Mescaline
Mescaline, An Overview
By Simon G.Powell
Back in 1978, the fine and wholly objective journal "Science" carried a remarkable story concerning the chemical analysis of some plant material found in a burial cave at Coahuila in Mexico. The plant material in question consisted of some shriveled peyote buttons strung on a necklace on a skeletal corpse.
These peyote buttons were ancient. In fact, they were believed to be around 1000 years old. For a millennium they had lain there, interred beneath the Earth, withering, drying and aging year-in, year-out.
The scientists who carried out the chemical analysis wished to verify if the plant material was indeed peyote since that was what the button-like vegetal material resembled. The scientists duly subjected some of the buttons to a standard batch of laboratory assays.
The analysis revealed that mescaline was present and that the aged buttons were therefore indeed derived from the peyote cactus, more formally known as the species Lophophora williamsii and known to be one of the world's longest employed entheogens, used by both the Aztec's of old and by various tribes of Amerindians to this day.
Not surprisingly, the authors of this paper spoke of the remarkable stability of the alkaloid mescaline, for it is the usual case that the chemical constituents of dead plant material degrade and decay over time, especially if the amount of time involved is ten centuries.
Consider, if you were to bury a cigarette or some coffee beans or a tea-bag in a chest in the garden and then dig up the chest in a thousand years, would you not expect mere dry inactive stale dust to remain there, a dust resulting from the incessant action of micro-organisms and such like?
Certainly, if some manky and unseemly residue of the tea-bag remained after all that time, you would not expect to be able to brew it and come up with a nice caffeine kick morning cup would you?
And yet, theoretically at least, the ultra-mature and still active 1000 year old peyote buttons unearthed in Mexico could have been ingested so as to potentiate an entheogenic experience. Such an act would make the drinking of highly regarded vintage bottles of wine seem absurdly dull in comparison.
The presence of the alkaloid mescaline within the peyote cactus is thus notable for its longevity and ability to remain stable and potentially psychoactive over immense periods of time.
According to many testimonies (most notably that issuing from psychedelic aficionado Aldous Huxley) mescaline is also notable for its psychoactive effect within the human psyche, an effect which makes peyote one the most hallowed and revered of the earth's entheogenic flora.
The Mystery Of Mescaline Synthesis
As to why the peyote cactus should forge a compound like mescaline within its tough pulpy body, this remains a mystery. Eleven carbon atoms joined to seventeen of hydrogen, three of oxygen and one of nitrogen. Outside the context of the human brain such a configuration of basic elements is nothing to note.
Inside the context of the human wetware neuronal brain however, we find potentially sacred significance. And ask a chemist to rustle up this organic alkaloid combination from scratch and he or she will have great trouble.
Certainly one would need a well equipped lab and a heap of precursor chemicals obtained at no small cost from pharmaceutical suppliers.
Yet, for some reason, the genotype of the peyote cactus holds this alchemical list of manufacturing instructions for mescaline synthesis, inscribed in 4-bit DNA code and embedded in the nucleus of each of its cells.
Thus, the cactus will make mescaline as a natural and, in a sense, effortless part of its growth and development.
Perhaps mescaline can be dismissed as some sort of waste product. Or a kind of insecticide produced to ward off predators.
However, the fact remains that of all the thousands of species of cacti, only the peyote and a couple of other species produce mescaline so it is by no means certain that it is either a defense compound or a metabolic waste product.
It is also the case that 90% of all the world's plants produce no alkaloids whatsoever (such as mescaline, psilocybin, caffeine, nicotine etc).
In fact, peyote is known to synthesize more than 40 alkaloids, which, according to E.F.Anderson, author of peyote, the divine cactus, is more than any other species, a number of which may possibly enhance or modify the effect of mescaline upon the human psyche.
Which means that we are left without an obvious answer as to why and how a DNA script arose or evolved within the peyote cactus for making such a rare and compelling substance as mescaline.
Unless, of course, we begin to wax a little mystical and assume that entheogenic plants like peyote have some sort of shamanic function within Gaia. But before we explore such a Gaianesque option, let us briefly look at the illustrious history of this most esteemed of psychoactive succulents.
Science And Peyote
The peyote cactus first began to be explored scientifically a century ago when German chemist Arthur Heffter managed to isolate (and thence name) the active ingredient mescaline. He even tested the pure substance on himself but was not noted for any poetical testimony to the mescaline experience.
