• Shinji_Ikari [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    11 months ago

    I think some context is lost here, is the plant the culture, or the ritual surrounding the plant?

    Catholicism uses wine in a ritual form in a very integral part of the religion, but wine itself is naturally occurring when you forget about your berries in the jar.

    If these people were going around performing the entire native ritual in some commodified way, it’d be 1000x more horrifying than tech bros wanting to get loopy.

    • Kynuck97 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      According the the person interviewed in the article, it is the plant, and the chemical itself.

      Creating synthetic mescaline in a lab or growing peyote in a greenhouse is a violation of natural law, and interrupts the unique symbiotic relationship with the plant. “What western scientists call mescaline is for us the essence of the medicine,” said Jones. “It is the soul of it and what makes it holy.”

      There’s definitely a branch of “Psychonauts” that want to engage in the whole ritual practice (See all these psychedelic retreats/therapies/ayauasca “experiences”), but it sounds like many of them don’t want the chemical commodified at all either.