Curare 18(1995)1: 103-129 Ethnopharmacognosy
and Human Pharmacology of Salvia divinorum Jonathan
Ott
Zusammenfassung: Der Autor gibt einen historischen Überblick zu Gebrauch und Forschungsgeschichte
der Wahrsagesalbei (Salvia divinorum). Es werden der traditionelle
Gebrauch bei Schamanen der Mazateken in Oaxaca/Mexiko sowie der
nichttraditionelle,moderne Gebrauch verschiedener Zubereitungsformen von
nordamerikanischen »Keller-Schamanen« vorgestellt und ausftihrlich diskutiert.
Der Frage nach der botanische Identitiit des »verlorenen« aztekischen
Entheogens pipiltzintzintli wird nachgegangen. Schließlich stellt der Autor seine Selbstversuche mit
der sogenannten »Heffter-Technik« vor. Abstract: After a
thorough review of the limited ethnographic data on shamanic use of the
entheogenic mint Salvia divinorum by the Mazatec Indians of the Sierra
Madre Oriental of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, with special emphasis on
pharmacognostical aspects, the author details the phytochemical studies which
led to the isolation of the novel diterpene salvinorin A in 1982-1984. Lingering
doubts as to the visionary properties of this compound were laid to rest a
decade later, when ‘basement shamans’ in the United States isolated and tested
the compound in psychonautic bioassays. A tabular summary of 15 reports
involving at least 60 trials of the novel drug by human volunteers is
presented; documenting activity of infusions of Salvia divinorum leaves
in water [the traditional method of ingestion], of the fresh leaves chewed,
whether subsequently swallowed or retained in the mouth as a quid; and of the
dried leaves smoked. Pharmacological activity of salvinorin A in human
volunteers is likewise discussed, both for inhalation of the vaporized compound
and sublingual application of 1 % solutions in acetone or dmso; including
original research here reported for the first time. Extremely low thresholds
for psychoactivity of salvinorin A [100-250 mcg sublingual; 200-500 mcg
vaporized and inhaled] show this compound to be the most potent natural product
entheogen known; some 10 times the potency of psilocybine from mushrooms
likewise used as shamanic inebriants by the Mazatec and other Mexican Indians,
and more than 1000 times the potency of the prototypical entheogen mescaline,
from the peyotl cactus [Lophophora williamsii] used as a visionary drug
by the Huichol, Tarahumara and other indigenous peoples of northern Mexico.
Speculations regarding the status of Salvia divinorum as a cultigen are
discussed, as is R. Gordon Wasson’s conjecture that this plant represents the
lost Aztec entheogen pipiltzintzintli. An exhaustive bibliography of more than
70 references reviews the ethnographic, chemical and pharmacological literature
on this intriguing shamanic inebriant. Keywords: Mazatec Indians, Aztecs, Mesoamerica, entheogens, Pipiltzintzinli,
Heffter Technique The Mexican
divinatory mint, Salvia divinorum Epling et Játiva, is one of the most obscure and
mysterious of all shamanic inebriants. Unlike its more famous Mexican
relatives, the péyotl cactus Lophophora williamsii (Lemaire)
Coulter, teonanácatl,
the psilocybian mushrooms
and ololiuhqui, seeds of the morning glory Turbina corymbosa (L.)
Rafinesque, this plant largely or completely escaped the notice of the 16th and
17th century Spanish friars and the opprobrium of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Indeed, it was not even mentioned in
the scientific literature until 1939 (Johnson 1939), was not described
botanically until 1962 (Epling & Játiva-M. 1962) and it wasn’t until 1993
that its active principle was finally identified (Siebert 1994). Actually, this
active principle, salvinorin A, was first isolated in 1982, in the course of a
systematic chemical search for novel terpenoid compounds in the genus Salvia
(Ortega et al. 1982). Although the Valdés group, searching for the
psychoactive principle of this
drug, independently isolated the same compound two years later (giving it the
synonym divinorin A), an imprecise animal assay was employed (the so-called
‘Hall’s open-field’ bioassay in mice) (Valdés et al. 1984). Even ‘though
members of the Valdés group had
ingested Salvia divinorum leaves in a traditional shamanic context in
Mexico (Díaz 1975,1979; Valdés et al. 1983), they did not follow their research
through to the definitive test of salvinorin A in psychonautic bioassays, the
only valid proof this compound represented the visionary active principle of
the leaves. Only when non-professional, countercultural ‘basement shamans’
commenced experimentation with the crude drug a decade later, was the
conclusive ‘Heffter Technique’ employed, and human self-experiments showed
beyond doubt that salvinorin A is the main visionary principle of Salvia
divinorum. The pioneering Swedish anthropologist Jean
Bassett Johnson, first scientist to observe divinatory use of Mexican entheogenic mushrooms in the summer of 1938, in the Mazatec village
of Huautla de Jiménez, also
mentioned in passing that: “In addition to the mushrooms, some people use a seed
called ‘Semilla de la Virgen,’ others use ‘Hierba María.’ ... the
Zapotec use a plant called ‘bador, the little children,’ which is
administered in the same way as yerba María by the Mazatec. The leaf is
beaten well, and a tea is made thereof ...” referring presciently both to the entheogenic morning glory seeds (known
as badoh in Zapotec or semillas de la virgen in Spanish) (Ott 1993) and Salvia
divinorum (Johnson 1939).
Six years later the Austrian physician Bias Pablo Reko, great pioneer in the
field of Mexican ethnopharmacognosy (not to be confused with his cousin Victor
Reko, a farceur who gained prominence in the German-speaking world by
appropriating the fruits of his cousin’s work in an unscientific popular book, Magische
Gifte), mentioned the use, by the Mazatec and neighboring Cuicatec Indians
of Oaxaca, of an hoja de la adivinación (divinatory leaf), in all probability S. divinorum (Reko
1945). Yet another clue was provided in 1952 by the great Mexican
anthropologist Roberto J. Weitlaner, also an Austrian, when he described the
therapeutic and divinatory use of an aqueous potion made by ‘rubbing the leaves
(50-100) in water’ of a Yerba de María (Weitlaner 1952): “otra yerba que en su pueblo
se llama Yerba de María ... se
utilizan las hojas, poniendolas en agua. Primero se fro tan entre las manos ... EI enfermo bebe el agua en
que se han frotado las hojas ... Esperan un cuarto de hora el efecto de la droga y el mismo
e_fermo empieza a decir la cIase de enfermedad que padece ... Cuando amanece el curandero
bafia al enfermo con agua de la misma que torno, y con esto queda curado el
enfermo. (another herb known in his village as Herb of Mary... the leaves are
used, putting them in water. First one rubs them between the hands ... The
patient drinks the water in which the leaves have been rubbed ... They await the
effect of the drug for a quarter of an hour and the patient himself begins to
state what type of sickness he suffers ... At
dawn the curandero bathes the
patient with the same water he drank, and thus the patient is cured.” However, it was the diligent work of the
pioneering ethnomycologist and entheogenic ethnopharmacognosist R. Gordon
Wasson which finally led to the collection of botanical voucher specimens of
this plant in October 1962. Wasson was also the first scientist on record to
have ingested the divinatory leaves, which his botanical collaborators Carl
Epling and Carlos D. Játiva-M.
subsequently identified as a new species, Salvia divinorum (Epling &
Játiva-M. 1962; Wasson 1962).
Just as important as the identification of the plant and documentation of its
effects was Wasson’s collection of live material, which then began to be
cultivated in the United States—it was from this so-called ‘Wasson clone’ that
salvinorin A was isolated in Los Angeles in 1993,
at last allowing testing of this compound in human beings (Siebert 1994). Wasson first ingested the
divinatory leaves in Ayautla on 12 July 1961, when he was given a potion of the
diluted, handsqueezed juice of 34 pairs of leaves, and compared the resulting
effect to that of the psilocybian mushrooms: “The effect of the leaves
came sooner than would have been the case with the mushrooms, was less
sweeping, and lasted a shorter time. There was not the slightest doubt about
the effect, but it did not go beyond the initial effect of the mushrooms—dancing
colors in elaborate, three-dimensional designs.” Wasson also mentioned his ingestion of the
juice of merely five pairs of leaves in San José Tenango on 9 October 1962, on
which occasion Anita Hofmann, wife of Albert Hofmann, ingested the juice of only
three pairs: “We both felt the effects,
which were as I described them in the ceremony in Ayautla the year before.” Two days later in Huautla de Jiménez, while María Sabina was celebrating
a mushroom velada with pills of Indocybin® or synthetic psilocybine, Albert Hofmann likewise ingested the infused
juice of five pairs of S. divinorum leaves (Hofmann 1979, 1990),
but unlike his wife and Gordon Wasson, he experienced only: “a state of mental
sensitivity and intense experience, which, however, was not accompanied by hallucinations.” In his pioneering paper on Salvia
divinorum (Wasson 1962), and an important sequel the following year,
summarizing ethnobotanical data on the major Mexican entheogenic plants (Wasson
1963), Wasson detailed what he had been able to learn about the divinatory
leaves. They seemed to be used only by the Mazatecs, who called them ska
Pastora or the equivalent in Spanish, hojas de la Pastora or hojas
de María Pastora (‘leaves of the Shepherdess’ or ‘leaves of Mary
Shepherdess’). This odd name has not received the comment it is due.
The interpolation of María into the name suggests the Catholic influence
which has corrupted Mexican shamanism, but the Biblical Mary was no
shepherdess, nor does any such woman figure in Catholic iconography. More
importantly, however, the Mazatecs would not have seen sheep until after the
arrival of Europeans to Mexico in the sixteenth century. This name is clearly a
modernism, and it is more than surprising that an important shamanic inebriant
would lack an indigenous name, for ‘leaves of Mary Shepherdess’ can in no way
be considered an indigenous name, for a people whose pre-Columbian ancestors
never set eyes on a sheep! It is even conceivable that Salvia divinorum use
is a post-Conquest introduction to the Sierra Mazateca. We will return to this
point below. Wasson described two methods of ingestion of Salvia
divinorum leaves: either by making a stack of leaves in pairs face-to-face,
which are then simply eaten (“It is customary for the Indians to consume the
leaves by nibbling at the dose with their incisor teeth.”); or in the form of
their juice, or rather a sort of aqueous suspension of the leaves in cold
water. This latter was precisely the method documented by Weitlaner. Thus was
prepared Wasson’s first dose of the leaves in Ayautla: “Augustina squeezed the leaves with her hands and collected the juice
in a glass. This was certainly an inefficient method. Some water was added. I
drank the dark fluid, about half a glass full,
the result of squeezing 34 pairs ...” As for the dose of five pairs of leaves prepared in San José Tenango
the following year for Wasson and the three pairs for Anita Hofmann, these were: “ground ... on her metate,
after passing them through the smoke of copal, and she did a thorough
job of it. Water is added to the mass that comes off the metate, the whole is
put through a strainer, and then we drank the liquor.” Wasson also mentioned the curious datum that
the Mazatecs regarded Salvia divinorum to be the most important member
of a ‘family’ (all, botanically speaking, indeed members of the same family,
Labiatae), being la hembra, ‘the female,’ whereas el macho or
‘the male’ was Coleus pumilus Blanco, and el nene, ‘the child,’
or el ajihado, ‘the
godson,’ was Coleus blumei Bentham.
This is more than strange, given
the fact that both species of Coleus are post-conquest introductions to
Mexico (Schultes 1967), and their juxtaposition with Salvia divinorum in
the minds of the Mazatecs might be seen as reinforcing the suspicion that their
use of the ‘leaves of Mary Shepherdess’ too is a post-conquest innovation.
Unfortunately, we have no firm evidence for the psychoactivity of either
species of Coleus. Wasson “tentatively” suggested that Salvia
divinorum might represent the unidentified pre-conquest Nahua entheogen pipiltzintzintli,
(or pepetichinque) mentioned by 17th century friar Agustin de
Vetancurt and in the annals of the Inquisition, as an herb taken in water for
divination or applied in water as a poultice (recall Weitlaner’s report that
apart from drinking the infusion of Yerba de María, the patient was bathed in it) (Aguirre Beltran 1963; Garza
1990; Vetancurt 1698; Wasson 1963). It has also been suggested that Salvia divinorum is represented in the
head dress of a deity depicted in the Mayan Dresden Codex (Emboden
1983). In her 1977 biography, Mazatec shaman María Sabina (one of Wasson’s
primary informants) noted that: “Si tengo a un enfermo en el
tiempo en que no se consiguen hongos, recurro alas hojas de la Pastora. Molido
y tornado, trabajan como los ninos. Desde luego, la Pastora no tiene la
fuerza suficiente. (If I have a patient during the season in which it is
impossible to procure mushrooms, I have recourse to the leaves of the
Shepherdess. Crushed and ingested. they work like the children (the
mushrooms). Of course, the Shepherdess does not possess enough strength.” (Estrada 1977) Three years earlier, in a monumental
transcription, transliteration and translation of an entire mushroomic curing
ceremony with Sabina, Wasson had puzzled over María’s repeated mentions of
so-called ‘aquatic leaves’ which cured when rubbed on the patients’ body
(Wasson et al. 1974). Given Weitlaner’s report of bathing patients in
the Salvia divinorum infusion, most decidedly a cutaneous application of
‘aquatic leaves’ (as we will see, a decade later use of the leaf residue of S.
divinorum infusions as a poultice was also reported), and Vetancurt’s
report of similar use of pipiltzintzintli, it seems probable that here
María was speaking figuratively of external use of Salvia divinorum, a
plant which is also ‘aquatic’ in it ravine habitat (Epling & Játiva-M.
1962). This effectively summarizes our primary ethnographic data on Salvia
divinorum, and Epling and Játiva’s terse one-and-a-half-page paper, and
Wasson’s concise seven-page paper certainly provided little detail. It is thus
surprising to note the relatively strong impact the leaves of the Shepherdess
began to have on the literature. No fewer than five different color paintings
of Salvia divinorum have been published (Emboden 1972; Foster 1984; Schultes 1976; Schultes & Hofmann 1979; Schultes & Smith 1980), along with
two different botanical illustrations (Mayer 1977; Schultes 1967; Schultes & Hofmann 1973), two black-and-white photographs of the
whole plant (Díaz 1975; Wasson
1963), and color and black-and-white photographs showing the use of a metate
to prepare infusions of Salvia leaves (Riedlinger 1990; Wasson 1963)!
