Anhalonium lewinii: My right leg became suddenly heavy and solid; it seemed, indeed, as if the entire weight of my body had shifted into one part

- VERMEULEN Frans,

Anhalonium lewinii

Anh.
With Peyote MAN is alone, desperately scraping out the music of his own skeleton, without father, mother, family, love, god, or society. And no living being to accompany him. And the skeleton is not of bone but of skin, like a skin that walks. And one walks from the equinox to the solstice, buckling on one's own humanity.
[Antonin Artaud]
We are bored by the whole question of drugs and paradise. It would be better if drugs could give us a little knowledge. We do not spend a century in paradise.
[Henri Michaux]
Signs
Lophophora williamsii. Mescal Button. Peyote. N.O. Cactaceae.
CLASSIFICATION "In the second half of the nineteenth century the characteristics and scope of the large genus Echinocactus were disputed by several European and American botanists; gradually its limits were narrowed and new genera were proposed to contain species that had once been included in it. In 1886, Theodore Rumpler proposed that peyote be removed from Echinocactus and placed in the new segregate genus Anhalonium, thus making the binomial A. williamsii, a name which soon became widely used throughout Europe and the U.S. Much earlier [1839] Lemaire had proposed the name Anhalonium for another group of spineless cacti, now correctly classified as Ariocarpus. Anhalonium must be considered as a later homonym for Ariocarpus, so, according to the International Rules of Botanical Nomenclature, it cannot be validly used as a generic name for any plant. Ariocarpus superficially resembles peyote, but clearly is a different genus. ... Finally, in the same year [1894] Coulter proposed a new genus for peyote alone: Lophophora. This helped clarify the nomenclatural situation because peyote had been included in at least five different genera of cacti by the end of the nineteenth century. The group of plants commonly called and used as peyote is unique within the cactus family and deserves separation as the distinct genus Lophophora."1
NAME The genus consists of two species: Lophophora williamsii and L. diffusa. Its name derives from Gr. lophos, a crest, and phoreo, I bear. The name Anhalonium refers to the fact that this cactus doesn't have spines: an = without, helos = needle, spine. Spines are present only in very young seedlings. Adult plants produce spine primordia but they rarely develop into spines. It has the size of a small apple. The characteristic wool-filled centre of the plant gave it its native name peiotl, meaning caterpillar. When the top of a peyote dries, the soft fleshy tissue is reduced greatly in volume, whereas the proportion of wool to what formerly was the fleshy part is greatly increased. Other theories to explain the etymology of the word peiotl refer to the Aztec words pepeyoni or pepeyon, meaning "to excite", or to peyonanic, meaning "to stimulate or activate."

Anhalonium lewinii

DISTRIBUTION The plant is indigenous to the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico and the Rio Grande region of Texas. "The soils of the Chihuahuan Desert are limestone in origin and have a basic pH, from 7.9 to 8.3. These soils can also be characterized as having more than 150 ppm [parts per million] calcium, at least 6 ppm magnesium, strong carbonates, and no more than trace amounts of ammonia. The soils test negatively for iron, chlorine, sulphates, manganese, and aluminium. Phosphorus and potassium vary somewhat throughout the range, but in most localities occur in trace amounts or are not present at all. ... Peyote is found to tolerate a very wide range of climatic conditions: precipitation ranges from 175.5 mm up to 556.9 mm per year, maximum temperatures vary from 29.1 degrees centigrade to 40.2 degrees, and minimum temperatures range from 1.9 to 10.2 degrees centigrade."2
ADAPTATION Living in arid deserts, Lophophora has developed an adaptation strategy that is quite unique among plants. In the winter season - a long period of bleak drought - it hibernates by means of a surprisingly simple technique. At the beginning of the dry period the long and powerful roots shrivel to such an extent that the plant loses half of its normal volume. The shrinking roots pull the plant underground. In spring the reverse takes place. Absorbing rainwater, the plant swells up again and emerges above ground.
FEATURES The area on the stem that usually produces flowers and spines is well pronounced in peyote and is identified by a tuft of hairs or trichomes. Ranging in colour from deep reddish-pink to nearly pure white, flowers arise from within the centre of the plant. There are no visible leaves in either juvenile or mature plants. Leaves are greatly reduced and only microscopic in size; even the seed leaves [cotyledons] are almost invisible in young seedlings because they are rounded, united, and quite small. Fruits develop for about a year and then elongate rapidly at maturity. Usually, only the upper half of the fruit contains seeds. Peyote plants may occur as single-headed individuals or may form dense clumps up to two meters across with scores of heads. The latter occurs through the activation of adventive buds that appear on the tuberous part of the root-stem axis below the crown. Such growth often is the result of injury and almost always occurs if the top of the plant is cut off. They rarely rot if injured or cut, so excised pieces will readily form adventitious roots and can become independent plants. Peyote is one of the slowest-growing plants in existence. The period from germination until blooming for the first time is approximately thirteen years. Mature specimens may attain a diameter of 12 cm, rising some 3-6 cm above the surface of the ground. Yet, the long, tapering root may reach a length of 30 cm or more at maturity. A greater concentration of mescaline appears as the plant gets older. The Indians revere the oldest plants and keep them as personal amulets or place them on the crescent altar to represent 'Father Peyote.'
CONSTITUENTS Lophophora contains the alkaloids hordenine and tyramine, both of which have antiseptic properties. With regard to hordenine, Lophophora is among the plant species with the highest amounts of it, others being Hordeum vulgare [Barley], Citrus sinensis [Orange], Selenicereus grandiflorus [Cactus grandiflorus in homoeopathy], Tamarindus indica [Tamarind] and Zea mays [Corn]. Hordenine has been shown to have the following properties: antiasthmatic, antidiarrhoeic, bronchorelaxant, cardiotonic, hepatoprotective, and vasoconstrictive.
HALLUCINOGEN Besides the alkaloids mentioned above, Lophophora contains more than fifty psychoactive ingredients, the most powerful of which is mescaline [3,4,5 trimethoxyphenethylamine]. Named after the Mescalero Apaches, mescaline was first isolated from the peyote cactus by the German chemist Heffter in 1896 and independently synthesized in 1918. As one of the first hallucinogens to be reproduced in the lab, mescaline became the centre of scientific interest in the early 1900s and was used in the experimental treatment of alcoholism, mental illness, and other disorders. The novelist Aldous Huxley describes his experiences with mescaline [sulphate] in The Doors of Perception. This controversial essay arose from Huxley's need for "a new pleasure" and the desire "to take occasional holidays from reality."
MESCALINE Mescaline is related to the amphetamines, and has very similar properties as adrenaline. In doses of 200-500 mg [about 10-20 buttons], mescaline triggers increased heart rate, body temperature, and blood pressure and dilation of the pupils. Normal coordination and reflexes are reduced, and the skin may feel dry and itchy. Peak effects hit 2-3 hours after ingestion, and run their course in about 12 hours. Mescaline belongs to a family of compounds known as phenethylamines, whereas the other major psychedelics, such as LSD, psilocybin, harmaline and DMT, belong to the indole family. Many synthetic drugs, such as ecstasy [MDMA] and 2C-B, are phenethylamines, and are related to the chemistry of mescaline. Mescaline occurs naturally in several cactus species, most notably Lophophora and many members of the genus Trichocereus.
DIFFERENCES WITH LSD Debate still rages about noteworthy differences in the response to LSD and mescaline. People more experienced with both psychedelics "generally indicate that peyote and mescaline are 'warmer' and 'more earthy' than LSD, which is usually seen as being more 'cerebral.' The mescaline present in the cactus appears to increase considerably a feeling of fellowship that is only sometimes prompted by LSD. Shulgin remarks that under mescaline 'There is a benign empathy shown to both inanimate and living things, especially to small things.' Allen Ginsberg and others have suggested that mescaline - more than other psychedelics - produces a state of mind very receptive to the complex of benevolent attitudes expressed in Wordsworth's nature poems."3
LSD "Virtually all American users of entheogenic drugs claim to have tried mescaline at some point in their careers. Clearly, the great majority have simply tried LSD or PCP under an assumed name. There can be no doubt about this conclusion - mescaline has always been in short supply, and numerous studies on street drug samples support this view. Moreover, a 400-600 mg dose of pure mescaline sulphate will fill two or three large 'oo' capsules, and most users report having ingested only one capsule or tablet. Yet 'sophisticated' users, when confronted with these facts, will usually claim that they have certainly tried the real thing, that they know the difference between LSD and mescaline, being connoisseurs; that LSD has this or that attribute, whereas mescaline may be distinguished by various superior qualities. To put it bluntly, this is hogwash. Not only have the great majority of entheogen users never tried authentic mescaline but, I submit, under proper experimental conditions, many would be unable to discern much difference between mescaline and LSD. In fact, peak effects of these compounds are remarkably similar, and these drugs [as well as psilocybine and psilocine] show cross-tolerance, suggesting they produce their effects by similar neural mechanisms."4
INTOXICATION Peyote contains many alkaloids and peyote intoxication therefore differs markedly from that induced by mescaline, peyote's main alkaloid. The peyote intoxication usually has two phases: "a period of contentment and hypersensitivity, and one of nervous calm and muscular sluggishness, often accompanied by hypercerebrality and the typical coloured visions. Before the appearance of the visual hallucinations, the subject sees flashes of colour across the field of vision; the depth, richness, and saturation of the colours defy description. There seems to be a kind of sequence followed by the visions: geometric figures, to familiar scenes and faces, to unfamiliar scenes and objects, to secondary objects that vary with individual differences or which may be absent."5
HISTORY Fray Bernardino de Sahagun first described the plant in 1560. He estimated from Indian chronology that it had been used by the Chichimeca and Toltec at least 1900 years before the arrival of the Europeans. He reported as follows: "There is another herb-like [opuntia]. It is called peiotl. It is found in the north country. Those who eat or drink it see visions, either frightful or laughable. This intoxication lasts two or three days and then ceases. It is a common food of the Chichimeca, for it sustains them and gives them courage to fight and not to feel hunger or thirst. And they say it protects them from all danger." In Huichol ritual life the peyote and the deer were, and still are, seen as synonymous. This is clearly shown by prehistoric images in rock shelters in the Texas and Mexico border region. The Spaniards repressed the use of peyote because it was connected with heathen rituals and superstitions to contact evil spirits.
