WARNING:
THE EFFECTS OF THESE PLANTS ARE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND UNPREDICTABLE.
EVERY YEAR PEOPLE DIE FROM INGESTING THESE PLANTS.
THE ALKALOID CONTENT VARIES GREATLY IN PLANTS AND DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE PLANT.
A SLIGHT MISCALCULATION OF A DOSE MAY AND OFTEN DOES CAUSE DEATH.
THIS PAGE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.
DO NOT ATTEMPT ANY OF THE PRACTICES MENTIONED ON THIS PAGE.



A Note from Astraltraveler1984:


One thing I have learned is that, these plants are to be respected. Spend 5 minutes scanning through the Datura Experience Vaults on Erowid.org and you will see the disturbingly large number of train wrecks reported from the misuse of these plants.

I posted this page as a tribute to these teacher plants to share some of the vast amounts of interesting information about their long history of use.

Please heed my warning, and do not ingest these plants.

Namaste,

- Matt




Datura Time Line
(From the Datura Vault on www.erowid.org):

c. 5th Century BCE		Legend ha s it that when the Buddha preaches, dew or raindrops fall from the heaven onto Datura plants. 1
c. 301 BCE		Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle, writes about the hallucinogenic effects of Datura stramonium. The text contains one of the earliest references to the concept of tolerance to a drug. 2
c. 4th-6th Century CE		The Kamasutra of Vātsyāyana includes at least two references to datura. One reference instructs a man to annoint his penis with honey infused with datura before sexual intercourse, to make his partner "subject to his will". 3
c. 8th Century		The Buddhist scripture Guhyasamāja Tantra instructs in the ritual use of datura. 4 [Details]
c. 10th Century		The Buddhist scripture Vajramahabhairava Tantra refers to Datura metel several times. 5
11th - 12th Century		Datura is associated w ith the worship of Shiva, the Indian god associated with the creative and destructive aspects of the universe. 1
11th Century		Arabian doctor Avicenna reported on Datura metel under then name 'Jouzmathal ('metel nut'). This report was later repeated in Dioscorides's writings. 1
1543		Leonard Fuchs includes a drawing of Datura stramonium in his herbal. 1
1578		Datura is used as an aphrodisiac in the East Indies. 1
1676		A group of soldiers in Jamestown, Virginia ingest boiled datura and become delirious for days. 6 [Details]
1968		Datura over-the-counter remedies for asthma are banned after people begin using them recreationally
1968		Carlos Castaneda gives a fictionalized account of the use of datura in his best-selling book The Teachings of Don Juan. 7
Oct 24, 1968		In response to reports of the recreational use of medications containing Datura stramonium, the FDA adopted a policy that preparations of D. stramonium that are labelled with directions for use in self-medication will be considered "misbranded", a federal crime. 8 [Details]

Schultes RE, Hofmann A. Plants of the Gods. Inner Traditions, 1992.
Theophrastus. Historia Plantarum. c. 201 BCE.
Vātsyāyana. The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. trans. Richard Burton. Modern Library. 2002. p 181.
Fremantle F. A Critical Study of the Guhyasamāja. Doctoral Dissertation, University of London. 1971. p 103.
Sikl�s B. "Datura Rituals in the Vajramahabhairava-tantra". Curare. 1993;16(2):71-76.
Beverly R. The History and Present State of Virginia, In Four Parts. 1705. Part II, pg. 24.
Castaneda C. The Teachings of Don Juan. Univ. of California Press, Simon & Schuster. 1968.
Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Microgram. Jun 1969;2(2):55.

EXCERPT FROM PSYCHEDELIC SHAMANISM - JIM DEKORNE

THE BELLADONNA ALKALOIDS

The "Belladonna alkaloids"
are powerful hallucinogens found in many members of the
Solanaceae, a large and immensely useful botanical famiily which
includes the various potato, tomato, pepper, eggplant and tobacco
species. Each of the psychoactive alkaloids — atropine, scopolamine and
hyoscyamine — is present in the Old World Bella Madonna or Deadly
Nightshade plant, hence their earliest classification under that species'
name. More accurately called "Solanaceous drugs," or "Tropane
alkaloids," these chemicals are also found in a wide variety of
belladonna's Old and New World cousins, many with names that conjure
up images of witchcraft and black magic: Mandrake, Henbane,
Datura...

