Psychedelia, page 43
For 400 years, the intoxicating cohoba snuff of the Taino remained lost to Western knowledge, the early Spanish expeditions having rejected its strange effects, as seen in several conquistador documents. Then in the early 1900s, the leading botanist C W Safford made a correct identification of the cohoba snuff as being ground seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina (sometimes called Piptadenia peregrina), a legume tree found mostly in South America. Its geographical origins is a vital clue to the unusual dispersion of this entheogenic tradition, which did not begin in the 'West Indian' islands that Columbus stumbled upon, but rather across a substantial body of water in the Orinoco region of South America. Recent archeological finds in Northern Argentina suggest that ritual use of Anadenanthera goes back to at least 2.000 B.C., making it one of the earliest known, and most widely distributed, entheogenic drugs identified in South American. The Taino (also called Arawak) are widely dispersed across the continent, and may be responsible for pockets of cohoba/niopo use found as far south as Argentina and Paraguay.
The migrations of the Taino people can be traced via their use of the hallucinogenic cohoba snuff. On the Caribbean islands ritual objects such as snuff containers with carved deity figures have been found, but as one crosses the Caribbean Sea south to present day Venezuela, the findings become significantly more common. Explorers of the Orinoco river like Gumilla (1741) and Alexander Humboldt (1801) observed and reported the ritual use of intoxicating snuffs by various local tribes, as did the mid-century's Richard Spruce, whose discoveries of ayahuasca drinking were recounted in an earlier chapter. Pre-20th century sources account for almost a dozen tribes using the legume seeds as a drug. But it was not until Safford in 1915 that someone thought to connect this snuff with the reports from Columbus' expeditions in the Caribbean. Judging by the ethnobotanical pattern, the Taino spread eastward across South America, settling along the Orinoco river, and at some point in history made a lengthy seafaring cross north to present-day Haiti and neighboring islands, bringing their spiritual tradition and their intoxicating snuffs with them. They may in fact have actively introduced the legume tree in the islands in order to obtain the intoxicating seeds.
What Columbus encountered in 1492 was the Northeastern corner of a gigantic quilt of hallucinogenic drug cultures that stretched across the Meso- and South American continents, its unifying thread an ancient shamanic tradition of visionary plant healing that utilized powerful psychedelics like mescaline, Psilocybin and DMT. Despite inevitable socio-cultural exchanges and migrations, the respective drugs displayed a relatively strong regional localization, with peyote occurring primarily in Northern Mexico, the psilocybian mushrooms further south on the Central American land bridge, and pure DMT and its relative 5-MeO-DMT in the vast Amazon and Orinoco basins. The Caribbean islands have their share of regionally employed plant drugs such as the aforementioned strong tobacco, alongside cannabis and a mysterious 'zombie' deliriant-paralysant, but the legume seeds that the Taino brought with them across the water from South America represent a unique entry in the West Indian pharmacopeia, constituting a cultural link with regions as remote as present day Peru.
While the correct identification of cohoba and its historical usage on both sides of the Caribbean Sea was an early success for the ethnobotanical discipline, the question of the psycho- active principle in the snuff remained unclear until recently. As shown by Holmstedt & Lindgren at the Ethnopharmacological conference in San Francisco 1967, the dominating tryptamine in the legume seeds is bufotenine, a close relative of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT, both very powerful hallucinogens. However, the psychoactivity of bufotenine has been repeatedly questioned by science, and as late as 1996 a paper by Lyttle, Gärtz & Goldstein stated in no uncertain terms that bufotenine was not a psycho-active compound. The subject of their study was the bufo toads, a disparate group of amphibians which has acquired a substantial legend over the centuries, fuelled by the toad's presence in witchcraft and healing folklore. Pop culture references to 'toad -licking' abound and require little contextual explanation, indicating a high degree of mainstream pene - tration for this myth.
