Several(*) Reasons Why Salvia Divinorum Is A Sublime Plant Ally

Above is a digital image called 'The Lady', 2006, 30cm x 42cm by myself, as part of my ongoing ::salviaspace:: series of art works...

1. She is gentle. If you give her respect and take your time she will induct you pleasantly into a brilliant and shining world of intent which is equally jarringly shamanic, reassuringly and softly healing, oddly abstract and very earthy.
2. She is a Mistress of Time. Stepping deeper into her world permits you to enter mandalas of time travel, time bridging and other strangely other-worldly yet incredibly this-worldly events and experiences. What's remarkable is how unbidden these experiences are - she once took me to a madrassa in 13th century India: like, why the hell would I self-create that? I'm more interested in Crete or Mexico...
3. She breaks up reality delightfully. Here she can be strong. The world can be 2D, or she can retune your brain so that you see the wild quantum rippling of reality. Light and seeing can have physical force, and your body can be torn apart, or weirdly, turn into a piece of furniture. Here, she confounds both consensus reality of the daylight world, and the moonlit world of most entheogens of choice. Ayahuasca may open up a world of glowing beings but have you ever become a corn field for a year?
4. She is synchronistic. I do not know how to expound this one, but she does what many other entheogens do, which is propel you into a synchronistic world. I have dreamed in Mazatec (**), I have seen the future, I have seen odd reflections of another past. She has led me on tracks to a deeper understanding of myself and my world, she has laid out adventures in the daylight consensus world for me to play.
5. She is bizarre. Becoming furniture. Vision having physical force. Dreaming in a language I don't know but which turns out to be real. She causes me to question *everything* about 'me', the boundaries of my self, my world and a whole host of things I don't really have the words to adequately express. I like questions, and answers which are final bore me. She gives me lots of questions. She is not for everyone. Some adventures put people off because they are fearful. She is not like that - she puts people off because she seems so odd. They don't know what to make of her, and miss her whispers...
6. She is elusive. I've met plant spirits which announce themselves thunderously, as if demanding obeisance or awe. When you see The Lady, at first it's a glimpse, or a whisper: Come Deeper. Later one can behold a kind of epiphany of her, but it takes a while. She is not hieratic or dominating: she is a partner in 'our' vision, a participant not a leader of 'your' vision.
7. She is new. Although the Mazatecs have grown her for generations, she has until recently kept off the radar of non-Mesoamerican experience, so she has arrived among us confident and fully formed butwholly unknown. She is also bizarre (see 5 above) which keeps some people away. This means her visionary space has so far been untainted with value judgements that seek to define her(***), materialism both New Age and Consensus that seek to turn her into a product to market, conspiracy paranoia, advertising, marketing, psychedelic theories that seek to make her world 'real' or 'other' or 'enlightening', historical theories that try to push her as the plant which caused this civilisation to rise/fall/transform/whatever. She is a blank canvas - can you imagine playing in a genuinely blank canvas. It's fun.
8. She is playful. I know of no other entheogen like this. She can make me laugh like a schoolboy, not because of the ridiculousness of the vision, but the genuinely daft humour inherent within it.
9. She gives mu-ga, 'no mind'. After the visions, 'you' come back, but without your thoughts or your mind. This can last hours...
10. She brings beings. Plant elves, ripply spooks, that kind of thing. They definitely come to see you, not the other way around. Sometimes they're amused, other times they have something to tell you.
11. She transcends light and dark. No, more accurately, she completely ignores 'light', 'dark' and other pairs of opposites and takes you to somewhere where 'unity' barely exists...
12. She lacks fear. It's very difficult to feel fear with her, not necessarily because it's comforting but because fear is difficult when you're not entirely in your body. I have met some real malevolence occasionally (lizard beings, you know who you are), and a lack of fear has made that being completely transparent, the malevolence meaningless and almost amusing.
13. She makes mandalas. Many layers all laid out onto one vision. My favourite kind of experience.

Thirteen. Yes, that's a good number of reasons!

(*) - several because I hadn't (at the time of writing) decided how many to write yet...
(**) - no, I have no experience of the language but I happened to wake up and write down the words and then bought a Mazatec dictionary online and damn if she didn't bring some genuine words which made sense...
(***) - she tells me here to ignore my pesky inner cynic voice which reminds me that I am kind of here seeking to define her, and go with my deeper intent to joyfully explore her in words here. Kind of praise her too...

Bruce
www.biroz.net