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felix said:
risky for what?  you think he's gonna turn you in to the cops or something?  english teachers love reading papers like that.  whether they agree with the subject or not, i'd bet they get tired of reading the same old monotonous crap that gets pumped out by students over the years he's been a teacher.

if you do turn it in, would you mind telling us the response you get?

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Sure.  I didn't initially think it was a risk until someone mentioned to me that it could be.  So then I got a little worried.  I'll post back here as soon as I know what he thinks. 

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Well If anyone remembers me talking about a speech I was writing concering Terence Mckennas food of the gods, I have finished it. I will present to a group of about 20-30 highschool seniors tomorrow. I have to do a 10 min presenation and give them a worksheet. I have a few figs from the book on a over heads and have copied the glossory from the back of the book.

Here is an unformated copy, I highly suggest you download the .doc, if for some reason you can't open it request a format and I'll probably get around to it.

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Specific Purpose Statement: The relationship plants, namely mushrooms may have played in the development of early religious practices.

INTRODUCTION

I. Read Page 31-32

He had left the confusing flickering of the group fire and walked a few steps away to make water. The sound of his own voice came low and in the throat. Nee nee nee nee neeh. She Who Feeds Us seemed unusually powerful this harvest moon night. Enchanted by the landscape transformed by intoxication and moonlight, he walked farther away from the noises of the domestic scene.
The hekuli was near, he could feel it. At this thought the hair on the back of his neck rose up. There was a sound like shaking of seeds in a gourd. The he saw the hekuli; it looked like an iridescent flower, mouth, or sphincter hanging in space. And there were others behind it, spinning slowly in the darkness, some on way, some another. They approached him like a school of curious jellyfish. There was a soft liquid explosion as the nearest one reached him and passed through his body. At that moment the interior of his head flared with sunrise-pink light and he was infused with the presence of the thing. Impressions followed one another too swiftly to comprehend. Time fell away; super fluids of frozen agate seemed to rush through enormous spillways. He had a sense of flinging himself happily into death, a kind of wild orgasmic paroxysm of self-affirmation. A previously inarticulate bubble of emotive intent came to his lips. Tears were running down his cheeks. He had said these words before. But he had never said and understood them in this way before. Ta vodos!, Ta vodos! I am! I am!

a. This is a very reasonable assessment of how early life may have been for the first hominids.
b. Roaming the grasslands of east Africa, eating whatever looks edible humans had to have eaten Stropharia Cubensis, the familiar magic mushroom.
II. Relationships between plants and animals and their effect on society are as old as time, they have for many millennia shaped the way we think and act.
a. I intend to explain this relationship, namely the relationship mushrooms may have played in the development of early religious practices.
III. I first became interested with plants and their relationships with humans after reading Dr. Rick Strassmans DMT: the spirit Molecule: A doctor?s Revolutionary research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences and through Daniel Pinchbeck?s Breaking Open the Head. More recently I finished Terence McKenna?s Food of the Gods. Where he goes into detail exploring the relationships of numerous plants, and how they have affected humanity and shaped cultures since the dawn of time.
IV. Today, in my speech I will briefly summarize the ideas of McKenna and his interest in ethnomycology, a sub field of Ethnobotany, or more specifically, the study of human cultural and historical interaction with fungi, especially mushrooms.

BODY

I. First, we should establish who Terrence McKenna was, and how he became interested in the subject of ethnomycology and ethnopharmacology.
a. He arrived in the Upper Amazon in the Early 1970s, after spending time among the scattered vestiges of religion that litter Asia.
b. His interest was sparked while studying shamans and their use of mind-manifesting plants in their practices to achieve transcendental ecstasy with the Gaian earth.
c. From shamanism McKenna was able to observe the unstudied relationship between plants and religion and came to the conclusion along with many thousands of others that "psychedelic plants, and the shamanic institutions that their use implies, are profound tools for the exploration of the inner depths of the human psyche."

II. To continue it is also essential to redefine the term drugs as associated with intoxication. And also become aware of the meaning of language.
a. There is an old adage that states human are creatures of habit, this rains true when examining the fact that many drugs are currently used in sub-threshold levels for simple maintenance. Among the more popular ones are drugs such as tobacco, sugar, and caffeine.
b. I also believe it is important to note the way in which language works. (read pg 15, Para. 5)

Languages appear invisible to the people who speah them, yet they create the fabric of reality for their users. The problem of mistaking language for reality in the everyday world is only too well known. Plant use is an example of a complex language of chemical and social interactions. Yet most of us are unaware of the effects of plants on ourselves and our reality, partly because we have forgotten that plants have always mediated the human cultural relationship to the world at large.

III. Establishing this, McKenna begins his linear progression of the relationship that plants have had on the human species over many millennia.
a. Now, I intend to explain his theory on how plants were involved in the beginning?s of religious practices.
IV. Essentially, he proposes a new view on Human evolution, stating:
a. The first human contact with psilocybin-containing [magic] mushrooms may have predated the domestication of cattle in Africa by a million years or more.
b. But more important, is that domestication of cattle would bring humans in a closer contact with these mushrooms, whose spores come to fruition in the dung of the cattle.
c. In addition, besides deepening the interspecies co-dependency it is also at this time when we find the beginning of calendar making and religious rituals.

