273 - Indigenous Plant Wisdom

Program Notes

[NOTE: All quotations are by Kat Harrison.]

“If a bird you’re not used to seeing comes and sits on a tree outside your window and calls, and calls, and calls. It’s not just a bird of a trip. It’s a bird that has a message that it is sending you that may be positive, that may be a warning. It’s something you pay attention to.”

“You really need to, at least part of the time, speak [out loud] to the entity that you are invoking the presence of. That the whole idea with these medicines is to go into an active, right now, relationship between beings. It’s inter-species communication.”

“In order to do this kind of magical work, energy transforming work, you have to create a vulnerable oasis. You have to be willing to be open and be vulnerable, and in order to do that you have to set up protection around you, around the people you’re working with, or even the place you’re working. And one of the ways to set up protection is to plant plants that carry that kind of protective power around you.”

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[From their Web site: “Thank you for considering Gaian Botanicals as your source for high quality ethnobotanicals, herbs and teas. We are a small privately owned and operated specialty shop who imports direct from growers & harvesters in small quantities to ensure everything is fresh. We use our own contracted laboratory to manufacture high quality, safe and effective botanical extracts. We maintain the highest level of respect and great relationships with the plants, those who cultivate and manufacture our extracts, our customers and Gaia. We take great care with every aspect of our business and keep overhead low to save you money!“]

Transcript

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Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic

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salon.

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And even though it’s summertime up here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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And even though it’s summertime up here in the Northern Hemisphere,

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when things usually slow down here in the salon,

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we have been graced with the financial support of several of our fellow saloners who either sent in a direct donation or who made a donation for my Pay What You Can novel,

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The Genesis Generation. And these generous souls are

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And I thank all of you ever so much.

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You know, your support just means a lot to me,

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as does the support of so many of our other fellow salonners

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who post comments on our Notes from the Psychedelic Salon website

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or who link to us or simply tell their friends about these podcasts.

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You know, it all helps to keep this circus going,

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which means that we’re going to continue finding more and more of the

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others each week. So thank you for being a part of the salon. It’s good to know that you’re here.

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And now for today’s program. Originally, I wasn’t going to include the talk I’m going to play right

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now. It’s by Kathleen or Kat Harrison, mainly because in it she refers to slides that she was projecting

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or showing along with her talk.

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But due to the overwhelming and extremely positive response that I received about the

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previous talk by Kat, the one that I played just recently, well, I thought that I’d better

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play this one anyway, as there’s actually quite a lot in it that can be gained without seeing the projected images.

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In fact, in the previous talk of Katz that I played a couple weeks ago,

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she even mentioned that she used her slides as notes for her talk.

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So, we’re actually getting to hear her complete presentation,

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we just don’t get to look at her notes.

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And, as in all of these recordings that were made on the old cassette tape decks,

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well, there’s a brief pause around the 45-minute mark when the tape came to an end and had to be turned over.

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Ah, the trials and tribulations of ancient tech, huh?

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But at least we had portable recorders way back then.

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Way back then, which was only ten years ago, you know.

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Anyway, here now is Cat Harrison

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speaking in a little room on a hilltop

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near the ruins at Planque, Mexico,

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one January evening in 2001.

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Some of these animated presences,

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it’s in the great tradition of animism,

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which I think I see is having a rebirth, I’m happy to say.

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I think that the reanimation of nature in our perception

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is really one of the best directions we can go in this very awkward, dangerous time that we live in

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where we have turned our attention globally so much toward matter.

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And so I am encouraged to see that whenever it endures in Native people

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or reaches into those of us who have been removed

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from our indigenous backgrounds

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for generations and generations and have lost our own traditions.

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I do think that they’re deep in all of us.

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It’s not that long ago that we were all indigenous somewhere

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and that we have the capacity to receive that kind of perception

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and then use it in our own lives.

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And that’s really what I’ll talk about tomorrow morning.

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You’re going to get a bit of me here

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because tomorrow morning is my talk about ritual

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and how that might work with psychoactive plants.

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So I had traveled in Mexico a great deal

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but eight years ago, seven, eight years ago

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I wanted to, I had a problem

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I had a heart problem

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and it was actually a medical problem

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and I had some advice on a medicine that I might take

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but I would have to take it for the rest of my life

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and I didn’t want to do that and, wore a heart monitor for a little bit and, you know,

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had the problem described and it was, it was, uh, scary. And I, and I was young to have that kind of

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limitation. And, and I had always this interest in native healers. I hadn’t been traveling out

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on my own for a while, raising a family and and I was a single mom, and you know, certain things that keep you home and busy, and although I did

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always manage to travel, and sometimes took my kids, and if you don’t know, Finn is here. He’s

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my son. He’s here somewhere, and he’s, there he is, the tall, well-spoken guy, and so he traveled with me sometimes too when he was little and anyway so I decided

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that I wanted to go to the Mazatec people the people of northern Mexico that I’d heard so many

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good things about and how deeply they understood the plants and the mushrooms that they worked with

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and how alive their their practices were and I asked my friend Brett

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Blosser whom I know maybe all of you know but some of you certainly do a fine anthropologist

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doing a lot of work with the huichol these days about his friends in the Mazatec area, I knew he had hiked through there as a spelunker. And like this part

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of Mexico, it is limestone riddled with caves and very porous, a lot of water underground.

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And he had done some spelunking in there and had encountered an old shamanic family, and told me about it a couple of years before that.

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So he kindly, he trusted me,

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and he kindly gave me some directions,

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and I found my way to these people.

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So that’s who I’m going to be talking about.

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They were the first people I went to,

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and then I have returned.

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Actually, I’m going back after this seminar.

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That’ll be my fourth trip back to the

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mazitek people i do find uh that in dealing with native people people who live close to the earth

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and who don’t travel and are not worldly in terms of um having witnessed all the kinds of things we

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have you know but they’re absolutely brilliantly intelligent and and sensitive um but i do find

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that they like uh cycles cycles in their lives cycles in their calendars uh an awareness that

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things change and return change and return and part of that is as an anthropologist ethnobotanist

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when you go to meet people and you ask for the gift of their knowledge and their time,

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and you make your exchanges with them in trade for that,

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but nevertheless you’re really cultivating a very intimate relationship.

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And so returning to them, even if there’s a fairly long time, a couple of years between visits,

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is very reassuring to them.’s how the world works and and and so as an ethnobotanist who

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has allies in different parts of latin america especially i do when you cultivate a relationship

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with a family or with a healer you take it very seriously and the likelihood is you are going to

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be returning to work with that person or those people again and which may limit the number of

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people that you’re going to encounter in your life’s work because you’re going to have these to work with that person or those people again, which may limit the number of people

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that you’re going to encounter in your life’s work

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because you’re going to have these people to return to

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and then those people to return to.

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And so this will be my fourth trip back to them.

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And I usually go and stay about five or six weeks,

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sleep on their floors,

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get a place, rent a little place of my own

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so I give them peace and so I get some peace

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and so I have some time to write up my notes, go away for a few days and stay by myself and then come

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back and stay for a few days with them. Just live their lives, you know, help them harvest, collect

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what they need, clean beans, do ceremony, watch the world go by, watch the grandchildren,

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do ceremony, watch the world go by, watch the grandchildren, all of that.

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It’s a wonderful immersion in their worldview to go talk with them about their plants and about those things which are most sacred to them.

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So I’m going to start the slides, though, because I could probably keep talking and forget I had slides.

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And I’m going to sit down here.

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I don’t need to really point anything out,

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so I’m just going to sit beside the slide projector and push the button.

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So I’ve put just a couple of slides of old paintings.

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When the Spanish first came to Mexico, many things went on,

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but they destroyed many of the books, the records of the Native people

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because they were attempting to change their worldview

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and lay the European one on over, as you all I’m sure know.

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But some people, especially some of the friars,

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some of the religious people who came,

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did recognize that there was an incredible and very, to them,

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unusual way of seeing among the Indians,

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and they asked for them to paint their mythology or their visions,

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and a few of these records have come down to us.

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So this is just to illustrate this concept of the plant-human relationship and the

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constancy of transformation and of interpenetration of these realms that is part of the worldview

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of the people of Mexico. I’m not sure which is forward here. Yes. and then many of the native plants here the plants that were used

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in medicine and ritual and offerings and all of that were recorded food plants were recorded in

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these paintings which are more like the european folk botanical illustrations that were 16th century that were occurring in um in europe at

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the time they were actually a little uh more detailed and more scientific in europe at that

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time but not a lot more botanical illustration hadn’t didn’t really flower until a little bit

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later in europe and uh so these paintings are interesting because they do portray many botanical features,

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but they also have some sort of fantastical features.

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They always include the roots, which I think is so interesting, you know.

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So you really get the whole, all aspects that the plant presents to you.

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It’s flowers, it’s leaves, it’s structure, it’s roots, it’s fruits,

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all of these things.

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leaves, its structure, its roots, its fruits, all of these things.

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This is a drawing, an end paper that I did for this book, The Sacred Mushroom Seeker.

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It was an anthology of articles honoring R. Gordon Wasson, the American banker, mycologist,

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who you probably also know of, who did a great deal of research into mushrooms around the world

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with his wife, Valentina Wasson,

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and discovered mid-career, mid-passionate hobby,

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discovered mid-career, mid-passionate hobby.

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As yet, well, it had been discovered previously,

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but not popularly described,

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the use of mushrooms and the ongoing use of mushrooms in religious practices among the Indians of Mexico.

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So he traveled through Oaxaca,

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and here I will actually point out some things.

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In case you don’t know where you are,

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this is Mexico, all down here.

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This is the Yucatan Peninsula.

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We’re down in here right now.

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This square…

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Okay, this is the only slide I have to do this on.

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So this is the state of Oaxaca.

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This square is this square up big.

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Oh, it’s quite blurry.

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And this northern Oaxaca right in here up toward Veracruz and Puebla

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is where the Sierra Mazateca is.

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The Sierra Madre, the Mother Mountains,

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coming down from the Rocky Mountains in the States,

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it’s the same, the spine of the Americas.

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It goes all the way down and then picks up again in the Andes all the way down through South America.

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And it breaks up in here into the Sierra Madre Occidental, the west, and the Oriental, the east.

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And these people live in these mountains of the Sierra Madre Oriental.

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These people live in these mountains of the Sierra Madre Oriental.

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The plants that Wasson was looking for were portrayed in here.

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This one is Salvia divinorum on this side.

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I’ll talk more about this.

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The psilocybe mexicana, little mushrooms up here.

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Psilocybe seralescens over here.

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Amanita muscaria, he thought might be in use and looked for the use of it

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in Mexico but to my knowledge didn’t discover

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the use of that. It does grow here. It grows up in these mountains

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of Chiapas even and the Morning Glory

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Ipomoea Violacea over here

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This is a little rendition of a mushroom

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stone and that’s something of which

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a couple of hundred, I believe, of those have been found in the Americas,

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rather in southern Mexico, Guatemala, up to about two feet tall. They’re carved stone figures of

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people or animals seemingly transforming into or transforming out of mushrooms.

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And they were not sure how and when they were used,

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but they are beautiful icons, and you may have seen pictures of those.

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So here we are in the mountains of the Sierra Madre.

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This is where the Mazatecs live.

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It’s very rugged.

