Home | Community | Message Board
You are not signed in.
Sign In New Account
Forum Index Search Posts Trusted Vendors Highlights Galleries FAQ User List Chat Store Random Growery


This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.

General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
Threaded Mode Threaded  Previous topic Previous  View all topics Index  Next topic Next 

Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Mushroom-Hut Liquid Cultures   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Myyco.com Isolated Cubensis Liquid Culture For Sale   Sporeworks.EU Spores for European Microscopy

Jump to first unread post Pages: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |  [ show all ]
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: HB]
    #1497183 -

Yaqui and Hopi Shamans also say they got thiere knowledge of plants from hallucinogenic plants, in this case, primarily peyote. Kind of far away from the Amazon. Kind of a coincidence. This is not going to satisfy anybody, but I personally have enough respect for these wise men that if they say they aquired thier knowledge from, ayahuasca, or peyote, or even rice crispies for that matter, I don't have a hard time beliving them, especially knowing how powerfull these plants can be.


--------------------
Ken Wilbur

"this is life changing"

welcomehome

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: thestringphish]
    #1497237 -

I have a friend who would say that there are infinite universes and therefore we are in the one where by chance they discovered ayahuasca.

Tell my why this is wrong so I can go to town with your answer.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: HB]
    #1497253 -

HB: they did a remote viewing session and entered the main bunker of al Queda headquarters, and in their minds drew up what was within, and then accessed those drawings when they came back and redrew them

*coughcoughbullshitcoughcoughHACK*
Yeah... HB, I'm gonna need some sources on that one...


--------------------
Note: In desperate need of a cure...

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: Sclorch]
    #1497531 -

Quote:
Is it so hard to believe that trial and error (centuries of bioassayal of horrible jungle plants) can eventually "lead" the shaman to an interesting plant combination?


I see a pattern but that isn't very convincing nor could it be considered anything other than circumstantial in this case.  What you are saying is that people alter their consciousness therefore the shaman must have found it by trial and error.

Sclorch, you are a supreme skeptic.  Would you entertain such flimsy evidence for other things that are doubtful?  Say the existence of a Supreme Being? 

Do the math.  What is 80,000 squared?

Of course it was mentioned that if they used plants to tell which plants to ingest it sounds like circular reasoning.  But is it?  Look a little closer and you can see how a vision induced by Yopo snuff could tell the shaman to use Psychotria viridis.

This also brings a tangential issue of truly medicinal plants.  In the Amazon there are 80,000 species.  You're a shaman and someone has a headache.  So after thousands of years in the jungle and with each shaman keeping copious notes on which plants were tried for which illness the shaman were able to cure diseases.

I am sorry.  That requires more faith than I have.  I don't think anyone with an ounce of skeptic in their blood could believe it either.  It just isn't very convincing.

Cheers, :smile: 

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: ]
    #1498002 -

Do these societies have a written language? I was under the impression that a lot of primitive tribal societies don't have written languages, thus compounding the difficulty of cataloguing large amounts of information.


--------------------
Persons denying the existence of robots may be robots themselves.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: bert]
    #1498051 -

Quote:
Do these societies have a written language?


Most of the larger south American cultures had a written language. For the most part they were very advanced for their time. For example, the Mayan's had a calendar system that puts our modern one to shame with its accuracy. They were very clever people.



--------------------
Just another spore in the wind.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: bert]
    #1498264 -

None of the Amazonian tribes had written languages. All of this would have to be passed using oral tradition.

Good point.

Cheers,

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: ]
    #1499928 -

Let's just do some simple math....

100 tribal groups, each with one shaman living on the outskirts of the village (though this is probably a VERY conservative figure).

Let's give the shaman 25 good years of plant munching.
And let's say each shaman finds only bioassays 10 new species a month and they mix it with whatever the fuck they feel like mixing it with (add another multiple of ten per month= 1,200).
Then let's multiply that by about 100 generations.

100 x 25 x 1,200 x 100 = 300,000,000

1. There were probably more than 100 shaman running around the Amazon per generation.
2. They probably had considerably more time than I've alloted them
3. This quasi-arbitrary number you've given (80,000,000^2) is ridiculous in that you're not giving these indigenous people any credit for being able to recognize something that MIGHT be ingestable (I think I made that up)... I don't think they bothered chewing up thorny bushes or hardwoods.

