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Sunday, August 18, 2013

plants and plant spirits

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception


How did the indigenous peoples discover the synergistic properties of the plants used in the ayahuasca brew to access DMT?

Indigenous Amazonian people say they received the instructions directly from plants and plant spirits. Ayahuasca is used in some of the most sacred rituals and rites of passage throughout the Amazon and other places with rich indigenous connection in South America.

"The hallucinogen Ayahuasca is a brew of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared with the Banisteriopsis caapi vine. It is either mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine (DMT)-containing species of shrubs from the genus Psychotria or with the leaves of the Justicia pectoralis plant which doesn't contain DMT.

The brew, first described academically in the early 1950s by Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, who found it employed for divinatory and healing purposes by the native peoples of Amazonian Peru, is known by a number of different names.

It has been reported that some effects can be had from consuming the caapi vine alone, but that DMT-containing plants (such as Psychotria) remain inactive when drunk as a brew without a source of monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) such as B. caapi." 

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