Ololiuhqui, the psychoactive plant of the Mexican plateau
Danilo Anton

Ololiuhqui or coatl-xoxouhqui ( Turbina corymbosa ), also called «seeds of the Virgin» is a vine with bell-shaped flowers that grows in the valleys of Central Mexico. 
Since ancient times native people ground the seeds and prepared them moist producing a substance with visionary properties.
The name ololiuhqui, which in Nahuatl means «round thing», probably derives from the shape of the root.  
The name coatl-xoxouhqui, «green serpent», which is another name given to this plant, is probably related to visions of shapes and colors produced during its ingestion reminding the configuration of the aerial organs of the plant.
The most important active ingredients of ololiuqui are hydroxyethylamide amide and lysergic acid, which are related to  ergot alkaloids.

The Tree of Life and Teotihuacán 

Ololiuhqui consumption appears to have been an essential element in the evolution of religious and spiritual systems of aboriginal Mexico. While references are relatively rare, there is indirect evidence that its role in Mesoamerican native societies was very important.
In the Teotihuacan culture, which flourished in the early centuries of the Common Era ololiuhqui was a very important spiritual element.
The paintings of Teotihuacan reveal symbolic graphic versions of this vine. In one of them, a central deity appears located on the root of the plant from where the winding stems and the flowers rise culminating in a characteristic bell shaped form.
From the tree foliaje many seeds spill were painted as a “rain» received by two priests who are located on both sides of the picture.
We do not know for sure who were the people who inhabited the Valley of Mexico at the time of the height of the Teotihuacan culture.
The main archaeological evidence consisting of pyramids and remains of other buildings of Teotihuacan have been insufficient so far to fully reconstruct the spiritual functioning of these ancient societies. Not even its original name or the ethnic composition of its population is known (Lopez Lujan, 2000).
 However, we think that the Teotihuacán people may be related to present day otomian ethnic nations. (to be continued).
From "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones. 

Serpentine Visions

D.Antón
In almost all traditional societies throughout human history the images of serpents symbolizing the origins of wisdom are renewed.
As early as 2,000 to bd a Mesopotamian seal represented a serpentine deity.
She had a human form and in her hands held  the caduceus with two snakes entwined in a double helix.

From the visions induced by ayahuasca, the Shipibo-Conibo communities of the Amazon jungle in the present territory of Peru identify the Cosmic Anaconda which they believe is the protector spirit of life 3   .
For the Mapuche the beginning and subsequent development of the universe was ruled by two serpents (filu), the sea serpent: Kaikafilu, and the land serpent, Trengtrengfilu.
Beyond the Pacific Ocean, in Australia, aboriginal peoples believed they descended from the Great Mother, the Rainbow Serpent.
She was also present in Chinese mythology, represented by two serpentine shapes symbolizing the essential, complementary and opposing principles: Yin and Yang. They are two coiled and androgynous silhouettes which epitomize the forces that make all aspects of life.
Yin represents earth, she is female, dark, passive and absorbent, she is present in even numbers in the valleys and waterways.
Yang is Heaven, male, light, he is active and penetrating, he is present in odd numbers, in the mountains and in the solid lines.
Together they become the dragon, a winged and double serpent, representing the cosmic evolution.  We are living both yin and yang times, the synthesis of opposing principles.
In India, the Serpent Mother is represented by Sesha, the thousand-headed serpent.
Even in the drama of Judeo-Christian biblical Genesis, despite being disowned by the church paradigm, the serpent is also present. She is the one that takes care of the tree of knowledge. The original sin of the first human couple, for the values ​​of the patriarchal society was wanting to find the truth, gain knowledge, to return to their natural origins. And in this attempt, as did many other peoples, there was the serpent.
In Mesoamerica, from the old days of the Olmecs, it was possible to see allegorical representations of flying snakes, even in the Maya and Teotihuacan pictures, they reappear again and again as the magical symbolism of the Plumed Serpent.
Quetzalcoatl is the Aztec vision of the fundamental duality of the ancient serpent, the term, of Nahuatl origin, is constructed with two roots: quetzal (feather, bird) and coatl (twins, snake).
As describes Ptolemy Tomkins referring to the Mexican native world:
“It started to take shape ... a being composed of wind, waves and rain, whose essence was movement and whose body was that of the snake. This snake lived in heaven, and its presence was manifested everywhere ....
This serpent of heaven had its counterpart living on earth and between the two divided the universe.
Sleepy and cold, the second snake was very different from her sister who lived in heaven. Its gigantic form in the black earth set in motion only to devour things.  Stars  entered its stomach when they fell below the horizon; it was known that the spirits of maize and other crops descended there when their stems became pale and withered, and humans, as their bodies scrapped resulted in war or by accident, also penetrated there. The stomach of this serpent was as long as the width of the land, and a number of possibilities were reserved for beings who roamed its length .
The sky could be described as a two-headed dragon, a giant snake, or a four iguanas place.” 4
The snake is present through all levels of the Mexican mythological drama. Coatlicue, the mother of mothers, is represented with a skirt of snakes, and her head is made by the composition of two serpent heads face to face.
Coatlicue’s daughterm Coyolxauhqui, the Lunar Goddess, which was dismembered in his struggle with her brother Huitzilopochtli, also was represented with pairs of snakes coiled in her arms and body.
From: "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones

Drugs, hallucinogens, narcotics, stupefacients: a very inaccurate and arbitrary terminology: 

D,Anton

One of the main problems regarding drugs is the inadequate and arbitrary use of the terminology, which is a demonstration of the widespread ignorance that exists in this subject.

In contemporary culture the use of the word "hallucinogens" referring to all psychoactive plants is widespread. However, most of the compounds normally classified as (illegal) drugs ARE NOT hallucinogens.

Another word commonly used refering to psyhoactive substances is "narcotics" . This term is not accurate either. Many products thar are consideered “illegal drugs” have an effect which is precisely the opposite. It is the case of cocaine, which, as we know, is a stimulant of the central nervous system and IT IS NOT narcotic at all. Derived words like narcotraficker, narco-gangs or narco-criminals. concerning the illegal marketing of cocaine, are equally inadequate.

Another commonly used term, with a rather vague meaning, is “stupefacient" (substances that cause stupor). The word "stupor" means “numbness, insensitivity”. From that point of view we can say that there are many drugs that produce "stupor" in that sense, but most of them can be legally consumed.

The term "drug" is also very general and inadequate to describe illegal compounds. Botanical pharmacology calls “drug” simply the part of the plant that is consumed with pharmacological purposes. In a generic sense drug is used for substances having biological effects on the body the characteristics and intensity of which vary depending on the substnce itself, the dose and the person receiving it According to the dose, a “drug”may be "medicine" or "poison". In fact, any substance is nott medicine or poisons, only the dose is.

As for the quality of "addictive" attributed to certain banned substances, it is totally inappropriate. Many of the illegal "drugs" are not addictive, whereas there are a large number of legal products producing strong addictions.

In short, the vocabulary of prohibition is consistently vague and contradictory. The only reasons that determine the designation of a substance as an illicit drug are historical and cultural in nature and concern to irrational dogmatic qualifications promoted by sectors beyond scientific logic.

In fact, to refer to the issue objectively, it will be required to name accurately the psychoactive substances presently considered as “drugs” as well as the relativity of their uses and effects. Only in this way the conceptual precision required will be achieved to address the issue in a reasonable and scientific manner.

D.Anton

Are drugs an essential part of human diet?

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

“Diets are privileged spaces
to work on ourselves “ 1

No culture on earth has been so deeply alienated from the natural surroundings as the industrial-consumerist contemporary world.
Despite the growing crisis, and the irreconcilable contradictions between the strategies and resources, advance continues toward catastrophe with complete indifference.
We must recognize the depth of our historical dilemma as a species.

If we allow the authorities of political, economic and pseudoscience deciding where to continue or not legitimately focusing human curiosity, we will continue to frustrate our potential possibilities.
Authoritarian restrictions and tutorials to the imagination are degrading and grotesque.
Governments interfere in the diet, intrude into what things people can eat and which ones are forbidden.
They restrict research on psychoactive substances, which could provide valuable psychological and medical approaches, preventing also their religious and spiritual use.
They are suppressing religious sensibility, the spiritual links that are based on the relationship between plants and humans that existed long before the advent of  “history”.
It is time to have an honest reappraisal of the true costs and benefits of using such plants against the costs and benefits of non-use.
 The global culture is in danger of succumbing to an effort to exclude the problem of their own lack of awareness through a military and police arbitrary and cruel terrorism against users and producers of certain substances that have been classified as “drugs”.
This attitude is based on misinformation and historical ignorance.
Deeply rooted prejudices explain why industrial and consumer mind suddenly gets anxious and repressive against “drugs” .
Changes in consciousness that induce strong substances irrevocably reveal that mental life of human beings have physical bases. In that sense, psychoactive drugs face the principle of inviolability and special status of the soul which has been imposed by the “Christian” ideology and similar religious paradigms for over two millennia.
Sacred plants and their psychosocial effects are also facing the modern idea of ​​the ego, its inviolability and control structures.

