Food of the Gods The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (original) (raw)
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Psychoactive botanicals in ritual, religion and shamanism
Chapter 18 in: Ethnopharmacology, E. Elisabetsky & N. Etkin (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), Theme 6.79. Oxford, UK: UNESCO/Eolss Publishers. http://www.eolss.net, 2005
Psychoactive plants have played an important role in medicine, religion, ritual life, and recreation since ancient times. In shamanic religions, which appear to have dominated throughout much of human pre-history, trance induced by psychoactive plants and other techniques permits direct contact with the divine. For this reason, plant hallucinogens and other psychoactive botanicals have been considered by cultures throughout history as "plants of the gods": sacred substances that bring knowledge, power, healing, and mystical insight, but that must be used with utmost respect and caution. With the spread of Christianity, and especially since the Inquisition and Conquest of the New World, the religious use of psychoactive plants has been severely and sometimes violently suppressed. Western scientific and popular interest in psychoactive plants enjoyed a resurgence in the mid-twentieth century, though the excesses of the 1960s "psychedelic era" provoked a backlash, exacerbating existing biases within the scientific, medical, and law-enforcement establishments. Psychoactive compounds produce their peculiar effects on consciousness by mimicking the chemical structures of neurotransmitters or otherwise altering the transmission of nerve impulses. Over the past two hundred years, chemical and physiological studies of natural psychoactive compounds and their synthetic derivatives have resulted in major contributions to medicine and neuroscience. This chapter presents an overview of twenty-two important psychoactive plants used in religious or ritual settings throughout the world, with supplementary information on ten additional species. The cultural and historical background for each plant is presented alongside pertinent botanical, chemical, and pharmacological information. An appendix provides a summary of the names, traditional and biomedical uses, and active components of plants discussed in the text. A general introduction and concluding discussion help set the topic of psychoactive plant use within the intertwined historical, social, philosophical, scientific, and contemporary legal contexts.
SexuS Journal ● 2017 ● 2 (5): 201-236
Abstract: Psychoactive plants which contain hallucinogenic molecules that induce a form of altered states of consciousness (H-ASC) have been widely used during the religious rituals of many cultures throughout the centuries, while the consump-tion of these plants for spiritual and religious purposes is as old as human history. Some of those cultures were shaman and pagan subcultures; African native religions; Bwiti Cult; South American native religions; Amazon Cultures; Central American Cultures; Mexican subcultures; Aztec, Maya and Inca; Wiccan and witch subcultures; Satanists; American Indians; Greek and Hellenistic cultures; Sufis; Hassan Sabbah’s Hashisins; Hindu, Indian and Tibetan cultures; some of the Nordic subcultures etc. Some of the psychoactive ingredients of the plants that were used during these religious rituals were; narcotic analgesics (opium), THC (cannabis), psilocybin (magic mushrooms), mescaline (peyote), ibogaine (Tabernanthe iboga), DMT (Ayahuasca and phalaris species), Peganum harmala, bufotenin, muscimol (Amanita musca-ria), thujone (absinthe, Arthemisia absinthium), ephedra, mandragora, star lotus, Salvia divinorum etc. The main pur-poses of the practice of these plants were: spiritual healing; to contact with spirits; to contact with the souls of ances-tors; to reach enlightenment (Nirvana or Satori); to become a master shaman, pagan or witch; to reach so-called-other realities, etc. Such “psychedelic-philosophical plant rituals” changed participating persons’ psychology, philosophy and personality to a great degree. In these two successive articles, the consumption of psychedelic plants during religious rituals is reviewed and it is hypothesized that the images, figures, illusions and hallucinations experienced during these “plant trips” had a great impact on the formation and creation of many figures, characters, creatures, archetype images that exist not only in the mythology, but also in many religions, as well, such as angels, demons, Satan, mythological creatures, gods, goddesses etc. In the Middle East and Anatolia, within many hermetic and pagan religions, Greek and Hellenic cultures psychoactive plant use was a serious part of the religious rituals, such as Dionysian rituals or Witch’s’ Sabbaths. Although the impact of the “psychedelic experience and imagination” was enormous to the configuration of many religious and mythological characters, and archetypes, this fact has been underestimated and even unnoticed by many historians and anthropologists, because of the quasi-ethical trends of “anti-drug-brain-washed Western Socie-ties”. Today, it may be perceived as very disturbing for many believers that their belief systems and religious figures are actually just a result of the imaginations of the “human brain and psyche”, which were very elevated and altered