USES For millennia the Huichol have rubbed the juice of the crushed peyote into wounds to prevent infection and promote healing. It has been shown that hordenine shows an inhibitory action against at least 18 strains of penicillin resistant Staphylococcus bacteria. In many Indian languages the word for medicine is the same as for peyote. Women of the Menomini tribe use peyote for childbirth, earaches, or to be inspired to weave intricate spiral patterns.
RITUALS Peyote has many ancient ritual uses. The Huichol, for example, make a yearly pilgrimage, the peyote hunt over 600 km of rugged desert country. The journey involves many ritual steps and many days of journey involving hardship. The participants often paradoxically speak the opposite of what is intended. The quest comes to an end when the spiritual leader rushes ahead and fires arrows to enclose the first peyote on all quarters. He then cuts the plants leaving some root to re-grow new crowns. The return to Wirikuta - the geographical and mythical homeland of the Huichol - is seen as a return to paradise. "The Huichol Indians of Mexico treat as a demi-god a species of cactus which throws the eater into a state of ecstasy. The plant doesn't grow in their country, and has to be fetched every year by men who make a journey of forty-three days for the purpose. Meanwhile the wives at home contribute to the safety of their absent husbands by never walking fast, much less running, while the men are on the road. They also do their best to ensure the benefits which, in the shape of rain, good crops, and so forth, are expected to flow from the sacred mission. With this intention they subject themselves to severe restrictions like those imposed upon their husbands. During the whole of the time which elapses till the festival of the cactus is held, neither party washes except on certain occasions, and then only with water brought from the distant country where the holy plant grows. They also fast much, eat no salt, and are bound to strict continence. Anyone who breaks this law is punished with illness, and, moreover, jeopardizes the result which all are striving for. Health, luck, and life are to be gained by gathering the cactus, the gourd of the God of Fire; but inasmuch as the pure fire cannot benefit the impure, men and women must not only remain chaste for the time being, but must also purge themselves from the taint of past sin."6 During the past two centuries the religious use of peyote has spread northward into the United States and Canada among many of the Plains Indian Tribes such as the Navajo, Comanche, Sioux, and Kiowa. In 1918 the use of peyote was incorporated as a sacrament into the Native American Church. This was an adaptation of the Mexican ritual adopted by Indian tribes in the north. It is commented that Jesus came to the white man as flesh and blood, but to the Native American as peyote.
NATIVE CHURCH "Some of the crucial factors are a positive expectation held by the Peyotists, an emphasis on the real interpersonal world rather than the world within the individual, emphasis on communion rather than withdrawal during the drug experience, emphasis on adherence to the standards of society rather than on the freeing of impulses, and certain practices during the meetings. ... The whole spirit of the [peyote] religion seems best characterized as communion - with God and with other men. Meetings are experienced as a time of being close and growing closer to one another. It is acceptable and expected that if someone in a meeting expresses a strong feeling, the others present feel it with him and tell him so. If there is a tendency to lose old features of one's identity, there is an equally strong tendency to acquire stronger identity as a member of the group. As a member of the church, each person is assured of his own significance and of group support for his own needs to be self-assertive in the outside world. ... Meetings are conducted in a strict and organized way. Distortions in time sense are counteracted by the various events of the service that take place at precisely defined times of the night. Almost everything is done in a ritualized way that requires attention to the detail of one's movements and speech. The drum, ceremonial tobacco, and other important objects are passed only in a certain way. In moving about the hogan or tepee, one walks only in a certain direction. All these details are invested with considerable emotion, and some Peyotists say that this keeps them "thinking in the right way." The ceremony is experienced as beautiful, but much of the beauty is the beauty of orderliness. ... Roadmen are trained to look after people who become excessively withdrawn. If a participant begins to stare fixedly into the fire and seems unaware of the others, the roadman will speak to him and, if necessary, go to him and pray with him. In the process of praying with him, the road man may fan him with an eagle feather fan, splash drops of water on him, and fan cedar incense over him. All of these processes are regarded as sacred and helpful, and they seem to provide stimulation in several sense modalities to draw one back into the interpersonal world. Another safeguard is the custom that no one is to leave the meeting early. Considerable effort is made to prevent someone who has been eating peyote from going off alone into the night. This factor is probably important too, in the customary activities of the morning after the meeting. Everyone stays together and socializes until well after the drug effect is over."7
BALANCE "In a sense, participation in a peyote journey makes of each man a kind of shaman or priest. For a long time following a pilgrimage its members acknowledge a ritual bond with one another. They recognize and greet each other in special ways. They have special names. They wear special insignia: the tobacco gourd of Tatewari, squirrel tails on the hats. The peyote journey also has the characteristics of initiation; one who has never gone is said to be 'new', like a baby; he is matewame and must undergo special restrictions, because his tenderness makes him extraordinarily vulnerable to the malevolent magic of sorcerers. ... A man who would assume the enormous burden, ritual and psychological, of a mara'akáme [shaman-priest], who would make himself responsible for the welfare of his community, must first complete at least five peyote pilgrimages. But he must do this not as a follower, intent only on private thought and private vision. He must demonstrate on each such journey his capacity to be an effective soul guide, or 'psychopomp', who escorts his spirit companions safely across the barriers of space and time, through the gateway of the clashing clouds, and to the sacred mountains at the end of the world in the east, where the ancestor spirits await them. He must prove his capacity to endure not only lack of food and water but lack of sleep as well. Even at night, when his companions rest around the sacred fire, he must remain awake, alert, ever ready to defend their spiritual integrity against supernatural enemies. They are all spirits, of course, for the duration of the journey. But he more than any other man must transcend the limitations of his bodily self and achieve that unique breakthrough that sets the shaman apart from ordinary men. If he lacks these qualities he will never 'complete himself.' ... It is my impression that this special condition of the shaman cannot be faked - that not only he himself but his companions really do know whether or not a man who lays claim to being a mara'akáme has what the Huichol call 'balance' - that special, ineffable capacity to venture without fear onto the 'narrow bridge' across the great chasm separating the ordinary world from the world beyond. In the summer of 1966 Ramón gave us a memorable demonstration of the meaning of 'balance.' He took us to a spectacular waterfall, with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to the valley below. This, he said, was 'special for shamans.' While the other Huichols grouped themselves in a semicircle in a safe place some distance from the edge, Ramón removed his sandals and, after making a series of ritual gestures to the world directions, proceeded to leap - 'fly' might be more appropriate - from one rock to another with arms stretched wide, often landing but a few inches from the slippery edge. Occasionally he would disappear behind a great boulder, only to emerge from an unexpected direction. Or he would stand motionless at the extreme limit of a massive rock, wheel about suddenly and make a great leap to the other side of the rushing water, never showing the slightest concern about the obvious danger that he might lose his balance and fall into space. We were frankly terrified, even annoyed, at such 'foolhardiness', but neither his wife nor the other Huichol watching showed any real apprehension. The demonstration ended as abruptly as it had begun, without any explanation of Ramón's strange behaviour. The following day he asked if we thought he had been showing off. He said, "Perhaps you thought, 'Ah, Ramón is drunk with too much beer.' But no. I took you there to show what it means 'to have balance.' So you could see and understand. Because when one crosses over as a shaman one looks below, and then one perceives this great abyss filled with all those animals waiting to kill one. Those who do not have balance are afraid. They fall and are killed."8