The solanaceous plants with the longest history of shamanic
usage in the New World are the daturas. Datura inoxia (formerly Datura
meteloides) is a native of the American Southwest. Carlos Castaneda
has don Juan call it "the Devil's Weed," but it is less pejoratively known
among the Zuni, Navajo and other tribes as "Sacred Datura." This is a
large bushy species with fetid-smelling foliage — indeed, one of its
common names is "stinkweed." The dankly malodorous leaves stand in
sharp contrast to this plant's Lily-sized, night-blooming white flowers,
which exude a heady and distinctly erotic perfume.

Datura inoxia is a plant with a definite presence. It would be unusual
for anyone seeing it for the first time to pass it by, though one might be
hard put to explain exactly what about it feels so strangely compelling.
Yet compelling it is — every year small but significant numbers of
people (usually teenagers) are admitted to hospital emergency rooms
and drug-abuse clinics for treatment of acute datura poisoning. Much
of the contemporary interest in these plants is doubtless traceable to
the writings of Carlos Castaneda, who popularized both datura and
shamanism with his ostensibly factual book, The Teachings of Don
Juan. In this and subsequent volumes, datura is glamorized as a kind of
astral projection catalyst and don Juan is presented as an archetypal
shaman who teaches his apprentices the secrets of navigating the
imaginal realm. Unfortunately, there is considerable evidence to
suggest that Castaneda's books are no more than very convincing novels
and that anyone using them as authentic shamanic manuals is well
advised to exercise extreme caution; datura can and often does kill
those who use it improperly.

Inoxia's cousin, Datura stramonium, also known as Thornapple and
Jimson weed, is a mostly Eastern species probably introduced from the
West Indies. The Indians used to refer to it as the white man's plant
because of its proclivity for growing in garbage dumps. Like its Western
cousin, D. stramonium is large and bushy, but with smaller,
magenta-tinted white flowers. There are also tropic varieties, such as
the Brunfelsia and Brugmansia, two genera of so-called "tree daturas"
widely used South American shamanism. These are often included as
admixture ingredients in both the aya-huasca and San Pedro brews to be
discussed later.

Although the solanaceous drugs have a long and colorful history of use
in both Old World witchcraft and New World shamanism, there is an
over-whelming consensus of opinion that they are dangerous and
unpredictable for any but a Master shaman to ingest. Even don Juan
admits: "To tame the devil's weed into an ally is one of the most
diffi-cult tasks I know."2

There is no doubt that the datura are powerful plants. Just growing
one is a bewitching experience; a palpable aura of temptation and
forbidden knowledge seems to emanate from her.
leaves and flowers as you watch her steadily expand from a tiny
seedling into a large bush. (I the feminine pronoun because there is an
almost universal attribution of female energy to this genus.) In fact,
general associations with the dark side of the feminine are common to
all of the belladonna alkaloid plants. For example, consider the Latin
designation for the Deadly Nightshade, Altropa belladonna, from which
this entire class of compounds takes its name. This is a combination of
Altropos, one of the three fates of Greek mythology, 2nd belladonna,
an Italian word meaning "beautiful lady."
Atropos (which translates as "inevitable," "Unalterable" or
"inflexible") is the goddess who cuts the thread of life at the moment of
death. She is usually portrayed holding a pair of shears, and is a rurally
regarded as the most fearsome of the fates because she is the one
whose sole purpose is to kill you. The name belladonna, "beautiful
lady," refers an era when Italian women used to drop night-shade
tinctures into their eyes to dilate the pupils and make them look sexy.
(The pupil-dilating properties of atropine are still utilized by modern
opthamologists when doing eye examinations today.)

When you combine the ideas of death, fate and a beautiful woman,
you get the concept of the femme fatale — a sexy temptress who
destroys men through their own weakness for her charms. Indeed, don
Juan describes the datura "ally" as a female who "Distorts men. She
gives them a taste of power too soon without fortifying their hearts and
makes them domineering and unpredictable. She makes them weak in
the middle of their great power."3 It is highly significant that these
plants are almost invariably associated with some form of sexual
witchcraft:

The hallucinations are frequently dominated by the erotic moment....
In those days, in order to experience these sensations, young and old
women would rub their bodies with the "witches- salve," of which the
active ingredient was belladonna or an extract of some other
solanaceae.4

The salve referred to was the ubiquitous "flying ointment" of European
witchcraft, used by witches to "fly" to the Sabbat (presumably a
location in the imaginal realm) where they engaged in wild sexual orgies
with the devil and his minions. This of course is reminiscent of the
earlier Greek rites of Dionysus, from which medieval witchcraft almost
certainly evolved:

His worshippers sought to become possessed by or assimilated to him
by wild dancing.... His followers included spirits of fertility such as the
satyrs, and in his ritual the phallus was prominent.5

It is a well-known speculation that the popular image of the witch
with her broomstick harks back to a time when these women supposedly
applied hallucinogenic ointments to their genitals with its handle, in
effect, masturbating with it. Whether or not real witches actually used
such an awkward artificial phallus, the fact remains that the salve or
ointment made from the alkaloidal extractions of solanaceous plants is
universally associated with aggressive female sexuality, a mystique
which, in common with the femme fatale and witch archetypes in
general, is almost the defining characteristic of the ancient goddess
religions.

The consistency of these themes suggests that the entities associated
with the belladonna alkaloids are primordial earth-forces (always
symbolically female) which have been brutally and systematically
repressed in human consciousness for literally thousands of years. A
goddess repressed is a woman scorned, and her archetype appears in the
collective psyche as a dangerous and destructive entity out to revenge
herself on the patriarchy that usurped her power.

For example (to show how these themes are so tightly interwoven),
our word datura is derived from the Sanskrit dhattura. As dhatturea
("datura poisoner") the term was used to describe members of the
fearsome and fanatical Thug sect. These worshippers of the Hindu goddess
Kali employed Datura metel (a species native to India) to drug their
sacrificial victims. Kali, the dark and destructive aspect of the Hindu
mother goddess, demanded nothing less than human sacrifices from her
worshippers, and it is said that the Thugs (from which our epithet for
a brutal criminal is derived) offered up hundreds of thousands of victims
to their goddess before the practice was finally stopped by the British
overlords during the last century.

Assassination for gain was with them a religious duty, and was
considered a holy and honorable profession. They had, in fact, no idea of
doing wrong, and their moral feelings did not come into play. The will
of the goddess by whose command and in whose honor they followed
their calling was revealed to them through a very complicated system of
omens. In obedience to these they often traveled hundreds of miles in
company with or in the wake of, their intended victims before a safe
opportunity presented itself for executing their design; and when the
deed was done, rites were performed in honor of that tutelary deity,
and a goodly portion of the spoil was set apart for her.6
Does this strange and fanatical belief system sound like a familiar
strategy of the entities from the imaginal realm? Are we dealing here
with a frustrated female force from mind-space seeking revenge for her
repression deep within the collective psyche of humankind? If the
belladonna alkaloids are specific catalysts for evoking primordial
feminine energy, which typically manifests within consciousness as a
femme fatale archetype, it suggests that we are confronting an archaic
force of nature as it existed before the invention of agriculture and the
patriarchal religions — the wild and untamed female before she became
a male chattel domesticated to hearth and home.
When you consider that Western male descriptions of datura trips are
almost universally negative, yet that both female witches and New
World shamans maintain a respectful affinity for the plant, it relates to
something we already know, that the male-female polarity within the
Western psyche, particularly among men, is seriously out of

balance. If the quality of one's consciousness determines the quality
of one's experience of the imaginal realm, it follows that any
unintegrated personality arrogantly penetrating into the jurisdiction of
the Goddess is courting grave misfortune. The name "devil's weed" is
another clue to understanding these interconnections, since the devil
has always been associated with witchcraft, an activity mostly
practiced by free-living women. Its rites included having sexual
intercourse with the "horned god," an activity obviously only safely
possible within the realms of hyperspace once the free sexuality of the
goddess religions had been stamped out by patriarchal monotheism.
Such defiant freedom was an intolerable challenge to the authority of
the Inquisition and to any males out to make possessions of "their"
females. When Castaneda has don Juan say, "To tame the devil's weed
into an ally is one of the most difficult tasks I know..." he is
understating the case considerably! We are dealing here with one of the
most primitive of all archetypes, and it is folly to imagine that such a
force could ever be "tamed." Utilized carefully and wisely, perhaps, but
never tamed, since this archetype is by definition untamable, though
the possibility of eventual integration is an intriguing hypothesis. At any
rate, don Juan's warning must be taken seriously by any would-be
explorer of the imaginal realm; seeking datura for an ally should be attempted
only by established Masters of hyperspace - think of it as
post-graduate work.

Unlike classical shamans, the sorcerer in Europe had his trance
encounters with the spirit world on occasions distinguished from his
manipulation of that supernatural world. I believe the reason for this
major distinguishing feature of European witchcraft lies in the nature of
the drugs they were using. Specifically, the solanaceous hallucinogens
are so powerful that it is essentially impossible for the user to control
his mind and body sufficiently to perform ritual activity at the same
time. In addition, the state of extended sleep following the period of
initial excitation, sleep which can extend for three or four days,
together with the typical amnesia, made this hardly a convenient
method for daily practice of witchcraft.
Furthermore, there is some ethnographic evidence that too
frequent use of the solanaceous drugs can permanently derange
the mind.7
None of this is to say that one should not cultivate these magical
plants and get to know them as physical entities. Castaneda himself
claims that this was a part of his initiation, and fictional or not, it is
worthwhile advice for anyone interested in growing hallucinogenic
plants. I raise several specimens each of both Datura inoxia and
stramonium every summer. Since they are considered weeds by the
uninitiated, it is not surprising that these botanicals are very easv to
grow, requiring little or no care past the seedling stage. I have seen
them thriving in the poorest of desert soils, so with even minimal care
and watering they usually attain a large size.

Cultivation: Needs warmth for germination, sow seeds 1/4" deep
in full sun. Pretty much any soil mix works, these germinate easily
within a week or two. Keep moist. Transplant young and keep up with
pot sizes as roots crowd, or plant out Best growth is with ample root
space and fertile mix. D. stramonium is an annual and will set seed,
then die.... Likes sun and heat.8

Although stramonium is described as an annual plant, a Datura inoxia
specimen in my patio sprouted from its roots the second year — this in
New Mexico with its bitterly freezing winters. Greenhouse plants,
potted and kept from freezing, have consistently behaved as perennials,
and when I dug up an inoxia early this spring to make room for another
plant, the root was obviously still viable. Of the two species, I favor the
inoxia over the stramonium, mostly because I love its sultry white
flowers and their erotic perfume.

Dr. Karl Kiesewetter, a well-known historian and one of the first to
experiment with flying ointments in modern times, in fact died of
poisoning after one of his experiments. The plants he used in his fatal
ointment included monkshood. Of all the herbs used in flying ointments,
it is one of the deadliest.11

The following experience was with a shamanically-mixed brew made
from a South American species of tree datura:

I first felt a tingling sensation in my lips, followed soon by the same
sensation in my fingertips. This felt exactly like the feeling experienced
when your leg "falls asleep," when the blood rushes back. Along with the
tingling, I felt a pronounced vibrating in the affected parts.... From the
beginning I felt a strong urge to expectorate periodically and later
realized that I was actually frothing at the mouth... I became very dizzy
with vertigo, which intensified precipitously. Everything started spinning
to the right yet never seemed to move.

My mind kept adjusting to the spin to set me right again. There was a
complete loss of muscular coordination at this point, and I could no
longer walk or even stand up... The next day, I felt extremely weak and
nearly unable to move without great discomfort... My companion later
noted the following effects which he experienced with the drug:
"swollen lips and heavy tongue, crazy in the head, cold sweat, stomach
ache, nausea and weak vomiting, urtication, inability to walk or move,
and vertigo." He also felt "the world was spinning around me like a great
blue wheel. I felt that I was going to die."13

A final, less arduous and more poetic, description is provided by a
woman, a shaman's apprentice who found the experience useful and
instructive. "Huantuj" is the Ecuadorian term for a decoction made from
the Brugmansia genus of tree daturas:

The shaman Celso Fiallo in Quito, Ecuador called me "pollita," "my
little moth" because he believed that on the day I came to stay, his
datura plants blossomed. He was referring to the datura-pollinating
hummingbird moths recognized by the human skulls traced on the back
of their tiny heads. From this omen I believed that the datura might be
an important teacher for me.