So, let's say that the number of ingestable plant candidates is a quarter of what you say (though that number is still probably too high)...

20,000^2 = 400,000,000

BTW, what about the poison arrow frogs?
Did some shaman sense some mystical vibration given off by these frogs that led him to believe that they contained a poison that would be good for hunting monkeys?
Use your fuzzy logic in some other forum that I don't frequent... it confuses the plebians and it wastes my time. :wink:

Mr_Mushrooms: None of the Amazonian tribes had written languages. All of this would have to be passed using oral tradition.

So was the Quran... so was alot of stuff.  So what?   


--------------------
Note: In desperate need of a cure...

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: Sclorch]
    #1500958 -

Fuzzy logic?  Such accusations border on personal remarks.  I know you are above such things. :wink: back at ya.

While your premise may seem convincing to a novice it doesn't pass muster for those even slightly acquainted with shaman practice.  I have to admit it is an ingenious argument though.  You simply having shaman running around the jungle "testing" plants like a Western scientist would do.  You don't really expect anyone to believe that I hope.

Do you how the Western mind works when it tries to figure out what will cure what?

The Doctrine of Signatures is a classic example.

For those who don't know that was the method used in Europe to determine what plants would heal or aid different ailments of the body.  Simply put, if they saw a plant that looked like a part of the body they "knew" it would heal it or was good for it.  Flowers that looked like a human eye were used for treating the eyes,etc.

It is also incorrect to say that number of plants is "ridiculous" simply because you don't understand that all plants are ingestable at some stage.  Sprouts?  Natives are known to eat everything from spiny cactus to bugs for food.  Native Americans used the bark of various trees to cure different ailments.  So simply reducing the number to fit your argument, while ingenious, doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.

What you really are relying on is "chance".  The is the bastion all empiricists run to when they don't have a convincing argument.

As I said before, you'll have to do better than that if you want to convince a skeptic.

Cheers, :smile: 

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: ]
    #1501026 -

I've always wondered how the indians could distinguish harmful from helpful plants too. I've read that shamans could tell the different kinds of plants apart by looking at the color of the aura that they give off. Supposodly power plants are a certain color, medicinal plants are a certain color, edibles, poisonous plants, ect. These people, especially shamans, have a much closer relationship with the earth than we do, so I don't doubt that it's possible for them to "see" the energy that certain plants give off. It just seems impossible that they used trial and error to find the right plants. Maybe the plants used to brew ayahuasca are like brother and sister and it's obvious to a shaman, but not to us, that they could be used together.


--------------------
"The only unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain and everything is changeable."

Edited by peruvian spark (04/28/03 02:56 PM)

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: Sclorch]
    #1501100 -

not a bad try Sclorch, but how do you explain the Yanonamo people who SNORT a combination of plants? did the Shamans go around randomly snorting different combinations of plants for hundreds of generations until they found what they were looking for?



as for ayahuasca,
one thing that I thought of is maybe the smaller tribes were taught by the more advanced groups like the Maya, who had writing and I imagine some sort of systematic approach to catalog medicinal plants. Most Maya texts were burned by the Spanish without ever being translated so we'll never know if this was the case. what a loss... but I'm sure they would have devoted a lot of resources for this kind of research... I mean if they could predict solar and lunar eclipses and the orbital mechanics of the planet Venus, why not?

Meso-American culture ranged from the Andes and the Amazon to the American Southwest, they were never a coherent empire, but there were well established trade routes and information would have passed easily, so you would have to increase your "100 tribal groups" exponentially.

but it still doesn't explain the essential mystery. if they were looking so hard, what were they looking for? did they know?


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: ]
    #1501108 -

The spirits guided them.


--------------------

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: ]
    #1501339 -

Mr_Mushrooms- "skeptical of being skeptical"?

So I say chance and you say "mystical forces"?
You can't seriously call yourself a skeptic...

You're also assuming that the shaman were the only members of the tribes who experimented with jungle foliage. And you're not giving them much credit in the intuition department... maybe they observed animals' reactions to certain plants... maybe they weren't even TESTING plants when they discovered their entheogenic properties- "Hey Bumba, come taste Muhwambi's new chili... it makes me feel funny...."

The truth is, I want a grounded answer... so I find it.
And you want a fantastical answer... so you find it.


--------------------
Note: In desperate need of a cure...