The ego is terrified to see dissolved its borders with the world. This explains the suppression of the feminine, which is our carnal bond with nature and the distant past, the deep prejudice that prevents us from assessing correctly the strange, exotic, and irrational terror of transcendental experiences.
In short, encounters with psychoactive plants put into question all the paradigmatic vision of the society of domination.
For that reason, they cannot be allowed.
They must be eliminated, stigmatized.
They symbolize the worst subversion, the subversion produced by the truth and knowledge when they light up inside the consciousness.
They have to imprison all who dare to defy the base of the system.
Global culture, self-intoxicated by poisonous byproducts of technology is the unhappy heiress of a very old persecutory attitude.
The belief ot elites that altering consciousness through plants is somehow wrong, and perversely antisocial.

In short, the suppression of shamanic knowledge, with its insistence on ecstatic dissolution of the ego, is robbing us of the meaning of life and is making us enemies of the planet, of ourselves and of our descendants.
The rulers, the witch hunters are killing the matriarchal wisdom, and in it, the final truth that defines us: our essential condition of natural beings.
It is time for change.
 1 Ref. Rosa Giove, “Discovering the squaring of the circle, ikono from A ‘; Takiwasi Magazine Year 3 No. 5, September 1997.
From: "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones.

The prohibitionist wave of the Twentieth century

D.Anton

The "witch hunt", referring to users of psychoactive substances, resumed in the United States during the period commonly called "Prohibition". During that time, which lasted from about 1915 to 1932, the authorities tried to restrict the consumption of alcohol. By limiting or prohibiting the production and marketing of liquors, the repression led to the emergence of organized groups dedicated to meet the demands of those people who wanted to obtain the substances by any means. These bands kept the government in check for several years, until the ban was repealed.

At the same time, central societies concentrated their energies on pursuing internal ideological opponents. The anticommunist fever that invaded Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Spain of Francoism, and then spread to the United States with the McCarthyite phenomenon, were the priority of the police forces for several decades.

Once it was found that the alleged subversive enemy had reduced its influence, particularly after the fall of the "Eastern Bloc", the elites of the central countries, particularly the United States, set about finding a new target to take their "idle" repressive forces.

Again, as in the times of the Holy Office, they found it in the production, trafficking and consumption of certain psychoactive substances.

So they several plants and their derivatives were banned and stigmatized: poppy, opium, morphine, heroine, marijuana, coca and cocaine, LSD, ecstasy and many other natural substances or synthetic substances which had the property of modifying the state of consciousness.

The new witch hunters were barricaded behind government and police offices, had great powers, could use jets and helicopters, had almost unlimited budgets and virtually assured impunity.

Meanwhile, many ordinary people, people who just wanted to satisfy their demands to modify their states of consciousness, have been forced to dispense with the forbidden substances, or obtain the "illegally" risking persecution and arrest.

The old logic of the Inquisition still continues, but now with a more subtle propaganda and many more material means.

From "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones.+

Opium and the poppy plant

 Danilo Anron

Poppy (Papaver somniferum) is one of the oldest medicinal plants of the Afro-eurasian world.  It is an annual herbaceous plant that grows naturally in Asia Minor and other regions of the Near and Middle East. Its seeds are edibles and are not psychoactive. However, when the capsule is scratched, a milky, rubbery material seeps out which upon hardening turns brown. This substance, which has very special properties, is called opium.

Poppy was domesticated in ancient times. There are tablets in Sumer in Mesopotamia (6,000 or 7,000 years ago) that mention the poppy, and medicinal Assyrian tablets relate to its healing power. In the seventeenth century BC Egyptian doctors prescribed opium for children crying, just as many centuries later, the Victorian nannies would use opiates to calm babies.

