Armani 2015

You guys want your silly vaccines. I licked every little plastic ball in ever ball pit in every Chunkee Cheese in America and now I have Super Measels but my body produced so many antibodies I can’t physically die

ig: camille_knit

Nagano Mountain, Japan by K MORII

🍃🐂🌿~blessed taurus season~🌿🐂🍃

twiggstudios:  wild garlic focaccia

Incenses, perfumes and cleansings: entheogens in ancient Mediterranean cultures.

It has been said of incense that “its aroma unconsciously stimulate the mind by imitating sexual pheromones” (DM Stoddart,The Scented Ape. Biology and culture of human smell, University of Tasmania, 1990: 261) Some incenses were prepared to exercise a certain effect on the spirit. It was widely believed among philosophers and men of science that some incenses possessed disturbing properties of mind and spirit. Such seems to have been the case of the Kyphi, a psychoactive compound that was used in rites and ceremonies and is mentioned in the Egyptian magic papyri of the Hellenistic era. It is cited by Pedanius Dioscorides (De mat. Med., I, 23) and Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride) Tells us about him in more detail:

“Kyphi is a perfume whose mixture is made up of sixteen species of substances: honey, wine, raisins, sedge, resin, myrrh, rosewood, seseli; mastic, tar, fragrant reed, yellowberry, and, in addition to all that, giant and dwarf juniper (because you already know that there are two species), cardamom and calamus are added. These various ingredients are not mixed at random, but, according to formulas indicated in the holy books, which are read to those who prepare this perfume as they mix the substances that compose it. As for the number sixteen, it seems to have been adopted on purpose, since it is the square and the only one among all whose figure, having all its sides equal, offers a perimeter equal to its area, although this property certainly does not matter to the expected effect. But, since most of these mixed substances have aromatic virtue, a soft and salty breath emerges from them. Under its influences, the state of the air changes, and the body, soft and pleasantly bathed by its emanations, falls into sleep, acquiring an evocative disposition.

 The afflictions and vehemence produced by daily worries are weakened like loosening ties, dissipating without the help of drunkenness to receive daydreams, they are polished and burnished like a mirror. The effect obtained is as purifying as the Pythagoreans achieved by pressing the lyre, before giving themselves up to sleep, thus appeasing and channeling the instinctive and passionate element of their soul. Indeed, the fragrant substances many times revived the fading feeling, and many were also the times that, with their softness, calmed and calmed those who absorbed them by dissolving them in their bodies. The effect caused was similar to that of which some doctors tell us when they affirm that the dream comes when the exhalations of the food extend like climbing around the intestines, when it seems that they are groped gently, determining something similar to a delicate tickling.  The Egyptian Kyphi it is also served as a concoction and as a mixture. They drink it to purify themselves internally and use it as a mixture because of its laxative virtue.”

The psychoactive ingredient in Kyphi is none other than juniper oil, especially Juniperus oxycedrus, which contains an essence similar to tanacetol, with great stimulating and psychoactive potential. Tanacenol, also called thujol, is the main oil component of northern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) and red cedar (Thuja plicata) and is also found in common chrysanthemum (Tanacetum vulgare) or atanasia. Any repertoire of botanical pharmacology will tell us that it is also known as thujol, thuyol, absinthol, thuyone, tanacetol, and tanacetona, making it part of the essential oils of wormwood or artemisia and juniper juniper (Juniperus thurifera). In high doses it is a powerful hallucinogen. Many of the incenses made in the Near East and used in ecstatic celebrations or divination rituals contained, among its ingredients, cedar oil.

In a meticulous and well-documented work that has generally gone largely unnoticed by scholars of entheogens, Godbey (1930: 217 ff) highlighted, almost eighty years ago, the narcotic effect of incenses throughout the next East that he attributed, after studying ancient texts and ethnographic evidence, to the fact that in its composition there were plant extracts such as opium poppy, cannabis, or wormwood, known in some places with the nickname of “santonica”, the plant sammu-ilu that appears in the Akkadian texts of magic and witchcraft, and that used in very small doses produces sensory paralysis, loss of vision and memory, and terrifying hallucinations, while in higher doses it is a powerful poison that can cause death.

It was the plant used by the Greeks in the worship of Artemis-Hekate, from where the name of the genus comes. It was used as a sacred poison in certain religious ordals of the East. Apuleius affirmed that his fumigations drove away demons and some doctors, such as Areteus of Cappadocia, prescribed it against melancholy. Dioscorides himself (De mat, med., III, 129) compares a variety of wormwood or artemisia with divine ambrosia. In later Europe it is a magical plant associated with Saint John’s Eve. According to this same author, another component of incenses was the oil of white cedar, whose effects are very similar, and which was considered a sacred tree in many parts of the ancient Orient. Its use was highly developed in the Mesopotamian pharmacopoeia (G. Contenau, “Drogues de Canaan, d`amurru et jardins botaniques”, Mélanges Syriens offerts a René Dussaud, vol. 1, Paris, 1939, p. 12.) of the incenses that inspired the oracles of the Baru priests in Babylon and the incenses used by the Canaanites and other peoples of the near ancient East.

