Ismene said:
Mescalito was a name Carlos Castenada made up because he was confused by the mescal bean - none of the indians actually refer to peyote or san pedro as mescalito.
thank you.
lately i'd really been questioning the validity of his books... after all, he was an author, and authors write books. and books can be fictitious... and that isnt to say i dont think there is anything of value in them... the kind of ideas adressed in those books (if your into that sort of thing), are alot more deeply rooted than his stories, and there is alot of very extensive reading you could do, before (some people) would say you even began to grasp the idea of the concepts that he seems to throw around lightly.
take it with a grain of salt i guess is the expressioin that comes to mind.
i respect and like the idea of certain plants having their own spirit to them, but i think that the concept is more or less just something to associate with in your mind so your intentions are clear when you expirience something that (you hope) the drug will produce.
now days, modern science tells us what is that makes us trip, and it's more closely related to physiology and psychology than it is to what partucular spirit inhabits what plants... and with the times being the way they are, people are thinking more about getting fucked up than respecting a plant-spirit.
when people eat 'cid, no one is concerned with what spirit inhabits the chemical... it's all talk about set and setting, and what you may be psychologically prone to. why? because we know it is produced in a lab, as opposed to grown naturally, and dont associated it with the spirit of a living thing.
all that "spirit of the cactus" stuff came before we even knew how the drug technically worked with our brain, and IMO was more of a guideline to keep yourself attuned to some kind of possitive thought, in order to maintain that set, or setting, or psychological state or whatever. i'm not going to attest that i know or retain a whole lot of knowledge in southwestern shamanism, but it's pretty ellaborate and there is alot to cover that we can already explain in our own way befitting our own culture.