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Plant Ceremony History

The use of sacramental entheogenic plants have played a central role in healing, community harmonization, spiritual connection, and earth stewardship since the dawn of human civilization.

Shamanic cave paintings dating back to 38,000BC in the Northern France, Spain & the Sahara reveal psilocybin mushrooms with anthropomorphic figures in the ceremony. Psilocybin has also been discovered in pottery dating back to 2000 BC in Xiongnu China and is said to be the main ingredient for the legendary Soma beverage central to the prolific spiritual traditions of Vedic India. In Ancient Egypt, the Blue River Lily, mandrake & psilocybin mushrooms were used as a rites of passage ritual in ceremonies of the underworld, afterlife, and divination – and are featured in hundreds of hieroglyphic and sculpture art pieces over a 5000 year lineage. In Greece, the Kykeon brew was the central sacrament to the Eleusinian and later Dionysian mysteries. A pilgrimage while fasting to the sacred temples was followed by imbibing on ergotted wine (Ergot being the man fungal ingredient in LSD) hailed by Socrates, Plato, Emperor Marcus Oralius, Sophicles and many of the most enigmatic figures of Hellenistic Greece, as critical to the upholding the virtue of Athenian culture. There is also evidence suggesting that the earliest Gnostic Christian eucharist was also an entheogenic sacrament as found in Brian Muraresku’s seminal book – “The Immortality Key”.

While Indigenous cultures including Aborigine in Australia, who communed with the Pituri bush to enter the dream time; and the the Bwiti tribe of West Africa utilizes the Iboga root, used these plants to connect with ancestors, experience the dream time, and release unhealthy attachments. (Note: The iboga root is now renowned in contemporary medicine for its prolific capacity to rehabilitate those suffering from major opioid addiction.) Ayahuasca, the vine of souls, a brew made from the Banisteriopsis caapi and psychotria viridis plants, invokes a powerful connection to the natural kingdom providing perspective to man’s role as guardians and stewards of ALL life. Peyote and Huachuma (San Pedro) cacti have also played a central role in ceremonial indigenous traditions in both North & South America, largely responsible for the preservation of many sacred ceremonial traditions that would have been lost to persecution. And lastly, the Flesh of the Gods or psilocybin mushrooms, the essence of Teonanacatl Xoxipilli (God of Flowers) in the Aztec tradition, and core sacrament in Mayan and the ancient Mazatec traditions, continues to be utilized as a medicine central to the upholding core virtues of the spirit, ancestral connection, healing, and self-realization.

Recreational use of psychedelics is a phenomenon that was born in the consciousness explorational renaissance of the 1960s. This isn’t to say that music, dancing, childlike wonder, and community revelry cannot be a central aspect of the experience.  Yet throughout the enduring legacy of psychedelics, despite an incredible lineage of religious & legal persecution and oppression, a central aspect of the journey revolves around an overt & powerful mystical experience that transcends recreation and rapidly shifts the journeyer into a space of sacred reverence, profound connection, and life transformative realization.  

In the present day, these deeper internal revelations may come about through a recreational experience that later leads one down a path that is increasingly more serious and meaningful. For others, a careful consideration and analysis of mental health and/or historic use has led to a desire for an intentional foray into the mystery via ceremony.  Yet however you have arrived at this threshold, should you hear the call to experience this timeless tradition for healing, growth or spiritual initiation, we welcome you to explore coaching & journey options with the Sparc.  Connect and experience the life transformative power of plant medicines used within a safe, ethical and deeply intentional framework today. 

 

Here is a list of resources to continue to explore the enduring legacy of Entheogenic Plant Medicine Ceremonial and its uses in different ceremonial traditions throughout the world.

02

Visionary: The Mysterious Origins of Human Consciousness

By Author: By Graham Hancock (The Definitive Edition of Supernatural) 

03

Kykeon 

By Author: Joshua J. Mark, World History Encyclopedia (2009)

04

Plants of the Gods

By Author: Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, Christian Rätsch (2001)

05

Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality 

By Author: R. Gordon Wasson (2021)

06

The history of ergot of rye (Claviceps pupurea) II: 1900-1940 

By Author: M.R. Lee, National Library of Medicine (2009)

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