Historically, opium was not smoked, but rather was drunk with wine or swallowed as pills. It was (and is) used to relieve pain, achieve a state of euphoria or as an aphrodisiac.

In ancient Crete poppy was planted from Minoan times (third and second millennium before the common era).

There are ceramic jars dating 1,500 bd in Cyprus showing stylized incisions in poppy capsules ^18.. Twelve century BC ivory pipes were also found in a temple of the same island an it is thought they were used to inhale the fumes of opium (one of the few examples of "smoking pipes" that is reported in the Mediterranean before European expansion in America).

The Greek feminine deity Demeter, the Mother Goddess, was both goddess of grain and poppies.

In Greece and Rome opium was usually administered as a pain reliever. To this end it was recommended by the founders of the European medicine: Hippocrates (c.400 BC), Dioscorides and Galen (130-200 AD).

It is thought that the potion that prepared Helen of Troy in Homer's Odyssey " to quell the pain and sorrow and bring oblivion every discomfort" was prepared based on the opium poppy. Similarly, some argue that the vinegar mingled with "gall" offered to Christ in the cross (Matthew 27:34) also contained opium. It is symptomatic that in ancient Hebrew, the word used to designate the "gall" Rosh , referred also to opium.

From the seventh and eighth centuries, medicine opium was also part of the Islamic civilization. Arab traders spread the opium in Persia, India, the Malay region and finally China.

In 1530 the German-Swiss physician   Paracelsus developed a new type of medicine that somehow integrated classical and medieval practices. Paracelsus was a fan of the powers of opium which he called "the stone of immortality" and always carry it with him.

The opium-based drug that had more significance was the tincture laudanum. It was prepared by dissolving opium in alcohol.  Paracelsus had great success with this recipe spreading rapidly throughout Europe.

For more than three centuries laudanum was "the" medicine that could not miss in any medical kit.  Its use spread to the affluent classes in all the states of the continent, to the clubs of London and Paris and to high political and military spheres. For most of the nineteenth century most of the aristocrats had become fans of laudanum (ie opium and alcohol).

The Muslim advance carried opium consumption to India, which, over time, would end up being the largest producer of poppy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mogul monarchs gave opium to their soldiers, and emperor Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, drunk opium in his wine. 

Even today, in India construction workers and agricultural laborers a small ball of opium into their mouths ingesting it with their tea. However, in the Indian subcontinent, opium consumption never reached the social dimension which would  later reach into China, especially during the nineteenth century during the Opium War.
From "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anron, Piriguazu Ediciones. 
Blog in Spanish: daniloanton.blogspot.com

The main psychoactive plants

Danilo Anton

The major psychoactive factors include many substances, generally of plant origin. Below is a list of the main synthetic plants that have been used historically and psychoactive compounds extracted from plants:

1.  Poppy ( Papaver somniferum ) is a herbaceous flowering plant from which opium-bearing seeds are obtained. It contains several active substances with psychoactive properties: morphine (from which heroin is extracted), codeine and others.

2. Hemp ( Cannabis sativa ), also improperly called marijuana, is a, native to southern Asia shrubby plant, which has psychoactive alkaloids with well defined properties. From cannabis hashish is obtained.

3. Peyote ( peyote ) is a cactus whose main active ingredient is mescaline. The peyote grows in arid subtropical areas of North America.

4.  Teoonanacatl ( Mexican Psilocybe and Stropharia cubensis ) is formed by several species of psychoactive mushrooms that grow in the mountains of Mesoamerica (Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guatemala). They contain psilocybin and psilocin

5.  Fly agaric ( Amanita muscaria ) is a psychoactive mushroom that grows in the Nordic and temperate mountain forests in Eurasia. It contains muscarine and muscimol.

6. Ayahuasca is an infusion prepared from a vine that grows in the Amazonian region. This vine called  Banisteriopsis caapi contains harmina¹³   (C ₁₃ H ₁₂ N ₂ O), an alkaloid with strong sicoativas properties.

7. Ergot  ( Claviceps purpurea ) is a fungus that parasites rye, wheat and other grasses. It is strongly psychoactive and has significant toxicity that can be removed in its preparation. It is of Eurasian or North African origin. It contains several psychoactive alkaloids including lysergic acid, closely related to LSD-25 (d-lysergic acid diethylamide) the known synthetic psychedelic compound.

