Tonight I decided to bioassay the potency of the isopropyl alcohol extracted material I described in a recent post as 'tar' (Reference to a 'Salvia' email list posting. - Daniel Siebert). I measured a 1/4 tsp. size piece using a measuring spoon. It felt like a piece of stiff beeswax. It was waxy in texture and shiny greenish black in color, sort of like a piece of black crayon.

I placed this 'soft extract' under my tongue. The taste was not unpleasant, somewhat like tea and somewhat bitter. I parked it under my tongue, except when chewing on it occasionally. It felt better than placing a quid in my mouth, and a lot easier on my body than smoking.

After I placed it under my tongue, I turned on a CD of Bach's French suites, and lay down on my bed. Lights were dimmed. Beside me were a bowl and towel. There was a waxy feel to the material in my mouth. I chewed it from time to time and it coated my teeth in a waxy layer. Nothing trippy seemed to be happening for the longest time (actually about 20 minutes). I lay on my back and listened to the music. Then I started feeling a little odd, but felt sure the extract would prove a dud. I felt very disappointed and thought I would have to apologize to the list for posting a recipe for material that was really not much better than a placebo.

Before spitting it out, and giving up on it though, I decided to hold it in my mouth for the duration of one more long breath. On impulse I took a deep breath and tried to hold it in as long as I could. As I blew out the breath I noted the familiar Salvia feel very suddenly overtook the universe and then things started to get real strange, real fast.

Every time I heard a note of Bach's music, reality fragmented, and I saw pillars of reality sticking out of a surface of a metallic sea. This became related to the metallic surface of molten solder. Earlier in the day I had been in my cold little studio in the woods beside my home (in Ohio) where I had been working on soldering pieces of copper foiled glass together to form a stain glass panel. In my besaged vision reality became a shimmer on the surface of that solder. I became unsure whether I was someone in Ohio , or a sculptor in New York City whose name I did not know. I was both and neither.

Despite my lack of personal identity I could still think. I thought that Salvia was a nexus of realities, and it seemed that there were an infinite number of realities, and that in each one someone had taken Salvia and entered this same place. It became my task ---well someone's task ---- to materialize from this Salvia reality as one of the actual people living in one of the infinite number of different realities. I broke into hysterical laughter as I realized that the salvinorin containing waxy material sticking to my teeth was 'reality wax'! My teeth were coated in this black tarry 'reality wax'. An infinite number of realities was contained within the effect of salvinorin, and salvinorin was contained in the wax, the wax was contained in my mouth, and I was contained within reality. The whole oroboros seemed hilariously funny!

This was the absurdest true thing in ten thousand different realities! And I laughed my fool head off at it. At the same time I desperately felt I had to spit out my mouthful of salvinorin containing spit, and clean the 'reality wax' off my teeth, in order to assume existence in some particular reality. While trying to spit out this dose of 'reality wax', I thought of Dale Pendell's term 'existentia' as the description for the type of drug Salvia which is. And I realized that his use of this term was a stroke of absolute genius.

While I could think appreciatively of Dale Pendell's book, I was still unsure of which person I was, and which existence I would return to. I knew I had to return to a reality, but which one? The one in Ohio, or the one in New York City? The thought came to me that Salvia is not about seeing patterns with ones eyes closed, although I wanted to do that. Nor was it about getting answers to particular problems, as I had hoped to when I began the trip, but that it was about reality, or more accurately 'realities', and the multiplicity of choices one has, as to which reality to return to! Someone left a reality in Ohio. Someone returned to the reality in Ohio. But simultaneously (or not simultaneously as it was in another reality) someone seemed to leave reality in a New York sculptors studio, and later return to it. Or did the person who left reality in New York return to the Ohio life and the person who left reality in Ohio return to the New York life. Damn this reality-wax, I've got to brush it off my teeth, so I can sober up and realize this is all nonsense. This is all nonsense--- right ? right ?? right???

I found that by using a toothbrush the black tarry 'reality-wax' could be brushed off, and after I did this, gradually consensus reality reassembled itself. But I wonder still, who was that sculptor in New York City? And which New York City in which reality?

And that's what just 1/4 tsp. of black tarry waxy soft Salvia extract can do to you.