Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers

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The “Immortality Key” unfolds in a similar way. What appears to be a straightforward investigation into the origins of Christianity becomes a detective story, searching for an explanation into the famed Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece, as well as the righting of an academic wrong, a coming of age story, a Roots-like search for the author’s cultural origins, all told within the framework of a personal Odyssey, and I say Odyssey with a capital O! Plants of the Gods” is a term referring to the religious meaning members of many primitive cultures worldwide attribute to plants containing hallucinogenic or mind-altering substances. The plants are customarily considered sacred and consumed in religious rituals in an attempt to reach and communicate with gods or revered ancestors. They are frequently used in healing rites. Occasionally, they are used for purely recreational purposes, this being their main use in the modern societies of both industrialized and underdeveloped nations. However, it must be noted that the hallucinogenic or psychedelic experiences, recreational, are not always euphoric. Schultes lived and traveled with forest peoples for almost 14 years, sometimes amongst tribes that had never seen a white man before. At one point, he was gone for so long that friends in the Colombian capital of Bogota had given him up for dead. They were in the process of arranging memorial services in his honor when he reappeared at the National Herbarium, frightening more than a few of his fellow botanists. From James to the 1950s, again, when this was all fair game, I think that I sense kind of a return to the big questions. In addition to the relief of suffering, what do psychedelics really mean for people today? Why do people find meaning, even if all you think about psychedelics are agents of relieving suffering for PTSD? Okay, if you’ve ever talked to, and I’ve talk Iðunn the goddess of spring who guards the apples that keep the gods eternally young; wife of the god Bragi [3]

Plants of the gods by Richard Evans Schultes | Open Library Plants of the gods by Richard Evans Schultes | Open Library

Artemis, goddess of the hunt, the dark, the light, the moon, wild animals, nature, wilderness, childbirth, virginity, fertility, young girls, and health and plague in women and childhood By reaching a separate reality and becoming a sorcerer or warrior, Carlito would escape the mundane everyday existence that most of us lead and become inaccessible to old friends and family. As a man of knowledge in the state of non-ordinary reality, Carlito would attain vast amounts of supernatural powers by which he could then carry out extraordinary feats — such as fly great distances, converse with animals, render enemies harmless, vanquish powerful foes, and accept death without fear when it came. In Mexico, several varieties of morning glories ( Turbina corymbosa) referred to as Ololiuqui and bindweed vines ( Ipomoea violacea) are considered sacred plants because of their hallucinogenic powers. Both the Zapotec and Aztec Indians consumed the seed of these plants containing lysergic acid compounds that also act through the serotonin psychoactive pathways, as with psilocybin and psilocin. They continue to be used for religious and curing rituals by modern Indians throughout Mexico, including the Mazatecs and the Zapotecs in the Oaxaca region. The exact mechanism of how THC acts to alter mood and cognition and other psychogenic effects is not known, but it is known that the drug induces its most powerful effects by binding to its own cannabinoid receptors in the brain and that additional psychotropic effects may take place by the indirect release of dopamine.[ 13]

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The present-day Tarahumara Indians of Mexico mix Datura plants ( Toloache) with maize to make a ceremonial drink. Furthermore, they believe that Toloache is possessed by a malevolent spirit, just as Don Juan, the Yaqui teacher, also believed. Many of the initial evaluations from the Western medical perspective have focused on mescaline, which is of course from Mexican peyote. We’ll be talking about in a later podcast, psilocybin from magic mushrooms, and ayahuasca itself. These mind-altering remedies have been clinically proven to produce promising therapeutic effects in some cases of addiction, depression, and even OCD. I think further research is revealing to us that these mystical experiences seem to lie at the [foot] of essentially all religions, not just Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam, but some of these tribal religions of the people I’ve been working with. And this experience of the ineffable could be part of everybody’s experience, and may in part explain what’s missing from modern religion in the sense that the big question is, why are people turning away from organized religion? In the ’70s or ’80s, it was the first ethnobotanical congress in Latin America. It was held in Mexico, and much of the tenor of the discussion was how the Mexicans and other Latinos resented the fact that all of these gringos were coming down there and doing all these studies, and that the Latinos should study their own plants and their own indigenous peoples. I had to smile when the proceedings were published and here’s the dedication: Para Richard Schultes, quien abrió el camino (For Richard Schultes, who blazed the trail). So Schultes was beloved by the undergraduate students, by the graduate students, by many, if not most, if not all of his Latin colleagues. But I think most important of all is how he was regarded by the indigenous peoples themselves.

