A Head Full (a look at Salvia divinorum)

A HEAD FULL  

 

“The main trip in these trippings is to go to the very door of death, to the very border when you can come back to your body.”

Ganesh Baba

 

Entheogen: “that which generates God (or godly inspiration) within a person.”

R. Gordon Wasson

 

A Tripping

 

          The night arrived. It was the beginning of Christmas vacation and the kids were asleep. My wife was reading in the kitchen and I sat in the living room on the couch with my home made brass pipe on the coffee table in front of me. I had turned the lights low and put on Steve Reich Remixed in which various artists, as per the title, remixed the legendary avante garde musician’s work figuring this would be an excellent album to leave with, if I were to leave. I read that like any psychedelic, set and setting was important with the salvia experience and that it was recommended that one have a sitter who was sober watch over you while under the influence of these leaves. I had placed some dried leaf on the rolling tray. The little baggie of extract sat next to the leaves. I decided to start with the leaves. I hailed Shiva, crumbled some leaves into powder, loaded a bowl, and smoked. The smoke was harsh, unpleasant. I held the smoke in like a hit from a joint. I smoked the rest of the bowl of leaves and sat waiting for something to happen. I felt as though I was on the verge of that something but could not say exactly what. I had heard it was powerful stuff but perhaps it was exaggerated by young ones who had not transformed their consciousness as much as I had.

I emptied the bowl into the ashtray and loaded some of the black, crumbly extract. I loaded a full bowl of the extract and smoked.  I put the pipe down on the coffee table just as things on the far wall seemed to fall away—first the books and shelves, then the wall sighed, retreating away, tilting backwards, until the under arching framework of the universe was revealed: a latticework of energy only in this naked form momentarily. The entire room appeared to be but a façade over the universe—a disguise it wore so that I would not fall out into space dazzled by my own insignificance, and significance. I closed my eyes. No refuge there, for lurking behind my eyelids was an army of golden Saguaro cacti all wearing Mexican sombreros, Zapata-style mustaches, all holding hands and spiraling to the music which had become the focal point of my consciousness. I felt as though I was going to fall out of my “envelope” (as my wife calls this mortal coil) and called out to my wife, as best I could from my sweating body on the couch, to come and hold my hand. Even with her hand in mine, I felt that I was spiraling away with the golden Saguaros and that at any moment I would join them, and by doing so, die. It was as though the entire world had tilted away with me far, far, away from my normal bearings. Tilted; a good word for this feeling. I tried to speak and all I could say was, “Holy Mother of Christ.”  I think I repeated that at least five times amazed at the overwhelming domination, or liberation, of my spirit—the strength of this substance. I had no inkling at that point, that I was actually anything. The music guided the cacti and I kept my eyes closed. They joined together in gilded star shapes and faded away to aureate fairy dust.

I realized that the experience was different from any other psychedelic I had explored, as there was no slow progression to the peak of the experience—instead, with Salvia, it started at the peak.

I opened my eyes and my wife sat watching me. “It is like death. It is like all of this around us is insubstantial décor over an eternal, neutral, loving and monstrous universe.” As usual for this type of experience, explaining the revelations is close to impossible due to the limitations of language–I mean “Holy Mother of Christ”? What the hell did the crucified Jew, or his mother, have to do with this? My wife nodded her head not knowing what to say.

Awareness is passed

I’d first heard about the sacred Salvia divinorum from a boarder of my godfathers in Normal, Illinois. The boarder, Chad, was a young undergrad studying biology. He rode a bicycle that cost more than my 1988 Honda Civic. I did not think this kid could teach me—a thirty-one-year old head, anything at all about the drug culture. Boy was I wrong, but it took me five years to find out how wrong. Chad never was able to get any Salvia for me, as Chad was the kind of guy who smoked your pot and drank your beer, but if he bought any beer it would be some obscure nine dollar six pack that he would not share. If you snagged one of his beers he’d get angry. If he had any pot he would tell you he was saving it for his girlfriend. He was not an ideal connection for any illegal substance and generally acted like a spoiled rich kid.

