Someone recently asked me about San Pedro ceremonies and what Christians should make of them. My first gut reaction was that they open you up to something demonic in a way we can't control. The more I worked through it, the more I thought that instinct was pointing at something real, just not quite where I first landed.
I can't say with confidence that taking the cactus automatically opens a person to a demon. Scripture doesn't say that, and I don't want to hand demonic powers a kind of authority Christ never gave them. But there's a strong biblical reason to stay away from ceremonies built around invoking spirits and receiving revelation from them. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 that an idol is nothing, and yet participating in pagan worship can still be fellowship with demons. It's the spiritual participation that concerns me more than the plant.
But as I kept thinking about it, I realized the cactus isn't really the point. It's just one example of something much bigger, which is the human longing for a special door. A secret, a ceremony, a higher level, an experience that finally makes it feel real. And that longing shows up everywhere, including in the church.
Here's what I keep coming back to. Christ has already given us his word and his church to lead us into deeper communion with God. In the incarnation, God came to us, so we don't have to climb into some hidden spiritual realm to find him. At the cross, the barrier came down, so we don't need another mediator or guide or initiation. At Pentecost, the Spirit was poured out on God's people, not reserved for people who reach unusual states. And the church, with Scripture, prayer, the table, and one another, is how we're formed into the likeness of Jesus. The spiritual life isn't a secret to unlock. It's a gift that's been given.
That's why seeking esoteric experience can become a quiet rival gospel. Paul warns about it in Colossians 2:18-19, about people who delight in visions and unusual practices. But his main complaint isn't the experiences. It's that they've lost connection to the Head, to Christ. A person can get so interested in accessing the spiritual that they drift away from the one through whom God has actually revealed himself. And it's sneaky, because it looks like hunger for spiritual maturity. "I want to go deeper. I want to experience transcendence."
I don't think that desire is wrong. Christianity has a lot to say to it. Ephesians 2:18 says, "For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father." That's the whole life of the Trinity, opened to us through Christ. So when someone offers me a deeper door, the question I keep asking is what that door could possibly offer that I don't already have in him.
The other thing I have noticed is that these kinds of ceremonies and secret practices tend to separate us. Just think about the actual physical movement of it. Instead of pressing into the real life of the community, you leave it to go seek an experience with a guide. You're separating and moving apart. And even if everyone did it, we'd still end up with insiders and outsiders, those who've been through it and those who haven't, because the experience itself can't be handed to the person who wasn't there. If the deeper life requires something strenuous or risky, then the sick, the elderly, the kids, and the weak are locked out too. The gospel works the other way. What was once hidden has now been made known to all the saints, Jew and Gentile alike (Col 1:26-27), and it comes to us in public things like water, bread, a cup, Scripture read aloud, and people gathered. A kid can receive it. A woman in hospice can receive it. That's not a lesser way in. That's how God chose to give himself, and it keeps us together instead of sorting us out.
I think this is true of more than ceremonies. A lot of spirituality, even in the church, turns into a ladder. Some people seem to have a special experience or gift or moment, and the rest of us are left wondering if we're missing something and not measuring up. It's the microwave version of life with God. What Scripture gives us is slower. It's the long, boring, messy work of showing up, forgiving each other, reading the Word, praying for the same people for years, and being formed together over decades. The Spirit does give gifts, and I'm grateful for them, but they're given for the common good, to build up the body, not to rank it (1 Cor 12). The life God actually gave us in Christ isn't a shortcut for the few. It's a slow road for everyone, walked together.
I also want to be honest that I'm new to some of the more mystical side of faith, and I don't want to flatten it. Christianity is deeply mystical. Paul was caught up to the third heaven. Peter, James, and John saw the transfiguration. The Spirit gave visions and prophecy in Acts. God can meet people in extraordinary ways. But notice what Paul does with it in 2 Corinthians 12. He doesn't build a path or a class around it, and he doesn't make it the basis of his authority. He boasts in his weakness instead. So the problem was never mystical experience. The problem comes when an experience becomes a way into God other than Christ, or when it starts dividing the church into the people who have had it and the people who haven't.
Dallas Willard puts it in a way that sticks with me: the goal isn't to collect experiences of transcendence but to become the kind of person who can live in conscious communion with God right in the middle of ordinary life. That's the incarnation again. Ordinary human life became the place where divine life is available to us.
So I think the danger is two things at once. Yes, we might meet something we shouldn't. But maybe worse, we can slowly become dissatisfied with the means God has already given us, while the God who came to live in us and among us is right here, in the water, the bread, the word, and the people next to us.