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Ancient psychonauts?

Might not be as common as it sounds tho - it wasn't like some kind of permanent burning man festival.

Maria Sabina was really the only person in the area actually taking the mushrooms regularly - most people in the village never touched them unless they were desperately ill and wanted a diagnosis from "the mushroom". It wasn't "dude let's trip balls!"
 
Pfafffed said:
Dale Pendell's "Pharmako/poeia" and "Pharmako/gnosis" cover a LOT of ground if you're interested in the topic. Great books, too. It seems like deliriants were widely used wherever they were found, although never uncontroversially, and almost always in low doses combined with alcohol and other drugs as an admixture.
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I love all 3 of those books. I remember waiting 10 years for the Gnosis book after the first book. The one with psychedelics. The poetry part is great. As an example in saying cannabis does not make a person better, it just magnifies a person and the statement was Larceny giggles as it steals.

Not sure, still reading the thread and thinking. But I do think peope have been tripping as long as these things have been around. My trips are already different here in 2021 than in 1981. So I can only imagine the difference in tripping in 2500BC if they did at all.
 
Ismene2 said:
So it sounds acceptable that these ancient people would have been so dedicated to tripping that they would eat dreadful shit like datura and ergot etc?
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Sure, why not? I mean they were, biologically, the same as us. So why wouldn't they have a curiosity in altered consciousness or psychoactive drugs?

Plains Indians like the Mandan and Sioux would simply torture themselves into altered states of consciousness, no drugs required...achieving an altered state of consciousness is a very common practice in anthropology, and drugs were merely one way to achieve that.
 
Well, it was not just mesoamérica. Entheogen use was/is common in most of the continent. Ayahuasca use in the Amazon jungle is apparently a very ancient practice with unknown origins predating the Inca empire.

San Pedro use was also very extended in indigenous cultures in all the andean region.

In Chile, archeological evidence of ritual Yopo use dating back to the V century has been found.

I guess wherever psychoactive plant grow, you can find an ancient culture making use of them.

Ismene2 said:
Might not be as common as it sounds tho - it wasn't like some kind of permanent burning man festival.

Maria Sabina was really the only person in the area actually taking the mushrooms regularly - most people in the village never touched them unless they were desperately ill and wanted a diagnosis from "the mushroom". It wasn't "dude let's trip balls!"
Click to expand...

This, however, is absolutely true too. At least in southamerica, but I would asume everywhere else, entheogen usage was limited to shamanistic practices or treated as medicine. Indigenous people didnt have a consumer culture.
 
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Img_9999 said:
Well, it was not just mesoamérica. Entheogen use was/is common in most of the continent. Ayahuasca use in the Amazon jungle is apparently a very ancient practice with unknown origins predating the Inca empire.

San Pedro use was also very extended in indigenous cultures in all the andean region.

In Chile, archeological evidence of ritual Yopo use dating back to the V century has been found.

I guess wherever psychoactive plant grow, you can find an ancient culture making use of them.



This, however, is absolutely true too. At least in southamerica, but I would asume everywhere else, entheogen usage was limited to shamanistic practices or treated as medicine. Indigenous people didnt have a consumer culture.
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Does the actor known as the QANON SHAMAN trip?

VOWFUCZ5L5EVY2BD5AZRW4RGQQ.jpg
 
Burnt Offerings said:
Sure, why not? I mean they were, biologically, the same as us. So why wouldn't they have a curiosity in altered consciousness or psychoactive drugs?

Plains Indians like the Mandan and Sioux would simply torture themselves into altered states of consciousness, no drugs required...achieving an altered state of consciousness is a very common practice in anthropology, and drugs were merely one way to achieve that.
Click to expand...

Because outside Mesoamerica you had Christianity and Islam who tend to slaughter unbelievers. Plus we know these drugs are safe - they didnt. They would think they were the handiwork the devil and drive you "mad" like most people still do today. The vast majority of people still wouldn't go near these drugs today.

