Women and Entheogens: Rise of the Dark Feminine

Rise of the Dark Feminine: Boston’s Women & Entheogens Conference and the Work of Healing in Place The psychedelic renaissance has a visibility problem. For all the clinical trials, venture capital, and media coverage, the communities who have longest carried entheogenic knowledge — Black, Indigenous, and women of color — remain underrepresented in the spaces now shaping its future. The Women & Entheogens Conference (WEC), returning to Boston this July 24–26, is a sustained, lineage-rooted answer to that gap. Founded by Kai Wingo (1972–2016) — activist, urban farmer, mushroom cultivator, and community organizer — WEC was built to center women’s voices, ancestral wisdom, and culturally grounded conversations around entheogens and healing. That founding vision is carried forward today by Mama Ayana Iyi, healer, educator, and former President of the Detroit Psychedelic Society, whose work has reached international stages including Breaking Convention, Beyond Psychedelics, and the Ozora Festival. Behind both of them stands the intellectual and spiritual legacy of Baba Kilindi Iyi (1955–2020), whose African-centered frameworks helped expand global conversations on responsible entheogenic practice. This year’s gathering — themed Rise of the Dark Feminine — takes place Friday through Sunday at a venue in Boston, MA. It is designed not as a one-time event but as an annual activation point within a year-round community ecosystem called Heal a Woman, Heal a Nation (HAWHAN). Where the conference brings people together for education, ceremony, embodied practice, and integration, HAWHAN sustains the work between gatherings through monthly community events, leadership development pathways, and ongoing peer and facilitator support. The conference format holds five interconnected pillars: talks and panels grounded in lived experience; workshops and embodied practices; optional ceremonial spaces approached with cultural integrity and consent; integration rooms for rest and meaning-making; and intentional community connection spaces. Care is treated as infrastructure, not an afterthought — childcare, bodywork, sound healing, yoga, and acupuncture are built into the program, not offered as optional upgrades. Critically, while WEC remains women-centered at its core, the ecosystem explicitly makes space for men, couples, LGBTQIA+ participants, and intergenerational healing — operating from the understanding that the healing of women cannot be separated from the healing of families, communities, and the cultural systems that shape human connection. The economic model is equally intentional: a circulatory system in which membership fees, event proceeds, and sponsorship reinvest directly into fair contributor compensation, scholarship access, and community infrastructure — designed for sustainability, not extraction. WEC represents what community-led psychedelic education has always looked like when it emerges from within rather than being handed down. For practitioners, facilitators, seekers, and policy voices who want to engage with this movement on its own terms, this is the gathering. Women & Entheogens Conference July 24–26, 2026 | Boston, MA WomenandEntheogensConference.com womenandentheogensconference@gmail.com

Number of Attendees: 500