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European witchcraft flaunted de rigeur delusions of leveraging influence, wealth, love, and revenge via ritual and herbalism. A deliverable real world upshot was flying. Generous addition of biological blockbusters like belladonna (deadly nightshade) and amphibian skins to potions and brews had partakers snockered and prancing amidst stratospheric demons and gods. Really interesting pharmacognosy - luminous crystal palaces and divine personifications - lay elsewhere, in places where mightier religions were born of more capable psychodelicatessans.
The Middle East is hotbed to noisome gods. It cherishes fanciful tales, One Thousand and One Nights, rife with flying carpets (and odalesques, but I digress). Did Arabia fly? Is the Judeo-Christian-Moslem axis spinning about drug trips? Persian rugs' predominate color is often mordant Syrian Red or Turkish Red derived from untold pounds of ground and extracted Syrian rue seeds (Peganum harmala). Espand incense is based upon Syrian rue seeds.
(Spenta Armaiti (Esphand/Espand or Espandarmaz) is a Persian female deity protecting Gaia. Espand means holy and Armaiti is devotion and unconditional love. She is guardian of herdsmen and farmers, re Greek Demeter and Armenian Spendaramet.)
Between June and August Syrian rue displays countless showy white flowers 1-1.5 inches across with five elliptic petals and five slightly longer narrow sepals. Fertilized flowers mature into leathery three-lobed seed capsules 3/8 inch in diameter jutting erect on their stalks, containing about fifty dark brown angular seeds. Seeds and roots are 3-7% by weight ß-carboline alkaloids, predominately harmine (4,9-dihydro-7-methoxy-1-methyl-3H-pyrido-[3,4-b]-indole or 7-methoxy-1-methyl-3,4-dihydro-ß-carboline) and harmaline: serotonin antagonists, CNS stimulants, exceedingly potent short term (3-6 hours) monamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors, and hallucinogens.
Harmala alkaloids are psychoactive. 25 to 50mg orally elicits a dreamy state. 200 to 750mg broach six hours of fluorescent pinwheels and protracted conversations with powerfully compelling folks who are not there. Users begin hearing humming or buzzing noises, notice wave-like movement of their surroundings, and experience feelings of sinking together with sensations of flight. "These initial effects can be discomforting." The horizon may collapse in a brilliant strobe effect. Geometric hallucinations mutate into immense birds of prey, jaguars, and snakes. This is the rush.
MAO detoxifies barbiturates, alcohol, and narcotics. MAO inhibitors can lethally extend and augment central depressant effects. They potentiate amphetamines, ephedrine, methyldopa, norepinephrine, epinephrine, phenylpropanolamine, tranquilizers, and antihistamines. Harmala alkaloids (harmine, harmaline, harmalol, harman, peganine, isopeganine, dipegene, vasicinone, and deoxyvasicinone) can launch hypertensive crisis (sweating, pallor, nausea, vomiting, fright, headache, and cranial hemorrhage). God will meet you up front and personal if your flying carpet larder contains aged cheese, beer, red wine, pickled herring, snails, chicken liver, yeast products, figs, raisins, pike, sauerkraut, coffee, chocolate, soy sauce, cream, or yogurt.
In the spring of 1935 a gardener amused by exotic plants and living a few miles east of Deming, New Mexico planted seeds of a perennial succulent shrub native to the arid parts of North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and across to Pakistan and India. The sandy arid soil of southern New Mexico cherished Peganum harmala and it proceeded to colonize the American Southwest. This is a considerable accommodation if you are a shaman or long-haired 1960s remnant because...
...You would otherwise need venture to mortally dangerous and un-air conditioned portions of the Amazon to dicker with the natives for some sacred (expensive) ayahuasca or yagi brewed from middling rare Banisteriopsis caapi bark containing between 0.2% and 1.3% mixed harmala alkaloids.
Is there more than apocryphal evidence suggesting Arabia indulges in unspoken ecstasies of the blackest, most sacrosanct religious persuasion? Islam concedes one of Ten Commandments prohibiting graven images that the One True Church (Roman, Greek, Russian) honors in iconographic breach. Moslem mosques, literature, and homes host the most punctiliously rendered abstract tessellations and balanced filling decorations of space imaginable, galaxies of Celtic knots conceptually extended to hallucinatory complexity, perfection, and coloration. It is a small leap of faith to imagine an ancient artist preparing first quality red pigment from Peganum harmala seed extract and ocher earth. Grind the seeds, soak the seeds, ingest 25-50 mg of harmaline by accident. Go back for more of a good thing - say 200-750mg - and change the Arab world forever.
Are there present-day guarded cults periodically gathering to decorate their flying carpets with Syrian rue? The outwardly insane cacophonies of 14th century theology writ large might have inward divine origin accessible at will. Lord knows it would have done the Mormons a world of good.
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