Celso was ecstatic (as was his nature) that I would have the
opportunity to meet Taita Carlos Tanguila of Archidona. Sporting an
elegant shirt with pearl buttons and a hipster's grey dinner jacket, Taita
Carlos looked like a Chinese beatnik strung out on opium. He and his
entire family are very shy — they all giggle like children, but his ability
as ayahuascero and administrator of Brugmansia [tree datura] is highly
respected throughout the area. The shaman invited Celso and me to stay
with him. There in the rainforest we would drink huantuj and
ayahuasca, and bathe in a river filled with animal and human
head-shaped stones.

It took two hours of hiking up and down muddy hills with supplies on
our backs to reach Taita Carlos' plantation. Celso walked smack into
barbed-wire and asked me to suck the bloody toxins from his forehead.
We finally arrived at the impressive, stilt-propped structures of Taita
Carlos. Like the home of a great beatnik, there were modernist
ayahuasca drawings on the exterior walls of his huts, and large tree
parts and bones hanging from the walls as sculpture.
After eating a lunch of white rice, broth, and yellow chica that comes
from the palms, we retire to the teenagers' room to await the huantuj.
Carlos and his boys ascend the stairs with this decoction made from two
handfuls of datura leaves. Taita Carlos sings to the potion and blows
tobacco on it. Then Celso does his tune and we drink. We smoke
cigarettes with the boy apprentices and wait. Taita Carlos tells us many
things: that a dose a little larger than average could kill us; that some
trips last up to twelve days: the body left behind while the spirit
helicopters out over the rainforest. It is typical to go to lands not
accessible in the body. Celso reminds us that this is the drink of the
witches' conventions, their bodies and broomsticks left in a heap on the
floor.

The first trip evokes an incapacitation of movement and extreme
spatial dislocation. I can squat directly over the chamber pot to pee,
which I must do very often, but I can't seem to target the bowl. A chair
that seems to be directly behind me is actually several yards away and I
fall to the floor. I close my eyes and open them to find the family
watching me. I close them again and open to find they've disappeared,
then reappeared, then disappeared once more. I try to talk with them
but have no idea of what I am saying or trying to say, only the feeling of
a strong intent to speak about something important. They listen very
politely and smile at me. That night, the first semblance of imagery:
exquisite, otherworldly objects of my mind's eye that feel very much my
own (different than tryptamine visions which do not feel like one's own).
The next day we try again. Taita Carlos wants me to drink Brugmansia
to open my eyes for the ayahuasca — my pupils will remain dilated for
three days. This time we sit in the cooking hut with the wife and
children. She is weaving a net bag and cooking soup. The kids are
watching us and playing idly on the floor. Celso leaves the hut to loudly
retch outside. This makes Taita Carlos nervous. He lifts the glasses of
huantuj to examine the quantity and then cautiously pours a bit from
each glass back into the cooking pot. We drink again and then retire to
the boys' bedroom in the other hut to lie down. Now there are visions.
Moving outside to pee is almost impossible, but necessary. As I enter the
path to the forest I hear giggling behind me and turn to see the entire
family peeking out at me from the cooking hut. They are laughing at the
way I walk. Other creatures on the path are also laughing — these are
elongated, suspended entities, mostly bilateral though not entirely
symmetrical, and they are gesturing at me while scratching at
themselves, yawning, speaking words, enunciating non-words from their
lips. It takes about five minutes to recognize these creatures as trees.
They turn back into trees, then creatures, then trees.
Mounting the stairs to the room takes about an hour's time. I see a
red-haired drug addict, a woman, hanging languidly from the window of
our hut. She must be another patient of Taita Carlos, though we haven't
been introduced. Then I realize it is not a human being at all but a large
sculptural branch that hangs on the exterior wall. I call for Celso to
come and see her, but he has somehow disappeared and is not where I
left him. The jackets hanging on the wall pegs are infested with spirit
faces.