by psychedelic plants that are totally banned today. What those chemicals did in the brain was actually induce the con-sciousness to recognize the inner self, to unravel the subconscious and the collective unconscious, to open some of the doors of perception, to disentangle entoptic images and perhaps explicate some unknown functions of the brain and the human psyche which may have many other means to contact other –hypothetical— realities! Since the research on the psychedelic nature of the brain will unravel many facts about the consciousness of the brain and human psyche, we invite the authorities again to ponder deeply the banning of research on psychoactive plants and psychedelic drugs! KEY WORDS: psychoactive plant, entoptic, phosphene, religious ritual, opium, THC, Cannabis, DMT, ayahuasca, Pega-num harmala, phalaris, magic mushroom, psilocybin, peyote, mescaline, ibogaine, thujone, Arthemisia absinthium, Salvia divinorum, Dionysian ritual, mandragora SexuS Journal ● 2017 ● 2 (5): 201-236
Plants & Pathways: More-than-Human Worlds of Power, Knowledge, and Healing
Dissertation, 2020
This dissertation investigates the pathways and consequences of the commodification of ayahuasca, an Indigenous psychoactive and medicinal Amazonian plant brew, and the Shipibo healing rituals associated with its use. The “ayahuasca complex” is an assemblage of socionatural boundary beings, more-than-human relations, and interspecies and Indigenous practices that produce ayahuasca as a global commodity. I argue that the ayahuasca complex produces worlds in which both plant beings and humans participate, and which create ontological openings toward life. Providing healing services to outsiders is one way that Shipibo communities in the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon have responded to the conditions of globalization and regional histories of colonial violence, racism, and resource extractivism; but these communities are still living in great poverty. This dissertation unfolds in response to four guiding research questions: (1) how does the commodification of ayahuasca differ, if at all, from the socioeconomic and socioecological relations that have defined the extraction of other resources in Ucayali?; (2) how do Shipibo communities and healers benefit from ayahuasca tourism and what are the limitations on their ability to benefit?; (3) how does the adoption of Shipibo healing practices by outsiders affect relationships between humans and plant beings?; and (4) how can outsiders and researchers like myself work in Shipibo communities in ways that are not exploitative and extractive? My findings are based on fourteen months of ethnographic research in Ucayali, Peru (over five years), in which I conducted interviews, ecological studies, focus groups, and participant-observation of practices associated with ayahuasca, including harvesting, cooking, and healing. I also lived and worked in Shipibo communities and became involved in NGO projects and a community-based forest management project. My work dwells at the intersection of political ecology, STS (Science, Technology, and Society), environmental history, and environmental anthropology while also emphasizing decolonial approaches and introducing feminist and multispecies lenses to this topic. I use a political ecology framework to show that although the ayahuasca boom may appear similar to other extractive frontiers, the plants used to make ayahuasca also resist commodification in certain ways and create their own particular economic pathways that do not conform to usual commodity circuits. Nonetheless, as with other extractive economies, resources flow northward to rich countries through the growing ayahuasca commodity web. Although the commodification of ayahuasca does open up channels for resources to flow back to Shipibo communities, benefits and power continue to be concentrated in the North, and Shipibo communities are constrained by ongoing structural racism from capitalizing on the commodification of ayahuasca. I find that a legacy of colonial exploitation and extractivism still structures racialized hierarchies in Ucayali and globally, which constrain Shipibo healers’ ability to benefit from capitalist/colonial systems of power. However, ayahuasca’s particular relationships with humans, both material and cultural, causes it to behave unusually as a commodity. This dissertation reveals that plants themselves are important actors in commodity networks. I argue that as the ayahuasca complex moves through capitalist and reductionist frameworks, plant-human relations are altered in such a way that plant agency is constricted. My work draws from the literature on political ontology to understand relational practices as constitutive of worlds. Ayahuasca’s relationship with humans, therefore, is constituted through specific practices that shift as they move through different ontological framings and take on new meanings, values, and configurations of power. I focus on power, knowledge, and healing, as three attributes that are associated with ayahuasca, and use this as an analytic to show that these attributes become unraveled and humanized as ayahuasca is recontextualized. However, new articulations and openings are also created as plants and humans, Shipibo healers and outsiders engage in new types of collaborative worldmaking practices.
