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- From: msclito@eskimo.com (Gary Bense)
- Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.psychoactives
- Subject: Practical Uses of Yage
- Message-ID: <CpArt9.ILJ@eskimo.com>
- Date: 4 May 94 21:31:36 GMT
-
-
- Here is a file from my board (Altered Consciousness) about practical
- uses of Yage. I hope some will find it of interest...
-
-
- ---------------
-
- Yage
-
- This in in reference to the questions floating about regarding Yage. I
- cannot speak with any real authority on this plant, given my limited
- experience with it. I have actually used the isolated "main" fraction of
- the lina; harmaline and harmine (interestingly enough dubbed "telepathine"
- when first isolated.) I have found them personally to be of limited value,
- even though they CAN be extremely potent...but then so can Datura. Potency
- is not an accurate gauge for me to access it's illuminative qualities,
- although that is not to say they don't go hand in hand, all other things
- being equal. It is EXCELLENT for increasing the intensity of P. cubensis
- intoxication. As little as 25 mg or so can VASTLY increase within minutes,
- the "levels" one is traversing. I usually just put a pinch between my
- cheek and gum (no pun intended for all youz cowboys out there...I AM an
- Okie!) Harmine or Harmaline has always produced an incredibly irritating
- buzzing/pressure in my ears/head. There seems to be a propensity for this
- chemical to produce visions of cats and serpents.....and a smokey, bluish
- haze that seems to drift about. McKennah has given both the beta
- carbolines and the raw plant to Eskimos who have never seen either large
- cats OR serpents in the Artic...and they saw them. He was proposing a sort
- of Periodic Table of Hallucinogens at one time. I need to get back with
- him on this.
-
- ANYWAY, I just purchased an EXCELLENT book from the U.K.; _Gateway to Inner
- Space; Sacred Plants, Mysticism and Psychotherapy_ Edited by Christian
- Ratsch. Many, many writers collaborated on this text and I bought it
- because Terence McKenna has an article _Among the Ayahuasquera_.
- For instance, Charles Muses has a paper called _The Sacred Hallucinogens of
- Ancient Egypt_. I have not read that one yet, but it is abundant with
- complete breakdowns of the active constitutents. Next one for me to read,
- as I have finished the paper by McKenna.
-
- Before I go into the known methodology of preparing Yage (B. caapi), I'd
- like to list a short parse of the introduction.......
-
- "Information flows through the multiple continuum of being, seeking
- equilibrium yet paradoxically carrying images of ways its flow toward
- entropy is locally reversed by a being or society or phenomenon. These
- images become concepts and discoveries. We are immersed in a holographic
- ocean of places and ideas. This ocean of images and the intricacy of their
- connections is indeed infinite. We understand it to whatever depth we are
- able. This is perhaps why great genius proceeds by apparent leaps. The
- revolutionary idea which inspires the genius comes upon one complete and
- entire by itself from the ocean of the speculative mind. We seek the
- intuitive leap that reveals the very mechanism of that Other Dimension.
- The need for such a leap for humanity will grow as we exhaust complexity in
- all realms save the microphysical and the psychological. At present my
- method is immersion in the images and self-examination of the phenomena,
- i.e. taking P. cubensis mushrooms and pondering just what this may all
- mean, with confidence that time will at least deepen my understanding if
- not eventually answer all questions."
-
- "My provisional acceptance of this view of the dimension 'seen' in
- hallucinogenic trance approximates the worldwide 'primitive' view that we
- are somehow co-mingled with a 'spirit world'."
-
- "Is the access to another dimension which the psilocybin mushroom makes
- available something so uniquely peculiar to it that it is reasonable to
- associate the phenomenon specifically with a single species of mushroom?
- Or is this strange world a thing unique to the chemical Psilocybin,
- wherever it occurs in nature? R. Gordon Wasson has written that when he
- returned to to Mexico (after Albert Hoffmann isolated the active
- constituent Psilocybin from the P. cubensis mushroom) and presented tablets
- of the Psilocybin to Maria Sabina, the old curandera who first introduced
- "white man" to it, the old mushroom bruja avoed: "The Spirit of the
- mushroom is in the little pill!""
-
- "In my confrontations with the personified Other that is present in the
- mushroom, part of the message was its species-specific uniqueness and its
- desire for a symbiotic relationship with Mankind. At other times it
- presented itself not so much as a personage but as an infinite network
- which many sorts of beings in different parts of the multiverse were using
- for their own purposes. I felt (and still do) like a two-year-old child who
- struggles with the dilemma: "Are there little people in the radio?"
- Perhaps the psilocybin-revealed dimension is a kind of network of
- information and images, or something even more substantial."
-
- What follows next will be taken verbatim from _Plants of the Gods_,
- printed
- in 1979...limited edition by McGraw Hill Book Company. It was almost fifty
- dollars then...I have no idea if it is still in print (doubtful) or what
- the cost might be. It remains, in my mind, as THE definitive tome in
- this
- area. It was a collaboration between Albert Hoffmann and Richard Evans
- Schultes. Besides being the one to discover LSD and isolate Psilocybin
- from P. cubensis; Hoffman owes much to his good friend Schultes (who, by
- the way, is the Director of the Harvard University Botanical Studies Group
- and Museum). He and McKenna have traipsed about the globe together,
- sometimes with Andrew Weil in tow, collecting and propagating hallucinogens
- in the reserve McKenna has set up on several hundred acres of the big
- island of Hawaii.
-
- "The vine is prepared in an incredibly diverse range of technique. Alone,
- the vine bark is scraped from the freshly harvested stem. The bark is
- boiled for several hours. The stripped vine is then macerated and boiled
- for several hours in a seperate container. These are then combined and
- taken in various amounts....depending of the original length of the vine.
- All this is further complicated (and McKenna reiterates this as well) by
- the various admixtures of other plants into the brew of the plain caapi.
- Most of these are rich in the DMT family of alkaloids, which are not
- normally active orally, but since Harmine/Harmaline is a
- monoamine-oxidase
- inhibitor, it renders these quite potent when ingested orally. Some of the
- leaves of the plant B. rusbyana are often added, as are Virola theiodora,
- both of which are RICH in DMT and 5-MEO-DMT."
-
- I will quote the article I refered to earlier MeKenna wrote, in closing:
-
- "After spending seven weeks deep in the Amazonian rain forest, it became
- clear that the quality and efficacy of the various brews we imbibed depends
- entirely on the knowledge, personality and care used by the person
- preparing it. B. caapi is completely different by itself; the quality of
- the effect is RADICALLY altered by the various admixtures of the other DMT
- containing plants!"
- ------------------------------------------
-
- -Mescalito Ted
-
- .-'~~~-.
- .'o oOOOo`. -msclito@eskimo.com / Mescalito Ted
- :~~~-.oOo o`. Sysop of Altered Consciousness / 1.5 Gigs /14.4
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- |This Soma is a god, he curses |We quaffed the Soma bright |
- |The sharpest ills that man endures, |And are immortal grown. |
- |He heals the sick, the sad he cheers, |We've entered into light |
- |he nerves the weak, despels their fears;|And all the gods have known. |
- |The faint with martial ardour fires, |What mortal now can harm |
- |With lofty thought the bard inspires, |Or foreman vex us more? |
- |The soul from earth to heaven he lifts |Through thee, beyond alarm, |
- |So great the wondrous are his gifts. |immortal god we soar." |
- |Men feel the god within their veins | |
- |And cry in loud exalting strains. | -The Rig-Veda |
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