Huichol yarn painting depicting
themes from their genesis myth: The Nierika or cosmic portal opened
by peyote, linking the underworld with Mother Earth, through which
the gods came and all life came into being. It unifies the spirit
of all things and all worlds. (Schultes & Hofmann R613).
Christianity is a prime example of a world sacramental religion,
founded on 'holy communion' - a flesh and blood sacrament - the
sangre and soma - symbolic of a sacrificial death. These simple
wafers of bread and sips of diluted wine carry no effect in themselves,
but claim to infer a reality so powerful that merely to partake
of the 'eucharist' is deemed to be the innermost mystery of communion
with the godhead. If such a sacrament is going to be of functional
effect, shouldn't one expect it to actually be a potent psychoactive
substance in biological terms?
The notion of sacrament as something natural that is consumed
to make 'holy' or whole poses a central question of sexual paradox
in consciousness. How is such completion achieved in the universe?
Is it arrived at through an outer journey of scientific or empirical
discovery in the material world? Is it to be found through philosophical
analysis and discourse? Is it to be found in a covenant of submission
to the will of God? Is it to be pursued through an arduous meditative
journey into the innermost reaches of the mind and soul to the
cosmic self? Or is it to be found in sexual reunion and in the
interactive mysteries of the 'living sacraments' of the biosphere?
Lying beneath this is the fraught question of what subjective consciousness actually is. Is the complete mind - the visionary state - something we possess alone and sufficient unto ourselves, a pure state in inner devotion, separate from the material world, or are the highest experiences of unification achieved not alone but in interaction? Is mystical consciousness somehow not only collective but interactive? Is its 'purpose', rather than communication with the absolute or an unseen God, rather the genesis of a more compassionate and aware natural condition - of living co-participation?
No one in their right mind would consider humanity, for all its domination of the living species of the planet completely independent of them. Man must eat and eat the living flesh of plants fungi and animals to exist. Merely to consume other life forms we are interdependent with them. This interdependence is accepted as central and fundamental to our natural condition, but when it comes to consciousness, our patriarchal mind-sky heritage makes us feel that our mental identity is to be carved out, not in interactive merging but in a lone isolation, on the one hand a supremacy of contemplation and mental control, and on the other a submission to a higher power - the will of god.
Yet perhaps both these hierarchical ideas are misconceived. Perhaps the purpose of the conscious mind is not to leave the natural world for a 'higher plane', but to be learn to better integrate with conscious nature in a wholeness that both gives us the sense of completion and fulfillment we seek, and in so doing sustains living diversity in a more integrated compassionate and caring relationship. Indeed this is the only practical route to the immortal paradise all our myths and religions gravitate towards, and the reality the immortal sexual passage of the generations attests to. Therefore we need to consider the possible role psychotropic plants, fungi and animals may have in making the consciousness of the biosphere complete, whole and 'holy'.
The relationship between so-called 'power plants' and human consciousness is a startling example of the sexual paradox principle in action - the idea that the crowning forms of integrative conscious experience are not gained by one species in isolation but in interaction between complementary living principles, without which, the heights of the spiritual experience might be difficult or impossible to achieve, attained only by a mystic or psychotic few, or so become so distorted by second-hand accounts, that they are perceived only 'through a glass darkly', rather than knowing and being known face to face.
Complementing the deep meditation of the Eastern traditions of Buddhism and the Upanishads is a Western tradition of sacramental shamanism every bit as ancient in which virtually every psychedelic species has become revered as a sacred 'power plant' for curing and access to the divine and hidden realms of nature. The origins of these discoveries in myth frequently go back to discoveries by women gatherers which are later stolen by the men.
Mircea Eliade (R184) made a major conceptual error when, in his seminal work "Shamanism" he relegated sacramental forms of shamanism to an inferior status. In fact the strongest, deepest and by far the most insightful traditions of shamanism come through the power plants. Centrally important here is a world view in which nature and all the species therein are sacred and the 'good life' is lived in an intimate caring relationship with nature rather, than the dominion over nature claimed by humanity, projected through a high god.
The 'war on drugs' is an aberration in human history, which runs counter to the experience of virtually every culture which has preceded it. It is based on a Christian fear of paganism, of witches brews and of any form of material access to the divine - that anything outside the carnivorous Christian sacrament of soma and sangre, is diabolical.