Like many other empiricists, Heffter chose to focus his interests upon chemistry and not entheogenisis. It was, after all, the easier option.
The first monograph to appear in English which detailed the actual phenomenology induced by mescaline was that from the hand of American psychologist Heinrich Kluver in 1928. Entitled mescal..., Kluver's little book contains a wealth of experiential data testifying to the awesome psychological effects of mescaline.
The book also made it clear at that time that, at least from a psychological perspective, the mescaline experience could be used as a research tool for uncovering the depths and unconscious dynamics of the human psyche. Indeed, in the introduction to Kluver's book, the reader is informed that English investigators:
...will become familiarized with this plant and be encouraged to employ it in the many suggestive and therapeutic, psychological and neurological avenues which lie open.
Similarly, the opening lines from Kluver read:
The importance of mescal for psychological research cannot be questioned.
Such scientific optimism was in vain however for, as is well known now, mescaline is a scheduled substance, considered to be of no medical, scientific or epistemological value whatsoever. In the USA for example, peyote is for the most part a banned plant, possession of which is deemed a criminal offense.
Societal judgment has it that civilians steer clear of such a dangerous organism. And yet a look at some of the descriptions of mescaline intoxication outlined in Kluver's book makes a clear case that peyote is indeed worthy of investigation and that these early experiments in psychedelic or entheogenic phenomenology were indeed full of promise in the then relatively young field of psychology. For instance, among the descriptions
...a beautiful palace, filled with rare tapestries, pictures, and Louis Quinze furniture.
...visions of human intestines, of sections of abdomens, and sections of the pregnant uterus.
Kluver also included vivid descriptions of mescaline visions given by Weir Mitchell at the end of the 19th century. Mitchell spoke of how:
...a rush of countless points of white light swept across (my) field of view, as if the unseen millions of the milky way were to flow a sparkling river before the eye.
Kluver likewise included a vivid account given by Havelock Ellis in 1898:
I would see thick, glorious fields of jewels, solitary or clustered, sometimes with a dull rich glow. Then they would spring up into flower-like shapes beneath my gaze, and then seem to turn into gorgeous butterfly forms or endless folds of glistening, iridescent, fibrous wings of wonderful insects...
It seemed to me as if tones, optical phantasms, body sensations, and a certain...taste formed a unity, as if what I experienced in my body and what I experienced perceptually in the external world were not separated any more, as if body and object were a unity.
In short, it was clear at the time of Kluver's book that peyote was a visionary plant whose principal active ingredient was capable of catapulting the consumer into a world of symbolic visions and ecstatic delight. What better tool could there be for exploring the frontiers of consciousness?
What better tool could there be for opening regions of the unconscious psyche hitherto manifest solely in dreams and rare trance states? Indeed, what better tool could there be to explore the apparently divine potential of conscious human existence? Like it or not, mescaline had mystical connotations...
American Indians And Peyote
The apparent failure of scientists to take up Kluver's call for widespread experimentation might possibly lie in the fact that Kluver failed to mention much about the use of peyote by native American Indians who were known at that time to employ peyote in their religious ceremonies.
Kluver also failed to discuss the highly salient role of set and setting upon the mescaline experience. He also declined to discuss the role of a priori assumptions which will certainly mediate subsequent interpretations of visionary phenomenology.
In short, Kluver's book is devoid of any shamanic bent and provides no conceptual context within which to fully make use of the mescaline experience, his research with mescaline lacking an historical epistemological legacy.
It seems that, like many other scientists, Kluver was more interested in categorizing and reducing psychedelic phenomenology rather that using such experience to build a new conceptual vision of reality.
Only 25 years later would Aldous Huxley explore this more radical option in his seminal book the doors of perception, a publication which marked the birth of the West's attempts to integrate the psychedelic experience into mainstream culture. Yet even Huxley remained fairly taciturn on the shamanic use of peyote.
True, he managed to forge a kind of new history of the psychedelic experience, yet without the shamanic approach so long employed by native peoples in their dealings with entheogenic flora, such a contemporary enterprise could never generate more than a fleeting wave of cultural change.