Psychoactive plants which contain hallucinogenic molecules that induce a form of altered states of consciousness (H-ASC) have been widely used during the religious rituals of many cultures throughout the centuries, while the consumption of these plants for spiritual and religious purposes is as old as human history. Some of those cultures were shaman and pagan Tibetan cultures; some of the Nordic subcultures etc. Some of the psychoactive ingredients of the plants that were used during these religious rituals were; narcotic analgesics (opium), THC (cannabis), psilocybin (magic mushrooms), mescaline (peyote), ibogaine (Tabernanthe iboga), DMT (Ayahuasca and phalaris species), Peganum harmala, bufotenin, muscimol (Amanita muscaria), thujone (absinthe, Arthemisia absinthium), ephedra, mandragora, star lotus, Salvia divinorum etc. The main purposes of the practice of these plants were: spiritual healing; to contact with spirits; to contact with the souls of ancestors; to reach enlightenment (Nirvana or Satori); to become a master shaman, pagan or witch; to reach so-called-other realities, etc. Such "psychedelic-philosophical plant rituals" changed participating persons' psychology, philosophy and personality to a great degree. In these two successive articles, the consumption of psychedelic plants during religious rituals is reviewed and it is hypothesized that the images, figures, illusions and hallucinations experienced during these "plant trips" had a great impact on the formation and creation of many figures, characters, creatures, archetype images that exist not only in the mythology, but also in many religions, as well, such as angels, demons, Satan, mythological creatures, gods, goddesses etc. In the Middle East and Anatolia, within many hermetic and pagan religions, Greek and Hellenic cultures psychoactive plant use was a serious part of the religious rituals, such as Dionysian rituals or Witch's' Sabbaths. Although the impact of the "psychedelic experience and imagination" was enormous to the configuration of many religious and mythological characters, and archetypes, this fact has been underestimated and even unnoticed by many historians and anthropologists, because of the quasi-ethical trends of "anti-drug-brain-washed Western Societies".
A Reader in Ethnobotany and Phytotherapy
Folia Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis
I am very pleased to write a short preface to the remarkable book on ethnobotany and phytotherapy, or culturally different ways of relating to plants. The book is edited by my former Ph.D. student and an enthusiastic associate, Miroslav Horák. His dissertation was on the alternative phytotherapeutic treatment of drug addiction in the Peruvian Amazon based on long-term fieldwork represented a promising invitation. People's relationship with plants is the most fundamental aspect that has constituted and continues to constitute the world, although in somewhat alienated environment of cities we rarely see them directly. Higher plants, the only significant autotrophs on the planet, are feeding all of us, for the most part serve as a source of clothing and pharmaceuticals, their scent and beauty accompanies us from the cradle to the grave. Of course, they also have their shadowy and dark side and former deliberate folk poisoning belongs to it as well-today, we tend to poison each other with words and deeds without their contribution. Also, in our country ethnobotany had been of exclusive importance for a long time-even the Mattioli herbarium is for the most part composed of folk evidence and folklore. In the South Bohemian countryside, I experienced a decline of ethnobotany and ethnozoology in my grandparents' generation. Folk interpretation does not distinguish between therapeutic and magical applications-both merge into one; and it is after all a matter of taste and tradition that we understand the results of science, be it the administration of penicillin in the treatment of angina or the explosion of the atomic bomb, as "technical" operations that do not surprise us. The world as a whole is big, and plants are its strong subsection. I would like to wish the editor and his diverse team of writers much success, good health, and enthusiasm to further work in this field.