Many of our modern medicines are plant sourced. Our evolutionary endowment in psychoactive plants has been particularly rich, with some of the most potent psychedelic substances known coming directly from natural sources. Although some of these, such as the solonaceous plants used in mediaeval witchcraft are frankly toxic, others despite being somewhat bitter medicines are medicinal or of no seriously debilitating effect. The 'medicine men and women' who partake and administer these live healthy lives into their nineties extolling the power and virtue of these sacraments.
We will examine just a few cases, choosing the context of the Christian sacrament to confirm an evolution from the traditional Eucharist to the use of 'living sacraments'. However the principle applies to all sacred use of power plants, whatever their religious context.
In fact the man who finally led him to the eucharist was indeed
the judge Cayetano. Wasson (R717) was deeply struck by the spiritual
power of the sacred mushroom (R648, R613), which he referred to
as 'the divine mushroom of immortality':
'Ecstasy! The mind harks back to the origin of that word. For
the Greek ekstasis, meant flight of the soul from the body. Can
a better word be found to describe the bemushroomed state? ...
Your very soul is seized and shaken until it tingles, until you
feel you will never recover your equilibrium' (Furst R227 198)
The sacred mushroom teonanactl is 'known to the ancient Meso-Americans as the Flesh of God, echoing the soma and sangre of the Christian Eucharist (Harner R285 90). Wasson also noted that Greeks call mushrooms broma theon 'the food of the gods' (Furst R227 194) and specifically likened the experience to the epoptea of Eleusis 'For me there is no doubt that the secret of Eleusis lies in hallucinogens'.
'On both nights Wasson stood up for a long time in Cayetano's room at the foot of the stairway, holding on to the rail transfixed in ecstasy by the visions that he was seeing in the darkness with his open eyes. For the first time that word 'ecstasy' took on a subjective meaning for him. ... There came one moment when it seemed as though the visions themselves were about to be transcended, and dark gates reaching upward beyond sight were about to part, and we were to find ourselves in the presence of the Ultimate. We seemed to be flying at the dark gates as a swallow at a dazzling lighthouse, and the gates were to part and admit us.'. (Riedlinger R570 31)
Wasson's father Edmund was a maverick Episcopal priest, who
had written a book called "Religion and Drink" and never
tired of telling Gordon that Christ's teaching began with the
water into wine at Cana and ended with the wine of the Eucharist
at the Last Supper. Gordon was to interpret his experience in
the light of its significance as the agape of the Early Christians.
This eucharist and the falling sacred words evoked to Wasson the
day of Pentecost in which the disciples and the women at the burial
were "filled with new wine". In his subsequent article
in Life he wrote (Riedlinger R570 26):
"On the night of June 29-30 1955 in a Mexican Indian village
so remote from the world that most of the people spoke no Spanish,
[we] ... shared with a family of Indian friends' a celebration
of 'holy communion' where 'divine' mushrooms were first adored
and then consumed. The Indians mingled Christian and per-Christian
elements in their religious practices in a way disconcerting for
Christians but natural for them. ... We had come from afar to
attend a mushroom rite but had expected nothing so staggering
as the virtuosity of the performing curanderas and the astonishing
effects of the mushrooms. ... We were received and the night's
events unrolled in an atmosphere of simple friendliness that reminded
us of the agape of early Christian times"
"One can imagine the many trembling confabulations of the friars as they would whisper together how to meet this Satanic enemy. The teonanactl struck at the heart of the Christian religion. I need hardly remind my readers of the parallel, the designation of the Elements in our eucharist 'Take, eat this is my Body'... and again 'Grant us therefore my gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son ... and to drink His blood'. But the truth was even worse. The orthodox Christian must accept on faith the miracle of the conversion of the bread and wine into God's flesh and blood: that is what is meant by the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. By contrast the sacred mushroom of the Aztecs carries its own conviction: every communicant will testify to the miracle that he has experienced" (Furst R227 191).
The curandero who opened the secret of the mushroom to Wasson was Maria Sabina. Shortly before his arrival she had a vision that strangers would come to seek the little one who springs forth. She had shared her vision with Cayetano García the local sindico or justice, and it was he who agreed that the knowledge should be shared and brought Wasson to her.
