Syrian Rue/Harmala - Mars Dust

So I'm going to break from the New World entheogens for this one and go to the other side of the planet, and talk about Syrian Rue. This plant is mentioned in the Koran and I kind of agree with the sentiment-

Every root, every leaf of harmel, is watched over by an angel who waits for a person to come in search of healing

Traditionally the plant was used by the Persian and proto-Persian people and eventually islamized. From there it traveled along with Islam to many parts of the old world including India, North Africa, Spain, and eventually mainland Europe and China. Its seeds are used as incense in many ceremonies including Nouruz (new years), and Iranian/Iraqi weddings.

I personally came across this plant in my Ayahuasca research and I'm so glad that I did. It's seeds are the perfect ingredient for an Ayahuasca brew due to the potent MAOI effect. This also augments the use of other entheogenic substances like Psylocibin, Mescaline, DMT, and even cannabis. I like to think of it as an entheogen enhancer. Lengthens trip times, makes the trips more powerful, increases positive feelings and makes bad trips less likely.


The seeds can be eaten whole or ground up and put into gel capsules or brewed into a tea. The tea is incredibly bitter, similar to black coffee. I had some luck mixing milk and sugar into mine, but I am not sure if that has any negative side effects. When ingested orally in large quantities (10g)  you may activate some of the inherently psychoactive properties of the seeds. These include nausea, tracers, and heightened color sensitivity. You can also expect to vomit if you take too much.

I really love grinding the seeds in a mortar and pestal and sprinkling a little bit over a bowl. While the seeds do form a messy tar like residue when burned, the euphoric good vibes I get are worth the clean up. I started taking the seeds during a time of depression and panic disorder and have found that the syrian rue has helped heal me from that. I haven't had a panic attack since using it regularly (about 2 months), and have been very happy. Due to being an MAOI it effects seratonin levels which could be good for people with depression (WARNING! DO NOT USE IF ALREADY PRESCRIBED ANTIDEPRESSANTS). It also affects dopamine, is a natural antioxidant, and a natural anti-mutagenic.

The active ingredients of Harmala are Harmine, Harmalol and Harmaline. Harmaline is a wakefulness-promoting agent on top of the other benefits mentioned and is the main psychoactive component of the seeds. This means it promotes wakefulness and alertness and reduces tiredness, drowsiness, and the need for sleep. Oh yeah it also glows! Only under UV light... but still, how cool!

You can purchase the seeds at many Indian or Middle Eastern markets, but if you are unable to do that you can also purchase them online, just like most of the things mentioned in this blog.

I like to get the 10-25x Harmala extract. Me and my roommates sometimes lovingly call it Mars Dust because of its red granulated appearance. Be careful when using the higher potency extracts! Its very easy to take too large of a dose and end up feeling very uncomfortable instead of the desired euphoric de-stressed feeling. Do not take a lot of harmala expecting to see crazy visions or have psychoactive thoughts like with other entheogens. Like I said before, this is merely a booster to other visually active substances. If you eat or smoke a lot of Harmala you'll just get sick and probably throw up.

San Pedro- Mescaline Cactus

 The San Pedro cactus is particularly associated with healers, shamans, and curanderos in the Andes region of south America. The earliest depiction of it in art so far discovered is a stone carving of a shaman found at the Jaguar Temple of Chavin de Huantar in northern Peru which is almost 3500 years old. That means the South American people have used and depicted the use of San Pedro since at least the time of Greece and Egypt.Textiles from the same period have been found depicting the cactus with hummingbirds and jaguars, with spirals depicting the visual experience.

So why is this plant such an important part of Andean culture through the millenia? Some say the reason is the same as why people are drawn to hallucinogens still. There is something inherently human about exploring this space. One shaman from Richard Shultes book Plants of the Gods says this of San Pedro:

"First, a dreamy state... then great visions, a clearing of all faculties... then a detachment, a type of visual force inclusive of the 6th sense, the telepathic state of transmitting oneself across time and matter, like a removal of thoughts to a distant dimension."

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I don't know about you, but if I was a hunter gatherer society, especially one who attributed many of the things that happened in life to the gods, this cactus would be a major spiritual experience. I would probably build temples to it, and art about it. To me it would seem like a way to speak with the gods. It still is a major spiritual experience for people.

