> I don't know if prehistoric man ate acid, I dont really care ; - )
IAN: Perhaps you know they did but are only joking. ??
Assuming you do not know: in fact Mexican tribes, such
as the Mazatecs, consumed, as a central feature of reli-
gious ritual and healing ceremony, the seeds of two varieties
of the morning glory, ipomoea violacea and rivea corymobosa,
from which Dr. Albert Hoffman extracted LSD. But before you
go out and wolf down a packet of morning glory seeds %^)
consider that most are coated with a toxic fungicide.
Also, I suspect they don't sell the active varieties. |^(
LSD was originally extracted by Dr. Hoffman from the
rye fungus ergot (claviceps purpurea) from which several
popular medications are derived, such as the life exten-
sion drug Hydergine. Here too, in the case of rye fungus,
there is evidence of ceremonial religious use when prop-
erly prepared, as the fungi is quite poisonous.
Hawaiian wood rose also contains LSD, as I understand,
in fairly high concentrations. It's even sold through
mail order companies. I'm, however, not aware of it
being associated with historical ritual use.
>But in essence (with or without mushrooms) you are talking about something
>quite important, more specifically *patterns and visualizations* and a keen
>observation about the intelligence of humans - being that (primarily)
> through the vision part of the brain, we have developed pattern
> recognitions that other species do not.
>How this will shape up in the debate about and developement of cognitive
>science and intelligence research I am not qualified to say.
>But it is certain that our eyes and mind and imagination (mind's eye) all
>work together in a very different and cohesive way to make us what one
>would call "sentient".
IAN: It's interesting to note that the anti-drug mind-set,
which acts to suppress the logical integration of hallucinogenic
knowledge and practice into modern life and anthropo-neurological
investigation, cannot see the connections that make this line of
inquiry logical. In short, the lower intellectual capacity of
this violent subset of society suppresses the application of
those agents that may be associated with the growth of intellect-
ual capacity, which is exactly what one would predict. The drug
laws represent the victory of ignorance which stifles further
intellectual progress and evolution along these lines.
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IAN GODDARD <igoddard@erols.com> Q U E S T I O N A U T H O R I T Y
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