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Anadenanthera spp.
Anadenanthera spp. Constantino Manuel Torres and David B. Repke, authors of Anadenanthera: Visionary Plant of Ancient South America, the most comprehensive study of this plant maintain: “The genus Anadenanthera was, together with tobacco, one of the most widely used shamanic inebriants. It is primarily South American in distribution and includes two species with two varieties…
Salvia apiana
Salvia apiana A website for the Department of Biology at the University of San Diego contains the following information about Salvia apiana, a well-known and popular smudging plant: “White sage is an important and sacred plant for Native Americans. This plant provides both food and medicine for the Kumeyaay. The seeds of the white sage…
Latua pubiflora
Latua pubiflora Olivos Herreros calls Latúe, perhaps the rarest of all psychoactive plants, “the classic hallucinogen of Mapuche ethnology.” One researcher translated the name of the plant as “Land of the Dead”, perhaps in reference to the isolated region on the mountainous coast of southern Chile (from Valdivia to Chiloé), which is its sole habitat…
Nicotiana rustica
Nicotiana rustica Johannes Wilbert’s impossibly comprehensive study of tobacco has stood the test of decades: “Tobacco in traditional South American societies […] is shown to have played a culture-building role. Functioning as an actualizing principle between the telluric and the cosmic, it has served to validate the normative behavior and to affirm cultural institutions.” Wilbert…
Lophophora williamsii
Lophophora williamsii Wade Davis hopes that we always keep in mind a fundamental truth regarding this cactus: “In fact, we now know, based on recent archeological discoveries, that the native people of Mexico have eaten peyote for seven thousand years.” About what they characterize as a “divine cactus” used by the Huichol (Wixárica) of Mexico,…
Hierochloe odorata
Hierochloe odorata (or Anthoxanthum nitens) The name for sweetgrass in Mohawk (Kanien’keha) is Óhonte Wenserákon and in Cheyenne it is Motse’eo. According to Cliff Eaglefeathers and Pete Risingsun, “Sweet grass (Motse’eo) is a sacred plant, a gift from Maheo’ (God), our Creator of Life. Cheyenne believe life is a spiritual journey with the sacred spirit of…