To explore the true virtue of the peyote cactus then, one must undoubtedly refer to its shamanic use by native American peoples for it is the aboriginal use of the cactus that carries with it a long, colorful and pragmatic history as well as emphasis upon set and setting.
It is also the shamanic approach which might supplement our scientific understanding of peyote and give us a less reductive understanding of the dynamics of psychedelic consciousness.
Traditional Uses Of Peyote
Although the most prominent group to have employed peyote in a ritualized context are the Huichol Indians of Northern Mexico, it is also the case that peyote has been used, and still is used, by a number of Amerindian tribes.
Anthropologist Weston La Barre's classic study/thesis of peyote use entitled the peyote cult was written in the 1930's and updated several times in the following decades. He notes that the essential goal of the native Amerindian peyote user is to obtain visions for prophecy, curing and inner strength. On a typical Plains (Kiowa) ritual, La Barre comments:
At intervals older men pray aloud, with affecting sincerity, often with tears running down their cheeks, their voices choked with emotion, and their bodies swaying with earnestness as they gesture and stretch out their arms to invoke the aid of peyote. The tone is of a poor and pitiful person humbly asking the aid and pity of a great power.
The case is clear. Although La Barre has provided what is deemed among anthropological circles to be the definitive overview of native peyote use in his The Peyote Cult tome, he is certainly no psychedelic enthusiast.
Which means that, for him at least, the peyote cult is a kind of ritual of escapist intoxication, with any seemingly divine and sacred visions being no more that flights of fancy induced by a toxic alkaloid with no real place in the human brain.
And yet a look at some further accounts provided by La Barre would seem to suggest that there is more than just simple flights of delusory fancy at work in the peyote experience.
Consider the following comment by the Lipan tribe on how to approach peyote:
If a fellow is not scared...he will surely have a good time. But when a fellow is rough and ill tempered he will have a hard time learning from peyote. It will scare him...If someone has wrong thoughts, he had better look out or he will go crazy...
Similar caution from the Cheyenne who report that a person must keep hold of himself and must be straight or peyote will shame him. And the Winnebago who state that if an individual does not believe in its virtue, he is likely to suffer a great deal.
These sorts of simple uncontrived beliefs about peyote highlight just how seriously native Amerindians treat their divine cactus. Indeed, it is this overtly cautious approach to the mescaline experience that can be regarded as the hallmark of spiritual authenticity.
For if there were nothing to the experience but simple flights of fancy, then there would be little reason to pay special attention to one's inner state prior to ingestion.
It can even be argued that churches and mosques do not attract this kind of inner searching and inner appraisal of one's psychical state before entry precisely because a truly entheogenic experience is unlikely to transpire within the ostensibly holy building.
This is in direct contrast to peyote consumption which, through its profound effects, can elicit a bona fide sacred experience. This is the very big difference between genuine spiritual activity and the pseudo variety.
Earliest Uses Of Mescaline
Peyote has a millennia-old history which dates back before its use by Amerindian tribes north of Mexico. The Aztecs are known to have employed peyote in their religious rituals (along with psilocybin mushrooms) and before this time it was known to be used by various other groups of indigenous Mexican Indians.
For instance, 2000 year-old bowls with peyote cactus effigies have been found in Colima and, from the same era in Oaxaca, pipes have been unearthed fashioned with deer motifs holding peyote.
Since peyote grows most abundantly in Mexico its use is believed to have diffused northwards at the end of the 19th century at the time when native Amerindian tribes were most persecuted.
Just as the Ghost Dance phenomenon spread through North American Plains tribes during the 1870's in a cultural attempt at spiritual unification in the face of colonial oppression, so too did the use of peyote spread in the wake of the Ghost Dance's demise.
According to ethnobotanist R.E.Schultes, the Kiowa and Commanche Indians first learned of peyote from visits to allied tribes in Mexico. They then took this knowledge and spread the word north.
By the first few decades of the 20th century there was a concerted effort by Amerindians to get their newborn and evermore popular religious peyote practice made legally secure.
Thus, in 1918 the Native American Church was instituted (the NAC), an inter-tribal organization headed by leaders drawn from various Amerindian tribes. Today, there are believed to be more than a quarter of a million members of the NAC, with all members being allowed to legally ingest peyote for religious purposes.
