Peyote
Peyote has provoked controversy, suppression,and persecution ever since the arrival of Europeans in the New World. Condemned by Spanish conquerors for it's "satanic trickery," and attacked more recently by local governments and religious groups, the cactus has continued to play a major sacramental role among the Indians of Mexico while its use has spread to North American tribes in the last hundred years. The persistence and growth of the Peyote cult constitute a fascinating chapter in the history of the New World-and a challenge to the anthropologists and psychologists, botanists, pharmacologists and psychic investigators who continue to study the plant and its constituents in connection with psychic phenomena. Peyote is one of the most spectacular vision-inducing plants encountered by the Spanish conquerors. They found Peyote firmly established in native religions, and their efforts to stamp out this practice drove it into hiding in the hills, where its sacramental use has persisted to the present time. On the basis of several historical events recorded in Indian chronology, it would seem that Peyote was known to Chichimeca and Toltec at least 1890 years before the arrival of the Europeans. Peyote is used as a religious sacrament by more than forty American Indian tribes in many parts of the United States andwestern Canada. Because of this religious use, Peyote attracted the attention of scientists and legislators and caused heated and often irresponsible opposition to its free use in American Indian ceremonies.In 1993 Congress passed a law allowing for the sacramental use of peyote.
|