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It’s been compared in literature to well Mexico, all of central Mexico

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a piece of crumpled brown paper

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if you imagine that laying on a table

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that’s the surface of Mexico

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and these rugged mountains

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and you see in the front here

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you see corn maize

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which came from Mexico

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originally was teased out of the grasses of Mexico Teosinte a long, long time ago maize, which came from Mexico originally,

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was teased out of the grasses of Mexico,

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Teosinte, a long, long time ago,

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and is one of the primary sacred plants of the Americas.

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Obviously has changed life around the world

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since it spread post-conquest

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into the cuisine of every continent.

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into the cuisine of every continent.

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And these mountains have done a wonderful thing.

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As mountains do, they preserve little pockets of information,

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genetic information in plants,

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habitat of all sorts for all sorts of creatures, life forms,

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very special little niches that can only exist at a certain altitude,

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a certain latitude, a certain humidity,

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a certain north-south facing direction to the light,

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and the same with cultures.

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And so if you know, for instance, about the many food plants that come from the Americas and have been spread around the world,

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you know that many of them come from the Andes

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where the same phenomenon goes on,

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this preservation of diversity,

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the development of diversity,

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and then the preservation of it.

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So that butterflies as well,

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if you can imagine,

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everything that lives in one of these deep canyons

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is going to have its own little world unto itself

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and the mountains themselves act

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as barriers for them to move across and interbreed pollinate whatever their form of reproduction is

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to the other side and so there’s this natural preservation that happens with mountains

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and with people living in in them as well so in the Andes, for instance, you get

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incredible diversity of language, culture, the dialects, the music of every mountainside

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and valley, and the same here in the mountains of Mexico, especially up in this rugged area.

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And it meant that, I’ll go on a bit here, it meant that when the Spanish came in, this is the main town of the Sierra Mazateca,

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Huautla de Jimenez.

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This is Huautla in a good mood.

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It can be a pretty muddy, gray,

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forbidding, funky town too.

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But under a full moon on a lovely night,

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it looks like this.

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funky town too but under a full moon on a lovely night it looks like this and um and i’ll go on to the next uh and this is the a little bit lower in these mountains where these valleys soften a

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little bit and you just see the density of foliage so these dialects and the all the practices and

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the use of these psychoactive plants and mushrooms and the way that people use them,

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even though they are all speaking the same language,

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the Mazatec language,

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has great diversity from one neighborhood almost to the next.

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Also, at least as of 10 years ago,

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they were still estimating that 40% of the Mazatec people

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were monolingual still.

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They only spoke Mazatec, not Spanish.

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This is 500 years after conquest

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where an effort was made, of course,

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to convert everyone to a certain way of seeing,

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to a religion, to a language, to an economy.

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And it’s an example when you find monolingual people

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who did not take on the

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conqueror’s language that if that if their original language is preserved and there it’s not even

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diluted with the outsider’s language then probably many other things are preserved as well in terms

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of their cultural life and probably even their botanical life at least the cultivars that they

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protect and and propagate

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so this is the male and female flowers of maize of the corn that I just wanted to be sure we

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understand that sacred plants bridge many categories you know, my work in talking,

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I talk a lot to the herbal community in the United States,

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and I am blessed to have been,

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I don’t know, I guess I had lots of friends who were herbalists,

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and they recognized gradually that they too are ethnobotanists

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of a different, of a certain stripe,

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and so I’ve been invited into many of these very large

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this thriving herbal uh idea marketplace exchange of of plants and techniques and all of that and

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and and i also teach it part-time at a university and what i try to do the way that i talk about

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psychoactive plants in the so-called straight world is that I just

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make sure that I’m talking about the whole spectrum of plants and of human plant use and of that

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ancient and intimate set of relationships and then I can embed the psychoactive plants in that

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instead of pulling them out like they’re a separate category,

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like they’re drugs, like they’re not plants,

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or just talking about them by themselves.

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And I go to native plant societies and talk,

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and old people with blue hair,

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never thought about taking a drug,

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just get so interested and excited.

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And there is a way that we can infiltrate lovingly and effectively.

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And I don’t mean infiltrate.

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I mean, you know, kind of joking.

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But I just think that we over-categorize.

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So I try to embed it.

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And so, therefore, corn is a sacred plant.

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There you go.

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and a bit of the background on what people,

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who people invoke in using these sacred plants in the Mazatec world.

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This is the Virgin of Guadalupe.

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She, if you don’t know the story,

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here you are in Mexico,

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she is the patron saint or the matron saint of Mexico.

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Of course, the Catholics who came had their Christian icons and deities,

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and Christ and the Virgin, his mother, were primary among them.

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And there have always been movements also in European Christianity

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that some of them worshipped Mary more than

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they did her son. And of course, there’s a lot of thinking about how that comes out of

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old goddess thinking, old world goddess religions that preceded Christianity. But that’s a big topic so here in Mexico

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what we saw was that people had many deities

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of all sorts and all genders and all animal types

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for the various forces that they interacted with in their daily life

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and when the Spanish came

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with their whole pantheon of Christian elements,

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the Native people tended to take on some or adapt many

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to match up with the even richer pantheon that they had.

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And I really, really admire

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Native people in the Americas

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for being experts at adaptation.

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They just seem to be able to bend

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and incorporate and go forward, survivalists.

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Of course, disease wiped out 90, 95%

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of the Native people of the Americas

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all the way through,

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and that would be an incredible disaster to any people.

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But of those left, they kept on looking at what came to them,

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looking at what worked, very pragmatic, you know,

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and staying spiritual at the same time.

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So this is a painting of Juan Diego,

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an Indian in the early 1500s, shortly after Cortes arrived

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here, who had three visions of this female deity on a mountain, which is now encompassed

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by Mexico City, and went each time to tell the priest that he had seen this incredible

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deity. And it was actually associated with plants too

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because as he was walking up the mountain,

00:23:29 ►

this hill over Mexico City,

00:23:31 ►

one of the stories, at least, there are many versions of this,

00:23:33 ►

but one of the stories is that he began to see plants

00:23:35 ►

that he had never seen before as he was walking up the hill.

00:23:38 ►

And then the plants began, it was very dry there, very arid,

00:23:42 ►

and he began to see lush plants

00:23:43 ►

and he saw even flowers that he had

00:23:46 ►

never seen before that had jewels set in them, and he knew something was going to happen, and then he

00:23:51 ►

saw the goddess, and so he went back and told the priest that he had seen her, and they said,

00:23:59 ►

no, you couldn’t have, you know, you’re an Indian, she’s not, this is not who we’re talking about. And he went back again and then again,

00:24:05 ►

and she graced him with roses,

00:24:09 ►

which were a Spanish flower treasured by the Spanish,

00:24:12 ►

and he carried them in his mantle,

00:24:13 ►

and somehow when he carried this evidence to the priests,

00:24:17 ►

her image was emblazoned on his huipil, on his gown,

00:24:23 ►

and so that now hangs in the Basilica

00:24:26 ►

to the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City,

00:24:28 ►

which is not a very beautiful place.

00:24:30 ►

I was just there a few days ago.

00:24:33 ►

But she is very beautiful in the hearts of Mexico,

00:24:36 ►

and she is also among the Mazatecs.

00:24:38 ►

And this is on top of a mountain in Mazatec country

00:24:41 ►

where all sorts of deities are being honored with offerings.

00:24:45 ►

I always try to look at how plants are, of a mountain in Mazatec country where all sorts of deities are being honored with offerings.

00:24:47 ►

I always try to look at how plants play into what is offered

00:24:51 ►

and the different ways

00:24:52 ►

that they act as devices

00:24:55 ►

of communication,

00:24:57 ►

which is what offerings really are.

00:25:00 ►

And so this tiled painting

00:25:02 ►

of the Virgin of Guadalupe

00:25:04 ►

was added later, maybe I think 15 years ago.

00:25:08 ►

But this ridgetop has been a place where offerings were made for eons

00:25:12 ►

and actually to a male deity who lives in this mountain.

00:25:19 ►

And he, this is a long ridge and out on one end of the ridge is a cave.

00:25:26 ►

It’s very hard to get to,

00:25:27 ►

and that cave is supposedly his home,

00:25:32 ►

and you really don’t go visit him at his home

00:25:34 ►

because he’s too important.

00:25:35 ►

You come more,

00:25:36 ►

this was told to me by a contemporary Mazatec Indian,

00:25:39 ►

that this is his office,

00:25:40 ►

and this is where you come

00:25:41 ►

to leave your calling cards,

00:25:45 ►

your offerings.

00:25:47 ►

Mazatec Indians walk,

00:25:48 ►

it’s a long, long foot trail

00:25:49 ►

up from the town,

00:25:51 ►

several miles,

00:25:52 ►

and they walk up the mountainside

00:25:54 ►

in their good clothes.

00:25:56 ►

They come and they gather

00:25:57 ►

these certain aromatic leaves

00:25:59 ►

which you see laying about here

00:26:00 ►

as they come

00:26:00 ►

because the aroma

00:26:01 ►

is always an offering

00:26:03 ►

to the gods

00:26:04 ►

and bring other things

00:26:07 ►

and put them here

00:26:08 ►

when they want

00:26:09 ►

good luck with business

00:26:10 ►

this is a prosperity mountain

00:26:12 ►

and one of the things

00:26:13 ►

that they always leave

00:26:14 ►

everywhere that you see

00:26:15 ►

and this is true here too

00:26:17 ►

Christian just had some today

00:26:19 ►

are the cacao beans

00:26:22 ►

the beans of the chocolate plant

00:26:24 ►

another sacred plant in Mexico native to Mexico and to South America,

00:26:28 ►

central and South America.

00:26:29 ►

And these are these fat seeds of the chocolate cacao pods.

00:26:36 ►

And this is a little, you know, shelter for candles so they can burn in the rain.

00:26:41 ►

And always everywhere that I go to these sacred places,

00:26:47 ►

and sometimes there’s nothing more than just a flat rock and some cacao beans laid out

00:26:51 ►

and you know that there’s something there or someone there

00:26:54 ►

that they recognize that they’re leaving offerings for.

00:26:59 ►

Here’s a picture of a cacao pod

00:27:02 ►

that has just come off of this tree

00:27:04 ►

if you have never seen one. that’s probably about 10 inches long,

00:27:09 ►

and you open it up, and it’s a white semi-sweet pulp

00:27:13 ►

with lots and lots of those beans in it.

00:27:16 ►

They were used as money by the Maya.

00:27:18 ►

They’ve been used as many things.

00:27:20 ►

They’re a unit of value that is edible and magical, both.

00:27:30 ►

And I put this in to remind myself to say

00:27:33 ►

that now another sacred plant has been added to daily life among the Mazatec,

00:27:41 ►

which I consider psychoactive, and that’s coffee,

00:27:44 ►

which is what’s drying

00:27:45 ►

out here on this slab of cement in a valley.

00:27:49 ►

And we know that coffee actually comes from Ethiopia, the mountains of Ethiopia originally,

00:27:57 ►

and that from the historical record, it looks like it was brought into this area about 150

00:28:03 ►

years ago. But I have asked Mazatec Indians who always have a pot of weak, very sweet coffee boiling

00:28:10 ►

on their fire, and they don’t have burners. They have an ongoing wood fire on a mud-covered,

00:28:18 ►

baked mud table. That’s how they cook. And they will keep a pot of this weak sweet coffee going, you know, 18 hours a day.

00:28:26 ►

And I’ve asked them how long they have it.

00:28:29 ►

I always like to ask about the origin,

00:28:31 ►

what people think the origin of the plant is that they use,

00:28:34 ►

because often they have great stories for how the gods brought it or different sources.

