Terence McKenna on Salvia Divinorum

[Ulmdorgr]

Terence McKenna, from the '90s.

Part 1: Part 2:

Transcripts provided for translation purposes (cheers boolie!).
Part 1 transcript
[0:00]
I do want to say one thing, it almost slipped my mind, and for those of you who have your hands up I apologize, but I think this needs to be said, and I don't know how many of you know it. But this comes under the... uh... this is a news flash folks, we interrupt this program to bring you a special announcement: a new psychoactive substance has been discovered. A very powerful psychoactive substance. The most powerful since the discovery of LSD. A substance so powerful that 300 micrograms is the dose. That means that 1 gram will dose 7,000 people (in actuality, it's 3,333.33 repeating people; however, most smoked doses range from 1-20mg). Uh, this compound comes from a plant. The plant is, and I hope you're paying attention, the plant is legal. The compound is legal. You can possess it, you can manufacture it, you can transport it across borders, you can give it away, you can sell it, and you can do it on stage. And it comes from a plant. And the plant is also available. And I want to tell you about this because I, okay, no shoving, no shoving! Alright, not to keep you in suspense any longer, the plant is Salvia Divinorum. Salvia Divinorum, which, some of you who are real mavens of this stuff, know it. It's been in the books for 30 years, the problem was no one knew how to get off.

[1:58]
And so it was always carried in these lists as "suspect hallucinogen." The thing is, any scientists confronted with a plant where somebody says it's a hallucinogen, will test to see if it's an alkaloid. All hallucinogens, almost all, are alkaloids. So, Salvia Divinorum, negative for alkaloids. Doesn't matter. It has a new, unknown compound in it, now known, Salvinorin Alpha (note that he mispronounces it as "Salvorine"). And the interesting thing about Salvinorin Alpha is, we have in this country what's called a structural near relatives or congener (mispronounced as "cogener") law. Which says, if a compound is a structural near relative, isomer, enantiomer (mispronounced as "indantiomer"), or stereoisomer, of an illegal compound, then it too can be made illegal.

[2:56]
Salvia Divinorum doesn't fit this description. That means that inorder to make this stuff illegal, the government will have to present medical data showing there is something wrong with it. And at this stage, nobody on Earth knows the real pharmacological parameters of this compound. So, here's the deal. You can grow this plant in a window box, in your apartment, in your backyard. It looks like Joe Plant. There is nothing particularly distinguishing about this plant, and if you have three or four cuttings, in six or seven months you will have more than you know what to do with. And I'll just describe how I do it. I'm slightly chickenshit to do the pure compound, which by the way you do 300 micrograms. Understand that what that looks like is a small grain of salt. A small grain of salt, is a human effective dose.

[4:08]
It comes on so fast that you have no impression of it coming on at all. You do it, and then after a while you notice that for a long time you have been staring at something incomprehensible. Well let me te-... here's how I recommend that you do it while we get the chemical thing sorted out. Because the chemical, it could be dangerous, it would be very easy to overdose by a factor of 10, 20, 30, and you would still just be doing a smidgen (oh how wrong he was). So I say, let's honor the plants, let's not hand the government a bunch of casualties that it can cluck over and put on national TV, you know the bibble-a-bibble-a-bibble's show. Let's - [4:59]

Part 2 transcript
[0:04]
Let's use the plant, and the way you do it is you grow up a batch of this stuff, and get between 15 and 20 leaves, remove the midvein with your finger nail, just to lower the mass, fold it into a little pile, put it in your mouth, and 20 leaves is a whopping mouthful, so basically as much as you can get in your mouth, put it in your mouth, lie down in silent darkness, and squeeze this stuff with your jaws. Tastes like, it's horrible, it's not as bad as ayahuasca, but it's horrible, but you could acquire a taste for it. So, lie down in darkness where you can see a digital watch, one of these red flashing jobs, like a K-Mart deal. And, and then, let it, don't swallow it, but just squeeze it and masticate it. At fifteen minutes, by the clock, spit it out into a bowl, or a kleenex, or something, and then just lie there. Lie still in the darkness, with your eyes closed, and look, and this is almost the key empowerment, though it's almost idiotic, people fail to do it. Look at the back of your eyelids with the expectation of seeing something. And when you do that, after just three or four minutes, there will be, what uh we professionals call, streaming! Which means, amoeboid lights of afterimage colors, the chartreuse and purple, flowing by. And about three minutes after that, it will deepen very very quickly into extraordinarily bizarre uh, dare we say it, fairly DMT-like hallucinations.

[2:00]
And it builds fast, I mean so fast, that there is this wonderful moment in it where you actually know real fear. Which shows you that it's working. I mean, I really believe, if you take a psychedelic and you're not afraid you did too much, you didn't do enough. The experience then will unfold, over about 45 minutes. And just lie there and look. And it is beautiful. It is beautiful. I mean I'm a connoisseur of hallucination, and the beautiful, these deep indigo, blues, these cerulean blues, against blackness, that are like neon, and these amorphous "eve-tongue-gay"(I don't know what he's saying here)-kind of shapes that are moving and transforming themselves. I was amazed, I couldn't believe it. I was saying, "My god! This is legal! This is legal! And it's working! It's working!" And I am the hardest of the hard heads. I know some people say, you know, "here's take a this lucaden, this will get you off, here's this, smoke this, kanickanick this, something els-" no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Uh uh, no, it doesn't, it's not like that, these things are rare. But this one works. And I commend it to your attention and your friends' intention. And anyone with shamanic intent. As I say, it's perfectly legal to possess, advocate, the whole bit, yes.