Now if you've never heard of San Pedro despite its cultural importance to one of the largest empires in the New World, you may be wondering why not. Well, I'm pretty sure you've at least heard of San Pedro's more popular sister in Central and North America, peyote.

Peyote was the first New World hallucinogen to be discovered by Europeans. It was unfortunately discovered by the Spanish whose religious fervor did not spell good things for these cactus drinking natives. Through violent conversion and enslavement the Spanish tried to stamp out any non Christian religion, and that included the use of Peyote as a spiritual aide. The Europeans forced this religious group far away from civilization into the hills where they could practice without fear of retaliation.

Peyote too has been used for millenia, since at least 1900 years before the arrival of the Spaniards attempted to end its spiritual use. But some recent evidence using radio-carbon dating has discovered two peyote buttons at an archaeological dig site on the Rio Grande in Texas. This indicates that native Americans were likely to have used Peyote at least 5500 years ago. To put that in perspective, people on the American continent were using this cactus continuously from the time of ancient Sumer to present day, largely undisturbed. The Native Huichol culture has 4 gods, the Corn, the Eagle, the Sun, and the Peyote. One Huichol Shaman has said:


"Peyote is everything, it is the crossing of the souls, it is everything there is. Without peyote nothing would exist"

The use of mescaline entered the pop-culture with Dr. John Raleigh Briggs, the first western scientist to draw attention to the peyote plant, and mescaline as a result. Mescaline has similar effects on the brain as Mushrooms and LSD. Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception, PIHKAL by Alexander Shulgin and Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas all launched Mescaline into the pop-culture foreground but I don't think it ever achieved the same status as Acid or Mushrooms did as a recreational drug.

After the 1971 Psychotropic Convention that made Mescaline illegal and the subsequent crack down of recreational use of Peyote, pop-culture and wide spread use died down. Recently a film starring actor Michael Cera, Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus (2013) depicts 2 young Americans and a group of Chileans as they search for the San Pedro cactus experience, and touches on the New Age spiritualism and its connection with entheogens.

Peyote and San Pedro can be prepared in a number of ways including being eaten raw. Peyote is usually cut into "buttons" and chewed on or soaked in water. The cactus is quite bitter so many modern users will dry the cactus and grind it into a powder then take it via gel capsule.

San Pedro due to its size difference to peyote is much more versatile for preparation and many Mexican or South American recipes that already use cactus can be used to make tasty entheogenic dishes from the San Pedro. The hardest part of making a San Pedro dish is the preparation and peeling. The stalk is long and it is star shaped. To start cut inwards at the concave sections towards the center to create cactus "spears".

To peel the spears start from the bottom and cut away the waxy outer green part. This proccess is time consuming. Put on some good music.

After its cut you can do a lot with it. You can dehydrate it in a home dehydrator (though these often cost upward of $200 and even  a cheap one can be $120) to store for long times as cactus jerky. The dried cactus can also be ground into cactus granules.

Raw fresh cactus can be salted, limed and eaten straight. You can cut it up and make a vinegar salad. Cook it in oil and season it. Really the possibilities are limitless so long as you don't cook it for too long and damage the alkaloids.

And speaking of alkaloids, there's also a way to extract pure mescaline from the cactus. That is illegal. I do not recommend doing it. It involves lots of chemicals, and the effect is not terribly different than eating the cactus itself.

I will not post the process for extracting mescaline from San Pedro cactus but it is easily find-able on the internet if you are dead set at doing it.

Ayahuasca- Vine of the Soul

Richard Evan Schultes is largely considered the father of modern ethnobotany. Ethnobotanists aim to document, explain, and describe the complex relationships between cultures and how they use plants. This includes food, dyes, construction, cosmetics, and of course spiritual use. Schultes plant studies largely took him to the Amazon rain forest, initially in search of a blight resistant rubber tree plant, but his field-work with the native Americans tuned him into much more. While he eventually abandoned his search for the rubber tree due to political reasons, what he did find were over 300 new plant species never discovered and practical traditional use for over 30,000 more. His book The Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers, co-authored by Albert Hofmann in 1979 is considered his greatest popular work.

One of the curious uses for plants he discovered was with the indigenous tribes of Peru. He was the first westerner to academically document the brew Ayahuasca. The brew had been used by the tribes there since pre-colonization, and when the Spanish and Portuguese discovered its use they wrote it off as the work of the devil.


