Have you ever killed anyone?
Have you eaten the flesh of man?
Have you eaten peyote?
Part of a series of questions presented by a San Antonio priest at confession, circa 1760.
Art thou a soothsayer?
Dost thou foretell events by reading omens, interpreting dreams or by tracing circles and figures on water?
Dost thou garnish with flower garlands the places where idols are kept?
Dost thou suck to blood of others?
Dost thou wander about at night, calling upon demons to help thee?
Hast thou drunk Peyote or given it to others to drink, in order to discover secrets or to discover where stolen or lost articles were?
Presented at confession by Padre Nidolas de Leon, presumably during the same period as that of the San Antonio father.
Peyote--Lophophora Williamsii
Lophophora Williamsii, known to the layman as peyote, is a species of thornless cactus that is both revered and reviled because of its properties as a powerful hallucinogenic. The plant is native to the Southwestern United States, where long ago it became a staple of a number of Native American religious rites; it can be inferred by the sources of the above interrogatives that the use of peyote was officially frowned upon by practitioners of the Judeo-Christian faiths, and even today strict rules exist prohibiting the use of peyote. The current controversy regarding the plant bears a resemblance to the buzz surrounding the possible legalization of marijuana : The rules and provisions, canceled out and layerd upon by differences in federal and state legislation, are fraught with gray areas and are a maze to decipher.
Appearance, Refinement Methods, and Effects
As I mentioned previously, the peyote plant is a thornless cactus. It is light blue-green in color, bears pink flowers, and digs a root resembling a carrot into the dry earth in which it grows. It is capped by a peyote, or mescal, button that resembles the thick cap of a mushroom--this might be the cause of the misconceptions that the cactus actually is a mushroom. It is small, rarely stretching more than an inch off the ground, and contains the hallucinogenic agent that lends the plant its fame.
Refinement methods of the peyote button range from the crude to the relatively meticulous. It can be cut off and chewed, brewed into a concoction for drinking (presumably in a manner similar to making tea, or maybe top ramen), or rolled into pellets and swallowed. The active substance in peyote is mescaline, one of several naturally occurring hallucinogenic drugs. An alkaloid, mescaline tastes bitter, causes initially a feeling of nausea, then produces visions and changes in perception, time sense, and mood. The effect's intensity is generally proportional to the amount of mescaline taken; a small dose may only create a sense of physical energy well-being preceeded by a period of lethargy. There are no uncomfortable aftereffects, and the drug is not physiologically habit-forming.
Harvesting and Outlook
Peyote are annually harvested by the millions--an act which, surprisingly, and as mentioned in the above node, is not illegal. Proper harvesting of the peyote buttons will leave the fertile root, which can germinate several new caps; careless harvesters, however, tend to cut far into the root, thereby disabling the plant's future reproductive potential.
The genetic diversity and wild population of the peyote is rapidly diminishing; it is currently listed by the US Government as a threatened species. For conservation information, and advocates for the legitimate, religiously motivated use of peyote, check out www.peyote.net/flyer.htm.
http://www.marijuana-seeds.biz/peyote-facts-and-information.html
http://www.geocities.com/nycfacts/crime/drugs/
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/p1/peyote.asp