{"id":4084,"date":"2012-04-18T21:48:45","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T03:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4084"},"modified":"2012-04-19T09:00:49","modified_gmt":"2012-04-19T15:00:49","slug":"quick-review-two-books-on-mind-altering-herbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4084","title":{"rendered":"Quick Review: Two Books on Mind-Altering Herbs"},"content":{"rendered":"

My house holds several shelves of herb books, thanks to M.’s interest in herbalism, some of which rubs off on me.<\/p>\n

Lots of them are not relevant to our ecosystem, but we keep them for one little bit or another.\u00a0 Of the best, my favorites include Charles Kane’s Herbal Medicine of the American Southwest<\/em><\/a>, although it leans more to the Sonoran desert than the southern Rockies, and the late Michael Moore’s <\/a>various works of herbalism and ethnobotany.\u00a0 <\/a>(Others by Kane here.)<\/a><\/p>\n

One thing this reading did for me is make me sensitive to which writers have gotten their hands dirty, so to speak, and which are just recycling.<\/p>\n

I would put Kenaz Filan’s The Power of the Poppy: Harnessing Nature’s Most Dangerous Plant Ally<\/a> <\/em>in the first category and Steve Andrews’ Herbs of the Northern Shaman: A Guide to Mind-Altering Plants from the Northern Hemisphere<\/em><\/a>, sadly, in the second.<\/p>\n

I have a real negative reaction to phrases such as “is thought to contain tryptamine”\u00a0 or “has been reported to have been used in the berserker frenzies of the Viking tribes” or to borrowing from dear old Maud Grieve<\/a>, who was indeed a leading herbalist of the early twentieth century, but has no one learned anything since?<\/em><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Herbs of the Northern Shaman<\/em> is full of that kind of bluster that promises more than it delivers.<\/p>\n

<\/em>Some sentences are completely confused: “Further to all these uses the Thorn Apple was a hallucinogen that ancient Greek priests employed as an oracle” (118). Presumably, the priest, not the plant, was the oracle, but if he employed Datura<\/em> (thorn apple) as an entheogen, how was it done? And where and when and in what god’s service were these priests?<\/p>\n

You won’t learn that here. Herbs of the Northern Shamanism<\/em> is too elementary to be a solid\u00a0 historical work and too vague to be useful to the hands-on herbalist. It offers precious little about cultivation, preparation, or dosage. And for a book with “Shaman” in the title, it has little solid to say about the entheogenic uses of plants except for bland references to other peoples in other places. You would get much more at Erowid.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Open The Power of the Poppy<\/em>, by contrast, and you will find a solid, documented history of humankind’s various interactions with Papaver somniferum<\/em>, both the plant itself, its chemical constituents (heroin, morphine, etc.), and its synthetic imitations. Filan can write several interesting pages just on the history and development of the hypodermic syringe:<\/p>\n

The hypodermic quickly became a status symbol among physicians, a sign that they had the finest and most modern medical equipment at their disposal [in the late 19th century]. Wealthy clients learned how to inject themselves or trained their servants in the technique . . . .\u00a0 The 1897 Sears Roebuck catalog feature hypodermic kits (a syringe, two vials of cocaine or morphine, two needles, and a carrying vase) for$1.50. (255)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The chapter on cultivation is basic but accurate enough, but the payoff is the chapters on dependence, tolerance, and getting clean.<\/p>\n

Finally, if shamanism is partly about relationships<\/em> with the other-than-human world, you will find that here too. It is not merely a literary device to write, “Poppy wants<\/em> to alter your consciousness; that is one of the major means by which she encourages human cultivation\u00a0 . . . . But be advised that Poppy has her own best interests at heart, not yours. We may believe that Poppy is a tool that suits our purposes. Be advised that Poppy feels the same way about us” (276).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My house holds several shelves of herb books, thanks to M.’s interest in herbalism, some of which rubs off on me. Lots of them are not relevant to our ecosystem, but we keep them for one little bit or another.\u00a0 Of the best, my favorites include Charles Kane’s Herbal Medicine of the American Southwest, although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,25],"class_list":["post-4084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-entheogens","tag-herbalism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-13S","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2913,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2913","url_meta":{"origin":4084,"position":0},"title":"For People Who Can’t Find the Spice Aisle . . .","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 . . . .\u00a0 you can buy gen-u-wine witchy basil of unknown age and origin on eBay. (Click image to embiggen.)","rel":"","context":"In \"herbalism\"","block_context":{"text":"herbalism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=herbalism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/paganbasil1-300x47.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":61,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=61","url_meta":{"origin":4084,"position":1},"title":"Traditional Medicine versus Addiction","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 5, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"As long as I'm blogging the BBC, let me point out this story on the effectiveness of traditional therapy, including the use of entheogenic (\"psychedelic\") plants in a shamanic context to overcome drug addiction in Brazil.","rel":"","context":"In \"entheogens\"","block_context":{"text":"entheogens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=entheogens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6251,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6251","url_meta":{"origin":4084,"position":2},"title":"Free Articles in Ethnobotany, Ethnomedicine","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine has an archive of downloadable articles, including this one, \"Down Deep in the Holler [sic]: Chasing Seeds and Stories in Southern Appalachia\" (link is to PDF file). Interesting material from all over the world.","rel":"","context":"In \"anthropology\"","block_context":{"text":"anthropology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=anthropology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2278,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2278","url_meta":{"origin":4084,"position":3},"title":"Around the Pagan Blogosphere","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 Ways of leaving offerings for land wights, at Golden Trail. \u2022 Hermes versus the Internal Revenue Service (and a great poem) at The Alchemist's Garden. \u2022 \"Animist Human Diplomats\"\u00a0 at Adventures in Animism. Are you asking more than you are giving? \u2022 Still on the theme of place: Dealing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1252,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1252","url_meta":{"origin":4084,"position":4},"title":"Spices, Speak to Me","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The Mistress of Spices is sort of like the wort-cunning herbalist witch archetype, only with (Asian) Indians and a Bollywood star whose \"acting\" is very stylized, mostly about eye makeup.We ordered it from Netflix months ago, and it finally reached the top of our queue. The whole movie is so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"herbalism\"","block_context":{"text":"herbalism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=herbalism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000NVT0T8","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11375,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11375","url_meta":{"origin":4084,"position":5},"title":"“These Are Dangerous Books”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 11, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Dale Pendell, erudite writer of \"the poison path,\" author of Pharmako\/Poeia, Pharmako\/Gnosis, and Pharmako\/Dynamis, died two years ago, but I only recently found a video of his memorial service. I am starting this video at the 30-minute mark, because that is when Gary Snyder comes on. Quite simply, I think\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/pharmakopoeia-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4084"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4103,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084\/revisions\/4103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}