Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.psychoactives
 
This in in reference to the questions floating about regarding Yage.  I
cannot speak with any real authority on this plant, given my limited
experience with it.  I have actually used the isolated "main" fraction of
the lina; harmaline and harmine (interestingly enough dubbed "telepathine"
when first isolated.)  I have found them personally to be of limited value,
even though they CAN be extremely potent...but then so can Datura.  Potency
is not an accurate gauge for me to access it's illuminative qualities,
although that is not to say they don't go hand in hand, all other things
being equal.  It is EXCELLENT for increasing the intensity of P. cubensis
intoxication.  As little as 25 mg or so can VASTLY increase within minutes,
the "levels" one is traversing.  I usually just put a pinch between my
cheek and gum (no pun intended for all youz cowboys out there...I AM an
Okie!)  Harmine or Harmaline has always produced an incredibly irritating
buzzing/pressure in my ears/head.  There seems to be a propensity for this
chemical to produce visions of cats and serpents.....and a smokey, bluish
haze that seems to drift about.  McKennah has given both the beta
carbolines and the raw plant to Eskimos who have never seen either large
cats OR serpents in the Artic...and they saw them.  He was proposing a sort
of Periodic Table of Hallucinogens at one time.  I need to get back with
him on this.
 
ANYWAY, I just purchased an EXCELLENT book from the U.K.; _Gateway to Inner
Space; Sacred Plants, Mysticism and Psychotherapy_ Edited by Christian
Ratsch.  Many, many writers collaborated on this text and I bought it
because Terence McKenna has an article _Among the Ayahuasquera_.
For instance, Charles Muses has a paper called _The Sacred Hallucinogens of
Ancient Egypt_.  I have not read that one yet, but it is abundant with
complete breakdowns of the active constitutents.  Next one for me to read,
as I have finished the paper by McKenna.
 
Before I go into the known methodology of preparing Yage (B. caapi), I'd
like to list a short parse of the introduction.......
 
"Information flows through the multiple continuum of being, seeking
equilibrium yet paradoxically carrying images of ways its flow toward
entropy is locally reversed by a being or society or phenomenon.  These
images become concepts and discoveries.  We are immersed in a holographic
ocean of places and ideas.  This ocean of images and the intricacy of their
connections is indeed infinite.  We understand it to whatever depth we are
able.  This is perhaps why great genius proceeds by apparent leaps.  The
revolutionary idea which inspires the genius comes upon one complete and
entire by itself from the ocean of the speculative mind.  We seek the
intuitive leap that reveals the very mechanism of that Other Dimension.
The need for such a leap for humanity will grow as we exhaust complexity in
all realms save the microphysical and the psychological.  At present my
method is immersion in the images and self-examination of the phenomena,
i.e. taking P. cubensis mushrooms and pondering just what this may all
mean, with confidence that time will at least deepen my understanding if
not eventually answer all questions."
 
"My provisional acceptance of this view of the dimension 'seen' in
hallucinogenic trance approximates the worldwide 'primitive' view that we
are somehow co-mingled with a 'spirit world'."
 
"Is the access to another dimension which the psilocybin mushroom makes
available something so uniquely peculiar to it that it is reasonable to 
associate the phenomenon specifically with a single species of mushroom? 
Or is this strange world a thing unique to the chemical Psilocybin,
wherever it occurs in nature?  R. Gordon Wasson has written that when he
returned to to Mexico (after Albert Hoffmann isolated the active
constituent Psilocybin from the P. cubensis mushroom) and presented tablets
of the Psilocybin to Maria Sabina, the old curandera who first introduced 
"white man" to it, the old mushroom bruja avoed: "The Spirit of the
mushroom is in the little pill!"" 
 
"In my confrontations with the personified Other that is present in the 
mushroom, part of the message was its species-specific uniqueness and its 
desire for a symbiotic relationship with Mankind.  At other times it
presented itself not so much as a personage but as an infinite network 
which many sorts of beings in different parts of the multiverse were using
for their own purposes. I felt (and still do) like a two-year-old child who
struggles with the dilemma: "Are there little people in the radio?" 
Perhaps the psilocybin-revealed dimension is a kind of network of
information and images, or something even more substantial." 
 
What follows next will be taken verbatim from _Plants of the Gods_, 
printed 
in 1979...limited edition by McGraw Hill Book Company.  It was almost fifty
dollars then...I have no idea if it is still in print (doubtful) or what
the cost might be.  It remains, in my mind, as THE definitive tome in 
this 
area.  It was a collaboration between Albert Hoffmann and Richard Evans
Schultes.  Besides being the one to discover LSD and isolate Psilocybin 
from P. cubensis; Hoffman owes much to his good friend Schultes (who, by 
the way, is the Director of the Harvard University Botanical Studies Group
and Museum).  He and McKenna have traipsed about the globe together, 
sometimes with Andrew Weil in tow, collecting and propagating hallucinogens
in the reserve McKenna has set up on several hundred acres of the big
island of Hawaii. 
 
"The vine is prepared in an incredibly diverse range of technique.  Alone,
the vine bark is scraped from the freshly harvested stem.  The bark is
boiled for several hours.  The stripped vine is then macerated and boiled 
for several hours in a seperate container.  These are then combined and 
taken in various amounts....depending of the original length of the vine.
All this is further complicated (and McKenna reiterates this as well) by 
the various admixtures of other plants into the brew of the plain caapi.
Most of these are rich in the DMT family of alkaloids, which are not 
normally active orally, but since Harmine/Harmaline is a 
monoamine-oxidase 
inhibitor, it renders these quite potent when ingested orally.  Some of the
leaves of the plant B. rusbyana are often added, as are Virola theiodora, 
both of which are RICH in DMT and 5-MEO-DMT."
 
I will quote the article I refered to earlier MeKenna wrote, in closing: 
 
"After spending seven weeks deep in the Amazonian rain forest, it became 
clear that the quality and efficacy of the various brews we imbibed depends
entirely on the knowledge, personality and care used by the person 
preparing it.  B. caapi is completely different by itself; the quality of
the effect is RADICALLY altered by the various admixtures of the other DMT
containing plants!"