We humans love our poisons.. Tobacco being the most treacherous…
The Poison Path
Taxonomy
Known commonly by the names Tobacco, petún or piciétl.
There are two cultivated species which are Nicotiana tabacum and N. rusticum. Both of these are a result of a fertile hybrid between two wild species sometime in the far past, propably in the Andean region of South America. Commercial tobaccos are mainly N. tabacum.
Chemistry
Alkaloids present are mainly nicotine. Especially in some other Nicotiana species there are also nornicotine and anabasine present. A harminelike alkaloid, harman, has also been found in the smoke of some tobaccos. Different species and strains of domestic species come with a lot of variation.
Usage
Drink, smoke, snort, chew, suck, lick, apply topically as an oinment or insert it rectally as an enema… these are the ways that have been discovered through out different cultures around the planet. The oldest method is propably drinking a strong potent decoction. Sometimes the solution is drunk through the nostrils to induce blackness and red flashes in the drinker’s vision. Tobacco snuffs are also an ancient method of use, often mixed with other hallucinogenic plants. There is also archaeological evidence for tobacco enemas. Smoking seems to be a more recent development even though oldest pipes found date back 3000 years. Tobacco may be the oldest cultivated plant in America, going back more than 8000 years.
The Plant
A stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic and maybe a hallucinogen too. This is has got the be the most poisonous plant regularily consumed by human beings. Tobacco is a healer and a killer, ally and seducer.
”Spin off, keep them back.
Calm my fears, I will speak”
This is the main shamanic plant of the New World. You can learn all the lessons of the poison path from this one plant… if it doesn’t kill you first.
”And it will get you, if you play with it.
Maybe you chip, nip, lick around the edges,
but it will get you, if you keep it up.”
If you cannot overcome your tobacco habit; If you cannot quit it,
you are no doctor and you better not proceed. You must face it, you lack the power.
There will be even greater dangers ahead.
You will cough. You will gasp for breath. You will suffocate in an ocean of air.
”SMOKING IS A DYING ART”
”Like a drowning man, you will panic and lash out at those around you, curse your own friends and family, and hurt those who love you most. What makes you think you can succeed where so many others have failed? Besides, you are fine just where you are. There is nothing to accomplish by continuing” – Dale Pendell
Mayan rain god smoking
Even Freud was never able to quit. The longest he stayed off tobacco, was 14 months; ”All of it torture”.
…And thinking of tobacco as a sacrament will get you no further. There are stories of these South American shamans who use tobacco as a ritual tool and a sacrament, and that they get their hallucinogenic effect because they use it infrequently. Yes, they do use it as a ritual tool, but that does not mean they use it infrequently. South American shamans are almost all deeply addicted to tobacco and use it a lot so they can tolerate even higher and higher doses.
”When Rocio began her apprenticeship, her teacher gave her infusions of tobacco to drink every day for a month. She was vomiting up blood. At the end of a month he took her into the jungle and gave her a draught of guanto – left her there and told her that the guanto would show her the way back.”
Tobacco is indeed the Great Purifier and this is part of it’s weapon-nature. If you are going to mess with poisons, tobacco is a great choice to be allies with. It is like fire for fire and earth for earth.
In our culture, with our mild tobaccos and cigarettes, we have completely forgotten the hammerlike power of this plant. Our daily commercial tobacco is not the same thing as true Nicotiana.
”The Indians say that this smoke is very wholesome for clearinf and consuming superfluous humors of the brain. Moreover, if taken in this manner it satisfies hunger and thirst for some time. They also commonly use it if they have to discuss some matters among themselves: they draw in the smoke and then speak…” – André Thevet
Thevet was the person to introduce N. tabacum into Europe in the mid-1500s. Sometimes this credit is given to Nicot, but his seeds were proven to be N. rustica. Rustica was known and used as a medicine long before Thevet introduced tabacum into France.
Tobacco flowers on the Aztec statue of the god Xochipilli
”The Tibetans call tobacco the poisonous dakini killer. They say that tobacco smoke, like the smoke from burning flesh, attracts the wrong spirits, that tobacco grows where menstrual blood drops.”
The smoke from N. rustica is really strong. In some species the nicotine content may approach levels of 20 percent. Some tobacco shamans have developed a technique of hyperventilating while they smoke. This way they can keep on inhaling the smoke, taking in huge doses of smoke until finally falling unconscious. This seems to be a safer way than drinking, because if one does not vomit after drinking a tobacco infusion, result may be death or permanent injury. The most extreme way is the tobacco enema, where the risk of overdose is too great to consider.
