A Sense of Doubt blog post #3287 - Psychedelic Press
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This article by The Seed SistAs (clinical herbalists Kaz Goodweather & Fiona Heckels) first appeared on Psychedelic Press XL: Folklore and Psychedelic. Belladonna is an imagination ignition. She is steeped in such wonderful history: folklore and medicinal use. She perfectly exemplifies how stories connected to plants can bring you closer to the essence of them. We Seed Sistas are a pair of medical herbalist witches. As you can see, we love to gender our plants! We work to bridge the gap between our scientific training in plant pharmacognosy and a long history of magical work with plants. One huge, consistent thread of our work has been with the Nightshade or Solanaceae plant family. These powerfully medicinal herbs have had some of the most exciting and mystical folklore connections to magic and stories surrounding them. The Nightshade family is vast and provides many of the world’s favourite fruit and vegetables from the tomato and chilli, to the aubergine and potato. However, there are also the shadier (mysterious and feared) plants such as datura, henbane and one of our favourites, belladonna. This text is a look at how this plant has influenced much of history and even may be at the root of what is now known as ‘rave’ culture. Could belladonna also have influenced one of the major world answers to substance abuse with alcoholics anonymous? What potential powerful magic and medicine lies at her heart that we can draw on to create lasting change in some personal and societal challenges? Atropa belladonna connects to a variety of ancient folklore which can support current exploration of this power plant. We will share how the layers of story add to a depth of understanding that can enhance life, health, magic, and mystical experiences—and how creating modern folklore can bring forth new ideas and imaginings. We will also touch on approaches to altered states of perception and how the magic of entering differing states is part of the healing that medicine people worldwide can offer, and something that is all too often sadly lacking in our modern allopathic framework. Belladonna has a rich history that can be drawn upon to create deeply mystical, held experiences relevant to the culture, time, and lifestyle that we find ourselves in. Let’s dive in. 1. Deadly Nightshade – Atropa belladonna Belladonna is a native European power plant, holding the key to an altered mind perspective, as well as being a hugely beneficial, physically-active medicine. Since ancient times, this beauty has been famed for poisonous properties, and applications in witchcraft, sorcery, and other forms of magic and medicine—and it is still very much in use. Over the years as we became more attracted to this herb and her stories, intense magic started to seep into our consciousness—she appeared to us in dreams as a mysterious witch. She serendipitously graced our garden with her presence, self-seeding in an untended bed. 2. Astrology Every plant is associated with a celestial body from a time when astrology was inextricably linked with theories of health and medicine. Whatever your views on astrology, it provides a framework from which to understand qualities and actions of a plant on the human condition or body. Astrology’s link or influence on modern science is undeniable although it is actively discouraged form modern scientific research!¹ Deadly Nightshade is ruled by Saturn. Saturn has the qualities associated with boundaries. When discovered, it was the furthest-reaching planet visible to the naked eye. The energy became associated with the outer reaches, with discipline and a sense of time-keeping, for overcoming challenges.² Any astrological bodies beyond Saturn were seen to have more ethereal or mysterious influence. Saturn became known as Grandfather Time but also as the threshold. Thus, Saturn became associated with belladonna and other toxic plants because of their ability to end life. 3. What’s in a name? Both the common and Latin names of herbs carry stories of their medicine, hints as to their appearance or location or warning of their power/toxicity. Often the Latin names link to deities whose stories connect into the essence of the plant in question. Bella-donna is an Italian phrase meaning ‘beautiful lady’. This name was given to the plant because the ladies of Venice used Atropa belladonna as a cosmetic.³ They would drop the juice of the berry into their eyes to gain the mydriasis (pupil enlargement) caused by its use. The dilated pupils were considered more alluring. In an aroused state naturally, the pupils will dilate so this subtle messaging is powerful stuff. The purple juice of the berries was also applied as a rouge to the cheeks. These beauties must have been completely inebriated, a fact that may have also added to their attraction! Belladonna’s dark green foliage gives rise to hues of greens and purples in her aromatic blooms. Once these tubular flowers are pollenated, they morph into the famous dark black, shiny berries, often referred to as the Devil’s cherries. These mirrored spheres look like potential treats to the uninitiated and have even ended up in a pie or two! The taste of the berry is sweet and the vivid purple juice can look appetizing, especially as they can be growing alongside the blackberries, looking all safe, delicious and tasty. We often wonder at the name ‘Devil’s Cherry’ and wonder if it was coined to give children the fear of consuming the berries. This is a possible warning to children to steer clear of what are extremely enticing, black shiny berries with a sweet tasting (unusual for plants so high in alkaloids) fruit. Stories of summoning up Old Nick himself were told: ‘If you eat the Devils’s Cherry, better be prepared to come face to face with the devil.’⁴ In the wild, we have found belladonna loving uncultivated or desolate areas. There is an Ancient Greek myth associated with the namesake of the Atropa belladonna, a story that speaks of the formidable nature of this fantastic power plant. Atropos was one of the Moirai, the three fates of ancient Greece who control the threads of life and death. The first Fate is Clotho, the spinner. She sits and spins the thread of life, the fabric of human existence. She is the maiden and is often seen in artworks carrying a spindle. The second Fate is Lachesis, meaning the allotter. She measures out the thread of life which determines how long one will live. She is the holder of our time spent here in the mortal realm. She appears depicted as a matron with a staff with which she points to the horoscope on a globe. The third Fate is Atropos meaning ‘inevitable’. She is the cutter of the thread of life. She appears as a crone. She chooses the manner of each person’s death and when their time is up, she cuts their life-thread with her shears. Her role is the archetypal death figure. She is the smallest of the three, characterized as the most terrible.