aidan wrote:
And thanks for the words of understanding (really, I'm being sincere-that's one thing I regret about conversations on the internet - no conversational nuances so it's so easy to be misunderstood) but I don't understand all that you said. I may be exposing my ignorance here, but I'm curious. What (or who) is "psilocybe"?
Aidan: Thanks for your kind words. I am also a nature lover as your are, and I believe that spirituality arises from nature, as a flower blooms, rather than being a virtue imposed on it from above as the organized religions say.
Psilocybe is the genus of a group of hallucinogenic mushrooms some of which grow on cow dung—look for the picture of Psilocybe cubensis pictured earlier in this thread. Hallucinogenic mushrooms have the ability to produce near-mystical experiences, though I can't vouch for that myself.
Many so-called primitive religions use the mystical experience as the basic ritual for their religions, and the experience may be spontaneous or induced by various plants, such as mushrooms, cacti, ayahuasca, ibogaine, etc. There is one plant that commonly grows in Dallas called the Illinois bundleflower, Desmanthus illinoensis, a leguminous bush from whose roots can be extracted the most powerful natural hallucinogen known, DMT or N-N Dimethyltryptamine.
Apparantly as recently as 1000 years ago indians living near the border of Texas and Mexico were using the seeds of the Texas Mountain Laural, Sophora secundiflora, which contains a well-known hallucinogen, in their rites. Unfortunately, one seed also contains enough neurotoxin to cause death so the indians substituted peyote cactus.