But is it a myth? The toad case turns out to be complex and therefore subject to the usual simplifications and misunderstandings. The most common bufo toad, Bufo marinus, does not contain psychoactive agents to any degree that would make a person high; most likely he or she will die from the toxins also present in the toad's defensive secretions. However, the less common Sonoran Desert Toad, Bufo alvarius, does produce enough DMT-family alkaloids in its venom to create a psychedelic experience. The proper method is too milk the glands of the toad and let the excretion dry into a gum-like paste, which is then smoked like regular DMT. The active compound is generally assumed to be 5-MeO-DMT, and anecdotal trip reports from 'toad smoking' bear a distinct resemblance to the powerful effects of 5-MeO-DMT, a chemical cousin to pure DMT.
Recent decades have seen some underground interest in 5-MeO-DMT due to its rich occurrence in nature, but many psychedelic aficionados report it to lack the vital visual extravagance of classic DMT, creating instead a dark, cerebral, 'death-like' experience. 5-MeO-DMT has its fans in the head community, but both classic DMT and ayahuasca display deeper cultural presence and stronger support among Western psychedelicists. As a South American entheogen however, 5-MeO- DMT carries a long tradition of native usage and it is the main active agent in the epená type snuffs used by tribes in the Amazon and Orinoco basins. Epená is made from the resin of various plants in the Virola family, dried and prepared for insufflation.1 Geographically, the hallucinogenic snuff tradition becomes more common the further North one travels, while the ayahuasca brew dominates in the West. According to anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, the Virola plants are at home in a rainforest environment, while Anadenanthera peregrina grows in open savannah country; the Guaviare River forms a hypothetical line between the two areas of snuff use.
Although a crude and apparently unpleasant form of administration, the insufflation method has left historical traces in the form of ritual paraphernalia such as snuff trays, hollow tubes and canisters. These have facilitated an archeological and ethnographic analysis of the epená and ñopo traditions with a clearer and more ancient historical footing than the corresponding ayahuasca cultures. One of the leading experts on South American snuff rituals, Swedish ethnographer Henry Wassén, offers a useful summary of the snuff intoxicant use in Ethnological Studies #28 (1965), and there was substantial coverage of the topic at the conference in San Francisco 1967 (op.cit). Drawing on field literature going back to 1908, Wassén lists 28 South American tribes where entheogenic snuff use has been observed, and strives to sort out the broad linguistic and botanical confusion around these drugs. Not only will a common word like parica be used for different snuffs in different tribes, but various admixtures may be added to the snuffs without any clear distinction in the naming. To this can be added, as the author suggested in the earlier ayahuasca Chapter III, that the natives might give inaccurate or incomplete explanations of what their spiritual medicine contains. The work to uncover the mysteries of these obscure entheogens continues up to the present day with comprehensive works by Christian Rätsch, Jonathan Ott, and others. In a 2001 monograph, Ott found the Virola 'paste' to be active orally,2 and while 5-MeO-DMT is effective without an MAOI (unlike classic n,n-DMT) it can be notably potentiated by the harmala complex. Some interesting trip reports from 5-MeO-DMT can be found at Erowid.org.
