Visionary Plant Consciousness: The Shamanic Teachings of the Plant World edited by J. P. Harpignies. Philadelphia, PA: Park Street Press, 2007. Biblio.; illus.; 224 pp.; 6”x 9”; $16.95 (paper).

Reviewed by Timothy White. Reprinted from Shaman's Drum, Number 74.

In Visionary Plant Consciousness: The Shamanic Teachings of the Plant World, ecological activist and editor J. P. Harpignies has gathered a sampling of thought-provoking presentations and roundtable discussions recorded from 1990 to 2004 at the annual Bioneers Conference—a gathering of environmental and social pioneers dedicated to finding practical and visionary solutions for restoring the ecological health of life on Earth. The revolutionary thesis championed in this collection is that the survival of life on this planet has been sorely endangered by our materialistic overexploitation of nature, and that the best hope for recovering our respectful place within the web of life may be found through the responsible use of certain psychoactive plants—those teacher plants that have guided indigenous shamanic cultures for millennia. A related, secondary theme is that, since these plants may hold the key to our healing and survival, the Western world desperately needs to decriminalize the use of sacred visionary plants.

The basic themes raised in this volume should be familiar to readers of Shaman’s Drum, since the magazine has printed articles by or about most of the presenters featured in the book. Many of the presenters—who include Jeremy Narby, Wade Davis, Charles Grob, Andrew Weil, Luis Eduardo Luna, Dennis McKenna, Kathleen Harrison, and Paul Stamets, among others—are well-respected anthropologists, ethnobotanists, and medical doctors who have written extensively about the shamanic use of entheogens. The discussions in this volume are not focused on providing descriptions of specific shamanic practices, although different authors speak in passing about their experiences in Peruvian San Pedro ceremonies, Mazatec mushroom veladas, indigenous ayahuasca traditions, and the new ayahuasca-based religions of Santo Daime and the União do Vegetal (UDV). Instead, these discussions are exploratory in nature—offering broad overviews, reviewing emerging trends, and proposing new solutions, in an informal, conversational style that makes for stimulating, provocative reading. Most important, the innovative eco-shamanic paradigms discussed in this volume offer new approaches to securing our survival.

As the visionaries in this book suggest, there are multiple reasons why entheogens may hold keys to solving our planet’s impending ecological crisis. In his introduction, Harpignies rhetorically asks, “What possible interest could the use of shamanic plants present to those with very tangible concerns about environmental degradation?” His answer is that many of his associates—some of America’s most dedicated environmental activists—were originally inspired or influenced by taking hallucinogens in natural settings, and those experiences produced profound “biophilic” feelings, which he describes as “spiritual bonds with the natural world that set a tone for the rest of their lives.” Anthropologist Wade Davis suggests that entheogens were instrumental in catalyzing many of the cultural changes launched during the 1960s: “When we look at the narratives about … issues such as the new attitudes towards minorities and other cultures, the roles and rights of women, [and] the environment—one key factor in that change of outlook is consistently expunged from the record: the fact that millions of us laid prostrate before the gates of awe beneath the power of one of these plants.”

At the heart of this volume is a challenging ecological manifesto, voiced most eloquently at the 1993 Bioneers Conference by the intrepid psychonaut Terence McKenna. McKenna argues that humans have come to a critical crossroads—we must choose between the opposing paths of eco-consciousness and material consumerism. He contends that “the piling up of material goods, consumer object fetishism, is the force that is destroying this planet,” and he cautions that “there isn’t enough glass, metal, and fossil fuel in the near surface of this planet to deliver a middle-class lifestyle to all the people who have been sold on that idea.” While calling for the deconstruction of our material culture’s rabid promotion of “product fetishism,” McKenna challenges Americans to remember that “a child born to a woman in San Francisco or Malibu will consume between eight hundred and one thousand times the natural resources of a child born to a woman in Bangladesh.” He concludes that the only effective way to survive the approaching apocalypse is for Americans to change the way we think, and the only way to do that fast enough may be for people to ingest psychoactive plants. While I have long held that McKenna’s views on the prehistory of psychoactives were embarrassingly speculative, I appreciate his assertion that the gift of psychoactive plants may be their ability to awaken our spiritual natures, help us restore peace within ourselves, and lead us away from the juggernaut of Western commercialism.

While most of the visionaries featured in this volume assume that entheogens can catalyze rapid personal and cultural change, they advocate a noticeably conservative approach to using them. Several of the presenters caution that experimenting with potent entheogens without the help of experienced guides is potentially dangerous, and a few even repudiate the recreational use of psychoactives. Indeed, having survived the free-for-all psychedelic sixties, all of the seasoned entheogenic explorers in this collection acknowledge the fundamental lesson of that era: that providing appropriate “sets and settings”—through either traditional rituals or creative new therapeutic constructs—is vital to the efficacious use of entheogens.

Several of these visionaries take the set-and-setting principle a step further, advocating the use of entheogens mostly within traditional indigenous ceremonies. For example, Wade Davis comments that “those in our culture who are interested in sacred plants tend to focus too much on the plants and not enough on the fact that rituals of all kinds and the use of these types of plants specifically are always rooted in culture, and rooted in a more general desire to change consciousness.” While much can be learned by approaching entheogens from within time-tested traditional rituals, I caution against assuming that any given plant entheogen needs to be bound to a set cultural ceremony. For example, both peyote and ayahuasca have been successfully integrated within different cultural contexts, and within more than one traditional ceremony. In fact, I side with those shamans who hold that the plant entheogens are master teachers that are capable of teaching novices what they need to know.

Another theme expressed in this volume is that personal use of entheogens has radically enhanced our understanding of shamanic practices and wisdom. As anthropologist Jeremy Narby reports, “When anthropologists started participating in shamanic sessions, all hell broke loose, especially when they started imbibing these strange beverages and discovered that what these natives had been saying all this time wasn’t just a bunch of superstitions.… One could be an atheist or a materialist academic … and still see cosmic serpents.” Indeed, many of the visionaries represented in this volume—for example, Jeremy Narby, Wade Davis, Charles Grob, and Dennis McKenna—are professional scholars who have dedicated their careers to documenting the phenomenon of entheogenic experience. I am appreciative that these researchers have helped document the social, physical, and psychological benefits of using entheogens, providing information that is helping dispel centuries of biased propaganda against psychoactives. Nonetheless, I find it ironic that some of these same researchers seem hesitant to fully endorse shamanic viewpoints regarding the primacy of spiritual realities and the sentient consciousness of plants and places.

One discussion, from the 1994 conference, considers some biological theories that may relate to the shamanic view that certain plants are master teachers capable of educating humans. Ethnobotanist Dennis McKenna—Terence’s brother—reports that bio-pharmacological research has discovered plants communicate through a molecular language of chemical compounds, including alkaloids, terpenes, and polypeptides. Certain plants produce and release these messenger molecules into their environment in order to influence their interactions with other organisms. For example, decomposing oak leaves produce flavonoids that make it difficult for competitive plants to grow in the vicinity of oak trees. Other plants produce toxins that serve no purpose except to discourage predatory insects. In one interesting battle of “evolutionary wits,” some butterflies have evolved enzymes that neutralize certain plant toxins. While some of these molecular adaptations can be explained as chance Darwinian survival mechanisms, Dennis notes that psychoactive plants seem to have evolved neurotransmitter-type molecules capable of affecting human brains long before there were brains and nervous systems to interact with. Although he acknowledges that it is curious that “these plant chemicals somehow became adapted to mediating signals between sets of receptor systems in human brains,” he doesn’t speculate about the phenomenon. Unlike his brother Terence, Dennis maintains a decidedly scientific materialist viewpoint—“It’s not that there’s a teleological force guiding evolution; in my view, it’s just that information and organization are inherent properties of matter.” His assumption that “consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of matter so much as an epiphenomenon of organization” may fit within a materialist perspective, but it ignores the shamanic belief that spirit tends to generate, imbue, and organize all things according to certain basic principles.

This volume also highlights the views of several well-known entheogenic advocates—notably Terence McKenna, Kathleen Harrison, Paul Stamets, and Jeffrey Bronfman—who have, each in their own way, actively embraced paths of entheogenic mysticism or shamanism. Until his untimely death in 2000, Terence’s renowned gift for gab and his enthusiastic endorsement of the consciousness-raising properties of entheogens earned him celebrity status among some counterculture groups. While critics have questioned some of Terence’s more speculative theories, he did much to advance the use of psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca in this country. Ethnobotanist Kathleen Harrison’s long-term involvement in indigenous entheogenic cultures in Mexico and Peru and her understanding of the role played by women in preserving medicinal plant knowledge have inspired her to champion new sustainable models for advancing the respectful and responsible use of entheogens. Inspired by the observation that psilocybin-active species are frequently associated with human debris, mycologist Paul Stamets has been studying and promoting the promising bioremediative ability of certain mushroom species to clean up lethal toxins in the environment. Philanthropist Jeffrey Bronfman’s strong personal belief in the hoasca sacrament used within UDV ceremonies was instrumental in his decision to resist government efforts to interfere with his group’s religious practices, and his perseverance resulted in a Supreme Court decision that may signal a radical shift in our nation’s willingness to allow the use of psychoactives in religious contexts.