00:28:40 ►

But I wondered if they knew it had been introduced to them,

00:28:42 ►

and the people I asked said, no, we have had coffee forever.

00:28:46 ►

And I questioned that once, and they said, well, how could we not have had coffee forever?

00:28:50 ►

Coffee is life.

00:28:56 ►

Some plants are just grown for beauty around close to dwellings where you can see them as you walk out the door and I have been told that

00:29:07 ►

beauty is protection as well as pleasure and protection is a major concern to people who do

00:29:14 ►

shamanic work and was talking about the shadow today and the shadow within us but any of us who

00:29:21 ►

have traveled and and participated in ceremonies,

00:29:26 ►

healing ceremonies or psychoactive ceremonies in other cultures

00:29:30 ►

know that a huge amount of energy goes into watching your back

00:29:34 ►

or into keeping the healer’s enemies at bay

00:29:38 ►

so that this kind of work can be done.

00:29:41 ►

And there’s really a lot to say about that,

00:29:43 ►

and I think I will say more about that

00:29:45 ►

tomorrow in terms of what i’ve seen in other places but also so so throughout all of this

00:29:51 ►

that this element of protection vulnerability and what you do that the corollary is that in order to

00:29:59 ►

do this kind of magical work energy transforming work you have to create a vulnerable oasis.

00:30:07 ►

You have to be willing to be open and be vulnerable.

00:30:09 ►

And in order to do that, you have to set up protection around you,

00:30:13 ►

around the people you’re working with, or in the place you’re working.

00:30:15 ►

And one of the ways to set up protection is to plant plants

00:30:20 ►

that carry that kind of protective power around you.

00:30:23 ►

So the Brugmansias are grown there,

00:30:26 ►

but not used as drugs,

00:30:30 ►

not used ceremonially that I’m aware of,

00:30:33 ►

but their potency is still recognized

00:30:36 ►

by the fact that they are planted

00:30:38 ►

in relationship to that kind of work.

00:30:43 ►

This is a double blossom of the…

00:30:48 ►

I don’t know, do you think this is Brugmansia aurea?

00:30:52 ►

Does anybody have an opinion here?

00:30:54 ►

Like what?

00:30:58 ►

Quadruple, yeah.

00:31:04 ►

Aurea, that’s what I was thinking

00:31:05 ►

maybe it’s Aurea

00:31:06 ►

and they do

00:31:07 ►

they do

00:31:09 ►

mutate

00:31:10 ►

or hybridize

00:31:11 ►

or something

00:31:11 ►

so that they have

00:31:12 ►

blossoms inserted

00:31:14 ►

within blossoms

00:31:15 ►

and those have

00:31:16 ►

a certain

00:31:16 ►

extra

00:31:17 ►

exotic power

00:31:18 ►

this is the common

00:31:20 ►

one that is

00:31:21 ►

seen there

00:31:22 ►

and I’ve

00:31:23 ►

taken cuttings

00:31:24 ►

and propagated

00:31:24 ►

this quite a bit.

00:31:25 ►

It just is a very happy Brugmansia,

00:31:28 ►

and it goes through color changes from a very creamy yellow

00:31:33 ►

to this sort of color and on to a deeper peach.

00:31:39 ►

Yes, this is Swaviolens, Brugmansia Swaviolens, yes.

00:31:43 ►

And I have been told that they use it in the way that people do use Brugmansias

00:31:48 ►

also in the Andes and in Asia, I’m told,

00:31:52 ►

which is smoking the blossoms for asthma.

00:31:56 ►

And I’ve taken to drying these blossoms

00:31:58 ►

and sharing them with a friend who has chronic low-level asthma

00:32:01 ►

and she has stopped using any other medication.

00:32:05 ►

And I know that the Brugmansias you know we hopefully all know that the tourism brugmansias are very

00:32:10 ►

tricky plants to use great caution but just smoking a tiny bit of the dried blossoms of

00:32:19 ►

well it’s it’s a way that i like to approach plants. I don’t know. I feel like that’s a good place to come in with a plant,

00:32:27 ►

and you can just titrate a tiny dose into yourself

00:32:29 ►

by taking one taste and waiting to see what happens.

00:32:32 ►

And the blossom itself has its own character,

00:32:37 ►

so that’s good medicine.

00:32:40 ►

But it’s also planted for protection around houses.

00:32:51 ►

medicine, but it’s also planted for protection around houses. And this is a drawing of a remnant of a mural, wall painting, at Teotihuacan, the ruins outside Mexico City. And I put this

00:33:01 ►

in because these are people apparently doing something that is still done all over the Americas.

00:33:08 ►

I just recently experienced it in Ecuador, too, whichahuasqueros and people of that sort in South America

00:33:29 ►

have experienced this.

00:33:30 ►

It’s very common.

00:33:31 ►

Also in Asia, it’s a universal method of cleansing.

00:33:36 ►

Limpia means to clean.

00:33:38 ►

And by taking branches and including sometimes blossoms,

00:33:43 ►

but more often just leaves,

00:33:44 ►

but I have seen

00:33:45 ►

this blossom or

00:33:49 ►

branches of leaves

00:33:51 ►

with these blossoms

00:33:51 ►

used in Lempius

00:33:52 ►

also.

00:33:54 ►

But by waving

00:33:56 ►

branches around

00:33:57 ►

within a building

00:33:59 ►

to change the

00:34:01 ►

luck, to sweep

00:34:03 ►

out what is old,

00:34:04 ►

to allow in what is new, especially using them to sweep the luck, to sweep out what is old, to allow in what is new,

00:34:06 ►

especially using them to sweep the aura of a person,

00:34:10 ►

not necessarily touching the person,

00:34:12 ►

but sometimes during intense healing ceremonies,

00:34:16 ►

people are brushed and brushed and brushed with leaves.

00:34:20 ►

And these leaves, the species are chosen,

00:34:24 ►

the form of them is chosen to have a certain effect.

00:34:28 ►

I’ll say more about it or remind me if I don’t, but I mean to.

00:34:33 ►

And these moths that are in here too are regularly considered

00:34:40 ►

symbols of transformation, the moth, the butterfly, you know.

00:34:45 ►

And there are all these associations

00:34:46 ►

that are made in Mexican art

00:34:51 ►

with different symbols

00:34:53 ►

and what they represent about plants

00:34:56 ►

and the nature of the action that’s going on.

00:34:59 ►

Generally, because of their whole transformation

00:35:03 ►

of that life form, they are regarded as transformation of that life form,

00:35:05 ►

they are regarded as symbols of that going on.

00:35:08 ►

Also, these curlicues coming out of their mouths are said to be songs.

00:35:12 ►

Little pieces of curled commas can be seen as speech usually,

00:35:19 ►

and these are songs.

00:35:21 ►

Songs are a very important part of all of this kind of work. I want to show you just

00:35:26 ►

a few pictures of the kind of people that do this. I’ve worked with four different families of healers

00:35:31 ►

now, or four different extended family groups in different villages. And they grow all their own

00:35:39 ►

corn and beans here. The hojasanta that we’ve been eating with our fish down here, you see these, it’s a piper species and you see them in the

00:35:47 ►

background there. They’re very self-sufficient. They don’t use money very much.

00:35:55 ►

Really strong

00:35:56 ►

people. Don’t they have great faces? These are two grandsons

00:35:59 ►

from two different, in two different directions from

00:36:03 ►

an old healer.

00:36:05 ►

And the upper one wants to learn English,

00:36:10 ►

and he speaks Spanish and Mazatec now,

00:36:12 ►

and be an international translator and travel all over the world.

00:36:16 ►

And the younger one wants to, and does actually already,

00:36:21 ►

he’s the boy in a family of a single mom and three sisters.

00:36:25 ►

He grows all their food.

00:36:27 ►

He was ten in this picture.

00:36:29 ►

He grows their corn and beans,

00:36:30 ►

and he wants to be just like his grandfather,

00:36:32 ►

and he’s paying attention to the tradition of curanderismo.

00:36:39 ►

I don’t know if he’s actually apprenticed at this point.

00:36:42 ►

And they’re very good friends,

00:36:44 ►

but they’re very different in terms of the futures

00:36:46 ►

that they see in the world.

00:36:48 ►

This is a typical ancient path.

00:36:50 ►

These, and me and a guy who was informing,

00:36:55 ►

an informant, a word that, you know,

00:36:58 ►

I try not to use, but the term coming into,

00:37:06 ►

you know, the politically correct term coming in is parabiologist

00:37:08 ►

I know a lot about biology

00:37:10 ►

they’re not trained

00:37:11 ►

but they pass it on

00:37:12 ►

and so I sometimes call him

00:37:14 ►

my parabiologist friend

00:37:16 ►

these paths like this

00:37:18 ►

go up through these mountains

00:37:21 ►

those mountains that I showed you

00:37:22 ►

are just crisscrossed with these paths

00:37:24 ►

and people have been walking them for so long.

00:37:28 ►

I could just get the feeling in Mexico

00:37:30 ►

of such a deep awareness of the land,

00:37:33 ►

of every inch of it, you know,

00:37:35 ►

that has been crossed on foot for so long.

00:37:37 ►

And when the roads come in,

00:37:39 ►

it really changes things

00:37:41 ►

because for many reasons,

00:37:43 ►

and I wrote a whole article about roads

00:37:45 ►

and coming into Mexico and changing consciousness,

00:37:47 ►

which I’d be happy to,

00:37:49 ►

I forgot to bring any piece of paper with me to this trip.

00:37:52 ►

I don’t know what happened, but anyway,

00:37:54 ►

not a single thing,

00:37:55 ►

but I could send it to someone if you’re interested.

00:37:58 ►

But when you walk on these stone paths,

00:38:03 ►

you look, you see everything.

00:38:06 ►

I’m sure it was this way here and around the ruins and up those mountains.

00:38:09 ►

You keep your eyes open, you monitor.

00:38:12 ►

Every day when you walk in a life like this

00:38:16 ►

is a pilgrimage that is in a cycle of seasonal changes

00:38:22 ►

and changes brought by humans

00:38:25 ►

and changes determined by the moods of the deities that you recognize

00:38:33 ►

and that can be modified by changes in those deities.

00:38:37 ►

So I’d like to convey to you the depth of relationship,

00:38:41 ►

the great conversation that is going on

00:38:44 ►

between all of these levels

00:38:46 ►

all the time. And when a road goes in where a trail was, then trucks come, Coca-Cola comes,

00:38:54 ►

batteries come, measles comes, you know, lots and lots changes very quickly. And people stop

00:39:02 ►

looking. They look at the trucks going by. and even this old curandero I worked with,

00:39:06 ►

the road was built down past him

00:39:08 ►

and I said, how has the road changed your life?

00:39:10 ►

And he said, now we are like monkeys.

00:39:12 ►

Every time someone comes by,

00:39:13 ►

we stand up and act like something important is happening.

00:39:16 ►

We have to look at the truck.

00:39:18 ►

You know?

00:39:28 ►

Really, some of the finest people I’ve ever known, these folks,

00:39:30 ►

they are so poor.

00:39:35 ►

I was at the Salvia Divinorum conference recently with some of you and said I was going to go on this trip.

00:39:38 ►

And since we were talking about Salvia, which came from Mazatec people

00:39:43 ►

and was harbored by them for 500 years without anybody else knowing about it,

00:39:49 ►

I said, well, I’m going there soon and I’m going to bring them some gifts.

00:39:53 ►

And I’m happy to say people gave me $1,500 to share with these people,

00:39:59 ►

which really, just a little bit to a family really makes a difference.

