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Psychoactive Properties of !Kung Bushman Medicine Plants
Abstract
This article addresses some of the recent controversy over the role of psychoactive substances in the !Kung Bushmen healing ceremonies and trance induction. Although some contemporary works on the !Kung and their healing ceremonies give no evidence of the use of psychoactive plants, an examination of the available biochemical and pharmacological literature on the properties of these plants indicates that most contain psychoactive or toxic substances that are likely to have trance-inducing properties. Almost half of the !Kung medicine plants contain psychoactive substances or have toxic pproperties, and a similarly large group of these plants has psychoactive or toxic properties in related species. Although recent reports have shown little concern with the use of psychoactive substances, the earlier literature illustrated a major concern with their use in !Kung Bushmen trance and healing. This contrast with more recent research suggests a decline in the use of psychoactive plants in the recent past. This decline is examined with respect to changes in the !Kung Bushmen society and how altitudes in the United States regarding drug use may have influenced investigators and their research reports.
... While Richard Katz does not address the issue of psychedelic use, Lorna Marshall's earlier observations report the use of plants that are inhaled as smoke from the material placed in a tortoise shell and burned on the embers. Examination of the plants identified in these earlier reports show that the majority of them are psychoactive (Winkelman & Dobkin de Rios 1989). ...
This paper presents an empirical model for interpreting evidence of ritual practices and
alterations of consciousness, derived from a cross-cultural study. The four main types of
religious practitioners—the healer complex (shaman, shaman/healer and healer), the
medium, the priest and the sorcerer/witch—are described in terms of their characteristic
roles, experience of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) and relation to subsistence
strategy and socio-political conditions. Shamans, found worldwide in foraging societies,
are replaced by shaman/healers, healers and mediums with the intensification of
agriculture, warfare and political integration. All of these religious practitioners use
alterations of consciousness for healing and divination. Priests, who exercise dual secular
and sacred roles and represent a hierarchy of lineage power, are found in agricultural
societies with political integration beyond the local community. Whereas priests carry out
collective rituals for the general protection of the community, the sorcerer/witch, who
emerges in societies with high levels of political integration and judiciary but low levels
of community integration, represents the devalued side of the supernatural involving
immoral acts causing illness, destruction and death. This empirically-derived model of
religious practitioners provides a framework for inferring the nature of religious activity
in the past. As a case study, I apply this model to identify the types of magico-religious
practitioners found in imperial Roman society and to explore their subsequent influence
on the religious traditions of Christianized Europe.
... Richard Katz suspected that two of these has psychoactive properties: the root of gaise noru noru (Ferraria glutinosa (Baker) Rendle, Iridaceae family) is used to "aid the activation of n/um," and the root of gwa (species not determined), used in dance with the drums "to help induce !kia" (Katz, 1982b: 314-5). The fact that !kia falls within the rites that classically induce modified states of consciousness, and probably through the use of psychoactive sources, was recognized by Marlene Dobkin de Rios (1986; see also Winkelman & Dobkin de Rios, 1989). Leshoma is not present among the plants used during the !kia as indicated by Katz. ...
The bulbaceous plant Boophone disticha – known mainly by the term leshoma given by the Sotho ethnic group – is characterized by powerful hallucinogenic properties and is used as initiatory and divinatory plant among many southern African ethnicities. Once known as the main compound of San arrow poisons, its psychoactive properties have been recognized by Western scholars only in the last 50 years, since its ritual use was strictly kept secret by its initiates. Through the analysis of the few ancient and modern ethnographic observations that have been able to bypass the wall of secrecy that envelop the use of this plant, the Sotho male initiation rite (lebollô la banna) and the use of the plant as divinatory “bioscope ” among the South African sangoma (healers) are described. As evidenced by archaeological findings, man’s relationship with this plant has lasted for at least 2000 years.
... The notable lack of coverage of African cultures is justified from the editor's perspectives as a reflection of the lack of archeological evidence for the use of many known species. However, the significance of psychoactive plant use there as well is indicated by the presence of mushroom petroglyphs in the Sahara and the documented use of an extensive repertoire of psychoactive plants among the shamans of the hunter-gatherer !Kung Bushmen (Winkelman & Dobkin de Rios, 1989). ...
A substance having a profound or significant effect on mental processes is known as psychoactive (Appleton 1967). A psychoactive drug is also known as psychotropic drug (Appleton 1971). Some people refer psychoactive medicinal plants as mind alerting herbal drugs (Crocq 2007).
Cambridge Core - Archaeology of Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and The Pacific - Image-Makers - by David Lewis-Williams
Asked to comment on copies of southern African rock paintings, nineteenth-century San informants sometimes gave puzzling explanations. This article considers a San comment that was based on an erroneous interpretation of images in a nineteenth-century copy made by George Stow, but which nonetheless contains insights into San beliefs about lions and associated religious beliefs. The relationship between those beliefs and depictions of lions is discussed. The act of painting a lion was embedded in a web of social and cognitive relations and had social consequences for both those who made them and those who viewed them.
Some current debates about southern African Bushman (San) rock art have led to an interest in the activities of Bushman ritual practitioners. This paper presents nineteenth and twentieth century Bushman ethnography to show that these people entered an altered state of consciousness that most researchers call 'trance' to heal the sick, go on out-of-body journeys, make rain and transform themselves into animals. The combination of trance experience with these 'supernatural' activities suggests that, whatever social differences exist between these Bushman ritual practitioners and those in certain Asian and North American societies, it is appropriate to term them 'shamans'. The ethnographic material outlined in this paper forms part of the basis for the further argument, not developed here, that southern African rock art was at least in some measure associated with the work of Bushman shamans.
This paper investigates the use of plants for psychoactive purposes in southern African healing traditions. Information on psychoactive plant use was gathered by screening the ethnobotanical literature and interviewing 15 traditional healers on their use and prescription of plants for psychoactive purposes in South Africa. This information was subsequently compiled into an inventory. The inventory lists 306 plants, representing 94 families, with psychoactive uses in southern Africa. The plants listed in the inventory were arranged alphabetically by family, followed by the botanical species name, ethnic names and corresponding ethnic groups utilising the plants for psychoactive purposes, and literature reports on psychoactive use. Where available, information on plant part used, preparation, dosage, route of administration, known and potentially active psychoactive ingredients and personal fieldwork notes were included. Particular families contain high numbers of species used for psychoactive purposes. The chemotaxonomic research cited indicates that the presence of compounds with potential psychoactivity may account for the higher number of species per family used.
Watt (1967) appears to have made the last comprehensive review investigating psychoactive plant use in southern Africa. Therefore, this inventory is a new and useful synthesis on the important, but thus far neglected, area of psychoactive plant use in southern Africa. The high number of species reported as having psychoactive uses from the literature supports the hypothesis that southern Africa has a flora that is rich in psychoactive chemicals that is substantially utilised by indigenous groups.
A typology of magico-religious practitioners is determined in a cross- cultural sample. Shamans were found in hunting and gathering soci eties ; Shaman/Healers and Priests in agricultural societies; and Healers, Mediums, and Malevolent Practitioners in societies with political integration. Analysis of selection procedures and activities suggests three bases for magico-religious practitioners: a universal basis related to trance states; sociopolitical power in societies with political integra tion ; and conflict between trance-based local power and stratified political power.
Presents cross-cultural data to examine the patterns of alterations of consciousness and their relationship to social and physiological conditions
Herbalists in Baja California Norte, Mexico, were interviewed to determine the ailments and diseases most frequently treated with 22 commonly used medicinal plants. Those diseases which were most frequently mentioned by the herbalists provided the focus for initial assessments. The phytochemistry of the medicinal plants was determined from published research, and the likelihood of successful treatment of diseases was assessed by determining the known pharmacological actions of the plant constituents. Most of the plants contained substances which had recognized pharmacological effects in the treatment of the diseases being treated by the herbalists.
Since the time of atomists like Democritus, forerunner of Plato and Aristotle, two modes of scientific explanation have been used to fill the conceptual space between mind and brain, a dualism more grudgingly resistant to resolution than that of energy and matter. One method assumes a world of hidden realities, impenetrable, to be understood by conjecture and test, observations evaluated for their consistency with hypothetical constructs. The other requires an intuitive grasp of the essence, insightful awareness of the thing itself. The first approach defines a unification of mind and brain out of the possible; the second assumes it. Feelings about these orientations still run strong. In a recent book, the philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper expressed irritation with Plato for intermixing these two thought styles without acknowledging the intermixture, concluding that only the conjectural-test approach is valid; the other kind of knowing Popper dismissed as a “will-o-the-wisp” (Popper & Eccles, 1977).
Opening Paragraph
My purpose in this paper is to describe some of the religious beliefs held currently by the !Kung Bushmen of the interior bands of the Nyae Nyae region of South West Africa. I shall limit the paper to a description of their concepts of the gods, the problem of evil, supplication, the spirits of the dead, and the ceremonial curing dance, but leave for another paper a more detailed account of medicine men, how they become medicine men, and more about their practices and beliefs. We gathered the information which I present principally on our expeditions of 1952–3 and 1955.
Opening Paragraph
The ! Kung Bushmen whose medicine dance is described in this paper live in the interior of the Nyae Nyae region in South West Africa. The observations were made in the years 1951–61, in the course of five expeditions. The bands with which expedition members had the closest and most prolonged contact were those that the author numbered 1-7, 9, 10, and 12 on the map (Fig. 1). The present study is concerned principally with the people in those bands, who numbered, in all, 225 persons. The information gathered from informants was obtained for the most part in 1952–3, when twelve consecutive months were spent in the Nyae Nyae region.
Designed as a supplement to the sixth edition of "Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry", this CD-ROM provides instant access to the complete text of its parent volume, including tables and references. Software technology enables the user to pinpoint terms and retrieve information quickly. The disk also contains all the information found in Ayd's "Lexicon of Psychiatry", which can be searched separately or integrated with CTPIV.
First published in 1986, this book describes the most important medicinal plants in tropical West Africa and similar humid tropical climates. After a short introduction about early traditional medicine, the bulk of the book gives an account of locally occurring plants, grouped by their medicinal actions. Plants that affect the cardiovascular and nervous systems are discussed, as are those with antibiotic, insecticidal and molluscicidal properties. Those which affect the hormonal systems of humans are catalogued and so are others that act as adrenal-cortex, sex and thyroid hormones. There is a full botanical index, which includes the commonly found synonyms for many of the plants and the work is illustrated by the author's own water colours. It may be of particular interest and use to pharmacists, biochemists, botanists and pharmacologists and of great value to those who exploit locally available resources in treating diseases in tropical areas.
The issue of cross-cultural similarities and differences in trance practitioners engaged in healing is examined, based on a formal quantitative cross-cultural study and analysis. The findings suggest distinct types of healers: shamans, shaman/healers, healers, and mediums. The data illustrate not only some universals of healers, but more importantly it reveals systematic differences between the shamans of hunting and gathering societies, the shaman/healers of agricultural societies, and the possessed mediums of politically stratified societies. These different types of trance healers are characterized and compared in order to illustrate the importance of terminological clarity, as well as to examine the characteristics and functions of shamanistic healers with respect to the social and cultural context of their activities.