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Maybe this is what the Mayan calandar was all about. 2012 the end of reason. I live in an area that can be described as nothing else but a drug den, the majority of the adults in this area are drug addicted dead shits and their entire life is dedicated the pursuit of synthetic chemicals. Overdoses, alcohol abuse, stabbings, house invasions, robberies, and bashings are everyday events around here - par for the course. Police raids are a rarity and from what I see I can only conclude that the supply is these substances is controlled by the police and allowed to flourish as a source of easy money for them. I've separated myself from that drug culture and done my best stay within the law as it stands because I don't want to be part of that culture/lifestyle and I don't want my kids to grow up with a deadshit drug addict for a father. As a result myself and my family are social outcasts to a large extent and people just don't trust us. I have plants in my yard that could help these misguided souls, I'm not judgmental, we all chose our own path and they've decided to go down their own chosen path. I really have to hold myself back in regards to enlightening some of them and maybe help them kick their habits and become productive citizens through the use of some of these plants but if I told just one, word would get out in days and my yard would be stripped bare by junkies looking for fix. So for the most part I keep to myself. My eanest belief is that substances of abuse (not the plants we collect) are in many ways a symptom of malnutrition, their bodies are starving and they can't join the dots and feed themselves adequate nutrition so they satisfy the cravings with drugs which takes food off the table and completes the cycle, leaving them in a constant state of need which is always suppressed with more drugs. Now I'm going to be lumped into the same group as the rest of neighbourhood and as far as the law is concerned I may as well be be a junkie. I can't even get pissed off about it, I don't allow myself that luxury unless I know it will be impetus for some positive change as a result. This is a sad day for Australia, common sense and basic human rights. I can see a big surge in the use of illegal manufactured drugs such as amphetamines and heroin as a result of all this, the yin that will come from excess yang (control) I hope your neighbourhoods don't end up like mine with nazi cops protecting their assets and trouncing everything else.

These are my logs..... ive shown you mine now you show me yours I drilled some holes in these oak logs, plugged and waxed them up. Now the waiting game begins.

Well a lot of the credit has to go to my Maestro Huachumero don Choque Chincay under whose tutalage I have experienced the old ceremonial styles at the orginal ancient sites on the Peruvian north coast and central highlands, on numerous occassions, and who revived these ceremonial traditions through great personal effort and farsighted vision. Credit also to my Maestro Ayahuasquero don Rober Acho Jurema, who maintains the old style of ceremonial use of Ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon, par excellence. And even more so, much credit must be paid to the teacher plants themselves, which were so central to many ancient American cultures and from which infinite insight can be gained both about the past, the present, and the future. Beyond that, I have independently travelled to many of the most important archaeological sites in Peru, Bolivia, some in northern Chile and Argentina, the south-west of North America (ancient puebloan sites) and south from central Mexico (there's still alot missing, but here's hoping!). The rest is inferred from visits to museums and examiations of monumental and portable artworks, personal exploration of sacremental plants where legal, and reading books on archaeology and plant use, plant distribution, critical analysis of ancient art and architecture, studies of ecology, and sensibility to the forces within landscapes including in Australia. I suppose it is a matter of intellectual accumulation punctuated by visionary revelation and actual interaction with the sites themselves, and their surrounding environment. It has been particularly suitable for my personality being an absolute numbat when it comes to science, chemistry, physics and mathematics; I immediately found the archaic spiritual sciences to be considerably more comprehensible and viscerally compelling on a personal level. Most people would have bought a house (or at least half of one!) by now and maybe I should have but I quite simply found the knowledge irresistable. Unfortunately, finding a context for integration of these things has, and continues, to prove entirely difficult in this country, to say the least, as has the financial encumberances of funding such exploration over the last seven years which has decidedly set me back in a material sense. Further to that, only the tip of the ice-burge has been revealed to me, if even that much. I'm pretty slow on the up-take and especially in living true to the lessons. But I'm not sorry and I wouldn't know where one should begin. Probably, as most on this forum would have already, by asking the question. I am not particularly comfortable talking about my experiences on a forum as it does not communicate the nuances effectively nor allow a common ground to be found where differences of opinion may be evident, so that is all I will say for now about this. If you were looking to know more I would direct your attention to archaelogical books, particularly those that deal with art, land-use and architecture simultaneously, which can found for most ancient cultures worldwide, or books such as Plants of the Gods that gives a brief synopsis of the use of many sacred plants in many cultural contexts across the globe. Pre-columbian cultures may be a particularly fertile field for those interested in shamanic plant use. A specific book that fully explores and extrapolates how plants and landscape definitively shaped cultures is, as far as I know, waiting to be written for the general public.