Back in the bed I find myself suddenly accompanied by a noseless,
earless old woman. I am catching on now, and am not frightened but
feel deeply bemused. I turn my head slightly — she is still with me in
bed, but no longer a noseless and earless old woman, now merely a
bunched array of pillows. (Actually, there were no pillows.) There was
no elementary school wall clock either, nor night-lit travel alarm clock
next to the bed, but when I wanted to know the time of night, these
appeared to tell me so. The family kept appearing and disappearing
also.

The strangest illusion happened a little after midnight. Celso and I
were sleeping, sharing a bed with our clothes on, as was our habit while
traveling. Taita Carlos appeared in the doorway to summon me to an
initiation with ayalwasca. His command, his summons, was fierce and
impatient. I became frantic and angry because I had no sense of distance
and couldn't find the bedside table with matches and candle. I began
ordering Celso with bravado to get up and help me — Taita Carlos is
calling! Months later, I learned that this is a classic hallucination with
huantuj: the initiate is incapacitated, lying on the ground, when the
shaman or plant teacher suddenly arrives. The neophyte, unable to get
up, is left lying helpless with a growing feeling of panic at not being
able to obey the guru's call.

Later, there were sporadic visions of extraordinary objects and events:
my sister appeared to whisper a prediction into my ear. It is said by the
forest people that a drink of huantuj will show you the future —
however frightening, however good. The shamans also believe that the
datura decoction is a panacea, a viral preventive that can cure cancer,
AIDS and the entire gamut of viruses for at least a year after ingestion.
The next morning Celso and I discovered that the black scars of bug
bites that had been lodged in my skin for three months had virtually
disappeared, leaving my skin soft and smooth.

Days later, exiting the forest by the same hilly path, I kept sliding and
falling on my backside into the mud. Celso preceded me, seeing nothing
of it, and Taita Carlos followed. Each time I fell, Carlos and I would
giggle hysterically, but by the time Celso turned around to see what was
so funny I was back on my feet as if nothing had happened. Celso
bumped smack into the same barbed wire on the way out as he had
done on the way in.14

In my opinion, there are so many less demanding psychoactive plants
around, that the solana-ceous species are most usefully cultivated for
their aesthetic and historical interest only. Significantly perhaps (some
food for thought here), these botanicals are not illegal to grow or
ingest, which suggests that the authorities (remember that "archon" is
Greek for "ruler") are more threatened by people altering their
awareness than by committing suicide. In any event, unless one has been
initiated by a bonafide shaman who truly understands how to use these
plants, they are best studied and admired in space-mind rather than
mind-space.

NOTES
1. Weil, A. & Rosen, W. (1983). Chocolate to Morphine: Understanding
Mind-active Drugs, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, p. 132.
2. Castaneda, C. (1968). The Teachings of Don Juan, Ballantine, NY, p. 49.
3. Ibid., p. 48.
4. Hesse, E. (1946). Narcotics and Drug Addiction, New York, Philosophical
Library, p. 103.
5. Encyclopedia Britannica (1968), Vol. 7: p. 466.
6. Encyclopedia Britannica (1911), Vol. 26: p. 896.
7. Harner, M. "The role of hallucinogenic plants in European witchcraft," in
Hallucinogens and Shamanism, p. 146.
3. Anonymous (circa 1992). Cultivation Details for Exotic Plants of the Jungle,
P.O. Box 1801, Sebas-topol, CA 95473.
9. Miller, R.A. (circa 1973) The Magical and Ritual Use of Herbs, O.A.K.,
1421"N: 34th, Seattle, WA 98103, p. 124, passim.
10. Grieve, M. (1971). A Modern Herbal (Vol. II), Dover, NY, p. 806.
11. Wittmann, C. (1991). "Magical Flying Ointments," The Herb Quarterly, Fall, p.
18.
12. Lyttle, T. (1983). "A close encounter with Belladonna, black sheep of the
psychedelic world," The Psychozoic Press, #6, Winter, pp. 38-42.
13. Plowman, T. (1977). "Brunfelsia in Ethnomedi-cine," Botanical Museum
Leaflets, Harvard University, Vol. 25, No. 10, December, p. 306, passim.
14. Anonymous (1993). Personal communication.