In this sense, the words of K. Nielsen (Incense in Ancient Israel, Leiden, 1986, p. 30) are highly illustrative: “The fragrance of incense works like a drug which ensures the favorable disposition of the gods towards man. It makes them give positive oracles, it makes them forgive sins. The fragrance of incense purifies the mind of the gods as well as the mind of the man. It is the perfect medium for establishing communication between the divine and the human sphere. “On the other hand, it seems that part of the opposition of the prophets of Yahweh to the incenses used in the Canaanite cults of the” high places “may come from their adversity towards its narcotic effects.

In this regard, the writing by Benny Shanon (”Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis“, Time and Mind: The Journal of Archeology Consciousness and Culture, Volume 1, 1, 2008, pp. 68 ff.) Regarding the incense employed in the Temple of Jerusalem:

"The next case is that of the incense employed in the Temple of Jerusalem (the ktoret, also known as ktoret ha-samim, the incense of drugs). This incense contained a series of ingredients, the identity of most not known to us today. Its recipe was held secret, known only to one priestly family, and with the destruction of the Temple it was lost. The ktoret was used daily in regular temple services, but only once a year was it offered inside the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of the Temple. This was done alone, by the High Priest, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The Talmud narrates that there was a danger the High Priest might not return sound and well, and that therefore a ch ain of fine gold was attached to his robe trailing outside forothers to monitor his well-being. Drawing on a phonological similarity of the word “ktoret” and the Hebrew word for “connectivity,” the Zohar, the great Qabbalistic text, explains that the ktoret established a connection between God and Man …

For quite some time now, it has been suggested that the term ‘cannabis’ is a cognate of the Hebrew term knei bosem, which means fragrant reeds and is indicated as one of the ingredients of the sacred incense employed first in the tabernacle and later in the two temples of Jerusalem … Yet another curious piece of information is encountered in the writings of the first-century Jewish historian Josephus Flavius ​​who mentions that on the miter of the Jewish High Priest there was a golden image of the plant Hyoscyamus. This plant is known to be highly psychoactive.”

According to a recent study by researchers at John Hopkins University and the University of Jerusalem, Boswellia resin, one of the common ingredients of the most famous and widespread of all known incenses (frankincense), is psychoactive and causes several effects on the brain such as relieving anxiety and depression, facilitating spiritual exaltation (A. Moussaieff et al., “Incensole acetate, an incense component, elicits psychoactivity by activating TrpV3 channels in the brain”, The FASEB Journal, 22, 2008, pp. 3024-3034). Goldwork, also recently published in the journal Neuropsychobiology, states that the smell of frankincense can improve cortical activities and inhibit treatment function of the motor response (M. Iijima et al., “Effects of Incense on Brain Function: Evaluation Using Electroencephalograms and Event-Related Potentials”, Neuropsychobiology 2009, 59, pp. 80-86).

Also in the form of perfumes and mists, preparations with somniferous, narcotic, and even hallucinogenic effects could be administered. Dioscorides (De mat. Med., I, 54, 2 and I, 58, 2) already pointed out the somnolent qualities of the scent of saffron and the perfume made with amaracino (Origanum maiorana). Apuleius himself states that certain perfumes can cause a hypnosis-like state to the point of ecstasy:

“Although I must believe Plato when he assures that between the gods and men there are certain divine powers, which serve as intermediaries, by their nature and by the place they occupy, and that such powers govern all manifestations of divination and Miracles performed by magicians. Furthermore, I am intimately convinced that the human soul, especially if it is the pure soul of a child, can, thanks to the attraction exerted by certain songs, or by the unnerving effect of certain perfumes. , reach a state of hypnosis and plunge into ecstasy, to the point of forgetting the surrounding reality. In such a state, having lost the notion of the body in which it resides, it can regain its primitive essence and return to its nature, which without hesitation she is immortal and divine, and thus, immersed in a kind of dream, is capable of foreshadowing the future” (Apology, 43, 2.)

Also in his famous work The Golden Ass, Apuleius alludes to certain soporific vapors that the sorceresses of Thessaly used to cause a deep hypnotic sleep:

"While the guardian you see here was watching over my corpse with all its insight and attention, some old witches tried to snatch my remains; for this purpose they disguised themselves many times and always in vain; not being able to circumvent the activity and vigilance of the guardian, as As a last resort they spread a soporific mist over him, burying him in a deep sleep. Then they began to call me by my name and they didn’t stop screaming until my stiff body and my frozen limbs with lazy effort, began to obey by magic. , this man you see here, was alive, and, dead, he only had the dream. But, as he was my namesake, when hearing his name, without realizing the case, he got up and, advancing like a ghost, he went to hit the door of the room.” (Metamorphosis, II, 30.)

oiaoooa

I saw a baby bun today and I love her!

x x

the girl with rituals

“I came home. I enjoyed my bath. I enjoyed perfuming myself. I knew I was born for this, to do it over and over again, the ritual of the dressing, the perfuming for love, for sensuality. I enjoyed everything sensually”

(Anaïs Nin, from a diary entry featured in Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary; 1939-1947)