PILGRIMAGE "So intense is the drama of the actual hunt for the Deer-Peyote in Wirikúta that certain prior events of crucial importance for the success of the quest tend to be overshadowed. The first of these is the ritual of confession and purification through which the participants are initiated into the sacred enterprise of the pilgrimage. This is an extraordinary ceremony. Everyone - peyoteros as well as those who remain at home - is required to acknowledge publicly all his or her sexual adventures, from the beginning of adulthood to the present. Further, each sexual partner must be identified by name, regardless of the presence of spouses or lovers, although old people are allowed to telescope their love affairs and be less precise about names. No display of jealousy, hurt, resentment, or anger is permitted; more than that, no one is even allowed to entertain such feelings 'in one's heart.' Any show of hostility and any deliberate omission of sexual intimacy or a lover's name would jeopardize not only the offender but also his companions and the entire sacred enterprise. The quest for life could prove fruitless. At the very least, even if the peyote country were reached, those who had failed to purge themselves or who carried 'bad thoughts in their hearts' would probably fall victim to sorcerers, suffer terrible hallucinations, and perhaps even die. An extraordinary spectacle indeed - doubly so if one has been taught to regard jealousy and its expression as a 'natural' human emotion, common to all people everywhere, rather than as an artefact of culture. ... At first glance one might be tempted to explain the whole phenomenon in terms of Catholic influence. Why else would the Huichol, who sanction polygamy and who in any event are not noted for their sexual fidelity, equate sex with sin, or at least with transgression? Nevertheless, I see no reason to regard the Huichol rite as anything but purely aboriginal and pre-European. In the first place, confession was practised in Mesoamerica long before the arrival of the Spaniards [an Aztec goddess to whom confessions were addressed was appropriately known as 'The Eater of Filth']. Secondly, there are fundamental differences between the Catholic and Huichol rites that are obscured by the very term 'confession.' In Catholic practice the confessor admits to having sinned and, if the priest accepts his act of contrition and repentance as genuine, is absolved from the sins he has acknowledged. The Huichol does not repent but merely acknowledges a certain act as fact. In this sense 'profession' might be more accurate than 'confession', except that of course in the context of the peyote quest sexual intercourse per se is disapproved and hence a 'transgression.' ... Metamorphosis is implicit in the confession ritual. The peyotero has been made over, 'become new.' He has shed one state of being, maturity, and assumed - or reassumed - another, that of childhood innocence. At the same time, transformation has occurred on another level, for the peyotero has 'become' the likeness of one of the supernaturals of the original peyote quest. More than merely child, he has had to become spirit, for the gates of the Otherworlds will open only for one who is spirit."9
EXPERIMENTS Heffter did some experiments with the new drug [mescaline] he had discovered. The following is an excerpt from his laboratory notebook. "Experiment performed on 23rd July, 1897. 12:09 p.m. One gram of the sulphate salts of the alkaloids corresponding to 16.67 g of the drug was dissolved in water and taken orally. Pulse rate 76 per minute. 12:33 p.m. Occipital headache. Limbs feel heavy. 12:45 p.m. Pulse rate 66 per minute. 1:00 p.m. Nausea. Pulse rate 60 per minute. 1:15 p.m. Pulse rate 68 per minute. While reading, green and violet spots appear on the paper. The same occurs when I look up at the bright sky. After shutting the eyes visual images occur which are initially pale but gradually become more clearly defined and brighter. In this particular experiment landscapes are less frequent and I have predominantly images of kaleidoscopic figures, patterned carpets and cloth, luxurious articles of clothing and architectural scenes. The predominant colours are orange, red and green, with a little blue and occasionally yellow. On this occasion images occur in a completely darkened room, i.e. in a photographic darkroom, while my eyes are open, but they are not as vivid and clear as when I keep my eyes shut. The capacity for visual images lasts in this experiment for an extraordinarily long time. Even on the following morning coloured [green and violet] spots still appear when I shut my eyes. Other symptoms were as follows: dilatation of the pupils, dizziness, very distressing nausea which lasted on this occasion until 8 p.m. , loss of appreciation of time, impaired hearing and a feeling of tiredness in the limbs. All these symptoms, which were identical to those observed in the experiment performed on the 6th July, disappeared gradually during the evening. On the following morning only the pupils were still slightly dilated. In this experiment my consciousness again remained clear, but I found it hard to concentrate on calculations and while talking. My speech was somewhat slow and labourious."10
PERCEPTION "Under the influence of mescaline, the sensory qualities separate from objects of perception and begin to lead a life of their own. The 'soberness' of everyday moods, of everyday consciousness, seems swept away. Everything suddenly appears morning-fresh, in magnificent colours, crystal clear and incredibly plastic and mobile. When the eyes are closed, colours, freed from the fetters holding them to objects, continue to live a life of their own ... The experience of time and space is largely laid aside, whilst the faculties of thinking and memory are retained. Every single experience 'means' something, for example a picture not hanging straight that the world will perish in three days' time. The life of the will is completely paralysed, and a person under the influence of mescaline sees no reason why he should do or bend his will to anything in particular."11
COLOURS Of the sensory phenomena that peyote produces, the altered perception of colours is most remarkable. Auditory hallucinations and sharpening of the olfactory sense also occur. "Most usually there was a combination of rich, sober colour, with jewel-like points of brilliant hue. Every colour and tone conceivable to me appeared at some time or another. Sometimes all the different varieties of one colour, as of red, with scarlets, crimsons, pinks, would spring up together, or in quick succession. But in spite of this immense profusion, there was always a certain parsimony and æsthetic value in the colours presented. They were usually associated with form, and never appeared in large masses, or if so, the tone was very delicate. I was further impressed, not only by the brilliance, delicacy, and variety of the colours, but even more by their lovely and various textures - fibrous, woven, polished, glowing, dull, veined, semi-transparent - the glowing effects, as of jewels, and the fibrous, as of insects' wings, being perhaps the most prevalent. ... I awoke at the usual hour and experienced neither sense of fatigue nor other unpleasant reminiscence of the experience I had undergone. Only my eyes seemed unusually sensitive to colour, esp. to blue and violet; I can, indeed, say that ever since this experience I have been more æsthetically sensitive than I was before to the more delicate phenomena of light and shade and colour."12
LIGHT "It is worth considering the fact that the little Mexican cactus, peyotl, in its natural habitat in Central and Northern Mexico, is subjected to inordinately intense light, and that experiences of light are characteristic of peyotl-mescaline intoxication. Similar connections between their toxic action and the conditions under which they grow are visible in the case of henbane, thorn apple and deadly nightshade. ... My own experience of peyotl intoxication illustrates the essential difference between one type of intoxication and another. [Earlier], I described my experiment with black henbane and portrayed the plant as a gloomy, sinister growth. In the peyotl intoxication everything was bright and clear, luminous, of unearthly beauty, encompassed by a multitude of sweet sounds. ... The most active element of the peyotl cactus, the alkaloid mescaline, is mainly accumulated in its centre. One can take either the interior of the plant, or synthetic mescaline. I have tried both. The difference was considerable. Under the influence of the isolated alkaloid mescaline the course of intoxication was briefer and more violent, more of a shock, than after taking the whole plant substance. My sensations after eating the plant were gentler and more natural; they took longer to pass - intoxication often lasted for several days - and my recollections of the experiment was clearer. ... The fragment of peyotl which came into my possession was fibrous, brown and desiccated. It was bitter and unpalatable, but I forced myself to swallow it. ... I went through all the terrors and torments of thorough-going poisoning. My legs gave way, a yawn grew into a spasm, my chest ached and a boundless, crushing melancholy took possession of my soul. The horrible city was bare, bleak and cold, while the shivers and the terrible numbness of my brain caused me unspeakable anguish. The morning after a night's heavy drinking can be pretty grim, but it is generally relieved by a touch of philosophical humor. This remnant of consolation was denied me. Trembling muscles and leaden exhaustion made it hard for me to walk. I felt that the waves of light were coming to meet me like a solid and impenetrable wall. But there is one thing I must not forget to add: I was trembling not only with the freezing cold I felt in spite of the almost African heat - I was also trembling with a strange tension, a wonderful sense of anticipation, as though I were about to be visited with a new life. My cold shivers were at the same time shivers of rapture, although none of my agonies abated. ... Things were revealed in a flash and then sank quickly back into the void. Excitations and sensations arose in irregular jerks, like gentle explosions, leaving behind them a depressing nausea, a profound pessimism that saw no beauty, no hope and not a trace of joy. Once in my room, I closed the wooden shutters in front of the windows, undressed and lay down. At the time I imagined I was unable to stretch out. I seemed to be sitting upright on the bed, and yet I was lying flat in the ordinary way. Then I found it possible to lie down and sit up simultaneously, and this filled me with profound satisfaction. Nausea, constriction of the chest, muscular tremors, numbness of the brain and the terrible grey pessimism vanished as though blown away. As soon as I shut my eyes, a mighty but inaudible stream flowed past me, a river of colour and radiance. ... This wakefulness was scintillating, crystal-clear. I was bathed in invigorating, animating, purifying air. ...
