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

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If you want to truly begin to understand shamanic cultures and shamanic healing, and the plant of the gods, and the fungi of the gods, and the magic frogs of the gods, you need to experience the ceremony as the shaman as the indigenous people see it. Now as an ethnobotanist, I’ve been through probably 80 or 90 ayahuasca ceremonies. Always in a ritual context, always led by a shaman, because these are plants of power and knowledge and danger as well. Two plants in Don Juan’s armamentarium were considered “allies”: Psilocybe mexicana, a mushroom that was dried and smoked in a pipe and referred to as humito (“little smoke”) by Don Juan; and Jimsonweed or devil’s weed, a powerful psychoactive plant in the Nightshade family. The species utilized, Datura innoxia, was chewed and ingested or rubbed as an ointment to certain body parts. Both the smoked mushroom ( humito) and the flowering plant Datura, also referred to as devil’s trumpet and Moonflower, helped the ritualistic consumer in his journey to attain a state of non-ordinary reality and wield supernatural powers. Interestingly enough, coca and cocaine is still produced in enormous quantities around Trujillo in northern Peru. They take the cocaine out of it and use the rest of the leaf as a flavoring for Coca-Cola still. However, the drug, which is widely used in ophthalmologic surgery and in treating inoperable cancer as a painkiller, is then sold to pharmaceutical companies, which distribute it with a license, with a prescription. When you see Yucuna men hunting, or you see them in the gardens helping their wives, they always have that container with them. And every time they feel the need, they use the spoon, or in really traditional communities they use a leg bone of a tapir, this is a big forest mammal, as a spatula to scoop out the powder and place it between the cheek and the gum. Unlike the coca leaf, which is prized by the Andean cultures and the Kogis in Northern Colombia, the ipadu quid is not chewed, but it’s gradually allowed to dissolve and be swallowed at which point the user takes the scoop.

Schultes, Hofmann - Plants of The Gods (Healing Arts, 2001) Schultes, Hofmann - Plants of The Gods (Healing Arts, 2001)

How these people discovered this complex chemistry is really beyond me, but this is yet another mystery of these plants of the gods. In these coca chewing tribes, people use an alkaline substance to extract the alkaloid. In the case of the Kogi, since they live on the edge of the Caribbean sea, it’s seashells. In fact, seashells are sacred to the Kogis, and they’re always trekking down them out into the sea to collect these seashells. Amongst the Kogis, seashells are a form of commerce, or a form of money almost, or a very important part of their sacred offerings. 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. Previously, we mentioned D. innoxia in the context of the teachings of Don Juan. Datura plants grow in the tropical and subtropical regions of both hemispheres. In Mexico, the plants, referred to as Toloache, are considered one of the main plants of the gods and used extensively for their psychoactive effects. It was consumed by both the Mayans and the Aztecs in ancient times. The eminent Maya scholar Eric Thompson wrote in The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization[ 12] that the chilans (Mayan priests specializing in divination) may have used peyote and Datura mixed with tobacco and lime to induce hallucinatory visions and assist them in divination. More recent archeological and anthropological scholarship have confirmed that bloody Mayan rituals also utilized hallucinatory plants.[ 10] Louis Agassiz was a very famous Swiss biologist. He came to Boston to give some lectures and they were so well received that he was offered a job at Harvard. He worked with Harvard and some of their donors to create the Museum of Comparative Zoology. At the time, this was one of, if not the finest naturist museums in the world, certainly in North America.

Plants of the Gods: S4E6. Part 1 — Ayahuasca and Tobacco Shamanism: an Interview with Ethnobotanist Dr. Glenn Shepard Dr. Mark Plotkin: Today, we want to talk about coca, truly a plant of the gods. It’s often confused with coconuts or cacau, but coca is a family unique to South America, typically about a meter or two high, and has been in use by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. The latest finds, I think, indicate use of coca, coca quids, coca that’s been chewed, about 8,000 years ago. Atropa belladona L. played a major role in the war of the Scots under Duncan I against the Norwegian king Sven Canute about A.D. 1035. The Scots destroyed the Scandinavian army by sending them food and drink laced with 'sleepy nightshade'. Perhaps some of the lessons learned from the increasingly widespread legalization of marijuana in many countries might help us one day pursue a similar positive path with coca in its native form. In the meantime, the traditional use of coca by its traditional users should be celebrated and protected. The bottom line here is the coca used in its traditional cultural setting is a plant of the gods, which only benefits humanity. One of the first tribes he worked with were the Cofan, who were master curare makers. He was able to collect many different forms of curare. In fact in later years, Schultes sent a student, a graduate student, to continue studying with the Cofans and he actually found a curare, an arrow poison made from a nutmeg — I mean, a cinnamon tree. This is totally unreported prior to Pinkley’s groundbreaking work.

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

The Aztecs called these mushrooms Teonanácatl (“divine flesh”), and as we have mentioned, the Mayans also ingested them, although peyote may have been the most commonly used hallucinogen in both civilizations, as well as by most other Mesoamerican cultures. Of all the plants of the gods, coca is a masticatory, that is a plant, which is chewed by people. There are two types of masticatories. There is the mechanical, that is plants or plant products, which are chewed purely for mechanical reasons essentially. It’s just something enjoyable. It doesn’t produce a physiological response. A good example of that would be the resin of the red spruce tree, which is traditionally chewed by indigenous peoples in New England. Larch resin, which was popular amongst the indigenous peoples of Siberia, and the best known of all, which is chicle, which is the source of chewing gum. The recent creation of the center for psychedelic and conscious research at Johns Hopkins University, supported in part by my buddy, Tim Ferriss, as well as similar efforts underway at other prominent universities like Yale and NYU, shamanic medicine is rapidly shifting from being considered unconventional, non-effective, primitive to conventional. It is becoming part of conventional medicine. We talked earlier about the importance of admixture. These are plants or other compounds which are added to an arrow poison or ayahuasca or hallucinogenic snuffs, which may not be toxic or hallucinogenic in and of themselves, but they enhance the potency of the other compound, be it hallucinogenic or otherwise. Such as truly the case with coca. You need to add something to extract the alkaloid and make it more effective, more stimulating. 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.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. Plants of the Gods: S4E7. Part 2 — Ayahuasca and Tobacco Shamanism: an Interview with Ethnobotanist Dr. Glenn Shepard Approximately 20 minutes after the initial dose, the subject usually experiences the onset of dizziness, and nausea often preceding a purge, either vomiting or defecation, which the shamans insist is part of the process, that you must clean your body of toxic substances. And shamans insists that many of the ills that afflict Western society are because we do not expel toxic substances like they do, using a variety of plants, often ayahuasca, but not only ayahuasca — there’s shamanic cultures that don’t use ayahuasca — purge themselves intentionally to cleanse themselves of toxins that the body accumulates over time. These are not plants or compounds to be trifled with. And let me tell you about my worst ayahuasca experience of all. I was in the middle of a ceremony with a Komsa shaman, actually an Ingano shaman from Colombia, and I soon was able to realize that this was going to be a very, very, very bad trip. And I then found myself vomiting purple phosphorescent scorpions. So anyone who thinks that this is going to be a fun ride, anyone who thinks this is always going to be a world of wonder and magic, and lots of fun, is underestimating what these types of journeys can consist of. Interestingly enough, Schultes was not the discoverer of Chiribiquete. And of course, as an ethnobotanist, we always have to point out that we don’t discover anything. The indigenous peoples got there first. But when I say Schultes was a discoverer of ayahuasca, I mean that the indigenous people showed it to him and gave it to him and led the ceremony with him. When I say that Schultes discovered Chiribiquete from a Western perspective, further research has revealed that it was another Harvard fellow who got there first, an extraordinary character named Alexander Hamilton Rice.

Plants of the Gods: Hallucinogens, Healing, Culture and

I discovered the tome, Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers,[ 11] while researching and ascertaining the veracity of certain stories contained in an immensely celebrated series of books from the sixties and seventies by Carlos Castaneda, an anthropology student and PhD candidate at the University of California at Los Angeles.[ 4] I wanted to verify the existence and corroborate the action of the powerful hallucinogenic plants mentioned in that popular series and that were consumed by Don Juan, the teacher, and Carlos Castaneda (“Carlito”), his younger apprentice. When the scientist works and respects indigenous culture and wisdom, she or he typically develops a scientific name based on the indigenous name, to honor their knowledge and that’s why it’s called Banisteriopsis caapi. The vine is also known as yage. Y-A-G-E. It is predominantly known by this name in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. And it’s also known in Huasca and other parts of Brazil, where it’s become a staple of these new religions. Joy of the mind and of the soul, Plants of the Gods is just always such an entertaining yet so pedagogical and rich in knowledge. Hoffer and Osmond: "Hallucinogens are chemicals which, in non-toxic doses, produce changes in perception, in thought and in mood, but which seldom produce mental confusion, memory loss, or disorientation for person, place, and time."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. Also another spectacular find was the Lady of Cao, C A O, which is a similar story. And in terms of Moche pottery, it is a depiction of many aspects of daily life, many of which involved coca chewing. When you see the heads of the Moche people in the Larco Herrera Museum in Lima, many of them have a big quid of cocoa stuffed under their left cheek. The other thing that’s famous about their pottery is it’s incredibly pornographic. They depict all sorts of extraordinary sexual acts, and Professor Schultes remarked on this by saying, “If they’d spent as much time performing these acts as they did portraying them in pottery, perhaps they wouldn’t have died out.” After attaining fame and commercial success, Castaneda remained mysterious and inaccessible, a secretive man in all aspects of his life, while orchestrating from afar a vast following of admirers, students, and apprentices. Questions were asked and are still being asked about his anthropological apprenticeship, the veracity of his research, the existence of Don Juan, and the logical question of whether his PhD should have been given in anthropology or creative writing! Suffice to say that since the 1970s the literary reference to the persona of Don Juan shifted almost imperceptibly in America from the amorous Don Juan of Spanish literature to Don Juan Matus, the Yaqui sorcerer, “man of knowledge,” and mentor of Carlos Castaneda. (The reader should keep in mind that it is in fact Carlos Castaneda himself who is speaking through the persona of Don Juan and who is expounding his purported philosophy of life in all of his books.). You can see the results on a young, beardless me here. During the long research period while I was setting up various aspects of the filming, this book became my Bible. I actually read quite a few works on hallucinogenics and legal highs, but most were either obscurely medical or uncritically new-agey – this one is the perfect balance, giving excellent ethnographic details of the different peoples or tribes that have used the substances concerned, with comments on mythology or folklorish import where relevant, but also providing details on the chemistry at work and the neurological effects produced (where known).

Plants of the Gods - PDF Free Download Schultes Hofmann - Plants of the Gods - PDF Free Download

I want to talk a bit more about what is ayahuasca, and its importance and increasing importance in the world today. And what it teaches us about healing, what it teaches about entheogenic plants and fungi, what it teaches us about tribal knowledge. This was a plant, this was a liana first discovered and of course, as a Schultes said, ethnobotanists don’t discover anything, we just write with our indigenous colleagues teachers, we write it down. Bonito manual de divulgación para gente interesada en plantas enteogénicas. Valioso por lo accesible de los datos técnicos, pero invaluable por resaltar la importancia étnica y religiosa de cada planta de los dioses. 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. Narby, Jeremy, and Rafael Chanchari Pizuri. Plant Teachers: Ayahuasca, Tobacco, and the Pursuit of Knowledge. New World Library, 2021. Spruce realized that this represented a species unknown to science, and he named it Banisteriopsis caapi, honoring the Tukanoa name, which, as I said, was caapi. Now, one of the great and understudied aspects of the plants of the gods of the hallucinogenic substances is admixtures, which are plants, typically plants, sometimes insects, added to the potion with the intention of altering the type, intensity, and duration of the experience.it was very good, because when possible, the active substances were identified, and they were compared with neurotransmitters occurring in the brain; Season 4 of Plants of the Gods wraps up today with an episode featuring Peter Grinspoon, MD, cannabis specialist at Harvard Medical School. During this conversation, Dr. Plotkin and Dr. Grinspoon discuss everything from the pain-relieving and uplifting qualities of cannabis sought by people with chronic illnesses to marijuana in popular culture (cannabis trilogy to brush up on your history!), as well as his father’s successful efforts to fend off the Nixon Administration’s attempts to deport John Lennon because of a cannabis conviction. Join us today for this captivating interview.