The mushrooms were consumed before a small altar. The curandera kept one corner free so that the Holy Ghost could descend in the form of the sacred words that came to her, the words of her little book: "I see the word fall, coming down from above as though they were little luminous object falling from heaven. The word falls on the Holy Table, on my body, with my hand I catch them word for word." (Halifax R274 134)
Her long life to age 91 was beset by many tragedies including a macabre vision she had shortly afterward on the 'little things', which foretold the murder of her son, possibly in vengeance for opening the knowledge of the mushroom. Her house and little shop were also burned (Estrada R196 71, 79).
"The father of my-grandfather Pedro Feliciano, my grandfather Juan Feliciano, my father Santo Feliciano - were all shamans - they ate the teonanacatl, and had great visions of the world where everything is known... the mushroom was in my family as a parent, protector, a friend".
Maria Sabina had sampled sacred mushrooms in abundance as a
child. A few days after watching a wise man cure her uncle she
notes: "Maria Anna and I were taking care of our chickens
in the woods so that they wouldn't become the victims of hawks
or foxes. We were seated under a tree when suddenly I saw near
me within reach of my hand several mushrooms. 'If I eat you, you
and you' I said 'I know that you will make me sing beautifully'.
I remembered my grandparents spoke of these mushrooms with great
respect. After eating the mushrooms we felt dizzy as if we were
drunk and I began to cry, but this dizziness passed and we became
content. Later we felt good. It was a new hope in our life. In
the days that followed, when we felt hungry we ate the mushrooms.
And not only did we feel our stomachs full, but content in spirit
as well. I felt that they spoke to me. After eating them I heard
voices. Voices that came from another world. It was like the voice
of a father who gives advice. Tears rolled down our cheeks abundantly
as if we were crying for the poverty in which we lived.' She had
a vision of her dead father coming to her. I felt as if everything
that surrounded me was god" (Estrada R196 39).
"Maria Anna and I continued to eat the mushrooms. We ate
lots many times, I don't remember how many. Sometimes grandfather
and at other times my mother came to the woods and would gather
us up from the ground on which we were sprawled or kneeling. 'What
have you done?' they asked. They picked us up bodily and carried
us home. In their arms we continued laughing singing or crying.
They never scolded us nor hit us for eating mushrooms. Because
they knew it isn't good to scold a person who has eaten the little
things, because it causes contrary emotions and it is possible
that one might feel one was going crazy" (Estrada R196 40).
Maria Sabina describes access to the timeless eternal visionary realm: "There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby and invisible. And there is where God lives, where the dead live, the spirits and the saints, a world where everything has already happened and everything is known. That world talks. It has a language of its own. I report what it says. The sacred mushroom takes me by the hand and brings me to the world where everything is known. It is they, the sacred mushrooms that speak in a way I can understand. I ask them and they answer me. When I return from the trip that I have taken with them I tell what they have told me and what they have shown me" (Schultes and Hofmann R613 144).
"The more you go inside the world of teonanacatl, the
more things are seen. And you also see our past and our future,
which are there together as a single thing already achieved, already
happened . . . I saw stolen horses and buried cities, the existence
of which was unknown, and they are going to be brought to light.
Millions of things I saw and knew. I knew and saw God: an immense
clock that ticks, the spheres that go slowly around, and inside
the stars, the earth, the entire universe, the day and the night,
the cry and the smile, the happiness and the pain. He who knows
to the end the secret of teonanacatl - can even see that infinite
clockwork" (R613 149).
Eunice Pike noted to Wasson in 1953 "One of the proofs that
it is 'Jesus Christ himself' who talks to them is that anyone
who eats the mushroom sees visions. Everyone we have asked suggests
that they are seeing into heaven itself. ... Not all Mazatecs
believe that the mushroom messages are from Jesus Christ ... Most
monolinguals however will either declare that it is Jesus Christ
who speaks to them, or they will ask a little doubting 'What do
you say, it is true that it is the blood of Jesus'?" (Mushroom
Ceremony - Smithsonian Institute).
Jesus came to the white man as flesh and blood, but to the
Native American as peyote. John Wilson, who many claim as the
'founder' of the peyote religion in the United States claimed
that he was continually translated in spirit to the 'sky realm'
by peyote and it was there that he learned the events of Christ's
life and the relative position of several of the spirit forces
such as sun, moon and fire.
Ceramic snuffing pipe with a deer holding a peyote in its mouth
Monte Alban 500 BC (Schultes & Hofmann 1979).
