We’ve Always Been High Contextualizing the Entheogenic History of Cannabis

This was initially published in the 12th Issue of Extraction Magazine published in 2019 and is being shared for educational purposes on this blog. Please cite as Bone, CB “We’ve Always Been High: Contextualizing the Entheogenic History of Cannabis.” Extraction Magazine, Jan./Feb. 2020, Volume 3: Issue 12; pp. 8–11.

Cannabis has existed for millennia. The number of cultures embracing the plant is as bountiful as its therapeutic applications. Less recognized, however, are the ancient applications of the plant as an entheogen. Entheogenic substances are psychoactive chemicals used in spiritual/ religious contexts, including lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), ayahuasca, datura, psilocybin, etc. Most contemporary uses of cannabis in the West largely fall outside this spiritual domain despite the historical precedent. However, outside of the Global North, entheogenic drug practices are the norm, as various healers and spiritual practitioners utilize these substances to invoke deeper connections and broader perspectives. [1]

Debates rage on surrounding cannabis’s role as an entheogenic substance. Some critics argue that it’s merely a drug and not a psychedelic or entheogen, while advocates point to the myriad of therapeutic applications and cannabis’s rich historical use within religious and spiritual ceremonies. [2] Such discussions, while lively, miss the point that cannabis, as a ubiquitous cultural artifact across space-time, has the potential to take on all of these values, and will retain different values to different consumers.

This article explores the development of cannabis through its various cultural applications as an entheogenic substance, including the historic and traditional uses of cannabis and hemp products across diverse, global cultures. From Ancient India to the African Continent during the 19th Century, cannabis consumption rituals have been utilized across various spiritual and religious contexts, prior to and alongside its proliferation as a commodity. Understanding cannabis’s value as a cultural artifact is important to navigating renewed interest in the plant as a medical and industrial crop, given the ways culture and consumption practices are recursively informed. [3]

Indian

The earliest recorded evidence of cannabis use as a religious phenomenon comes from the Atharva Veda, a core Hindu text written between 1400-2000 BCE. The Vedas ascribed several properties to the plant including “Joy-Giver”, “Liberator”, and “Source of Happiness”, while culturally, the plant was utilized in ceremonies from weddings to the festival of Diwali. [4] The plant makes appearances throughout the cultural texts and preparations of the plant for religious purposes are well-documented. Furthermore, in Tantric Buddhism, cannabis serves as an important part of a traditional ritual, serving as a catalyst for literal ecstasy, defined as a higher state of enlightenment and connectedness with a higher power. [5]

Cannabis preparations were as diverse as the applications, as scholars continue unearthing more functions of cannabis in ancient India. Preparative techniques are broken down into three main types, each with a distinct cultural legacy and history: bhang; gunjah; charas. [6]

Bhang has its direct roots in the text of the Vedas where it’s described as a preparation of dried cannabis (interpreted to mean leaves, stems, and flowers) in milk or water, often accompanied by black pepper and sugar. Gunjah, most like the cannabis flower we smoke today, referred to dried buds of selectively cultivated female plants. While this practice is often included in rituals, its origins are less clear. The third preparation, charas, is produced from the plant’s resins and can be considered the earliest version of hashish.

China

While cannabis consumption was strictly ordered and well documented in ancient Indian cultures according to religious and social values, hemp medicines in Chinese culture can be traced to more esoteric religious traditions. Some scholars argue that the suppression of traditional religious practices, such as entheogenic cannabis use, and the lack of documentation on their history, is the result of a regional secular turn marked by the rise of Confucianism, which stands at odds with Taoist precepts. [7] Interpretations of ancient Taoist religious texts and traditional Chinese medicine guides have given credence to the idea that cannabis has psychodynamic and hallucinogenic properties that aid in religious practices such as trance meditation and visualization. The extent to which the plant was utilized in such practices compared to more utilitarian applications remains shrouded.