Traditional Ayahuasca is a foul bitter brew composed of two plants that work in a sort of harmony to open the entheogenic properties of one another.

One of the two plants is a sturdy jungle vine, Banisteriopsis Caapi. This vine contains an MAOI, or monoamine oxidase inhibitor. That is it inhibits enzymes in the body that break down a number of chemicals, and can be prescribed to combat depression (though often as a last resource due to its often lethal reaction with other drugs.) One of the chemicals this enzyme breaks down is DMT (dimethyl-tryptamine). DMT is one of those chemical compounds that was banned in the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and is a Schedule I drug in many countries. It is also found in nearly every living organism on the planet, including people. Typically DMT is broken down orally and the only way to ingest the chemical is to vaporize and inhale it, or inject it.

The tribes of Peru through either pure luck or decades of trial and error discovered the MAOI quality of the B. Caapi vine when mixed with leaves from the tropical shrub P. Viridis, the other component of the traditional ayahuasca brew. When the two plants are combined in a pot, and boiled in the semi acidic waters of the Amazon river it produces a powerful, orally active DMT "potion."







This traditional Ayahuasca brew has a number of effects on those who choose to participate in the ceremony. Upon ingestion the thick, phlegm like concoction works its way into the guts of the person. After roughly 30 minutes the potion starts to have an effect. The stomach cramps and ties itself in knots. Nausea slowly creeps up on the person. Reality starts to not seem quite as real as walls melt away or everything gets long tracers. Strong geometric patterns overcome the vision of the person, and then comes "the purge." Due to the emetic properties of the component plants, most users of ayahuasca should expect to have violent bouts of vomiting or even diarrhea.

Believe it or not, many of the people who have used this powerful spiritual product describe the purge portion as quite pleasant, and an important part of the process. From the book Aya Awakenings, by Rak Razam:

"As the minutes go by we collapse into our mattresses, and the sound of vomiting fills the air. La Purga the natives call it -- the purge. Wracking heaves of spew usher forth from gringos all around me, as the ayahuasca reads their energetic bodies, finds the sickness within and brings it up and out, sometimes from both ends.
I'm actually feeling okay, slightly spacey, but the steady warmth of the ayahuasca in my stomach is nothing compared to the gag reflex from all the vomiting gringos. I'm at the bottom right hand corner of the maloca (large jungle hut), so close to the edge I should be able to lean over and vomit when it comes time to purge myself, and part of me wishes it would happen sooner rather than later just to get it over with...
The ayahuasca starts to come on slow, snaking in and out like a lover, tantalizing me. The spirit in the plant is playing hard to get -- or, more than likely, she's finding me hard to get. She's interfacing, overlapping energy fields as her jungle medicine comes on strong. There's a flash of vibrant green as something starts to happen, as I fall into this target window of curious circuit-like patterns, lines of energy that are called "ayahuasca rivers." Locks deep inside of me that I never knew were there are tumbling open and i am spilling into the spaces they reveal...
The circuitry patterns come and go as I struggle with the vine in me now, still holding on and breathing through the cramps in my stomach and the pressure building up in my bowels. I feel like the ayahuasca's getting to know me from the inside out, but I'm trying to control her; I'm static and blocking her ability to come through. It's only when all others seem to have fallen asleep in the wee hours of the night that I bring myself to get up and creep down into the jungle to purge." (Aya Awakenings: p.55-57)

After purging usually complete detatchment from reality happens, as you are transported mentally to a different sense of reality. Pure hallucinogenic, no connection to the outside world. When in this state almost unanimously drinkers claim to have seen spirit beings and deep detatchment from the reality they came from. This state usually lasts for 4-6 hours. From the erowid experience vault:

"When she left me for the night, the visions came in floods, as if they had been waiting to prey on me on my lonesome.... and OH MY... were they fucking relentless. Taunting, grotesque and graphic. Genuinely frightening in a nightmarish sense; except I was very aware that this was no dream. I was visited by countless dragons, in various forms and guises. Some were menacing… disgusting and sometimes they were comical caricatures of distorted, twisted creatures. They let out high pitched screeches whilst abruptly twisting and disfiguring into more revolting, more distorted figurations. They were attempting to purposefully scare me. I knew that was their intent, and I tried my hardest to not give into the fear. All the while clutching onto the bed. Sometimes the air was filled with prehistoric reptilian birds soaring and threatening. 