Not too long after Chad told me about this plant, I graduated from Illinois State with my degree in English with a minor in philosophy. I decided to teach English as a Second Language in a Mexico. Considering how I felt about Bush and the invasion of Iraq, I saw no better options. I was tired of people telling me, when I complained about the government or when I would imply that the “government” of the United States itself was involved in committing 9/11, “Well what are you going to do about it?” As if complaining about the state of affairs was wrong. As if not to trust your government or to question its actions was un-American. I decided to no longer contribute to the coffers of the government by leaving the country. That was my answer.

While living in Mexico I wondered about the Salvia plant and began doing research. I read that this plant, a member of the mint family, Salvia divinorum, was capable of giving an LSD or Ketamine type high that was of short duration, 5 to 10 minutes, when the leaves were smoked. My interest was piqued. I love natural highs. I have always been interested in sacred plants and had tried many throughout my life. I learned about morning glory seeds from Steal this Book, by Abbie Hoffman, the American Yippie, in which he mentions morning glories as being a cheap and legal high. I had tried Peyote, mushrooms, morning glory seeds, Hawaiian baby woodrose, kava-kava root, catnip, LSD-25, alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, by the time Chad told me of Salvia, this strange plant he had smoked that made him really high.

Curious Head Researching: Facts

In Mexico the medical and mystical use of plants is very common, with people still using them as medicine and in potions. This coincides well with the history of the use of entheogens in Mexico, as it was indigenous to many of the cultures here in the New World. Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD and no relation to the American Yippie, stated that “the use of such psychedelic drugs within a religio-ceremonial framework was discovered among the Indian tribes in Mexico at the beginning and in the middle of the twentieth century.” I was in the right country to gain insight into a phenomenon that had been of interest to me since the first time I was told not to do drugs way back in the sixth grade. 

I began reading heavily and buying books concerning the use of these substances. In Mexico I was able to find books like Antigua Recetario Medicinal Azteca (Ancient Aztec Medicinal Recipes), Medicina Natural (Natural Medicine), both offering cures from herbs and plants, the fat Plantas Curativas Mexicanas (Mexican Curative Plants), which lists every possible plant and its medicinal uses including cannabis, coca, and poppies. One of the most interesting books was Plantas de los Dioses (Plants of the Gods), with its cover photo of Xochipilli, the Aztec god of flowers, in one his more famous images, sitting on a pedestal adorned with the flowers of tobacco, morning glories, their tendrils, and stylized mushroom caps. The book was written by Richard Evans Schultes and Dr. Albert Hoffman. The most interesting aspect of the book is that this translation is published by Fondo de Cultura Economica, the Economic Cultural Fund, funded by the Mexican government. As this is a really a guide book to a some of the most significant entheogenic plants in the world, at the beginning of the book is a warning that the plants in the book are subject to the narcotic laws of respective countries and that ingesting these plants could be against the law in your area.

I realized, from living in Mexican culture with so much emphasis on natural plants available at the herberias, herb shops filled with dried and fresh plants used in medicine and by witches and wizards, run by women who read tarot and can recommend a candle to keep away the evil eye, or an herb to promote an abortion—these people still believed in the power of plants over pharmaceuticals.

I had thought I was “just” a head, but the observation of my son and all this research made me realize that there was something inherently human about my desire to understand myself–this desire to shift my consciousness, and to use plants and their magical elements as tools for self-understanding and to release creativity and introspection, just as my son had shown me this was innate to the species, this realization made me realize that my desire was not much different. I realized that there are so many ways of seeing and that these plants can offer the option of picking the channel or tuning in to what each particular plant offers as a channel. There is no one way of seeing. To think that there is, is to believe that everything is simply solid and fixed. This is not the case.

