Aromatherapy and the Mind. Julia LawlessЧитать онлайн книгу.
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He further suggests that the alcohols pumped into the blood during the ecstatic state could lead to a kind of mystical intoxication, which, like certain drugs, could open the ‘doors of perception’ and induce visionary experiences. The shared ‘celestial visions’ reported by the nuns who surrounded St Teresa’s deathbed may be related to this process, bearing in mind ‘the possible action of the molecules involved in the odour of sanctity – which was especially strong and almost unbearable – on the nervous system and psychic functioning of those nuns’.10
THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION
Using aromatics and herbal drugs to open the doors of perception was a domain of expertise specific to the traditional shaman. The shaman featured largely in primitive forms of medicine because he or she was able to travel back and forth across the invisible barrier that divides matter from spirit, and act as a mediating influence:
The shaman himself must be a master of psychological control … he rejoins that which was once a totality – man and the animals, the living and the dead, man and the gods … and in providing this integration, the shaman provides his magical cure.11
Within a contemporary context, the shaman’s magical flight could be seen as a form of psycho-therapeutic practice. Indeed, the key to health from the shamanic perspective was seen to lie predominantly in the domain of the psyche – and one of the principal ways of gaining access to this realm was by the use of herbs and aromatics.
An important part of the shaman’s rigorous and challenging training was acquiring knowledge about medicinal plants, including those with hallucinogenic powers. Those plants which had curious psychic effects included aromatics such as hemlock (Conium maculatum), mugwort (Artimesia vulgaris), bay (Lauris nobilis), nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) and cannabis (Cannabis sativa).
Such knowledge has survived to the present day. In 1985, the Chumash medicine woman Chequeesh told researcher Will Noffke that she had learned of her native heritage by utilizing the ‘dream herb’ mugwort – a plant which is used to produce a narcotic (and toxic) essential oil. Hemlock, a poisonous aromatic plant with a foetid smell, was a vital part of the European witch’s arsenal, and enabled her to fly away on her broomstick – the equivalent of the shaman’s magical flight. In the Hindu Kush, the sibyl inhales fragrant smoke from the sacred cedar in order to induce a trancelike state before pronouncing the oracle, much in the same way as the pythia
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