Newsgroups: alt.psychoactives > Does anyone know anything about S. divinorum? > (Mexican Mint) > > I know that the Mazatecs used it for medicinal purposes, > but i havent been able to find out what kind of stuff > that they did with them. > > I also have had a hard time digging up any articles on it, > i've found one that cites a couple others, but thats about it. I'll do my best. Hope you don't already have this information. Before me, I have a copy of _The Psychedelic Reader_ (selections from _The Psychedelic Review_), Edited by Gunther M. Weil, Ralph Metzner, and Timothy Leary (University Books. New Hyde Park, New York - available via your local interlibrary loan; mine's from Johns Hopkins): "All of these attributes fit the _hojas de la Pastora_ that the Mazatecs generally use as a divinatory plant. In September 1962 we gathered specimens of the _hojas de la Patora_, and they were found to be a species new to science: Epling and Jativa named it _Salvia divinorum_. Among the Mazatecs I have seen only the leaves ground on the _metate_, strained, and made into an infusion. The colonial records speak of an infusion made from the roots, stems and flowers. But this is not incompatible with our information about _Salvia divinorum_: the Mazatecs may confine themselves to the leaves of a plant that has the divine virtue in all its parts. I suggest that tentatively we consider _pipiltzintzintli_, the divine plant of pre-Conquest Mexico, identical with the _Salvia divinorum_ now invoked in their religious supplications by the Mazatecs." (170) "And here we revert to the miraculous plant that we think is the _Salvia divinorum_, called (as we believe) in Nahuatl _pipiltzintzintli_, in the records of the Inquisition dating from 1700. This is obviously related to the name for the sacred mushrooms used by Marina Rosas. Dr. Aguirre Beltran translates it as 'the most noble Prince' and relates it to _Piltzintli_, the young god of the tender corn. In the accounts of the visions that the Indians see after they consume the sacred food - whether seeds or mushrooms or plant - there frequently figure _hombrecitos_, 'little men,' _mujercitas_, 'little women,' _duendes_, 'supernatural dwarfs.' Beginning with our maiden at her _metate_, here is a fascinating complex of associations that calls for further sutyd and elaboration. For example, are these Noble Children related perchance to the Holy Child of Atocha, which gained an astonishing place in the hearts of the Indians of Middle America? Did they seize on this Catholic image and make it a charismatic icon because it expressed for them, in the new Christian religion, a theme that was already familiar to them in their own supernatural beliefs?" (182) --