As Professor of Botany Hui-Lin Li, an expert on the history of cannabis in China notes, “The evidence... suggests that the medicinal use of the hemp plant was widely known to the Neolithic (Stone Age) peoples of north-eastern Asia and shamanism was especially widespread in this northern area and also in China, and cannabis played an important part in its ritual” (Li, 1975). Likewise, expert on Chinese history, Joseph Needham has also noted, “...the hallucinogenic properties of hemp were common knowledge in Chinese medical and Taoist circles for two millennia or more” (Needham, 1974). xpert on Chinese history, Joseph Needham, also reports that Taoists mystics were alleged to add “hallucinogenic smokes to their incense burners... The addition of hemp (ta-ma, huo-ma, Cannabis sativa = indica) to the contents of incense-burners is clearly stated in one Taoist collection, Wu Shang Pi Yao (Essentials of the Matchless Books), which must place it before +570...” (Needham, 1974). This shamanic relationship with cannabis obviously lasted some centuries amongst Taoists and this is not surprising as “…the Taoist technique of ecstasy is shamanic in origin and structure” (Eliade, 1984). The magical use of cannabis was not limited to smoking. In the Chen Kao, “Yang Hsi describes... his own experience using the Chhu Shen Wan (Pill of Commencing Immortals) which contains much hemp” (Needham, 1974). A Taoist priest writing in the fifth century B.C. about seeded buds of cannabis noted that “magician-technicians (shu chia) say that if one consumes them with ginseng it will give one preternatural knowledge of events in the future.” “…[O]ne could add a fine +6th-century example from a Wu Tsang Ching (Manual of the Five Viscera)… ‘If you wish to command demonic apparitions to present themselves you should constantly eat the inflorescences of the hemp plant’” (Needham, 1976). amazon/Cannabis-Soma-Solution-Chris-Bennett/dp/0984185801/ref=la_B004SJTQYU_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403715789&sr=1-1
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 17:03:38 +0000
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