Death is coming

The closer death creeps up upon me the less I am able to understand the reasons for life or living.

Yes I have experienced a close family member dying and unlike television it takes decades to handle such a thing. To think I am going to put my family through such a thing when I finally leave is more horrific to me than the thought of death itself.

My life was and is still a learning experience but when all said and done what am I to do with all this accumulated learning over my lifetime if I just die. There is no logic or reason to this.

Long ago I became aware that the God story that is sold to the majority is just a nice story to give mankind with a message of a basic layout of how nice life could be if everyone followed these ideas. Not many in life do and if one thinks about it the good and evil structures actually depend on each other. The good that can be experienced in life is only understood as good when there is it's opposite to compare it to. This is not rocket science only common sense in reality. I am not saying we need to experience bad but understanding in it is needed to appreciate the great things many of us can have in our lives. From birth to death there are many ways mankind helps his fellow man. How many ways can you help?


Sunday, August 8, 2010

History Of The Spiritual Use Of Mushrooms

By Dr. Markho Rafael

People have used mushrooms as spiritual tools for at least 7,000 years. Thats the age of the oldest preserved records, cave paintings left by the historic San Peoples in Tassili of southeast Algeria. Images depict what has been interpreted as masked, dancing medicine men holding mushrooms in their hand; presumably of the awareness altering variety.

Tassili is located in an area that today is an uninhabitable mountainous desert. But in ancient times, the climate was wet, allowing not only humans to live there but also cattle, and even crocodiles. The San Peoples were culturally tied to other tribes across the desert, from Chad to Egypt, maybe even Greece.

The Greek Eleusinian Mysteries - spiritual initiation ceremonies - date back to 1,600 B.C. and for two millennia it was the most important spiritual initiation ceremony of ancient Europe. Many scholars believe the ceremony employed the use of mind-altering mushrooms. With participants such as Plato and Aristotle, the influence of the Eleusinian Mysteries on the formation of western culture cannot be underestimated.

Later Vikings are known to have consumed limited amounts of the today much feared poisonous species Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria). Ironically, they appear to have used it to overcome fear through religious rituals in which they danced and ate mushrooms before fearlessly going into battle.

It may not have been an admirable type of spirituality practiced by this warrior culture but it was none-the-less part of their religious practices whatever we may think of them. Siberian shamans are also said to have used Fly agaric in their spiritual practices to help them talk to their gods.

In a controversial book titled Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality by R. Gordon Wasser, Fly agaric is even attributed as the source of the Vedic juice called "soma" - a liquid described to have been used in ancient Hindu religious practices, and said to be bestow divine qualities to the soul of the consumer, even immortality.

(Note: Make no mistake, Fly agaric - Amanita muscaria - is poisonous and can also be confused with other deadly species. Consumption for any reason is completely discouraged.)

Meanwhile in the New World, spiritual ceremonies using mind-expanding mushrooms were likewise performed. The earliest written record stems from between the 13th and 15th centuries, a text known as the Mixtec Codex. The Mixtec Gods were often engraved wielding mushrooms.

In spite of the fact that the Mixtec people of central Mexico self-professed to use spiritual mushrooms in their religious ceremonies, western scholars still questioned it in a characteristically condescending fashion.

American botanist William Safford argued that peyote buttons were mistaken for mushrooms, while other scientists insisted that the Mixtec culture really did use mind-expanding mushrooms in their religious rituals.

Raging on until the early 1930's, this debate finally got settled when amateur anthropologist Robert Weitlaner got invited to view a Mixtec religious ritual including the mind-expanding mushrooms.

Two decades later, R. Gordon Wasser and his wife Valentina Povlovna were the first white people to participate in a Velada (mushroom ceremony). This religious ceremony lead by shaman Don Aurelio was described by Wasson in a 1957 Life Magazine article, which became the spring-board for public awareness of mind-altering mushrooms.

Out of 60 Psilocybe species, 25 are known to contain the mind-altering compounds psilocin (unstable) and psilocybin (stable). The two species Psilocybin caerulescens and Psilocybin mexicana are believed to be the ones used by the Mixtec. Although Psilocybin cubensis is now more common even in America, it is believed to have arrived with the Europeans.

Spiritual mushrooms have been illegal in most of the world since the 1970's because of their potential misuse as recreational drugs. Only in The Netherlands were fresh Psilocybe allowed to be sold until less than a year ago.

But after a 17-year old French tourist killed herself by jumping off a bridge after consuming Psilocybe mushrooms, the Dutch parliament voted to ban all sale of so called "magic mushrooms." The ban took effect on December 1, 2008. The use of consciousness-altering mushrooms in spiritual practices is now officially history.

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