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: Sclorch]
    #1501479 -

i think ive read a story once about a native american a long long time ago who was walking tru the desert with nothing to drink and nothing to eat. then he came across a cacti and the spirit of it told him to eat it and take it back to the vilage and eat it with al the men of the tribe, and repeat the ritual.

maybe because of the not eating and drinking (fasting) people can get in an same sort of state as under the influence of psychedelic plants. and maybe thats how the spirits of these plants learned these poeple about the properties of them.

Or maybe the knowledge about ayahuasca and other plants where given to man by the Elohim/Nefilim, ancient (gods) from another planet who where on earth a long long time ago. maybe they even brought these plants to earth. :smile: 


--------------------
"an immigrant from heaven on earth with a work visa"

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: Sclorch]
    #1502640 -

:grin:

Well the "Truth" is that neither one of us has a concrete answer.  But I do claim a slight advantage.

I am a Shaman, Kola.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I want a fantasical answer.  I only want the Truth. :smile:

And to find it I am willing to turn away from any and all putative "answers" whether they be mystical or empirical.  And I know with certitude that the math doesn't add up in your favor.

Only mine.

Cheers, 

Edited by Mr_Mushrooms (04/28/03 10:15 PM)

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: ]
    #1503210 -

The simple answer: Maybe they just didnt have much to do all day but combine weird things for experimentation. Maybe the shamans just DID that sort of thing.

It's the same case of how cow milk was first mass produced:

"Did some guy just go up to a cow and think to himself, gee, I think i'll drink the stuff that come out of these things when I squeeze em'!" -Calvin

Unlikely? Sure, but that's the universe, baby!


--------------------
Nothing is True. Everything is permitted.
Everything is true. Nothing is 'permitted'.



Every man and woman is a star.
Each star is it's own prison.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: ]
    #1503215 -

Where did you get your Shaman degree?


--------------------
What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you think you know,
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection,
Is it all you want it to be?


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: Murex]
    #1503265 -

probably off one of those degree infomericals, alongside interior decorating and computer repair.


--------------------
enjoy the entertaining indentity i have constructed for you while you can.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: ]
    #1503272 -

Mr_M: Well the "Truth" is that neither one of us has a concrete answer.
So far, so good...

But I do claim a slight advantage.
Okay, you lost me.

And I know with certitude that the math doesn't add up in your favor.
Still lost...

Whole lotta ego for a self-proclaimed shaman... but I should chalk it up to stress, right?


--------------------
Note: In desperate need of a cure...

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Ayahuasca Mystery? [Re: atomikfunksoldier]
    #1503274 -

I highly doubt ITT Technical Institute offers a degree in Technical Shaman Repair. The whole trial and error idea seems plausible. I am of the belief that psychedelics help to process information in novel ways. Maybe they started with smaller doses that helped them to realize what was going on. No need for spirits..The brain is more powerful than people give it credit for.


--------------------
Persons denying the existence of robots may be robots themselves.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |  [ show all ]

Shop: Mushroom-Hut Liquid Cultures   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Myyco.com Isolated Cubensis Liquid Culture For Sale   Sporeworks.EU Spores for European Microscopy

General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
Threaded Mode Threaded  Previous topic Previous  View all topics Index  Next topic Next 

Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* the mystery of yawning, how i lost the ability to do it.
( 1 2 all )		 daytripper23 7,180 39 02/25/13 03:41 AM
by Hobozen
* "THE DRINKERS" - Ayahuasca Interview Series Natura 1,882 9 07/26/03 04:47 PM
by fireworks_god
* Ayahuasca.. the ultimate placebo Mixomatosis 2,277 14 01/05/04 02:25 AM
by Shroomism
* Ayahuasca and Jungle Visions
( 1 2 3 all )		 Swami 3,313 41 04/26/04 02:20 AM
by Strumpling
* Ayahuasca superior to mushrooms? Plant-spirits?
( 1 2 3 all )		 shivak 4,922 49 07/31/08 09:27 PM
by c0sm0nautt
* deep mystery gnrm23 1,412 5 08/22/01 10:10 AM
by gnrm23
* the mysterious Adamist 1,650 10 11/06/02 03:07 AM
by Swami
* Santo Daime ayahuasca ritual paddo 1,240 8 08/13/02 11:28 AM
by RebelSteve33

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Middleman, DividedQuantum
6,535 topic views. 2 members, 39 guests and 15 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2026 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.032 seconds spending 0.008 seconds on 16 queries.