”I lived for some years in the Sierras in an uninsulated and somewhat drafty cabin. The cabin lay right across what must have been the wasp equivalent of an ”elephant walk,” because wasps of many varieties were constantly crawling in and out, making their way through, or collectin on the windows. Some of them stayed, and there was a paper-wasp nest right over the loft. At night, when we were in bed, the wasps were in bed also. As they were, at such times, all quiet on the nest, there was never any conflict of interest org reat priority to remove the nest. But I do recall the way they would react to any wish of tobacco smoke if we smoked in bed: instantly the whole nest abuzz – all the wasps stretched up on their thin legs, fanning angry wings…”
Indeed, in organic farming, tobacco infusions can be used as a pesticide. I have personally tried that and I have been succesfull. However, tobacco is a strong plant and may damage weaker plants.
Pharmacology
Nicotine is similar to acetylcholine by structure. This is a neurotransmitter active in both the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems, as well as in the somatic nercous system. Acetylcholine has also been found in the central nercous system which could explain why nicotine may affect the ability to learn.
”Recognition of the nicotine molecule by cholinergic receptors is possible because the positive charge on its ammonium head and the electronegative charge of its pyridine ring are exactly the same distance apart from each other as are corresponding electrical charges on the acetylcholine molecule.” – Johannes Wilbert (1987)
In the central nervous system nicotine increases arousal and enhances learning and performance of simple tasks. Performance of complex tasks were shown to be impaired in studies by George Spilich, but the mechanism is not understood and the results remain under sceptisism. Dosage is critical to whether performance is enhanced or impaired.
The stimulant/sedative effects may be due to the fact that nicotine binds more thightly than acetylcholine. First it gives a nice rush, but then it stays bound monopolizing the site, inhibiting further action.
Nicotine stimulates parasympathetically the smooth muscles of the digestie tract. It’s actions on the sympathetic nervous system are less well understood, but in addition to mimicking asetylcholine, it stimulates the release of epinephrine (adrenailn) and dopamine along with lesser amounts of norepinephrine and serotonin. Norepinephtine is chemically related to mescaline.
Toxic effects include perspiration, light-headedness, general weakness, tremors, convulsions, and respiratory paralysis.
Tobacco can induce amblyopia, a condition of day blindness and enhanced night vision. Jaguar shamans like tobacco. Heavy use of tobacco creates a strong body odor, a raspy voice, and a rough furred tongue.
Ceremony tobacco
Shamanism
Tobacco is a plant of energywork. It’s about transferring and attuning energy. Traditionally energies are a godly thing and as such, tobacco is the food of the gods. Gods have to eat too you know. Tobacco is actually very foodlike. Taking tobacco relieves hunger, much like food does. Tobacco grows in gardens, just like food. It likes rich, sunny soil, and will volunteer if you prepare a spot for it. This is a plant that looks like food, grows where food grows, allays hunger, but is still not quite food. The relief for hunger given by tobacco is only temporary. Eventually you must eat real food.
And in the end, tobacco will bring it’s own hunger. It is a craving analagous to the hunger for food. So it seems, that tobacco is a spirit food, rather than human food.
”A Campa tobacco shaman considers himself the husband of Jaguar Woman and calls his tube of ambil (tobacco paste) ”my wife.” Human foodstuffs don’t satisfy jaguars. To avoid eating any of his own friends or relatives, a shaman hunting in his jaguar form travels great distances.”
The gods’ problem is that even though they need to eat, no food grows in the spirit land. Thus they have to deal with humans, who have the tobacco monopoly. They have to bargain. In exchange for our feeding them, and enduring the hardships that such feeding entails, they will try to help us out on their side; keeping accidents from happening, diverting disasters, spilling the beans about where certain animals are living or who it was that pilfered the fish traps, and generally acting as diplomats between various, often malevolent, spirits.
”A deal?”
The spirits will let us know when they are hungry: the craving of nicotine is the growling stomach of the hungry spirit. We feed them by taking tobacco and a transference takes place.
”Sometimes animals in the spirit world drink too much at one of the tobacco pools and get transported into this world”
Every shaman must undergo three stages: sickness, death and rebirth; tobacco provides them all. This is the shamanic initiation, and it is almost perfectly given by tobacco.
”Tobacco is the muscle. Maybe the mushrooms or the little leaves of the Shepherdess will give you the seeing, but you need tobacco for the muscle, to clean the sickness out.”
The best part of tobacco is that it doesn’t take much time. It is perfect for the busy man. It doesn’t take the whole day for this ally to answer a question.