Wanting to Spin: Everyone Must get Stoned

My son Oscar was born during the time I was in Mexico. He has reaffirmed that this wanting to get high thing is, indeed, inherent to the human species. He always wants me to spin him in my desk chair. He seems to crave the spinning motion as much as one might crave a cup of coffee, a joint, a line of coke, cigarette, or orgasm. I know that since having done all these various drugs throughout my life, spinning in a chair just did not satisfy the way a substance did, but I still wanted to feel something. I read that the drive to “get high” is as innate in humans as the sex drive—that humans have been getting high on something (usually a plant) for as long as they have existed. According to Kenneth Blum PhD., “Humans seem to be consumed with the search for pleasure states.” And why would that be? Blum says, “To many, reality provides a stable but sometimes boring and frustrating experience. . .” I don’t know if I agree with him in reference to my son as he does not seem to find reality to be boring, maybe frustrating when his desires are thwarted, but other than that, is totally into reality and altering his sensation of it, just like his papa and his mama. This observation vindicated my interests and again showed that I was just not some addict interested in vacuously changing the channels of perception, but a human who felt an interest, perhaps more strongly than others, in getting high as a specialty of my human experience.                         

Salvia was on my list of plants to explore, as I had thought there was nothing new left to see from plants. I found numerous websites on the Internet, in particular erowid.com and dhushara.com which talked extensively about the sacred use of entheogens and the war on them. I was shocked by the amount of information I could find. It was so different from when I was really into drugs in my early twenties. Then, one could read books if one could find them, but today, almost instantly, one can find information on just about any substance that will get you high. I learned that Salvia was, as Chad mentioned, quick acting, powerful, and native to a specific region of Oaxaca, Mexico and had been used for millennia. 

Upon my return to the United States in order to pursue my master’s degree, with hundreds of morning glory seeds from my own plants that I had grown in Mexico, I began a garden in front of our house and began looking into purchasing Salvia and some other plants that were legal in the U.S. I found an outstanding entheogen online nursery called Bouncing Bear Botanicals which sold a variety of entheogenic plants, the majority totally legal in this country, as they have not garnered enough significant media attention to be deemed illegal. I ordered dried salvia leaf, as well as five times extract. I also ordered a Peruvian San Pedro cactus, the most sacred Peruvian entheogen, which contains as much mescaline as Peyote and is totally legal for anyone, unlike Peyote, which legally, and unfairly, is reserved in this country for members of the Native American Church. My intention was to grow this plant, as I did with all that I grew, as a sacred being—to show respect to the gods who gave us these life forms to learn from, and to preserve it for future generation who may never get the chance to know these plants if the forces of the current paradigm have their way.

When I received the leaf and the extract, I began to doubt what I had been reading about its effects. How could this dried leaf, or this crumbly extract, push one into another dimension? I figured that its effects must be exaggerated, even though the Aztecs had called the plant pipiltzintzintli, “the noblest little prince.” Today it is still used by curanderas, healers or shamans, as a substitute for mushrooms when the “flesh of the gods” is not available.

     In our culture, entheogenic plants are demonized if their effects are known. Humans tend to forget the fact that this plant can relay through neurotransmitters, the communication system of all nature, different glimpses into the make up of themselves and the universe around them. This transference of information and sensation is amazing, bringing to mind the analogy of Adam and Eve biting into an apple in a garden and becoming as God. This fact has also mystified scientists, but to the shaman, this mystery is solved with the acceptance of the oneness of all things. In the shaman’s world the plant spirits are here to help us understand this oneness as we have seen that most psychedelic episodes have often been called spiritual in nature—revealing to many, a glimpse at this oneness of the universe and its “Godness.”   

After my experience of the tilting world/wall and the acknowledgment that I had not seen everything plants could offer yet, I decided I should have a live Salvia plant in tribute to what I had seen—to acknowledge my responsibility to help maintain this sacred plant with all its implications; spiritual and philosophical. I checked Bouncing Bear—they had live cuttings available. 