Three of these paintings (Emboden
1972; Schultes 1976; Schultes & Smith 1980), one by Frances Runyan, two by Harvard botanical artist
Elmer W. Smith, unfortunately misrepresented the corollas of Salvia
divinorum as being purple, not white (in the botanical description Epling
and Játiva had misdescribed the
calyx color as “cyaneorum”; in the 1979 revised edition of Emboden 1972; the
erroneous painting was replaced with a color photograph of the flowering plant,
and Emboden amended the botanical description of the flowers). Fortunately this
evident scientific interest led to renewed and more detailed studies of the
mysterious entheogen. The Mexican psychiatrist José Luis Díaz began to study Salvia
divinorum in the Sierra Mazateca in summer 1973, and in his preliminary
paper he described the use of doses of 25 to 50 pairs of leaves, prepared by a
manual technique similar to that previously described by Weitlaner (Díaz 1975): “toma una
jicara con agua y sabre ella machaca vigorosamente el manojo de hojas con sus
manes hasta que se extrae toda ‘la sangre de la hojita.’ El bagazo se desecha y
el bebedizo resulta un liquido verde espumoso y en extrema amargo. (she takes a
jar of water and using her hands vigorously mashes the bunch of leaves above it
until all of the ‘blood of the little leaf’ is extracted. The bagasse is set
aside and the resulting potion is an extremely bitter and frothy green liquid.” Díaz chronicled six personal experiences with
the potion, of a total of 12 by members of his group, mentioning that “my
perception of the effects has in general increased with experience.”
Nevertheless, Díaz described quite mild visual effects (in some cases none at
all) “far from being hallucinations,” with the peak effects lasting only ten
minutes and disappearing within a half-hour of ingestion. Díaz also described
inconclusive chemical studies, stating there were: “various alkaloids in Salvia
divinorum, two of which are apparently psychoactive.” Díaz reported crude
pharmacological experiments with “alkaline extracts” of the plant in cats
(using the fractions which would correspond to defatted, acidic-water-soluble,
basic-water-insoluble, alkaloidal constituents in a standard solvent extraction
of alkaloids) commenting that effects were “notably similar to those produced by hallucinogens of the LSD type,”
which were, however, of much shorter duration, lasting at most a half-hour.
Díaz also mentioned the inconsistent nature of the observed effects, which he
ascribed to varying potency of the starting material or instability of the
active agents (Díaz 1975,1977). Albert Hofmann, who together with Gordon
Wasson collected the first botanical voucher specimens of Salvia divinorum in
October 1962, also made reference to this presumed instability of the active
principles of Salvia divinorum, inasmuch as he had returned to
Switzerland with juice of Salvia divinorum “preserved with alcohol”
which “proved in self-experiments to be no longer active,” thus depriving
Hofmann and his coworkers of the Heffter Technique bioassay needed to guide the
experimental isolation of the active principles (Hofmann 1979, 1990; Ott 1994,
1995a). It has been incorrectly stated in the literature that Hofmann made
unsuccessful chemical attempts to isolate the active principle of Salvia
divinorum (Valdés 1994b; Valdés et al. 1987a), when in reality he abandoned
plans to study juice of the plant chemically, when it proved in
self-experiments to be inactive. It is worth noting that Hofmann had simply
expressed the juice of the leaves and diluted this with alcohol, rather than
preparing the aqueous infusion of the ‘rubbed’ leaves described by Weitlaner, Díaz and Wasson. Thus matters stood until 1979 and 1980, when
Leander J. Valdés III began to collaborate with Díaz, making the isolation of
novel compounds from Salvia divinorum his thesis project at the
University of Michigan. Valdés described in great detail two shamanic healing
sessions with Mazatec curandero Don Alejandro on 18 August 1979 and 6
March 1980. On both occasions Díaz and Valdés ingested infusions of Salvia
divinorum--only in the first session did Don Alejandro likewise ingest the
drug. Valdés described the divinatory dose of the leaves as being “from 20
(about 50 g) to 80 (about 200 g) or more pairs of fresh leaves to induce
visions” (noting also A. Gomez Pompa’s notations on herbarium sheets, to the
effect that 8-12 pairs of leaves went into a dose); while in the 18 August
session he received a “beginner’s dose” made from 20 pairs and Díaz and Don
Alejandro from 50 pairs; in the second session Díaz received a dose made from
60 pairs, Valdés from 50. Valdés mentioned that “only fresh foliage will serve
for divination,” that being a primary use for the leaves, which were also
employed in shamanic training, and in lower doses as specific medicines for
various diseases (Valdés et al. 1983). Valdés stressed the necessity of using
only fresh leaves, noting in a second paper “it purportedly loses psychotropic
activity on drying” (Valdés et al. 1987a). He also mentioned the existence of a
prescribed dieta or ritual diet of 16 days, then reduced to only 4 days
after the initial dose. Such a diet is also associated with the shamanic use of
psilocybian mushrooms among the Mazatecs (Wasson & Wasson 1957), and is
commonly prescribed with shamanic use of ayahuasca in Amazonia (Ott
1994) and with other shamanic inebriants. As in the reports of Weitlaner, Díaz
and Wasson, Don Alejandro apportioned pairs of the leaves which were crushed
manually (Valdés et al. 1983): “into a small enameled bowl
partially filled with water. As more foliage was squeezed and added, the liquid turned dark green ... (and) was
poured through a sieve into a glass which was topped off with water.” Supposedly the leaves could be kept fresh for
up to a week by wrapping them in leaves of Xanthosoma robustum Schoff,
but the infusion would only last for a day. Whereas the leaf residue was
usually left in a remote place, it was sometimes applied as a poultice to the
head of a patient, again harking back to Vetancurt’s 17th century description of pipiltzintzintli (Garza
1990). Díaz described the commencement of subtle visions 15 minutes after
ingesting the infusion of 50 pairs of leaves on 18 August (his seventh
experience), which became more intense over the next 15 minutes. Valdés also
described visions, and a sensation of flying, 45 minutes after ingesting his infusion
of 20 pairs of leaves. Both Díaz and Valdés described visions during the first
hour of the session of 6 March, which was cut short at the 50-minute point,
owing to distracting noises. Even 2.5 hours after ingestion, having returned to
his hotel and extinguished the light, Valdés experienced more visions, and the
sensation of the perceived reality of: “standing
in a bizarre, colored landscape talking to a man who was either shaking or
holding on to his hand. Next to them was something that resembled the skeleton
of a giant (sic) stick-model airplane made from rainbow colored inner tubing.
The ‘reality’ of what he was seeing amazed him.” (Valdés et al. 1983) Valdés later noted “It was an amazing
hallucination, as I truly believed I was in the meadow. It was not like
a dream.” (Valdés 1994b), and such vivid visions of alien space or geometry are
a hallmark of the effects of Salvia divinorum (Blosser 1991-1993). Both
Díaz and Valdés experienced physical effects as well as visions, consisting of
incoordination, dizziness and slurred speech. In contrast to Wasson’s
report that the leaf infusion “did not go beyond the initial effect of the
(psilocybian) mushrooms,” Valdés stressed “the Salvia infusion will
induce powerful visions under the appropriate conditions” of silence and
darkness. As mentioned above, Valdés went on to isolate
two novel trans-neoc1erodane terpenoid compounds from the leaves, which
he named divinorins A and B (Valdés et al. 1984), only to discover that he had
been ‘scooped’ by the group of Alfredo Ortega in Mexico, which had already
isolated the more important of
these compounds, giving it the name salvinorin (making salvinorin A and B the
appropriate designations for the compounds) (Ortega et al. 1982). The Ortega
group was not studying ethnopharmacognosy per se, but rather studying
terpenoid chemistry in Salvia species, and they conducted no
pharmacological tests of the novel compound. Valdés’ group, on the other hand,
was actively seeking the visionary principle of the plant, using as bioassay
not the indicated Heffter Technique, but “a modification of Hall’s open field”
in mice. This involved administering fractions of the plant to mice, then
observing their behavior in a 90 cm circle divided into squares, that is,
counting the number of squares entered, time spent immobile, and rearings onto
hind legs. They concluded that salvinorin A was the visionary principle of the
plant, as it reduced all three measures of activity in the mice, much as Salvia
divinorum did in human beings (‘though Valdés had not documented his nor
Díaz’s behavior in the open field, nor described either rearing up on his hind
legs!). Furthermore, salvinorin A was said to have a sedative effect on the
mice (while salvinorin B, its desacetyl congener, was inactive in this assay),
and Valdés later published the details that all the following compounds
provoked the same effect in the mouse bioassay as salvinorin A: mescaline,
secobarbital, an ether extract of Cannabis sativa L. and another labiate
terpenoid compound, the hypotensive forskolin or colforsin (Valdés et al.
1987a). Later, in a subsequent paper, Valdés qualified this, stating: “further testing ... has allowed a different
interpretation ... amphetamine stimulated the mice; secobarbital, forskolin and
the cannabis extract had strong sedating effects ... Mescaline,
salvinorin A, and isosalvinorin A—the 8-epimer of salvinorin A—interrupted (decreased) animal activity without an
accompanying true sedation ...” and noting the activity of salvinorin A was
qualitatively and quantitatively similar to that of mescaline (Valdés 1994b)!
The fact that pharmacologically-disparate compounds like the potent sedative
secobarbital and the powerful stimulant mescaline gave similar results in the
bioassay, should have alerted the Valdés group to its lack of specificity, but
they inexplicably neglected to employ psychonautic bioassays which would have
left no doubts about the activity of the salvinorins. Valdés’ group also
mentioned the existence of “at least two more terpenoids” in their extracts,
and noted that the terpene-enriched crude fraction of the leaves was
“substantially stronger” than its equivalent of pure salvinorin A, and Valdés
later reported his isolation from the leaves of the ant-repellent loliolide, of
unknown pharmacology and previously found in various plants, including Lolium
perenne L. (Valdés 1986). In seeming refutation of the Mazatec belief that
the dried leaves are inactive, both the Ortega and Valdés groups
isolated salvinorin A from dried leaves, and the latter group reported a yield
of 0.18 % salvinorin A in dried leaves; corresponding to 0.022 % on a fresh
weight basis. Neither group published a synthesis of salvinorin A (or B), but
both derived the same structure from X-ray crystallography (it is unusual for
this procedure to be carried out twice for the same compound), and the group of
M. Koreeda subsequently worked out the absolute stereochemistry of salvinorins
A and B (Koreeda et al. 1990). Valdés’ group was unable to confirm the report
of alkaloids in Salvia divinorum by Díaz, noting: “extensive work in our laboratory has shown that the
pharmacologically active extracts from S. divinorum do not
contain alkaloids, nor were we able to isolate any alkaloids from the plant itself.” (Valdés et al. 1984) Díaz’s conclusions are generally regarded to
have been premature, and it is an open question how (presumably)
alkaloid-enriched extracts of the leaves were pharmacologically active in
cats—it is my opinion that Díaz’s bioassay itself was at fault.  Salvia
divinorum (Photograph:
Jonathan Ott) Having written his thesis on the isolation of
salvinorins from Salvia divinorum to get his PhD., Valdés concluded his
research on the plant with some cultivation experiments in Ann Arbor, Michigan;
outdoors in summer and in greenhouses the rest of the year. Manual
cross-pollination of the ‘Wasson clone’ and a strain collected by Valdés
resulted in 4 of 14 setting seed (28%), but the seed was accidentally killed by
overheating the growth chamber before viability could be assessed (Valdés et
al. 1987a). At this point Valdés’ scientific research with Salvia divinorum was
temporarily suspended, leaving the question of the active principle unresolved.
Although Valdés’ group suggested salvinorin A was the visionary principle (in
their 1987 paper, Valdés et al. expressed reservations: “if salvinorin A and
the new compounds we isolated ... prove to display hallucinogenic activity in
humans”), the gross lack of discrimination of their bioassay left room for
doubt, and the simple expedient of testing the novel compound in a human
researcher was inexplicably foregone. The next chapter in the scientific biography
was to be written by ‘basement shamans’ of the United States’ ‘counterculture.’
As early as 1984, Salvia divinorum, baptized as ‘diviner’s sage’
(Heffern 1974) or ‘sage of the seers,’ was profiled in a latter-day herbal
(Foster 1984) which was recently reprinted. This book gave a concise summary of
ethnographic data on the plant, described its cultivation, and mentioned the
important datum that live specimens could be purchased from a California
seed company identified in an appendix. Foster described his ingestion of 20
leaves: “leaving me with an upset stomach, a dry, acid mouth,
and a great respect for Mazatecs who can work their way through a hundred! For
me the leaves produced hardly noticeable effects. Craig Dremmond (sic) suggests
that plants cultivated outside of Oaxaca may not develop the active
constituents, and I predict that Salvia divinorum will never become a popular
subculture euphoric.” This comment, and María Sabina’s dismissal of
the leaves as feeble compared to her preferred entheogenic ally teonanacatl (María’s
biography was translated into English in 1981, noting “Of course the
Shepherdess doesn’t have as much strength.”) (Estrada 1977), have seemingly
informed modern consciousness of this little-known entheogen, which acquired a
reputation as being weak and second-rate (tacitly assumed of any plant our
governments have not deigned to prohibit). Reviewing entheogens in a
widely-read anthology, botanical expert Richard Evans Schultes commented
(Schultes 1972): “In Oaxaca, Salvia
divinorum seems to be utilized only when supplies of the mushrooms and
morning-glory seeds are short” Another more recent source echoed this theme
of surrogate or second-rate entheogen (Rätsch 1988): “Mazatec shamans use its (S. divinorum’s) leaves
when they are unable to obtain magic mushrooms (Teonanacatl).” Nevertheless, as early as 1973 Salvia
divinorum was included in a popular booklet on Growing the Hallucinogens
(Grubber 1973) and live plants continued to be available commercially,
becoming a mainstay of the mail-order plant and seed companies dedicated to
shamanic inebriants, which began to appear in the nineties, and whose customers
became avid collectors and cultivators of such exotica. There even arose
on-line computer bulletin board systems (b.b.s.) dedicated to shamanic
inebriants and other psychoactive drugs, such as alt.drugs,
aft.drugs.psychedelics, alt.psychoactives and myriad others, where
‘basement shamans’ could compare horticultural and other pharmacognostical
notes. In 1992, one such entheogen aficionado, Jim Dekorne, started a
newsletter, The Entheogen Review, in which readers could share
experiences with novel and largely unknown drugs like Salvia divinorum, and
report innovations in their cultivation, preparation and use. I first encountered Salvia divinorum in
1975, when I moved to Mexico to collaborate with the Díaz group. I observed
that young Mexican users of Cannabis and entheogenic mushrooms, who were
wont to engage in mushroomic tourism to Huautla de Jiménez to obtain
psilocybian mushrooms, which had become articles of the tourist trade there
(Ott 1975), would return to Mexico City with dried leaves of Salvia
divinorum, which they would smoke in ‘joints,’ like marijuana. I verified
that the dried material was, in fact, active and effective when smoked, in
contrast to the Mazatec belief that drying the leaves destroyed their potency.
This observation was first reported in the literature by Díaz, in his first
paper dealing with ska Pastora (Díaz 1975). Smoking dried Salvia
divinorum leaves surprisingly became the preferred mode of ingestion among
certain users in the United States (Pendell 1995). By the summer of 1993, Salvia
aficionados in California had discovered that by far the most potent means
of ingesting the fresh leaves was the so-called ‘quid method,’ chewing the
leaves well and retaining the leaf mass and juice in the cheek, in the manner
in which coca (Erythroxylum coca LAM.) is typically chewed, swallowing
neither the leaves nor their juice. Valdés, with whom the ‘basement shamans’
communicated this finding, later mistakenly reported that the Mazatecs so use
the leaves: “Some Mazatecs, as well as nonnative experimenters,
chew a cocalike quid of the fresh leaves that induces strong and persistent visions ... Mazatec informants made a quid of four to five pairs ...” (Valdés 1994b) In fact, this method was discovered by
non-professional researchers in California, again besting the Mazatecs, who
failed to discover this most effective method of ingestion, just as they failed
to discover the activity of dried leaves or their activity when smoked.
Finally, in the summer of 1993, these same ‘basement shamans’ succeeded in
isolating a salvinorin A-enriched crude precipitate (which I verified shortly
after to be roughly 50% pure) from organic solvent extracts of the dried leaves
(the procedure was shown to me, and it involved the simplest possible kitchen
chemistry, which could be executed in less than an hour), and demonstrated by
smoking this precipitate on tinfoil or in glass pipes that it was active at
doses of around 1 mg, and did indeed contain the visionary principle of the
leaves. After Valdés provided a sample of authentic salvinorin A, it was
irrefragably shown that the precipitate was impure salvinorin A, thus proving
the conjecture of the Valdés group, that this novel terpenoid was the main
visionary principle of the leaves of Mary Shepherdess. One of the ‘basement
shamans,’ evidently the first human being to ingest pure salvinorin A, then
went public, describing “Salvia divinorum and salvinorin A: New
pharmacologic findings” in the pages of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology (Siebert 1994). In his paper, Siebert briefly described the effects in 6 volunteers of
aqueous suspensions of fresh Salvia divinorum leaves along with coca-like
quids of masticated leaves held in the mouth; and of pure salvinorin A in
20 volunteers, administered both by buccal spraying of an ethanolic solution of
the compound, and by inhalation through a glass tube of the pure compound
vaporized on tinfoil with a butane ‘micro torch’ (the high melting point of
salvinorin A, around 240 C, makes effective vaporization difficult without such
an apparatus). The plant material studied was the famous ‘Wasson clone.’ When
subjects were given an aqueous suspension of 10 fresh leaves (about 30 g)
homogenized in a blender in 100 ml water, which they then swallowed, followed
by rinsing the mouth to minimize contact of the suspension with oral mucosa,
“none of the (6) volunteers reported any noticeable effects.” When the same
suspension was held in the mouth for 10 minutes absent swallowing, then spit
out, “all of the volunteers report(ed) very definite psychoactive effects.”
When doses as high as 10 mg of salvinorin A were swallowed in gelatin capsules
“there was no detectable activity.” On the other hand, buccal spraying of 1 ml
of ethanol in which 2 mg salvinorin A was dissolved “proved to be active” but
weakly so: “this method was inefficient and results were inconsistent.”
Extraordinarily high activity was found for inhaling the vapors of salvinorin
A: “typically threshold effects are noted at about 200 µg (mcg)” and “when 200-500 µg (mcg) of salvinorin A is vaporized and
inhaled the subjective effects produced are identical to those typically
produced by the fresh herb. Doses up to 2.6 mg were tested in this manner.”
(Siebert 1994) The pharmacodynamics varied greatly by method of ingestion. The
quid method of chewing the leaves provoked first effects in 5-10 minutes which
quickly built up to a peak, maintaining a plateau for 1 hour, with effects
subsiding over another hour. Inhalation of the vaporized, pure compound led to
full effects within 30 seconds, lasting 5-10 minutes, then subsiding over 20-30
minutes. Like Valdés, Siebert stressed the potent and vivid visionary effects: “Frequently people report having seen visions of
people, objects, and places. With doses above 1 mg, out of body experiences are
frequent ... The volunteers who were experienced with other hallucinogens all agreed that
despite some similarities, the content of the visions and the overall character
of the experience is quite unique.” Siebert also submitted a sample of salvinorin A for screening on neural
and other receptors, using a procedure called the Nova-Screen™. In tests of competitive inhibition of
binding of reference target compounds, at concentrations of 10-5M,
there was no significant inhibition in receptor affinity of the target compound
for 40 receptors, including 15 neurotransmitter receptors. This suggests what
one would expect, given the novel structure of the compound and its unique
effects—that it binds to some other, possibly new, receptor. Siebert concluded
that salvinorin A, when swallowed, “is deactivated before entering the blood
stream,” and that absorption must take place in the buccal mucosa for oral
activity. He suggested that injection might result in a threshold of activity
yet lower than the 200 mcg following inhalation of the vapors (Siebert 1994).
Even as such, salvinorin A is at least an order of magnitude more potent than
any other known natural entheogen, such as psilocybine from María Sabina’s
mushrooms (oral threshold of psilocybine in human beings is about 2 mg (Fisher
1963)), and is within the range of activity of the semi-synthetic ergoline
compound lsd. To think María Sabina had characterized ska Pastora as
lacking strength compared to her beloved mushroomic children (Estrada
1977), while the crude mouse assay employed by the Valdés group had suggested
that salvinorin A was of the same order of activity as mescaline, a compound
which is in fact more than 1000 times less active (Ott 1993)! On the other hand, it appears Siebert went beyond his evidence in
alleging absorption in buccal mucosa was a requisite for activity of the drug.
It seems logical that crystalline salvinorin A in capsules might not
dissolve in gastric juices, thus explaining the inactivity of capsules with
high amounts of the pure compound. Although swallowing the homogenate of 10
leaves mechanically blended in water evinced no detectable activity, this
observation does not warrant concluding lack of gastric absorption of the drug
as prepared in infusions by the Mazatecs. In the first place, this dose is far
too low. Although Wasson and Anita Hofmann each felt mild effects from a
suspension of merely 6 leaves, Albert Hofmann felt next to nothing with the
10-leaf dose utilized by Siebert. We must recall that Valdés had described the
dose range as 20-80 pairs of leaves; Gomez Pompa as 8-12 pairs; Weitlaner and Díaz as 25-50 pairs, while Karl Herbert Mayer
mentioned 13 pairs (Mayer 1977)—even Valdés’ ‘beginner’s dose’ of 20 pairs is
fully four times the amount tested by Siebert, whose negative results
can thus in no way be construed as proving lack of gastrointestinal absorption.
Also, it is not certain that mechanical blending of the leaves in water
accurately reproduced the curious method of ‘rubbing’ the leaves in water employed
by the Mazatecs. Indeed, Valdés later characterized this as “a pharmaceutically
elegant way of preparing a microsuspension or emulsion of salvinorin A,” noting
the traditional method was “much more effective than the crude emulsion that
was made to dose the mice” in his laboratory experiments (prepared by
dissolving salvinorin A in corn oil and surfactant Tween-80, then shaking in
water; which emulsion would readily ‘break’—this suspension was then injected
intraperitoneally into the mice) (Valdés
1994b). Valdés took issue with Siebert’s conclusions regarding gastrointestinal absorption of salvinorin A:
“from these animal studies one can conclude that the emulsion of the compound
allows regular peritoneal absorption,” speculating that “although not as potent
as inhalation of the vaporized compound, the effects might last longer” noting
that in Mexico he had experienced much longer-lasting effects than those
reported by Siebert. Indeed, all of the ethnographic reports describe making an
infusion of the ‘rubbed’ fresh leaves in water, which is simply swallowed, with
no emphasis on retaining the material in the mouth as long as possible, and
only Wasson described the alternate method of simply chewing the leaves,
although American anthropologist Bret Blosser independently documented this
ingestion method among contemporary Mazatecs (Blosser 1991-1993), as did Mayer
(1977) (Blosser added the detail that the stack of pairs of leaves was rolled
into a taco or cigar to facilitate chewing the leaves). On the other hand, it
is a noteworthy fact that, as Siebert’s experiments with a marginal dose of 10
leaves blended in water did show conclusively, buccal absorption is the more
effective method of ingestion. To be sure, in the course of chewing 20-80 pairs
of fresh leaves, the leaf matter would needs be in contact with buccal mucosa
for an extended period, allowing buccal absorption ... but why did the Mazatec Indians fail to discover the obvious advantages
of the quid method? This question is especially pointed in that, as Pendell
noted: “by the eighth swallow of the leaves the gag reflex becomes
overwhelming” (Pendell 1995). Valdés offered an explanation at least for the
failure of Mazatec shamans to note the activity of dried leaves,
suggesting that: “Drying drastically alters the chemical composition of the leaves, and the
microsuspension/emulsion of salvinorin A will not be formed. Since salvinorin A is insoluble in water, the dry
leaves will not serve to prepare an effective infusion.” (Valdés 1994b) On the other hand, Dale Pendell described preparing dried leaves for eating: “Salvinorin is practically
insoluble in water. The best way to ‘ingest’ dried leaves is to soften them
with some hot water, then keep these leaves in the cheeks just as with fresh
material.” (Pendell 1995) The quid method and the preparation of
smokeable precipitates from extracts of the leaves were rapidly communicated to
the entheogenic underground by Internet b.b.s. and publications like The
Entheogen Review. In winter 1993 a reader commented that blended juice of
150 fresh-frozen leaves was inactive in three individuals (that is, 50 leaves
each), with editor Dekorne noting “without any first hand experience to go on,
I can’t comment” (Anon. 1993a). Six months later, another reader described
having heard about the quid method (yet another, fresh from a Botanical
Preservation Corps seminar in Hawai’i, where Dale Pendell spoke on Salvia
divinorum and where Dale, Dennis McKenna, myself and others were
experimenting with smoking pure salvinorin A that I’d isolated just prior to
the event, detailed this quid method) (Anon. 1993b). A year later, Valdés
himself had written to the newsletter (Valdés 1994a), warning readers of the
reputed “extreme potency” of salvinorin A, while one intrepid reader
reported making ayahuasca analogues (Ott 1994) with Salvia divinorum (chewing
6 g of Peganum harmala L. seeds with 45 half-dried leaves, reporting an
eight-hour experience, describing it as “by far the worst tasting entheogen,
though it’s my favorite”); and yet another described “spooky ... complete dislocation” from smoking
“two or three consecutive bong hits” of dried leaves, giving an effect lasting
no more than 20 minutes (Anon. 1994a). Editor Dekorne was prompted to warn his
readers: “A Word to the Wise: Information soon to be made public (a veiled reference, apparently,
to Siebert’s paper) will almost certainly result in the dea (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) putting Salvia
divinorum on the schedule-1 (most restricted drugs) list, so get it while you can.
There’s far more to this plant than meets the eye.” (Dekorne 1993). even though his book Psychedelic (sic)
Shamanism, published the following year, characterized the plant as a
‘minor psychedelic’ and contained a distillate of incorrect speculations about
the purported inactivity of dried or frozen leaves, the “extreme instability”
of the active agent, etc. (Dekorne 1994). Issue No.6 of the hybrid
drug/shamanism magazine Psychedelic Illuminations featured a sidebar on
“Mazatec Magic,” in which the quid method of chewing Salvia divinorum leaves was described, as was smoking of the dried leaves, “for milder
effects” (Anon 1994b). This sudden burst of pharmacological activity
by the ‘basement shamans’ evidently alarmed Valdés who, apart from his
abovementioned warning to readers of The Entheogen Review, published a
paper in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, noting: “Until recently, S. divinorum
was considered to be a plant with low abuse potential (sic) ... it is apparent that both S. divinorum and
salvinorin A are prime candidates to become drugs of widespread use once
knowledge of their effects spreads. A small investment in fertilizer and
solvents, with only a minimal need for mastery of laboratory technique, would
make cultivation of S. divinorum and isolation of salvinorin A
potentially much more attractive than trying to synthesize lsd or phencyclidine
derivatives.” (Valdés 1994b) First we had Dekorne, presumably not in favor
of prohibiting entheogens, suggesting prohibition of Salvia divinorum to
the authorities; then Valdés, presumably opposed to non-traditional use of
entheogens, suggesting the idea of cottage-industry, commercial cultivation of Salvia
divinorum and isolation of salvinorin A for sale on the black market!
Valdés even offered useful practical advice, if not detailed instructions, to
the would-be black-market producer of Salvia divinorum and salvinorin A: “Having 80 to 100 12-inch
pots (5 cuttings/pot) arranged quincuncially in an area of 4x4 m (12x12 ft),
indoors (on benches under normal cool-white fluorescent lighting) or outdoors,
can yield well over one kilogram per month of dried leaves once the plants are
established (about two to three months) ...
An underground chemist, however, would not need to be so meticulous. There is no need for using
a Soxhlet apparatus, and experimenting could lead to the use of commonly
available solvents for the extraction. Yields of even a gram per kilogram of
dried leaves would produce some 2,000 human doses.” (Valdés 1994b) Valdés’ paper was rather a review of the
state of knowledge on Salvia divinorum than a report of any new results
from his own research. Unfortunately, this was marred by several mistakes.
Besides the abovementioned misattribution of the quid method to Mazatec
informants of Bret Blosser, who learned of this from Americans in Los Angeles,
not from his informants in the Sierra Mazateca (Blosser 1991-1993), Valdés
erroneously summarized Siebert’s findings with vaporized salvinorin A. He
stated that: “A dose of 200-500 mcg produces visions that
last from 30 minutes to an hour or two, while doses over 2 mg are effective for
much longer.”
(Valdés 1994b) On the contrary, Siebert stated the full
effects were experienced in 30 seconds, the duration of the strongest
effects was only 5-10 minutes, with the effects subsiding over the following
20-30 minutes (with “somewhat increased” duration at doses above 1 mg). Valdés
also weighed in with authoritative opinions on alleged “inaccuracies about S.
divinorum that are fixed in the literature,” to wit: the question of the
identity of Salvia divinorum with the Nahua entheogen pipiltzintzintli,
and the purported status of Salvia divinorum as a cultigen, rather
than as a wild plant. Valdés dismissed both out-of-hand, as “inaccuracies,”
offering, however, only opinions and no evidence whatever to the contrary. Let
us examine both these theories in turn. With regard to the possible pre-Columbian
Nahuatl name for Salvia divinorum , Valdés stated authoritatively that: “It has been demonstrated that
either marijuana or one of various
species of morning glories are better candidates (than S. divinorum) for
being the unknown Aztec plant pipiltzintzintli).” citing his own 1987 paper and Díaz’s 1979
review article. Valdés and Díaz, far from demonstrating anything of the kind,
merely cited Aguirre Beltran’s argument, based on his interpretations of the
archives of the Inquisition, that pipiltzintzintli was another name for ololiuhqui
(‘round things,’ the ergoline-alkaloid-containing seeds of the ‘snake
plant,’ coaxihuitl, Turbina corymbosa) (Aguirre Beltran 1963). Since the
archives made reference to the use of parts of pipiltzintzintli other
than simply the leaves, Valdés hastened to note that leaves and stems, as well
as seeds, of T. corymbosa likewise contained alkaloids. Yet only ground ololiuhqui
seeds are reportedly used to prepare visionary infusions in Mexican
shamanism, and we can readily discard ololiuhqui as a possible identity
for pipiltzintzintli by quoting our primary source on the identity of
the mysterious entheogen, 17th century friar Agustin de Vetancurt, who
described the leaves of pipiltzintzintli thus: “Tómanla bebida para no sentir cansancio, y aplicadas por
modo de emplasto cura las partes desconcertadas, en el agua ordinaria ... y aunque los Naturales las estiman, los Españoles las aborrecen por supersticiosas, porque aquéllos
las suellen
tomar para adivinar, y saber lo oculto en sueños, mézclase con zacazili, y
ololiuhqui para las fracturas. (They take
it as a drink so as not to feel weariness, and applied as a poultice they cure injured parts, in
ordinary water ...
and although the Natural Ones (Indians) esteem them, the
Spaniards abhor them as superstitious because those people are wont to take
them for divination, and to learn hidden things in dreams, mixing them with zacazili
and ololiuhqui for fractures.” So pipiltzintzintli was mixed with ololiuhqui—it
is thus obvious that we are dealing with two different drugs (zacazili may
correspond to sacasil, a species of Anredera, or to sacasile,
Boussingaultia sp. (Díaz 1976))! Since pipiltzintzintli had both
male and female varieties, and was also used dried, both Díaz and Valdés
suggested marijuana, Cannabis spp. as a “likely candidate.” This
suggestion is frivolous—rather like speculating that soma or Homer’s nepenthes
was peyotl! While there exists taxonomic debate over the question of
speciation in Cannabis (Ott 1993), there is no question of the Eurasian
origin of Cannabis, botanists universally regard it to be a post-contact introduction to the New World,
and noted experts Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann diplomatically
dismissed Díaz’s and Valdés’ proposal as being “more than highly unlikely”
(Schultes & Hofmann 1980). Pendell cited the lack of sexes in Salvia
divinorum as militating against its identity with pipiltzintzintli,
but as he himself allowed, “it is also possible that the reference to gender is
metaphorical” (Pendell 1995), as is certainly the case with male/female pairing
of entheogenic mushrooms used shamanically in various parts of Mexico (Ott 1993; Rubel & Gettelfinger-Krejci 1976; Wasson & Wasson 1957); likewise
with male and female elements of plant combinations in Amazonian ayahuasca potions
(Ott 1994). Furthermore, Wasson’s pioneering paper noted exactly this with
respect to the leaves of the Shepherdess, said by his Mazatec informants to be
‘the female’ in a ‘family’ including ‘the male,’ Coleus pumilus, and a
‘child,’ C. blumei (Wasson 1962). The lack of botanical sexes in Salvia
divinorum constitutes specious grounds to reject the identity of this drug
with pipiltzintzintli, given the common use of sex-pairing as a metaphor
for entheogenic plant ingestion or dosing; and the fact that Vetancurt
described both the drinking of a potion of pipiltzintzintli for
divination, and application of the leaves used to make the potion as a
poultice—precisely what Valdés himself reported for Mazatec use of Salvia
divinorum (while Weitlaner reported similar cutaneous application of the
potion itself)—argues eloquently for Wasson’s proposal that pipiltzintzintli
was Salvia divinorum. Can Valdés point to any other Mesoamerican
entheogen whose leaves are used to prepare a divinatory potion, and also
applied cutaneously as a remedy? In the case of ololiuhqui, Sahagun and
Hernandez described divinatory use of potions, and the therapeutic, cutaneous
application of same, but prepared from the seeds, and not from the leaves of
the plant (indeed, ololiuhqui is the Nahuatl name of the seeds only, the
plant is called coaxihuitl or coatlxoxouhqui—‘snake plant’ or ‘green snake’ (Ott 1993)). Garza
mentioned the use in Tepoztlán,
Morelos of a plant called piltzintzintli, a vine with pods full of
red-and-black seeds, which seeds were taken daily, one at a time, up to a total
dosage of 12, to treat ‘airs’ (Garza 1990). While she was unable to identify
this plant botanically, it surely corresponds to the well-known Rhynchosia
spp.—Díaz noted that Rhynchosia species, with brilliant
red-and-black seeds borne in pods, are known as pipiltzintli in northern
Mexico (Díaz 1979). The Wassons described divinatory use of six pairs of seeds
of Rhynchosia pyramidalis (Lam.) Urban, combined with 6 pairs of the
psilocybian mushroom Psilocybe aztecorum Heim, known as apipiltzin (‘little
children of the waters’) by a Nahua curandera in San Pedro Nexapa, high
on Popocatepetl (Wasson & Wasson 1957). This sounds like a promising lead,
but the Rhynchosia seeds were known descriptively in San Pedro Nexapa as
‘bird’s eyes,’ not as pipiltzintzintli, and of this mysterious Aztec
entheogen, it is the seeds which were not mentioned as being used, as Valdés
admitted (Valdés et al. 1987a). Of course, this further militates against the
misidentification of ololiuhqui as the lost Aztec drug, but is
consistent with the relatively seedless (as we will see below) Salvia
divinorum being pipiltzintzintli. We have thus seen
that, far from ‘demonstrating’ better candidates than Salvia divinorum for
pipiltzintzintli, Valdés has offered one that is impossible, not having
been present in pre-Columbian Mexico, and another which our primary source
clearly identified as a plant distinct from pipiltzintzintli, and that
was in fact mixed with it to treat fractures! After this inauspicious start,
Valdés fared no better in his ‘demonstration’ of the second alleged ‘inaccuracy’ in the literature, the status of Salvia
divinorum as cultigen. Wasson had stated that (Wasson 1962): “We were on the watch for Salvia
divinorum as we criss-crossed the Sierra Mazateca on horseback in September
and October of 1962, but never once did we see it. The Indians choose some
remote ravine for the planting of it and they are loath to reveal the spots ... Salvia divinorum seems to be a cultigen;
whether it occurs in a wild state (except for plants that have been abandoned
or have escaped) we do not know.” I noted in my 1993 book Pharmacotheon, also
singled out by Valdés, that (Ott 1993): “The
Mazatec Indians believe the plant is foreign to their region of the Sierra
Madre Oriental and we do not know whence it came, as no wild populations have
been discovered ...” In arguing against this, Valdés only offered the unverified statement of
his informant Don Alejandro, that “the plant grows wild in the fairly
inaccessible highlands of the Sierra Mazateca,” and described seeing large
stands along a creek in a small ravine and in a coffee plantation (Díaz (1975) gave the altitude range of Salvia
divinorum as 750-1500 m; but Wasson (1962) described it as growing in
Huautla de Jiménez at 1800 m, and Don Alejandro’s claim might be construed as
suggesting it grows near the 2100 m summit of Cerro Rabon) (Valdés 1994b;
Valdés et a1. 1987a). What Valdés actually observed is not inconsistent with
either Wasson’s statements or my own (he admitted the stands he saw were
“apparently originally started by humans”), and absent documentation of the
purportedly wild stands described by Don Alejandro, he has given us no evidence
that the plant exists in truly wild conditions. He further cited Siebert’s
recent collection of viable seed from cultivated Salvia divinorum in
Hawai’i as evidence of its wild nature (Siebert 1993-1994), but a recent
botanical and horticultural study not cited by Valdés supports Wasson’s contention that the plant is a
cultigen (Reisfield 1993). Following up Valdés successful
production of seed from cross-pollination of two strains of Salvia
divinorum, Reisfield was also able to obtain viable seed from
self-pollinated strains of the plant, but both manual cross- or
self-pollination had extremely low success rates (only a few percent).
Reisfield suggested the plant was a hybrid, possibly of largely incompatible
parents which remain unknown. He could cite no prospective parents, and Epling
and Játiva merely compared Salvia divinorum to the central Mexican S.
cyanea Lamb. ex Benth., a species recently collected by Siebert and
analyzed for salvinorin A, with negative results (Siebert 1993-1994). Since
1991, I have been growing 3 different strains of Salvia divinorum (91-11,
the ‘Wasson clone’ from San José Tenango at 1200 m altitude, and 91-41 and
91-42, two so-called ‘palatable clones’ collected by Bret Blosser in Llano de
Arnica, Municipio de Tenango, Oaxaca) side-by-side in a natural setting near
Xalapa, Veracruz (at 1350 m altitude, about 150 km north of Huautla de Jiménez).
All have prospered, flowered abundantly and repeatedly, but no seed has set,
despite repeated attempts at manual self- and cross-pollination. Unless Valdés
can document Don Alejandro’s contention that Salvia divinorum in fact
grows wild in inaccessible areas of the Sierra Mazateca, the best conclusion we
can draw from the available evidence is that, as Wasson stated from the outset,
the plant is a cultigen. I would also like to point out another inaccurate statement Valdés made
with regard to Salvia divinorum—in his paper describing his isolation of
salvinorin A, he claimed it was “the first clearly documented psychotropic
terpenoid” (Valdés et a1. 1984). In fact, the psychotropic terpenoid thujone
(Merck Index 11: 9326; synonyms: absinthol, salvanol, tanacetone), active
principle of wormwood, Artemisia absinthium L. and the famous absinthe
liqueurs distilled from it, has been known for nearly a century; and the
psychotropic terpenoid cannabinols (Merck Index 11: 9142) from Cannabis spp.
for more than three decades. Thujone even occurs in high concentrations in
some strains of culinary sage, Salvia officinalis L. (Tucker et al.
1980), and smelling that plant can have psychoactive sequelae, as
thujone is volatile (Duke 1987). Steam distillation of fresh leaves of Salvia
divinorum showed they contained no thujone (Ott 1993). One of the
well-known pre-Columbian entheogens is itzauhyatl, Artemisia mexicana Willdenow,
a probable thujone-containing species, and psychoactive Artemisia species
were widely used by Native Americans (Ott 1993). The Oraon tribals of West
Bengal, India, were recently reported to smoke leaves of the thujone-containing
(Uniyal et al. 1985) Artemisia nilagirica (Clarke) Pamp. as an entheogen (Pal & Jain 1989). In Amazonia, the mint Ocimum micranthum
Willdenow is considered to be entheogenic (Duke & Vasquez 1994), and is
known to be added to ayahuasca potions (Ott 1994). As for the Coleus species
said to belong to the same ‘family’ as Salvia divinorum, Coleus blumei is
known to contain terpenoids (García
et al. 1973), flavonoids and coumarins (Lamprecht et al. 1975) of unknown
psychopharmacology. Terpenoids known as coleones are found in other species of
the genus (Arihara et al. 1975), and Coleus blumei was shown not to
contain the hypotensive terpenoid colforsin or forskolin (Shah et al. 1980),
found in the Ayurvedic medicine gurmal or Coleus barbatus (Andrews)
Bentham (Valdés et al. 1987b). Along with Coleus blumei and C. pumilus,
the well-known Ayurvedic medicine pashnabhedi, Coleus amboinicus Lourteig
(Nadkarni 1976) might be a good candidate for screening for salvinorin A or
allied compounds—in the classic text, Indian Medicinal Plants, it is
stated (Kirtikar et al. 1918): “In spite of its intoxicating properties the people of Bengal employ it in colic and
dyspepsia.” (italics mine) Before summarizing the human pharmacology of Salvia divinorum and
salvinorin A, I would like to list my reasons for regarding the shamanic use of
this drug to be a post-Conquest innovation in the Sierra Mazateca. I had
previously mentioned the lack of a truly indigenous name for Salvia
divinorum among the Mazatecs. It is suspicious that the Mazatecs associate
the plant with the Biblical Mary, and with sheep, both post-Conquest
introductions to the Sierra Mazateca, and Valdés documented remedial use of
infusions of 4-5 pairs of Salvia divinorum leaves to treat a disease
called panzón
de barrego (sic), ‘big
lamb’s belly’ (Valdés et al. 1983). We also have the precedent of the mushroom Psilocybe
cubensis (Earle) Singer, introduced to Mexico by Europeans along with the
cattle in whose dung it grows. Some Mazatec curanderos have come to
ultilize this mushroom as a shamanic inebriant, others eschew it (and,
tellingly, those who do use it hold it to be the ‘least esteemed’ species).
This is exactly what we find with Salvia divinorum—we have seen that
María Sabina held it in low esteem. Like the leaves of Mary Shepherdess, P.
cubensis lacks a truly indigenous name, being known prosaically in Mazatec
as the ‘sacred mushroom of the bull’s dung’; or in Spanish as honguillo de
San Isidro Labrador, the ‘mushroom of St. Isidore the Plowman,’ patron
saint of Madrid! (Wasson & Wasson 1957). The fact that the Mazatecs put Salvia
divinorum in the same ‘family’ as two species of Coleus known to be
post-Conquest introductions to Mexico is further evidence for this hypothesis.
What clinches the argument for me, however, is how little the Mazatecs seem to
know about using the drug. They believe the leaves to be inactive when dried, but this is not true—the dried leaves preserve their activity indefinitely
and salvinorin A is highly stable. Valdés suggested the dried leaves were
unsuitable for preparing the aqueous infusion, but Pendell has shown they can
be successfully rehydrated for oral ingestion, one way the Mazatecs have been
documented using the fresh leaves. Valdés saw in the strange method of
preparing an infusion of the fresh leaves: “a pharmaceutically elegant way of
preparing a microsuspension or emulsion of salvinorin A,” while Wasson
dismissed this as “certainly an inefficient method.” Siebert’s studies showed
it to be indeed an inefficient method—a marginal, low dose which provoked no
effects in an imitation of the Mazatec technique (and the same dose which was
all but inactive for Albert Hofmann, even when prepared under the supervision
of María Sabina) was “consistently effective” at evoking “definite psychoactive
effects” utilizing the simple quid method, readily discovered by American
‘basement shamans,’ but not divined by the Mazatecs. Far from being an ‘elegant way’ of ingesting the leaves of Salvia divinorum, this seems rather a crude adaptation of the
standard Mazatec (and other Mesoamerican Indian) technique for preparing the
psilocybian mushrooms and the entheogenic morning glory seeds, which are
traditionally crushed on a metate and infused in water (Wasson
1963). It is as ‘though the Mazatecs had adapted this standard technique for
processing entheogenic plants for ingestion, which is indicated in the case of
the mushrooms and seeds, but barely
effective in the case of the leaves ... as ‘though they had learned comparatively lately of this drug, which
was given a name inspired by the religion and economy of their conquerors, and
to process which they simply adapted their existing technique for processing
entheogens, despite the fact that it hardly works in this novel case. So
ineffective is this adapted processing, that the leaves of Mary Shepherdess
have the reputation among the Mazatecs of being much less powerful than the
psilocybian mushrooms. Even Valdés’ informants regarded Salvia divinorum to
be weaker than the morning glory seeds or the mushrooms (Valdés et al. 1983).
Hofmann found 0.2% psilocybine (dry weight) in cultivated Psilocybe
caerulescens Murrill from a strain collected in July 1956 in Huautla de
Jiménez (Heim & Hofmann
1958), while Valdés isolated
0.18 % salvinorin A from dried leaves of Salvia divinorum—making the
leaves, gram per gram, nearly 10 times as potent as the mushrooms (since
salvinorin A is roughly 10 times the potency of psilocybine)! If the Mazatecs
have a long familiarity with the leaves, if in reality they have developed a
‘pharmaceutically elegant’ way of processing them for ingestion, then why do
they fail to perceive them as being far and away the most potent entheogen
available to them?  Salvia
divinorum (Photograph:
Jonathan Ott)
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