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>> Since the dawn of modern humans,

every culture in every region practiced what some would call

shamanism.

This mystical practice is scarcely

understood but not forgotten.

In the 1960s, amateur ethnomycologist, Gordon Wasson,

wrote his first book titled, "Soma--

Divine Mushroom of Immortality," after noticing

the indigenous mushroom culture in Siberia.

Siberian shamans would collect the fly agaric or Amanita

muscaria mushrooms, and either dried and ate them

or would feed them to reindeer and drink the urine to get

the effects free of nausea.

Because this culture neighbored ancient Indian culture,

Wasson surmised that the Amanita muscaria

mushroom must be the lost ingredient of the drink, Soma.

Soma was the sacred and psychedelic beverage

of ancient India.

But how could this mushroom have ended up

in a foreign religious sacrament?

This drove Wasson to dig deeper to discover

what shamanism truly is.

>> The term itself came from the Siberian cultures and was

brought into English through Russian and German.

And people started to recognize it

as a phenomenon that was found in many parts of the world

and started applying it to Native American practices,

into Australian practices, and things like this.

What really is a shaman kind of depends

on the perspective we take.

>> So the shaman is like a spiritual bounty hunter.

He or she deliberately induces these altered states

with drugs or other means.

But then, they don't just sit there and have the trip.

They can actually actively navigate in that world.

>> The shamans have attained a sufficient sophistication

to explicitly understand that the vessel of our chemical

transformation is the body.

And the plants lift the imprisoning structures

of the ego.

And the ego flows out into the world.

>> Beyond the confines of small tribes in Siberia,

author Gordon Wasson discovered that larger societies were also

using psychedelic plants as a form of societal shamanic

ritual.

>> Even in studying the Hindu culture,

the Ganges River comes out of Shiva's top knot.

In very many depictions, you see a picture of a cannabis leaf

on top of Shiva's head.

And also, he's holding a vessel that contains bhang, B-H-A-N-G,

which is a cannabis-containing beverage that is flavored with

cinnamon and cardamom and other spices.

And I was also very interested to learn about the Eleusinian

Mysteries.

>> The Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece clearly had

a psychedelic sacrament.

We even know what it was now.

It a form of ergot that grows on barley.

Was used in a beverage called the kykeon

that initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries drank.

And then, they had extraordinary and life-changing experiences

in the dark halls.

They were addressing, setting there as well.

These experiences were underwent and undergone

in a place called the Telesterion, which

was underground and in darkness, probably dimly

lit with little lamps here and there,

creating a setting for the experience to unfold in.

And the initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries,

who included people like Plato, people like Socrates,

people like Cicero, came out, and afterwards,

reported that their lives had been utterly

transformed by the experience that they had undergone.

They had lost their fear of death.

They knew that they were immortal spirits,

that they were just temporarily housed in a human body.

>> From ancient India to Greece, psychedelic plants have been

used for deeply spiritual quests and large-scale healing.

But what was the first well-organized psychedelic

society?

Scholars and historians had all but given up on uncovering

the mysterious beginnings of the shamanic society, when in 1976,

Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi unearthed

the 4,000-year-old temple complex in present day

Turkmenistan.

This complex is nearly a half a million square meters

divided into a large northern and smaller southern region.

Its walls, made of clay bricks, span 120 by 150 meters

and were reinforced by 20 rectangular towers.

Roughly 6500 to 1700 BC, the northern region

was burned down, and the whole complex was abandoned quickly,

leaving the mystery of its origins

only with the artifacts found there.

Author and researcher Chris Bennett

spent years investigating the spread of cannabis

in the ancient world and began piecing the puzzle together

from this location.

>> The debate about Soma and Haoma, the origins of them,

has changed lately because of archaeological finds.

And one of the really important ones

is the work of the Russian archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi.

He wrote about this in his book, "Margiana

and Protozoroastrism."

And Sarianidi he was doing work in the outer regions

of Afghanistan, in an area known as the Bactria-Margiana

Archaeological Complex.

And in this region, he found a number of temple sites,

and these were big temples, about the size of a football

field.

And half of the temple sites were

dedicated to the preparation of this beverage, which Sarianidi

has identified as Soma, Haoma, the sacred beverage

of the Persians and the Indians-- ancient Indians.

>> It is still debated whether this lost city of Gonur Tepe

had a supreme ruler or simply an elite class and high priest.

