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The Narcotic Complex of the New World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Weston La Barre

Extract

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Exorbitant attention has been paid to the nature of gods, whose character it is to be inacessible to examination, but relatively less attention has been paid to the impresarios of gods, viz. prophets and shamans and priests—the de facto sources of all our religious information—who are available for study. It is our contention that the nature of deities is to be sought in the psychic disposition of their exponents and, more than this, that the ancestor of the god is the shaman himself. The vatic personality is often known to be psychologically abnormal, or perhaps only temporarily in such a state as the dream or the vision, and doubtless often in response to the pressure of some current crisis, personal or social or both. But the conditions for hallucinatory contact with spirits and gods may easily be gained by psychically quite ungifted persons, through the use of psychotropic drugs. It is this second situation we would wish to examine in the present study.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 12 , Issue 48 , December 1964 , pp. 125 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © 1964 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Students of primitive religion will be familiar with the works of Mircea Eliade, in particular Le chamanisme et les techniques archaiques de l'extase (Paris, Payot, 1951), and of de Felice.

2 Valentina P. Wasson and R. Gordon Wasson, Mushrooms, Russia, and History, 2 vols, New York, Pantheon Books, 1957.

3 Clark Wissler, The American Indian, New York, Oxford University Press, 1922, pp. 25-27.

4 Weston La Barre, "Native American Beers," American Anthropologist, 40 (1938) 224-234.

5 Ruth Bunzel, "The Role of Alcoholism in Two Central American Cultures," Psychiatry, 3 (1940) 361-387.

6 Weston La Barre, The Peyote Cult (Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 19, 1938; 3rd enlarged edition, Hamden, Conn., Shoe String Press, 1964).

7 Richard E. Schultes, "Botanical Sources of the New World Narcotics," Psychedelic Review, 1 (1963) 145-166, p. 154. Cf. Idem, "Hallucinogenic Plants of the New World," Harvard Review, 1 (1963) 18-32, p. 23.

8 Schultes, Botanical Sources, p. 156.

9 Schultes, Hallucinogenic Plants, p. 26.

10 R. Gordon Wasson, "A new Mexican Psychotropic Drug from the Mint Family," Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University, 60 (1962) 77-84.

11 La Barre, The Peyote Cult, Appendix 3, pp. 128-130.

12 Schultes, Hallucinogenic Plants, pp. 28-29. A brief survey of the history of research on teonanacatl, together with a definitive annotated bibliography, is : R. Gordon Wasson, "The Hallucinogenic Mushrooms of Mexico and Psilocybin: A Bibliography," Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University, 20 (1962) 25-73. The most comprehensive work is that of Roger Heim et R. Gordon Wasson, Les Champignons Hallucinogènes du Mexique: Etudes Ethnologiques, Taxinomiques, Biologiques, Physiologiques et Chimiques. With the Collaboration of Albert Hofmann, Roger Cailleux, A. Cerletti, Arthur Brack, Hans Kobel, Jean Delay, Pierre Pichot, Th. Lemperière, and J. Nicolas-Charles (Archives du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 1958, Series 7, Vol. VI) Paris : Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 1959, 322 pp., 36 plates, 28.000 F. An excellent summary is that of Roger Heim, Champignons toxiques et hallucinogènes, Paris : Boubée & Cie., 1962. The best summary in English on New World narcotics, hallucinogens and psychotropic drugs (to which the present study is much indebted) is by Richard E. Schultes, "Native Narcotics of the New World" and "Botany Attacks the Hallucinogens," The Pharmaceutical Sciences, Third Lecture Series, 1960, Lectures 2 & 3, pp. 139-185.