Howard Rheingold- Ethnobotany: The Search for Vanishing Knowledge

8/3/2019 Howard Rheingold- Ethnobotany: The Search for Vanishing Knowledge

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A catastrophic lossof knowledge, dwarf-ing the conflagrationat the library ofAlexandria, is takingplace in the jungles

lectors.leaguesthing mThe knoprecioustraditionof lives.must hafor earlying remathe expehundredtoxic, toWhich imans didChavinB.C., depcactus (Tcal and s


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the preserve: "No one is preserving this information.Or precious few of us, anyway. It's professionally dan-gerous to have anything to do with this information."He was pointing at a brown liana, as thick as my armin places, coiling its way up tree trunks, limbs, andaround itself in heliocentric pilgrimage to the junglecanopy. The "dangerous information" McKenna wasmourning encompasses a lot of territory. The vineitself, Banistereopsiscaapi, is a key ingredient in thesacramental infusion used by an old medical, religious,psychiatric, and social system - the ayahuasca cult.The little that is known about the psychosocial systemthat has grown up around the plant over thousands ofyears is intriguing; legends and anecdotal reports hintat direct perception of knowledge regarding diet, medi-cine, spiritual growth and personal conduct - the plantitself as the teacher/healer/psychopomp.4 Other per-sistent rumors concern "shared states of mind" andself-diagnostic capabilities. 5 In the ayahuasca cults,the medicine, the plant, and the teacher are all the

medicinal, econoplace. The knowconcerns the fohealth, sanity, iplant-based medtrum (althoughobtain herbal refoods boutique).ganization, apprpopulation relycontext of "tradsource of.hatthconsumers paidscriptions whosefrom plants.6In the early 197pharmaceuticalbody, Terence Mplants themselvethem. A Univer


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specimens. An expedition to a remote tributary ofthe Putomayo river in the Colombian Amazon led tohis first experiences with the mushroom Strophariacubensis, which he and his brother Dennis succeededin cultivating after several years of effort. In 1976 hemarried another enthusiastic amateur ethnobotanist,Kathleen Harrison, and by 1977 they had found theland in Hawaii - three hours by machete from thenearest road - and started moving their specimensthere.Kat was in Thailand at the time I visited, in search ofthe fabled kratom (story p. 32). Terence and his charming young son Finn took me for morning walks alongthe trail that encircled their property, pointing outspecimens of the more than 60 imported species thatwere growing there at the time. Shortly after I returneto the mainland, 50 new species arrived from SouthAmerica, and through an arrangement Kat had madewith a botanical garden in Bangkok, new Asian spec-

"When yoplants at aspecimensphytosanitUS. Depaferent collThe procesinterest inof a plant.letters of sversities, aethnobotashould bebotany isobutions ha

d As McKenjust the firobtainingthe sought


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Shamans inthe Serviceof Plantsbody of knowledge of nprocesses by observingpsychotropic drugs, togpersonal reactions to aenvironmental stimula

n this manner, then[according to the be-liefs of Desana shaman-ism], the human mindis continuously engagedin the task of fulfllino

the demands of the left hemisphere.Th e degree to which this can be ac-complished depends upon the indivi-dual's awareness of cosmic energiesand upon the person's willingness toobey the moral order promulgatedby shamans. The individual brain is

A normal natural enviras a forest, a riverbank,field, transmits certain"energies" (bogari), of wpient may hardly be cohis awareness has beenexample, by food restricgoing to hunt. But in anenvironment these enersifted and orchestrateddevices. This control casingle person, such as aspeaks, recites, or sings;


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Banisteriopdouble helictheogenic phuasca,yagit call it "spnative habipure indigecretic religimestizo poptime the haDimensionsPlowman, pvard's GranSchultes. Thaquarium ito Hawaii. Opathinewhrumors of smagical son


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Howard Rheingold- Ethnobotany: The Search for Vanishing Knowledge