Sage has been conquering my heart...
The ally spirit in it, the powerful guiding presence, and the impeccable connection to self, deep emotions, and the natural world.
I am talking about S. cryptantha, now called S. absconditiflora.
Also been exploring S. verticillata and it clearly has a powerful guiding spirit as well, and is more similar to divinorum (it is also noted to be genetically close to S. divinorum). Even though I am no less impressed by it, I have this intuition that my path is with absconditiflora which is more heart focussed.
Ate 20 fresh leaves of verticillata the other day and it was enough for significant effects for me. Verticillata has two varieties here, one narrow leaved and one broad leaved. The narrow leaved variety barely has visible trichomes on it while the broad leaved is as hairy as can be imagined. Since salvinorin a is said to be concentrated on trichomes, I never tried the narrow leaved variety.
Absconditiflora is like a "mother's lap" with it's pure unconditional infinite soft compassion and love and it's connection to all that is. But it also takes guts to go deep with it because this very impeccable connection to deep emotions make you feel all the very difficult emotions stored in you to the fullest...Takes a proper ceremony to facilitate a cleaning/transformation of these emotions. The plant's spirit imparts a total heart opening, pure love, compassion, and connection to all beings - plants, animals, humans... For me liberty caps were also kind of like this. By this point I experience being influenced by this energy just from harvesting it.
It also has a very "shamanic" guiding spirit.
I am also intrigued by S. recognita as it is a genetically close relative of absconditiflora. I am guessing it will have the distinct heart opening character as well. I will find it one day, I know it grows not far from the garden of eden where I am gifted with all my ally plants. Just, now is the time to establish my allyhood with absconditiflora for me.
I would like to propose that these sages are more potent than the findings in the original study of the thread, as it is the leaves which have the highest concentration of SA and the measurements were of the entire aerial parts. I am also pretty sure that absconditiflora has other potentiating and synergizing components in it. As would be expected from me, I will finish this with saying that it is best not to approach these sages as a factory of SA to be extracted and concentrated, and it is best to approach them as whole medicine spirits.
Last 4 pics S. verticillata, the rest S. absconditiflora.