LJ Idol Season 9 Week 16 - The World, Friend, Within the Whirlwind
o/` "You and I the whole day long
Can't you hear it, rising spirit
It's like a wild violin,
You try to lose it, in the music
Of the moment that you're in." o/`
-- "Blue Sky Riding Song" performed by Martin Michael Murphey
A friend, seeking to put me at ease regarding my newly diagnosed epilepsy, introduced me to the peyote ceremony and its place as a religious touchstone to the plant world. It's not a world commonly open to outsiders; Ben Smiley, who was Hopi, had an elderly relative on the Ute reservation who served as one of the community's last medicine men. For Ben (who was his favorite and who alone among those of the younger generation desired to learn the older ways), he agreed.
It's not at all as most imagine and you should probably ignore the bizarre accounts written in places such as Erowid. Living as we did on the high plateaus bordering the mountain deserts below, peyote grew plentifully in the wild. The dried form, called a mescal, our medicine man informed me, was more potent and it was this form of the plant he would be using.
I don't honestly understand why anyone would want to use this plant recreationally without the guidance of a seasoned medicine man. I remember stripping and entering a deerskin lodge built for the purpose of sweating away impurities. Sage infused water was sprinkled over hot rocks and occasionally a soaked branch laid across them. I had neither eaten nor drunk for a day prior to coming to him and after the first few minutes the whole experience took on an air of surreal disconnection. The medicine man laid a large peyote on a small stone altar set beside the fire for the purpose. To this he sang while making offerings of cornmeal to the four directions and ending with a dusting of corn pollen. An assistant greased my skin --- all of it --- and the medicine man dusted me with corn pollen. Afterward, he wet what was left into a paste and with his thumb smudged a mark on each forehead.
These are the last clear actions in my memory. I remember looking at the cactus and thinking it had begun throbbing in time with the blood through my veins which hummed in counterpoint with the medicine man's chants. He motioned me to open my mouth and bestowed upon me a small button, much as a Christian priest might a sacrament. You have to chew it and let the juices absorb through the membranes in your mouth; it tasted acid and bitter, green and withered, like death and life. They don't tell you that the first action of peyote is a massive systemic purge. I was being turned inside out, reborn with my organs raw and bleeding on the outside and the bones eaten by hungry shadows. It took a few minutes and it took an eternity but eventually I became suffused with a sense of well being, of balance and harmony. I took root, grew new skin and bones.
The ceremony did not cure my epilepsy (it was not designed to do so) but it did leave me with a new sense of the sacred and a lasting connection with plants. They speak to me even now and I know their needs better than any master gardener. This, then, is the reason my garden thrives where others have failed. Even though I live in Florida, I keep in touch with the cacti. They throng a desk near the window and crowd one another in seeking my attention. I maintain at least two species of peyote; they are small but powerful and most out here would never recognize them as such. I do not eat them; it is enough to have them close by and to hear their whispers.
Outside, guarding my Wiccan circle where the family holds rites according to the Wheel of the Year, the poisonous ones guard us from harm. I dance with datura. Datura sings in delicate iridescent soap bubbles which chime as they expire in the sunlight. Always, always it's a line between beauty and death but as long as I can hear them, I can find my way back and be renewed each time.
Can't you hear it, rising spirit
It's like a wild violin,
You try to lose it, in the music
Of the moment that you're in." o/`
-- "Blue Sky Riding Song" performed by Martin Michael Murphey
A friend, seeking to put me at ease regarding my newly diagnosed epilepsy, introduced me to the peyote ceremony and its place as a religious touchstone to the plant world. It's not a world commonly open to outsiders; Ben Smiley, who was Hopi, had an elderly relative on the Ute reservation who served as one of the community's last medicine men. For Ben (who was his favorite and who alone among those of the younger generation desired to learn the older ways), he agreed.
It's not at all as most imagine and you should probably ignore the bizarre accounts written in places such as Erowid. Living as we did on the high plateaus bordering the mountain deserts below, peyote grew plentifully in the wild. The dried form, called a mescal, our medicine man informed me, was more potent and it was this form of the plant he would be using.
I don't honestly understand why anyone would want to use this plant recreationally without the guidance of a seasoned medicine man. I remember stripping and entering a deerskin lodge built for the purpose of sweating away impurities. Sage infused water was sprinkled over hot rocks and occasionally a soaked branch laid across them. I had neither eaten nor drunk for a day prior to coming to him and after the first few minutes the whole experience took on an air of surreal disconnection. The medicine man laid a large peyote on a small stone altar set beside the fire for the purpose. To this he sang while making offerings of cornmeal to the four directions and ending with a dusting of corn pollen. An assistant greased my skin --- all of it --- and the medicine man dusted me with corn pollen. Afterward, he wet what was left into a paste and with his thumb smudged a mark on each forehead.
These are the last clear actions in my memory. I remember looking at the cactus and thinking it had begun throbbing in time with the blood through my veins which hummed in counterpoint with the medicine man's chants. He motioned me to open my mouth and bestowed upon me a small button, much as a Christian priest might a sacrament. You have to chew it and let the juices absorb through the membranes in your mouth; it tasted acid and bitter, green and withered, like death and life. They don't tell you that the first action of peyote is a massive systemic purge. I was being turned inside out, reborn with my organs raw and bleeding on the outside and the bones eaten by hungry shadows. It took a few minutes and it took an eternity but eventually I became suffused with a sense of well being, of balance and harmony. I took root, grew new skin and bones.
The ceremony did not cure my epilepsy (it was not designed to do so) but it did leave me with a new sense of the sacred and a lasting connection with plants. They speak to me even now and I know their needs better than any master gardener. This, then, is the reason my garden thrives where others have failed. Even though I live in Florida, I keep in touch with the cacti. They throng a desk near the window and crowd one another in seeking my attention. I maintain at least two species of peyote; they are small but powerful and most out here would never recognize them as such. I do not eat them; it is enough to have them close by and to hear their whispers.
Outside, guarding my Wiccan circle where the family holds rites according to the Wheel of the Year, the poisonous ones guard us from harm. I dance with datura. Datura sings in delicate iridescent soap bubbles which chime as they expire in the sunlight. Always, always it's a line between beauty and death but as long as I can hear them, I can find my way back and be renewed each time.