The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in Wappinger’s Falls


A short drive from the consumer spectacle of the Poughkeepsie Galleria and into the forest of Wappingers Falls exists the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM). It’s a museum as well as figurative, literal, and legally recognized church that channels and celebrates the power of visionary art. That power is blasted out into a mesmerizing entangled web of energy and love that CoSM’s founders, artists Alex and Allyson Grey interpret as God. It’s the same God reached through the prayers and meditation of all world religions, the Greys say—they just visited this ethereal dimension through the use of psychedelics.

While some may not connect with the Greys’ illicit methods of transubstantiation, there’s no denying there’s magic in the madness. What they’ve built in Wappingers Falls, is a world-class, expertly curated, culturally significant, professionally run museum dedicated to the history and contemporary relevance of visionary art—centered around the prolific artistic output of the Greys. The 40-acre campus at CoSM, the site of a former Christian camp, contains a large Victorian house with 10 rentable guest rooms, the Mushroom Cafe, a dining hall, another cozy gallery, a gift shop, and Entheon, a 12,000-square-foot exhibition space that opened in May of last year. There are trails and an outdoor gathering area where bonfires are lit regularly for full moon celebrations. The Greys have hosted over 270 lunar parties since founding CoSM in Manhattan in 2004.

<a href="https://media2.chronogram.com/chronogram/imager/u/original/22081096/guide_–_cosm_–_alex_grey___allyson_grey_in_the_chapel_of_sacred_mirrors__wappinger__ny__photo_by_bo_bartlett_.jpg" rel="contentImg_gal-22039689" title="Alex and Allyson Grey in the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors." data-caption="Alex and Allyson Grey in the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.  
” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”>


click to enlarge

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in Wappinger's Falls

Alex and Allyson Grey in the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.

“CoSM is a sanctuary of visionary art and I think that psychedelic art is a kind of contemporary sacred art,” Alex Grey says. “Worldwide, it is still somewhat of an underground activity, but it’s a ubiquitous form of art with history that goes back millennia. Many, many people have found something extremely sacred in their psychedelic experiences and this art becomes identified with those experiences.”

One and the Same

Entheon also tells the story of the Grey’s life together, as visitors wind up three stories of the renovated carriage house. The story starts with their inspirations and the works of other visionary artists, then ascends through gallery after gallery of the couple’s symbolically complex paintings, depicting snapshots of a spiritual universe that binds living things together.

“We’re all both unique and the same simultaneously, without conflict,” Allyson says. “We’re authentic, and also unified. We are individuals but there is a thread of unity with all beings and things, and we have found that thread is the same with everybody’s psychedelic experience.”

<a href="https://media1.chronogram.com/chronogram/imager/u/original/22081098/guide_–_cosm_–_kissing_1983_alex_grey.jpg" rel="contentImg_gal-22039689" title="Kissing, Alex Grey, oil on linen, 1983" data-caption="Kissing, Alex Grey, oil on linen, 1983  
” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”>


click to enlarge

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in Wappinger's Falls

Kissing, Alex Grey, oil on linen, 1983

Alex is well known for expressing these ideas through his vibrant paintings of figures that often feature geometric radiation, bodies in X-ray, fractals full of eyes, interdenominational religious icons, and fantastical narrative imagery. (Alex’s painting Praying appeared on the cover of this magazine in November 1999.)

For how visually busy most of his paintings are, they’re surprisingly legible, a talent informed by former jobs as an illustrator for medical texts and as a billboard painter. Alex’s most zeitgeist-capturing work has been creating album art and performance imagery for the metal band Tool.

Allyson’s more abstract creations explore order and chaos through kaleidoscopic geometry and a secret alphabet of symbols made known to her in psychedelic visions. Her Chaos Order Secret Writing Zone gallery is a sensory bombardment on the second floor of Entheon. Though the couple’s styles and processes differ, they’ve worked together, often on the same canvas, since sharing their first acid trip in 1975. The couple recently returned from Burning Man, where their tandem live painting exhibitions have been part of the desert festival’s slate of attractions since its early days. They travel the world to electronic music festivals throughout the year and their work has become fundamental to the visual language of modern psychedelic culture.

Order and Chaos

During a life-changing trip in 1985, the Greys had a shared vision of the Sacred Mirrors series as a “sanctuary for spiritual renewal through contemplation of transformative art,” according to Alex. The current chapel on the top floor of Entheon is the temporary home of the 21 ornately framed paintings, eventually destined for an extravagant circular temple to be built elsewhere on the CoSM grounds. The “mirrors” are paintings depicting life-size figures in various states of existence—multicultural nudes, the internal biological systems, religious deities, and humans at different phases of entanglement in the organized chaos of the extraplanar divine realm that the Greys feel connects everyone and everything.

<a href="https://media1.chronogram.com/chronogram/imager/u/original/22081351/guide_–_cosm_–_all_one_gallery_in_entheon_exhibiting_the_work_of_21_visionary_artists_from_around_the_world_2023-07-18-en.jpg" rel="contentImg_gal-22039689" title="The Psychedelic Reliquary hosts treasured artifacts and ephemera, including the spectacles of Dr. Albert Hofmann and the ashes of Timothy Leary." data-caption="The Psychedelic Reliquary hosts treasured artifacts and ephemera, including the spectacles of Dr. Albert Hofmann and the ashes of Timothy Leary.  
” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”>


click to enlarge

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in Wappinger's Falls

The Psychedelic Reliquary hosts treasured artifacts and ephemera, including the spectacles of Dr. Albert Hofmann and the ashes of Timothy Leary.

Functionally, as a church, CoSM worships creativity, not, Allyson stresses, drug use. Beliefs personally held by the Greys about the shape and design of God are a part of a mercurial lore that the couple don’t push on visitors or even their growing collective of regular attendees. The only semblance of doctrine here is an encouragement to make art. CoSM’s services take the form of regularly scheduled Art Church where anyone can come to paint and make art together in a meditative state. Allyson says CoSM isn’t without rules, however. “We do talk openly about psychedelics here but we don’t have any here, and we make sure that we don’t have any here,” she says. “We have security [personnel] who make sure that people aren’t passing it around or offering it to other people. We want to be a safe place for our community to come together.”

Journey into Entheon

While the extravagant exterior of massive faces, figures, and sacred symbols has not yet been completed, Entheon makes an immediate impression. Visitors open the brass doors—a bronze relief titled Creating a Better World by Alex depicting Adam and Eve surrounded by the iconography of world religions—and become immediately aware they are in a museum like no other. Entering the All One Gallery, you’re greeted by the painting Ana Suromai by Amanda Sage, featuring a screaming woman holding up her skirt and blasting lightning out of her vagina in the direction of a corporate boardroom and a landscape populated by instruments of oppression.

Other works include the arresting colors and textures of paintings by the late Ernst Fuchs, considered the father of the visionary art movement, and a number of paintings from the rich vein of South American visionary artists, including Pablo Amaringo. The gallery, which will exhibit a rotating collection, is a repository for dozens of pieces by established and emerging artists, in a movement rarely collected in one place.

Also featured are the slick psychedelic sculptures of Ryan Tottle, an Oscar Award-winning Disney animator, who has worked closely with the Greys to help 3-D model and engineer the large-scale sculptural elements planned for Entheon’s exterior. Alex says all these artists agree that psychedelic visions have influenced their work.

<a href="https://media1.chronogram.com/chronogram/imager/u/original/22081350/guide_–_cosm_–_the_great_hall_of_entheon__2024_featuring_works_of_alex_grey___allyson_grey_2024-07-14_-_entheon_galleries.jpg" rel="contentImg_gal-22039689" title="The Great Hall of Entheon, featuring works by Alex and Allyson Grey." data-caption="The Great Hall of Entheon, featuring works by Alex and Allyson Grey.  
” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”>


click to enlarge

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in Wappinger's Falls

The Great Hall of Entheon, featuring works by Alex and Allyson Grey.

“Anybody can have that experience,” Alex says. “Anybody can feel connected with the infinite. You don’t have to call it god. There’s a million different names you could use. Some people who connect with the psychedelic experience are looking for a reference point. CoSM can be that point.”

Deeper into Entheon, the Psychedelic Reliquary is an altar to the scientists who discovered and isolated psychedelic compounds as well as psychonaut researchers and philosophers. There are also relics from across the timeline of psychedelic history, including 4,000-year-old mushroom eater sculptures, historically significant acid blotter sheets (behind glass), and even some of Timothy Leary’s ashes.

Along with Allyson’s solo gallery, the second floor of the museum is also home to the Progress of the Soul gallery, displaying Alex’s series on life from conception to death, and the Gaia Gallery, devoted to his paintings exploring man’s influence on the Earth. There’s an insightful gallery of Alex’s many yearly self-portraits, and another devoted to the Greys’ storied performance art career.

The third floor is home to the Sacred Mirrors series, as well as the Great Hall, which serves as an event space and repository of some of the Greys’ most iconic works, including Alex’s Net of Being, a massive depiction of an endless vista of many-faced columns and voids. Before the painting is a stage, where regular talks and performances are held.

The Greys say while they may be CoSM’s figureheads, their goal is to encourage people to build fellowship. “For Alex and I, what we always wanted was to create a container,” Allyson says. “To build a temple that could be the container for the experiences of other people. So that’s the art of CoSM. It’s a social sculpture. It means that we collaborate with everyone.”


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *