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

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Clinicians are equally enthused about the possibilities of experimenting with these therapies to treat ailments as diverse as anorexia, early stage Alzheimer’s, insomnia, and even PTSD, one of the most terrible afflictions of our troops. The late Stanislav Grof, a pioneer in the field of psychotherapy, I love this quote, was fond of saying that “Psychedelics are to psychology the same way that telescopes are to astronomy, and microscopes are to the study of bacteria.” 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. In ergot poisoning the active principles are again indole alkaloids derivatives — that is, ergotamine and ergotoxine — that cause severe vasoconstriction responsible for ergotism and gangrene. Other psychotropic lysergic acid amides are responsible for the convulsions, delirium, and madness. Amazingly, these psychotropic derivatives are similar to those found in Mexican morning glories and bind weeds previously mentioned.[ 11] Pen-ts'ao ching (herbalist) stated that the flower enable to see spirits, and if consumed over a long time produce levitation and communication with spirits Dr. Mark Plotkin: I can’t think of any other book I’ve read on the history of religion which had parts that were laugh out loud, funny, but that is one of the special parts of the immortality key. And I really, really, really loved your discussion of the analysis of these classical scholars, the brightest people of their age, supposedly trying to figure out what the hell went on at Eleusis. And at one point, I think it was a fellow from Oxford or Cambridge said, well, it was giant puppets! And you said, yeah, ancient Muppets! This type of humor is often missing in these types of clinical and historical analysis but that’s what makes the book so special.

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

Another group of plants that should be mentioned for the sake of completeness are the opioids closely related to the narcotics. If the book, Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers, is deficient in one area, it is in the brief description of narcotics and cocaine. This could be related to the fact that narcotics produce euphoria but are generally not hallucinogenic. In fact, morphine, a well-known narcotic drug produced from the opium poppy plant, is named after the Greek god of sleep, Morpheus, because of its hypnotic qualities — in the same fashion as the scientific name of the opium poppy plant itself, Papaver somniferum. Now I learned from professor Schultes that if you want to save the rainforest, you have to save the indigenous peoples of the rainforest. And if you want to save the indigenous peoples of the rainforest, you not only have to work in partnership with all of them, you particularly have to partner with the shamans themselves. This is what we call biocultural conservation. It’s not about saving rainforests or saving shamans. They are intricately linked. 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. Within the next hour, visions commence, often inducing fear, stress, and even terror and frequently followed by scenes of unsurpassed loveliness and spiritual illumination. Participants in traditional ayahuasca sessions sometimes report the ability to communicate telepathically with the shamans guiding the ceremony. So much so that the first alkaloid isolated from ayahuasca vine was named telepathine.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.

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

Nhang, was a river-dwelling serpent-monster with shape shifting powers, often connected to the more conventional Armenian dragons. The word "Nhang" is sometimes used as a generic term for a sea-monster in ancient Armenian literature.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.

Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucin…

His second trip to South America was to recreate Bolivar’s famous trek from Caracas to Bogota overland. He was accompanied by a fellow who wanted to learn how to be a South American explorer. His name was Hiram Bingham. Bingham later went on to discover Machu Picchu and became much more famous than Alexander Hamilton Rice ever was. But I don’t think he ever would have got there if he hadn’t been trained in the field by Rice himself. A Smithsonian scientist named William Safford said that, “No, there were no hallucinogenic mushrooms. It was just peyote. It was the Indians trying to mislead the missionaries.” But Schultes was a better botanist than Safford, and he knew there would be no peyote, which thrives in desert-like conditions. There would be no pipe peyote in the tropical forest of Oaxaca and Southern Mexico, and he set out to prove Safford wrong.

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). Asase Afua, the goddess of the lush earth, fertility, love, procreation and farming in the Akan religion Now what’s intriguing about these admixtures is that they contain hallucinogenic tryptamines, which is another type of alkaloid, a chemical substance common in many plants. Caffeine is an alkaloid, strychnine is an alkaloid. Now these tryptamines prove inert when consumed orally, unless they are activated by the presence of compounds which are known as monoamine oxidase inhibitors, MAO inhibitors. Now, among the prodigious consumers, a person may consume over a pound of the powder daily, which is why every night in the maloca you hear thud, thud, thud, which is the creation of the ipadu powder to be used the next day. And I might add that the Yucunas were Schultes’ most favorite tribe. He referred to them as the most valiant and reliable of all the peoples he worked with. And I think a lot of ipadu went into that judgment. Now, ayahuasca and many other hallucinogens and entheogens are coming to the fore. Studies, and we’ll get into this in the course of the podcast, are now indicating that the birth of many, if not most religions, are rooted in these types of magical plants or other hallucinogenic properties found in fungi and in some cases, even animals. There’s a new book coming out called The Immortality Key that I recommend by a fellow named Brian Muraresku, which talks about the origins of Christianity and entheogenic fungi.

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

Hemp (marijuana) was mentioned by the Greek geographer and historian Strabo (c. 63 BC-AD 21) in his Geography as growing in Colchis in Scythia, and he referred to “Getae dancers who burned cannabis flowers to reach states of ecstasy.”[ 3] The Greek physician and botanist Dioscorides (AD 40–90) cites hemp as a source of fiber for making textiles and recommends it as treatment for earache. The great Greek physician and surgeon Galen (AD 130–200) notes that hempseed was added to sweet foods in banquets to induce euphoria and arousal.[ 3]

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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. Brian Muraresku: You have to think about ancient wine. Without being heretical, or speculative about it, ancient wine was very, very different from the wine we drink today. In fact, a common word used in ancient Greek, the language that was used to draft the Gospels, the language that was used by St. Paul, the greatest missionary Christianity ever knew, when he was preaching and converting to this Hellenic univer A third hallucinogenic plant was the most powerful and, as a benevolent “teacher,” a deity in and of itself. Don Juan referred to this plant as mescalito. The plant not only assisted the user in reaching a separate reality but also taught great lessons that would lead to a better ordinary life. The source was peyote, Lophophora williamsii, a cactus species grown in Mexico and the American southwest. The top part of the cactus was cut off, collected, and dried. Later these peyote “buttons” were ritualistically chewed and ingested, a couple of pieces at a time. Don Juan and Carlito participated in several such ceremonies described in the early books.[ 4] Secondly, Schultes’ legacy is that nature is the ultimate medicine chest. There are medicines to be learned from nature which can heal our ills. Even ills which physicians cannot cure can sometimes be treated and sometimes be cured by indigenous shamans. Whether it’s with peyote, whether it’s with mushrooms, whether it’s with ayahuasca, or whether it’s just by chanting, to the shaman, the hallucinogen, the entheogen, is a vegetal or fungal or biological scalpel which allows him or her to analyze, to diagnose, to treat, and sometimes to cure the human mind in ways that our own physicians cannot.