Church of Ambrosia
One of the earliest entheogenic churches operating openly in Oakland after Ordinance 13553 — operating under Oakland's lowest-enforcement-priority framework for entheogenic plants.
Type: Church
Location: Oakland, CA
Membership: Sacramental congregation; donation-based
Venues: Oakland, CA — rotating sacramental ceremony venues
Activities: Sacramental psilocybin mushroom ceremonies under Oakland's Ordinance 13553 (2019), which decriminalized entheogenic plants and made enforcement the lowest priority for Oakland PD.
About
Church of Ambrosia is one of Oakland's entheogenic churches that began operating openly after Oakland's City Council passed Ordinance 13553 in June 2019 — the first US city ordinance to decriminalize entheogenic plants, making enforcement of laws against psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, iboga, and mescaline the lowest priority for Oakland police.
The church operates sacramental ceremonies centered on psilocybin mushrooms, framing the experience within a spiritual and healing context. Oakland's decriminalization ordinance created a practical operating environment for entheogenic churches that provides significant, though not absolute, legal cover — police deprioritization is not the same as legality, and churches operate with awareness of the legal gray area they occupy.
Church of Ambrosia represents one model in the diverse Oakland entheogenic church ecosystem alongside Sacred Garden Community, Soul Quest affiliates, and others — a model specifically oriented around congregational sacramental practice rather than the one-on-one therapeutic session format that Oregon's Measure 109 emphasizes.
Why It Matters
Oakland's entheogenic church community — of which Church of Ambrosia is an early and representative example — has served as a real-world laboratory for how sacramental psilocybin access operates at the community scale without clinical regulatory framework. The lessons are directly relevant to other cities considering decriminalization.
State Legal Context
See current psilocybin laws in California.