In many ways, the priests of larger civilizations

mirrored the role of the predecessor, the shaman.

>> So, the shaman in the traditional role is basically

a liaison for the community to this realm of the supernatural

and these supernatural forces.

So, in that sense, it's kind of a priest-like function.

>> At Gonur Tepe, the high priest was the gatekeeper

to spiritual and psychedelic experiences.

The psychedelic trip has been equated

to a mystical experience, as it allows

the user to peek behind the veil of cultural conditioning.

And the high priest was the one that bestowed these vision

quests upon the people.

Only through his approval were commoners

allowed to drink this sacrament.

Gordon Wasson claimed that the Amanita muscaria mushroom

was the psychoactive ingredient in Soma and Haoma

because of the mushroom's common use in nearby areas.

But this claim is unproven, and some believe quite implausible,

due to the kind of experience these mushrooms elicit.

Amanita muscaria mushrooms have been

known to cause euphoria but also nausea, sweating, cramping,

and salivation.

So, the mystery has continued through the ages,

until Victor Sarianidi sent scraping samples from Gonur

Tepe out to be analyzed.

>> Based on archaeological evidence that's recently come

up in the last decades, they found big bowls in the ground

where the Soma would have been ground with mortars

and pestles, and then also straining devices,

as well as bowls, with fossilized remnants in it.

And so they took some of these fossilized remnants, which

was like a fossilized liquid substance, and had it tested.

And they found evidence of cannabis, ephedra,

and in some cases, poppy.

And all these plants grow in this region as well, still.

>> Poppy is the base ingredient for opium,

which elicits a sedative and euphoric effect, while ephedra,

the basic ingredient for amphetamines,

is a stimulant and appetite suppressant.

And lastly, cannabis elicits a slightly psychedelic effect

with an increase in appetite, causing this beverage

to act as a symphony of mind-altering ingredients

for these ancient Indo-European cultures.

>> And it's interesting it has his counterpart in the Avestan

religion over in Persia, where it's known as Haoma.

Because of language similarities and mythological similarities--

they're both Indo-European languages--

this combined use and identity indicates a much older origin

from an identical call, so going considerably far back

into history.

We know that they were involved in trades

with another Indo-European culture

living in central China, known as the Gushi Culture.

And we found numbers of perfectly preserved specimens

of both cannabis and ephedra at this site.

And it's likely that these Indo-Europeans living in China,

who were exporting cannabis, were

likely the suppliers of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological

Complex's use of it and delivered by Scythians.

My view is that the Chinese term for cannabis,

which is [NON-ENGLISH],, traveled with cannabis

into the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex with

this name that became Haoma and then through dialectical

changes as it reached into India became Soma in the Vedic

language.

>> Along several ancient trading routes,

the nomadic horseback Scythians had burial kurgans that were

recently unearthed.

Not only were golden vessels found

containing remnants of cannabis and opium,

but the frozen tundra preserved the tattoos on their skin,

depicting animals warping and spiraling,

as if seen in a psychedelic trance.

Ancient Greek historian Herodotus

recorded the funerary rites of the Scythians

as they built tripod tents and fumigated cannabis seeds

inside.

But this wasn't the only place in history

we see the use of a tent with smoke and vapor.

>> There is a Polish entomologist

and anthropologist, Sula Benet, who suggested that this Hebrew

term, [? canabasin ?] was a reference to cannabis and that

this reference appears for the first time in the Exodus 30.23,

where God who--

appears to Moses in flames of fire

from within a burning bush, commands

Moses to make a holy anointing oil.

And every time that Moses has to speak the Lord,

he has to go inside this enclosed tent--

a little area called "the tent of the meeting."

And he covers himself in this oil.

And he also places some of the oil on the altar of incense.

And he speaks to the Lord and the pillar of smoke

over the altar of incense.

None of the other Israelites in the biblical story

ever see or hear the Lord.

They can only tell if Moses is talking to the Lord

if smoke is pouring out of the tent of the meeting.

>> Moses is believed by historians to have lived

in the 16th century BC, just after the period of Gonur Tepe

and connected to the same trade routes.

The phenomena of inhaling mind-altering substances

in order to speak to divine sources

are also seen with the Oracle of Delphi,

which ranged from the eighth century

BC and possibly earlier, in the late Mycenaean times.