It is evident that the modern-day peyote ceremony provides native Amerindians with solidarity and also with a link to their aboriginal past. And since the vision quest is a prominent part of Amerindian culture it is quite natural that an entheogenic plant be employed to potentiate such an endeavor.
In the first 10 years after the establishment of the NAC there were some 10 bills presented to Congress by the Bureau of Indian Affairs aimed at banning peyote use. This is typical. However, none of those bills became law. Apparently the biggest threat to the NAC was, and still is, that posed by Christian missionaries.
It would seem that certain people simply cannot make the connection between Gaia and the sacred; that the sacred can be potentially accessed by ingesting certain alchemical plant products in the natural environment; and that the sacred is here all around us as part and parcel of the web of life itself and not part of some unreachable supernatural domain.
One must here assume that, at heart, plants like peyote raise fear in the minds of those tied to religious dogma and the words of old religious scripture.
With entheogenic plants, it is clear that the theological proof lies in the entheobotanical pudding. Yet for many the pudding is avoided. The well worn adage about native Americans talking with God and Jesus while Whites only talk about God and Jesus still sums up this curious cultural polarity.
Modern Use Of Mescaline
As I alluded earlier, it was Aldous Huxley who described the mescaline experience most elegantly and influentially to the West in the 1950's.
Preferring to keep his eyes open during his mescaline experimentation, Huxley reported a sacramental vision of reality, where every object that he saw shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance.
Whether or not Huxley planned it, his publication initiated a burst of cultural interest in psychedelic exploration which climaxed briefly in the next decade with the rampant and pop use of LSD.
Our peyote expert Weston La Barre was not amused by these events, referring in later editions of The Peyote Cult to Huxley's book as being rather absurd.
Yet however absurd Huxley's praise for mescaline in the eyes of some hardhearted scientists, by 1960 mescaline was in vogue with Beatniks and other early psychedelic pioneers.
In May of that year for example, 311 pounds of peyote buttons (the buttons are the dried top parts of the cactus) and 145 capsules of powdered peyote were seized from the bearded and barefoot owner of a New York east side coffee house thus testifying to the growing subcultural appeal of this strange new drug.
However, mescaline (due to its relative rarity) never really became a popular psychedelic and, instead, cheap mass produced LSD eventually became the fashionable and readily available hallucinogen of popular experimentation.
But to reiterate, there was no ritual context in which to take hallucinogens in the 60's, apart that is, from the infamous merry prankster electric kool-aid acid test and other trippy hippy gatherings.
It was arguably this complete lack of shamanic context which ensured that psychedelics did not effect a permanent paradigmatic change within Western culture.
Some would say that pioneering icons like Huxley, Ken Kesey and Leary came close (see storming heaven for example) but at the end of that dreamy decade, western culture continued on its relentless consumer-driven course. Nothing but art itself really changed.
The 60's can be viewed as but a glimpse of some kind of utopian possibility for mankind and no more. After all the partying and quixotic enthusiasm it was back to business as normal as the profane and mundane aspects of society eventually overran those plant allies with the inherent capacity to forge both inner and outer revolution.
All the while, amidst Leary and Huxley's calls for a global change in consciousness, dwindling Mexican tribes like the Huichol continued to partake of their peyote sacrament as part of a shamanic ritual handed down from generation to generation.
Perhaps it is from the Huichol that we can learn the true and long lasting virtue of entheogenic plants, on how best to approach their inherent power and how best to integrate their effects into culture.
Books Peyote And Other Psychoactive Cacti
Describes growing peyote and other psychoactive cacti. Looks at growing, cloning, grafting, and extracting maximum output of mescaline and other alkaloids. Includes Peyote, San Pedro, Donana and other cacti.
Peyote has been used ceremonially by the native peoples of the Americas as a spiritual medicine for close to 3,000 years. Peyote and Other Psychoactive Cacti is a concise and readable guide to the art of cultivating Peyote, San Pedro, and other entheogenic cacti.
Peyote And Other Psychoactive Cacti Peyote:
The Divine Cactus
The most complete authority on the peyote cactus, Lophophora williamsii. Includes every aspects of peyote. History, religious uses, ethnobotany, phytochemistry and pharmacology. For anyone interested in learning all aspects of this mystifying plant.
If you are looking for complete information on the peyote cactus, this is the book for you to buy. It is professional, well written, and informative.
Peyote: The Divine Cactus
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