00:40:05 ►

This is an herbalist midwife.

00:40:09 ►

It’s either raining or blazing hot here.

00:40:12 ►

You’re at this similar latitude but a lot higher.

00:40:16 ►

And so the sun just really bakes.

00:40:19 ►

So the women all carry black umbrellas all the time

00:40:23 ►

and use them in the sun as much as they do in the rain.

00:40:26 ►

I took to that myself.

00:40:27 ►

And we were on an herb walk.

00:40:29 ►

This woman, she didn’t speak Spanish.

00:40:30 ►

Her brother is with us and was the translator.

00:40:33 ►

But she’s a midwife.

00:40:35 ►

And I just find that midwives are a wonderful category of people

00:40:39 ►

for mediating states of consciousness and knowing about plants

00:40:44 ►

and being really good at sharing

00:40:46 ►

what they know they’re a you know ancient international network of women who deal with

00:40:55 ►

life and death they’re brave they’re very adept at what they do they just have an incredible body

00:41:00 ►

of knowledge and some of my best friends in cal are midwives. I’m connected kind of into a midwife network and I look for women like that when I travel to ask questions.

00:41:13 ►

So, you know, you can just walk through these mountains with someone who knows these things

00:41:19 ►

and trusts you and point to this plan and point to that one and you never know what will come to

00:41:25 ►

you you just have to be watching a lot and you gather wonderful bits of information

00:41:29 ►

tobacco is the other primary sacred plant besides corn in the americas and

00:41:37 ►

probably the most persuasive plant on the planet actually actually. I like to look at plants as having,

00:41:46 ►

at plant species as having strategies.

00:41:49 ►

Because I have adopted the native way

00:41:51 ►

of seeing each species as a being unto itself.

00:41:56 ►

This is a fairly universal,

00:41:58 ►

Earth-based point of view

00:42:00 ►

that each species, not each specimen,

00:42:02 ►

but each species is a being

00:42:04 ►

which had its origin in ancient time

00:42:07 ►

as an individual.

00:42:10 ►

The human was an individual.

00:42:11 ►

Dog was an individual.

00:42:13 ►

Tobacco was an individual.

00:42:15 ►

Maze was an individual.

00:42:17 ►

And they had a relationship.

00:42:19 ►

And some were positive affiliations,

00:42:22 ►

some negative.

00:42:25 ►

And then gradually, in this way of thinking,

00:42:28 ►

gradually as time changed and kind of broke down into the complexity

00:42:33 ►

and went from sacred time to the so-called profane time

00:42:38 ►

that we have lived in for a very long period now,

00:42:43 ►

then these individual giant beings of a different sort,

00:42:49 ►

these primordial essences,

00:42:51 ►

got feet of clay like we did.

00:42:54 ►

And they now have many members of themselves

00:42:58 ►

that walk or stand here on the planet.

00:43:01 ►

But they’re all still in the relationships they were in before

00:43:04 ►

and each of

00:43:05 ►

them is a being so in that sense you can go especially with tobacco because it’s just such a

00:43:09 ►

you know heavy duty plant you can go to anyone who uses tobacco in a traditional or semi-traditional

00:43:18 ►

way and who has is open to the idea to the mythological ideas and asks them about the being that tobacco is

00:43:28 ►

and gets stories.

00:43:29 ►

And this is true in the hill tribes of Laos,

00:43:32 ►

in Africa,

00:43:33 ►

and everywhere that it has spread,

00:43:34 ►

which is all post-conquest.

00:43:36 ►

It moved faster than anything

00:43:38 ►

across to Africa and through Asia

00:43:41 ►

and up into Europe

00:43:43 ►

and knocked people’s socks off wherever it went.

00:43:46 ►

But particularly where it didn’t,

00:43:51 ►

where people, well, let’s see,

00:43:53 ►

I should put it the other way around.

00:43:55 ►

In its traditional use, it has all of this mythology

00:43:58 ►

and these practices which relate to it,

00:44:01 ►

which cause people to relate to it

00:44:03 ►

as though it is a very important being with a certain function.

00:44:12 ►

And there’s a lot to say about tobacco in the Americas

00:44:16 ►

and there’s a lot to say about what went wrong with tobacco

00:44:18 ►

as it spread into cultures that don’t treat it that way.

00:44:22 ►

But sticking to the Mazatecs

00:44:25 ►

this is by the way Nacotiana tobacco

00:44:28 ►

this is growing in my garden in California

00:44:30 ►

but it is the one that grows all over the

00:44:32 ►

highlands, the Mazatec highlands

00:44:35 ►

and this is its blossom

00:44:37 ►

the Mazatecs

00:44:42 ►

grow two varieties of tobacco this one is called san pedro saint peter

00:44:49 ►

as you probably know he’s the saint the catholic saint that holds the gates to heaven

00:44:55 ►

the guardian at the gate and makes the decision about who goes through and

00:45:01 ►

um they grow another called san pablo saint. Paul, which is smaller. It was identified

00:45:08 ►

originally to me as Nicotiana tobacco but another variety but I’ve begun to wonder about that. I’m

00:45:16 ►

not sure. I don’t think it’s Rustica because it doesn’t look like any Nicotiana Rustica I’ve seen

00:45:20 ►

but I’m just not sure and I don’t have a picture of it here. But what they do is they mix these two tobaccos together,

00:45:29 ►

and they did that long ago.

00:45:31 ►

That’s in the record that I believe it was called Yetl,

00:45:37 ►

the two tobaccos together, Pisietl or Pisiete it’s called now.

00:45:41 ►

They call this mixed Pisiete now,

00:45:44 ►

but that originally or back several hundred years ago

00:45:49 ►

was a mixture of Nicosiana tobacco and Nicosiana rustica.

00:45:54 ►

Well, what I know from my experience with them

00:45:56 ►

is that they mix San Pablo and San Pedro together, the two saints,

00:46:00 ►

and they pray constantly when they are using this tobacco.

00:46:04 ►

They don’t smoke it.

00:46:05 ►

I don’t know any Mazatecs who smoke

00:46:06 ►

unless they’re sort of degraded and in town.

00:46:09 ►

They put it on their altar.

00:46:13 ►

They rub it on their bodies during ceremony

00:46:17 ►

and sometimes the elders or people doing magical work

00:46:22 ►

will put a little quid of it in their cheeks.

00:46:28 ►

Here she is grinding on a stone, grinding the two tobacco varieties together.

00:46:35 ►

They’re wilted leaves.

00:46:36 ►

She grinds them until they’re a damp green mash,

00:46:41 ►

and then she adds a little bit of lime calcium carbonate which is called

00:46:45 ►

cow in Mexico and it’s what’s added to tortillas as well or to the to the masa

00:46:51 ►

to the corn flour to make the tortillas the right consistency it’s also added to

00:46:55 ►

the tobacco changes the consistency makes it fluffier and then of course

00:46:59 ►

it’s alkaline and so it activates in the in the mouth if you do use it as a quid. I have asked the

00:47:09 ►

most experienced and wisest Mazatec healer that I know what his greatest ally is in the

00:47:18 ►

plant world because he works with various species of mushrooms, he works with other

00:47:22 ►

plants, and he works with tobacco.

00:47:25 ►

And he said, oh, absolutely, San Pedro, San Pedro y San Pablo.

00:47:29 ►

He said, if I lived on this earth and I could only have one plant to do my work,

00:47:34 ►

I would do it with tobacco.

00:47:35 ►

And I asked the same question of a healer in Ecuador who used ayahuasca

00:47:40 ►

and a number of other things.

00:47:41 ►

He said, tobacco, absolutely tobacco.

00:47:43 ►

You can’t communicate without tobacco

00:47:45 ►

and you can’t protect without tobacco.

00:47:48 ►

The other work you can do on your own if you have to,

00:47:51 ►

but you have to be able to communicate above

00:47:53 ►

and you have to be able to draw that line of protection around you

00:47:57 ►

and that’s what you can do with tobacco.

00:47:59 ►

Tobacco is a prayer plant.

00:48:01 ►

And so they say, these people say, murmuring all the time,

00:48:05 ►

whenever they’re working with tobacco,

00:48:07 ►

whenever they’re even praying

00:48:08 ►

and they don’t have tobacco with them,

00:48:09 ►

they start out by saying,

00:48:10 ►

San Pablo, San Pedro, San Pablo, San Pedro,

00:48:13 ►

trying to get their attention.

00:48:14 ►

And then they ask,

00:48:15 ►

they have this sense of hierarchy,

00:48:16 ►

they ask that San Pablo and San Pedro,

00:48:19 ►

please listen,

00:48:20 ►

please protect us,

00:48:22 ►

please carry our message to the next level.

00:48:24 ►

Generally the next level is to the Virgin of Guadalupe. So they say, please go

00:48:28 ►

to Guadalupe and ask for her to give us her attention.

00:48:33 ►

We have something to ask of her. We have something to say to her.

00:48:36 ►

And so they see St. Peter and St. Paul as

00:48:40 ►

transmitters.

00:48:45 ►

And he said,

00:48:47 ►

he said, Paul, we have to go out there and do something.

00:48:51 ►

And Paul, who was a contemplative in real biblical time,

00:48:55 ►

but Paul, I was told, Paul was lazy.

00:48:58 ►

That’s what the Mazatec curandera told me.

00:49:01 ►

Paul, she said, have you ever known anyone who didn’t like to work?

00:49:03 ►

Like this is an unthinkable thing.

00:49:05 ►

And I said, yes.

00:49:08 ►

And she said,

00:49:10 ►

well, that’s what San Pablo was like.

00:49:12 ►

He didn’t like to work, you know.

00:49:13 ►

So he said, San Pedro,

00:49:14 ►

you go out

00:49:15 ►

and you do the work out there

00:49:17 ►

outside the gate

00:49:17 ►

and I will do the thinking

00:49:19 ►

inside the gate.

00:49:20 ►

I’ll stay here and think.

00:49:21 ►

And so they work together that way

00:49:23 ►

and that’s why you blend them together because you want someone inside doing the work, you want someone outside doing the gate. I’ll stay here and think. And so they work together that way. And that’s why you blend them together because you want someone inside doing the work. You want someone outside doing

00:49:28 ►

the work. Now, another person that I asked said, well, they may be called San Pedro and San Pablo,

00:49:36 ►

but San Pedro is actually female because she grows wherever she wants to and you can’t control her.

00:49:41 ►

And San Pablo is male. And mazidex always do everything

00:49:46 ►

in pairs and they always acknowledge the masculine and the feminine they measure out all of their

00:49:51 ►

plant um allies and pairs they they i have been told have a their notion of god is hermaphroditic

00:50:00 ►

the sun hermaphroditic and that you don’t ever talk to God

00:50:05 ►

you talk to those under God

00:50:07 ►

that God is really preoccupied

00:50:09 ►

and you talk to San Pedro, San Pablo

00:50:13 ►

you talk to Guadalupe, you talk to some of the other saints

00:50:15 ►

everyone has different allies

00:50:16 ►

those saints match up to other ancient deities

00:50:19 ►

and this is what you do in every one of the psychoactive ceremonies as well

00:50:24 ►

here’s a typical what you do in every one of the psychoactive ceremonies as well.

00:50:32 ►

Here’s a typical indigenous peasant altar table.

00:50:33 ►

The only table they had,

00:50:35 ►

that one small table in the little kitchen house. This is a tiny two-room house,

00:50:39 ►

and they put flowers on it, gladiolas particularly.

00:50:44 ►

They say that the Virgin loves gladiolas.