Sometimes birds were mechanical. Sometimes beautiful. At one point they were picking at and devouring me. Some sort of punishment, perhaps....? I could see myself; my back, up from above. Sparrows and birds of prey were feasting on me, shredding my tendons, and I remember thinking at the time what a wondrous piece of art this image could make. 

At one point there were colossal apocalyptic horses, with heads exploding into bloodied bits around the room. The fan above me in the room appeared alive and maleficent. The walls breathing. The little green night light to the left of my bed was some slithering, hissing serpent, constantly letting me know of its presence. 

The visions grew slightly kinder at one point when I was brought to some ancient landscape of mountains and dreamy colours. White, silky dragons glided through the lands and protected the creatures within. They showed me their home, and told me I'd be welcomed again after death one day. They said this was one option of the afterlife. 

And thence the sinister scaly caricatures returned, snapping their jaws, flaunting their deformities, and screeching in what seemed a world devoid of meaning. They came, and they came back again until it became some sort of comical spectacle and I could see they were more or less harmless. 

Still, the ghastly imagery stayed with me till I fell asleep. At first I was terrified, then I supposed I became accustomed to them. But it was never at any point near pleasant, as it had been the previous night. The spirits were there with the clear purpose to torment me, and were not interested in any sort of communication or reason. "

The healing properties of this concoction are what brings many people to the vine.  While non-native users know of the spiritual applications of ayahuasca, a less well-known traditional usage focuses on the medicinal properties of ayahuasca. When used for its medicinal purposes ayahuasca affects the human consciousness for less than six hours, beginning half an hour after consumption, and peaking after two hours. Ayahuasca also has cardiovascular effects, moderately increasing both heart rate and diastolic blood pressure. In some cases, individuals experience significant psychological stress during the experience. It is for this reason that extreme caution should be taken with those who may be at risk of heart disease.

Ayahuasca is also surprising easy to make at home, although I've found you may have to substitute some of the traditional ingredients out for ease. This is my personal favorite recipe as far as ease of access to materials, cost, and ease.

• 5-10 grams of Mimosa Hostilis root bark 
• 2 grams of Syrian Rue seed matter 
• 1 Large coffee filter
• 1 stainless steel or ceramic pots, no aluminum.
• Vinegar 

So I personally love Syrian Rue, its my own personal little favorite plant. The seeds contain an MAOI just like our friend B. Caapi used in traditional brews, but it also contains seperate properties in the alkaloid Harmaline that are slightly hallucinogenic in their own right.

Instead of the lengthy proccess of extracting the MAOI from B. Caapi you can simply swallow the seeds like a pill, 2-5 grams will provide sufficient MAOI enyme inhibiting properties for the DMT to not be metabolized.

1. The stainless steel pot is filled with roughly about 400ml of water and 4 tablespoons of vinegar. The root bark should be submerged into the water and brought to a slow simmer, not boiled, (the lowest setting on the cooker should be used for this) excessive heat will destroy alkaloids.

Once most of the water in the pot has evaporated, more water can be added 2 or 3 or more times to continue the brewing process as the longer it brews the more potent the ayahuasca will be This is optional but recommended, If there is no time to do this at least twice the amount of root bark will need to be added to achieve a similar dosage. 

2. Before the water has simmered down to about ¾ of the way down, the root bark should be taken out of the water and left to cool. Once the root bark has cooled down enough, the liquid should be squeezed out of the root bark back in to the pot and the root bark should be discarded of. The water is then further evaporated and what should be left is a small amount of a purple/brown coloured liquid enough to fill a shot glass.

3. The Syrian rue, needs to be taken 30 minutes before the root bark.

Thats it! your milage may vary though.

Be sure to research heavily the health risks of taking Ayahuasca and precautions if you ever decide to try it. It could have potentially deadly side effects if mixed with the wrong medication or recreational drugs.

