An interesting article (
HERE ) in my gmail box. A brief description of a report published online Dec. 2 in the journal Neurología giving a brief rundown of psychoactive plant and plant preparations used by ancient meso-America cultures. Included is this description of a drink consumed by the Maya-
"called "balché" during the ritual of divination, in which they tried to communicate with spirits, according to the report...(they) made the drink by mixing an infusion from the bark of a plant called Lonchocarpus longistylus together with honey produced by bees that fed on a type of a morning glory plant that contained ergine , which is thought to have psychedelic properties"(*from the online article, italics mine.)
I recall a thread here about "psychedelic honey"but apart from that, this is the first mention I've seen of it.
The article goes on..
" Reports by 16th-century historians say that the Maya added tobacco and the dried skins of a common toad in the Bufo genus to their alcoholic beverages to make the drinks more potent,...the K'iche' group of the Maya still uses the skin of this amphibian as an ingredient in their balché."And this just struck me,a little off topic but..., with reports and knowledge of these substances known since the conquest of the Americas, i wonder how much actual material may have been ingested by individual conquistadors,and whether any was smuggled back to the old world, perhaps to end up in the heads of artists andor thinkers of the time. Possibly by nascent rosicrucians or maybe Cordoveran qabbalists? Perhaps there is an untold story of the original western psychedelic underground there somewhere.
Sine experientia nihil sufficienter sciri potest -Roger Bacon
*γνῶθι σεαυτόν*