00:50:48 ►

And when you come, when you ask for help in a ceremony,

00:50:54 ►

as I did when I first came and then many times after that,

00:50:57 ►

you bring gifts.

00:50:59 ►

And most, in my experience, most healers in the Americas,

00:51:03 ►

you bring them tobacco.

00:51:05 ►

And part of your job, if you’re coming to ask for some work on your behalf,

00:51:09 ►

is to find out exactly what kind of tobacco they like because they’re just like Americans.

00:51:12 ►

They’re really fussy about their tobacco.

00:51:15 ►

But with these people, you can’t even buy this mix.

00:51:19 ►

It’s just grown and given or traded under the table.

00:51:24 ►

So you wouldn’t even bring them tobacco because it’s too special.

00:51:28 ►

But you would ask about the kind of beeswax candles they want,

00:51:32 ►

and they sniff them, and they can tell from the smell of the candle

00:51:36 ►

before it’s been burned the quality of it,

00:51:38 ►

and even sometimes the plants that the bees were going to

00:51:43 ►

as they were making their hive,

00:51:48 ►

and so then that goes into, that scent goes into the wax, and those will be burned.

00:51:53 ►

And often the length of a portion of one of these ceremonies, a mushroom ceremony or salvia something,

00:51:58 ►

not salvia, mushroom ceremony, and some of these healing ceremonies,

00:52:03 ►

would be the length of time that the candle burns. so they tell you how long the candle has to be some of the candles are four

00:52:08 ►

feet long and they’re huge you know you don’t see those very often you go to have someone who

00:52:13 ►

custom makes them and then pictures of the various saints that um that uh particularly have for some

00:52:23 ►

reason have come to this family as the most useful.

00:52:27 ►

These people never go to church.

00:52:29 ►

They couldn’t remember how many years it had been,

00:52:31 ►

maybe once, twice when they were children.

00:52:35 ►

They incorporate certain Catholic elements,

00:52:38 ►

but they are not church-going people.

00:52:40 ►

They have their ceremonies.

00:52:41 ►

This is their altar.

00:52:44 ►

And they’re most famous for mushrooms.

00:52:47 ►

I think several of you have already mentioned to me

00:52:49 ►

that you went to Huautla in the 70s or the late 60s

00:52:54 ►

when people were hearing that mushroom use was happening

00:52:59 ►

in the mountains of Mexico,

00:53:01 ►

and you could go up there and um take uh mushrooms there was a

00:53:06 ►

wave of hippies that um is this squeaking all the time in your ears or just mine

00:53:11 ►

yeah it sounds like it um so uh so that that hit like a tidal wave up there and really changed Wautla and it went through a kind of a burst

00:53:28 ►

with all these people discovering this Indian village

00:53:30 ►

and then the darker repercussions of that

00:53:34 ►

and then shut down

00:53:35 ►

and many people said later

00:53:37 ►

that in the latter days of that wave

00:53:39 ►

that Mazatec people seemed very unfriendly

00:53:42 ►

and it was just too much of an onslaught of another culture.

00:53:46 ►

Most people were not sensitive.

00:53:48 ►

They were not going as ethnobotanists or even sensitive seekers.

00:53:56 ►

But to this day, you can walk around the hills around the town

00:54:00 ►

or get off the bus, in fact, and be approached by people,

00:54:03 ►

you know, ongos, on it’s um that means mushrooms and there are sort of hotels a couple left where you can go and get a

00:54:12 ►

little dark room with graffiti on the walls and be given mushrooms and i i really um discourage

00:54:18 ►

doing that i don’t think it’s respectful to the people and the culture there and I don’t also think you necessarily will

00:54:25 ►

have a great experience um what I do think is interesting is to look at the way to emulate the

00:54:35 ►

way they look at these species they have they deal with people say different things I’ve heard 14

00:54:41 ►

different species of um psilocybe mushrooms and or psilocybin of psilocybin mushrooms,

00:54:47 ►

psilocybin and psilocin-containing mushrooms,

00:54:50 ►

and I saw the use of four different species,

00:54:54 ►

and they each have a different folk name, a different character.

00:54:58 ►

These people know their mushrooms so well,

00:55:00 ►

even though they have the same chemicals in them largely,

00:55:03 ►

they have them in slightly different ratios in each species, but what they see is that they are actually a different

00:55:10 ►

being. And you would go to one for a certain kind of ceremony, for a certain problem, for

00:55:15 ►

a certain type of celebration, and you would go to another for another activity and so it’s just like we would go to a certain friend for something she knew

00:55:29 ►

to a chiropractor if our neck were out to a herbalist if you you know had ongoing digestive

00:55:36 ►

problems i mean you just choose your allies and you go to the appropriate one and so there are

00:55:42 ►

many different species there um there this one actually was probably

00:55:46 ►

psilocybe serulescens

00:55:49 ►

and the curled edge

00:55:53 ►

maybe two different varieties of it

00:55:56 ►

the difference in color

00:55:57 ►

I didn’t have time to

00:55:59 ►

I just witnessed these

00:56:02 ►

I didn’t take these back

00:56:04 ►

but the first trip there I did collect specimens of every mushroom,

00:56:07 ►

every psilocybin-containing mushroom that I saw,

00:56:10 ►

and took them back and did my best to get them ID’d and propagate them

00:56:15 ►

because, you know, they’re, I mean, take spore prints and see what you can do

00:56:21 ►

because they are each very different.

00:56:25 ►

We’ve been taking Cubensis, Psilocybe Cubensis, for years,

00:56:28 ►

Stropharia Cubensis it has also been called.

00:56:31 ►

And, you know, that’s the one that was easily grown beginning in the mid-’70s

00:56:38 ►

and proliferated throughout the United States and probably Europe too, I assume.

00:56:45 ►

It was easy to grow, and it has been called the mushroom

00:56:49 ►

as though it were the only one

00:56:51 ►

and as though it is the only kind of portrait

00:56:56 ►

of a psilocybin-containing mushroom that existed.

00:57:00 ►

Well, they call psilocybe cubensis,

00:57:03 ►

the one that we’re so familiar with, San Isidro.

00:57:06 ►

And San Isidro is the patron saint of laborers, Saint Isidore.

00:57:11 ►

The patron saint of laborers, laborers go to him for their protector.

00:57:15 ►

And you would take Cubensis if you were interested in starting a particular piece of work.

00:57:24 ►

If you were going to clear a piece of hillside

00:57:26 ►

and plow a new field there,

00:57:29 ►

or if you were going to try to start a business

00:57:31 ►

and you wanted the blessing,

00:57:33 ►

you wanted problems with that solved,

00:57:35 ►

you would go to the one that watches out for work.

00:57:37 ►

But you wouldn’t necessarily go to Cubensis

00:57:39 ►

for a healing ceremony.

00:57:41 ►

You wouldn’t necessarily go to sing pans of praise to Guadalupe.

00:57:50 ►

Celosib, I mean,

00:57:53 ►

yes, celosib mexicana

00:57:55 ►

is los pajaritos, the little birds.

00:58:00 ►

And that one, they say,

00:58:01 ►

often brings happiness.

00:58:03 ►

It brings delight.

00:58:04 ►

Now, it can also bring tears, I know,

00:58:06 ►

because I have been in ceremonies with them

00:58:08 ►

where they measured out those 37 pairs of los pajaritos

00:58:17 ►

to each one of us on a leaf like this.

00:58:21 ►

And they measure, as I say, every single thing in pairs.

00:58:24 ►

And we did did we sang the

00:58:25 ►

praises of the world together we uh everyone takes these these mushrooms in a ceremony in front of

00:58:32 ►

that altar or an altar like that that you see you know it was a family of four um three of us took

00:58:38 ►

the mushrooms and um this was not for a healing ceremony. This was just to say thank you, basically. To see what is

00:58:48 ►

and say thank you. And these people really know how to

00:58:52 ►

pray. They really know how to ask for help in the world.

00:58:55 ►

But they know just as well how to say how grateful

00:58:59 ►

they are. And I do find that among very poor, very simple

00:59:03 ►

living people um all over that if they’re

00:59:08 ►

dealing with spirit and they’re dealing with this kind of uh of uh invocation they always say thank

00:59:17 ►

you many times they describe what they’re thankful for they describe this beautiful world they

00:59:21 ►

describe their beautiful grandchildren they get into it know, and really say thank you.

00:59:25 ►

And they ask that this,

00:59:28 ►

that a little bit more food be grown

00:59:30 ►

so they just have enough in the dry season,

00:59:33 ►

that a little, that the rains come on time,

00:59:36 ►

that the police leave them alone,

00:59:40 ►

that whatever it is, you know,

00:59:41 ►

I mean, it’s not a drug question.

00:59:43 ►

It’s just the Indians are such, you know,

00:59:45 ►

they’re just still really, really second-class citizens in Mexico,

00:59:50 ►

and they do get into trouble, and it’s hard to get out of,

00:59:55 ►

and they have so little power.

00:59:58 ►

But they know to say thank you.

01:00:00 ►

That’s the point I’m making, that gratitude, that respect,

01:00:03 ►

and that gratitude is really a part of the formula.

01:00:08 ►

These are a couple of old slides that I didn’t take of Maria Sabina,

01:00:11 ►

the renowned shamaness of Mexico.

01:00:17 ►

She was, you know,

01:00:20 ►

discovered by

01:00:22 ►

Wasson and his entourage

01:00:26 ►

in the late 50s

01:00:29 ►

and

01:00:30 ►

60s. She was a phenomenon.

01:00:35 ►

She was at the core of the whole wave that hit

01:00:38 ►

Oaxaca and Huautla. She also,

01:00:40 ►

I think it’s very interesting that

01:00:43 ►

this kind of ancient plant-based shamanism

01:00:47 ►

was discovered in terms of the Western attention in Mexico

01:00:54 ►

and not somewhere else since it does exist in folk cultures around the world

01:00:58 ►

and it was discovered as a woman’s practice.

01:01:03 ►

There are areas where there are many women

01:01:05 ►

shamanic figures

01:01:07 ►

and there are other areas where there are very few

01:01:08 ►

and they’re mostly men.

01:01:10 ►

But she became the emblematic shaman of the world

01:01:14 ►

and probably will hold that position for a long time.

01:01:17 ►

She was very good at what she did.

01:01:21 ►

These are mushrooms in this box.

01:01:23 ►

These are, I think one is her daughter

01:01:25 ►

and people that, you know, a number of healing ceremonies were witnessed

01:01:29 ►

where she ate the mushrooms, the patients ate the mushrooms

01:01:31 ►

other people ate the mushrooms, she sang

01:01:33 ►

she was really a good poet and singer of the songs

01:01:37 ►

that carry a lot of the spirit of the mushroom

01:01:40 ►

and the invocation of that spirit

01:01:44 ►

and then what the mushroom and the invocation of that spirit and then what the mushroom says.

01:01:47 ►

And she says that, she speaks for the mushroom

01:01:50 ►

out into the room, into the people there,

01:01:54 ►

seeing and revealing and asking,

01:01:57 ►

answering the questions they have asked.

01:02:00 ►

I fully admire the work that I know of that she did,

01:02:04 ►

as we probably all do,

01:02:06 ►

but I have to say that there are many other fine healers.

01:02:11 ►

And she wasn’t the last, and she wasn’t the only one.

01:02:14 ►

And there are men and women, and there are new ones coming along.

01:02:18 ►

This is her in a state of prayer and a mushroom ceremony.

01:02:22 ►

of prayer and a mushroom ceremony.

