Our history is the history of some vague, excruciating pain associated with the loss of this perfect human world, then our complete oblivion, denial, and ultimately denial of some part of ourselves. This is a story of relationships with plants, reminiscent of symbiosis agreements that were established and broken. The consequence of losing the feeling of being part of a green tool of plant nature is the alienation and despair that surround us and threaten to make our future intolerable.
It took many centuries to put out the flame of Eleusis, to lose the partnership, to erase the vision of community and society, consecrated by the halo of the Mother Goddess. Then there passed many centuries of nostalgia for paradise and its rivers, the heavenly soma, nostalgia, which took on all new and varied forms in search of satisfying the inherent human desire for intoxication.
All natural drugs, stimulants, relaxants and hallucinogens, known to modern botanists and pharmacologists, were discovered by primitive man and have been used since time immemorial. One of the first things that Homo sapiens did with its newly developed rationality and self-awareness was that he directed them to look for how to circumvent analytical thinking and overcome it, or, in extreme cases, at least temporarily erase the isolating self awareness Trying everything that grew in the fields and forests, he firmly adhered to what seemed good in this context, that is, it changed the quality of consciousness, made it different, different – no matter how – from everyday sensation, perception and thinking.
In subsequent chapters, we will explore these substitutes for the original intoxicating fungus of our prehistory. Unfortunately, this review will only serve to emphasize how far we have moved away from the initial dynamic balance of partner paradise.