PART III ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

As one looks at the uses to which psychedelics are put among the peoples of the world, the extent to which their use is associated with religious practices is very striking. Although alcohol, a depressant, is also used sacramentally, it is probably not used for religious purposes in as many diverse cultures. The high frequency with which red wine is the chosen alcoholic sacrament raises the question of the extent to which "the blood of the grape" is memorial of human or animal sacrifice, rather than being used for its direct effects on consciousness.

Where psychedelics are involved in religious experience, ,. aie more frequently used as the direct carrier of the experience. The California Supreme Court specifically recognized this characteristic of peyote when it struck down an attempt by the state of California to prevent members of the Native American Church from using peyote (Chayet, 1967). Wasson and Wasson (1957) have argued that the idea of God may have arisen from the accidental ingestion of mushrooms with psychedelic properties. This hypothesis is strongly supported by the recent discovery that the fly agaric mushroom may have been the legendary soma of the founders of Hinduism (Wasson, 1969). The role of psychedelics and other hallucinatory plant material in gaining religious experience and the psychic abilities necessary to carry out the functions of a medicine man is beautifully set forth by Castaneda (1968) as his experiences with a Yaqui diablero.

The first paper in this section, Osmond's "Peyote Night," is a reprint of an account of a peyote ceremony of the Native American Church. His participation in the sacrament and ritual changes him from an outside observer to an inside observer, and his observations develop an impassioned clarity.

In contrast, "The Conversion of Crashing Thunder" expresses what the peyote ceremonies mean to an Indian.

Linzer's paper on yage summarizes what is known about the ceremonies and purposes of taking yage. Metzner's paper deals in the same way with the mushroom, an important source of psychedelic chemicals. It should be noted that his paper was written before Wasson identified soma with Amanita muscaria, so his comments on this mushroom will have to be modified in the light of these new data.

The paper by Mikuriya is probably the first that described kif-growing in Morocco. The use of cannabis preparations is not prohibited in Islam, as alcohol is. The government has been forced into an unpopular and ineffective anti-cannabis stand by national and international considerations. Mikuriya closes by comparing customs around the use of hemp in Morocco with those in the United States, and finds many striking parallels as well as differences.