Christian Rätsch

Christian Rätsch (20 April 1957 – 17 September 2022) was a German anthropologist and writer on topics like ethnopharmacology and psychoactive plants and animals.

Life Rätsch was born in 1957 in a Bohemian community in Hamburg, Germany. His father was an opera singer, his mother a ballet dancer. He started learning about shamanism and sacred plants at 10 and had his first drug experience at 12.

Rätsch earned a doctorate in Native American cultures. He conducted field research for three years while living with the Lacandón Indians in Chiapas, Mexico investigating shamanism first-hand, and completed his doctorate on their incantations and spells.

Selected works

The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications Christian Rätsch's The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants