tobacco and lime combined

[friendly]

I've been reading up on Maya ritual and culture and have found it recorded that they would take powdered green tobacco mixed with calcinated snail shells from the jungle and put it this mixture between the cheek and gum, the same as coca is used further south.

They say it relieves fatigue, eases pain, gets you very intoxicated and acts similarly to coca, According to "Maya Ritual and Religion" by J.E.S. Thompson.

[bandario]

I've been reading up on Maya ritual and culture and have found it recorded that they would take powdered green tobacco mixed with calcinated snail shells from the jungle and put it this mixture between the cheek and gum, the same as coca is used further south.

They say it relieves fatigue, eases pain, gets you very intoxicated and acts similarly to coca, According to "Maya Ritual and Religion" by J.E.S. Thompson.

In India people put lime paste onto raw tabacco and stick it between their lip and gums as a quid.

I tried it whilst I was over there but the giant hole burning in my gum freaked me out too much to notice anything else. Seems like a quick route to mouth cancer.

[Teotzlcoatl]

You'll get sick if you use too much...

...and if you don't have a tolerace to niotine.

I wouldn't try it... It's just nicotine, nothing special.

[AndyAmine.]

Thats not true Teotz, there are plenty of reports of mild trance/psychedelic and spiritual experiences using tobacco, particularly Mapacho liquid through the nose.

This practice is common in some parts of the amazon in conjunction with Ayahuasca.

Edited August 14, 2008 by AndyAmine.

[hebrew]

tobacco is more than just nicotine it is a powerful medicine, i would call myself a tobaquero in some ways, green tobacco as friendly mentions is quite good there are lots of ways to prepare tobacco for chew, i have not added snail shells but have worked with other base additives.

tobacco can be very psychedelic i find chewing to be a great way of administrating tobacco and singado liquid tobacco drunk through the nose is a whole other kettle of fish to any other way of tobacco use. singado is a vital part of san pedro ceremonies in north coastal peru.

there are many ways to prepare singado, with many different additives to it as well

most san pedro singado consists of san pedro brew, perfumes like agua de florida kananga water sometime tabu perfume, rum and sometimes other magical substances.

that will be guaranteed to blow you head apart.

often with ayahuasca a water singa would be drunk before and throughout the ceremonies.

for more information about tobacco and its use in south america there is a great book by wilbert on the subject well worth the read if this subject interests you.

often green tobacco is hung up above the fireplace to dry where the leaves would be ground and mixed with ash for snuff or for a wet snuff placed on the gums mapacho is the tobacco mainly used for this, yummy my mouth waters at the thought

Edited August 14, 2008 by VelvetSiren

[incognito]

its true! ive seen the man drink tobacco through his nose with my own two eyes!

i would like to try this during a cactus drink myself.

have u had much experience using pituri VS?

what are ur thoughts of its potential as an entheogen?

by the way you rock.

[hebrew]

hey mate well pituri is an entheogen already i do not really understand your question pituri is an important plant its a sacred medicine.

i really enjoyed the pituri at ega and sadly lost my bag i was given at ega

[Vertmorpheus]

What do we think would work better... big rainforest snail shells, recently vacated, or old much leached n bleached inland river shells from lil molluscs? The inland ones, more calcium and less other things? Suggestions appreciated.

Baccy either green or cured with ash hits the spot sometimes... not something I do often as it's probably too enjoyable in a way. Never used shells , I tried different woodashes and now its either dead but still attached flooded gum branch or Bloodwood (corymbia) of the same kind of stage... cooked cool and with plenty of air but a little "restriction", leaves a lovely white superfine ash... the bloodwood is a bit less alkaline than the flooded gum, but tastes much much better and usually gives a finer softer ash.I tried a few kinds of wattle but almost all were just far too strong, very very soapy and metallic (granitic soils around here). Would be the shit for the serious devotee I guess but I like the sweet softness of bloodwood.

Bloodwood is very effective, but I reckon only JUST as much as it needs to be... I find a fine dusting of plant matter is usually all it takes, but if I want some made to order I'll dry the plant matter (mostly, just break it spirit so to speak) and shred it a bit, trying not to bruise it too much in the process. Then, add a small dash of ash (i start at a big pinch per half cup, say), mix gently around with your finger, until its evenly dispersed and coating the plant bits, keep adding pinches until basically its evenly coated and you can still see it the details of the leaf or whatever, but its uniformly grey-white. Guess that'd all vary with taste and temperament but it works for me. Then add a drop of water, stir about evenly, repeat until its all just damp enough to mould and hold a shape... pack it down into the corner of the container, whatever you use. Should have a clean limey smell, lil else. Next day, half the limey smell is usually replaced by a sweetish smell... green sweet lucerne smell... and the water is usually all gone. Break it up, fluff it up gently, rewet, let it sit again... usually the 2nd or 3rd day the sweet green smell gives way to a more neutral herb spice smell with an... MSG edge? Kind of like the white salty plums, lol. If using brown plant matter, I find adding a bit of an excess of ash AND a sacrificial dry green plant matter component helps... seems if it cant do something with the chlorophyll it makes a meal of your alks instead, or so it seems on my planet. Wrapping in green leaf can work too. I'd have a standard ash to leaf ratio but it varies depending on how fine the ash came out, how strong I've found that batch to be, etc... more of a feel thing.

Never "tripped" off tobacco in the cartoon sense, but then I've rarely tripped like that off anything much... but it certainly can make the day to day fade into the background and the big picture become a lil clearer... to me its the mental equivalent of slapping a dodgy computer monitor, I guess. Doesnt change or make a picture, it just improves the view. But then I was stupid enough to start smoking as a kid (what adult would start, though, the bastards) and as such I am sure a lot of the magic is lost on me, a non smoker or a reformed smoker would get more out of it. I found it really helpful with a frustrating visit to a hawaiian rose farm, once. Otherwise I like it on long quiet bumbling walks (dont chew at it, just holding it seems enough) or just while having a quiet sit. Oddly enough if I start sitting and try to go walking, it can get a bit much, but if I start off walking and keep walking, I just want to keep walking and feel a bit antsy if I stop. Seems to help being warmed up first somehow.

A mate went to the US, while there he tried some of that Dip stuff... hes never smoked, bit of a health nut and is superfit, reckons he was rolling around on the beach making deals with god and all that to just let it wear off for about an hour and then spent two days in bed.

A few other things benefit from an occasional ashing too but the results can be a lil confronting, haha.

VM

[Monk]

Do you guys ever use the ash curing method to prepare material for pyrolization? Gonna have a bunch of Mucuna leaves ready here pretty soon... Sounds like a great way to get rid of the chlorophyl harshness quicker than sweating, curing, aging etc., no?

[Vertmorpheus]

No, I just smoke the shit sometimes It does take the green meanies out of the taste but it does replace it with a limey brick dust kinda taste. Guess its a matter of preference. For hellishly green n grassy material it would probably take longer time and more ash/water routines before youd taken most of it out... even then I'm not sure if its after the chloro or its just reacting with acids n sugars etc and its taken out as collateral... someone more sci minded could tell you I'm sure.

I find ashing works well for quidding or smoking (though must remember youd be lunging back on more fine particles nd radioactive whatnots) but watch it via smoking, it can make some things much much more readily apparent! I use this method with solanaceaous things (thus far tob, brug, brun, petunia) and did a few recent tests with some Cyperus rotunda seed head material... nothing green for it to play with there but it does seem to halve the time it takes to affect you, halve the duaration and double the sensation... whether thats a purely chemical thing or just the added kinda inert material slowed burn rate, who knows. But it seemed to help. A combo of brunfelsia g dry but not cured leaf and cyperus made as a quidding material came out very nicely indeed... quid a pinch, smoke a pinch, there ya go. Next test is going to be some minty lions tail.

Depending on where youare FM, you should be able to find some feral eucalypts n wattles to play with... apparently Florida is lousey with em? So I hear anyway.

VM

[Monk]

Hehe, did you forget me already, gd? I guess I've been neglecting my ozzie friends a bit for the nook I did move, but just far north. Now I'm up in the pacific northwest of the states. Not as good as Calif for cacti, but it's the land of the fungi Also, not many Eucs up here like down in cali, but maybe I'll try some maple ash.

Thanks for the response. Pretty much exactly what I needed to know. Hopefully, I'll get something worth reporting from my Mucuna bioassays. They're growing fast as hell right now!

[t st tantra]

vert,really enjoy your observational narratives,youre good at it imo.

do you think actives come through in the ash?

should we try using psychoactives for making ash?

some tribes clean up the ash by leaching the salts out and using them.

t s t .

[hebrew]

thats really interesting what you say there VM bloodwood ay, i think shells will make a stronger lime the ones found in the river would be stronger i feel but i dont know havent done any work with that yet.