This wakefulness acquired a new character: I felt something we normally experience only rarely and incompletely. The part of me that was consciously looking on, analyzing, thinking in terms of time and space and critically distinguishing between cause and effect, this part of myself was sitting beside me or above me, wherever I wanted it to be, or it was able to re-enter my body. ... There were flowing bands, slow or rushing rivers of colour. Colours - impregnating a material that must have been, from the beginning, the material of the world, on which all things imprinted themselves and out of which all things emerged - showed themselves to me and then disappeared. ... The sounds that came up from the street reached me in the form of colours; they shot into the room in cascades, in lightning flashes and radiant fires, and I took part in them. The walls curled. They drew together gracefully and with indescribable grandeur. I myself was the walls. This went on for perhaps a year or maybe two. In reality everything was timeless, without past and without future. ... The greatest gain and the greatest loss consisted in this: While the colours were revealing themselves to me as rivers, ribbons, sounds and tangible substances, I believed that I could read in them the meaning of life and all things. The one great ultimate truth was about to become clear to me at the next heartbeat. But every time this blissful, perfect moment approached I let it slip. I saw myself lying there smiling happily. I saw myself exactly as though a stranger were lying there. I watched the ultimate revelation fritter away."13
OTHER EFFECTS "About half an hour after ingesting the buttons the first effects are felt. There is a feeling of strange intoxication and shifting consciousness with minor perceptual changes. There may also be strong physical effects, including respiratory pressure, muscle tension [esp. face and neck muscles], and queasiness or possible nausea. Any unpleasant sensations should disappear within an hour. After this the state of altered consciousness begins to manifest itself. The experience may vary with the individual, but among the possible occurrences are feelings of inner tranquillity, oneness with life, heightened awareness, and rapid thought flow. During the next several hours these effects will deepen and become more visual. Colours may become more intense. Halos and auras may appear about things. Objects may seem larger, smaller , closer or more distant than they actually are. Often persons will notice little or no changes in visual perception while beholding the world about them, but upon closing their eyes they will see on their mind-screen wildly colourful and constant changing patterns. After several more hours the intensity of the experience gradually relaxes. Thought becomes less rapid and diffuse and more ordered. In the Navajo peyote ritual this change of thought flow is used wisely. During the first part of the ceremony the participants submit to the feeling and let the peyote teach them. During the latter part of the ritual the mind turns to thoughtful contemplation and understanding with the conscious intellect what the peyote has taught the subconscious mind. The entire experience may last from 6 to 12 hours depending upon the individual and the amount of the plant consumed. After all the peyote effects have passed there is no comedown. One is likely to feel pleasantly relaxed and much a peace with the world. Although there is usually no desire for food during the experience one would probably have a wholesome appetite afterwards."14
INFINITY "I was living in a timeless pulsation that bridged the gap between all barriers. I reached many eternities, and felt akin with infinity. At long last I knew the relation all things had for one another! All objects seemed to be complete in themselves; as I searched the depth of an object I would see many worlds buried in it. And as I examined each world, I saw that each had objects of its own which were seen as worlds and objects endlessly. Everything had a new interest for me, for everything was continuously in flux, and each new thing became newer than it was the instant before. All my senses merged and acted as one as they caressed and encompassed everything they perceived. A thousand sense feelings closed in upon me, stirring up within waves of climaxes that kept sending my mind to even greater, undreamed-of heights. The beginning was forgotten and no end was in sight. I had arrived back to the place of my origin. As each mystery exposed its true nature to me, each revelation was accompanied by vast explosions of vibratory colour, flowing liquid blending perfectly together to form a sea of radiant beauty. A consummation of me, my purpose and creator unfolded and seethed to further heights undreamed of; a tremendous upsurge of blissful emotion poured its intention into a tiny shell that expanded larger and larger. It reached its unbearable breaking point, and then release as the shell burst and a huge burning white flower grew bigger and bigger at a slow unceasing rate; the petals reached out to their fullest extreme, and then closed at the same unceasing rate, to rest... I continued to float in this heaven of satisfaction and contentment for an immeasurable time. Then far off in the distance I heard a thunderous sound which vibrated my world of infinite colour; the sound became louder, and I was wisked backwards through the velvet curtain of confusion once again."15
CASTANEDA Castaneda describes at length his experiences with the cactus. "I felt a strong, pungent bitterness; in a moment my whole mouth was numb. The bitterness increased as I kept on chewing, forcing an incredible flow of saliva. My gums and the inside of my mouth felt as if I had eaten salty, dry meat or fish, which seems to force one to chew more. ... But when I tried to speak I realized I couldn't; the words shifted aimlessly about in my mind. ... I experienced a very confusing moment, and became aware of the fact that although there was a clear thought in my mind, I could not speak. I wanted to comment on the strange quality of the water, but what followed next was not speech; it was the feeling of my unvoiced thoughts coming out of my mouth in a sort of liquid form. It was an effortless sensation of vomiting without the contractions of the diaphragm. It was a pleasant flow of liquid words. ... The passage from my normal state had taken place almost without my realizing it: I was aware; my thoughts and feelings were a corollary of that awareness; and the passing was smooth and clear. But this second change, the awakening to serious, sober consciousness, was genuinely shocking. I had forgotten I was a man! The sadness of such an irreconcilable situation was so intense that I wept."16 For American psychologist DeMille and peyotl expert Weston LaBarre, Castaneda's experiences are very much open to doubt. DeMille maintains that Castaneda invented Don Juan, and LaBarre stresses the fictitious nature of Castaneda's books, calling them "intellectual kitsch."
MEDICINE In 1888 the pharmaceutical company Parke Davis introduced the drug Anhalonium to medical practice, recommending the tincture during the next few years as a cardiac stimulant and tonic and for use in the treatment of angina pectoris. The drug was considered to have little less than marvellous effects and was also recommended for colour-blindness, as an antispasmodic, for general nervousness and insomnia, for asthma and for 'softening of the brain'. In current times, peyote is prescribed as an emetic, as a cardiac stimulant, and as a painkiller. Peyote has been shown to help near-sightedness and astigmatism.
EXPANSION OF FACULTIES "In 1933, a Swiss pharmacy began to advertise Peyotyl [sic] as a sort of adaptogen, to 'restore the individual's balance and calm and promote full expansion of his faculties,' leading the Swiss Federal Public Health Service to recommend this Peyotyl be made available only with a prescription. On the heels of the European and Americans, Erich Guttmann gave mescaline to more than sixty subjects at London's Maudsley Hospital. This research produced some of the best descriptions of mescaline inebriation. During World War II, German physicians at the infamous Dachau concentration camp studied the effects of mescaline as an interrogation aid on thirty prisoners."17
ARTS Aleister Crowley, nicknamed "The Great Beast" and a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, believed himself to be the first to introduce mescal into European artistic circles, stating that he made many experiments on people with mescal from 1910 onwards. Among them was Katherine Mansfield, but, according to reports, it only made her feel sick and rather annoyed at the sight of a picture hanging askew on the wall. Soon after the end of the First World War, the German scientist Kurt Beringer, an associate of C.G. Jung and Herman Hesse, conducted about sixty mescaline sessions, using as subjects male and female physicians and medical students. One of his subjects became fascinated with trying to put the "furious succession" of mescaline images on film; later, Walt Disney hired him as the chief visualist for Fantasia. More recent publications on self-experimentations with mescaline by novelists like Aldous Huxley [The Doors of Perception, 1954], Henri Michaux [Miserable Miracle; Mescaline, 1963] and William Burroughs [Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict, 1953] were an important stimulus to the use of hallucinogens in the sixties.
DRUG PICTURE The homoeopathic drug picture of Anhalonium, as described by Clarke, is based on the experiments of two men with peyote. The first was the American novelist and physician Silas Weir Mitchell [1829-1914], who described peyote intoxication in 1896. Weir Mitchell forwarded peyote buttons to the English essayist, physician and pioneer sexologist Havelock Ellis [1859-1939], who undertook 'provings' on himself as well as on three artist friends [among them the poet Yeats]. Weir Mitchell sent some buttons to the psychologist William James as well, but James got a severe stomachache after eating only one and declared that he would "take the visions on trust."
An artist friend of Havelock Ellis [probably Yeats] took four mescal buttons and experienced the following 'proving' symptoms. "Now also began another series of extraordinary sensations. They set in with bewildering suddenness and followed one another in rapid succession."18
• Blue light around objects.
• Sensation of numbness in the heart region.
• Delusion he is dissolving rapidly.
• Visions "of a furious succession of coloured arabesques, arising and descending or sliding at every possible angle into the field of view."
• "My right leg became suddenly heavy and solid; it seemed, indeed, as if the entire weight of my body had shifted into one part, about the thigh and knee, and that the rest of my body had lost all substantiality."
• "With the suddenness of a neuralgic pang, the back of my head seemed to open and emit streams of bright colour; this was immediately followed by the feeling as of a draft blowing like a gale through the hair in the same region."
• "At one moment the colour, green, acquired a taste in my mouth; it was sweetish and somewhat metallic; blue again would have a taste that seemed to recall phosphorus; these are the only colours that seemed to be connected with taste."
• Sensation of burning heat in the palm of the left hand.
• Sensation of heat about both eyes.
• "My reason appeared to be the sole survivor of my being. At times I felt that this, too, would go, but the sound of my own voice would establish again the communication with the outer world of reality."
• "Tremors were more or less constant in my lower limbs."
HEART Clarke states that Anhalonium doesn't produce any of the "terrible heart symptoms of the other Cacti." The experiments of Havelock Ellis provide evidence to the contrary:
• "There were paroxysmal attacks of pain at the heart and a sense of imminent death, which naturally alarmed the subject."
• "But a sudden difficulty in breathing and a sensation of numbness at the heart brought me back to the arm-chair from which I had risen. From this moment I had a series of attacks or paroxysms, which I can only describe by saying that I felt as though I were dying. It was impossible to move, and it seemed almost impossible to breathe. My speedy dissolution, I half imagined, was about to take place, and the power of making any resistance to the violent sensations that were arising within was going, I felt, with every second."
• "Persistent, also, was the feeling of nausea. This, when attended by a feeling of suffocation and a pain at the heart, was relieved by taking brandy, coffee, or biscuit."
PROVINGS •• [1] Unger - 6 provers [1 male, 5 females], 1958; method: 30x, twice a day 5 drops for 4-5 weeks; 12x, twice a day 5 drops for 3-8 weeks; 6x, thrice a day 5 drops for 3-4 weeks; 3x, thrice a day 5 drops for 4 weeks; in-between the various potencies medicine-free intervals of 1-2 months. For months after the proving, both Unger and other provers experienced a continuation of their visual hallucinations, predominated by the colours blue and green [the peyote cactus is bluish green!]. To one female prover the white keys of her typewriter appeared to be bluish green during a period of two years after the proving. According to Unger the element boron and its compounds, which naturally occur in Lophophora, account for the effects of peyote.
•• [2] Herrick - 10 provers, 1994; method: 30c, taken from one to three times over a three week period.
