Marching at the Speed of Light

A Trip Report

I have a history of growing and collecting unusual forms of entheogenic life. For a period of time, I had a formidable collection. Amongst the plants in my green room were:

Several strains of Banisteriopsis Caapi (the Ayahuasca plant)
Psychotria Viridis - A DMT candidate, traditionally used in Ayahuasca brews
Mimosa Hostillis - Another DMT candidate, used in modern DMT extractions
Various Psilocybinic mushrooms.
Lophophora Williamsii (You may know it as Peyote)
A miriade of different mescaline-containing cacti of the genus Echinopsis, some rare mutations and forms.
Iboga Tabernanthe - A powerful west-African psychedelic, sometimes used in upper-class clinics in the west for its ability to reset opiate receptors.
Ariocarpus fissuratus - “false” peyote. A beautiful, ancient cactus. Psychoactive in its own right as a deleriant
Yerba Mate - a caffeine containing plant native to South America, used by indigenous Guaraní and Tupi communities. ^☩
Bacopa Monnieri and Ashwaganda - Ayurvedic herbs used in ancient Indian medicine
Sinicuichi - An odd cryogen containing plant, mentioned on ancient Aztec artworks
Datura Stramonium - Known as Jimson Weed. A powerful deleriant.
Morning Glory (Little known fact. Morning Glory seeds contain LSA, a compound very similar to LSD)
Nicotiana Rustica - A powerful species of tobacco used in ayahuasca ceremonies
St. John’s Wort - A western herb with anti-depressant MAOI effects
Kanna - An adorable little African succulent containing SSRI compounds. Useful in treating depressive symptoms.

and

Salvia Divinorum ^†

Who, out of all of my plants, I have been the failed caretaker of more than any others. I have grown, lost, and regrown so many Salvia plants, that I have come to believe that the plant should be made illegal simply to save it from my wretched hands.

I no longer collect new entheogenic specimens^☥, but I look back fondly at this odd little stint of my life, and more than any of the other plants, I have been re-drawn over and over to the power and mystery of this sage de la pastora.

Recently, a good friend and likeminded compatriate of medicinal herbs, having familiarity with my history with the divine sage, surprised me with a gift of a rooted cutting of her Salvia Divinorum. It was such a powerful and unexpected gift that I didn’t know quite how to respond, but I did set out with intent to keep this one alive.

Unfortunately, this would not be a long-lived quest.

Upon returning home from a five-day long retreat, and despite my best attempts to leave copious amounts of water in the dish before leaving, I found her wilting in such a way as to be completely unreconcilable. She stopped drinking altogether, and ceased consciousness, surely passing onto that land that she has helped me to be so familiar with.

I was immediatelly distraught, but remembered to stay detached. My partner likes to remind me: ‘From dust we came, and to dust we return’, and I kept this in mind and heart as I listened over the next several days for what should be the next steps to take with the remains of my wayward passing stowee.

I mentioned that I have a history with Salvia. It’s true that I have grown it many times, and even once from seed^ȸ, but I had never before taken it orally.

My experiences smoking Salvia with a butane torch in the past left me with some amount of serious psychological trauma that lasted a decade. This isn’t an uncommon experience with smoked Salvia, as users frequently report difficult, lifechanging trips, that leave them shaken to their core.

Unlike other psychedelic experiences, Salvia didn’t feel like a drug. Other substances tend to distort, overlay, filter, compress, and apply all sorts of mutations to the usual state of our experience. Even smoked DMT feels like increasing the frequency of consciousness by applying a mutation to our experience. Salvia on the other hand, felt like a button in the universe that, when pressed, physically opens up the curtain of reality. It shows us truths that we intentionally forgot in order to exist. It shows us that every single thing in this universe is based on a single lie that we accepted so that we can manifest here as fleshy flesh beasts.

It’s physical. It’s raw. It doesn’t feel so much like a mutation of experience as it does you realizing that everything you’ve ever looked at your entire life is actually something very different than you realized. It’s alive, it’s crawling. It’s breathing. It’s flesh, and it’s all really very familiar.

and it’s You. As they say.

There are other examples of the Salvia experience being seen in disparate places unrelated to smoking a drug. Look hard enough, and you’ll find the near-death-experience report of an individual driving down a road, being crushed in a car accident, experiencing a classic Salvia experience without ever using it, and then being reverted back in time to a reality where the crash never occurred.

What I’m saying is, maybe there’s more ways to think about this than just chlorophyl and chemicals. Maybe, just maybe, the archetypical images seen on Salvia Divinorum and other near-death experiences, are the consequence of stepping beyond the veil. Maybe there are things seen in this state that our existence as bicameral hominids explicitely excluded from our experience in order for us to be able to exist.

Or maybe we’re just trippin’ balls mate.

I’ll let you decide, or not decide.

As an aside, For those familiar with Salvia:

The wheel, the zipper, the jester entity holding the wheel. Bhavacakra. Sahasrara. Mara.

Some food for thought for the curious. I invite you to explore these connections. Who knows, it might just open up a gateway to a new perspective.

Now, given this massive backstory, we’re ready to talk about my experience.

There is a voice within me that I listen to. It is like a guiding hand. It speaks in pulls and presses, rather than words. Some may call it intuition. Others call it spirit, or God. Some say it is their gut. I think it probably feels a little different to everyone.

It’s not something I always listened to, howevever these days it guides much of what I do. After my Salvia died, I asked the voice a question I feared the answer to.

“Should I use the leaves?”

I feared the answer, because the last times that I’d used Salvia a decade ago, I was left with deep mental scars. Much needed ones, (as I didn’t have a healthy relationship with substances at the time, and the kick in my ass turned out to be just what I needed.), but still, painful enough to deeply fear Salvia’s power.

The idea that at any moment, the small quantum people that make up our reality could simply sweep me away was.. unnerving.

☩ Now colonized, and located conveniently in your local supermarket. ‧͙⁺˚･༓‧͙⁺˚･༓𓊝

† I will note that I did NOT grow cannabis, as my partner at the time was anxious that it was too smelly and visible to guests, and the plant was not yet legal to grow in the state of New York.

☥ After all of these years, and particularly after owning one specific cat who loved to destroy rare entheogenic specimens, my collection now consists of only a handul of psychedelic cacti(strangely perfectly legal in the United States, as they’re a common garden plant)

ȸ Even amongst Salvia collectors, it is not commonly known that Salvia can in fact be grown from seed. It’s rare, as the plant self-propagates almost entirely from cuttings, however in rare conditions, when the stars are aligned just right and a large faux-Jamaican racist crab sings lulling calypso love songs just beneath the veil, it is possible for the plant to be coerced into pollinating and producing viable seeds. I was able to obtain some of these rare seeds, and felt a strong sense of gratitude in being bestowed the role of guiding these new genetics into the species through their offspring. You can imagine my anguish after losing them all in a tragically avoidable cat-piss incident.