{"id":96,"date":"2007-01-28T11:25:35","date_gmt":"2007-01-28T15:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/?p=96"},"modified":"2007-01-28T11:25:35","modified_gmt":"2007-01-28T15:25:35","slug":"%e0%a4%b8%e0%a5%8b%e0%a4%ae-soma-and-synchonicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/archives\/96","title":{"rendered":"Soma and synchronicity"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

An interesting coincidence: I’ve been on a bit of a soma jag recently (research, not use) because of a brief mention of it in Helen Macdonald’s excellent Falcon<\/a>. I started by re-reading Brave New World<\/a> for old time’s sake; back in high school it added soma to my vocabulary; college brought R. Gordon Wasson<\/a> and the idea of entheogens. Soma has been off the back burner and on a slow simmer in my head for a while; there seems to be a connection between the bowls found in Central Asian burials and either soma or Amanita muscaria<\/em> use (allowing that A. muscaria<\/em> might not be soma). The picture at the top of the post is a handle for one of these bowls. Falcon<\/u> brought the simmer to a boil, so – in preparation for (maybe) writing a long soma post – I’ve been spending the past couple days reading things like The Soma-Haoma Problem<\/a>. Now comes the coincidence – last night I was lying in bed reading The Areas of my Expertise<\/a> and laughing my head off (not a great way to get to sleep, I discovered); page 87 consists of the following:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WERE YOU AWARE OF IT?<\/p>\n

The famous Cole Porter tune “I’m In, You’re In” was actually Porter’s typically wry response to the urine-drinking craze of the 1920s.<\/p>\n

The practice originated with the fierce reindeer herders of Siberia known as the Koryac, who centuries ago had devised a means of purifying the hallucinogenic toadstool known as fly agaric. A local shaman would eat the mushroom, using his body to filter out the poisonous muscarine; its mood-altering compounds were preserved in his urine, which was then ritually consumed by other Koryac and also some of the more favored reindeer.<\/p>\n

Marco Pensworthy, a monocled young libertine and staff member of the American Museum of Natural History, who was later dismissed for seducing the skeleton of a giant ground sloth, introduced the custom to New York. During Prohibition, many a tuxedoed, thrill-thirsty swell attended one of Dr. Marco’s private “Siberian Tea Parties,” beneath the frozen gaze of the stampeding elephants of the Hall of African Animals, where, wrote Porter…<\/p>\n

There isn’t any shame in
\nMeeting with the Shaman
\nAnd making like the reindeers do…
\nIt’s just a little wonder
\nThat will unfreeze your tundra
\nI’m in, you’re in. You’re in too.<\/p>\n

After his disgrace, Pensworthy would wander Central Park humming Porter’s tune and offering passersby swigs from a suspicious flask. Finally arrested and institutionalized, he trepanned himself to death in 1952.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Like a lot of good tall tales, there’s a grain of truth in there – the Koryac references are accurate<\/a> regarding the mushroom and the urine (I’d be surprised if they shared their pee with the reindeer – but I could be wrong<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I’m running into these kind of coincidences more and more frequently (the one before this was putting Lost World of the Moa<\/u> down, flipping the teevee to Animal Planet, and falling into the middle of a segment on Haast’s Eagle<\/a>). I’m developing a hypothesis that rests on two factors – both Internet related – the immediate availability of information and the number of personal contacts with like-minded people that communication technology provides us with. I’ll do some more thinkin’ on it – perhaps a later post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hug me till you drug me, honey;
\nKiss me till I’m in a coma:
\nHug me, honey, snuggly bunny;
\nLove’s as good as soma. *<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

* An interesting coincidence: I’ve been on a bit of a soma jag recently (research, not use) because of a brief mention of it in Helen Macdonald’s excellent Falcon. I started by re-reading Brave New World for old time’s sake; … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,18,21,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-plants","category-random-stuff","category-wunderkammer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqxx-1y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}