The Rose of Paracelsus

Handwritten over four years from maximum-security federal prison cells, The Rose of Paracelsus: On Secrets and Sacraments, is a unique work of psychedelic literature that explores the potential of human cognition. This book follows the narrator, a Harvard graduate student and researcher, as he uncovers an intricate, global psychedelic network through encounters with “the Six,” clandestine LSD chemists who synthesize planetary-scale batches of the substance, traversing states of consciousness and advancing human evolution. From Cambridge to Moscow, Oxford to Zürich, Princeton to Mazar-i-Sharif and Bangkok, this book illuminates lifestyles within a rare and elusive organization, one that has evolved special gifts: advanced capacities of thought, memory and perception. The Rose is a psychedelic biography of its author, William Leonard Pickard, a former Harvard chemist who served 20 years in prison for conspiracy to manufacture and distribute LSD. An excerpt from The Rose was published in The Nature of Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact (Synergetic Press, 2021). One of the documentarians who made a podcast series dedicated to readings of The Rose said of the book, “Other than LSD, it’s quite possibly the most psychedelic thing you’ll ever find on paper.”