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OF FLESH GODS THE The ritual use of hallucinogens Boston Public Library MA Boston. 02116 FLESH OF THE GODS Digitized by the Internet Archive 2014 in https://archive.org/details/fleshofgodsOOpete Gods Flesh of the THE RITUAL USE OF HALLUCINOGENS EDITED BY PETER FURST T. fmVELANDl PRESS, INC. LongGrove, Illinois For information about this book, contact: Waveland Press, Inc. 4180 IL Route 83, Suite 101 Long Grove, IL 60047-9580 (847) 634-0081 [email protected] www.waveland.com Cover: Ceramic figurine of a man inhaling intoxicating snuff from a bottle- gourd nose pipe, from a shaft-and-chamber tomb in Colima, Mexico, ca. 100 BC-AD 200. Kurt Stavenhagen Collection, Mexico City, 11" high. Photo by Peter T. Furst. Copyright © 1972 by Peter T. Furst Reissued 1990 with changes by Waveland Press, Inc. ISBN 0-88133-477-4 Allrightsreserved. Nopartofthisbookmay bereproduced, storedina retrievalsystem, or transmittedinanyformorbyanymeanswithoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublisher. Printed in the United States ofAmerica 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 Contents Introduction, 1990 Peter T. Furst vii 1. An Overview of Hallucinogens in the Western Hemisphere Richard Evans Schultes 3 2. Tobacco and Shamanistic Ecstasy Among the Warao Indians of Venezuela Johannes Wilbert 55 3. The Cultural Context of an Aboriginal Hallucinogen: Banisteriopsis Caapi Gerardo Reichel-DolmatoQ 84 4. The San Pedro Cactus in Peruvian Folk Healing Douglas Sharon 114 5. To Find Our Life: Peyote Among the Huichol Indians of Mexico Peter T. Furst 136 6. The Divine Mushroom of Immortality R. Gordon Wasson 185 7. What Was the Soma of the Aryans? R. Gordon Wasson 201 A 8. Ritual Use of Cannabis Sativa L.: Historical-Ethnographic Survey William A. Emboden, Jr. 214 9. Tabernanthe Iboga: Narcotic Ecstasis and the Work of the Ancestors James W. Fernandez 237 10, Hallucinogens and the Shamanic Origins of Religion Weston La Barre 261 Bibliography 279 Index 295 The Contributors 303 V PETER F U EST T. Introduction 1990 Any social phenomenon that achieves a certain significance warrants systematic and dispassionate scientific inquiry, in the hope that we may understand its norms orlaws, ifany, minimize its potential hazards for individuals and society, and maximize its potential benefits. The use, or abuse, ofdrugs is clearly such a phenomenon, and it is not too much to say that especially now, in the midst ofyet one more "War on Drugs," we need far more and better information on which to base private attitudes and public policies that can have the most profound consequences, notjust for individuals and the larger society, but those very Constitutional liberties that have made us the envy of peoples all over the world. As someone said recently, what if we wake up one morninganddrugs are still with usbut the Constitution is gone? Estimates ofpeople on illegal drugs in this country vary depending on the way these things are counted, or the agenda of those who do the counting. But there is no doubt that apart from alcohol or tobacco, which many people still refuse to acknowledge as drugs,* millions ofAmericans employ some more or less dangerous illegal substances on a regular basis, whether to escape from unbearable economic, social and psychological conditions, the pressures of competition and success, or lack thereof, or for less compelling reasons, but in any event in disregard oflegal or physical consequences. The large number of"crack babies" alone is horrifying. It is also true that an enormous amount •Approximately 400,000 deaths ayearare attributable in the United States alone to smoking, and, according to recent estimates, perhaps 50,000 more, one-third from lung cancer and two- thirds from heart attacks, to "passive smoking," that is, the inhalation oftoxic fumes generated byothers{TheNew York Times, May 29, 1990). Alcohol kills about 100,000 peryear, and alcohol plays a role in about halfofthe 40,000 or more annual highway deaths. Measured against these grisly figures, the numberofdeaths from all illegal drugscombined is statistically, though hardly in terms of personal tragedy, minuscule. vii viii Introduction ofviolent crime and corruption are directly*attributable to international and local traffic in dangerous drugs, now chiefly cocaine and heroin. It is likewise fact that our own government, while fighting drug production and traffic in some places, has frequently turned a blind eye to these unsavory goings-on when "larger" political interestsor "national security" are supposedly involved. The chapters in this book are not about cocaine orheroin, orother addictive or dependency-creating substances that as developments ofmodern chemistry, unlike the botanical hallucinogens, no historic or ethnographic precedents and no models for behavior and control in ecstatic shamanism and the rituals of Native American and other tribal peoples. The one exception is tobacco, an indigenous New World weed that for millennia served spiritual ends for Indian peoples, who regarded it as a gift to hum.an beings from ancestors and gods, and that still functions as a potent shamanic intoxicant (see Chapter 2). As UCLA anthropologist Johannes Wilbert of demonstrates conclusively in an important new book. Tobacco and Shamanism in South America (1987), tobacco, or, rather, its principal alkaloid, nicotine, is indeed addictive, something that has long been known to smokers through personal experience but that the tobacco lobby has steadfastly denied, even as the industry capitalized on it through seductive advertising. It also appears that women become more quickly addicted than men. That it is one ofthe more potent ofthe plant poisons has longbeen known and utilized in the manufacture ofinsecticides; Wilbert notes that ifone ortwo drops ofpure nicotine, about what is contained in an ordinary cigar, were to be placed on the smoker's tongue, it would be enough to kill him twice over.* On the other hand, some Indians use tobacco exclusively to attain the visionary effects forwhich others employ what we usually understand by "hallucinogenic plants," those remarkable members of the vegetable kingdom with whose ethnobotany and cultural history this volume is concerned and which have been part and parcel of culture for thousands of years. It is in that context that tobacco belongs squarely with the hallucinogenic flora. The odd thing is that a phenomenon ofnature that reaches back so deeply into the evolution of plants, and that has such demonstrable antiquity as a phenomenon of culture, became an issue for our times only in the nineteen sixties. It is not that botanists, ethnologists and pharmacologists had been oblivious or ignorant ofhallucinogens and their important role in the indigenous *Wilbert notes in his new book (pp. 136-37) that although, as their name suggests, nicotine was once thought to be diagnostic forthe Nicolianas, recent research shows it to be a very widely distributed plantalkaloidthatisfoundinvaryingamountsinanumberofothergenera, including some that do not belong, like tobacco, in the Solonaceae. But it is the major alkaloid in the two maincultivatedspeciesof"Indiantobacco," NicotianatabacumandN. rustica, especiallythelatter. The UCLA psychopharmacologist Ronald K. Siegel and hiscolleagues tested cornhusk-wrapped A^. rusticacigarettessmokedrituallybytheHuicholsandfoundthemtocontainnearly20% nicotine, many times the amount in commercial blends.