He reported that he had seen Christ's grave, now empty and that
peyote had instructed him about the 'Peyote Road' which led from
Christ's grave to the moon (this had been the Road in the sky
which Christ had travelled in his ascent. Most peyotists strongly
affirm the Christian elements as an important part of their religion
(Anderson R15 36, 51):
"You white people needed a man to show you the way, but
we Indians have always been friends with the plants and understood
them ... "The white man goes into a church and talks about
Jesus , but the Indian goes into a teepee and talks to Jesus."
(Anderson R15 52).
However, it is Christ in his second-self who came to give the
peyote ritual to the Menomini:
"This old man was a chief of a whole tribe, and he have his
son to be a chief. He said, "I'm going to go, and you take
my place. Take care of this [tribe]." And the boy, he went
out hunting; He was lost for about four days. He began to get
dry and hungry, tired out; so he gave up. ... So he went, lay
himself down on his back; he stretched out his arms like this
[extending his arms horizontally], and lay like that. Pretty soon
he felt something kind of damp [in] each hand. So he took them,
and after he took them, then he passed away. Just as soon as he
- I suppose his soul - came to, he see somebody coming on clouds.
There's a cloud; something coming. That's a man coming this way,
with a buckskin suit on; he got long hair. He come right straight
for him; it's Jesus himself. So he told this boy, "Well,
one time you was crying, and your prayers were answered that time.
So I come here. I'm not supposed to come; I said I wasn't going
to come before two thousand years," he said. "But I
come for you, to come tell you why that's you [are] lost. But
we're going to bring you something, so you can take care of your
people. ... So they went up a hill there. There's a tipi there,
all ready. So Christ, before he went in it, offered a prayer.
...Take this medicine along, over there. Whoever takes this medicine,
he will do it in my name." So that's how it represents almost
the first beginning." (Anderson R15 23-4)
The indigenous use of Amazonian ayahuasca, has been reformed
into a modern religious movement, Union of the Vegetal, to "remember
past lives and to understand the true meaning of reincarnation
as well as to become familiar with the origin and the real destiny
of nature and of man". The Union Vegetale or UDV is a nominally
Christian movement devoted to experiencing inner harmony through
partaking of ayahuasca tea. A fortnightly meeting is held by the
movement, which includes members of both sexes from all walks
of life. Its membership is not restricted to one fringe group.
Similar movements, surround the use of iboga in equatorial Africa
in the bwiti and mbiri cults in which men and women make a vision
quest to visit the ancestors (p 126).
What is at stake here goes far beyond Christian horizons. It is
the discovery that the mystical visionary state is unlocked, not
by conscious control, but the incipient chaos that comes from
the interaction of the 'other' with our will to order. It extends
from the psychotropic plants and fungi to the actual molecules
which are their active principles, and their variants.
Persephone giving
Demeter the Epoptea sacrament.
Eleusis -'liberty cap' mushroom (Graves R256).
Healing the Nations
However, this association between an active sacrament and mystical gnosis has been lurking in the Christian condition since its beginning. Allegro (R8) has speculated that the mystery at the Christian origin is founded on an agaric mushroom cult. Commenting on the Elusian epoptea, Clement of Alexandria likens Christ, to the Hierophant of the sacred mysteries (Mylonas R486 274):
"Are they not sesame cakes, cakes with many marvels, . and a serpent, the mystic sign of Dionysos Bassareus? Are they not also pomegranates, fig branches ... ivy leaves, round cakes and poppies? In addition there are the unutterable symbols of Ge-Themis, majoram, a lamp, a sword and a woman's comb? [kteis - genital organ symbol]... Oh truly sacred mysteries! Oh pure light! In the blaze of torches, I have an epoptic vision of heaven and of God. I become holy by initiation. The Lord is the Hierophant who reveals the mysteries and commends them to the Father's care, where he is guarded for ages to come" .
Partaking the sacrament 1999 Holland
John Spong (R646 198) notes that the sacred meal is not just a ritual instituted by Jesus but is also the central motif in the manifestation of the resurrected Christ in which "their eyes were opened", just as were those of Adam and Eve when they ate the forbidden fruit:
In Acts again, eating and drinking the sacred substance with the redeemer is the central key:
Spong comments: "in the act of eating and drinking in the name of the Lord, here and now, we are sharing a foretaste of that kingdom. Perhaps in such a setting our eyes might well 'be opened' to behold the one."
Perhaps after all, Eve was right all along to seek the fruit that would 'make one wise' - hidden since the foundation of the world:
"And he shewed me a pure river of
water of life, clear as crystal,