V. He goes on to point out currently accepted trends in human evolution.
a. Pointing out and asking a common question, that evolution in higher species occurs over tens of millions of years, though Homo sapiens brain size has tripled in merely 3 million years.
b. Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson authors of Promethean Fire: Reflections of the Origin of the Mind call this ?Perhaps the fastest advance recorded for any complex organ in the whole history of life.?
c. Science has yet to explain how about 100,000 years ago we as a species emerged as we did as linguistic, self aware individuals.
d. And many paleontologists and evolutionary theorists? proposed a now discredited missing link.
VI. Terence suggests the real missing link may have been psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and harmaline.
a. He had naturally come to this conclusion, though a study entitled Psilocybin-induced Contraction of Nearby Visual Space this study supported his thesis. The study was conducted by researcher Roland Fischer, a pioneer in the field of psychoactive therapy.
i. Fischer, who gave sub threshold level dosages of psilocybin to graduate students and measured their ability to detect the moment when a parallel line skewed.
ii. He found that some are actually better informed after taking a drug than if one has not.
b. Further, Terence reviews the three scenarios which will come about when taking psilocybin containing mushrooms.
i. Low Level usage, without any notice of psychoactive dosage is consistent with Fischer?s findings; the increase in visual acuity or the chemical binocular effect is very effective in a Hunter Gather society.
1. Resulting in a higher food supply for a population, and improving the percentage of a clan that reaches reproductive age resulting in an out breading of non mushrooms using cults.
ii. In higher dosages it increases restlessness and sexual activity, and mushrooms being linked to a seasonal lunar cycle would also concur with the regulation of sexual activity.
iii. And finally still higher levels would certainly induce religious activity, or full blown shamanic ecstasy.
c. The above, dealing with prehistory is more of an educated assumption of what may have happened, because it lacks concrete empirical evidence.

VII. An educated guess therefore has many arguments that connect early religious practices to mushroom rituals.
a. Non Nak Tha, an archeological dig in Thailand is littered with graves in close proximity of zebu cattle.
b. Stropharia Cubensis is still prevalent in the area, today.
c. And since psilocybin containing mushrooms are coprophilic in nature it leads one to speculate the importance of such a finding concerning cattle.

VIII. This connection to cattle is not unique to Non Nak Tha, and connections can also be made between cattle and other early cultures.
a. Namely That of Catal Huyuk, where religious shrines are dedicated to Cattle.
b. Also, other interesting lost cultures point to signs of Mushroom use. As can be examined in these overheads.

IX. Delaying the focus on cattle for a moment, I would like to point out the magical plant, Soma, mentioned in the Vedas of early Indo-European cultures.
a. Soma?s identity lost for more than two millennia has great importance on many early cultures and religions, but none so important as Hinduism, who?s foundation is formed from the teachings of that magical plant?Soma.
b. Now, briefly, I will talk about the current theories of what Soma is.
i. Gordon Wasson argued that Soma was a mushroom, namely the red fly agaric, Amanita muscaria.
1. Until recently Amanita muscaria had been used in Siberian shamanism, and is viewed like a four leaf clover in modern artwork.
2. Wasson?s case can be seen in his book, Soma: Divine Mushrooms of Iimmortality.
3. And still others such as James Arthur go into more detail about Amanita muscaria, crossing over and linking into ethnobotany, Siberian shamanism and general theology.
4. Yet, still more, Heterodox Bengali Hindus have identified soma as a Psilocybin containing mushroom.
ii. Coinciding with the theory that Soma may have been Strohparia cubensis
1. The relationship between cattle is also notable, in that Hinduism holds cattle in High esteem. This relationship is an old one, one very prevalent in the Vedas.
X. Ethnobotany is young in relative terms when comparing it to the birth of science.
a. And Terence goes on, discussing in more depth, the relationship of other plants and how their effects have shaped cultures.
i. Exploring the 3 thousand year old mushrooms cults of Oaxacan Mexico first made known to the western world in a 1957 edition of Life Magazine.
ii. Talking about his own personal experiences with DMT. DMT is found in ayahusca practices in South America and the Caribbean.
iii. And further reanalyzing many cultures throughout recorded history, covering everything from ancient Greece, Medieval and present day Europe, as well as others. Discussing how plants played a part in the process of shaping cultures.

CONCLUSION

I. Though Terence McKenna?s Ideas are not always accepted I have only begun to explain the half of them, and there is a lot to study in the subject of Ethnobotany.
a. I hope this has held your interest enough to consider reanalyzing commonly held views on other cultures and possibly reading the rest of Terence?s Book, ?Food of the Gods?.
II. In short, I hope you now reconsider your understanding of how early religious practices may have been.


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Arthur, James James Arthur: Mushrooms and Mankind. 2000 10 march 2004
< http://www.jamesarthur.net/mm.html>

Fischer, Roland, et al., ?Psilocybin-Induced Contraction of Nearby Visual Space?
Agents and Actions 1, no. 4 (1970) 190-197.

Lumsden, Charles J, and Edward O Wilson. Promethean Fire: Reflections of
the Originof the Mind. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983.

McKenna, Terence Food of the Gods. New York: Bantam Books, 1992

McKenna, Terence. Terence McKenna Land. 10 march 2004
< http://deoxy.org/mckenna.htm>

Oeric, O.N, and O.T Oss,. Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower?s Guide.
Berkley: Lux Natura Press, 1986

Wasson, Gordon R. Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.
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heres the original thread from general discusion. http://www.dextroverse.org/forums/index.ph...t=ST&f=9&t=7826



EDIT: I have reread it to find some spelling errors. I haven't changed them online, though, becuase they are that minor and I don't feel I should be wasting my time further editing and uploading just isn't needed.

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