01:02:32 ►

And these are contemporary women who use these mushrooms.

01:02:36 ►

This is actually a mushroom deal going down right now.

01:02:43 ►

And that little green packet looks menacing, doesn’t it? That little green packet is a banana leaf packet, which

01:02:48 ►

is the way that mushrooms are packaged. After this, we walked outside. She’s handing her

01:02:56 ►

money. And the one on the right is a very highly thought of midwife also, but a midwife

01:03:01 ►

who is doing, you know, that’s the the thing is you deliver babies and you do these

01:03:06 ►

healing ceremonies and you help people die it’s all all these skills all come together you know

01:03:12 ►

and so we walked out on the street and the one of the the woman in pink her son who was collecting

01:03:19 ►

mushrooms came up and opened his leaf full of mushrooms to show her what he had collected that day because she provides midwives and others with mushrooms.

01:03:29 ►

And we were standing right on the little street in front of her house

01:03:32 ►

and I said, you can just like flash your mushrooms out like this

01:03:35 ►

right on the street.

01:03:36 ►

And they both looked at me like, what do you know?

01:03:38 ►

And they said, well, it’s not marijuana.

01:03:46 ►

You see why you can’t smoke at the ruins

01:03:48 ►

you could eat mushrooms at the ruins

01:03:49 ►

and the shamanic accoutrements

01:03:54 ►

are sold in marketplaces all over Mexico

01:03:56 ►

this is true but this is in a Mazatec marketplace

01:03:59 ►

these are the various kinds and qualities of these wax candles

01:04:02 ►

certain kinds of feathers, parrot feathers

01:04:05 ►

of pounded

01:04:08 ►

tree bark or the cambium layer

01:04:11 ►

of a tree, amate, that is

01:04:15 ►

pounded into a kind of paper, you may have seen artwork

01:04:17 ►

done on it, but they use these soft pieces of it

01:04:20 ►

that feel like fabric to wrap offerings

01:04:22 ►

and protective packets which

01:04:25 ►

they place in their eaves and bury under the corners of their little property and do different

01:04:32 ►

magical things like that because they’re always working on all of these levels even in daily life

01:04:38 ►

even in non-psychedelic life just watching what’s strange you know if, if a bird you’re not used to seeing comes and sits in a tree outside your window

01:04:46 ►

and calls and calls and calls,

01:04:48 ►

it’s not just a bird on a trip.

01:04:51 ►

You know, it’s a bird that has a message

01:04:55 ►

that it is sending you that may be positive,

01:04:58 ►

may be a warning.

01:04:59 ►

It’s something you pay attention to.

01:05:01 ►

If, I’ve seen in the Amazon,

01:05:04 ►

if a certain butterfly changes its path and flies

01:05:08 ►

through the open air shelter that you’re under and doubles back and flies through again or alights

01:05:15 ►

on somebody, they read it as a message. They stop and pay attention. The conversation stops.

01:05:20 ►

There’s this way of tracking life forms and their activities where they are taken

01:05:26 ►

as part of the same conversation that we’re all in um these eggs here are used also in um

01:05:33 ►

in these protective packets and another thing done with eggs is in these limpias and now

01:05:37 ►

who was talking about this someone in the last couple of days was talking about

01:05:41 ►

oh i know it was um manolo talking about the mucus dripping

01:05:46 ►

on the mirror and then reading it and telling something about health and the future and all

01:05:51 ►

that kind of stuff right well what it made me think of is the way that people again throughout

01:05:57 ►

the americas use eggs rub them on people’s bodies to do a reading, to absorb the energy. Eggs are considered a sort of a fluid kind of lens.

01:06:08 ►

And you take the egg and you rub it.

01:06:10 ►

Some people rub it so hard it practically pulls your hair out,

01:06:13 ►

but it doesn’t quite break the eggshell.

01:06:15 ►

Some people rub it more lightly, almost just hardly touching you.

01:06:18 ►

But they rub it all over you,

01:06:20 ►

and they’re asking for it to absorb the energy that you’re carrying

01:06:23 ►

so that they can read something about you. And then they crack it into a glass of water i’ve seen this in mexico and

01:06:29 ►

ecuador and peru they crack it into a glass of water and they watch how that egg white flows

01:06:35 ►

and any little specks of color or anything that might be in there and they tell you what’s wrong

01:06:40 ►

with you and then they know they get their branches and their flowers and their leaves and they sweep you and they clean you because they’ve just seen this x-ray of how you

01:06:51 ►

are. It might be a magical illness, it might be a physical illness. There isn’t usually much

01:06:56 ►

distinction in this worldview, you know, because physical illness is usually started from magical

01:07:01 ►

causes. But sometimes they’ll say well you you know as

01:07:06 ►

Manolo said you need to go to a doctor but usually they’ll work on it because it’s something

01:07:12 ►

that was sent at you something that you did wrong that opened you up to an imbalance it has a lot

01:07:21 ►

to do with balance and keeping your center clear and staying in balance.

01:07:26 ►

I know Maria Sabina,

01:07:27 ►

in some of her songs,

01:07:28 ►

she says,

01:07:31 ►

you follow the path of the,

01:07:32 ►

can I say that right,

01:07:34 ►

the path of the track of your hands.

01:07:37 ►

This is the path of your action.

01:07:39 ►

Where have you been?

01:07:40 ►

What have you been doing?

01:07:41 ►

If you are out of balance,

01:07:44 ►

you follow your action backwards in your memory in ceremony

01:07:46 ►

together with her until you find that moment where something went askew and then in time in that

01:07:53 ►

state of mind you can set that moment and that action in balance and move forward from that

01:07:59 ►

still in your mind to the present and then you’ll be well so it’s a way of healing yourself by dealing with

01:08:06 ►

the past in the present but taking a certain responsibility you may have been startled by

01:08:13 ►

something susto is a famous illness of the americas you know susto is a is a kind of getting

01:08:20 ►

suddenly knocked off balance by something unexpected.

01:08:30 ►

And then that opens you up in a way that doesn’t necessarily come back into harmony.

01:08:35 ►

So it’s a seeking of harmony of the interior self that creates health,

01:08:37 ►

and these ceremonies really work to do that.

01:08:44 ►

Some of the people among the Mazatec still wear the old dress and huipil.

01:08:47 ►

This is the colors of this village, this area.

01:08:51 ►

All the Mazatec people each have their own combinations of colors and stripes and embroidery from each village.

01:08:56 ►

And I just wanted to, I use my slides as my notes, you know,

01:09:01 ►

because I just don’t seem to write notes.

01:09:03 ►

So this one is, this woman on the right, she’s a young curandera.

01:09:10 ►

She’s, well, she’s probably 50 now, but she’s been doing this since she was in her early 30s.

01:09:16 ►

She’s buying some supplies for a ceremony from these women in their traditional dress still.

01:09:21 ►

She’s an example of the ongoing tradition, the living tradition of dealing with

01:09:29 ►

these mushrooms and she particularly does like mushrooms. She doesn’t use salvia divinorum.

01:09:37 ►

She only speaks Mazatec, only understands Mazatec, not Spanish, but she has a speech impediment and

01:09:43 ►

she can’t even pronounce Mazatec. The only person who understands her is her niece, who is apprenticed to her as a healer.

01:09:50 ►

Her niece, when I worked with them, was 12. And the niece understood these sort of very soft vowel

01:09:55 ►

sounds that she made and translated for her in Spanish or Mazatec to other people. So she was

01:10:01 ►

with her all the time. They both studied under this woman’s mother who died just a

01:10:05 ►

few years ago who was a renowned healer and the little girl I told this story at the salvia

01:10:12 ►

conference the little girl the who was 12 at this time said she had been sitting at her grandmother’s

01:10:21 ►

knee during ceremonies taking taking mushrooms, eating mushrooms

01:10:25 ►

in these healing ceremonies since she was two years old, or at least she remembered it since

01:10:29 ►

she was two years old. And she just is so grounded and really quite an amazing young woman. And I

01:10:41 ►

asked her how she knew how many mushrooms to eat when she was just a little child. I asked her how she knew how many mushrooms to eat

01:10:45 ►

when she was just a little child.

01:10:47 ►

I asked her how many her grandmother gave her

01:10:50 ►

and she said she didn’t give them to me.

01:10:52 ►

She just put out a bowl of mushrooms in front of me

01:10:54 ►

and let me eat them.

01:10:55 ►

And I said, how did you know how many to eat?

01:10:57 ►

And she said, I just ate them until I arrived.

01:11:12 ►

And this is Salvia divinorum, which probably most of you have seen, if not seen,

01:11:19 ►

at least seen pictures of it. It grows very green and moist in the green and moist places in the Oaxacan hills, in little glens. People don’t grow it by their houses. They don’t

01:11:23 ►

grow it by roads. They don’t grow up where anybody sees it. They traditionally at least and then the people

01:11:29 ►

I’ve worked with grow it far from where they live off in little hidden glens that are kind of shady,

01:11:35 ►

very quiet, often where a little bit of a creek is running by or by a spring and it’s allowed to grow and fall and the nodes touch the moist earth

01:11:46 ►

and they sprout again.

01:11:49 ►

So it does that thing.

01:11:50 ►

If you’ve grown salvia yourself,

01:11:52 ►

it likes to restart.

01:11:55 ►

It likes to be,

01:11:57 ►

cuttings to be made and to be restarted.

01:11:59 ►

The old woody stems after two or three years in a pot

01:12:03 ►

are not very happy.

01:12:04 ►

Well, they don’t do it that way here either.

01:12:06 ►

They re-sprout from the moist earth.

01:12:14 ►

That’s another.

01:12:15 ►

And sometimes the sun can give it that bit of color.

01:12:19 ►

This plant is called, this one is in, yeah,

01:12:23 ►

so you can see the shape of the flower

01:12:25 ►

and the legginess of the plant.

01:12:27 ►

And this is the blossom up close.

01:12:29 ►

I think it just looks like a dancing woman to me.

01:12:32 ►

This plant is also called shka pastora.

01:12:35 ►

That means, shka means leaves in Mazatec.

01:12:40 ►

Shka pastora, shka means leaf.

01:12:43 ►

And, or ojas de la pastora, the leaves of the shepherdess.

01:12:48 ►

And there’s speculation about the history of that name

01:12:51 ►

and the implications of it,

01:12:56 ►

but my feeling is that they are recognizing

01:13:01 ►

this very calm, large, protecting female spirit being that is in this plant.

01:13:13 ►

And the pastora aspect of it comes from the fact that she does just put her arms out and protect people in a very gentle way.

01:13:23 ►

and protect people in a very gentle way.

01:13:26 ►

And they recognize her definitely as female and have ceremonies eating these leaves measured out in pairs throughout the year,

01:13:34 ►

but particularly in the non-mushroom time of year.

01:13:36 ►

The mushroom season is fairly short, just several months in the wet summer,

01:13:42 ►

and they don’t preserve and dry the mushrooms.

01:13:45 ►

At least I haven’t seen that happening.

01:13:48 ►

So salvia is something that they might use

01:13:51 ►

in other times of the year.

01:13:53 ►

They take this plant in total darkness

01:13:57 ►

and total quiet.