[1-2] Anderson, Peyote: The Divine Cactus, The University of Arizona Press 1980. [3] Stafford, Psychedelics Encyclopedia. [4] Ott, Pharmacotheon. [5] Schultes and Hofmann, The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens. [6] Frazer, The Golden Bough. [7] Bergman, Navajo peyote use: Its apparent safety; cited in Baggott, A Note on the Safety of Peyote when Used Religiously [website Council on Spiritual Practices]. [8-9] Furst [ed.], Flesh of the Gods. [10] Holmstedt and Liljestrand, Readings in Pharmacology, New York 1963. [11] Pelikan, Healing Plants. [12] Havelock Ellis, Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise. [13] Schenk, The Book of Poisons. [14] Gottlieb, Peyote and other Psychoactive Cacti. [15] Roseman, The Peyote Story. [16] Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan. [17] Ott, ibid. [18] Havelock Ellis, ibid.
Affinity
MIND. Nerves. Digestion. Heart and blood vessels. Respiration.
Modalities
Worse: Light. Motion. Closing eyes. Sunlight [esp. at noon].
Better: Rest. Darkness.
Main symptoms
M Egocentric introversion [Julian]; non-egoic consciousness [Stephenson].
• "A sense of egotistical concentration, together with a delightful feeling of irresponsibility towards one's surroundings." [Zaren]
Self-contained.
M - Objects seem enlarged - diminished.
• "I was about twenty-one years old when some men told me, 'There's a new, powerful medicine. It's going to whirl you around. It will make you see God.' ... I wanted to experience this and I went to their first meeting in a lonely shack. Six men were sitting on the floor of an empty room. They had a half-gallon can full of cut-up peyote. ... I felt strange taking this new medicine and took only a few tablespoons at first. The peyote was powerful. The drum got into me. The gourd got into me. There were voices coming to me out of that rattle. ... By midnight I was having visions. First I saw a square turning into a circle, into a half moon, into a beaded belt - green and blue - which was spinning around me. I could see myself as if looking down a high mountain, sitting with the other six men, seeing myself crouching in the corner of that log house. Suddenly I was back within myself. My eyes were on the logs, which seemed very close by, like looking through a magnifying glass. I saw something crawling out between the chinks. It was a big ant, maybe ten feet high, the biggest ant there ever was, all horns, spiny like a lobster. As the ant grew bigger, the room expanded with it. I saw insects starting to eat me. I got scared and tried to get away but couldn't move. The leader, the roadman, could tell that I was seeing something. He knew how I felt. He whirled his gourd around, shook his fan of feathers at me. I came back to life, back from someplace outside the log house, it seemed to me. I was confused. ... I tried to think about animals, but was unable to concentrate. The men had told me, 'Eat this and you will see God.' I did not see God. I couldn't think in complete words, only in syllables, one syllable at a time."1
M Noises or touch perceived by a coloured vision.
Hypersensitivity to noises. Sounds seen as colours.
Sensation of being carried by music.
M Loss of sense of time.
• "Sense of continuum. With places and people that you meet. A feeling of having been here before. Of coming back again. God is one. Everything is one. Lifetime is short but there is something that will continue on. Or: Everything is diffused." [Shah]
Delusion of having a non-material body.
Disorientation.
• "The child that is brought in for ADD may most likely be confused for Cannabis indica, Baryta carbonica, or Helleborus. The child has two sides to herself. She is ritualistic, liking to wear the same clothes, eat the same foods or mimic certain people. She also has a contrasting side; she appears to be very free, easily transitioning from one event to another going along with any suggestion and, 'being so mellow that she is not with the program.' When you ask the parents what they mean, they explain, 'She misses a lot of her day. It's like she is dreaming. It's like she has some idea and is so into it that she misses what's going on around her.'" [Herscu]
M Audio-visual hallucinations; "coloured visions of most overpowering brilliance, associated with moving shapes of fantastic design, the motion being regulated somewhat in time by music." [Clarke]
Multiple colours; or blue and green increased, with red and yellow decreased.
Or: Everything only one colour.
Visual hallucinations which overpower all mental functions.
• "The visual aberrations are among the richest in our materia medica. Outstanding are noise and touch seen as colour, perspectives completely distorted. The visual impression may be so powerful as to drown out all mental functions. Blue and green perception is increased; red and yellow decreased. In this, the objective red and yellow of consciousness has been displaced by the more subjective blues and greens, closer to the ultraviolet in the visual spectrum. A unique symptom was green experienced as a metallic taste; also, two dimensional objects appear multi-dimensional." [Stephenson]
c Disturbances of vision in welders; after operation for hypophyseal tumours; from overexertion of eyes due to prolonged watching television; from astigmatism.
M Objects seem transparent; sees his internal organs.
M Loss of sense of identity; depersonalization.
Boundless response to any illusion.
An ecstatic feeling of immortality.*
Delusion of standing beside oneself and observing oneself.*
Clairvoyance. ['Always knows what people around her are feeling.']
• "Others love them, love their perceptions and ability to be empathic. They have the enviable meditative, ecstasy side, the side that sees, hears, and feels beauty, the side that suspends time and feels like they are one with God. However, over time, the ability to maintain themselves, to maintain their own desires, their own ego sense, disappears. Now others affect them too much. Now everyone needs to be careful of how they act around this person. Now the Anhalonium is too perceptive. The process of self-degradation continues. Whereas before, the patient felt love and joy looking at scenery, at life and nature, music, and loving different aromas, they are now accosted by these very same stimuli. Now all these external stimuli are too much to bear. They stop feeling the borders." [Zaren]
• "The keynote of this remedy is schizophrenia between the conscious and unconscious life of the patient. There is a retreat from objective reality into an inner life so rich and so varied that the other world has lost its meaning. ... Possibly as the result of this separation between the conscious and the unconscious, physiologically there is an all pervading lethargy and a depression of the usual instincts of sex, hunger and a desire for companionship. [In this the action is similar to that following Opium smoking.] Yet, in spite of the lethargy, insomnia is marked, particularly at night from overactivity of the mind. The cerebral dissociation is accompanied by many peripheral, neurological symptoms such as numbness, formication and anaesthesia, particularly of the tongue and the limbs. ... In the mental sphere there is such a wide range of symptoms as to make analysis extremely difficult. As we have said, outstanding is the increased involvement in the inner life to the exclusion of the outer. Complete absence of will so that volition has become autocratic, divorced from any mental control. Most of the classic symptoms of religious experience can be found here - the euphoria, the bliss, the loss of mundane time sense, the loss of self-consciousness and the feeling of union with the greater self, and the eternal renunciation of the world. Among delusions there is the classic schizophrenic one that 'faces appear mask-like'." [Stephenson]
M Weakness of will.
Obstruction of the will. Lack of initiative. Unable to make up one's own mind.
Flight and withdrawal when faced with decisions.
M Split personality.
G Hysteria, insomnia, schizophrenia; hebephrenia.
[Hebephrenia is a form of schizophrenia characterised by thought disorder and emotional incognity. Delusions and hallucinations are common.]
G Ailments from:
Times of severe isolation; exposure to frightening visions - such as violence or violent movies; illnesses with attendant blood loss and illness that leaves the patient extremely weak.
• "They also tend to produce and be aggravated by losing fluid through some form of discharge such as repeated or severe diarrhoea or blood loss. This could be due to injury, or due to bleeding per vagina or rectum. They may also perspire a great deal or have tremendous mucus production, with sinusitis, repeated colds or mucous diarrhoea." [Herscu]
G FATIGUE.
• "Feels like doing things in slow motion, like mind and body moving through thick molasses." [Herrick]
G Chilliness. Internal coldness of body.
• "As if any ability to maintain proper body temperature has been lost or as if they had 'spent' their energy." [Herscu]
• "An experience of a cosmic coldness, penetrating the body as if out of the cosmos."*
> Heat [becoming warm; warm applications].
c Sensation of coldness [and heaviness].
[lips; tongue; genitals]
G OR: Intolerance of heat. [Hyperthyroidism]
And Congestive frontal headache [esp. behind the eyes or above left eye].
And Perspiration of hands.
And Emaciation in spite of ravenous appetite.
< Heat of sun. > Cold air; cold applications.*
G Acute sensitiveness to meteorological changes.
G Dislike of all foods, in spite of strong salivation and sensation of hunger.
Or: Sensation of hunger despite adequate food intake.
G Gradual changes until a complete reversal of sleep-waking rhythm.
Flight from reality into the nightly dream world.
• "Increasing shadowing of day consciousness and brightening of night unconsciousness in all stages of transition. That is, during the day, tiredness and a feeling of being beaten-up, sleepiness, drowsiness and dimness of consciousness. At night, pronounced, long-lasting inability to fall asleep from active mental images. Restlessness and fulness of the thoughts. Dreams of a visionary character."*
G Sexual desire decreased.
• "Erogenous areas are icy cold."*
G Motion.
• "Disinclined to make the slightest movement."
G General reduction of peripheral pain sensation.*
G Muscular rigidity, particularly facial.
• "Other peoples faces appear mask-like and scheming."*
P Migraine.
< Closing eyes; motion of eyes. > Lying down.
And Disturbed vision [brilliant coloured objects are seen].
And Loss of conception of time.
P Trigeminal neuralgia, left-sided.
And Vasomotor troubles, increased perspiration and hypersensitivity to touch.
P Heart and circulation.*
Irregular or accelerated heartbeat.
Oppression of chest, esp. on left side.
Stitches in the heart and sensation of fear in the heart.
Feeling of constriction or squeezing, as if the heart were at a standstill.
* Unger, Das Arzneibild Peyotl, Allg. Hom. Zeitung, 1958 Heft 11 + Heft 12. Summary of proving in Journal of American Institute of Homeopathy January 1961.