Several roundtable discussions in this volume reveal that Western explorers are maturing in their understanding of shamanisms and entheogens. Calling attention to an often underestimated dark side of Amazonian shamanisms, Jeremy Narby advises tourists to approach Amazonian ayahuasqueros with due respect and caution: “It’s pretty clear that ayahuasca can fuel a thirst for power, and so one wants to keep an eye on these practitioners, especially when they get good, just as one needs to keep an eye on anyone in a position of power.” In the same discussion panel, the late Seneca journalist John Mohawk calls attention to the need to establish sacred relationships with power plants—from corn to psychoactive plants. “Indian societies,” he states, “are very aware that there’s always a dark side to power and that you have to treat these things very carefully and very respectfully. For indigenous people, there’s this sense that our relationships to the things of life have to be thought through and honored with ceremonies and sacrifices to make sure the right balance is maintained.”

Ending the War and Securing our Future

One of the prominent secondary themes addressed in this volume is that our nation’s “war against drugs” has reduced neither the supply nor the demand for illegal drugs, and that criminalization of drugs inevitably encourages the involvement of criminal elements and the escalation of secondary “collateral damage.” As Wade Davis states, “[The consequences of criminalization] range from a corrupt judiciary to seizure laws that allow the authorities to take my house if a houseguest of mine has an illicit substance; the creation of a prison-building industry with an enormous lobby; the devastation of our inner cities and the incarceration of so many of our youth; the assault on indigenous peasants throughout Latin America; and the destruction of one of its oldest democracies—Colombia.” Indeed, if there is one point of agreement among all the presenters, it is that our nation needs to end its war on psychoactive plants.

The book closes with a compelling discussion recorded in 2002 between Michael Stewartt, a leader in environmental restoration, and Ethan Nadelmann, a leading drug-reform advocate, who both contend that our nation’s “war on drugs” has turned into one of the most ecologically and socially devastating policies of our government. Discussing a rarely noticed side of the drug wars, Stewartt points out how the insane profits being made in the cocaine business are threatening the rain forests of South America. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that illegal drug crops have become the third-leading cause of global deforestation, and a recent United Nations report estimates that narco-traffickers are dumping an estimated seven million gallons of combined acetone, sulfuric acid, ethyl-ether, and ammonia each year into the ground and water courses of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and Brazil.

Tracking the war at home, Stewartt and Nadelmann argue that it has been effective in only one respect—accelerating the incarceration of America’s young people, primarily on nonviolent drug-related charges. As Stewartt points out, “The United States is now the world’s biggest jailer, with the highest per capita rate of incarceration of any nation, even ahead of Russia and China.” Nadelmann concurs, “We’ve gone from fifty thousand locked up on drug charges back then [in 1980] to almost half a million people locked up solely on drug charges today.”

While acknowledging that “drugs can, of course, be dangerous, some more than others, some even deadly,” Nadelmann astutely argues for the decriminalization of psychoactives: “There is no legitimate basis in science, ethics, or even religion for the law to discriminate between the responsible consumer of alcohol and the responsible user of marijuana, cocaine, or heroin.” He acknowledges that some drugs can cause social problems, but he suggests that “sensible education and regulation can play a constructive role in reducing drug misuse and its negative consequences.” He adds, “It is a fundamental mistake to confuse criminal prohibition with sensible regulation.”

While challenging the inquisitorial nature of our nation’s drug laws is beyond the scope of this review, I agree with the visionaries in this book who argue that our nation’s war on drugs is irrational, misguided, and ineffective. I appreciate Stewartt’s citation of a drug policy statement made by then-president Jimmy Carter: “Penalties for the possession of a drug should not be more damaging to the individual than the use of that drug itself.” I also endorse Nadelmann’s suggestion that “we should decriminalize mere use and possession of drugs and stop giving nonviolent drug offenders harsher sentences than rapists and murderers.”

I commend this volume as a thought-provoking examination of the thesis that our planet’s well-being could depend upon our respectful, creative use of visionary plants. Based on the evidence that these plants have long served indigenous shamans as effective methods of enhancing intuitive perceptions, engendering healing powers, and stimulating creative thinking, this book also makes a timely case for decriminalizing their responsible use.

Timothy White is founding editor of Shaman’s Drum.