List of nature deities - Wikipedia List of nature deities - Wikipedia

And this is the proposition of the Mysteries that belong to the pagan world to whether it’s the mysteries of Eleusis that we talked about or the mysteries of Dionysus, which I think have far more in common with early Christianity, and we can talk about that later. But this notion of encountering the divine within [personal] experience, so how did Aristotle define this this notion of the Eleusinian vision?Shepard, Glenn H. “Psychoactive Plants and Ethnopsychiatric Medicines of the Matsigenka.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, vol. 30, no. 4, 1998, pp. 321–332., https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.1998.10399708. That’s not true, and we’ll cover that in another podcast. But I see the same potential for coca and coca products. However, I have to say that cocaine is addictive in a way, which in my opinion, marijuana is not. So some safeguards need to be built in there. It’s a wonderful crop. These people grow it for their own uses, and I think encouraging them to expand the cultivation of coca, if it’s done in a sustainable way and doesn’t involve processing, which involves dumping all sorts of nasty chemicals into the rivers, is a potential crop of the future. But only if it can be carefully controlled. Only if the indigenous peoples and the peasants, the campesinos, the caboclos can benefit first and foremost. Only if it doesn’t involve destruction of further forest, and with the understanding that cocaine is a dangerous and addictive drug. Wine was routinely referred to as a drug from like the time of Homer to the fall of the Roman Empire. Over 1000 years go by, and of course, there’s a word for wine: “oenos.” And you see that in the New Testament, but this word comes up as a ritual formula again, and again. And the reason that is is because wine at the time, and you see this in the ancient literature, it’s described as, you know, unusually intoxicating, seriously mind-altering, occasionally hallucinogenic. That’s true and potentially lethal. So very, very different wine from the one and today. and in fact, you can look at Dioscorides, the great physician who writes at in the second half of the first century, at the exact same time the Gospels are being written. And you can read recipe after recipe of what to add to wine to produce any number of different effects, whether it’s adding spices like frankincense and myrrh, whether it’s adding poisons.

Plants-Of-The-Gods | PDF - Scribd Richard Evan Schultes - The Plants-Of-The-Gods | PDF - Scribd

So when we talk about plants of the gods or fungi of the gods, we’re not just talking about compounds which may be useful for treating mental or emotional ailments. We’re talking about compounds which have revolutionized Western medicine and Western culture, as discussed in the episode on ergot. These compounds may have played a vital role in the beginnings of Western religions in addition to many of the aboriginal ones as well. Steffensen, Jennifer. “The Reality (TV) of Vanishing Lives: An Interview with Glenn Shepard.” Anthropology News, vol. 49, no. 5, 2008, pp. 30–30., https://doi.org/10.1525/an.2008.49.5.30.In the Orinoco river basin between Colombia and Venezuela, the Guahibo Indians use a powerful tobacco snuff, Cohoba, which is hallucinogenic, and to which the local Indians refer to as Yopo. It had been recorded by Spanish explorers as early as 1496 that Cohoba may have been brought by the Taino Indians of the Caribbean and used as a snuff mixed with tobacco to communicate with the spirit world from earlier times. Cohoba comes from the beans of the Yopo tree, Anadenanthera peregrina, that was part of the flora studied by the German naturalist Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) in the early 1800s. Pat McGovern is known amongst other things for resurrecting some of these ancient potions and these ancient brews, and he pointed me to like a well the “Midas Touch” beer, for example, which he recreated, that that was based on a Phrygian potion, eighth century BC in Gaudium. And which is all the more reason why you need a guide. And when I finished with the most horrible night of my life, going through this terrible, terrible ceremony, I asked the shaman who was a friend and teacher why he has subjected me to this. And he said, “As a conservationist, as a friend of the indigenous peoples, you confronted many challenges.” He said, “By experiencing your death in a ritual fashion, you will never fear death and travail ever again. I have prepared you for the path of the warrior. And these are the depths of the emotions and the challenges, mental and spiritual, which all of us who have an interest in trying, taking, consuming the plants of the gods must be ready to face.”

Plants of The Gods - Their Sacred, Healing, and - Scribd Plants of The Gods - Their Sacred, Healing, and - Scribd

Asase Afua, the goddess of the lush earth, fertility, love, procreation and farming in the Akan religion Now chicle is a resin of the sapodilla tree, which also produces a very tasty indigenous edible fruit. It is best known to the Western world. It has had a major impact on our history in a very unique and interesting way. Chicle, as I said, was native to Central America. It was long chewed by indigenous peoples there, and the commercialization of chicle in chewing gum got its start with General Santa Anna, the Mexican hero of the Alamo. Dionysus, god of wine, vegetation, pleasure, madness, and festivity. The Roman equivalent is Bacchus. [4]Well, I did plenty of nitrous oxide in college, and I still don’t understand Hegel! So William James definitely had the jump on me☺ They represent complex and fascinating aspects of the story. In fact, we’ve been able to document over 100 different plants from 40 different families, added to the ayahuasca brew. Most of these that I said are flowering plants, although one is a gymnosperm, a conifer, essentially. Another is a fern. There’s also records of snake fangs, snake poison, frogs being added. It is a rich field for further research. A Deep History of Tobacco in Lowland South America.” The Master Plant : Tobacco in Lowland South America, https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474220279.ch-002. But after the ceremony, Spruce ventured into the forest to collect the vine and flower, which was necessary for making a precise identification. Botanists cannot take a piece of a vine and typically identify it. Indigenous peoples can take a piece of the vine and not only identify the name of the vine, they’ll tell you the use of the vine, they’ll tell you where it grows, they’ll tell you what soil type it likes. They’ll tell you when it flowers, what pollinates it, and what the seeds look like.