Declaration of Ethnobotanical Rights

Friends,

Raven and I first drafted the ancestor of this declaration in 1989 whilst tripping around Northern Arizona in a beat up old Honda Civic.  Here is the latest incarnation which I submit here for the purpose of receiving your comments, suggestions, grammar corrections- whatever.

LM

Declaration of Ethnobotanical Rights

Understanding that plants have historically been a source for food, fiber, fuel, and medicine, and that the human family has been traditionally sustained through its relationship to the botanical world, it is hereby declared that:

1.     All plants species are naturally created equal, each bearing its own unique qualities and inherent value. 

2.     All people have an inalienable right to cultivate, utilize, study, and share information regarding any species of plant.  As this Sacred Trust lies beyond the natural jurisdiction of any human agency, this natural relationship shall not be infringed providing that it does not actively endanger native ecological communities or public welfare.

3.     No individual person should be prohibited from the cultivation of any plant species for medicinal, spiritual, aesthetic, or other personal, non-mercantile purposes.

4.     While reasonable governmental taxes may be levied on the sale of agricultural products, no person or organization should be impeded in the commercial adaptation and trade of any plant, or plant product, providing such commercial activities do not violate civil or criminal statutes or other public safety codes regulating the commerce or transfer of specific plant materials, and are not contaminating of the genetic qualities and well-being of other species or ecological communities.

The Strangest Flower In The Sonoran Desert Smells Like A What?

Passiflora mexicana

Not a common plant, but where it grows, it creates nice stands of perennial vines climbing up into the mesquites.  A two-lobed passion vine leaf, most commonly they have three.  It likes moist places in riparian zones and these special places are becoming less common.  Find some before they're gone.

The herbalists among us know of the passively sedative qualities of this family of medicines, a reliable, if feebly potent anti-depressant. How I found this strange Venusian looking flower is, for me, a true example of applied ethnobotany, or how plants whisper, or how the monkey finds the banana, and how the philosopher finds the stone.

In the second year of working a vegetable garden in an east Tucson mesquite bosque, I finally stopped what I was doing in order to investigate a persistent, oddly fetid aroma wafting in the humid monsoon-time air.  You see, friends of the Desert Magic Toad can attest to the weird aroma of freshly vaporized Bufo alvaruis venom.  Like its chemical relation dimethytryptamine, the smoke smells like a heady mix of sasquatch scat, roses, and sex.  Well this particular flower, it turns out, churns out the exact aromatic signature as the hyperdimensional incense of the sacred smoke of toad venom.  So initially, the question was why am I smelling toad venom in the garden?  I believe that you were with me, Miss Wendy, when following my nose to a stand of healthy mesquites where I was looking on the ground for a squished toad, I looked up and saw this amazing flower from space.

So here's where the applied ethnobotany happens.  I already happened to know from my reading on the genus Passiflora that these medicines are manufacturers of harmine and harmaline, a class of compounds which are monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), these types chemicals often being designed into our primitive big pharma antidepressants.  Additionally, harmine and harmaline are moderately active psychoactives whose presence in the Amazonian shamanic medicine ayuhuasca is the catalyst for the amazing psychedelic effects of the aformentioned dimethyltryptamines, which are supplied by a second plant source and mixed together to create the mystic Amazonian brew, the breakfast of shamans.

So, what have we here?  A plant whose flowering aroma mimics that of the very medicine whose combinatorial effects might be an endemic, convergent habitat, desert ayuhuasca?  Clearly, this association was specific enough to signal the hippie to start beating the bushes in search of the sacred, but humble, unspoken thing.  When the monkey eventually peels this banana, I'll let you know how it tastes. 

My Friend and Mentor, Dr. Frank Crosswhite

In my 50 years, I have been blessed by an intimate circle of remarkable teachers, elders, and societal leaders that I can only attribute to an amazing grace of coincidence and providence.  I was raised with my parents driving United Farm Workers’ leader Cesar Chavez around in our ’66 Impala, for example.  My dad was friendly with major political influences of the 1960’s and later, on my own, I fell into a circle of plant-influenced cultural mavericks such as Dr. Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, and Dr. Alexander Shulgin.  Eventually, I knocked at the grass-thatched hut door of the 100+ year-old peyote elder and Huichol shaman, Don Jose “Matsuwa” Rios, considered by many to be the “real Don Juan”.

Amongst this personal grand gallery of human influences for which I am forever grateful, none has influenced my daily doings more than Dr. Frank Crosswhite.  This month marks two years since Frank passed away, leaving one more unfilled slot in my own personal Mount Rushmore of plant heroes that I can sow the seeds of conversation with.  However, I never feel far from Frank each and every time I hand-water plants, something Frank seemed to be perpetually thrilled with doing, despite the fact that his professional compatriots found mystifying, if not annoying, that a man with such special academic talents could easily have consigned this monotonous chore to lesser trained monkeys such as myself.  I understood however that to water plants was a joy to Frank, as it is to me, understanding that it is not just water we are dispensing to each individual organism- it is Love.

Frank was the Executive Editor of “Desert Plants”a remarkable publication of the University of Arizona.  In his editorial role, Frank avoided the dusty language of academia, instead relating to the reader’s childlike wonder of plant magic as if each species were a gift under a Christmas tree whose delights are just waiting to be unwrapped.  One of my most memorable of Frank’s editorials was simply titled, “The Goodness of Plants”.

Here is an excerpt from Frank’s Arizona Daily Star obituary whose full text can be viewed here, and which I highly recommend to my fellow plant enthusiasts.

Crosswhite's balance of academic endeavors with hands-on work made him something of an anomaly, Bach said.

"Most academic people, they have a Ph.D. after their name, they are notorious for book knowledge, but they don't have much practical experience," Bach said. "That's what made Frank different from most academics."

It wasn't just plant experts who appreciated the Crosswhites' work. They were adept at articulating their knowledge to people of all ages, education levels and backgrounds.

"Both he and Carol were able to talk about plants in ways that were correct botanically and formally, but at whatever level their audience might be, from fifth-graders to fellow scientists," Upchurch said.

Frank Crosswhite may have been a little too enthusiastic, his wife said, but no one ever complained.

"He had encyclopedic knowledge at his command in so many different fields," she said. "He could make a story that was just absolutely fascinating based on what, to other people, would be dry-as-dust facts."

On tours, "he would have people feel and touch and taste the plants. The only thing people were not prepared for was, if they kept asking questions, he'd keep answering them. His tours would extend far beyond their intent. They (visitors) would come back just as the arboretum was about to close with sunburned noses, but still asking questions," Carol Crosswhite said.

This man who looked like a character straight out of the 1950’s, with an unchanging crew cut and conservative style, skewed my perceptions of what spirit might reside in any particular body.  Frank’s philosophical musings were just as hip as any Tom Robbins or Ken Kesey novel, but were always guided by a pragmatic allegiance to the theme of humanity’s unfolding, lock-step march to the future with our plant allies.  It occurs to me that Frank was best situated to accurately assess the fallen state of humanity’s society because of, not in spite of, his being embedded in a 1950’s worldview.

Below, in honor of my friend and big brother in the field of ethnobotany, with whom I miss our hours of conversation so much, I give you two paragraphs of Frank’s editorial (Desert Plants, Vol. 9, #2), “The Moral Element in the March of Science, Technology and Agriculture”.