[incognito]

was kind of wondering what ur experiences with pituri have been VS, i know the word 'potential ' isnt really applicable to pituri. Was asking as there doesnt seem to be a hell of alot of people out there experienced in pituri usage , and was looking forward to any insight of its usage by yourself!

[Vertmorpheus]

I think the use of river reds etc has something to do with mineral accumulation... the "crunchier" the wood, the more alkaline it typically comes out... salinity, etc... the corymbia I prefer is growing in what used to be riverline, but probably not for 40 years now, and it gets a good soaking and flushing every time it rains (cops a lot of overland flow and leaching from exposed granitic gear up the slope). I know things I can use to make a more salty alkaline ash, like the wattle, but I find I'd rather use twice the plant matter than have a horrible soapy tangy burning in my mouth that I think si the fats being rendered out of my gob, haha. Guess its a matter of straights and roundabouts. I guess thats why people get into the river gums (which is what my flooded gums are anyway, really, just a lil positionally embarassed) and mallees, other superhard things from mineral rich areas.

I don't find (getting back to FM, yes I do remember you, just had no idea where the fuck you were these days haha) that what I do is a particularly great method for "curing" things at least not on the time spans I do it... there tends to be with some things a blackening/browning and others a chlorotic yellowing, but I find if I let it "cook" too long the effects could be described as smoking one crumb of blonde hash thru a yong, ie it hits the spot but is gone almost instantly and bulk side effects (as a typical outcome, i mean, things vary), whereas I aim to use it at the "midpoint" to get the best balance of effects. I reckon if you let it run quite a while it would maybe help cure things off but then maybe no more than the salt water ferment techs for tobacco that haveb een around for donkeys yonks. it certainly won't turn bright green into leathery brown in a few days IME (but might with heaps of extra ash, don't know) but then most things I've done it with I've harvested when in an N depleted state anyway. An important part I find is to be gentle with plant matter til you have the ash n water in place, then pack the hell out of it... all those juicy plant goodies are held onto as long as possible til they can party on with the ash, rather than just getting stuck to the fingers.

Not very precise I know. Practice and smell are good tools.

Tst, don't know about alks coming thru... I guess anyhting that could survive being slowly and gently toasted to death at a few hundred degrees at least, might have a chance, but then ash is a pretty much what you have left when everything else has been taken out of it. I have found that some wattles when used as a primary stove fuel tend to leave very storax-like deposits inside the firebox, but thats just whats evolved from the wood I spose. I do know that the incense resin I get from the bloodwoods has a very distinctive aroma that is completely absent from the ash, it comes out just smelling like you have readymix cement on your fingers, really, but "softer" on the nose. Whereas the hard wattle ashes are caustic enough that you get a noticeable exothermia going on if you use em to richly to treat too much plant in too large a volume (ie, will happily get a 1 litre glass container noticeably warm to the touch, if you over do things).

Washing ashes... I sometimes make charcoal for forge work (very cathartic) and thats basically the opposite process to making good ash... you want heaps of fuel and very little heat or air, just slowly carbonise the whole load from one end to the other, unlike ash which is fast and airy... andyou never quench a charcoal cook if you plan on using the coal for fuel, as it will spit and hiss and crackle from all the potassium and calcium etc that has suddenly ended up back in the matrix of the charcoal (my understanding, anyway) and so as you heat it, it explodes and sometimes with enough force to send red hot embers shooting around a fair distance... wattle DOES make a kickarse forge fuel, and I find that if a load of that has to be quenched (going out at short notice, etc) then in addition to the char sucking, there will often be white-blue slag formed around the lower intake holes (tiny things, think a 44 gallon drum with about a dozen whacks from a screwdriver)... I put it on some plants and they responded to it like potassium but took em awhile. Other time I did that, I used dam water (our dam water has bullshit high sulfur content, seems to help aromatic plants reach their peak too) and the slag acted like potassium, but was much more quickly taken up... I assumed because it was more on the sulphate side?

Ashes are sometimes made for treating plant matter and sometimes made as medicines themselves, to bulk out ochre, use as a dip for food like salt, etc. So I guess there'd be all different ways to make em depending on what you want em for. Anything for the skin or used internally my first thought would be youd want it as clean and neutral as possible (and its not like you cant use the salts removed for other things too, doesn't need to go to waste).

VM

[friendly]

The book mentioned "...snails from the jungle..."

[friendly]

The day after using tobacco laced yopo snuff, the craving for more was more intense than any craving I had ever experienced.

I attribute this to the tobacco. It has a very powerful call.