01:14:01 ►

It’s a very delicate state of mind in their estimation

01:14:04 ►

and in my experience and

01:14:06 ►

you wouldn’t disrupt it by having light or noises outside or even singing or any kind of

01:14:18 ►

activity inside very very still the mushrooms are taken in that other things will happen they have candles

01:14:25 ►

burning they have um you know you gaze upon um icons and flowers and stone and all of that uh

01:14:34 ►

the the healer during the mushroom session may sing definitely just wonderful wonderful strange

01:14:40 ►

songs um or even dance a little bit the most most amazing shamanic moment, or one of the two most amazing moments I have ever seen,

01:14:50 ►

was an old corandero on a very high dose of mushrooms, with all of us in that state,

01:14:58 ►

doing a dance that I have to say reminded me of Charlie Chaplin.

01:15:02 ►

You know the dance with the baked potatoes? Remember that one?

01:15:06 ►

Where, like, oh, just a great old movie anyway.

01:15:09 ►

He did this, this man did this very,

01:15:13 ►

just, it was like he became a cartoon.

01:15:17 ►

It was like he was acting out the spirit of the mushroom, you know,

01:15:20 ►

and he moved across the floor and back several times,

01:15:23 ►

flickering his hands in a certain way

01:15:25 ►

and doing this thing that was comical

01:15:27 ►

it was making us laugh tears

01:15:30 ►

and it was just absolutely beautiful

01:15:34 ►

but I hope it’s okay

01:15:36 ►

I’m kind of jumping back and forth here

01:15:38 ►

but the salvia experience would be in the dark and very still

01:15:42 ►

and before I did my first salvia experience with them,

01:15:45 ►

which is what they suggested to me

01:15:48 ►

when I went to ask about my heart,

01:15:51 ►

they did…

01:15:54 ►

You know, Anne was talking about working with people

01:15:57 ►

who need healing and kind of coming in

01:16:00 ►

on that psychological level,

01:16:01 ►

knowing them and loving them, even if they’re new to you.

01:16:04 ►

And they really did that with me. They really interviewed me about my life for hours before the

01:16:09 ►

day before, and then the day of it, more questions and try to understand where I had lost my balance,

01:16:17 ►

you know, where my pain was coming from. And, um, so they, even though I was talking about a different world,

01:16:28 ►

they got it.

01:16:30 ►

They got the same elements because they’re there.

01:16:32 ►

They’re looking at your luck.

01:16:36 ►

They’re looking at if your parents are alive or not. Are they looking at whether your husband is taking care of you or not

01:16:42 ►

and how your children are and what what your work is and you know those

01:16:47 ►

are the same questions they would ask someone in their world and um so they knew something about me

01:16:55 ►

and um then we went into this ceremony and they told me uh to they asked me if I really knew how to pray. And I said, well, I think so,

01:17:07 ►

but you probably can teach me something.

01:17:10 ►

And they said, well, if you don’t know how to pray,

01:17:12 ►

you’re going to learn how to pray tonight.

01:17:14 ►

And they did really insist that I, out loud,

01:17:19 ►

it has to be out loud,

01:17:20 ►

and this I’ve learned from Native Americans up north too,

01:17:24 ►

that you really need to

01:17:26 ►

at least part of the time speak to the entity that you are invoking the presence of that the whole

01:17:32 ►

idea with these medicines is to go into an active right now relationship between beings it’s

01:17:38 ►

interspecies communication and to say their name and say it out loud and praise them, tell them how beautiful they are or whatever it is you know about them

01:17:47 ►

and thank them throughout for what you are receiving

01:17:53 ►

and ask them for what you need.

01:17:55 ►

And they say, you know, if you don’t address them

01:17:57 ►

and you don’t ask for what you need,

01:17:59 ►

you probably don’t really believe that you deserve it

01:18:02 ►

and they’re not going to know

01:18:06 ►

to take you seriously and you stay in that mode you don’t drop out of it so um they

01:18:11 ►

encouraged me and began by praying in mazatec and and spanish a bit and then would say now it’s your

01:18:19 ►

turn and like 10 15 minutes of me just speaking constantly and i had to get over my self-consciousness and I was in an altered state

01:18:26 ►

very powerful altered state

01:18:27 ►

because when it works

01:18:30 ►

salvia is really powerful

01:18:32 ►

I mean this is just eating the leaves

01:18:33 ►

there’s a lot to say about all of this

01:18:36 ►

and it’ll be too long and I can’t see my watch

01:18:38 ►

so I don’t know how long I’m going on right now

01:18:40 ►

does anybody know how we’re doing on time?

01:18:42 ►

so so what, another 20 minutes, okay right now. Does anybody know how we’re doing on time?

01:18:47 ►

So what, another 20 minutes? Okay.

01:18:57 ►

Yes, the question was, was I ingesting the salvia? Yes.

01:19:03 ►

They measure out pairs of leaves, many pairs in my experience with them,

01:19:09 ►

you know, 20, 30, 40 pairs, and it’s really a lot of leaves.

01:19:16 ►

Of course, the leaves can, salvia leaves can go from several inches long to a foot long.

01:19:21 ►

I’ve grown them a foot long. But say somewhere in between.

01:19:25 ►

They roll them up. The people I’ve worked

01:19:28 ►

with roll them up into a big

01:19:29 ►

cigar. And then you

01:19:32 ►

just start at one end and you just eat all the way

01:19:34 ►

through to the end.

01:19:36 ►

And you swallow it.

01:19:38 ►

You swallow all of it. It doesn’t do

01:19:40 ►

anything. There’s no ill effect on the stomach.

01:19:42 ►

I think they say chew it

01:19:43 ►

very, very well so

01:19:45 ►

to whatever extent the you know oral activity the uh is a factor you’ve got it in your mouth for a

01:19:51 ►

long time and um and then you yeah you just swallow it down and it i never actually timed it

01:20:00 ►

given the circumstances but um i’d say like 45 minutes of a very strong state

01:20:06 ►

and then another 45 minutes of a milder state.

01:20:10 ►

And they said, these are the things that they said,

01:20:15 ►

and I’m just sharing them.

01:20:17 ►

This is what I was told and it worked,

01:20:21 ►

is that you must stay facing the altar,

01:20:30 ►

stay in a prayerful mode the whole time,

01:20:32 ►

be in total darkness.

01:20:34 ►

Only sound should be you speaking

01:20:36 ►

or if someone else is praying with you, you know.

01:20:39 ►

And not to have had sex for three days before

01:20:46 ►

nor to have it for three days after.

01:20:47 ►

And that’s a fairly standard prescription

01:20:49 ►

for a lot of psychoactives in Native use

01:20:53 ►

because of that openness factor,

01:20:55 ►

because of the vulnerability factor

01:20:57 ►

and kind of contamination of spirit.

01:21:02 ►

And not to laugh through the entire salve session. That’s a really important rule.

01:21:09 ►

And they didn’t say that about mushrooms, and I haven’t heard that about ayahuasca. I mean,

01:21:13 ►

people don’t generally have big laughing fits during ayahuasca, but they do sometimes drink

01:21:18 ►

mushrooms. And sometimes, I know people are tempted to during salvia, but I was told several times,

01:21:26 ►

absolutely do not give in to that.

01:21:28 ►

And I was told that salvia divinorum,

01:21:30 ►

which is not what we’re looking at right now,

01:21:32 ►

that salvia divinorum is like the deer.

01:21:35 ►

And some people say the word mazatec,

01:21:37 ►

the name of these people,

01:21:38 ►

means those who worship the deer

01:21:40 ►

or the deer-loving people.

01:21:42 ►

And, you know, I asked them why.

01:21:43 ►

I mean, they have very little animal protein that they can hunt anymore they do eat um armadillos and they can get them but um but i

01:21:52 ►

asked them why they i didn’t see any deer i’ve been staying there a long time and they talk about

01:21:55 ►

deer and they said well they’re all gone we scared them all away but they regard them as a sacred

01:22:00 ►

animal still and then they told me at another time that the salvia was like a deer.

01:22:05 ►

It’s very shy. And if you startle it, it will disappear again. That you have to listen for her

01:22:11 ►

to whisper to you what it is you need to know. It’s that kind of delicate relationship.

01:22:19 ►

So this is a Rivea coriambosa, also sometimes called Turbina Coriambosa. It’s part of another complex of plants that they use, which are

01:22:27 ►

Morning Glory seeds. This is in the Convolvulae CE, the Morning Glory family.

01:22:32 ►

And it has a little round, brown seed. And it’s also called

01:22:35 ►

Semillas de la Virgen, the Seeds of the Virgin. You know, so many of these

01:22:39 ►

plant names go back to these entities, and

01:22:43 ►

often to a great female entity. Sorry, but it is true.

01:22:49 ►

And the seeds of the virgin are used, well, both species, I guess, actually,

01:22:59 ►

are used throughout or were until at least until the later 20th century, used throughout the state of Oaxaca by many different Indian groups,

01:23:07 ►

not just the Mazatecs.

01:23:08 ►

And this is one of the species.

01:23:11 ►

These are little brown seeds.

01:23:13 ►

And then the other species that I have seen used is Ipumea violacea.

01:23:18 ►

And if you’ve ever grown the showy morning glories in the garden,

01:23:21 ►

you know that they’re a big funnel-shaped flower,

01:23:26 ►

the typical morning glory.

01:23:28 ►

This is the same species.

01:23:29 ►

This is a mutation.

01:23:33 ►

And every time I have,

01:23:36 ►

three times I have collected the seeds among the maziteks of the morning glory

01:23:38 ►

that they use for their ceremonies,

01:23:42 ►

morning glory seeds that they use.

01:23:43 ►

This is the, they use these mutations that are basically the funnel has deteriorated

01:23:49 ►

into a multiflora kind of effect where it has many, many petals.

01:23:55 ►

Here’s another one.

01:23:58 ►

I’ve seen it in both of these colors.

01:24:00 ►

I’m told that it grows in another shade as well and they prefer it to even the

01:24:10 ►

same species that has an intact funnel. Now Schultes and others reported the use of morning

01:24:18 ►

glory seeds, Iphomoea violacea, but it was the, you know, all the illustrations are of the full funnel-shaped

01:24:26 ►

flower. So I don’t know if this is a more recent mutation that became widespread. These seeds were

01:24:33 ►

collected over three villages in the high Sierra of the Mazatecs, and this is what they prefer.

01:24:40 ►

Again, this was, I got this from a woman who supplies plants to midwives,

01:24:51 ►

and the seeds are used for vision, but they’re also used in birth.

01:24:54 ►

It’s a uterine contractant.

01:25:02 ►

The ergot kind of compounds in the seeds have that action,

01:25:05 ►

and so they say when a mother is stuck,

01:25:07 ►

when the baby is stuck and the mother cannot let the baby go,

01:25:09 ►

they give her, they grind up some seeds and they give her a dose of that

01:25:11 ►

and she begins to dream and the baby comes quickly.

01:25:16 ►

So they’re using it, a psychoactive in birth, medicinally.

01:25:20 ►

And also it is used for a kind of,

01:25:23 ►

now I haven’t encountered this use directly.

01:25:26 ►

I’ve just talked to people who say they use it.

01:25:28 ►

I haven’t seen it or experienced it myself yet.

01:25:30 ►

But that they will take one to two Coke bottle caps full of the seeds

01:25:37 ►

and grind them and sluice them with a little bit of water

01:25:42 ►

and strain that or not strain it.

01:25:44 ►

I’ve heard it both ways,

01:25:46 ►

and give that to a person.