⁵ The folklore of the three fates expresses the potential extreme effects of belladonna plant medicine. Of course, it is all in the hands of the person wielding the medicine, as everything is a poison depending on the dose, but as we know some herbs have a narrower therapeutic-to-poisoning dose threshold than others. The common name of ‘deadly nightshade’ is therefore extremely fitting. 4. Historical tales of Belladonna intoxication The first recorded temple dedicated to Bellona was built around 300BC. The priests and priestesses of Bellona would take belladonna berries before entering into a fervent and fanatical ritual space.⁶ Dionysus and the Maenads An early example of reported psychotropic use of belladonna was at the Bacchanalia festivities of the Greco-Roman religious celebrations, where it was added to the wine.⁷ This celebration was to Bacchus or Dionysus, the God of Religious Ecstasy, and of the harvest, wine and intoxication and fertility and other pleasures. Dionysus the Greek God of Intoxication has been wrongly assumed to be faithful to his relationship with the grape, but there is plenty of supposition to connect him with other herbal additives to his brews.⁸ The female nymph revelers were referred to as maenads, so named from the Ancient Greek for ‘raving, wild or frantic’. The stories go that there were nymphs in attendance at these Dionysian orgies, and their appearance and behaviour was that of belladonna intoxication. These nymphs were depicted with dilated pupils and a frantic wildness, dancing and cavorting in abandonment. While much of history venerates male archetypes, gods, and scholars of ancient Greece, texts show that women had a leading role in magical practices with plants from dreaming temples to fertility rites—and female mythological beings connected to revelry and nature connection with plants.⁹ In our personal practice with this herb we feel this association, and love to call on belladonna’s energetic medicine to welcome in and rediscover ‘the wild’. We abandon civility, completely letting go and becoming ‘raving mad’, dancing and cavorting in wild ecstatic abandonment. Bringing images of the ancient stories to mind can help to unleash connections with the plants that carry an oral map as to how to work with them. 5. Alleviating bonds of addiction – contacting god inside (AA) Alcoholics Anonymous and Belladonna? The ‘Belladonna Cure’ was a moniker given by American doctors who were treating people suffering for mania.¹⁰ It was first developed in Europe by German chemists who extracted the hyoscine from the belladonna plant and started to experiment with morphine addicts (a huge issue in the early 1900s). The drug was shown to be useful and American doctors worked with it first with manic patients and then alcoholics. There are many US hospital reports of so-called epiphanies, or access to knowledge previously unknown from patients under the influence of psychotropic and mind-altering belladonna compounds. The foundation of the global organization Alcoholics Anonymous was born after one such vision by a man called Bill Wilson. Wilson had met God when under the influence of the ‘belladonna cure’ for his own alcoholism. His room was completely filled with light and a cleansing wind blew in; he became freed of his addiction. He went on to set up the twelve-step programme that is now a huge movement in the support of overcoming alcohol addiction. We like to think that the fierce grace of this herb had some play in this awesome organization. The belladonna treatment of the 1920s, which was deemed a cure for alcoholism and other addictions such as those caused by opium or cocaine, was for those less well-off often a brutal affair. The rich would have had personalized, opulent care; the poorer could have been locked up in awful asylums, with potentially induced delirium in the name of a cure! 6. Psycho-emotional applications for Belladonna • Feral – Permission to be wild and free • Fierce grace • Endings and new beginnings • Shifting the sense of a fear of lack • Cutting away energetic shackles • Releasing fears – link with Atropos • Cutting ties to past relationships • Clarity of mind • Seeing clearly With adulthood comes responsibility. Finding a job, a home, paying rent or a mortgage, finding love, potentially breeding, all have their own special set of pressures which create a serving of anxiety and fear. In adulthood, we experience the death of our care-free independence. We need to inhabit these new roles, new responsibilities without losing ourselves completely. Belladonna can help to celebrate the little deaths as we move through in life, and transition between these roles, embracing and releasing restrictions we might feel, cutting away all the baggage, freeing us from the binds, the worries that enslave our minds. Belladonna in name has been associated with changing our appearance to enhance attraction—a spidery, femme fatal. However, the deeper message of Atropa belladonna is that of the ravers, those wonton, wily, Maenads—finding our own wildness, a fabulous free dance a flow of momentum through the adventure of life. Being true to yourself—that in turn attracts, it attracts the people who are meant to find you, who are meant to be part of your story. We can use the energy of untamed wildness to free ourselves from the weight we carry and embrace our wild side, being true to our own authentic nature. Psychedelic Press is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Other resources: Mann, J (1996) Murder, Magic and Medicine (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Kluckhohn, C (1944) Navaho Witchcraft (Boston: Beacon Press) 1 Barton, T (2003) Ancient Astrology (London: Routledge), p. 3. 2 Klibansky, R, Panofsky, E, Saxl, F (2019) Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy (Quebec: McGill-Queen's Press), pp.127/133. 3 Berdai, MA, Labib, S, Chetouani, K Harandou, M (2012) ‘Atropa Belladonna intoxication: a case report’, Pan African Medical Journal, 11:72. 4 Grieves, M (1931) A Modern Herbal. Online: https://www.botanical.com/ 5 Smith, W (1873) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. Online: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ 6 Illes, J (2009). Encyclopedia of Spirits: The Ultimate Guide to the Magic of Saints, Angels, Fairies, Demons, and Ghosts (Witchcraft & Spells) (New York: HarperCollins) 7 Venturini, G (2023) Monaco Nature Encyclopedia. Online: www.monaconatureencyclopedia. 8 Ruck, C (2019). ‘Entheogens in Ancient Times: Wine and the Rituals of Dionysus’. In: P Wexler (ed.) Toxicology in Antiquity (2nd ed.), pp. 343–52 9 Dillon, M (2003) Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion (New York: Routledge) 10 Mylet, J (2020) ‘The Belladonna Treatment in the Early Twentieth-Century’. Online: https://pointshistory.com/ |
The following article by acid historian Andy Roberts first appeared in the Psychedelic Press print journal, issue XL. A few copies of this limited, special edition journal on folklore and psychedelics are still available to buy here.