Salvia Live

After work sometime in January, I opened the box to reveal the quiet green plants with square stems and pretty typical leaves—no fingers like pot, just a juicy watery looking plant with its roots wrapped in moist paper for the ride through the mail system, our modern communications system, transplanting this sacred plant descended from Wasson’s cutting brought to the United States over 45 years ago. All the literature I had seen suggested heavy watering including the “instruction” book which came with the cuttings, as Salvia coming from a rainforest in southern Mexico, is used to moisture throughout the day. All the cuttings that are found in this country are from the either of two cuttings that were originally brought in by R. Gordon Wasson and Brett Blosser. The plant has been deemed a cultigen, meaning it seldom seeds and is mostly propagated through human contact—cuttings primarily. Thus, the plant exists as is, due to the contribution of the Mazatec Indians of the region in keeping it alive for its sacredness and value it contributes to their culture. The hummingbird has been observed as an occasional pollinator of the plant, doing its part to help reproduce the plant in conjunction with the Indians.  In “captivity” it rarely seeds. Cuttings are the most efficient way for the modern botanist/closet shaman to acquire the plant.

The major way it reproduces itself in nature is when it grows high, which for Salvia is about a meter, the plant falls over and grows shoots out of branches that touch the ground creating new plants. The plant then spreads out—like hydra growing new heads where it touches the soil. The plants thus, require big pots as the more root system develops, the larger the plants grows. They did not have many roots, but I placed them in the rich potting soil and watered them with purified water to quench their thirst from their journey. I placed them in my utility room where they would get just enough sun–as they cannot stand direct sunlight. It is said that the plants can acclimate to the environment in which they are in and adjust themselves somewhat to the conditions of their environment. That was the approach I wanted to try as I felt that I did not have the facilities to create a totally ideal living situation for them and wanted them to toughen them up a little. One could almost say the plant’s living conditions are a reflection of the human users who must put up with prejudice concerning the plant—that the environment for experimentation with this plant is just as sensitive as what the plant itself requires in order to thrive. In fact if one gets up while tripping the trip sensation fades away. The high, if one can call it that, is as fragile as the plant itself and relies on the human in order to maintain highness by not moving unnecessarily. I found this out by getting up to adjust the stereo during a later trip and found that the visuals and the sensation of tilting disappeared. The high vanished with the movement of my body, as if it was dependent on a relaxed state to show what it could show. I felt this was analogous to the fact that the plant itself, in nature, has a very restricted growing area—as though it were something that needed to be reserved and kept quiet.  

The plants seemed to thrive well and one was moved to a window in the dining area. Looking at the plant closely, I noticed that the stem is square and the inside of the stem is a circle. The square in alchemical reckoning, symbolizes the material plane while the circle symbolizes the heavens—the ethereal–and it seemed appropriate these two mystical shapes would be united in this plant.

I look at this quiet plant and wonder how it could have transmitted whatever that message ultimately meant. I was not the only one who received news from the plant. I turned on my wife, and two of the godfathers of my son, to this amazing agent. One godfather, Bruce, did not feel it was much of a thing and while I was sitting tripping out he got up to get a beer! I felt the plant was insulted and called out to him from the couch to sit down and then spoke to the plant saying he meant no disrespect. He later told me that it sure seemed to work on me, but that he did not get it. On the other hand, Jonathan felt the plant revealed the silly putty consistency of the universe and was interested in further exploration.

Elizabeth, my wife, smoked salvia after a hard day of hanging with my parents at a casino in Shreveport. She sat at the couch with the lights low and William Orbit’s Pieces in a Modern Style quietly playing on the stereo as I sat next to her. She reported later, after having sat with her eyes closed, sweating, seeing, where the wall opened up for her, a ghetto street lit only by a lonely streetlamp shining cold white light onto a young girl walking down that street and of feeling the girl’s fear of being there. Elizabeth said she had been there as the little girl walking down that street, as well as looking at if from here on the couch. She told me then, of bumping into a large black woman at the casino who apologized profusely for bumping into her and how she felt as though having to apologize was something that the woman seemed to know really well. Elizabeth had sort of felt sad for this woman without knowing why and was convinced that the vision she had was a residual empathic shadow that had crossed my wife’s path needing to be revealed to someone. It was if the woman’s story needed to be felt by someone else. Elizabeth believes that she was given insight into the life of a complete stranger and believes this experience could be a key to understanding other human beings. I believe her.

I think of what Jonathan said about his first experience with Saliva: “It reaffirmed my awareness that there are many dimensions to this world.” This statement, my own experience, and my son’s spinning desire seem sufficient to me as to why the plant should not be “banned.” No life form should be banned. Each life form is a different face of god and is able to offer a different perspective.  Each living thing should be appreciated for being the unique life form it is. For some people salvia and the other entheogenic plants could be an aid in self-awareness.  

Entering Collective Consciousness

Amazingly enough, this plant has become popularized, though still not common knowledge, due to the Internet—the Internet as shaman revealing ancient secrets. Quite amazing in this prohibition crazed society is that Salvia still remains mostly legal. I say mostly because it has recently come under fire by “lawmakers” in various states in the Union and was recently made illegal in Australia. It is coming to notoriety to not only people who view it as a beneficial source of knowledge and empathy, but also to people who hate the idea of people changing the channel from that of the consensus, and ironically to people who do not realize that they are speaking with something sacred when they ingest this plant and abuse it causing damage to themselves and to the reputation and spirit of the plant. Due to the last two groups the plant has finally become a “cause” for concern for politicians wooing the anti-drug crowd with varying types of legislation pending or passed in the United States concerning its possession and cultivation and is currently on the D.E.A.’s list of “drugs of concern.” Saliva is currently illegal in Delaware, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Legislation is pending in 14 additional states as we speak. It could be a matter of time before it too, is another plant that the agents of the present paradigm would like to see eradicated to aid in the preservation of their perverse status quo to prevent the acknowledgment that the current world view is not by any means the only way of “seeing”.

Even in the face of such measures against a wise plant spirit, my plants continue to thrive and occupy a place of honor in my home. During the winter all my plants were brought into my older son’s bedroom and turned it into a veritable, useful plant, Mecca. Two of the Salvias make their home there amongst the Aloe Vera, the four different chili plants, Hawaiian baby woodrose, San Pedro cactus, various other cacti, garlic, and other friends. After helping me move all my plants to his room, my son said about his room, “it is so nice to have all this life in here.”  

Rhetorical Conclusion: Tapping on the Door

If the smoke of leaves can allow one to tap into empathy shadows allowing us to “literally” see into the life of another, reveal the structure of the universe, and show multidimensional space, is it not imparting knowledge that can guide us in this life? It seems a hard kick-in-ass revealing of what can be seen from ingesting the smoke of a plant, should indicate there are things we do not understand. With the aid of some of these substances, perhaps a bit more light can be shed on understanding what it is to be human. Many people describe psychedelic trips as being spiritual and there is the old Cheech and Chong joke about listening to Black Sabbath and “…seeing God.” Rhetorically one must ask if some person does see God somewhere in their life without the help of an outside person—just a chemical neurotransmitter to tune into a totally different dimension, should this exploration of ones mind, if done willingly, without harming others be illegal? Can a heightened sense of self awareness or the admittance of the possibility of a God like entity not be a positive thing? Is that what man is looking for? God? Is not the pursuit of understanding as primordial urge as sex? Seems humans cannot help but change their way of seeing and their mood. Who is to declare what experience of ones consciousness is permitted or allowed? Can said knowledge not be useful in understanding our role in the universe? How many other species can benefit from these types of experiences? Only humans, as we alone, of all species, are able to record what we have seen in Salvia and the other entheogens and apply it to increase our awareness of the levels of life, the interconnectedness of it all and transmit that message to others, as I am doing here. Thus, these plants are not something to use to escape reality, but to aid us in understanding and finding our way through this labyrinth of external “reality.” Either way, whether Salvia becomes illegal soon or not, I, standing here spinning my son in my chair, owe a big “thank you” to Chad for being an inadvertent agent of this plant and introducing it to my life, and consciousness.

~ by epiphanypoint on May 10, 2009.