Anthropology

Initiation into a Living Planet

One of the puzzles of climate science is the persistence of the Holocene Optimum – ten thousand years of anomalously stable climate that has allowed civilization to flourish. Science, as far as I can tell, attributes this basically to good luck. I have encountered among indigenous people a completely different explanation…  …that the rituals performed…

READ MORE
Anthropology

One river – the mystery of manna

“Once I tried to explain heaven to a young woman,” she said, smiling, as she poured Shultes a cup of tea. “I said it was as beautiful place, a place where there are no tears. She asked me whether I had been there. I said no. I explained that only the dead know heaven. Then…

READ MORE
Anthropology

Integration : special mushroom issue

It is known that many psychotropic mushrooms (above all, Psilocybe and Panaeo/us genera) live in dung of certain quadrupeds and in particular bovines, cervides and equines. This specific ecological phenomenom cannot but have been taken into account with regard to the sacramental use of psychotropic mushrooms, leading to the creation of mystico-religious relations between the mushroom and…

READ MORE
Anthropology

Do psychotropic[s] enhance, or diminish, human agency?

*then— a landscape in ancient Britain …[plants] are reliable and effective because they implement the findings of neuroscience and supplement… our humanist discourse about self-development and agency. In using… we become transhuman hybrid beings who build tools into the regulatory plant of the body. One question to ask then is: How many individuals have found,…

READ MORE
Anthropology

In defense of the use of sacred plants in the americas

Since their inception, international policies toward drugs have been characterized by being racist, classist, colonialist, and created by a Western elite that has failed to consider the diversity of traditional uses for plants and psychoactive substances. …the importance of these insights into psychoactive plants and their molecules, the diverse areas of research yet to be…

READ MORE
Anthropology

The whole fungus: civil

Narcotics Control Board calls for decriminalisation of narcotic drug use. The Deputy Executive Secretary of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) [in Ghana, Africa], Mr Michael Addo, has called for the decriminalisation of narcotic drug use. The six-day programme brought together lawyers, prosecutors, officials from drug enforcement agencies, psychologists, students and civil society organisations from Anglophone…

READ MORE
Anthropology

The whole fungus: pills, not.

​”COMPASS appears to have lost their moral one. CAPITALIST would be a more fitting monicker.” -An ECfES Board Member​ Regonizing that, it’s synthetic, single Ingredient, psilocybin pills. Compass Pathways is not giving mushrooms to depressed patients. Mushrooms contain many different molecules.  Psilocybin [ingested, converts to psilocin]… the active chemical that is responsible for much of –but not…

READ MORE
Anthropology

The whole fungus: people first

The fact that the hippie has been sacrificed in scientific analysis for the determination of medical properties of an alleged panacea tells us an important quality of our science – that science is underpinned by relationships of power, and true knowledge, knowledge of what is essential, is undermined by that very companionship. Note : Elder is…

READ MORE
Anthropology

A push for drug decriminalization surges in countries around the world — could the US be next?

Two of Canada’s three main political parties, including Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party, added drug decriminalization to their official campaign  platforms earlier this year, signaling that candidates intend to campaign on decriminalization in the upcoming 2019 federal election. … The momentum has even spread all the way to the United Nations, which released a joint statement with the World…

READ MORE