[3:43]
(The crowd asks to spell it) Salvia, it's in the genus Salvia. That's the mint family, sacred to pagans for millenia. Salvia, S-A-L-V-I-A, and then, Divinorum, D-I-V-I-N-O-R-U-M, "the diviner's mint." Well yes, let me say something about this that's very interesting (crowd asks "what's it's common name?"). Pardon me? Well, that's what I was going to talk about. It's native from mexico, so it has no common name in English. In Spanish, it has a very interesting common name. It is called "Ojos de la Pastora." Now, "The Eyes of The Shepherdess." What a strange name, think about it for a moment. First of all, notice that in Christian iconography, there are no shepherdesses, period! Not one! We got shepherds, you got your shepherds there, Christmas, shepherdess? No. So it's called "Ojos de la Pastora." Well then the anthropologist who studied this, Brett Blosser, to whom we all owe a great debt. Hail Brett.

[4:57]
Naturally, these people are "thotcil" and "soketil", they're in the mountains of Oaxaca. And so he said to them, "Well yes, Ojos de la Pastora, very interesting, but what do you call it in your language, what do you call it in thotcil" and they said, well we have no name for it, in our language. This is very, very interesting. And if any of you have any thoughts or want to work on this... It's inconceivable, if these people had used this for centuries that they would not have a local, thotcil, name for it. So he said, "Why don't you have a name for it?" And they said, "Because our grandfathers were the first to use it." And this, we do not know what to make of it. Because Salvia Divinorum is known only from this very indemnified locality in the Sierra Mazateca. Where did it come from? Has it always been there? But these indians only discovered it 200 years ago? Did it come from somewhere else? And if so, where? Because it's never been located anywhere else on the planet.

[6:13]
So this is a great puzzlement, and I think if we move fast enough, we psychadelicos, we pagans, we neuronots, we magicians, if we move fast enough, this will just be moot. And this is a far more powerful thing than cannabis. I mean, not if you've never smoked cannabis and then you sit down and smoke the best hash (ass?) there is, but as we all know, after a while cannabis loses its ability to catapult you into the unspeakable. The Salvia Divinorum, every time I have taken it, it's gotten better, and stronger, and weirder. So, I think it is sent from the goddess, at this time, Eyes of the Sheperdess, these are the eyes we should be looking through.

[7:05]
Alright, I'm gonna knock off. Thank you very much.

[nothim]

how did you translate that?
is it a soft or you did it by yourself?
apreciate your effort !!!

what is the cheers for?

there is a great one ---'seeking the stone'---that many should see!!!

it was on google videos i think

let me check

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... one&hl=en#

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... one&hl=en#



but how do you write down the words from a video, is it difficult ?



for example at those two llinks above--how to write down the speech?

[Ulmdorgr]

Yes, I had to do it by hand. It was not hard, but it took about an hour.

Cheers can be used for two thing: making a toast, or to say "Enjoy!"

Those two videos would take a LONG time to transcribe, unless you were a professional who could type as fast as he talked. I usually can't because I'm trying to understand the speaker at the same time, and I make things as grammatically correct as possible.

[nothim]

did not know that you have to do it by hand sorry, i thought it was alead made as a subtitle somewhere , we appreciate then,........

no worries for the 2 videos , it was only for the people to see them....

cheers = thank you in UK , is it in US too, or if i have to say thank you in us and i say cheers, you would think that i am inviting you to a drink ?

[Ulmdorgr]

I've never heard it used as "thank you." In that sense, it would sort of be used as a toast.

For example, imagine two people celebrating (Person1 and Person2) an achievement of Person2. Person1 says, "Today is a great day. We are here to celebrate Person2's work. Cheers!" Person2 then says, "Cheers!" And then they both drink or whatever.

Edit
Maybe you were thinking of something like the British "Cheers mate!" Which is saying, "Enjoy, friend!"

[nothim]

for real, in uk they use it as thank you !

they say cheers Ray or Jay or ..... as thank you Ray.......

[Ulmdorgr]

I think you're wrong. If you can find an example online, like on YouTube, maybe we can analyze it better.

[nothim]

i talked to them live, i am not lying

[caktalfraktal]

People say Cheers for Thank you, Hello, Goodbye, just about Any standard greeting here in Canada! It's not the mooost common phrase but its said enough

[nothim]

"Terence McKenna Salvia divinorum Coleus": http://vimeo.com/8748679

not sure on coleus--- i ve got a bush in front of my house --i might endevour ( venture) for a try.

regarding salvia splendens--- no psychoactivity at all--- after chewing and ingesting ...i think a salad of 60 leaves 2 years ago.

the taste is just ----AWESOME ----lol

it just replaced a craving missing salad at that time lol

[Ulmdorgr]

Good luck with coleus. It still sounds like it may not work correctly. Try it at night and try to dream. Maybe take melatonin at the same time to put yourself to sleep more quickly.

Yeah splendens has nothing. Coleus blumei has been rumored to be psychoactive but reports on erowid are poor. I think this was because they tried to smoke it, and its psychoactivity was, to my knowledge, oneirogenic (creates dreams). If you don't sleep on it I don't think it will do anything. Hopefully you are good at remember/recording your dreams or you might waste it. Then again, perhaps they never had the right coleus (look how big Terrence's is, and the coloration).

[nivkbecjer]

I love mckenna, he's a great story teller, but not always totally accurate with the facts. I was intrigued by this information supposedly gathered from the Mazatecs by Brett Blosser that "our grandfathers were the first to use it" so i went to work looking through all of Bret's published work to find the quote and came up short. So i contacted him, and he replied saying that it is in fact a misquote and that he never got any such origin stories from his friends in the Sierra Mazateca. Also it's "hojas" not "ojas" but "these are the leaves we should be looking through" is not quite as zingy an endnote as mckenna's.