”You want poison? You got it.”
Tobacco drying
Divination
Many early accounts of Indian tobacco use mention it’s use in divination: in capnomancy, spodomancy and oneiromancy. A method of spodomancy involves scrutinizing the shape of the ash at the end of a huge cigar: looking at whether the ash is curved or straight. Capnomancy involves looking at the smoke rising from a clump of burning tobacco and seeing which direction it goes. Most common way of divination with tobacco is oneiromancy. The diviner experiences dreams and visions while in a tobacco-induced trance or coma. They say that those returning from tobacco trances speak with the voices of the gods themselves.
Spodomancy
My own experience
I have never eaten or drank tobacco. I was 17 years old when I tried my first cigarette and after that I think I smoked more or less regularly for about 5 years. At first I smoked the basic commercial poison filled with toxic chemicals not related to tobacco in any way. I didn’t even know how much chemicals they add to commercial cigarettes.
Later I started favoring organic tobacco with no additives and I started rolling my own cigarettes. This at least felt better and obviously tasted better. At some point I figured I could grow some tobacco too. I am after all, pretty good with all kinds of plants. So a few times I grew my own tobacco plants in pots. I grew both, N. tabacum and N. rustica and I can say I enjoyed rustica more. There is a long tradition of growing N. rustica in Finland. I also learned how to ferment the leaves to make nice brown and good-tasting, strong stuff. I also figured that the commercial filters are shit… so I started using charcoal filters. But the paper tasted like shit… who wants to smoke paper?
So I started smoking from a bong.
From a bong?
Yes. Small tiny hits from a bong filtered by cold water. Now we are getting somewhere. Organic self-grown and self-fermented tobacco from a bong. This way I was able to get beautiful dreamlike trance-states that lasted some few seconds.
But the hunger grew stronger. The better the experience the more you want and you will never get enough.
The gods were crying at me for more and more! Oh yes the divine small death that comes from these hits.
A nice warm feeling with a headbuzz, then you start loosing your vision of this world and you take a small dive into this spirit world. …And then you come back, and you must wait a while until you can repeat that. After all, who wants to eat with a full stomach? You will wait for maybe 5 or 10 minutes and then you go again.
Until the tolerance starts creeping in…
This plant is so intense… It is the fastest drug in the world. Takes only a couple of seconds to blast you off and it is so easy to use. It has so many people in it’s grip.
…but the idea of quitting always haunted me as well.
I am a singer… I should not smoke.
I want to breath and run and dance… I should not smoke.
I can enter the spirit world through dozens of other ways… I don’t need tobacco anymore.
I had learned my lessons from this queen of death.
With help from other divine allies, such as mushrooms…
I quit.
I just quit. Instantly.
2 weeks I was swetting and stressing… experiencing headaches and pains…
Until it went away.
I was victorious.
And I have remained so.
I tell you,
this is a powerful plant. Respect her. Learn from her.
But if you mess with her, she will kill you.
It is your own choice if you want to be dealing with her.
You can learn all the same things elsewhere.
Tobacco is a fast, powerful, and painful teacher, and thus requires a powerful mind.
Stay strong.
If you are thinking of quitting.
Quit.
Instantly, and not ”step by step”.
If you want to use tobacco, favor organic stuff with no additives, and seriously think whether you want to smoke paper and use those regular commercial filters. Smoke tobacco, not shit you don’t know.
…
Astrologically tobacco is associated with Mars by:
Albertus, Frater, The Alchemist's Handbook: Manual for Practical Laboratory
Alchemy (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1974).
Whitcomb, Bill, The Magician's Companion: A practical encyclopedic guide to
magical & religious symbolism (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2001) pp.
467-472.
Farrell, Nick, Making Talismans: living entities of power (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn
Publications, 2001) p. 171.
Cicero, Chic & Cicero, Sandra Self Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition,
pp.281-282, 291.
Cunningham, Scot, Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs (St. Paul, MN:
Llewellyn, 2002), pp. 271-273.
Junius, Manfred M., The Practical Handbook of Plant Alchemy: An Herbalist's
Guide to Preparing Medicinal Essences, Tinctures, and Elixirs (Rochester, VT:
Healing Arts Press, 1993) [1979], pp. 102-122.
…
Texts in quotation marks are straigth from the book Pharmakopoeia by Dale Pendell.
The whole article follows quite closely Pendells text on Tobacco. I have left out some stuff and added some of my own stuff. My personal experience at the end is solely mine. I have tried to avoid copying anything from word to word.
Images are copied from the internet.
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Riku Salomäki