ENTHEOGEN PSYCHO-ACTIVE COMPOUND(S) ADMIXTURES GEOGRAPHICAL USE
Ayahuasca (brew)
a k a yagé, hoasca, natema, mihi DMT from plant 'chacruna' (Psychotria viridis) or the vine 'chagropanga' (Diplopterys cabrerana) + harmala alkaloids from B. caapi vine (for MAOI effect) Datura; Tobacco; other ritual or psychoactive plants Entire Amazonian rainforest, Andean foothills, Northwestern coast
Ñopo (snuff)
a k a cohoba, niopo, yopo, vilca, cebil, hisioma, parica Bufotenine from seeds in the Anadenanthera family of legume trees 5-MeO-DMT plants; harmala alkaloids from Caapi vine, Datura, possibly DMT plants Primarily Orinoco basin and northern Amazonia; Caribbean islands; scattered pockets in Peru, Paraguay, Argentina
Epená (snuff)
a k a nyakwana, yakee, hakudufha parica 5-MeO-DMT from the resin of several plants in the Virola family harmala alkaloids from Caapi vine, Datura, possibly DMT plants Amazonia, especially Northwestern parts; Orinoco
The other DMT alkaloid in the Bufo alvarius secretions is bufotenine, which presence is indicated already by its latin name. In their 1996 paper Lyttle, Gärtz & Goldstein repeated the oft-heard but yet unsettled claim that bufotenine lacks psycho-activity. The unique potency of the Sonoran Desert Toad's venom was assumed to come from the high ratio of 5-MeO-DMT rather than the 'inactive' bufotenine. This statement provoked an irritated response from noted researcher Jonathan Ott, who in 2001 published the results of a series of self-experimental bio-assays with the bufotenine-rich cohoba powder of the Orinoco tribes. Using crushed seeds from the Anadenanthera legume tree, Ott reported on noticeable psycho-active effects from the cohoba, independent on forms of administration.3 The bizarre case of a possibly mind-altering substance being present both in a toad's venom and in the seeds of a large legume tree was not lost on those involved4, and in a rebuttal to Ott's critique Thomas Lyttle (editor of Psychedelic Monographs & Essays) defended his 1996 paper, pointing out that the two studies dealt with bufotenine from organic sources so vastly different that direct comparisons were problematic.5 Ott also noted in passing that the high wasn't particularly pleasant, and his German colleague Christian Rätsch concurred, with reference to the native cohoba compound:
Roasted seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina are ground very fine with tobacco and ash. Most people who try this powder experience extremely strong (allergic) reactions or pain. No one who has tried it has expressed a desire to try it again.
(Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants, 2005)
Related to cohoba are other indigenous drugs from the same family of legume trees, all having bufotenine as its dominating alkaloid.6 They can be found under names such as yopo, niopo, vilca and cebil, with a native usage dispersed across the South American continent as far down as Argentina and Paraguay. Jonathan Ott suggests that the native word ñopo should be used as a general term for any psychoactive snuffs derived from these legume trees, including the Taino's cohoba, in order to separate them from other hallucinogenic snuffs used in South America. Thus, the term ñopo here refers to any traditionally used psycho-active compound from an Anadenanthera source with a high bufotenine content. Despite its long and widespread tradition of usage, the psychedelic students of today are likely to find the entheogenic compounds made from DMT and 5-MeO-DMT sources more attractive than the bufotenine-based ñopo snuffs. It is also likely that the native ñopo use often included admixtures of plant material with DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, harmala alkaloids and even Datura, which improve the psycho-activity and makes ethnobotanical analysis difficult.
2
Of course, Columbus didn't 'discover' the American continent in any but the most ethnocentric sense. Neither did the Norse explorer Leif Erickson, even if his sea voyage around the Christian year 1000 made it all the way to the North American mainland, unlike the Spanish expeditions. America was discovered, in the true meaning of the word, some 15.000 years earlier by one or more nameless tribes of nomadic Siberian hunter-gatherers who, driven by climactic changes and scarcity of game, had crossed the temporarily open Bering's Land Bridge to enter Alaska. As the last ice age receded, the tribesmen followed the Pacific coast southward, fanning out towards the east and south-east where the terrain seemed hospitable, and ultimately reaching as far as the North American East Coast and the southern-most parts of South America.
These archaic Siberian nomads were the earliest Americans, the first humans to inhabit the vast, alien continent. Their origins on the Asian taiga-tundra is of great ethnobotanical importance, as that region is considered by Western science the classic, original locus for vegal drug shamanism, via Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric. Modern genetic research indicates that the original colony of American settlers may have been just a few hundred in number, although further waves of East Siberian migrants are likely to have followed in their footsteps. Entering a New World whose vastness and variation they can never have imagined, they brought their ritual mushroom traditions with them. It is known that, unlike the stricter West Siberians, the migrating Eastern tribes used the fly agaric both for shamanic-spiritual purposes and as a recreational drug for the whole tribe.