1 John [Fire] Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes, Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions; New York 1994.
Rubrics
Mind
Loss of adaptability [2/1]. Heightened awareness of body [2; Marb.]. Clairvoyance [2]. Confusion, as to his identity [2]; depersonalization, loss of self-knowledge and self-control, dissociation from or self-identification with environment, personal disruption [2/1]. Decomposition of shape [1/1]; of space [1/1]. Delusion, body is immaterial [1/1]; she is dissolving [1*; Neon]; objects are enlarged [2]; enlarged and diminished [2/1]; floating in air [1]; immortality [1/1]; on closing eyes [1]; hears music [1]; he is separated from the world [2; Anac.; Androc.; Hydrog.]; snakes in and around her [1]; everything is transparent [2]. Escape in a world of dreams [1/1]. Execution lost as the result of overpowering visual sensations [1/1]. Open-hearted loquacity [1; Bov.]. Memory active for past events [1; Hyos.]. Music > [1]; sensation of being carried by music [1/1]; drums produce euphoria [1/1]. Flight from reality [1/1]. Monotony of thoughts [1; Chlol.]. Loss of will, with increased insight, self-awareness [1/1]; feels as if he had two wills [1].
Head
Sensation as if occiput opens and emits streams of bright colour [1/1*].
Vision
Colours, blue light around objects [1*]. Dim during headache [1; Cycl.; Iris; Sulph.]. Zigzags during headache [1/1].
Stomach
Nausea > brandy [1*; Ars.]; > coffee [1*; Alet.]; > lying down [1; Alum.; Nux-v.]; during pain in heart [1*; Spig.].
Chest
Sensation of numbness in heart region [1*; Cact.]. Paroxysmal pain in heart with sensation of imminent death [1*; Cact.].
Limbs
Sensation of heat in palm of left hand [1/1*].
Generals
Cold feeling in inner parts [1; Calc.; Hura; Laur.].
* Repertory additions [Unger].
Food
Desire: [1]: Garlic [*]; spaghetti [*]; spicy [*].
Better: [1]: Brandy [*]; coffee[*].
* Repertory additions.
Appendix anhalonium
HAVELOCK ELLIS - MESCAL: A NEW ARTIFICIAL PARADISE
[The Contemporary Review, January 1898]
It has been known for some years that the Kiowa Indians of New Mexico are accustomed to eat, in their religious ceremonies, a certain cactus called Anhalonium Lewinii, or mescal button. Mescal - which must not be confounded with the intoxicating drink of the same name made from an agave - is found in the Mexican Valley of the Rio Grande, the ancestral home of the Kiowa Indians, as well as in Texas, and is a brown and brittle substance, nauseous and bitter to the taste, composed mainly of the blunt dried leaves of the plant. Yet, as we shall see, it has every claim to rank with hashish and the other famous drugs which have procured for men the joys of an artificial paradise. Upon the Kiowa Indians, who first discovered its rare and potent virtues, it has had so strong a fascination that the missionaries among these Indians, finding here a rival to Christianity not yielding to moral suasion, have appealed to the secular arm, and the buying and selling of the drug has been prohibited by Government under severe penalties. Yet the use of mescal prevails among the Kiowas to this day.
It has indeed spread, and the mescal rite may be said to be to day the chief religion of all the tribes of the southern plains of the United States. The rite usually takes place on Saturday night; the men then sit in a circle within the tent round a large camp fire, which is kept burning brightly all the time. After prayer the leader hands each man four buttons, which are slowly chewed and swallowed, and altogether about ten or twelve buttons are consumed by each man between sun-down and daybreak. Throughout the night the men sit quietly round the fire in a state of reverie - amid continual singing and the beating of drums by attendants - absorbed in the colour visions and other manifestations of mescal intoxication, and about noon on the following day, when the effects have passed off, they get up and go about their business, without any depression or other unpleasant after-effect.
There are five or six allied species of cacti which the Indians also use and treat with great reverence. Thus Mr. Carl Lumholtz has found that the Tarahumari, a tribe of Mexican Indians, worship various cacti as gods, only to be approached with uncovered heads. When they wish to obtain these cacti, the Tarahumari cleanse themselves with copal incense, and with profound respect dig up the god, careful lest they should hurt him, while women and children are warned from the spot. Even Christian Indians regard Hikori, the cactus god, as coequal with their own divinity, and make the sign of the cross in its presence. At all great festivals Hikori is made into a drink and consumed by the medicine man, or certain selected Indians, who sing as they partake of it, invoking Hikori to grant a "beautiful intoxication"; at the same time a rasping noise is made with sticks, and men and women dance a fantastic and picturesque dance - the women by themselves in white petticoats and tunics - before those who are under the influence of the god.
In 1891 Mr. James Mooney, of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, having frequently observed the mescal rites of the Kiowa Indians and assisted at them, called the attention of the Anthropological Society at Washington to the subject, and three years later he brought to Washington a supply of mescal, which was handed over for examination to Drs. Prentiss and Morgan. These investigators experimented on several young men, and demonstrated, for the first time, the precise character of mescal intoxication and the remarkable visions to which it gives rise. A little later Dr. Weir Mitchell, who, in addition to his eminence as a physician, is a man of marked aesthetic temperament, experimented on himself, and published a very interesting record of the brilliant visions by which he was visited under the influence of the plant. In the spring of the past year I was able to obtain a small sample of mescal in London, and as my first experiment with mescal was also, apparently, the first attempt to investigate its vision-producing properties outside America, I will describe it in some detail, in preference to drawing on the previously published descriptions of the American observers.
On Good Friday I found myself entirely alone in the quiet rooms in the Temple which I occupy when in London, and judged the occasion a fitting one for a personal experiment. I made a decoction [a different method from that adopted in America] of three buttons, the full physiological dose, and drank this at intervals between 2.30 and 4.30 p.m. The first symptom observed during the afternoon was a certain consciousness of energy and intellectual power. This passed off, and about an hour after the final dose I felt faint and unsteady; the pulse was low, and I found it pleasanter to lie down. I was still able to read, and I noticed that a pale violet shadow floated over the page around the point at which my eyes were fixed. I had already noticed that objects not in the direct line of vision, such as my hands holding the book, shows a tendency to look obtrusive, heightened in colour, almost monstrous, while, on closing my eyes, afterimages were vivid and prolonged.
The appearance of vision with closed eyes was very gradual. At first there was merely a vague play of light and shade which suggested pictures, but never made them. Then the pictures became more definite, but too confused and crowded to be described, beyond saying that they were of the same character as the images of the kaleidoscope, symmetrical groupings of spiked objects. Then, in the course of the evening, they became distinct, but still indescribable-mostly a vast field of golden jewels, studded with red and green stones, ever changing. This moment was, perhaps, the most delightful of the experience, for at the same time the air around me seemed to be flushed with vague perfume - producing with the visions a delicious effect - and all discomfort had vanished, except a slight faintness and tremor of the hands, which, later on, made it almost impossible to guide a pen as I made notes of the experiment; it was, however, with an effort, always possible to write with a pencil. The visions never resembled familiar objects; they were extremely definite, but yet always novel; they were constantly approaching, and yet constantly eluding, the semblance of known things. I would see thick, glorious fields of jewels, solitary or clustered, sometimes brilliant and sparkling, sometimes with a dull rich glow. Then they would spring up into flower-like shapes beneath my gaze, and then seem to turn into gorgeous butterfly forms or endless folds of glistening, iridescent, fibrous wings of wonderful insects; while sometimes I seemed to be gazing into a vast hollow revolving vessel, or whose polished concave mother-of-pearl surface the hues were swiftly changing. I was surprised, not only by the enormous profusion of the imagery presented to my gaze, but still more by its variety.
Perpetually some totally new kind of effect would appear in the field of vision; sometimes there was swift movement, sometimes dull, sombre richness of colour, sometimes glitter and sparkle, once a startling rain of gold, which seemed to approach me. Most usually there was a combination of rich, sober colour, with jewel-like points of brilliant hue. Every colour and tone conceivable to me appeared at some time or another. Sometimes all the different varieties of one colour, as of red, with scarlets, crimsons, pinks, would spring up together, or in quick succession. But in spite of this immense profusion, there was always a certain parsimony and æsthetic value in the colours presented. They were usually associated with form, and never appeared in large masses, or if so, the tone was very delicate. I was further impressed, not only by the brilliance, delicacy, and variety of the colours, but even more by their lovely and various textures - fibrous, woven, polished, glowing, dull, veined, semi-transparent - the glowing effects, as of jewels, and the fibrous, as of insects' wings, being perhaps the most prevalent. Although the effects were novel, it frequently happened, as I have already mentioned, that they vaguely recalled known objects.
Thus, once the objects presented to me seemed to be made of exquisite porcelain, again they were like elaborate sweetmeats, again of a somewhat Maori style of architecture; and the background of the pictures frequently recalled, both in form and tone, the delicate architectural effects as of lace carved in wood, which we associated with the mouchrabieh work of Cairo. But always the visions grew and changed without any reference to the characteristics of those real objects of which they vaguely reminded me, and when I tried to influence their course it was with very little success. On the whole, I should say that the images were most usually what might be called living arabesques. There was often a certain incomplete tendency to symmetry, as though the underlying mechanism was associated with a large number of polished facets. The same image was in this way frequently repeated over a large part of the field; but this refers more to form than to colour, in respect to which there would still be all sorts of delightful varieties, so that if, with a certain uniformity, jewel-like flowers were springing up and expanding all over the field of vision, they would still show every variety of delicate tone and tint.
