> He was friends with Marsilio Ficino, who taught his students to hallucinate by chewing laurel leaves while playing the lyre

Which doesn't work, according to a quick search. And I'd believe Google over some cusp-of-Renaissance whack, who was clearly more than a little bit off.

Warmed over esotericism. Ficino, Mirandola, some others, were picking up an esoteric tradition dating back thousands of years. The neoplatonism, kabbalah, magic... it's all of a kind. The common thread being that all is one, that man is God, that the body is a prison, that we are properly seeking a return to the godhead from which we came, and that this can be achieved through transcendental practices. It's the same gnostic heresies that the early church was contending with and has roots in Persian mystical religions that are very, very old. I would argue that it is the dominant religious vibe of many Christians today and is the belief system that we might call "spiritual" today. It's also the same basic idea of progressive liberation theology (both religious and secular varieties) including transhumanism.

> Pico died burning up with fever; bundles of unintelligible notes were found stuffed in his cabinets.

I am reminded of a part in "Poet and the Pendulum" by Nightwish, where the band's composer, Tuomas, fantasizes about his own death:

> Today, in the year of our Lord, 2005

> Tuomas was called from the cares of the world

> He stopped crying at the end of each beautiful day

> The music he wrote had too long been without silence

> He was found, naked and dead, with a smile in his face, a pen and 1000 pages of erased text.

(Tuomas is still alive as of a few weeks ago)