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Angels' Trumpet: Femme Fatale

15:09 / 24.09.03

Jim DeKorne, author of Psychedelic Shamanism, called Datura a seductive, treacherous, feminine plant ally.

And this recent, grisly news story seems to illustrate that vividly.

Excerpt: The 18-year-old, only named as Andreas W, from Halle in Germany drank a tea made with the hallucinogenic angels' trumpet plants.

His mother said: "Andreas was behaving normally the whole day until he left the house and disappeared into the garden for a couple of minutes."

When he returned to the house he was wearing a towel wrapped around him and was bleeding heavily from his mouth and between his legs.

The emergency doctor who arrived a few minutes later said the student had cut off his penis and his tongue with garden shears and it was impossible to reattach the organs.

Anybody had any experience growing or working with this plant? It's common around South Florida, very powerful perfume and attractive, showy blooms. And seasoned psychedelic veterans say it's dangerous as hell....

15:17 / 24.09.03

There's plenty more info here about Datura's use and mythology.

15:35 / 24.09.03

Castinada called it the Devil's Weed, and has quite a bit to say about it in his first book. Aparantly powerful and very hard to control.

16:53 / 24.09.03

Note that Angel's Trumpet is a Brugmansia species and not a strict Datura (but a relative of). They're all anticholinergic deliriants of the Solanacea family. Angels' Trumpet is not as efficacious as the Daturas.

Active ingrediants: Scopolamine & atropine.

Effects are of course dose-dependenent but as you ascend the dose-response curve things will quickly get wildy out of hand, as illustrated by the bloody stumped German party boy. This type of disassociation is not at all uncommon with the Solanacea's.

I've heard of one anecdotal tale of a S. American tribe which use's a Datura preparation as a coming-of-age ceremony. Basically, the dose is high enough that the lad emerges with all of his memory completely and permanently erased, and is then indoctrinated into the adult male caste, presumably with penis intact.

Freaky stuff and if used, should be done so with extreme caution.

17:30 / 24.09.03

Quick note: Datura and Brugmansia are classified as different species. The Brugmansia especially has been diversified into different varieties largely, it is believed, through human intervention. In fact, members of traditional societies in S. and C. America apparently classify over 30 separate varieties, ranking them primarily according to spirit and entheogenic effect, and can identify them by sight (though they are indistinguishable by modern botanists). While Brugmansia is still a very perilous plant spirit to work with, its reputation is less dire than Datura, which is reportedly extremely jealous and demanding of its devotees.

Anecdote: my wife's parents grew towering Daturas in their Night-Blooms and Poison Garden (!!) year after year - plants that grew higher than my head and put forth enormous trumpet flowers, filling the entire neighborhood with their intoxicating scent (which, if you've never smelled it, is damn near addicting all by itself) - this is in Massachusetts, far north of the Datura's usual range.

This year they expanded their "collection" with a few Brugmansias. The Brugmansias flourished, but the Daturas were not impressed, and refused to give more than a few sorry blooms. Maybe it was just the weird weather this summer, or maybe they were angry and jealous of the attention (devotion?) given to the newcomers. It would certainly fit the traditional character of the plant (which, reportedly, would eventually draw its devotee into surly isolation, away from home and human contact).

There is nothing on these plants that is not to some extent poisonous/entheogenically-active, so be careful even casually handling one!

~L

08:59 / 25.09.03

Terence Mckenna certainly wasn't impressed with it, or at least this quote from an interview would suggest:

"But when you get to the -- well, before we talk about the psychedelics... Then there are drugs which are mental drugs which I don't consider psychedelic. My definition of psychedelic is tighter than most people's. For instance, you may know about datura. Datura is jimson weed and these ornamental plants with the large, white, bell-like flowers. Well, if you make a tea out of the leaves, root, flowers, or seed of that plant, it will turn you every which way but loose. I mean, it is a completely disorienting, freaky kind of experience, with loss of memory, confusion of sequence, delusion of reference, amnesia, projective imagining, so forth and so on. To my mind, it is not a psychedelic state. I call it a deliriant, or a confusant.

I remember -- I always usually end up telling this story. What put me off datura was, years ago when I lived in Nepal, I had this English friend, and we experimented with all kinds of drugs, and one day I was in the market buying potatoes and tomatoes, the only two things you could get in Bodina at that time. And I encountered this guy, adn we started just exchanging the news of the day, and in the course of the conversation, I became aware that he thought I was visiting him in his apartment. He was so lost in this stuff that he didn't know we were out in the street in the market. He thought I had come by his rooms. Well, I just said, that's too stoned. Nobody needs to be that twisted around. I mean, you literally do not know what is happening."

Less searchable M0rd4nt

16:05 / 27.09.03

Unfortunately there exist people who belive that you do need to get that stoned. They are pretty damn toxic to be around.

18:58 / 27.09.03

In my country, Argentina, the Datura is very easy to find: in the parks, in the railway tracks, etc. But it´s a less powerfull specie of the plant(but not too much). And it´s LEGAL!

12:00 / 09.10.03

I've smoked some before years ago, had the same effect as smoking fly agaric's I thought. Not as head-blasting as say making a brew out of it. I knew some people who did Belladonna by mistake and they were tripping for 2 days - 'long way to hell and back' sorta' experience!!!
But the Datura I had was picked from Scotland, quite a few bods were doing it - as some sorta' shamanic thing. I didn't brew mine, I smoked it in a pipe, as the bloke who did the brew was all over the place - if yer not that sure about things, practise caution - I would! Just felt 'high' really - but there wer the days we used to seek out bin-bags of dog opium and wild lettuce. Ther's alot of good to be said for picking your own wild natural highs!!!! Make sure y'have the right books to start with - or bring along somebody who knows the score and can pass on the knowledge.

03:22 / 03.01.14

I've developed quite a relationship with this plant. Some information can be found on my blog at http://empath23.tumblr.com

I tend to enjoy it. With the seeds the dosage is relatively accurate, but can vary quite significantly between plants. I find gauging potency by using only a few seeds at first and then working up is a relatively safe way to go about using it. I've been using datura inoxia exclusively, but have lately been wanting to find some other nightshades to work with. I plan on concocting a 'flying ointment' some time soon. This is definitely not something to mess with unless you're a pretty experienced voyager, although a single dry leaf smoked can induce a relatively mild cannabis like intoxication that lasts for about 30-45 minutes. I use it for ritual work quite often, as it aids with evocation.