Weir Mitchell found that he could only see the visions with closed eyes and in a perfectly dark room. I could see them in the dark with almost equal facility, though they were not of equal brilliancy, when my eyes were wide open. I saw them best, however, when my eyes were closed, in a room lighted only by flickering firelight. This evidently accords with the experience of the Indians, who keep a fire burning brightly throughout their mescal rites.
The visions continued with undiminished brilliance for many hours, and as I felt somewhat faint and muscularly weak, I went to bed, as I undressed being greatly impressed by the red, scaly, bronzed, and pigmented appearance of my limbs whenever I was not directly gazing at them. I had not the faintest desire for sleep; there was a general hyperaesthesia of all the senses as well as muscular irritability, and every slightest sound seemed magnified to startling dimensions. I may also have been kept awake by a vague alarm at the novelty of my condition, and the possibility of further developments.
After watching the visions in the dark for some hours I became a little tired of them and turned on the gas. Then I found that I was able to study a new series of visual phenomena, to which previous observers had made no reference. The gas jet [an ordinary flickering burner] seemed to burn with great brilliance, sending out waves of light, which expanded and contracted in an enormously exaggerated manner. I was even more impressed by the shadows, which were in all directions heightened by flushes of red, green, and especially violet. The whole room, with its whitewashed but not very white ceiling, thus became vivid and beautiful. The difference between the room as I saw it then and the appearance it usually presents to me was the difference one may often observe between the picture of a room and the actual room. The shadows I saw were the shadows which the artist puts in, but which are not visible in the actual scene under normal conditions of casual inspection. I was reminded of the paintings of Claude Monet, and as I gazed at the scene it occurred to me that mescal perhaps produces exactly the same conditions of visual hyperaesthesia, or rather exhaustion, as may be produced on the artist by the influence of prolonged visual attention. I wished to ascertain how the subdued and steady electric light would influence vision, and passed into the next room; but here the shadows were little marked, although walls and floor seemed tremulous and insubstantial, and the texture of everything was heightened and enriched.
About 3.30 a. m. I felt that the phenomena were distinctly diminishing - though the visions, now chiefly of human figures, fantastic and Chinese in character, still continued - and I was able to settle myself to sleep, which proved peaceful and dreamless. I awoke at the usual hour and experienced no sense of fatigue nor other unpleasant reminiscence of the experience I had undergone. Only my eyes seemed unusually sensitive to colour, especially to blue and violet; I can, indeed, say that ever since this experience I have been more æsthetically sensitive than I was before to the more delicate phenomena of light and shade and colour.
It occurred to me that it would be interesting to have the experiences of an artist under the influence of mescal, and I induced an artist friend to make a similar experiment. Unfortunately no effects whatever were produced at the first attempt, owing, as I have since discovered, to the fact that the buttons had only been simply infused and their virtues not extracted. To make sure of success the experiment was repeated with four buttons, which proved to be an excessive and unpleasant dose. There were paroxysmal attacks of pain at the heart and a sense of imminent death, which naturally alarmed the subject, while so great was the dread of light and dilatation of the pupils that the eyelids had to be kept more or less closed, though it was evident that a certain amount of vision was still possible.
The symptoms came on very suddenly, and when I arrived they were already at their height. As the experiences of this subject were in many respects very unlike mine, I will give them in his own words: "I noticed first that as I happened to turn my eyes away from a blue enamel kettle at which I had been unconsciously looking, and which was standing in the fender of the fireplace, with no fire in it, it seemed to me that I saw a spot of the same blue in the black coals of the grate, and that this spot appeared again, farther off, a little brighter in hue. But I was in doubt whether I had not imagined these blue spots. When, however, I lifted my eyes to the mantelpiece, on which were scattered all sorts of odds and ends, all doubt was over. I saw an intensely vivid blue light begin to play around every object. A square cigarette box, violet in colour, shone like an amethyst. I turned my eyes away and beheld this time, on the back of a polished chair, a bar of colour glowing like a ruby. Although I was expecting some such manifestation as one of the first symptoms of the intoxication, I was nevertheless somewhat alarmed when this phenomenon took place. Such a silent and sudden illumination of all things around, where a moment before I had seen nothing uncommon, seemed like a kind of madness beginning from outside me, and its strangeness affected me more than its beauty. A desire to escape from it led me to the door, and the act of moving had, I noticed, the effect of dispelling the colours. But a sudden difficulty in breathing and a sensation of numbness at the heart brought me back to the armchair from which I had risen. From this moment I had a series of attacks or paroxysms, which I can only describe by saying that I felt as though I were dying. It was impossible to move, and it seemed almost impossible to breathe. My speedy dissolution, I half imagined, was about to take place, and the power of making any resistance to the violent sensations that were arising within was going, I felt, with every second.
"The first paroxysms were the most violent. They would come on with tingling in the lower limbs, and with the sensation of a nauseous and suffocating gas mounting up into my head. Two or three times this was accompanied by a colour vision of the gas bursting into flame as it passed up my throat. But I seldom had visions during the paroxysms; these would appear in the intervals. They began with a spurting up of colours; once, of a flood of brightly illuminated green water covering the field of vision, and effervescing in parts, just as when fresh water with all the air bubbles is pumped into a swimming bath. At another time my eye seemed to be turning into a vast drop of dirty water in which millions of minute creatures resembling tadpoles were in motion. But the early visions consisted mostly of a furious succession of coloured arabesques, arising and descending or sliding at every possible angle into the field of view. It would be as difficult as to give a description of the whirl of water at the bottom of a waterfall as to describe the chaos of colour and design which marked this period.
"Now also began another series of extraordinary sensations. They set in with bewildering suddenness and followed one another in rapid succession. These I now record as they occur to my mind at haphazard: [1] My right leg became suddenly heavy and solid; it seemed, indeed, as if the entire weight of my body had shifted into one part, about the thigh and knee, and that the rest of my body had lost all substantiality. [2]With the suddenness of a neuralgic pang, the back of my head seemed to open and emit streams of bright colour; this was immediately followed by the feeling as of a draft blowing like a gale through the hair in the same region. [3] At one moment the colour, green, acquired a taste in my mouth; it was sweetish and somewhat metallic; blue again would have a taste that seemed to recall phosphorus; these are the only colours that seemed to be connected with taste. [4] A feeling of delightful relief and preternatural lightness about my forehead, succeeded by a growing sensation of contraction. [5] Singing in one of my ears. [6] A sensation of burning heat in the palm of my left hand. [7] Heat about both eyes. The last continued throughout the whole period, except for a moment when I had a sensation of cold upon the eyelids, accompanied with a colour vision of the wrinkled lid, of the skin disappearing from the brow, of dead flesh, and finally of a skull.
"Throughout these sensations and visions my mind remained not only perfectly clear, but enjoyed, I believe, an unusual lucidity. Certainly I was conscious of an odd contrast in hearing myself talk rationally with H. E., who had entered the room a short time before, and experiencing at the same moment the wild and extraordinary pranks that were taking place in my body. My reason appeared to be the sole survivor of my being. At times I felt that this, too, would go, but the sound of my own voice would establish again the communication with the outer world of reality.
"Tremors were more or less constant in my lower limbs. Persistent, also, was the feeling of nausea. This, when attended by a feeling of suffocation and a pain at the heart, was relieved by taking brandy, coffee, or biscuit. For muscular exertion I felt neither the wish nor the power. My hands, however, retained their full strength.
"It was painful for me to keep my eyes open above a few seconds; the light of day seemed to fill the room with a blinding glare. Yet every object, in the brief glimpse I caught, appeared normal in colour and shape. With my eyes closed, most of the visions, after the first chaotic display, represented parts of the whole of my body undergoing a variety of marvellous changes, of metamorphoses or illumination. They were more often than not comic and grotesque in character, though often beautiful in colour. At one time I saw my right leg filling up with delicate heliotrope; at another, the sleeve of my coat changed into a dark green material, in which was worked a pattern in red braid, and the whole bordered at the cuff with sable. Scarcely had my new sleeve taken shape than I found myself attired in a complete costume of the same fashion, mediaeval in character, but I could not say to what precise period it belonged. I noted that a chance movement - of my hand, for instance - would immediately call up a colour vision of the part exerted, and that this again would pass, by a seemingly natural transition, into another wholly dissimilar. Thus, pressing my fingers accidentally against my temples, the fingertips became elongated, and then grew into the ribs of a vaulting or of a dome-shaped roof. But most of the visions were of a more personal nature. I happened once to lift a spoonful of coffee to my lips, and as I was in the act of raising my arm for that purpose a vision dashed before my closed [or nearly closed] eyes, in all the hues of the rainbow, of my arm separated from my body, and serving me with coffee from out of dark and indefinite space. On another occasion, as I was seeking to relieve slight nausea by taking a piece of biscuit passed to me by H. E., it suddenly streamed out into blue flame. For an instant I held the biscuit close to my leg. Immediately my trousers caught alight, and then the whole of the right side of my body, from the foot to the shoulder, was enveloped in waving blue dame. It was a sight of wonderful beauty. But this was not all. As I placed the biscuit in my mouth it burst out again into the same coloured fire and illuminated the interior of my mouth, casting a blue resection on the roof. The light in the Blue Grotto at Capri, I am able to affirm, is not nearly as blue as seemed for a short space of time the interior of my mouth. There were many visions of which I could not trace the origin.