Entheogenesis- The Garden Revisited

  This blog is being written based on multiple people saying "dude, you should write a blog" after seeing my notes on entheogens. I've done fairly extensive research into the topic after smoking a large amount of marijuana and deciding I wanted to become a shaman. I am not a shaman, just for the record. I am however an entheogen enthusiast. My journey started by researching the use and effects of Ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic "potion" used by various aboriginal tribes in Peru. From there I attended a movie screening read a bunch of books and started falling down the rabbit hole, so to speak. I find the use of these substances, very, very interesting for a number of reasons. Now before I go too into my experiences, notes, research lets answer probably your biggest question: what is an Entheogen?

An entheogen ("generating the divine within")^[4] is a chemical substance used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context^[5]that may be synthesized or obtained from natural species. The chemical induces altered states of consciousness psychological or physiological (eg bullet ant venom used by the Satere-Mawe people). Entheogens can supplement many diverse practices for transcendence, and revelation, including meditation, yoga, and prayer, psychedelic and visionary art,traditional medicine and psychedelic therapy, witchcraft, magic, and psychonautics.

   In our modern society many of these substances are better known as hallucinogens or psychedelics. These substances have really only very recently entered the western world as far as wide spread or popular use goes. The first modern instance of westerners participating in the use of entheogens only goes back to 1955, with Valentina and R. Gordon Wasson. The Wassons were actively included in an indigenous mushroom ceremony in Mexico and subsequently published their experience in a 1957 Life Magazine article.

  Inspired after reading the article, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert started the Harvard Psilocybin Project in 1960 to promote psychological and religious study of these mushrooms. They were dismissed by Harvard and decided to turn their focus towards promoting the Psychedelic experience to the hippy counter culture movement. It was, obviously, a roaring success. Mushrooms, LSD, and other psychedelic drugs are still strongly associated with hippy culture due to their widespread use during the 60s, but after the Flower Children grew up it would seem that the use of hallucinogens has dried up. Why?

  In 1971, psilocybin and psilocin (the active compound in hallucinogenic mushrooms), along with a slew of other drugs were made illegal during the UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances. This list also includes DET, DMT, LSD, and Mescaline. Almost all of these drugs were Schedule I, or the drugs were considered to create the highest risk to public health. With pretty high penalties regarding the synthesis, sale and possession of the most popular hallucinogenic drugs use of these substances in popular culture started to dwindle and be replaced by other drugs such as cocaine, amphetamines, and party drugs like MDMA in the 80s and 90s. Scientific or medical research on entheogens ground to a halt. Aside from spiritual use with the indigenous tribes who had always used them, the plants and compounds more or less faded into obscurity. People still tried mushrooms from time to time, or acid if they could find it, but the drug culture was shifting away from these spiritual plants.

  There is somewhat of a loophole in the scheduling. Currently no plants or plant products are included in the 1971 convention.

Commentary 32-12: It may be pointed out that at the time of this writing the continued toleration of the use of hallucinogenic substances which the 1971 Conference had in mind would not require a reservation under paragraph 4. Schedule I does not list any of the natural hallucinogenic materials in question, but only chemical substances which constitute the active principles contained in them. The inclusion in Schedule I of the active principle of a substance does not mean that the substance itself is also included therein if it is a substance clearly distinct from the substance constituting its active principle. This view is in accordance with the traditional understanding of that question in the field of international drug control. Neither the crown (fruit, mescal button) of the Peyote cactus nor the roots of the plant Mimosa hostilis [Footnote: "An infusion of the roots is used"] nor Psilocybe mushrooms [Footnote: "Beverages made from such mushrooms are used"] themselves are included in Schedule I, but only their respective active principles, mescaline, DMT and psilocybine (psilocine, psilotsin).Commentary 32-13: It can however not be excluded that the fruit of the Peyote cactus, the roots of Mimosa hostilis, Psilocybe mushrooms or other hallucinogenic plant parts used in traditional magical or religious rites will in the future be placed in Schedule I by the operation of article 2, at a time at which the State concerned, having already deposited its instrument of ratification or accession, could no longer make the required reservation. It is submitted that Parties may under paragraph 4 make a reservation assuring them the right to permit the continuation of the traditional use in question in the case of such future actions by the Commission.

  This is the basis on the use of many of the plants and recipes shown in this blog. For each I will note the legality of its use in different countries, but largely the information I am distributing is the legal use of these plants and fungi that have been used traditionally for centuries. So thank you in advanced for reading and learning about these truly fascinating flora and their effects on human consciousness.