The religious historian Mircea Eliade, whose 1950s writings on shamans have been quite influential, oddly fell victim to a case of unscientific political correctness when he stated that the use of 'narcotic' elements in the shamanic ritual represents a debased, later form of shamanism. According to Eliade, the earlier and 'purer' form of shamanism did not utilize plant drugs but only the familiar techniques like drumming, breathing and fasting. This dubious claim tells us more about the prejudices of the mid-20th century period in which Eliade worked, than it offers any credible anthropological insight. Nevertheless, Eliade's irrational bias stood unchallenged for many years, and similar, unscientific prejudice against 'narcotics' can be found among other 20th century historians, usually in contrast to the direct observations made by anthropologists and botanists.
In an earlier and different intellectual climate, Friedrich Nietzsche took a stance that rings more rational than Eliade's hand-wringing:
Either by influence of narcotic potions, of which all primitive races and peoples speak in their hymns, or by the mighty approach of springtime which lustfully pervades all of Nature, those Dionysian stirrings arise'
(The Birth Of Tragedy , 1872)
Nietzsche connects the 'narcotic' experience with the birth of nature, and by extension to what he perceived as Dionysian. From his antique studies he inferred that the drug experiences were about rebirth, aliveness and joy – precisely what testimonies tell us the Eleusinian mysteries meant. Dionysius was not the main deity celebrated at Eleusis, but he figured extensively in the background, and the Greeks held other celebrations in his honor. This is not shamanism, but a communal mystery ritual whose main purpose is its own enactment, and the cathartic experience of the participants. Nietzsche's Dionysian reverie implies a second way in which ancient psychedelic drugs were employed, far from the shamanic healing. At a time when anthropology and ethnobotany scarcely existed as scientific disciplines, Nietzsche's intuition made certain to him what coming generations would debate and discover. To quote William Blake, 'what is now proven was once only imagined'.
Post-Eliade ethnographers have generally followed Occam's Razor and reversed Eliade's hypothesis. The drug-based ritual is today taken to represent the earliest, archaic form, and the abandonment of the drug element marks a later development, brought on by plant scarcity or religious taboo. Indeed, a tribal taboo is normally assumed to indicate an earlier occurrence of the now forbidden behavior, and such a codification and restriction of direct access to the divine by a priestly class is a vital threshold in the formation of organized religion out of local belief systems. As scientific evidence mounted and scholars drew opposite conclusions to Eliade's peculiar moralizing stance, he modified his position somewhat. Today, some anthropologists and ethnobotanists specialized on entheogens have gone so far as to suggest archaic plant drug use a common denominator behind all shamanic traditions and major religions, in addition to the mystery cults like Eleusis. Both Gordon Wasson and peyote authority Weston La Barre have ventured that various hallucinogenic or deliriant plants can be found at the origins of essentially all spiritual belief systems. This case may seem overstated, as the key event for the formation of a cult or religion – the visionary-prophetic experience – can be attained without the use of any drug. Most likely the answer lies somewhere inbetween, with drug or non-drug origins varying between time and place, rather than in adherence to any predictable pattern. In Amazonia one can still today observe entheogen - using tribes living a few miles from tribes who use no psycho-active drugs at all, yet follow similar shamanistic traditions.
The East Siberian people in America, who ultimately would be known as 'Indians' due to the miscalculations of European explorers, brought with them a spiritual tradition that involved the consumption of a plant drug. Encountering a flora infinitely more abundant than that known to their forefathers on the taiga and tundra, they would examine and experiment with these New World plants not just as sources for food, but for inebriation. Beyond such pioneering, risky bio-assays, they brought with them an atavistic tribal knowledge of seeing reindeers intoxicated by Amanita muscaria, and so watched for signs of plants or mushrooms that had an unusual effect on wild-life. These nomadic proto-Americans may in fact have encountered psychedelic mushrooms at a very early stage of their migrations, given today's abundance of psilocybian species along the Pacific Northwestern coast. Despite the enormous distances in time and space, traces of the Siberian ur-cult seems to have survived into modern mushroom rituals. Gordon Wasson points to the anthropo- morphic voice and the perception of the mushroom entity as little children as common to both the Siberian and South Mexican mushroom shamanism.7