Some elements of psychedelic folklore are relatively easy to unravel. For instance, the belief that towns, cities or even a country’s entire population can be rendered helpless by introducing LSD into the public water supply can be scientifically refuted.² And the popular lysergic legend that Francis Crick’s alleged use of LSD played a key role in helping him to discover the DNA double-helix crumbles when the facts are closely examined.³ Yet these tales continue to circulate, meme-like, on the internet and in the media as ‘truths’, demonstrating how difficult it is to convince people they are legends even when irrefutable evidence is presented. Determining the genesis of the Blue Star Tattoo legend and untangling how and why it has spread and persisted for decades presents a much more difficult challenge though as this particular psychedelic folklore motif does have some basis in reality. Although this essay deals specifically with the UK iteration of the legend it is first necessary to give a brief summary of its genesis and spread in the USA. During the early 1980s, newspapers, TV stations, education, health boards, police stations and other public facing organizations began to receive a slew of unusual letters and faxes. These alarming missives claimed school children were being given or sold small ‘tattoos’ or ‘transfers’ featuring attractive and colourful images such as blue stars, red pyramids, and well-known cartoon characters. The kicker was that these ‘tattoos’ were allegedly soaked in LSD! The legend claimed that when the unwitting child applied one to their skin, instead of sporting a cool temporary tattoo with which to impress friends or parents, they would be plunged into a powerful and hellish psychedelic experience which would lead to psychological or physical damage, addiction or death. The inference was that children were targeted and exploited due to their vulnerability and would become addicted to LSD by using these ‘tattoos’, thus introducing them to a lifetime of drug use and boosting the dealers’ customer base. The legend became known as the Blue Star Tattoo because a small blue star was one of the first images said to be on the ‘tattoos’.⁴ At face value the Blue Star Tattoo scare is the stuff of every parent’s worst nightmare. Or it would be, if it was true. But it wasn’t, it was an urban legend, a piece of psychedelic folklore carefully created for the post-hippie world of the 1980s and beyond. As the American and European iteration of the legend has been covered by notable folklorists including Jan Harold Brunvand I will concentrate on the British version, identifying its genesis and spread and examining what truth there is behind its lurid claims. By examining the available drug literature and scouring several newspaper archives, the first British example of the legend I could find occurs in March 1981, soon after the appearance of the legend in America and continental Europe. Schools throughout the Black Country area of the Midlands began to receive letters and faxes, ostensibly from the police, warning teachers and parents that children may be offered ‘LSD-coated cartoon stickers’. West Midlands Drug Squad officers immediately denied any knowledge of the letters, claiming:
Although the method of delivery was now ‘stickers’ rather than ‘tattoos’, the basic legend was near identical to its American and European counterparts. The police refuted it and made it clear there was nothing behind the scare letters. A simple, but effective hoax. Nothing to see, move along now. But for some reason, as was the case in America, the legend refused to die and the British print media slavishly and with minimal attempt at investigation or analysis repeated the story throughout the 80s. Terminology used in the British media changed slightly from the American iteration of the legend and whilst ‘tattoo’ was occasionally mentioned ‘transfer’ and ‘stamp’ became the prevalent name. Thus, ‘LSD Peril’, ‘LSD on Cartoon Ploy’, ‘Drug Warning Over Transfers’, ‘LSD stamps peril’, ‘Peril of the LSD on Cartoon Stamps’ and many other permutations of those words were repeated frequently in newspapers across Britain. Yet, like all the best illusions, the truth behind the Blue Star Tattoo legend was in plain sight from its first appearance but was ignored for reasons I will discuss later. Despite the legend being frequently discredited by the police numerous times in the 1990s it continued to grow, spreading widely across Britain. In my files I have over 150 very different news clippings pertaining to the legend. This may not sound like many, but each of those stories was repeated numerous times, as the result of press releases or local and regional newspapers picking up on reports in the nationals and re-publishing them, resulting in the legend appearing thousands of times in the British media. Often the same news report would confusingly state the legend both as a lurid truth by journalists whilst being simultaneously debunked by the police. This ambiguity and lack of certainty was a crucial enabling factor in facilitating the spread and mutation of the legend! A journalist writing in a 1990 edition of the Herts & Essex Observer reported on one letter—purporting to originate with the ‘Essex County Constabulary’ (even though no such organization existed; since 1975 they had been simply called ‘Essex Police’)—noting that ‘They say the tattoos are laced with LSD and poisonous strychnine which can be absorbed through the skin.’ Inspector Roger Howe of Essex Police wearily responded, ‘This warning has become quite widespread. It is a hoax. We’re not aware of any seizures of LSD in tattoo form in the UK’.⁶ Howe’s denial was disingenuous though as he would have known, as we will see, just what the ‘tattoos’ actually were. The reference to strychnine, a far more dangerous drug than LSD, being added to the mythical LSD-soaked stamps was one of the main mutations to the legend and soon led to a question in the Houses of Parliament. Sir Michael McNair-Wilson asked, ‘The Secretary of State for the Home Department what action his Department and the police are taking to discover the source of self-adhesive stickers laced with LSD and strychnine which are being offered to children; and whether anybody has yet been apprehended for offering these substances?’ Peter Lloyd, on behalf of the Government, responded:
Claims that LSD is often contaminated with strychnine is yet another psychedelic urban legend and introducing this element to the Blue Star Tattoo legend added another layer of danger with which to worry parents and the authorities. Since the 1960s, some LSD users have claimed painful reactions to LSD, such as stiff muscles and joints, were caused by the addition of strychnine, and it quickly became a popular lysergic legend. This piece of psychedelic folklore appears to have originated from a comment made by Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD. Writing in LSD My Problem Child, Hofmann noted that strychnine had been found, once, in a sample of LSD in powder.⁸ Other counterculture legends including psychoactive drug chemist Alexander Shulgin and Bruce Eisner also determined the addition of strychnine to LSD to be rumour rather than fact. Despite there being no evidence to support this rumour strychnine had now become attached to the Blue Star Tattoo legend in Britain. Absence of evidence is, of course, not evidence of absence. But the Blue Star Tattoo legend was beginning to come under examination by sceptics. Writing in Fortean Times Paul Sieveking noted, ‘In 1991, when the story was already over a decade old, I wrote that, “the Blue Star acid transfer story is a bit like a vampire; no matter how many times you cut it down it rises again to scare the pants off another generation of ill-informed parents”’.⁹ Perceptive as he was regarding the folkloric nature of the Blue Star legend Sieveking, despite his counter culture background, he apparently failed to realize what the source of the legend was. It should be obvious the Blue Star Tattoo legend, whatever its origin, is a variant of the chain letter, a message exhorting the recipient to copy and send the letter to as many people as possible. The content of a chain letter invariably consists of emotionally manipulative stories or promises some form of reward to ensure the receiver doesn’t break the chain, suggesting that ‘bad luck’ of some kind will befall those who do. Several of the Blue Star communiques actively encouraged the recipients to copy and spread the legend, such as the piece in a Birmingham paper in which the recipients were actively encouraged to ‘Reproduce this article and circulate it within the community and workplace.’¹⁰ Unlike most chain letters though, no negative consequence from failing to pass on the letter was stated overtly but the clear inference was that by not spreading the legend children and young people’s lives would be at risk. The identities of those who churned out the Blue Star Tattoo communiques were never discovered (in Britain or elsewhere) and their appearance began to tail off toward the end of the 1990s. I have only been able to find a handful of examples from Britain between 2000–2023 which I believe to be because of the rise of the internet and social media. It would be easy to sum up and dismiss the Blue Star Tattoo legend as being a variant or mutation of one of the thousands of chain letters that have existed since 1935 when the first was identified. But I think the legend can be traced a specific point in time. Let’s go back to the early 1980s when the Blue Star Tattoo legend first appeared. LSD was still available but the psychedelic decades of the 60s and 70s were over and the use of harder, more destructive drugs such as heroin and cocaine was on the rise. Many countries were initiating substance abuse prevention programs, several aimed at children and in 1981 Nancy Reagan (the then US president’s wife) became heavily involved in the anti-drug movement and was quoted as saying ‘Understanding what drugs can do to your children, understanding peer pressure and understanding why they turn to drugs is … the first step in solving the problem.’¹¹ And that, in a nutshell was exactly what the Blue Star communications were claiming about the LSD tattoos. Before revealing the reality behind the Blue Star Tattoo legend it’s worth examining the claims made by its anonymous creators and popularizers. Did the tattoos exist in the form the legend claimed? No, not one instance of an LSD-laced tattoo, transfer, sticker or other form of paper was ever found in the possession of a child. Nor was anyone ever arrested and charged with giving or selling a tattoo to a child or arrested for sending the Blue Star chain letters. Furthermore, the claim that the tattoos were being given or sold cheaply to children is risible. No drug dealer would have any interest in giving LSD to a young child because there is no fiscal motivation to do so, children not being known for having disposable income with which to buy drugs of any kind. The LSD chain letters’ claim that the tattoos would get children addicted to LSD is ridiculous because LSD is not addictive. Quite the reverse in fact: the human body quickly builds tolerance to LSD and increasingly-large doses must be consumed to achieve the same effect. And despite the claims that the tattoos could result in death or serious injury from the effects of LSD, it is widely considered to be physiologically safe, and very few people have ever died or suffered physical injury from its use. Of course, there could be the possibility of psychological damage from unwitting use of LSD, but as the ‘tattoos’ didn’t exist in the form claimed by the legend, there was no chance of that happening either. But let’s humour the legend for a moment and imagine LSD-soaked tattoos did exist and had escaped the clutches of the law, would they have the claimed effect if placed on the skin? Det. Chief Supt. Derek Todd of the Central Drugs Squad stated, ‘Even if LSD was in the tattoo, it would not absorb through the skin, our laboratories would tell us that.’¹² During research for this essay I asked a number of people who have been heavily involved in LSD manufacturing or in handling large quantities of LSD, and the consensus of opinion is that LSD placed directly on skin would have no effect whatsoever. Even Albert Hofmann’s claim that his first, involuntary, experience with LSD in 1943 came from him accidentally getting it on his skin is being challenged. So, if the basic premise of the Blue Star Tattoo legend is false, where did it spring from? One crucial factor that folklorists appear to have overlooked is that the genesis of the Blue Star Legend began at the same time as the huge increase in availability of a particular form of LSD delivery system known as ‘blotter acid’: sheets of blotting or other porous paper soaked in LSD which are then perforated into tiny squares. Does that sound familiar?... |
Albert Hofmann’s GardenA brief account of the chemist’s writings on gardens and the natural world
As I know today, it was actually the light of the reality of being in the common basis of life together with the plants that triggered this enchantment in the open mind of a child. – Albert Hofmann¹ In 1934, at the age of 28, the Swiss chemist and discoverer of LSD Albert Hofmann was undergoing an existential, spiritual crisis. Unreality had set in, people around him seemed like wooden marionettes, meaninglessness proliferated. ‘My soul’, he later wrote, ‘was in a terrible state’.² Sat brooding in his room one day, looking out on his garden, Hofmann’s gaze fell upon a tree: ‘A curious relationship effortlessly arose with this tree, which penetrated the vicious circle of muddied thoughts in my head and the path to healing was cleared.’ A thought emerged:
A newly felt understanding of ‘shared creation’ flooded Hofmann’s consciousness and he was filled with a sense of ‘serenity and trust’. Thereafter, whenever he felt anxious, he considered his affinity with his ‘brother tree’, in order to return himself to a state of calm. According to the famous horticulturalist and garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, ‘A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.’ Gardens and gardening have also long been suggested as a kind of medicine or therapy for the maladies of life. A trusting relationship between nature and humankind, cultivated in healing and teaching, is often axiomatic in writings on the subject. For Hofmann too, this self-evident relationship is woven through his writings in later life. The trust that these activities and spaces cultivate, he argued, forms an abiding security and happiness that is essential for the flourishing of life. Moreover, for us his readers, it provides the key context as to how he eventually came to understand the vitality of psychedelic experience (especially given the ambiguities of the accounts of his early (mis)adventures with LSD).⁴ In this article, I will give a brief account of Hofmann’s life and writings as they pertain to gardens, nature, and the natural sciences. Sources are necessarily limited to those available in English, and mostly derive from after his retirement as a research chemist. As such, the coherence or otherwise of his memories and ideas must be viewed in light of his mature weltanschauung—what, then, was Albert Hofmann’s garden? The impact of realizing one’s being-in-nature is necessarily the awakening of a wider context for any child, and the promise of new forms of relationship. For instance, Hofmann’s first memory is of seeing some bright red strawberries while his mother carried him through a garden.⁵ He also tended a child’s garden when he was very small, and in which the first plants he grew were Morning Glory flowers with blue and red cups.⁶ As such, cultivated nature rooted his conscious life. These very early memories of nature in its garden form were later enhanced through spontaneous spiritual experiences in wilder settings as he got older. While walking through forests and flower meadows, he would occasionally feel especially ‘uplifting experiences’ in which the natural world appeared in a meaningful and beautiful clear light.⁷ He later wrote of them,
Hofmann also became a member of the Wandervogel; a popular youth movement in Germany and Austria, with some reach in Switzerland too. Members hiked and communed in nature as a form of protest against rapid industrial growth. It is difficult to ascertain the extent of Hofmann’s anti-industrial feeling at that time. He did, of course, spend his career in the pharmaceutical industry, but there were strong echoes of anti-industrialism in his post-retirement writings. In Insights Outlook (1989) the retired chemist argued Europe’s scientific revolution made possible an ‘unimagined exploitation of nature and its forces. It led to the present worldwide industrialization and technologicalization of almost all areas of life’. While creating affluence and comfort, it transformed cities into industrial centres and set people on a path to the destruction of the natural environment.⁹ This historical consciousness saw the emergence of technological belief as a baffling replacement of the religious view of life.¹⁰ The natural sciences, however, offered an alterative path to destruction. ‘I became a chemist and then studied the chemistry of plants precisely because I was attracted by the mystery of matter and miracle of the plant world.’¹¹ This path, he later said, was intimately entwined with seeking philosophical and spiritual questions, as he searched for a ‘more complete picture of reality’. The natural sciences could, therefore, expand our awareness of the miracle of creation—a revelation that ‘could become the basis of a new, world encompassing spirituality’.¹² PSYCHEDELIC PRESS DECEMBER BOOK SALE Get 25% off our books with code 25BOOKS This eco-spirituality emerges, for Hofmann, by three subsequent meditations on the learning of the natural sciences. Firstly, when in his garden or walking, he would ‘stop to meditate on a plant’, and saw not only its shape, colour and beauty, but also the inner life of its chemical processes.¹³ Then secondly, he understood that ‘chemistry is made subservient’ to molecular biological processes—‘all this unimaginable without a blueprint and without a coordinating power’ such as that provided by ‘chromosomes’. Finally a third, higher view emerged in his mediation: the transfer of light to earth, through plant processes, such as the assimilation of carbonic acid, and then on to animals. ‘Even the thought process of the human being is supported by this energy, so that the human spirit, or consciousness, thus represents the highest, the most sublime energetic stage of the transformation of light.’¹⁴ Thus his meditation on a flower, and the learning of the natural sciences, revealed the co-creative interconnection of all life. Note the elevated position of humanity in this eco-spiritual view. Hofmann’s nature is neither the wild, dangerous place of humankind’s earlier days, and neither is it to be owned, as in exploited, purely for personal gain. Instead, it is a question of learning and security, in short, stewardship—and this he understands, more or less explicitly, as the religious, rather than technological, view of life that the natural sciences might cultivate. In regard to LSD, one might call this the Garden Trip. I don’t wish to dwell on Hofmann’s first couple of LSD experiences in April 1943—there’s been some excellent writings on this.¹⁵ However, I would like to draw attention to his morning after:
I am sure this afterglow feeling is familiar to anyone with a reasonable experience of LSD. This Edenic sense, wherein the garden dwelling is accompanied by a joyous sense of new creation, is a common theme in Hofmann’s writings on nature, and is undoubtedly intimately tied in with the LSD experiences both of himself, and others whom he knew. In LSD: My Problem Child (1980), Hofmann discusses WA Stoll, the first psychiatrist to self-experiment with LSD. During his initial trip in the 1940s, a series of images and scenes flashed across his mind; landscapes, skyscrapers, Gothic vaults, and then, ‘I was in a garden, saw brilliant red, yellow, and green lights falling through a dark trelliswork, an indescribably joyous experience.’¹⁷ Indeed, the Edenic beauty and joy of nature has since become a widely shared LSD experience—not least in Hofmann’s circles. In 1961, the chemist met Aldous and Laura Huxley while they were travelling through Europe. He and his wife Anita attended the author’s lecture, they ate together and discussed the ‘magical drugs’. Huxley scored a shedload of psilocybin and LSD from him. In his diary, Hofmann notes that Huxley recommended to Anita that she should take the drugs in an Alpine meadow, and ‘look into the blue cup of a gentian blossom to experience the miracle of its beauty’.¹⁸ Also, consider the chemist’s extraordinary trip with German author Ernst Junger in 1970, during which Hofmann wrote scrappy short notes: ‘With a glance through the window into the garden, in which snow patches lay, many-colored masks appeared over the high walls bordering it, embedded in an infinitely joyful shade of blue: “A Breughel garden—I live with and in the objects.”’¹⁹ Nature connection, he believed, is also embedded in our mytho-historical consciousness. ‘All conditions of happiness’ wrote Hofmann, ‘are based on security in the widest sense of the word’.²⁰ The Eden myth provides his mytho-historical example: ‘The world was a garden, the Garden of Paradise, where all beings lived in harmony and where man found sustenance and everything he needed without hardship or labor.’²¹ Therefore, the garden as a psychogeographical state alludes to our ability to reclaim or renew the security and happiness of Eden; the process of gardening. Thematically, gardening runs through Hofmann’s writing. It was a neat twist of fate that when travelling in Mexico with R Gordon Wasson to Ayauatla, a Mazatec settlement, that he, ‘delighted in the blue calyxes of the magic morning glory Ipomoea violacea, the mother plant of the ololiuhqui seeds.’²² Not only did he subsequently find that active principles in the seed were lysergic acid derivatives, closely related to LSD, but as already noted here, the plant was also the first he had planted in his own garden as a child—a wonderful cycle of interconnection. When the chemist told his friend, the German author Ernst Junger, about this, Junger replied:
Searching for the key might take myriad forms, but is arguably a quest undertaken by the occultist, natural scientist, and gardener alike. In one sense or another, they are each trying unlock processes ordinarily hidden to us. It is this practicality that ultimately underscores the chemist’s eco-spirituality. In a fascinating, short discourse on the concept of ‘possession’ in relation to property, power and relationships, Hofmann shares a ‘Chinese’ aphorism: ‘The master said “My Garden”… and his Gardener smiled.’ For him, it meant that while the master, or ‘proprietor’, may own the garden, the gardener is its possessor—for it is he that propagated, planted and cared for it: ‘He knows the garden in the freshness of the morning dew, he walks among the flower beds one last time before nightfall’.²⁴ As such, LSD might be understood as a gardening tool, part of the empirical toolkit for learning about and healing our relationship with nature. Not only through simply dwelling and being in nature, but through the cultivation and understanding of the myriad interconnection that nature itself so often reveals to the bejewelled eyes of a tripper. It can dig over new beds, plant new seeds, and rake and mulch the leaves of yesteryear for a fruitful tomorrow. Similarly, if correctly practised and understood, the natural sciences, like LSD, ‘invariably point to an altogether inexplicable, spiritual primordial basis of creation, to the miracle, the mystery… to the divine.’²⁵ If adopted, this insight, Hofmann believed, could turn earth back ‘into an earthly Garden of Eden’.²⁶ Hofmann’s garden therefore rests on humankind’s stewardship of the natural world; of teaching and healing—with LSD as just one handy tool in the Garden Trip. Psychedelic Press is a reader-supported publication. To support our work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 1 Hofmann, Albert (1989) Insight Outlook. Atlanta: Humanics New Age. 53 2 Hofmann, Albert (2013) LSD and the Divine Scientist: The final thoughts and reflections of Albert Hofmann. Rochester: Park Street Press. 41. Also see Hagenbach, Dieter & Lucius Werthmüller (2013) Mystic Chemist: The Life of Albert Hofmann and his Discovery of LSD. Santa Fe: Synergetic Press 27–28 for a slightly different translation. 3 Ibid. 41–42 4 See Piper, Alan (2023) Bicycle Day and Other Psychedelic Essays. London: Psychedelic Press 5 Hagenbach & Werthmüller 2013, 5 6 Hofmann, Albert (1980) LSD: My Problem Child. New York: McGraw-Hill. 159 7 Hofmann 2013, 42 & Hagenbach & Werthmüller 2013, 6-7 8 Hofmann 1989, 42 9 Ibid. 36 10 Ibid. 39 11 Hofmann 1989, xviii 12 Ibid. xix 13 Ibid. 46 14 Ibid. 49 15 See note. 4 16 Hofmann 1980, 19 17 Ibid. 38 18 Hagenbach & Werthmüller 2013, 129 19 Hofmann 1980, 170 20 Hofmann 1989, 32 21 Ibid. 33 22 Hofmann 1980, 131 23 Ibid. 161 24 Hofmann 1989, 63 25 Ibid. 53 26 Ibid. 56 |
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This article by the author and lecturer PD Newman first appeared in Psychedelic Press XL: Folklore & Psychedelics.
The ‘Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere’ (MIIS) refers to a mysterious group of Indigenous Americans responsible for creating many of the enigmatic platform mounds and earthworks constructed in and around the Mississippi Valley—the awe-spiring remains of which are exhibited especially throughout the Southeastern landscape of North America.¹
On top of the oft-found skeletal remains (both incinerated and intact) of what are believed to have been village chiefs and other significant tribal figures (in addition to, perhaps, their families, wives, slaves, and even human sacrifices), and in the vicinities around several of these sacred sites were found ancient artifacts bearing a number of caringly carved and painted abstract, anthropomorphic, and zoomorphic symbols.
These included ‘swirl crosses’ (swastika-like fylfot crosses), hunchbacked crones, winged serpents and serpents having antlers, underwater panthers (also having antlers), severed heads, fire-breathing skulls, disembodied hands with ‘eyes’ in their palms, and giant, intimidating raptors and moths. These pertain to what is now accepted by mainstream archaeology to be an early Native American model for the after-death journey—known colloquially as the ‘Path of Souls.’²
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Central to the MIIS is a puzzling set of iconographic symbols, many of which appear to have been alien to the preceding Hopewell, Adena, and Poverty Point cultures. Executed largely in the Hemphill style unique to the Moundville archaeological site, the set of symbols comprising the Path of Souls cycle probably functioned in a manner analogous to that of books of the dead in other cultures.³ Although Moundville pottery differed from standard mortuary texts: the ‘Path of Souls’ ritual vessels are believed to have been both practical and interactive. Indeed, by virtue of their consecrated contents, these pieces were possessed of the power to invoke the supernatural depicted on (or fashioned as) the pot, projecting their drinker(s) directly into those Powers’ domains—various important points plotted along the Path of Souls.⁴
From culture to culture, both ancient and modern, the after-death journey is oftentimes envisaged as a heroic, postmortem rite of passage, replete with ordeals, trials, and tribulations which the struggling soul must overcome—challenges through which the dead must pass—if it is to reach its goal. In almost every case, this etheric excursion ultimately culminates in the final incorporation of the soul of the deceased into the realm of the ancestors or the domain of the divine. Of course, depending on regional variations, reincarnation or total oblivion may also sometimes be alternative outcomes.
Terminal trips of this sort have become familiar to us in the skeptical West through exotic, popularized magical spell and ritual mortuary texts, such as the misnomial Egyptian Book of the Dead, the equally misnamed Tibetan Book of the Dead, and via even more obscure lineages of mystical transmission, such as the controversial yet no less traditional teaching of the ‘Aerial Toll Houses’ in the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. The Native American after-death journey known as the ‘Path of Souls’ constituted one such metaphysical mortuary map.
But, are ‘directions for the dead’ really all that this series of icons comprised? Yes and no. The answer is ‘yes’ insofar as the Path of Souls symbol set actually does qualify as a chart for the ‘checked-out’. Like a list of foreboding landmarks, the icons representing the Path of Souls are supposed to be followed sequentially—a spiritual schematic of sorts. However, the answer is also ‘no’ in that it probably wasn’t a journey reserved exclusively for the newly deceased.
In the form of an organized degree structure, appearing as certain sacred visualizations, ecstatic spirit journeys, and dramatic initiatory rites of passage, the Path of Souls was passed by priest, prince, and polity alike—that is, it was traipsed by both shaman and chief, as well as by members of an elite medicine sodality—while they were still alive.⁵ Well, not really alive—but not exactly dead either: suspended somewhere between the two, in a liminal, entranced state brought on by fasting, sleep deprivation, ritual action, body mutilation, and prolonged participation in drum and dance.
This profoundly significant ceremony would have taken the form of a formally-staged, ritualized mythodrama, specifically designed to pass an individual nominally through the very same trials expected to be encountered really on the Path of Souls. For that is precisely what the shamanic journey is understood to be—a magical death.⁶ Leaving his cumbersome corpse-like body behind, by the potency of the rite, the soul of the shaman was rendered free to roam the realms of the spirits and of the dead. Upon his return to the land of the living, anticipated boons of wisdom and power followed closely in the healer’s wake.
Although, as if that weren’t extreme enough, evidence suggests that these powerful trance induction techniques were not employed alone, but were in fact used by the Natives of the MIIS in conjunction with a number of different entheogenic teas and smoking blends.
While the infamous peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii) and so-called ‘Desert’ tobacco (Nicotiana obtusifolia) will no doubt be familiar to most as important Southwestern Native sacraments, with the exception of tobacco, the Southeastern Indigenous use of the majority of the entheogenic plants discovered in and around a number of Mississippian sites may be largely unknown to the casual reader. Although, in this study, we will focus our attention on just one: Jimsonweed (Datura stramonium). But, before diving into the Datura directly, we’ll first need to make a short detour to what is now Tampa, Florida in the 1540s, where invading Spaniards first observed the indigenous imbibement of an interesting, invigorating, inky infusion—known as ‘Black Drink’.⁷
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When DeSoto’s ship landed in what is presently the modern-day Sunshine State, it was noted that the Amerindians, every few days, were in the habit of boiling up a thick, black tea from the roasted leaves of a shrub resembling a cross between a holly bush and willow tree. To the surprise of the Spanish, upon assembling, the Natives would cheerfully drink, vomit, and drink again, leading later anthropologists to assume that the concoction simply functioned as an emetic and thus was a rite of purgation—and further resulting in an unfortunate classification by ethnobotanists, Ilex vomitoria: ‘the Ilex that makes one vomit’.
While it is certainly possessed of ample amounts of caffeine—indeed, closely related to South America’s yerba-maté, it is the only native source of caffeine in North America—yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria) is not an emetic. I know this to be true from personal experience. Although, there is evidence that a number of other, often secretive, plants were regularly added to the ‘cassina’ brew, as it was called by the Ais, Timucua, and other Muskogean speakers.⁸
Traditionally imbibed out of giant whelk shell cups imported from the Gulf of Mexico, or from specially crafted pottery beakers, decorated on their faces with symbols of the Below World, the potation eventually became so popular among Mississippians that massive amounts of the plant had to be imported some sixteen-hundred kilometers inland, to the ancient city of Cahokia, where it was expected to sustain some several thousand regular drinkers.
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A great many of these same shell cups were recovered from the city of Spiro in Oklahoma. After testing the residues in the cups and the beakers, researchers were not surprised to find traces of theobromine and ursolic acid—clear evidence of yaupon use. But, what they didn’t expect was that almost eighty percent of the vessels from Spiro tested positive for the presence of Jimsonweed alkaloids.⁹ The same is also true of curiously decorated ceramic bottles and ‘human head effigy pots’ recovered in and around the Central Arkansas River Valley¹⁰—as well as enigmatic, hunchbacked, crone-like effigy pots found secreted away in the Middle Cumberland region of Tennessee.¹¹
This fortuitous floral discovery has helped to shed light on a rather puzzling recurring motif that pops up throughout the Mississippi Valley—and even further west, surprisingly, among Puebloan tribes such as the Zuni and the Mimbres or Anasazi.¹² One of the bottles in question, housed at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma,¹³ is decorated with a distinctive ‘jagged spiral’ pattern that is now widely recognized as a stylized depiction of the proboscis of a Sphinx or Hawk moth—Manduca sexta—a species that lays its eggs and feeds exclusively upon the intoxicating leaves and nectar of a pair of popular nightshades: tobacco and Jimsonweed.¹⁴
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The larvae of this species are known as ‘tobacco hornworms’, due to the presence of a pointed red horn protruding from their bodies. Nicotine is generally poisonous to insects and animals. However, the tobacco hornworm is possessed of the remarkable ability to retain the drug within his body, unaffected by the toxin, which he is then able to eject out of his mouth at will, as a powerful defense mechanism. Ethnological evidence suggests that this defensive insectoid reaction may have been intentionally exploited by the Natives, independent of direct tobacco or Jimsonweed use. For instance, according to Navajo lore, the caterpillars themselves were employed in an entheogenic context. In his book, Navajo Legends, Irish-American ethnologist, Washington Matthews, related the following tale of an Indigenous ‘trial by fire’:
As the boys were about to enter the door they heard a voice whispering in their ears: “St! Look at the ground.” They looked down and beheld a spiny caterpillar called Wasekede, who, as they looked, spat out two blue spits on the ground. “Take each of you one of these,” said Wind, “and put it in your mouth, but do not swallow it.¹⁵
Just as with the juice of the tobacco plant, the protective nicotine-rich secretions of ‘Wasekede’ are not to be swallowed, but spat out. Immediately following this Wasekede episode, the boys go on to smoke ‘the tobacco [that] kills”—ostensibly, Jimsonweed—from a sacred calumet’.¹⁶ Images of this tobacco hornworm are preserved in a number of notable Mississippian relics, including a single exquisite crystal caterpillar effigy, and a stunning shell carving of this important insect in profile—both recovered from Spiro in Oklahoma. Perhaps the most significant example appears on the Middle Tennessee ‘Thurston Tablet’, found at or near the Castalian Springs Mounds in the late 1800s and currently on display at the Tennessee State Museum.¹⁷
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Insofar as the alkaloids consumed during the insect’s larval stage are retained within the bodies of the developing pupae, and finally within the constitution of the moths themselves—making them a bitter punishment for any animal unlucky enough to try to eat them—it is possible that the Manduca sexta itself is psychoactive. Known to archaeologists by the pop cultural epithets, ‘Mothra’ and ‘Mothman’, this lepidopterous non-human entity really does get around, appearing far and wide in the iconography of various Amerindian traditions.
For instance, alongside Datura flower ‘pinwheels’, he shows up painted on the stone walls of Pinwheel Cave in Southern California (where spent Datura quids were actually recovered),¹⁸ anthropomorphized in kiva paintings from Pottery Mound in New Mexico, pars pro toto on negative painted bottles found in Scott County, Arkansas, carved out of shell gorgets from Etowah, Georgia, and etched, ‘phantasmagorically’ into a shale palette from Moundville, Alabama—among still other closely related locations.¹⁹ Notably, for a culture lacking in written language, these icons served a function similar to that of labels on prescription medication bottles in the metamodern West, indicating to the viewer the precise ‘medicine broth’ that the particular vessel would have likely contained.²⁰
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2402.17 - 10:10
- Days ago = 3152 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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