The enigma was all the more intriguing because the botanical knowledge of the indigenous Amazonians has long astonished scientists. The chemical composition of ayahuasca is a case in point. Amazonian shamans have been preparing ayahuasca for millennia. The brew is a necessary combination of two plants, which must be boiled together for hours. The first contains a hallucinogenic substance, Dimethyltrytamine, which also seems to be secreted by the human brain; but this hallucinogen has no effect when swallowed, because a stomach enzyme called monoamine oxidase blocks it. The second plant, however, contains several substances that inactivate the precise stomach enzyme, allowing the hallucinogen to reach the brain. The sophistication of this recipe has prompted Richard Evans Schultes, the most renowned ethnobotanist of the twentieth century, to comment: “One wonders how people in primitive societies, with no knowledge of chemistry of physiology, ever hit upon a solution to the activation of an alkaloid by a monomine oxidase inhibitor. Pure experimentation? Perhaps not. The examples are too numerous and may become even more numerous with future research.

So here are people without electron microscopes who choose, among some 80,000 Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush containing a hallucinogenic brain hormone, which they combine with a vine containing substances that inactivate an enzyme of the digestive tract, which would otherwise block the hallucinogenic effect.

It is as if they knew about the molecular properties of plants and the art of combining them, and when one asks them how they know these things, they say their knowledge comes directly from hallucinogenic plants.

— The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby

1. beautifulpantomime reblogged this from xokatya
2. sharamur likes this
3. mayan-ek reblogged this from xokatya
4. mayan-ek likes this
5. 0n-the-precipice reblogged this from xokatya
6. theteethbehindkisses reblogged this from xokatya
7. theteethbehindkisses likes this
8. babilano likes this
9. natural-mystic-26 reblogged this from xokatya
10. livanybbilove reblogged this from xokatya
11. forgetmenot-blue reblogged this from xokatya
12. skaterboytae likes this
13. dylanbarrett reblogged this from xokatya
14. universalnative reblogged this from xokatya
15. xokatya posted this