Frank, you are a real plant whisperer.  I thank you so much for everything that you so freely shared with me.  Hell, you even paid me to listen.  I swear I feel you with me all the time I’m laying down the water and the love on my plants.  (Eyes welling up with tears…)

“A normal, living, breathing, human animal is attuned to a balanced pattern of functions whereby in the regular course of the day a variety of work, play, rest, enjoyment, and other activities are intermeshed, allowing a wide variety of inborn genetic adaptations to be exercised.  It is still possible, although unlikely, for most of us to live in such a pristine way- to pick fruit from a tree for breakfast, to till a small field in the morning, to weave a cloth, to eat a hot rabbit stew in the cold of winter, to watch the habits of migrating waterfowl, to pick herbs for tea, to add some thatch to a leaky roof, to make a stone wall, to milk a cow, and then the next day to do different things.  A person having such a life would be a social misfit.  For the good of society this person would be expected to specialize- perhaps do nothing all day long other than remove staples from checks sent to the IRS, or sit in a factory gluing rubber soles to left size 71/2 shoes, or sort mail in a post office, or sweep floors in a downtown skyscraper, or operate a bottle-capping machine.”

“Our society thrives on such a division of labor even though each individual has had to deviate from the regular course of life to which this human organism is genetically adapted.  In the dictionary sense of the word pervert, society is truly guilty of perverting the individual by “causing deviation from the right, true, or regular course” of the individual’s biologically adapted life.  In a sense the individual human is to society what a milk cow is to a farmer.”

A Tale of Two Gardens, my first blog post.

At this late date in civilized history, hardly any of us modernists could give a crap about anything written in the bible, by now choosing to relegate its possible meanings to wishful zealotry, thereby ignoring its very real allegorical, metaphysical, and cultural memes which our post-God culture is still very much informed by, if not infected with.  Myself, I read everything and believe nothing unless and until the truth of what it is leaks into my own brainpan.  Whatever you might think about biblical and cultural values or the lack thereof, I think a good way to introduce my special brand of mental and spiritual  mattress stuffing to you, mis amigos y amigas, is in reinterpreting the opening and closing chapters to our society’s most influential literary guide, the one we ignore while culturally claiming to follow.

Many years ago, as a deacon in the Pentecostal uprising of non-denominational Christianity, I enthusiastically soaked myself in hundreds of hours of bible study and contemplation.  My interest in such things was catalyzed by plant-induced entheogenesis and accidental meltdown into Divine Presence at 18 years young.  This self-motivated course of study also helped me pass the hours spent on an extremely boring night-shift job I was working.  This served my hubristic attempt to get informed about what the whole bible thing was supposedly about, in order to checkmate preachity people who would seek to slay my already saved soul on the altar of their particular denominational chessboard.  The most pointed personal take-away from this period continues to be the notion that Churchianity is like a board game that you can’t play correctly, if you actually read the rule book.  In other words, being raised a good Catholic (altar boy and all) I couldn’t recognize the style of play from any other human scam, and worse, this game appeared to contradict almost every concept ostensibly given in the manufacturer’s guide to playing the game.  Learning history only aggravated my alienation from the Babylonic religious inertias toward inhumane inquisition and persecution of the spiritually independent gene pool mavericks, all the while with great beating of both the living and the dead with a willfully ignored book of rules. 

Likewise, this pathetic personal disconnect from the habitually expected patterns of societal game-play affect me just as deeply in reading the US Constitution.  Just see what happens when you try to reconcile our modern paternalistic “democracy” with the extremely libertarian, representative republic prescribed in the groundbreaking, hand-penned, seed of genius (with Iroquois Nation and Magna Carta liftings).  Again, the current societal configuration bears no resemblance to the original rules of the game.  We now expect the fear and desire of the many to necessarily smother the unalienable rights of the individual.  This really hops up my already obnoxious social withdrawal syndrome.  I think of our current form of democracy as 3 wolves and 1 lamb having a majority-rules vote on what’s for lunch.

“Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

But back to the story… Here’s a synopsis of the bible story wrapped up in an organic whole-wheat tortilla- the whole of biblical history is basically a tale of two gardens.  The first garden is in the opening, the Book of Genesis.  Ingrained in most of our psyches is the concept of “The Garden of Eden” but I believe our mythic knowledge drops off precipitously from that point on.  The text states that before any plant sprung from the earth, The Creator made a man, specifically to tend the garden.  Stated more plainly, The Creator made a gardener.  A river, separating into four headwaters, flowed from and through the garden, in the middle of which were planted two trees.  The two trees are referred to as the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Now, culturally we’ve been infected with the image of Eve eating an apple, and this proxy bullshit meme robs us of much of our own makeup and heritage, in my opinion.  My fellow congregants, the plants tell me that this is a parable of our inner quandary. 

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”

That we are naked in our own self-awareness, is the precious secret we all hide under our social exterior- “How are you?/I’m fine”, kind of deal.  We know enough to separate ourselves from the ego-less animal community with our knowledge, the knowledge of our knowledge, and the shame of the naked ego, but we don’t know how to migrate, hibernate, nest, and a whole bunch of cool stuff that all other creatures just do. 

I often used to wonder as a child why every insect, bird, animal, and amoeba knew exactly how to make a life for themselves, how to make a home, what to eat, and how to raise a family.  They are naked to life; individuals, yet living as part of the one.  Our present species needs training and education (knowledge) and artificial aids even to get to the point to know how to wipe our own butts!  We most often depend on others for the knowledge and ability to make our house, bring our water, grow our food, deliver our babies, and bury our dead- seemingly as helpless as any of God’s other creatures are instinctive. 

The late Dr. Julian Jaynes  explored this predicament of our animal consciousness (tree of life) versus figuring it out (tree of knowledge of good and evil) in his treatise “The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.  In it, he describes the pre-Illiad mode of human consciousness as being more of an I/Thou relationship with nature, rather than a nature dominating, separate, I.  Ok, so we were naked and slept in trees and heard the voice of the God of Nature in our heads, but we were happy.

Cut to the last book of the bible, the very last chapter, and after the whole painful history of man, post-apocalyptic earth again has a garden with a river flowing down the street in the center of the city (New Jerusalem).  The tree of life is re-ensconced on both sides of the river, with no mention of the other tree. 

“On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.  No longer will there be any curse.”

So the plants tell me that this is the allegory of the human descent into history, into knowledge, wandering through the desert of the loss of God, bloated with all knowledge but thirsty for understanding who we are, where we came from, and where we go.  We are almost back to the gardens friends, but oddly enough, it’s taking all the knowledge we have to get back to the original naked, stoned immaculateness that our original design resonates with.  That’s why all this crap about Eve and an apple and all this being an inference for gender culpability or some inferred weakness on the lady’s part is backwards, IMO.  The women are always smarter.  Without thinking for ourselves, as our lady partners have convinced us to consider, most of us guys would be living like apes in trees and naked, possibly stoned, but far from immaculate.  We wouldn’t be happy or satisfied without the learning and the unlearning, the give and take of male/female turbulence, the up/the down, the toiling by the sweat of our brows, and the forgetfulness of isolated individualism that you just can’t buy in the Garden of Eden.  We wouldn’t be happy without our failures.  This is how I learn to grow everything, by making mistakes and improving next season.  This knowledge of good and evil is satisfying to our appetite for evolution.  I for one am happy we f*kd up back there somewhere.  It’s been great!  I’m even happier that we’re nearly at the beginning of the end of the descent through the history of unconscious knowledge and are piercing the veil of conscious awareness, both of our inner and outer environments.  Also, that many of us are becoming aware that, as in the first garden, we were created AS gardeners- TO garden, see?  That’s why we’re not truly happy without some of that love contact with Earth Mother and Grandmother Growth. 

Allrighty, I’ve said too much.  See you in the garden friends.

Now they are wedded, she is a good girl;
Naked as children out in the Meadow,
Naked as children, wild as can be,
Soon to have offspring, start it all over.
Start it all over.

The Doors- Queen of the Highway