According to Archaeologist Hui-Lin Li, “The use of Cannabis as a hallucinogenic drug by necromancers or magicians is especially notable. In ancient China, as in most early cultures, medicine has its origin in magic. Medicine men were practicing magicians.” [8] Farmers and peasants used hemp-based clothing, and pharmacopeias of the period discuss traditional medical applications. Archeologists discovered a number of wooden Brazzers and burial shrouds from gravesites in China dated to 2500 BCE that had trace amounts of delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) residue, which may evidence cultivation techniques and consumption rituals in line with religious applications alongside the industrial and nutritional purposes of the plant. [9]

The Middle East

A corner of the contemporary my-tho-historical narrative of cannabis involves tales of hash-laced assassins who used the plant resin as part of their cultural practice. [10] Arguably, this narrative was influenced by Orientalist and colonial attitudes of European explorers whose industrial applications of the plant stood at odds with psychoactive applications. This period of cannabis globalization marks a rapid diffusion of styles and practices that depict multicultural entheogenic relationships with cannabis mediated by the influence of various empires. [11]

For example, evidence of the various relationships people had with Cannabis can be found in firsthand accounts from the period, from biblical references of cannabis as a sacrament used by Abraham, to accounts of the Scythians using cannabis in steam baths, and archaeological evidence of Arabs using the plant for fatigue. [12] While many decoctions and applications of cannabis resin are documented within Islamic culture during this period, smoking and consuming hashish as modes of cannabis consumption quickly spread across Earth and stayed a staple in European cannabis circles well into the 21st century. [13]

Africa

Africa arguably has had the greatest impact on the globalization of cannabis as an entheogen. In addition to helping facilitate the spread of the plant to the new world and its eventual commodification, different groups throughout Africa made their own mark on the plant. From the kief-based hashish smoking dens of Morocco to tribal smoking rites south of the Sahara, cannabis can be connected to a myriad of religious groups and practices in ways that complicate traditional narratives of globalization. While the commercial interests in hemp certainly dovetailed with entheogenic applications, the gaps between these two created opportunities for new cultural relationships with the plant that continue to define contemporary attitudes on cannabis.

Important to African cannabis history is the notion that the narratives we have on cannabis consumption in Africa are largely Eurocentric. These narratives are liable to embellishment and conflation in line with the broader colonial attitudes of the period. This is an indomitable broader barrier to authentically understanding some of the entheogenic applications of cannabis, and the impact of these viewpoints has been the marginalization of what consumption rituals across the African continent have contributed to modern consumption rituals.

This view is argued by Chris S. Duval in his cannabis historiography entitled The African Roots of Marijuana. Duval writes:

“African practices were overlooked partly because European writers framed the Levant as where psychoactive cannabis reached its cultural pinnacle. Cannabis consumption in the eastern Mediterranean region included sweet, hashish-based confections with lengthy recipes, such as majun. Edible cannabis concoctions that existed south of the Sahara were overlooked and uncommon anyway. Historical sub-Saharan societies were satisfied with smoking cannabis. Smoking transforms the plant drug as a pharmacological agent; its effects are felt quickly after inhaling, compared with a half-hour or more after eating cannabis-laced food. It is easy for smokers to control dosage but difficult for hashish eaters. Nonetheless, Europeans perceived this preference for smoking as backwardness. ‘Orientals use refined preparations of cannabis resin,’ reported a French traveler in 1889, but Central Africans only smoked “the rustic form” of mixed flowers, leaves, and seeds.” [14]

The Americas

Much of cannabis culture in the Americas is bookended by the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and prohibition era so the idea of a distinctly religious or entheogenic connection to cannabis is difficult. For many slaves, workers, and continental indigenous groups, cannabis was part of a broader folk tradition that encompassed entheogenic applications with wider health and well-being ideals. Indeed, the quintessential experience of smoking a joint can be directly traced through the advent of cannabis in the Americas and how various cultural groups incorporated the plant into their lives. [15] Altogether, these practices helped inform the identities of diaspora groups, and their regulation was part of a broader project of social control that aimed to suppress religious and personal expressions.