"There were spirals and arabesques and flowers, and sometimes objects more trivial and prosaic in character. In one vision I saw a row of small white flowers, one against the other like pearls of a necklace, begin to revolve in the form of a spiral. Every flower, I observed, had the texture of porcelain. It was at a moment when I had the sensation of my cheeks growing hot and feverish that I experienced the strangest of all the colour visions. It began with feeling that the skin of my face was becoming quite thin and of no stouter consistency than tissue paper, and the feeling was suddenly enhanced by a vision of my face, paper-like and semitransparent and somewhat reddish in colour. To my amazement I saw myself as though I were inside a Chinese lantern, looking out through my cheek into the room. Not long after this I became conscious of a change in the visions. Their tempo was more moderate; they were less frequent, and they were losing somewhat in distinctness. At the same time the feeling of nausea and of numbness was departing. A short period followed in which I had no visions at all, and experienced merely a sensation of heaviness and torpor. I found that I was able to open my eyes again and keep them fixed on any object in the room without observing the faintest blue halo or prism, or bar of glowing colour, and that, moreover, no visions appeared on closing them. It was now twilight, but beyond the fact of not seeing light or colour, either without or within, I had a distinct feeling that the action of the drug was at an end and that my body had become sober suddenly. I had no more visions, though I was not wholly free from abnormal sensations, and I retired to rest. I lay awake till the morning, and with the exception of the following night I scarcely slept for the next three days, but I can not say that I felt any signs of fatigue, unless, perhaps, on one of the days when my eyes, I noticed, became very susceptible to any indications of blue in an object. Of colour visions, or of any approach to colour visions, there was no further trace; but all sorts of odd and grotesque images passed in succession through my mind during part of the first night. They might have been the dreams of a Baudelaire or of an Aubrey Beardsley. I would see figures with prodigious limbs, or strangely dwarfed and curtailed, or impossible combinations such as five or six fish, the colour of canaries, floating about in air in a gold wire cage. But these were purely mental images, like the visions seen in a dream by a distempered brain.
"Of the many sensations of which my body had been the theatre during three hours, not the least strange was the feeling I experienced on coming back into a normal condition. The recovery did not proceed gradually, but the whole outer and inner world of reality came back, as it were, with a bound. And for a moment it seemed strange. It was the sensation - only much intensified - which everyone has known on coming out into the light of day from an afternoon performance at a theatre, where one has sat in an artificial light of gas and lamps, the spectator of a fictitious world of action. As one pours out with the crowd into the street, the ordinary world, by force of contrast with the sensational scenes just witnessed, breaks in upon one with almost a sense of unreality. The house, the aspects of the street, even the light of day appear a little foreign for a few moments. During these moments everything strikes the mind as odd and unfamiliar, or at least with a greater degree of objectivity. Such was my feeling with regard to my old and habitual self. During the period of intoxication the connection between the normal condition of my body and my intelligence had broken - my body had become in a manner a stranger to my reason - so that now on reasserting itself it seemed, with reference to my reason, which had remained perfectly sane and alert, for a moment sufficiently unfamiliar for me to become conscious of its individual and peculiar character. It was as if I had unexpectedly attained an objective knowledge of my own personality. I saw, as it were, my normal state of being with the eyes of a person who sees the street on coming out of the theatre in broad day.
"This sensation also brought out the independence of the mind during the period of intoxication. It alone appeared to have escaped the ravages of the drug; it alone remained sane during a general delirium, vindicating, so it seemed, the majesty of its own impersonal nature. It had reigned for a while, I now felt, as an autocrat, without ministers and their officiousness. Henceforth I should be more or less conscious of the interdependence of body and brain; a slight headache, a touch of indigestion, or what not, would be able to effect what a general intoxication of my senses and nerves could not touch."
I next made experiments on two poets, whose names are both well known. One is interested in mystical matters, an excellent subject for visions, and very familiar with various vision-producing drugs and processes. His heart, however, is not very strong. While he obtained the visions, he found the effects of mescal on his breathing somewhat unpleasant; he much prefers hashish, though recognising that its effects are much more difficult to obtain. The other enjoys admirable health, and under the influence of mescal he experienced scarcely the slightest unpleasant reaction, but, on the contrary, a very marked state of well being and beatitude. He took somewhat less than three buttons, so that the results were rather less marked than in my case, but they were perfectly definite. He writes: "I have never seen a succession of absolutely pictorial visions with such precision and such unaccountability. It seemed as if a series of dissolving views were carried swiftly before me, all going from right to left, none corresponding with any seen reality. For instance, I saw the most delightful dragons, puffing out their breath straight in front of them like rigid lines of steam, and balancing white balls at the end of their breath! When I tried to fix my mind on real things, I could generally call them up, but always with some inexplicable change. Thus, I called up a particular monument in Westminster Abbey, but in front of it, to the left, knelt a figure in Florentine costume, like someone out of a picture of Botticelli; and I could not see the tomb without also seeing this figure. Late in the evening I went out on the Embankment and was absolutely fascinated by an advertisement of 'Bovril', which went and came in letters of light on the other side of the river. I can not tell you the intense pleasure this moving light gave me and how dazzling it seemed to me. Two girls and a man passed me, laughing loudly, and lolling about as they walked. I realized, intellectually, their coarseness, but visually I saw them, as they came under a tree, fall into the lines of a delicate picture; it might have been an Albert Moore. After coming in I played the piano with closed eyes and got waves and lines of pure colour, almost always without form, though I saw one or two appearances which might have been shields or breastplates - pure gold, studded with small jewels in intricate patterns. All the time I had no unpleasant feelings whatever, except a very slight headache, which came and went. I slept soundly and without dreams."
The results of music in the case just quoted - together with the habit of the Indians to combine the drum with mescal rites, and my own observation that very slight jarring or stimulation of the scalp would affect the visions - suggested to me to test the influence of music on myself. I therefore once more put myself under the influence of mescal [taking a somewhat smaller dose than on the first occasion], and lay for some hours on a couch with my head more or less in contact with the piano, and with closed eyes directed toward a subdued light, while a friend played, making various tests, of his own devising, which were not explained to me until afterwards. I was to watch the visions in a purely passive manner, without seeking to direct them, nor was I to think about the music, which, so far as possible, was unknown to me. The music stimulated the visions and added greatly to my enjoyment of them. It seemed to harmonize with them, and, as it were, support and bear them up. A certain persistence and monotony of character in the music was required in order to affect the visions, which then seemed to fall into harmony with it, and any sudden change in the character of the music would blur the visions, as though clouds passed between them and me. The chief object of the tests was to ascertain how far a desire on the composer's part to suggest definite imagery would affect my visions. In about half the cases there was no resemblance, in the other half there was a distinct resemblance, which was sometimes very remarkable. This was especially the case with Schumann's music, for example, with his Waldscenen and Kinderscenen; thus "The Prophet Bird" called up vividly a sense of atmosphere and of brilliant feathery bird-like forms passing to and fro, "A Flower Piece" provoked constant and persistent images of vegetation, while "Scheherazade" produced an effect of floating white raiment, covered by glittering spangles and jewels. In every case my description was, of course, given before I knew the name of the piece. I do not pretend that this single series of experiments proves much, but it would certainly be worth while to follow up this indication and to ascertain if any light is hereby thrown on the power of a composer to suggest definite imagery, or the power of a listener to perceive it.
It would be out of place here to discuss the obscure question as to the underlying mechanism by which mescal exerts its magic powers. It is clear from the foregoing descriptions that mescal intoxication may be described as chiefly a saturnalia of the specific senses, and, above all, an orgy of vision. It reveals an optical fairyland, where all the senses now and again join the play, but the mind itself remains a self-possessed spectator. Mescal intoxication thus differs from the other artificial paradises which drugs procure. Under the influence of alcohol, for instance, as in normal dreaming, the intellect is impaired, although there may be a consciousness of unusual brilliance; hashish, again, produces an uncontrollable tendency to movement and bathes its victim in a sea of emotion. The mescal drinker remains calm and collected amid the sensory turmoil around him; his judgement is as clear as in the normal state; he falls into no oriental condition of vague and voluptuous reverie. The reason why mescal is of all this class of drugs the most purely intellectual in its appeal is evidently because it affects mainly the most intellectual of the senses. On this ground it is not probable that its use will easily develop into a habit. Moreover, unlike most other intoxicants, it seems to have no special affinity for a disordered and unbalanced nervous system; on the contrary, it demands organic soundness and good health for the complete manifestation of its virtues. Further, unlike the other chief substances to which it may be compared, mescal does not wholly carry us away from the actual world, or plunge us into oblivion; a large part of its charm lies in the halo of beauty which it casts around the simplest and commonest things. It is the most democratic of the plants which lead men to an artificial paradise. If it should ever chance that the consumption of mescal becomes a habit, the favourite poet of the mescal drinker will certainly be Wordsworth. Not only the general attitude of Wordsworth, but many of his most memorable poems and phrases can not - one is almost tempted to say - be appreciated in their full significance by one who has never been under the influence of mescal. On all these grounds it may be claimed that the artificial paradise of mescal, though less seductive, is safe and dignified beyond its peers.
At the same time it must be remembered that at present we are able to speak on a basis of but very small experience, so far as civilized men are concerned. The few observations recorded in America and my own experiments in England do not enable us to say anything regarding the habitual consumption of mescal in large amounts. That such consumption would be gravely injurious I can not doubt its safeguard seems to lie in the fact that a certain degree of robust health is required to obtain any real enjoyment from its visionary gifts. It may at least be claimed that for a healthy person to be once or twice admitted to the rites of mescal is not only an unforgettable delight, but also an educational influence of no mean value.