About the Datura cult in Southern California:
Posted by entheogenic paths on
At the time of initial European settlement in the late 18th century, the Chumash natives of Southern California numbered about 15,000 people.
Their ancestors occupied the Santa Barbara coastal channel and offshore islands for 8,000 years or more.
At the end of the prehistoric era they became a classic example of a complex and stratified society with affluent food stores, at the level of commanderies on a hunter-gatherer-fisher economic basis.
The worship of the Chumesh differs in some respects from those of other Californian peoples.
The Shoshone tribes of the south used Datura in puberty initiation where the initiates ran in ecstasy or danced the night away while fasting, or while being stung by ants or whipped with nettles.
Since detura decoction produces hallucinations, the Chumesh visionary journey in California did not involve extreme practices of self-torture, mutilation, or living in a place far from civilization.
The Chumesh relied entirely on Datura in their search for supernatural power, while the Yucats also received power from dreams.
To induce dreams, they may warm up and stare at the sun for hours or get up 3-4 times during winter nights to bathe in icy water.
*There is no mention of such customs among the Chumesh in connection with the worship of the Datura.
Usually an expert prepared and served the detour.
He was called in Ventorno alsukayayic 'one of the cause of poisoning', the ethnographers translating into Spanish sometimes turned it into datura givers - Tolo achero.
A coyote or an eagle would give detura in the old days when the animals were still people, probably this is a prehistoric period.
Among the Tachi Yokuts, the giver had to receive the datura first as his dream helper, but among the Chumesh and most other tribes, skill in using the datura seems to have been a primary requirement.
In Ventura there were five old datura givers who gathered to serve the plant and then question the drinker about his visions. There was no fixed number of elders and larger villages usually numbered 12-20 Datura givers.
Datura preparation - and dangers:
The Chumesh attributed different strengths and virtues to different parts of the Datura plant, they used the root because it was the strongest.
Whoever went out to dig Datura roots first purified himself, otherwise he would harm the spirit of Datura and destroy the effectiveness of the medicine.
At the time of digging the root, the natives used to call the Datura spirit Grandmother. Probably because the traditional medicinal use is often served by the mother or grandmother of the detura drinker.
The Chumesh used to abstain from sex, meat and fat for some time before (three days at the Tahi Yokets).
One man claims that the elders knew exactly which root to pluck, a root that was sure to trigger a vision.
To prepare the drink, the Tulu Achero crushed the datura root in a ceremonial mortar and soaked it in cold water.
Sometimes roast the root a little before soaking.
The preparation of Datura required great skill, it is not only hallucinatory but also very poisonous.
A dose sufficient to induce hallucinations has very toxic effects on the body, and the effective entheogenic dose is not far at all from the lethal dose.
The traditional Datura giver had to calculate the dose according to the type of soil in which the plant grew, the age of the plant (Datura is a perennial), the size of the roots and the thickness of the finished brew.
The Yukot and Kitanmuk only drank datura in the winter and early spring, later in the year they thought the plant too strong.
The Chumesh and the Shoshanim from the south drank detura every season, which increased their risk - here the detura giver had to also take into account the time of year when measuring the dose.
Many aspects of this cult, including the transparency of the datura giver in collecting the roots to the drinker's strict observance of taboos, mostly reflect a deep desire not to harm the spirit of the datura.
A scholar named Guyton suggests that the retribution of the Detura spirit stemmed from fear of its lethal potential as well as admiration for its hallucinogenic properties.
The behavior of a person just recovering from detura was erratic and unspeakable, a linguistic reflection of this is the verbal derivative momoyic - 'to be affected by' the same epithet from Chumesh mythology to describe the allied momoy spirit of detura.
I translated only two pages from the following fascinating article-
Share this post
- 0 comment
- Tags: אתנובוטניקה, דטורה, צמחי רעל
