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All About Salvia Divinorum - History To Today |
Salvia divinorum has been popular for a long time. We don't know how long because the nether reaches of this amazing plant stretch outside of the Western collective memory and history. All that we do know for certain is that it has been used as a sacrament in Central America previous to when we discovered this. It could have been for decades, or it could have been for more than a thousand years. The natives of Central America used it to contact the spirit world, to see into the future, and other shamanic and occult uses.
The plant comes from Oaxaca, Mexico. It has been used by the natives there and in the surrounding area for quite some time. Salvia is still used there today by some members of the Mazatec tribes.
Eventually, of course, it was discovered by the Western world. This happened when Jean Johnson in 1938 observed it being used in a tea for purposes of divination. The common use of salvia for divination is partly responsible for the naming of the plant, which, when translated from Latin, roughly means "Diviner's Sage."
At this point, the plant was a mysterious magical plant that had barely been studied. However, slowly but surely more and more people came into contact with salvia divinorum. For instance, in 1960 Gordon Wasson was the first to get samples of the plant and bring it back for scientific study. Then, in 1961, he became the first Westerner that we know of to partake in the sacred plant.
Finally, in 1962 Sterling Bunnel was able to secure some salvia divinorum plants that could reproduce. Since then, these plants have had a lineage that carries down all the way to today.
Also, in 1962 the plant was finally named salvia divinorum. Before this, it was called local names in native languages. However, science was beginning to develop an interest in the plant and so it was named according to the scientific taxonomy.
Then, time passed and very little research was done on the plant. It faded into obscurity for a time, and very few studies and scientific experiments were ran on salvia divinorum. That is until the active ingredient within the plant, salvinorum A, was researched more by Daniel Siebert. Once he published his paper, he also began his own work on selling and propagating the plant.
By this time, the Internet had begun worming its way into many households and many people's minds. The Internet led to a huge increase in the popularity of the plant among many people. People could read about salvia divinorum on websites and then, just a few clicks away, they could purchase the plant from dozens of websites. This led to an exponential boost in the availability and popularity of the plant.
Eventually, it caught the attention of the government. Despite the fact that salvia divinorum had been used for at least decades and possibly centuries with no record of severe problems, it began to be made illegal. Many scientific studies had been unable to correlate risks with the plant, but the media showed the plant in a negative light. This, in turn, caused many states and countries to make possession of the plant illegal. This began in the United States in 2005, when Louisiana passed the first law banning the sacred plant.
Since then, many other states and countries have followed suit. Also, there is still research being done on the plant by scientists. It has been discovered to interact with the kappa-opiod system, which basically means that it might have many medical uses. The illegality of salvia divinorum has, however, made it difficult to acquire the plant. This has slowed the rate of scientific research on it, making it more difficult to derive possible medicines from the plant.
What will happen? Will salvia divinorum--a plant once used by shamans to foretell the future--be made illegal federally? Or will the science hold out and overturn the sensationalist headlines that have caused people to panic and criminalize a harmless plant? As usual, only time will tell. |
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