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The primary objective of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the challenges involved in detecting ancient ayahuasca, a traditional hallucinogenic drink from the Amazon region, which is prepared using Banisteriopsis caapi liana and other plants, by utilizing advanced analytical techniques. The presence of harmine and harmaline in Andean archaeological findings has led certain authors to speculate that the Banisteriopsis liana may have been the source plant responsible for their occurrence. Consequently, the utilization of this liana can be traced back to at least 500 CE. However, a combination of archaeological, ethnobotanical, biochemical and analytical chemistry considerations has rendered uncertain the true origins of the presence of harmine and harmaline in ancient mummies and artifacts. Thus, the archaeological evidence does not convincingly prove the ancient usage of ayahuasca. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this third contribution to the study of the cults of the hallucinogenic plant of iboga of Equatorial Africa, the themes concerning the mythical origins of the plant and of Bwiti--the religious cult that uses iboga as a visionary agent--are presented and analysed. Distinction is made between the mythological themes of the traditional cults, in particular those of the Mitsogho of central-southern Gabon, and those of the cults syncretic with Christianity, as developed by the Fang ethnic group of northern Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. In the Fang Bwiti the mythical origins of the cult are described in a tale, the "story of Banzioku", of which there are numerous versions handed down by different branches. A comparative study of 26 versions of the "story of Banzioku" is undertaken. One of the stories is previously unpublished, collected by the author in 2022 from a community of the Ndea Kanga branch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the ethnographic data concerning psychoactive mushrooms, the most enigmatic case is that of "mushroom madness", a bizarre behaviour that periodically affected a part of the Kuma population and other ethnic groups of eastern New Guinea, and which according to the natives was due to the consumption of certain species of mushrooms. The research carried out by Wasson and Heim in the 1960s established that these forms of "madness" were not caused by the consumption of psychoactive mushrooms, although the reason for the involvement of mushrooms remained enigmatic. Up to now, the various sociological, psychological or psychiatric hypotheses that have attempted to explain the phenomenon of the "mushroom madness" have been based on the assumption that no concretely psychoactive mushroom was involved. On the basis of a series of new mycological, ethnomycological and epidemiological data, and the acquisition of surprisingly ignored ethnographic data from the 1980s, I propose here a different interpretation of the "mushroom madness" that starts from an opposite assumption, that is, that it was a social rite in which psychoactive mushrooms were actually involved. The reality of a "complex of hallucinogenic Boletaceae" spread from China to Melanesia is also highlighted, which is yet to be studied from a chemical-pharmacological point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this second contribution towards the study of the traditional uses of the hallucinogenic plant iboga in equatorial Africa, some aspects are exposed regarding the formation of false clichés of missionary and colonial origin which have influenced and indoctrinated the same natives, to the point of convincing them of the reality of these Western models. These concern the missionary idea of a monotheism of the natives; the belief that various populations, in particular the Fang, were devoted to cannibal practices; and, as regards the religious cult of Bwiti, where iboga is used as a visionary source of divine revelation, the original practice of human sacrifice. Finally, the Masonic interpretations of Bwiti proposed by both missionaries and some scholars of this cult are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hallucinogenic plant Tabernanthe iboga is used as a source of visions by various ethnic groups of western equatorial Africa in the context of a complex system of religious, therapeutic and divinatory practices that can collectively be defined as 'iboga cults'. The most renowned are the religious cults known as Bwiti. The author presents a series of studies on the iboga cults, based on field investigations in Gabon undertaken in the period 1991-2022. In this first article, the first written documents attesting to the traditional use of iboga are presented and discussed. At the current state of research, the oldest reference to the existence of Bwiti is dated to 1861, while the oldest reference to iboga is dated to 1862. 1862 is also the first date of the arrival of this plant in Europe. Inconsistencies in the translation of ancient texts from the original English to the French are highlighted, which have generally escaped French-speaking scholars and which also concern the first quotations of Bwiti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s, the Bulgarian chemist Svetlana Balabanova undertook a series of chemical analyses aimed at searching for drugs in almost a thousand human remains from the archaeological sites of four continents. Most of these analyses resulted in findings that were 'impossible' from the point of view of the accepted history of drugs, such as the presence of cocaine in Egyptian mummies, derivatives of Cannabis in Peruvian mummies, and nicotine in Eurasian mummies and skeletons; results that contradicted the established knowledge regarding the post-Columbian diffusion of cocaine, hemp and tobacco between the Old and New Worlds. What caused a sensation and brought Balabanova to global prominence were her theses to justify these results, which conjured up transatlantic journeys by the ancient Egyptians to reach South America, with a commercial exchange of coca and hemp, and the presence of native species of tobacco in the Old World. This article presents a review of the Balabanova affair based on a comprehensive consultation of all the publications of this scholar concerning archaeological and ethnobotanical research. Careful observation of the numerous contradictions and inconsistencies present in these studies lead to new deductions, which reveal the strong possibility of falsification of the results of various chemical analyses, and the likelihood that other chemical analyses were never even performed. The publication of the results of these 'ghost' researches can be explained by analysing Balabanova's character, as evidenced