113 lines
6.8 KiB
Plaintext
113 lines
6.8 KiB
Plaintext
Yage
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This in in reference to the questions floating about regarding Yage. I
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cannot speak with any real authority on this plant, given my limited
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experience with it. I have actually used the isolated "main" fraction of
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the lina; harmaline and harmine (interestingly enough dubbed "telepathine"
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when first isolated.) I have found them personally to be of limited value,
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even though they CAN be extremely potent...but then so can Datura. Potency
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is not an accurate gauge for me to access it's illuminative qualities,
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although that is not to say they don't go hand in hand, all other things
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being equal. It is EXCELLENT for increasing the intensity of P. cubensis
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intoxication. As little as 25 mg or so can VASTLY increase within minutes,
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the "levels" one is traversing. I usually just put a pinch between my
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cheek and gum (no pun intended for all youz cowboys out there...I AM an
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Okie!) Harmine or Harmaline has always produced an incredibly irritating
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buzzing/pressure in my ears/head. There seems to be a propensity for this
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chemical to produce visions of cats and serpents.....and a smokey, bluish
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haze that seems to drift about. McKennah has given both the beta
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carbolines and the raw plant to Eskimos who have never seen either large
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cats OR serpents in the Artic...and they saw them. He was proposing a sort
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of Periodic Table of Hallucinogens at one time. I need to get back with
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him on this.
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ANYWAY, I just purchased an EXCELLENT book from the U.K.; _Gateway to Inner
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Space; Sacred Plants, Mysticism and Psychotherapy_ Edited by Christian
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Ratsch. Many, many writers collaborated on this text and I bought it
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because Terence McKenna has an article _Among the Ayahuasquera_.
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For instance, Charles Muses has a paper called _The Sacred Hallucinogens of
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Ancient Egypt_. I have not read that one yet, but it is abundant with
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complete breakdowns of the active constitutents. Next one for me to read,
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as I have finished the paper by McKenna.
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Before I go into the known methodology of preparing Yage (B. caapi), I'd
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like to list a short parse of the introduction.......
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"Information flows through the multiple continuum of being, seeking
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equilibrium yet paradoxically carrying images of ways its flow toward
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entropy is locally reversed by a being or society or phenomenon. These
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images become concepts and discoveries. We are immersed in a holographic
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ocean of places and ideas. This ocean of images and the intricacy of their
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connections is indeed infinite. We understand it to whatever depth we are
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able. This is perhaps why great genius proceeds by apparent leaps. The
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revolutionary idea which inspires the genius comes upon one complete and
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entire by itself from the ocean of the speculative mind. We seek the
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intuitive leap that reveals the very mechanism of that Other Dimension.
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The need for such a leap for humanity will grow as we exhaust complexity in
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all realms save the microphysical and the psychological. At present my
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method is immersion in the images and self-examination of the phenomena,
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i.e. taking P. cubensis mushrooms and pondering just what this may all
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mean, with confidence that time will at least deepen my understanding if
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not eventually answer all questions."
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"My provisional acceptance of this view of the dimension 'seen' in
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hallucinogenic trance approximates the worldwide 'primitive' view that we
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are somehow co-mingled with a 'spirit world'."
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"Is the access to another dimension which the psilocybin mushroom makes
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available something so uniquely peculiar to it that it is reasonable to
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associate the phenomenon specifically with a single species of mushroom?
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Or is this strange world a thing unique to the chemical Psilocybin,
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wherever it occurs in nature? R. Gordon Wasson has written that when he
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returned to to Mexico (after Albert Hoffmann isolated the active
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constituent Psilocybin from the P. cubensis mushroom) and presented tablets
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of the Psilocybin to Maria Sabina, the old curandera who first introduced
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"white man" to it, the old mushroom bruja avoed: "The Spirit of the
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mushroom is in the little pill!""
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"In my confrontations with the personified Other that is present in the
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mushroom, part of the message was its species-specific uniqueness and its
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desire for a symbiotic relationship with Mankind. At other times it
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presented itself not so much as a personage but as an infinite network
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which many sorts of beings in different parts of the multiverse were using
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for their own purposes. I felt (and still do) like a two-year-old child who
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struggles with the dilemma: "Are there little people in the radio?"
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Perhaps the psilocybin-revealed dimension is a kind of network of
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information and images, or something even more substantial."
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What follows next will be taken verbatim from _Plants of the Gods_, printed
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in 1979...limited edition by McGraw Hill Book Company. It was almost fifty
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dollars then...I have no idea if it is still in print (doubtful) or what
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the cost might be. It remains, in my mind, as THE definitive tome in this
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area. It was a collaboration between Albert Hoffmann and Richard Evans
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Schultes. Besides being the one to discover LSD and isolate Psilocybin
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from P. cubensis; Hoffman owes much to his good friend Schultes (who, by
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the way, is the Director of the Harvard University Botanical Studies Group
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and Museum). He and McKenna have traipsed about the globe together,
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sometimes with Andrew Weil in tow, collecting and propagating hallucinogens
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in the reserve McKenna has set up on several hundred acres of the big
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island of Hawaii.
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"The vine is prepared in an incredibly diverse range of technique. Alone,
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the vine bark is scraped from the freshly harvested stem. The bark is
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boiled for several hours. The stripped vine is then macerated and boiled
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for several hours in a seperate container. These are then combined and
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taken in various amounts....depending of the original length of the vine.
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All this is further complicated (and McKenna reiterates this as well) by
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the various admixtures of other plants into the brew of the plain caapi.
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Most of these are rich in the DMT family of alkaloids, which are not
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normally active orally, but since Harmine/Harmaline is a monoamine-oxidase
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inhibitor, it renders these quite potent when ingested orally. Some of the
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leaves of the plant B. rusbyana are often added, as are Virola theiodora,
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both of which are RICH in DMT and 5-MEO-DMT."
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I will quote the article I refered to earlier MeKenna wrote, in closing:
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"After spending seven weeks deep in the Amazonian rain forest, it became
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clear that the quality and efficacy of the various brews we imbibed depends
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entirely on the knowledge, personality and care used by the person
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preparing it. B. caapi is completely different by itself; the quality of
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the effect is RADICALLY altered by the various admixtures of the other DMT
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containing plants!"
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