I’ll phase out the initiatory speech, as I have already talked about the book, and not here to blow it out of proportion but it’s been a few months more of production on this manifesto, and i’m ready to slice up another preview. The other info is here Mind Expansion. I don’t care if you buy it when I self release it, just keep an open mind about it, and tell your tribe, your friends, or your grandpa.
Lighting Up
If the Vikings did learn the art of smoking, what part of the world did they yearn the practice from? There are not clear ‘Viking pipes’ but many many tools that resemble pipes or could be used as smoking apparatuses. What did they use to smoke their herbs? Were these a form of social ritual? What did they smoke if so?These questions only supply soft answers because of the rarity to almost nil accounts of smoking use in the North. We would imagine they might have use the most realistic natural objects that they had access to; hollowed out bones, ram and other livestock horns, rolled leaves. One can picture an eleventh century wayfarer perhaps collecting some nightshade plants in his or her pouch and smoking them through one end of a goat horn like a pipe. But traditionally seen in the North, especially Finland is the communal fire sitting, in which the tribe would sit around. If there were any local plants making medicinal smoke, they would have picked up on it, and of course been privy to it’s effects. The burning of the Cannabis or Sage plants for instance.
Herbs, plants, mushrooms, and lichens, whether drunk, ingested, rubbed, inhaled, smoked, or salved have been communicators with their own inhabiting spirit for time immemorial. The user who endeavors towards their use is not merely a partaker, but a dedicant of the ally within the substance itself. A communion takes place, where verbal language and understanding is transgressed, and a link with the secretive, runa, of the plant, or fungus is opened up to allow the participant to experience places beyond their own domain, unconscious ‘murkier’ and latent states of the mind, visions and sensual awareness of elves, dwarves, and the Gods and Goddesses themselves. Pictures are revealed which were never discerned before, sounds become audial that others are unable to hear, and the spirit is enlivened to a new partition of the entirely of themSelves. Through the ally of plants one gains a deeper understanding of the sacred and spiritual cosmos.
VIKING LSD
When the Vikings started to till the land and grow crops, a mongst them were different types of cereals, like rye, wheat, oats, barley and grasses. We see from the map of archaeological plant finds around Norway, that remains of these plants were found from Viking age, from growing. They were not only found naturally, but propagated where the weather was good.In good seasons they had excess, and this lead to the storage of their grains and cereals, probably in root cellars. A stone age style of storage shed built into or below the earth for root vegetables, and keeping grains, or perhaps they had special outbuildings constructed for this purpose. Either would serve the purpose of holding the extra crops through the winter and perhaps for several seasons to use when the harvest was not as successful. But these shelters were not perfect, and when the rains came, sometimes the stock would become moist or soaked with the water and then naturally soak, ferment, and decay. On the fruiting bodies of the cereals grew a type of parasitic fungi called ergot. The fungus resembles a small black mushroom, and when fully infected on the grains will contain the highest doses of ergotamine. The fungus bio-synthesizes the alkaloidal concentrations of the chemicals, and it is the lysergic acid diethylamide 25 that is within the ergot itself. LSD. Interestingly, the infected grain affects the cattle, and is resultful cause of bovine tremors. As well as gangrene in high toxic amounts. In the myths it is spoken of some of the men, so ugly, that no woman would want them, and angry cows. I’m not saying this is the reason, but perhaps a contributor. The claviceps ergot usually grows when there are extremely cold winters, followed by rainy summers, typical Icelandic and Scandinavian weather conditions. In sacred scriptures of the world, and ancient mythical texts there are described epiphenomena that are not indifferent to religious and mystical experiences from LSD from a variety of users. Does this mean Vikings had LSD within their stale gruels, and could it have contributed to the mythological stories or sagas? Beyond this, did they continue to use it, or quickly figure out how to preserve their crops better. I can’t be certain, but it is true that it would have been present.
Ergot (Claviceps purpurea)
This fungus retained steady use by Norse brewers, and was also used accidentally in the gruels served to their bog sacrifices, or thralls. Buried bodies found in peat bogs have contained the fungus in the guts.
One in charge of such of an apothecium substance for beer would have not only been the brewer, healer or Priest but the Shaman, as he or she would serve the medium between the physical and spiritual worlds. Transcending the mere human boundaries, and giving it its entheogenic properties, entheogen meaning ‘creating the God within’.
.EFFECTS.
“Convulsive ergotism”: Contains some of the similar chemical compounds as LSD, and can yield vivid visions and ecstatic trancelike dancing.
“Gangrenous ergotism”: sensation of burning limbs called St. Anthony’s Fire, pain in the gut, or death.
Kaleidoscopic arrays of rainbow color, hallucinations of a vibrating dimension of light and and sound. Trancelike ritual dancing.
(I’ll write one more of these now that i’m in good connection with the interwebs, but wait until later in December, it will be about Viking hemp)
:aferalspirit: 