This group, composed of enslaved Africans and displaced indigenous groups, inherited and crafted unique plant-people relationships as part of their constructed identity. This is why many advocates for legalization in Latin America have placed a focus on social equity in their crusade and why, “The larger problems related to cannabis stem not from its consumption, but from the (repressive) state responses that persist. It is, therefore, necessary to move ahead with regulatory systems for all uses of the [plant].” [16]

The history of cannabis contains as much medicine and industry as religion. The role of cannabis in new religious movements like Rastafarianism and the Church of Cannabis serves as ample evidence of the historical continuity that cannabis as a cultural artifact with spiritual significance has been able to maintain. Cannabis consumption rituals understood as religious practices should be protected and respected as valuable embodiments of the diverse relationships people have formed with the plant.

Doing so may afford a novel path through regulatory dilemmas that plague countries in the Global North by circumventing questions of recreational and medicinal value. This is significant as these questions are irresolvable. This concept was discussed in a report drafted for the Canadian Government as it prepared to legalize cannabis: “It is only natural that cultural backgrounds obscure answers to scientific questions in regards to [cannabis]. . . Thus ‘the [cannabis] controversy is primarily a political, rather than a scientific debate’ because it pits morals against morals, that are informed by cultural backgrounds.” [17]

Understanding the role of entheogens in crafting drug policy will better position regulators and the public for the liberalization of other entheogens already being realized in North America through the advancement of 3,4-methyl -enedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-based research and psilocybin treatment facilities. Cannabis consumption, whether entheogenic in purpose or not, is better realized in a context that embraces the diversity of more personal and intimate relationships with the plant and its derivative products, from nutritional to spiritual, or recreational to medical.

References

[1] Lott-Schwartz, H. “5 Of the World’s Most MindBending Drug Cultures,” National Geographic, posted 01/25/2019, accessed 12/11/2019.

[2] Brodwin, E. “Some Psychiatrists Think Cannabis Can Be Considered a Psychedelic Drug like Shrooms - Here’s Why,” Business Insider, posted 07/05/2017, accessed 12/11/2019.

[3] Spriggs, M. “High Culture: Reflections on Addiction and Modernity,” Journal of Medical Ethics 2004, volume 30: e11, book review.

[4] Warf, B. “High Points: An Historical Geography of Cannabis”, Geogr Rev, 2014, 104: 414-438.

[5] Parker, R.C., and Lux. “Psychoactive Plants in Tantric Buddhism: Cannabis and Datura Use in IndoTibetan Esoteric Buddhism.” Erowid Buddhism Vaults: Psychoactive Plants in Tantric Buddhism, Erowid Extracts, posted 06/2008, accessed 12/11/2019.

[6] Touw, M. “The religious and medicinal uses of Cannabis in China, India and Tibet”, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 1981, 13(1): 23-34.

[7] Clarke, R. and Merlin, M. Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany. 2013, University of California Press.

[8] Li, H. “An Archaeological and Historical Account of Cannabis in China”, Economic Botany, 1974, Volume 28.4: Pages 437-448.

[9] Donahue, M. “Earliest Evidence for Cannabis Smoking Discovered in Ancient Tombs.” National Geographic, posted 06/12/2019, accessed 12/11/2019.

[10] Daftary, F. The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma’ills, 1974, I.B.Tarius, London.

[11] Zuardi, A. “History of Cannabis as a Medicine: a Review.” Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria, 2006, Vol.28(2): 153-157. [journal impact factor = 1.593; cited by 199]

[12] Nahas G. “Hashish in Islam: 9th Century to 18th Century”, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 1982, 58(9): 814-831.

[13] Cannoli, F. “Hashishin ‘Users/Eaters of Hashish’ Words by Frenchy”, Weed World Magazine, uploaded 04/03/2019, accessed 12/09/2019.

[14] Duval, C. The African Roots of Marijuana, 2019, Duke University Press, Durham and London. [15] Chasteen, J. Getting high: marijuana through the ages, 2016, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham.

[16] Corda, A. and Fusero, M. “Cannabis in Latin America and the Caribbean: From Punishment to Regulation,” Drug Policy Briefing 48, Transnational Institute, September 2016.

[17] Spicer, L. “Historical and Cultural uses of Cannabis and The Canadian Marijuana Clash,” Report for the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, Library of Parliament. April 2002.