Communities like this, and the psychedelic movement in general, have at their foundations the premise that entheogenic substances, when used correctly, can have a positive impact on the lives of individuals and life in general on this planet. In the past few decades, much emphasis has been placed on rediscovering the practices of cultures with shamanic traditions and incorporating these into contemporary rituals. A common view amongst members of this contemporary psychedelic community is that when these shamanic techniques and plants are implemented in the traditional ritual setting, a positive experience reconnecting oneself to the natural world will ensue. This seems to be based on the view that the ancient shamanic cultures where nature worshiping people and their practices were built around this. This, however, may be a simplification of the extremely complex spiritual topology that entheogenic plants and substances allow access to. There are numerous examples of entheogenic plants being used in seemingly malevolent ways. The practice of brujeria in the amazon basin, and the imbibing of mushrooms by the upper classes at human sacrifice festivals in the aztec society, are two examples that immediately spring to mind. In these situations, especially in the case of the aztecs, entheogens are still living up to the namesake in that they are manifesting a god within, but what kind of god? These substances can manifest the full spectrum of desires within the human heart, including the will to bring suffering on others. It seems important therefore to carefully examine the context of entheogenic traditions before incorporating then into our lives. Perhaps more importantly, those who do use these powerful sacraments should create their own rituals and belief structures to emphasise positive qualities such as love and respect for nature and fellow beings, if that is what they seek.

For the sake of native conservation efforts, please don't do that.

Second Snowfella with Espostoa Lanata and think that stillman is on the right track too. To me, it looks more like a Terscheckii than a Pasacana but the differences are marginally anyway. Would need better pics from the second one to confirm but i guess theres few more left to say. bye Eg

I know i've been a bit slow to commit on a few things, but i have had to let dust settle a bit, with a few other things going on in my life at the moment. thats was settling down as a good time to go to melbourne, and as that date seems solid ill see you all then. Really looking forward to catching up with you all, have been fro a while.

oh yeah weather is warming up so I will be bringing plenty of fluid for the crew! Maybe a footy or american football too, and a boot full of cacti!!!

Here are my top three to find: 1) Psychotria poepiggiana 2) Psychotria poepiggiana 3) Psychotria poepiggiana Should be easy to ID when in flower, and a highly promising species that needs to be in cultivation.

The thing about some of those ancient cultures is that they lived and breathed their revelations to the fullest extent imaginable, something almost impossible to conceive from our modernised world. Without a deep and thorough investigation of their practices we risk underestimating just how far this can go. These cultures built supreme temples on the basis of what they were shown, temples that potentiated and focussed increbible volumes of energy existing in their environment. That is going way beyond ritual, although it exists on the same spectrum. Ritual is a modern psychological term we look back and apply, it hardly captures the full magnificence of what was occurring. Techniques and shamanic/energetic technology is probably a better way of looking at it, in cases on a incomprehensibly grand scale. In many cases, lust for power and a centralisation of esoteric methods in the hands of few led most of these cultures astray eventually. But how they were at the beginning is distant from how they finished up at the end, over the course of many centuries. Depletion of natural resources to build edifices and the veil of secrecy drawn between the elite and the populace were often associated with calamitous natural events that dis-integrated societies and left temples forsaken in the landscape. But they still speak of tremendous committment to a world of deities, energetic manipulation and direct involvement with multifaceted natural forces; to a world of altered and expanded vision that is more than the term entheogen can capture. To look back at these cultures with the proverbial new age etheogenic goggles is to apply a mismatched cultural context. For those people, at that time, it was a different reality, one that we have hidden from ourselves for mysterious reasons today, although it still lives on with potency in many of their sacred sites. Those cultures were living in a different world than the one we inhabit today; one that was animistic, forceful and alive; one in which connecting to the God within would be an unusual and foreign concept, living as they were in worlds where Gods dictated events daily and where the internal was transposed externally and pervaded their lives in the form of art, architecture and cultural customs (which is not to say the experience of God within was unfamiliar to them, or that the awakening experience is not shared between both moderns and ancients, the potential being the same for both). Certainly, many of these cultures became distorted, almost always through the pursuit of power, and certainly malevolent sorcery practices did (and still do) exisit, but that is not the fault of the technology they developed, only in its application. Indeed, we continue the same process ourselves, destroying our world for the sake of power, concentrating power in the hands of only a few; and this, also, is not a function of technology but of man's hunger for power. And in both cases, internal imbalance within the society causes an imbalance in the natural environment often accompanied by extreme climatic events and severe localised (now global) resource depletion (now, also, extreme loss of biodiversity). But some of those cultures show us that balance is not unobtainable and that lust for power can be assuaged; they demonstrate that harmonious cultures can persist in their environment for many, many generations without encountering (or initiating) dis-integrating natural, social or polical forces. That, it would seem, is a question of underlying ideology, often a function of landscape, and is where we should look for inspiration. Finally in many instances, as cultures collapse and new ones emerge, certainly new myths, new temples and new land-use and political systems develop. But "new rituals" is a misnomer, you can't create anything new under the sun; not then, and not now. In this entheogenic modern community, it seems many think of ritual as something fluffy and unnecessary, but "just ritual" is not all that those ancient cultures were doing (nor is it all that is happening where core shamanic practices still exist today) and in many respects to write it all off with the world ritual is an epic failure of understanding the true awesomeness of their practices in an objective sense; it is an academic word that doesn't grasp the facts. In reality, through shamanic technique on a small scale and temple building and topograhical enhancement and manipulation on a grand scale, many of those cultures were projecting and expanding their revelations and ideologies gained from communication with the elements and forces of their local landscape (and plants within that landscape) and the heavens, outward into the external world until it became a coherent living system of belief, of reality, with a mind-boggling potency and profundity whose durability dictated how quickly societies rose and fell. Many of those cultures went almost inconceivably deep into multifaceted and yet navigable internal and external landscapes; and they did that, indeed, with a metaphorical piece of string. Some of them got lost over time in being lured by the power and knowledge they found, while others steered a truer course. And, likewise, what we lose in our own world through a lack of cultural realisation may prove to be distastrous for us as well, but this our choice and now, just as then, the potential is there for balance. *I greatly enjoyed your post ?an and what I have written above is not really about how and whether individuals in our community should use ritual, that is entirely the choice of each individual. Indeed.

2 weeks hunger strike + LSD = Crazy Good luck mate I think what you do is very interesting, look after your self.

lol, no shit, sherlock! are videos of your interactions with people being made? floating a few interesting discussions around youtube and other social media sites might help create a buzz and get your message out

Soooooo HAPPY!!! Cheers Nitro, Awesome Stuff!

Yeah but with crosses like this, there is always the risk of it being a spontaneous self-pollination or a bee-pollination with something else. One plant that has a huuuuuge Potential for intergeneric breedings is Matucana! Everyone who is interested in Crossbreeding should work with them. Hybrids are extremely variable.

Remind me not to piss off a security guard

any info from people looking into this? if you're in the area this would be a brilliant thing to be looking at any info appreciated ;)

Well all you really need is a backyard particle accelerator like mine. They can be hard to hide from the neighbors though. Sorry, I'm digressing. Ok so how about if you had two different salvia clones, and crossed them using the cement powder, that's gotta be worth a try. Also I'm wondering if betel lime would be too strong an alkaline to use (or not). It would certainly create a high pH but may actually burn delicate parts of flowers.

Hi Halcyon, yes this could (theoretically) work with Salvia too but i see problems because Salvia doesnt have such a great genetic pool to begin with. But you never know until you tried so its definately worth the try. Maybe Centipede feels like trying some pollen from other salvia species out too. With cement and without as both could potentially work. Another option would be too create a pollenmix to fertilize it. With this technique you can try out many diffrent types of pollen at once. Saves you lots of time. If the salvia accepts one of the pollen types you mixed, it will set seed. But with this tech, you do not know which species was the one that successfully fertilized the flower.

Dont make me flattered. I´m just working really really hard on this because i dont see myself becoming like 110 yo so i need to get things done in a reasonable amount of time. Also im kinda insane when its about cacti so the mad scientist avatar fits just fine.

I am waiting for some pics when they are done EG! you really are a genius

Will add more info about it in the next days. Maybe i merge it together with the voltraping post and pin it. Will see. I am really really working hard on stuff like this and am in contact with a lot of people who grow cacti for a living. Thats one of the secrets many growers dont like to talk about openly but i want this place to be a wealth of knowledge in the future so im just putting it out there for you to make us proud. If there are intergeneric hybrids to be seen on the internet, i want to see them here first. The pleasure is mine because its great to see you finding this as interesting as myself, guys. Very very welcome guys. Marcel, it should actually work with all plants. Not only cacti. Im sure its being done throughout the big plant businesses. You know, the stuff that no one ever hears about.

Here are some updates. The tip is just starting to pup again. Here is the joined areols. and a profile pic