by reading her writings on ethnobotanical revisionism which are generally not taken into consideration, and which show how much Balabanova can--and should be--considered a 'proto-conspiracy theorist', whose only interest was to 'alter our cultural history', at whatever cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the historical record of psychedelic therapy in Europe and the Americas has undergone considerable revision. In this article, we contribute to this re-interpretation by sharing documentation relating to psychedelic therapy carried out in Italy during the period 1927–1966. Our library research has uncovered one hundred publications, documenting at least 60 clinical studies in which psychedelics were administered. There is evidence of some primacy regarding this psychedelic research: Italy has the world record, for the twentieth century, for having carried out the largest number of clinical studies on patients with psilocybin and with lysergic acid amide (LSA); humans first received the high dose of 500 mcg of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in Italy; and LSD plus LSA, and LSD plus psilocybin, were administered simultaneously for the first time. The most successful Italian clinical studies appear to have been those in which psilocybin was used in the treatment of depressive states, with the observed optimal dose being that of 3 mg administered intravenously every second or third day, alternated with placebo injections. Another therapeutic target that seems to have provided interesting results concerns the use of LSD and psilocybin for what was then called "neurosis." Italian psychiatrists have also made useful contributions to theoretical aspects concerning psychedelic therapies, for example in the conflicting debate on the "psychotomimetic paradigm" and in the distinction between the "primary" and "secondary" effects of these substances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the traditional world, the effects of intoxicating plants are usually interpreted as doors for access to, and communication with, the supernatural world. Alongside the more well-known species that have been subjected to in-depth ethnographic and scientific studies, the ethnographic documentation of the last two centuries is sprinkled with references to intoxicating plants about which very little is known, sometimes only the names they are called by local people. Many more plants are not even mentioned within the ethnobotanical treatises. Here, I focus on the tenatsali of the Zuñis, a plant widely mentioned in the oral literature and in the ethnographic descriptions of the ritual practices of this population, long resident in New Mexico. Still unidentified, anthropologists are divided on the question of whether it is a real plant or if it existed only at a mythical level. For the first time the mythological and ethnographic data concerning tenatsali are gathered together and analysed from an ethnobotanical point of view. The author comes to the conclusion that it is probably a real psychoactive plant or, more generally, an intoxicating source, kept secret by Zuñi initiatory groups and medicine-men, who perhaps continue to use it today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fly-agaric, with its characteristic red hat sprinkled with white spots, is the best known mushroom of Eurasian iconography, depicted countless times in children's fairy tales and Christmas themes. Endowed with intoxicating properties and used for millennia in Siberia as a visionary shamanic source, for several centuries Western culture has also attributed deadly properties to it. The cultural genesis of this "mortalization" process brought to the opposing values of "poisonous / intoxicating" and "negative / positive"; a semantic ambivalence that has also been present in Russian culture since pre-Soviet times. The mukhomor -- the Russian name for fly-agaric--was employed in the final years of Soviet power as a symbol of redemption by dissident underground movements, and its significant presence in contemporary Russian intellectual, literary and artistic production is presented on the basis of historical and ethnomycological considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The alan plant and the ancestor cult among the Fangs of Gabon" - During the past centuries, the Fang, a Bantu-speaking ethnic group of the Western Equatorial Africa, used the hallucinogenic plant alan (Alchornea floribunda) in their Byeri initiatory ceremonies. Byeri was a cult of ancestors that involved the conservation and worship of the ancestors' skulls. Despite the assertions that this cult has disappeared, it continues to be practised by today's younger Fang members in a modified, simplified form, as a way of reviving traditional values. This article brings together the few ethnographical data on the Byeri - a cult kept secret - including the data collected by the author during his research in Gabon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnography of daturas in Africa - Daturas belong to the tropane Solanaceous group of plants, traditionally used in the Old and New World for their intoxicant properties. In Africa two species - Datura stramonium, and D. metel - are used in religious, initiatory, divinatory, magic-therapeutic rites, and also as tools during trials by ordeal, in courts of law, and in criminal proceedings. The present study describes some African traditional cults and rites where daturas are involved, with a particular focus on the Bori possession cult among the Hausas of Niger, the feminine initiatory rite among the Tsongas of Mozambique, the ordeal ceremony among the Ba-Rongas of South Africa, the leba shay Abyssinian juridical institution, and the datura's ritual complex of Senegalese marabouts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The mescalbean among the North American Natives" - With the name "mescalbean cult" or "mescalism", a group of ritual practices of the North American Planes Natives are named, during which a vegetal psychoactive source was employed. The human relationship with this visionary source originates starting from the most remote antiquity, and lasted until the end of the XIX century of our era. In the present study the historical, ethnographical, archaeological, and mythological aspects of these rites are reviewed, bringing clarifications on the problem of the relationship of mescalism with peyotism, and on some terminological and ethnobotanical confusions which dragged in the studies for several decades. Lastly, some ethological aspects concerning the animal relationship with the mescalbean are analyzed, and which could clarify the origins of the human relationship with this intoxicant source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]