8. Ololiuhqui ( Turbina corymbosa ), also called "seeds of the Virgin" is a vine found in Mexico whose seeds have visionary properties.Like the ergot alkaloids lysergic acid containing, with strongly psychoactive character.

9. Aguacolla, also called San Pedro or giant ( Trichocereus pachanoi ) is a large-sized cactus (5-8 meters high) that grows in central and northwestern South Andes (Ecuador, Peru) America. Just as the peyote contains mescaline.

10. Coca is a very bushy plant of the Andean foothills in South America whose leaves contain numerous alkaloids, including cocaine.

11. Tobacco is a shrub native American origin grown in most of the native societies. It has several alkaloids, including nicotine.

12.  Beleño ( Hyoscyamus niger ) is a herb of the family Solanaceae characteristic of Europe and the Mediterranean region. It contains tropane alkaloids, including hyoscyamine and scopolamine. The latter has visionary properties.

13. Belladonna ( Atropa belladonna ) is a typical European continent herbaceous plant of the family Solanaceae, which contains several tropane alkaloids including hyoscyamine and scopolamine.

14. Mandragora ( Mandragora officinarum ) is a herbaceous plant of European origin that has a thick and irregular root of anthropomorphic appearance. It contains several tropane alkaloids including hyoscyamine, scopolamine, atropine and mandragorina.

15. Iboga ( Tabernanthe iboga ) is a shrub of Central Africa whose roots are used for its visionary properties. It is a species of milkweed family, consisting of shrubs and trees characterized by their simple leaves, colorful flowers and a milky juice. It contains ibogaine and 11 more indole-alkaloids.

16. Syrian rue ( Peganum harmala ) is a small shrub native to the desert areas of the Mediterranean East. It contains beta-carboline alkaloids such as harmine, harmaline and harmine tetrahydro-with visionary properties.

17. Datura ( Datura inoxia ) is a perennial herb that can reach more than 1 m high that grows in Mexico. The root is used, seeds and leaves lesser extent. It contains scopolamine and hyoscyamine.

 There are many other plants rich in alkaloids. Some of them are commonly used in industrial preparations and mass consumption (coffee, tea, chocolate, kola, mate, etc.) (see Chapter 6). Others are known only locally. Surely there are many whose properties are unknown. A complete list would include several thousand species.

From: "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazú Ediciones

Blog in Spanish: daniloanton.blogspot.com

Teonanacatl, the sacred mushrooms of Mexico

 Danilo Anton

The sacred mushrooms of Mesoamerica or teonanacatl are a set of psychoactive species mainly from the genus Psilocybe, but also from Conopcybe, Panaeolus and Stropharia.

They grow in most of Mesoamerica, and more especially in the territories of the states of Oaxaca, Campeche, Chiapas and Tabasco in Mexico and Guatemala.

The most commonly   species is Psilocybe caerulescens with a height that rarely exceeds 10 cm. Their shape is bell shaped, about 0.5- 3 cm in diameter and straw-colored, sometimes slightly greenish and even reddish brown. Psilocybe caerulescens grows given in altitudes of about 1400-1600 meters, mainly in limestone regions, under forest, in wet meadows and among mosses.They are highly psychoactive.

There are several species of the same genus with similar properties: Psilocybe mexicana , Psilocybe semperviva , Psylocybe yungensis , Silocybe wassonii and Psilocybe hoogshagenii.

Other species of psychoactive mushrooms consumed  by traditional Mesoamerican societies are Panaeolus sphinctrinus, reaching 10 cm in height, growing on cow dung, Stropharia cubensis (called "Sanisidro", about 4 to 15 cm tall, tan, and also grows in manure), and Conocybe siligineoides (reddish brown, about 8 cm in height growing on rotten wood).

The effect of these fungi is mainly due to the presence of a psychoactive alkaloid psilocybin. Many possess also psilocin, a compound which can enhance the effect of the first.

Mazatec and other peoples in neighboring regions coasumed it for a long time to get  visions and wisdom to heal the sick, or to make decisions about life.

Historical Reference

References to the Spanish chroniclers teonanacatl are very partial and therefore they can not be taken at face value. Rather, we must use the knowledge on the current use of the fungus. and use a little common sense to rebuild the role that these drugs had in Native American populations.