The scholar Martin Litchfield West

wrote that the Pythia, or Oracle,

exhibited Central Asian shamanic practices, as she reportedly

sat upon a tripod above a chasm from which vapors poured forth

as she inhaled them and prophesized.

If it is true that these age-old stories show

a deep appreciation for mind-altering plants,

how much farther back can we trace shamanic traditions

into history?

>> That evidence, we first encounter it in the painted

caves of upper-Paleolithic Europe going back close

to 40,000 years ago.

And curiously enough, just quite recently in Indonesia was

discovered a series of painted caves,

which date back to more or less exactly the same period,

the high 30,000s almost 40,000 years ago in the past.

There are certain types of imagery that regularly

and routinely crop up in those deeply altered

states of consciousness brought on by psychedelics.

And it's precisely those types of the imagery

that we find in the ancient rock and cave art

all around the world.

You'll often find geometry in the paintings or engravings.

You will find-- and this is really quite

diagnostic-- you will find creatures that are referred

to as therianthropes.

That's from the Greek therian, which means wild beast,

and anthropos, which means man.

They're hybrid human and animal figures.

>> Not only were these visionary illustrations important enough

to appear in humanity's earliest art in the painted caves,

but they were also immortalized in the flesh,

as the therianthropic paintings on the cave walls conjure

similar imagery to that of the Scythian tattoos.

There are remnants of shamanic practices

in every corner of the globe.

Might we also find references to psychedelics in the creation

myth of the Bible?

>> If you look at the imagery that is conjured up

of the serpent in the Garden of Eden--

I mean, I'm not saying that painters in the 14th century

actually saw the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

But if you look at the imagery that's

conjured up, very often--

actually, I would say about eight times out of 10,

you'll find that that serpent is a therianthrope,

that that serpent has a serpent body and a human head,

for example.

Or it may be equipped with arms and legs

off-- branching off that serpent body in some cases.

So right there, there's a suggestion

that we're dealing with a classic entity of vision.

In the mainstream Christian position

on the serpent in the Garden of Eden,

is that it represents the devil, the bad guy who's

come to tempt and mislead Adam and Eve.

But the very powerful alternative point

of view provided by the Gnostics is

that the serpent was one of the ancient teachers of mankind,

that he's coming to say to Adam and Eve,

you need to learn the difference between good and evil.

If you go back to the book of Genesis,

the forbidden fruit is the knowledge of good and evil.

That's what the-- that's what that tree is.

It's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And its fruit is therefore- is therefore

the knowledge of good and evil.

But is there a deeper layer to that?

Could we, indeed, be talking about some kind

of natural psychedelic?

>> What would it mean to discover that the forbidden

fruit that the parents of our species ate was psychedelic

in nature?

And is it possible that this fruit

initiated the rapid expansion of the human neocortex?

>> Well, there's an interesting set of findings about how

humans differ from our chimpanzee relatives in terms

of the use of these psychedelics and what happens in the body.

The human serotonergic system is much more sensitive

to these substances.

The binding of the serotonin neural receptors

with the psychedelics is two to four times more powerful

that what happens in chimpanzees.

>> John McPartlin and Dr. Jeffrey Guy,

the founder of GW pharmaceuticals,

they both have speculated that cannabis may have played a role

in this time period, that the psychoactive effects

of cannabis may have resulted in new novel ways of thinking

and approaching problems.

And the creativity aspect may have provided that element

for the great leap forward.

>> Another theory, popularized by the McKenna brothers,

was the potential for coprophilic spores or rather

manure-loving mushroom species, like psilocybin,

as being the impetus for humanity's great leap forward.

Cattle worship is seen throughout ancient Egypt,

Greece, Israel, Rome, Germany, and is seen in Jainism,

Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism.

Our ancient ancestors, seeking food

in the plains and grasslands, would have eventually found

the cattle that grazed in the fields

and noticed a strange mushroom that

grew from their droppings that influenced

the lingual and problem-solving regions of the brain.

Were cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms

possible causes for such drastic differences

in intelligence between modern humans and our ancestors?

How much of our modern society has been influenced

by our shamanic roots?

>> Really, out of shamanism come the roots of religion for sure,

pharmacology.

But chemistry and poetry and theater and all of these things

really find their roots in shamanism.

>> There's a certain point when religion doesn't want

the shamanism in there anymore.

That's really where we see the decline of the shamanic use

of these substances, as religions become

more politically motivated as a means of controlling society

and organizing society.

There became, I think, both a theological and political

desire to unify the people under one consolidated head and rule.

>> As religious institutions and political leaders began

combining their powers, as we see mirrored in major corporate

mergers today, the momentum was to keep spreading.

And at the start of what we call the Modern period,

European nations began sending forces to the Americas.

And as a result, indigenous tribes were decimated,

and countless generations of shamanic wisdom

was erased from the Earth.

Was there an agenda?

If so, what was the purpose?

>> I do believe that there are many forces that see

the psychedelic movement as a threat.

And it's its vast.

In earlier times, it might have been the church.

But I also see that it's a threat

to the pharmaceutical industry.

>> Big pharma imported $86 billion in drugs and exported

$47 billion worth in 2015 alone.

The power of this industry and its advertising sector

has forced the world of shamanism

beneath the shadow of Western medicine.

But what truly is the difference between the two?

>> In shamanism, when you have sickness,

when you have an ill individual for any reason,

you don't do what Western medicine does and look

for the causes of that illness at the level of the physical

being.

The causes of that illness are always one level above.

They're at the next level, in the spiritual dimension.

There's a spiritual disconnect which

is the source of this illness.

So, the shaman will address the spiritual problem,

the nonphysical problem in order to step down and solve

the physical problem.

In Western medicine, we have no such concept.

Because Western medicine doesn't even

believe in the spirit or the soul

or any such aspect of human beings.

Western medicine really does regard human beings as rather

clever and sophisticated meat robots.

But that is not--

that is not the shamanistic view.

The shamanistic view is that we are immersed in an incredibly

complex multi-layered reality and that--

and that what is happening at other levels of that reality

directly impact what happens at the level of reality

that we inhabit.

>> This perspective on the nature of healing is summarized

by radio host and filmmaker Max Igan,

who has spent years traveling the world to visit shamanic

tribes to preserve their wisdom.

>> Shamanism, it can be seen as something integral to the human

experience.

I'm a firm believer that all life progresses according

to the Fibonacci sequence.

If you look at Fibonacci sequence,

how that sequence works is you actually get the present,

and you combine it with the past to create the future.

That's how it works.

If we can get our present culture

and combine it with these past ways,

we will create a viable future.

But if we discard all of that ancient knowledge

and simply go with our technological flow,

we're going to lead ourselves to a very bad place.

>> A few modern healers, such as Kimba Arem,

utilize ancestral and modern techniques in her alternative

practices.

And her experience has taught her

where the healing intelligence truly

lies in terms of shamanic ceremonies.

>> And I actually see that rather than the shaman is

healing them, that the shaman is activating that person's own

inner healing ability.

Because that's really the true power,

is reminding people that they, too, are the divine.

We're the healer.

Like if you cut your finger, you're the one who heals it.

The doctor or the shaman can help address the wound.

But we're actually doing the healing work.

>> Perhaps it is the adoption of unhealthy patterns that builds

and obstructs the pure healing intelligence within each of us.

So if we look beyond the cultural adornments

and poetic language, might we find a more scientific basis

to shamanic rituals?

>> One of the things that they did was use ritual practices,

including chanting and singing and drumming,

that begin to change our brain wave pattern.

The alteration of consciousness in the shamanic ritual

starts off with a stimulatory phase--

dancing, drumming, singing, chanting--

to the point of exhaustion and to the relaxation phase.

Well, this is a shift from stimulating

the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous

system.

The parasympathetic nervous system

is the part of the nervous system that relaxes us.

And so basically, the relaxation response

is part of what's brought about by ritual activities.

>> American-based psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich mentioned

a similar pattern when he spoke about the four stages

of a primal pattern that healthy cultures share--

tension, charge, discharge, and relaxation.

It is seen in the movement of many forms

of classical and modern music, all forms of storytelling,

love-making, as well as healing catalysts.

Even though the content on top of this pattern

will always change, the underlying flow

is what establishes a space for a healing response.

Something must dredge up the traumatized

psychological material from the unconscious, which would be

during the stimulatory phase.

The contents must be processed, breathed through,

and exacerbated in order to bring about a critical point

when the psyche transforms the way it holds that content.