01:25:48 ►

Often late at night,

01:25:51 ►

a curandero, a shaman figure,

01:25:54 ►

will give the seeds to someone who wants to know about the future

01:25:56 ►

or wants to know some kind of divination question

01:26:00 ►

and will ceremonially prepare this

01:26:02 ►

and give this to him or to her late at night

01:26:06 ►

and then she will become sleepy and will lie down, curl up there on a mat in the curandero’s house

01:26:12 ►

and dream until dawn when the patient or the seeker will awaken

01:26:17 ►

and tell their dreams to the curandero and he or she will tell them what the answer is by interpreting the dreams that come

01:26:27 ►

from sleeping in the state having taken these seeds and this is a whole different ceremony

01:26:36 ►

not psychoactive plants but i just have had it impressed upon me over and over among

01:26:43 ►

the mazatecs and all the people that I work with in

01:26:46 ►

all these different places that uh that there’s really something going on with the leaves generally

01:26:52 ►

and so last time I was up there I was there for a shorter visit and and I was just about to leave

01:26:58 ►

and get on the bus and he said well you’re not going to leave before the uh ceremony of the um

01:27:03 ►

the uh stations of the cross, are you? And I

01:27:07 ►

was like not tuned in to that that was happening. Hadn’t planned on, I mean, I didn’t even know

01:27:12 ►

when. And so those of you who have Catholic background know about the Stations of the

01:27:17 ►

Cross and maybe others do. You know the places that Christ passed through when he was, this is really backing a lot,

01:27:27 ►

when he was trekking with the cross

01:27:32 ►

to his destination

01:27:34 ►

and the stories that happened at several places,

01:27:37 ►

particularly when he fell

01:27:38 ►

and would have interactions with different people.

01:27:41 ►

Well, all of these stories have been passed down

01:27:43 ►

and I was not raised Catholic,

01:27:45 ►

but I know that the reenactments

01:27:47 ►

of various sorts of these Stations of the Cross

01:27:49 ►

occur in Catholic ceremonies around the world.

01:27:53 ►

So these people have one that they do

01:27:56 ►

through the town on a certain day

01:27:59 ►

in relationship to Easter each year.

01:28:02 ►

And everyone in the town comes out for it.

01:28:06 ►

Women come down from all over the mountains,

01:28:09 ►

because many, many people, many more live out in the mountains

01:28:11 ►

than live in towns, as in Wadla.

01:28:13 ►

And they come in early in the morning,

01:28:15 ►

and the women have, as they’ve come,

01:28:17 ►

gathered two species of aromatic leaves.

01:28:19 ►

You can see them holding these bundles of leaves in their hands.

01:28:22 ►

And they walk through the streets.

01:28:24 ►

Now the young, the acolytes are carrying a censer there of copal incense,

01:28:30 ►

the tree sap from this area, Mesoamerica,

01:28:33 ►

that is burned in all sacred ceremonies, ancient and contemporary.

01:28:38 ►

And these people, these women are carrying these bundles of leaves

01:28:41 ►

and they carry them through the streets

01:28:44 ►

and then comes along in

01:28:46 ►

the procession here this larger than life body of christ dressed in velvets on this cot that they’re

01:28:53 ►

lifting up with the the purple um canopy over him and as he comes along people are um taking their

01:29:02 ►

leaves and reaching up and rubbing along his body that That’s what they’re trying to do there, to gather the light,

01:29:08 ►

to gather the power of Christ, the sun god,

01:29:12 ►

if you look at it from larger mythological terms.

01:29:17 ►

And it was amusing to me because all along at each station of the cross,

01:29:23 ►

each family that has the privilege

01:29:25 ►

to represent that station that year,

01:29:29 ►

and that’s a changing cargo system of privilege

01:29:32 ►

that happens in all these Mesoamerican towns,

01:29:38 ►

as part of their decorations of the station,

01:29:42 ►

they go up and harvest all these branches, and they put them along either side of their decorations of the station, they go up and harvest all these branches

01:29:45 ►

and they put them along either side of their house

01:29:49 ►

in huge pots.

01:29:50 ►

And the men who have not gathered branches of leaves

01:29:54 ►

in the hills,

01:29:57 ►

they’re also in the parade

01:29:58 ►

and they get carried away

01:29:59 ►

and everybody wants leaves

01:30:00 ►

to sweep the light from Christ down.

01:30:03 ►

So they start grabbing them out of the decorations.

01:30:06 ►

And so soon the men have leaves too. They’ve just taken them out of the vases. And so people

01:30:12 ►

are sweeping this and then they turn and sometimes they’ll turn and sweep each other or there’ll

01:30:18 ►

be old people who can’t reach up or who are walking really slowly and they’ll sweep them

01:30:22 ►

with the leaves and they’ll transfer the light and the energy

01:30:25 ►

from the Christ figure to each other

01:30:27 ►

or they’ll, I asked some of the women,

01:30:29 ►

they will take them home to people who are too sick

01:30:31 ►

or unable to walk, who are at home

01:30:34 ►

and sweep them there

01:30:35 ►

or they will just hang the leaves by their front door

01:30:38 ►

and they say it just carries the light.

01:30:41 ►

They carry the light.

01:30:42 ►

They carry this good energy.

01:30:44 ►

And this is what I’ve just seen everywhere

01:30:45 ►

is that there’s this belief

01:30:47 ►

underlying all these practices

01:30:50 ►

that leaves, that plants,

01:30:55 ►

that leaves particularly hold energy.

01:31:00 ►

They transmit energy.

01:31:02 ►

That they can pick up energy here with intention

01:31:04 ►

and they can carry it and they can pick up energy here with intention and they can carry it

01:31:06 ►

and they can do something else with it over there.

01:31:08 ►

And it’s a way of seeing

01:31:12 ►

how plant material is a living carrier,

01:31:21 ►

a document of our requests and our intentions

01:31:24 ►

and the power of nature and the invocation of spirit and action.

01:31:29 ►

All of these things come together in it.

01:31:31 ►

And I think it is really useful to look at the psychoactive plants

01:31:35 ►

that we know and love or would like to know and love

01:31:38 ►

as having that aspect too.

01:31:40 ►

I know it has nothing to do with chemistry.

01:31:42 ►

It is not scientific.

01:31:44 ►

It is not documentable.

01:31:46 ►

It’s just a way of seeing that millions of people, I believe, have participated in for a very long

01:31:53 ►

time. So it’s got a morphogenetic field, as Rupert Sheldick would say, of belief that plants,

01:32:01 ►

these living beings that are standing around us all the time watching what we do,

01:32:05 ►

that they’re actually participating in energy transmission

01:32:09 ►

in a way that is slower and subtler than what we’re used to,

01:32:13 ►

but in a way that is recognized by people.

01:32:16 ►

And I think there are ways we do it unconsciously in our modern life

01:32:19 ►

in terms of the plants we choose to have growing in our houses

01:32:22 ►

and the images that we put on the cloth that we wear,

01:32:25 ►

often botanical,

01:32:26 ►

that there are just,

01:32:28 ►

not only that they’re things of beauty

01:32:29 ►

and that they’re living things,

01:32:31 ►

but that there’s actually a kind of an inherent character,

01:32:35 ►

energy in plant material

01:32:37 ►

that is behind a lot of ritual and healing

01:32:44 ►

that goes on in the world

01:32:47 ►

and certainly among these people.

01:32:51 ►

And I think the last slide, and this is, you know,

01:32:55 ►

just all the elements that I’ve been talking about,

01:32:57 ►

the kopal burning on the ground, a plant resin,

01:33:00 ►

the tobacco on the table,

01:33:02 ►

the offerings of certain flowers that please certain deities,

01:33:06 ►

and somebody on his knees in a mode of honoring,

01:33:14 ►

making offerings and working on all these levels all the time

01:33:19 ►

in the belief that all the levels from the most earthy

01:33:28 ►

and the most humble to the highest have to be in communication

01:33:32 ►

in order for the whole picture to stay together.

01:33:35 ►

So that’s my talk. Thank you.

01:33:48 ►

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

01:33:51 ►

where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:33:56 ►

I have to admit that I found this talk to be quite humbling,

01:34:01 ►

as I think about how little I actually know about the living earth,

01:34:05 ►

particularly when compared to the knowledge and wisdom of these indigenous communities.

01:34:07 ►

You know, it’s so easy to slip into a feeling of superiority when comparing our high-tech

01:34:14 ►

lives with people who are mainly living simpler lives.

01:34:18 ►

But what has actually happened, I think, is that many of us have replaced ancient knowledge

01:34:24 ►

with technical knowledge,

01:34:26 ►

rather than instead augmenting the wisdom of our ancestors with our newly developed information.

01:34:33 ►

Recently, I saw a documentary that was simply titled Dirt, and if you haven’t seen it yet,

01:34:39 ►

I highly recommend it. And what’s the big deal about dirt, you ask? Of course, you would only ask that

01:34:47 ►

question if you were a techie geek like me and didn’t already know that dirt is wonderfully,

01:34:53 ►

amazingly alive. We here in the psychedelic community all seem to share an interest in the

01:34:59 ►

plant world, and yet I seldom hear much about the foundation from which these plants spring.

01:35:06 ►

And I’ll leave it at that for now, but check out the documentary Dirt if you get a chance,

01:35:10 ►

and I think it’ll give you an entirely new understanding of some of the issues that we’re

01:35:15 ►

now having to face due to our worldwide dependence upon monoculture farming to feed us.

01:35:21 ►

It’s a serious problem that isn’t going to go away simply by ignoring it,

01:35:26 ►

and so I hope that you better inform yourself about dirt and maybe even start a little garden

01:35:32 ►

of your own. Not only will it be satisfying, it’ll be a lot of fun too. Now getting back to the talk

01:35:39 ►

we just heard, let me take you back to where early on in Kat’s talk she said to pay attention, for example,

01:35:46 ►

when a bird you aren’t used to seeing sits outside your window and calls over and over.

01:35:51 ►

For many years now I’ve made it a practice that when something out of the ordinary in nature

01:35:56 ►

happens nearby me, that I make it a point to focus on whatever thought I was just having.

01:36:03 ►

That probably sounds more like a superstition,

01:36:06 ►

but it’s actually brought up some amazing ideas for me.

01:36:11 ►

You see, the way I see it is that Mother Nature, or Gaia, or Lady Ayahuasca,

01:36:16 ►

or whatever you want to call the animating spirit of this planet,

01:36:20 ►

well, I think that maybe that spirit can influence a bird to fly close by in front of me, or

01:36:25 ►

cause a rabbit or a squirrel or some other wild animal to approach me, or something like

01:36:30 ►

that.

01:36:31 ►

And, if I also suppose that Gaia can read my mind, well, then I figure that this out-of-place

01:36:37 ►

sign from nature is her way of putting an exclamation point on a thought that I was

01:36:42 ►

just having.

01:36:44 ►

And so I spend more time thinking about that particular idea than I probably would have done otherwise.

01:36:50 ►

Yeah, that’s kind of corny, I guess, but maybe you ought to try it the next time something like that happens to you

01:36:56 ►

and see what you were thinking about that maybe was important.

01:37:01 ►

Well, that had better do it for today because we’re already way longer than I like.

01:37:06 ►

And so I’ll close this podcast again by reminding you that this and most of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are freely available for you to use in your own audio projects under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 3.0 license.

01:37:30 ►

And if you have any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage, which you can get to few of them in my novel, The Genesis Generation, which is available in Kindle and other e-book formats, as well as a pay-what-you-can audiobook that is read by me.

01:37:52 ►

And you can find out more about that at genesisgeneration.us.

01:37:58 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:38:02 ►

Be well, my friends.

01:38:02 ►

signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:38:04 ►

Be well, my friends.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

273 - Indigenous Plant Wisdom

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