Entheogenic use of cannabis
[3] Mexican Native American communities occasionally use cannabis in religious ceremonies by leaving bundles of it on church altars to be consumed by the attendees.
The Vedas also refer to it as a "source of happiness," "joy-giver" and "liberator," [7]and in the Raja Valabba, the gods send hemp to the human race so that they might attain delight, lose fear and have sexual desires.
Yogis or sadhus along with other Hindu mystics have been known to smoke a mixture of cannabis sativa and tobacco in order to enhance meditation.
In Tantric Buddhism, which originated in the Tibeto-Himalayan region, cannabis serves as an important part of a traditional ritual (which may or may not also include sexual intercourse).
By conducting studies, effective public health strategies can be developed and informed policy frameworks be made to address this growing trend.
A Review of Historical Context and Current Research on Cannabis Use in India [9] The sinologist and historian Joseph Needham concluded "the hallucinogenic properties of hemp were common knowledge in Chinese medical and Taoist circles for two millennia or more",[10] and other scholars associated Chinese wu (shamans) with the entheogenic use of cannabis in Central Asian shamanism.
[11] In the mountains of western China, significant traces of THC, the compound responsible for cannabis’ psychoactive effects, have been found in wooden bowls, or braziers, excavated from a 2,500-year-old cemetery.
[13][14]A Taoist priest in the fifth century A.D. wrote in the Ming-I Pieh Lu that: Cannabis is used by necromancers, in combination with ginseng to set forward time in order to reveal future events.
1100 CE) Zhenglei bencao 證類本草 ("Classified Materia Medica"): If taken in excess it produces hallucinations and a staggering gait.
730) dietary therapy book Shiliao bencao 食療本草 ("Nutritional Materia Medica") prescribes daily consumption of cannabis in the following case: "those who wish to see demons should take it (with certain other drugs) for up to a hundred days."
Cannabis has been cultivated in China since Neolithic times, for instance, hemp cords were used to create the characteristic line designs on Yangshao culture pottery).
Some researchers think Chinese associations of cannabis with "indigenous central Asian shamanistic practices" can explain this "peculiar silence".
[8] The botanist Li Hui-lin noted linguistic evidence that the "stupefying effect of the hemp plant was commonly known from extremely early times"; the word ma "cannabis; hemp" has connotations of "numbed; tingling; senseless" (e.g., mamu 麻木 "numb" and mazui 麻醉 "anesthetic; narcotic"), which "apparently derived from the properties of the fruits and leaves, which were used as infusions for medicinal purposes.
[4]Several of the Tarim mummies excavated near Turpan in Xinjiang province of Northwestern China were buried with sacks of cannabis next to their heads.
"[20] The Chinese archaeologist Hongen Jiang and his colleagues excavated a circa 2,400-2,800 BP tomb in northwest China's Turpan Basin and found the remains of an approximately 35-year-old man with Caucasian features who had been buried with thirteen 1-meter cannabis plants, placed diagonally across his chest.
Each frame surrounded a bronze vessel filled with the remains of hemp seeds and stones and were presumably left smoking in the grave.
[24][25] According to Alfred Dunhill (1924), Africans have had a long tradition of smoking hemp in gourd pipes, asserting that by 1884 the King of the Baluka tribe of the Congo had established a "riamba" or hemp-smoking cult in place of fetish-worship.
In a number of countries, it was used to treat tetanus, hydrophobia, delirium tremens, infantile convulsions, neuralgia and other nervous disorders, cholera, menorrhagia, rheumatism, hay fever, asthma, skin diseases, and protracted labor during childbirth.
Originally there were small clubs of hemp smokers, bound by ties of friendship, but these eventually led to the formation of a religious cult.
[32] Herodotus also noted that the Thracians, a people who had intimate contact with the Scythians, introduced the plant to the Dacians where it became popular among a shamanic cult named the Kapnobatai, or "Those Who Walk in the Clouds."
In Egypt, cannabis pollen was recovered from the tomb of Ramesses II, who governed for sixty‐seven years during the 19th dynasty, and several mummies contain trace cannabinoids.
While not technically a religion itself, it is a philosophy that examines the inherent religious nature of man’s interaction with the cannabis plant.
[42]Chris Conrad coined the term Kantheism, which later became Cantheism (alternately spelled Cannatheism), in 1996, to promote sacramental cannabis practices.
Rastafari see cannabis as a sacramental and deeply beneficial plant that is the Tree of Life mentioned in the Bible and quote Revelation 22:2, "... the herb is the healing of the nations."