Were the northern American indians really interested in achieving altered states by those ceremonies? You get Muslims whipping themselves even today but it's not to expand their minds. Peyote only started spreading to the northern Indians in the last 130 years or so.
 
They sure did...

"Most North American Indian greatly respected visions, but few immersed themselves in them so deeply as did the Plains tribes. Sometimes a spirit may come on its own accord, but usually the Plains Indian had to go in active pursuit of his vision. He did this by isolating himself, fasting and thirsting, and practicing self-torture, at the same time imploring the spirits to take pity on his suffering. The youth gashed his arms and legs, and among the Crow it was the custom to cut off a joint from a finger of the left hand. Cheyenne vision-seekers thrust skewers of wood under pinches of skin in the breast; these skewers were attached to ropes, which in turn were tied to the pole. All day the youth leaned his full weight away from the pole, pulling and tugging at his own flesh while he implored the spirits to give him a vision."

"Mans Rise to Civilization..." by Peter Farb

archive.org

Man's rise to civilization as shown by the Indians of North America from primeval times to the coming of the industrial state : Farb, Peter : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

xx, 332 pages : 24 cm
archive.org

Farb also gives interesting commentary on Native American usage of mushrooms, peyote, jimson weed, tobacco etc.
 
Pfafffed said:
I'm not convinced that soma was psychedelic. It may have been, but I think a compelling case can also be made for it being the stimulant plant ephedra. There seems to be consensus that the Eleusinian mystery cult used a psychedelic sacrament, and possibly the Dionysean mystery cult. Some chemoarcheological evidence supports the use of ergot in that context. [See "The Immortality Key" by Brian Muraresku.] Michael A. Rinella has also written on this in his "Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens."

Dale Pendell's "Pharmako/poeia" and "Pharmako/gnosis" cover a LOT of ground if you're interested in the topic. Great books, too. It seems like deliriants were widely used wherever they were found, although never uncontroversially, and almost always in low doses combined with alcohol and other drugs as an admixture.

There's some question of category here, too. What qualifies as a psychedelic in the context of your question? Intoxicants of all sorts were used by people in history whenever they encountered them, and the boundary about what was psychedelic seems blurry to me. Iboga, syrian rue, tobacco, amanita, wine, henbane, the list goes on. People have always been committed to changing their consciousness, employing combinations of breathing techniques, posture, caves, sacred landscapes, sacred spaces, drugs, extreme temperature change, pain, bodily mutilation, fasting, exposure, ritual, you name it to try to get where they want to go.
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"Soma" has evolved over time, that's the problem. With literature export people began to fill in different substances for the word. Judging from the art and lore it has switched between Amanita Muscaria and psychedelic mushrooms, depending on geographical logistics. Maybe it devolved to stimulant use in some places. But I can't see how you can make a case for ephedra alone with so many trippy themes surrounding it.

So many people judging the soma case don't even take the contact high of the historical materials into consideration. It's a shame, though understandable since so few people are willing to pull off a successful Amanita trip and create the necessary point of reference.
 

Burnt Offerings said:
They sure did...

"Most North American Indian greatly respected visions, but few immersed themselves in them so deeply as did the Plains tribes. Sometimes a spirit may come on its own accord, but usually the Plains Indian had to go in active pursuit of his vision. He did this by isolating himself, fasting and thirsting, and practicing self-torture, at the same time imploring the spirits to take pity on his suffering. The youth gashed his arms and legs, and among the Crow it was the custom to cut off a joint from a finger of the left hand. Cheyenne vision-seekers thrust skewers of wood under pinches of skin in the breast; these skewers were attached to ropes, which in turn were tied to the pole. All day the youth leaned his full weight..
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Were they doing shit like this in any sense we would recognise tho? Or were they doing it because unless you did these ceremonies you had no place in the tribe? They show it in the film "a man called horse" it's more like a gang initiation ceremony than anything else. When you join the crips today you have to take a kicking and stomping from other gang members - it's not the same thing as an acid trip.
 