Healing with Plant Intelligence: A Report from Ayahuasca
Anthropology of Consciousness
Numerous and diverse reports indicate the efficacy of shamanic plant adjuncts (e.g., iboga, ayahuasca, psilocybin) for the care and treatment of addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, cancer, cluster headaches, and depression. This article reports on a first-person healing of lifelong asthma and atopic dermatitis in the shamanic context of the contemporary Peruvian Amazon and the sometimes digital ontology of online communities. The article suggests that emerging language, concepts, and data drawn from the sciences of plant signaling and behavior regarding "plant intelligence" provide a useful heuristic framework for comprehending and actualizing the healing potentials of visionary plant "entheogens" (Wasson 1971) as represented both through firstperson experience and online reports. Together with the paradigms and practices of plant signaling, biosemiotics provides a robust and coherent map for contextualizing the often reported experience of plant communication with ayahuasca and other entheogenic plants. The archetype of the "plant teachers" (called Doctores in the upper Amazon) is explored as a means for organizing and interacting with this data within an epistemology of the "hallucination/ perception continuum (Fischer 1975). "Ecodelic" is offered as a new linguistic interface alongside "entheogen" (Wasson 1971).
The Use of Psychoactive Plants in the Americas
This book tackles original ethnographies about various types of use of psychoactive plants, including ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, jurema, coca, tobacco, toé, Cannabis, snuff, sananga, kambô, yopo, timbó, and beverages such as caxiri. The chapters present a diversity of notions and practices relative to the use of such plants, highlighting the contexts of indigenous and non-indigenous uses, as well as intermediations and complex fluxes between them. The contributions discuss various themes, such as shamanism, agency, indigenous thought, gender, and performance. The different types of consumption of these substances, made by local and transnational populations, allow us to rethink classic anthropological categories such as ritual, sacred and profane, and healing. Pointing to the complexity of the contexts in which the uses of these psychoactive plants occur, this books also sheds light on the debate about the need for drug policy reform.
Syllabus: Plants, Potions and Pharmaceuticals: Ethnobotany and Biopiracy
2017
With rising pandemics of mosquito-born viruses like zika, malaria, dengue and continuing searches for cures for Ebola, cancer and HIV/AIDS, plants (as well as animals) provide insight, inspiration, and often resources /ingredients for possible cures. The World Intellectual Property Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization have dedicated special programs for traditional knowledge (folklore) and genetic resources (biological specimens of plants and animals). The high value placed on traditional knowledge, particularly from indigenous communities, has lead to vandalism and biopirating of plants and animals across national borders. This course will examine how the category of the plant, not simply the animal, carries a political charge, particularly in terms of biodiversity conservation, indigenous intellectual property rights, and pharmaceutical development. Among our readings and foragings, we will encounter the works and figures of famed Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes and his successors: Wade Davis, Paul Cox, and Michael Balick as well as Brazilian shaman Davi Kopenawa, environmental activist, physicist, and scholar Vandana Shiva, Native (North) American healers and activists such as Rosalyn LaPier, Winona LaDuke and female scholar-shamans like Barbara Tedlock. Class Structure: This is a seminar course. Instructor will post a general framing of the readings prior to each class with some questions to consider while you read (but are optional to respond to in written form), along with an introduction to the authors posted in "Discussions." For the first shopping week, the instructor will frame the readings and in-class discussion in a more formal way, bringing in relevant current global events for theoretical analysis. In the third week of class, students will sign up for readings for which they wish to present. Student presentations have a minimum of 10-15 but can fill the entire class time. While the instructor has clear "take-away" points and sections of the readings to analyze, the goal is to create a classroom environment where organic, dynamic, agile conversations can take place. After an introduction of the readings and main themes, the rest of the class will be devoted to discussion of assigned texts. While the material can be dense and present complex arguments, the environment of the classroom encourages thoughtful and creative collaboration. Graduate students will write weekly précis as well as meet once-a-week to discuss the required and recommended readings. Course Aims and Questions The course emphasizes an agile analysis, sowing the seeds for a working botanical knowledge, and cultivating the foundational roots for a deeper understanding of how plant life becomes a political actor on the global economic scene. Medicinal plants and their practitioners often get slated as employing " folk medicine and traditional knowledge, " generally of a lesser order than scientific knowledge. Yet folk knowledge continues to be the fodder for pharmaceutical development initiative and biopirates (or