Finally, the discharge is a pivot point in which

breakthroughs are made--

not by the shaman, but by the natural healing intelligence

of the one who is seeking the remedy.

This leads to the relaxation phase,

which allows a new unhealthy pattern to integrate.

This is the same as what's seen in the Savasana stage of yoga.

What other shamanic anomalies may have a physiological

and neurological basis?

>> It Is by agreement there's a marker at the beginning

and at the end.

You invoke the spirit at the end.

You thank the spirits and each other at the end.

And you move into ordinary time-- ordinary space time.

So that's the significance of ritual.

It's a fantastic-- to do it in the right way,

it opens up fantastic possibility.

Because then, [INAUDIBLE] feel safe.

For example, if you're in a ritual

and you're exploring something and you--

say psychologically you're working on your relationship

with your mother or your father or traumatic things,

and people are laughing back in the dining area,

cracking jokes, and drinking whatever-- beer--

what's that gonna be like?

It's not respectful of people.

It's like trying to do therapy in the middle of the subway.

>> It is likely that in traditional shamanic

communities, the whole group was not only involved

in the ceremony, but they all had similar belief systems,

allowing all of them to be more rooted in the customs

of their ritual.

If one person was experiencing a healing crisis,

the rest of the group was likely holding

space for their healing, rather than distracting them

with unnecessary noise or movement.

If they understood the basic criteria

for psychological healing, are there other shamanic anomalies

that may have a physiological or neurological basis?

>> Shamanism has certain characteristics that are pretty

much universal.

And a lot of what the shaman does is retrieve souls--

illness-- mental and physical illness in these cultures

is often understood as a loss of souls.

The idea of the shaman is a soul traveler

will often go to what's conceived

as the center of the universe, the world tree.

>> There is a well-known phenomenon of the out-of-body

experience, or astral projection.

Well, what we know is that there is a particular part

of the brain that's supposed to integrate our sense of self

with our body, the temporal parietal junction.

And when this part of the brain is taken offline,

then we're able to experience ourselves

independent of our body.

>> Does this mean that the shaman simply convinces his

or her own brain that the mind and body are separating?

And if so, does that mean that it's just a mirage?

Or is belief, imagination, and creativity

the physical mechanisms by which an aspect of the shaman

leaves his or her body to perform work

in other dimensions?

Perhaps this is the underlying knowledge

that shamans utilized when crafting a healing environment.

>> Shamans become healers.

They become good artists.

They can design their own rituals.

They create their own music and so on.

Again, what makes the shaman a shaman

is that he or she had a substantial number

of personal experiences.

>> Through lifetimes of shamanic experiences,

bringing wisdom from the other side to this physical world,

could this be the basis of all shamanic rituals?

What would the shamans of today look like?

Would they still be wearing the same clothes

and singing the same songs, or would they

be doing brand new work with the same spirit,

joining hearts and hands in ancestral twine,

as Xavier Rudd would say?

And if shamans of the past did healing work

for their village, what would a modern shaman

truly use to get their music and their message to the people?

If this shamanic power is still present today,

it would be present within all of us,

and the real tragedy from there would

be to remain ignorant of this gift.

The modern mindset seems to marvel

at the latest and greatest technology while disregarding

the importance of our heritage.

What if this is exactly why the health of the masses

and the health of the planet is struggling

to keep up with the rapid changes that we are causing?

What if the passing of each generation to the next

is a direct connection to our shamanic ancestry

and the biological technology of the human body

remembers all that our lineage has been through?

And what if the remedy to all our human problems

is simply to remember who and what we truly are,

embodied in the heart and soul.

If psychedelic plants and shamanic rituals

are a vital key to unlocking our past,

is this why they've been suppressed, feared,

and crusaded against in the old world, as well as the new?

In the late 1400s, as European Naval forces set out

to the New World, they would soon

stumble upon shamanic tribes in every corner of the Americas

with a rich history in using psychedelic plants.

One such region in South America would soon

reveal an ancient psychedelic cocktail of several botanicals.

Was there any connection between this ancient religious

sacrament and the Old World's Soma and Haoma,

or is the shamanic phenomenon of seeking deeply-expanded states

of consciousness through plant medicines an innate function

of those people that lived closest to nature?

Up next, join us as we explore the deep mysteries

of the Amazon rain forest and the ancient shamanic traditions

that live there.

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