I am conducting a cross-cultural analysis, using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (Murdock & White 2006), in order to determine how common is the use of inebriating plants, mushrooms, and/or beverages in human societies. I have not been able to find information on the use of mind-altering substances (hallucinogens, stimulants, narcotics) among the next African peoples: Lozi, Suku, Tiv, Fon, Tallensi, Luguru, Nkundo Mongo, Banen, Ibo, Ashanti, Wolof, Songhai, Shilluk, Mao, Bogo, Teda. Does anyone know if the traditional use (for religious, medical or secular purposes) of any kind of psychoactive material was ever present in any of these cultures? And if it is, can you direct me to the corresponding references?
I only have a list of tribal names for psilocybian entheogenic fungi from Africa. Those names are listed in my book on mushroom names, This is an older copy and since then several of the species here have been renamed into their earlier original names, so Many of the Mesonamerican shroom names were synonymous with several species already named The African names are still the same. Here is the link to my book which is being rewritten with the new updated data and beautiful new colored photos of each species described in the text. Hope this will help a little. of course there are numerous plants in Africa used such as khat, Iboga, etc.
http://mushroomjohn.org/names.htm
John W. Allen and happy holidays to you and your family.
Jose: I noticed that your list did not include the Yoruba. While I know there is extensive information about Yoruba culture available in English, Spanish and Portugues, I wonder whether they are part of your query. I have a close friend who is both a Rural Sociologist and Ifa Priest. If you are interested, I can introduce the two of you. Peace, Atim
Dear John,
I hope you are doing fine! Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my query. I will be checking out the document you referred me to. It has been somewhat difficult to get enough information on the use of psychoactive mushrooms by traditional cultures (besides the well-known cases, like the mazatecs) so I really appreciate your help. I will probably be picking your brain soon regarding the use of mushrooms on other continents (and also on the past, since I will be working with a sample of archaeological traditions too). I'd appreciate any assistance you can provide. Thanks for the good wishes. I hope you and your family have a wonderful new year!
Best regards,
José Ml. Rodríguez Arce
Dear Atim,
I hope you are doing just fine! I really appreciate you took the time to comment on my question. Actually, the Yoruba are not among the societies included on the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample so I will not be including it in this particular investigation. Nonetheless, I am interested in compiling information about the use of inebriants in all cultures around the world so I would be really grateful if you could introduce me to your friend. Thank you very much! I hope you have a great new year!
Best regards,
José Ml. Rodríguez Arce
Hola Jose, if you have a personal email, I can send you some papers (PDF) of some lists of Old World Hallucinogens by a late colleague, anthropologist, Weston LaBarre. Dr, LaBarre is author of the Peyote Cult (the definitive book on the peyote religion, used by Native Americans to help set up new charter church groups across the USA). He also authored the book, The Ghost Dance" which is about the origins of religion, and in that tomb, Dr. LaBarre discusses the theory that most religions began with primitive humankind accidentally consuming plants of an entheogenic nature allowing one to see things they had never seen before and considered the reactions as coming from a deity. I also have three great short papers by Dr. LaBarre form the late 1970s which lists other cultures that used such plants as sacraments, etc.
I can also provide you with a list of references to mushroom use in Africa from my CD-ROM, Teonanacatl: A Bibliography of Entheogenic Fungi. which covers their history from 5,000 years bp through December 2012. At that time I ran out of funds to update the data and my bibliography has more than 3,000 references, more than 10,000 cross-references all linked to author-date citations, over 2306 annotations, Over 360 references on Soma featuring mainly, Amanita muscaria, and more than 1680 screen sized photographs pertaining to every aspect of psilocybian and other entheogenic Fungi. Also included in that CD-ROM are several articles and a complete listing of the Wasson/Archives linked form Harvard University.
Other papers include my colleague and co-author of 7 academic papers with me on entheogenic fungi, he published a paper on Old World Hallucinogens. In my library I have close to over 90 % of every book, journal and magazine articles on psilocybian producing mushrooms as well as papers and books on many other drugs. One of my mentors over the years was the late Dr. Richard Evans Schultes, He is known as the Father of Ethnobotany. Please send me an email and I can supply you with several well written papers on some of the plants of Africa and on shrooms as well.
Happy New year to you and your loved ones, From Seattle and in symbiosis of our interest in this subject matter.
Best Regards,
John W. Allen
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