About Our Church
The world’s largest psychedelic church. A nondenominational, interfaith religious organization founded on direct experience with sacred sacraments.
Built Around Direct Experience
We are not a church built around a set of rules you must accept or a God you must name. We are a church built around direct experience.
The Church of Ambrosia exists for people who believe that the most direct path to spiritual understanding runs through the body, not around it. Our sacraments, psilocybin mushrooms and cannabis, are not shortcuts to enlightenment. They are ancient teachers. Humans have been working with them for as long as we have been human. We hold that relationship as sacred.
“Our religion is about direct experience. It’s not what you read from a book. It’s not what you’re told from a pastor. It’s your direct experience communicating with your soul to get the answers you need.”
Our members come from every background and tradition. Former Christians, lifelong atheists, practitioners of Buddhism, Islam, indigenous traditions, and paths with no name. What we share is not a creed but a conviction: that access to entheogenic sacraments for genuine spiritual purposes is a religious right, and that these plants have something to teach those who approach them with intention and respect.
We are interfaith. We do not ask you to leave your tradition at the door.
Oakland, 2019
Pastor Dave Hodges founded the Church of Ambrosia in January 2019 in Oakland, California.
The seeds were planted long before. In 2009, Dave founded SJBC, the San Jose Cannabis Buyers Collective. He had watched what happened when people had safe, guided access to sacred plants, and what happened when they didn’t.
In 2019, he formalized what had been building: a church where entheogenic sacraments could be accessed legally, safely, and in a genuine religious context. Zide Door opened its doors in Oakland that year. The response was immediate. The community grew faster than anyone anticipated.
In 2019, during a high-dose psilocybin ceremony, Dave had the experience that crystallized his calling. Three luminous beings, what he describes as the oldest of the mushroom gods, identified themselves to him and made clear what he was meant to do: ensure that people have access to these sacraments and spread the knowledge. That experience is at the root of everything that followed.
Since then, the church has grown to more than 137,000 members, hosted six annual Spirituality & Beyond gatherings at Easter, built one of the most comprehensive sacrament education libraries on the internet, and become one of the most visible religious freedom advocates in the psychedelic space.
In 2020, the Oakland Police Department raided Zide Door and seized sacramental materials. No arrests were made. The church stood firm.
We have been covered by Forbes, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, NBC Bay Area, CBS Bay Area, KQED, and KTVU, among others.
Open every day, 9 AM – 10 PM
Membership: $5/month
Reggie Watts & Shane Mauss headline
Four Pillars
Sacrament Access
At Zide Door in Oakland, members in good standing can access entheogenic sacraments as part of their religious practice. Open every day, 9am to 10pm. Membership is $5 a month, paid in person.
Education
The most thorough and responsible body of educational content on entheogenic sacraments anywhere. Dosage guides, safety protocols, a dosage calculator, and medication interaction guidance.
Community
Spirituality & Beyond is our annual Easter weekend gathering in Oakland. Speakers, scientists, musicians, artists, and community members for three days of talks, ceremony, and conversation.
Theology
The Doctrine of Religious Evolution holds that psilocybin mushrooms catalyzed the evolution of human language, consciousness, and religion itself, 2.5 million years ago. Read the full doctrine.
Dave Hodges
Dave Hodges is the Founder and Head Pastor of the Church of Ambrosia. He is based in Oakland, California.
Dave spent more than a decade before the Church of Ambrosia in the cannabis legal battles: in 2009, he founded SJBC, the San Jose Cannabis Buyers Collective, making case law and becoming a court-certified expert witness for Prop 215. He spent years fighting for access to sacred plants before he ever imagined leading a church.
In 2019, a high-dose psilocybin ceremony made everything clear. Three luminous beings identified themselves to him and told him why his life had gone the way it had, and what he was called to do next. His entire legal career had been preparation. What followed was the Church of Ambrosia.
Dave has faced legal pressure, a police raid that seized sacramental materials without a single arrest, and years of navigating a city that won’t approve or deny the Church’s operating permit. He is still here. So is the Church.
He delivers an annual Easter sermon at Spirituality & Beyond and hosts the Church of Ambrosia Podcast, where his guests have included Rick Doblin (founder of MAPS) and Robin Carhart-Harris, two of the most important researchers in psychedelic science.