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It was not purely a "rite of passage", no...it doesn't mention it in that excerpt, but Farb mentions in another part of the book that a lot of these "vision" quests (whether facilitated initially by self-torture or, later on, by drugs like peyote cactus or alcohol) experiences were done in a solitary context.

Are you just searching for something to say, "these dumb hippies who talk about their being ancient precendent for tripping ur ballz off, getta load of these chumps!"? Because I agree, those people are annoying. But, at the same time, it's equally overstating your case to simply say no, it didn't exist at all, because there are instances of it happening, whether we're talking about the Plains Indians or Sufi mysticism or whoever else...not in the same context that "modern psychonauts" exist in, obviously, but the basics (humans ingesting psychoactive substances in order to achieve altered consciousness) are the same
 
Would you put fasting and self flagellation into the same pot as searching for altered states on psychedelics tho burnt? Self flagellation might be people trying to reach the godhead for their own reasons but more likely it's primitive and deranged "worship" to try and please a frightening "god".

Are any of the established religions outside mesoamerica preaching drug use as a route to personal enlightenment today? I read Buddhism and psychedelics and it's just full of fucktards saying when they learned about Buddhism they "didn't need" psychedelics..
 
PriestTheyCalledHim said:
Does the actor known as the QANON SHAMAN trip?

VOWFUCZ5L5EVY2BD5AZRW4RGQQ.jpg
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Lol, yeah. He talks about it on his social media. The poor guy is a hot mess. The guy on his right is facing charges for distribution of cannabis and LSD. Tattoo on his right hand is of the logo of one of the most famous modern LSD vendors.
 
Pfafffed said:
Lol, yeah. He talks about it on his social media. The poor guy is a hot mess. The guy on his right is facing charges for distribution of cannabis and LSD. Tattoo on his right hand is of the logo of one of the most famous modern LSD vendors.
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I cannot see his tattoo, can you please post a more clear image of it?
 
Ismene2 said:
Would you put fasting and self flagellation into the same pot as searching for altered states on psychedelics tho burnt? Self flagellation might be people trying to reach the godhead for their own reasons but more likely it's primitive and deranged "worship" to try and please a frightening "god".

Are any of the established religions outside mesoamerica preaching drug use as a route to personal enlightenment today? I read Buddhism and psychedelics and it's just full of fucktards saying when they learned about Buddhism they "didn't need" psychedelics..
Click to expand...

Ismene,

1) It really comes off like you have no idea what you're talking about and are strawmanning the shit out of every group of people mentioned here.

2) Fasting and self flagellation are very much just as valid and effective means for achieving visionary altered states as psychedelics. I'm assuming you're also raised from Western culture, in which case, we have almost no self-destructive traditions left (and really, no traditions for achieving altered states besides drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco), so it makes sense this would seem odd to you. But it's well documented, in many cultures.

3) Why is established religions currently preaching drug use relevant? One, I don't think any of traditions that have used substances to achieve altered states have preached doing so. And two, they were mostly not used to achieve "personal enlightenment" but to achieve shamanic, altered states wherein answers to questions could be find.
 
1) I get it - I'm suggesting the belief system you have is nonsense. That's not easy for people to accept.

2) No they arnt. You can whip yourself every day down the rest of your life and never have the faintest idea what a mushroom trip is like. This is so obvious it's hard for me to grasp how anyone could not understand it. Whipping yourself to abase yourself before a frightening God you read about in a book is nothing like the psychedelic experience. Absolutely nothing. You don't agree?

3)Because the claim is these religions all had psychedelics in their past - if none of them do today why did they "stop"? Of course the obvious answer is they have nothing to do with psychedelics now because they had nothing to do with psychedelics ever. Occams razor - unless you have some bizarre alternative theory?
 
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