Sahagun says that "Indians" were eating them in a black fungus called nanacatl , that got ​​them drunk and hallucinating. They were ingested with honey to obtain visions of various kinds (usually disastrous), they began to dance or sing or mourn, or simply remain thoughtful. 

Francisco Hernandez in his Historia Plantarum Novae Hispaniae describes the habit of eating mushrooms as follows:

"Others are eaten when they do not cause death but cause sometimes.... a kind of irresistible hilarity. They are commonly called Teyhuinti. They are tawny color and bitter taste and they have a certain freshness that is not unpleasant. Others, without provoking laughter, generate visions of all kinds .... . "

 Motolinía, meanwhile, gave his own version:

" otherwise they got a kind un drunkness that made ​​more cruel: it was with some small mushrooms, which in this earth they look as in Castile; more so that in this land are of such quality, because when they are eaten raw they are bitter, they eat them with a little honey; aftere what they see thousand visions, especially serpents ... They are called teunanacatl which in their language means  flesh of God or the Devil. They worship them and that way with that bitter delicacy their cruel God.commuted them."   

 Today teonanacatl is still widely consumed in native cultures of Oaxaca, Chiapas and other Mexican states and Guatemala, and even there are people from North America and Europe who come to have the "teonanacatl experience".
Continue in next postings.
From the book "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones.

daniloanton-en.blogspot.com 

The  effects of psychoactive plants and substances

 Danilo Anton

The contents needed for these substances in order to have significant effects are variable, It is needed 500 mg of mescaline or 0.1 mg LSD to trigger psychoactive processes in adults.  Psilocybin acts 20-30 minutes after ingested and its effect lasts about 5-6 hours. Mescaline starts to have results in two to three hours, but his influence lasts more than 12.

Over time, and after repeated use, some individuals develop physiological tolerance for most psychoactive substances.

In an appropriate environmental and social context, the person who submits to the psychoactive experience can feel inundated with visual and auditory experiences, light and sound are felt in a more intense manner, the colors are bright and vivid, the images are numerous and persistent with sharper details and the perception of space is accentuated. At the same time, there is change in the consciousness, the object and subject merge, a sensation of floating may develop, the person feels empty or in communion with the universe.

All these feelings vary according to the type of substance, dosage, individual personality of the recipient and context in which the experience occurs.

When the administration or ingestion of the compound is made in unsuitable conditions, or in excessive doses, the effects can be negative, and in extreme, lethal.

However, these characteristics are not unique to psychoactive plants. All natural substances can cause health damage or death when they are improperly consumed.

Some plants with psychoactive properties, perhaps all, are able to communicate in some way with humans (or with other animals) who come in contact, either by ingesting, chewing or by smoking them. The experience obtained seems to be the result of some kind of exchange. It is difficult to know whether this is a real message that comes from the plant, whether chemical or electromagnetic, or if it is simply a reaction of the invididual experiencing visions, or if both occur at once.

For the official scientific paradigm, hallucinations are just that, hallucinations. For the shamans of the past and present these are messages that come from plants. According to them, the plants contain the knowledge and wisdom, the essence of the truths of the past and future.

 From " Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones

Blog en español: daniloanton.blogspot.com

The  origin of culture 

 Danilo Anton

 Once  humans became omnivorous, they also gradually became consumers of psychoactive plants. Simultaneously, a slow process of evolution changed their physical form, the capacity to manipulate tools and to create and understand symbols. This allowed humans to generate a distinguishing quality: the development of Culture.

Cultures are indeed an essential and variable part of human societies. They appear, they evolve, diverge.

When the first cultures were generated, they started an unstoppable process of change. Rituals, ceremonies and spiritual systems were created.

Highly complex communication systems were spoken, written or designed.     And finally, scientific and technological concepts and devices were invented and built.

Because of their origin and evolution in constant contact with psychoactive plants, human primates acquired a natural fascination with altered states of consciousness. 

The momentous messages that were activated by the Master Plants allowed spiritual growth.

For this reason, understanding human cultures requires taking into account the role of psychoactive plants. Without psychoactive plants cultural evolution becomes meaningless.

Perhaps this may explain the unique attraction, sometimes obsession, that us, humans, feel for these powerful plants.

It should not be forgotten.  Master Plants provide the codes to decipher essential characteristics of the human species.

These are keys to understand ourselves beyond appearances.

From the book "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones