how did they extract the spice back in the day?

[danknugz81]

i remember reading a few posts saying how the dmt back in the day was different then the white spice we pull now. were they just pulling with toluene back then to get the red/orange/dmt spice combo? are there any old teks in books or anything? this subject intrigues me.

 

[gardentoad]

Hello. I would really like to know the answer to this as well. I was lucky enough to have had some old-timer spice 12-13 years ago and I will always remember it. It was orangy waxy looking stuff that blasted me out of the universe. I actually thought I had died...my only regret was that I hadn'T said "good-bye" to my loved ones.

 

[Entropymancer]

I'd also like to know if anyone has specific information on what used to be common ways of preparing DMT.

I've collected together a summary of all the info I could find on the colored (yellow/orange/red) DMTs in my Jungle Spice thread (it's Section I.5) that would probably interest you.

 

[fourthripley]

i remember reading a few posts saying how the dmt back in the day was different then the white spice we pull now. were they just pulling with toluene back then to get the red/orange/dmt spice combo? are there any old teks in books or anything? this subject intrigues me.

I always wonder how 'back in the day' people mean.I understand synthetic was often encountered as an orange or salmon pink entity.I wonder when practical, reliably extracted material first 'went online' if you know what I mean, rather than being a figment of books and pamphlets and uninformed seekers floundering about in the dark.You only need to go back a few years on boards still extant to recreate that period Been playing with extractions for about 10 years' spurred by the DeKorne book which concentrated on Desmanthus and Phalaris and considered Mimosa and Pychotria too exotic to even mention by name.I believe up until a few years ago DCM was considered the solvent of choice; I remember on the old DMT world naptha being dismissed as a 'butter fingers' solvent.

 

[Entropymancer]

That's what I'm curious about. If DCM was the solvent of choice, then it's possible the orange/red color could have been N-chloromethyl DMT, an extraction sideproduct of unknown pharmacology.

If it was being extracted from plants, then there are certainly issues to consider there.

But it could just be that most times when people encountered DMT back then, it wasn't freshly extracted, and the orange could have just been the result of aged spice.

 

[Entropymancer]

And to further substantiate the thought that DCM reacts with DMT to make chlorinated derivitives, here's a quote from a paper published this year:

DMT was found to be reactive towards dichloromethane, either during work-up or long term storage therein, which led to the formation of the quaternary ammonium salt N-chloromethyl-DMT chloride

That's at least twice in the literature that it's been reported now. I wonder if it may have played a role in the old orange spice?

 

[magic clown]

I have allways wondered about that. It was a yellow brown sticky stuff like treacle, little bit like ear wax to look at. It somtimes had large rocky crystals in it but its overall consistancy was gooey. I used to pay quite large sums of money for it. At the time I asked my dealer where it came from and how it was made, he didnt know, told me he got it from people in Wales! I talked to him more recantly and showed him the modern version. It turns out I know a lot more about it than he does.

This was a question, I asked on this forumn when it first appeared a couple of years ago, nobody knew then either.

 

[strtman]

This is an interesting old topic. What I would like to know is, when was DMT in free base extracted for the first time?

Did the ‘ancients’ vaporized free base DMT ?

As far as I know smoking DMT like we do now was only a rediscovering.

 

[Jees]

Some history:

http://www.dmtsite.com/dmt/information/history_discovery.html

 

[strtman]

Thank you. Looks impressive.

 

[syberdelic]

My first DMT extraction was back around 2003-2004, using "QT's DMT extraction for students". My first try was using Coleman lantern fuel and the stuff was green. One puff indicated that the stuff was toxic. Immediately after, I found some naphtha at a hardware store and produced the earwax looking stuff that had an occasional crystal embedded.

I used acetone to mix some with some parsley, loaded it in a pipe and was shown every religious symbol that ever was crawling all over my JNCOs. The voices told me not to succumb to these temptations as it means giving up my own identity to be part of something false.

Anyway, I doubt that many of the early extractions were vastly different than currently used teks. It's all fairly simple chemistry that was commonly used even back to 1900. Probably the biggest difference were the non-polar solvents.

 

[null24]

The first encounter with spice that I had was in 1990 or so. It did indeed look different, large, barrel shaped crystals that were a dark red in color. It appeared to be rather 'messy'. The effects were definitely powerful and the taste and smell were exactly the same ( we just put it in a bong with ashes and torched.) All I know of its origin is that it came from the chem dept of a local college that is notorious for its drug experimentation. It was always assumed to be synthetic, rather than extracted, but that was only a guess.

 

[dreamer042]

There is an anecdote regarding this in "Mystery School in Hyperspace" describing an early encounter between Nick Sand and Owsley:

Early in his career, Sand’s experiments were primitive compared with the gold standard later achieved. According to one unkind assessment, Sand was “not particular about the purity he achieved.” In this view (perhaps informed by Stanley), as a yellowish-orange product, rather than a white salt-like crystal, “Sand’s DMT stank.” While this may have been true, Sand eventually became a stickler for perfection, a circumstance fired by his meeting with Stanley. In a recent interview with producer of the Mind States conferences, Jon Hanna, Sand expressed how grateful he is for Stanley’s guidance. “He had really kicked me in the ass about DMT purity and LSD purity. LSD purity, I never did wrong, because I learned it from him. DMT purity, I got together a lot because of his inspiration and reasoning and criticism. He was very scornful of my first DMT because it was just kind of this orangish-yellow paste, and he said it should be white crystals. And so I figured out how to make it white crystals.” By the winter of 1966/1967, Sand finally achieved the “breakthrough in purifying his DMT.”

A few other quotes of relevance to this discussion:

Terence McKenna’s ontological reference frame was thoroughly shattered by his first encounter with DMT in his apartment in Berkeley in 1965; according to the apocryphal myth, the source of this material was boosted by an unknown “mole” at the SRI from a putative “fifty gallon drum” of military-grade DMT; more likely it found its way to Terence through the aegis of his high school friend, one William Patrick Watson, who was working on a summer organic chemistry project at the Stanford School of Medicine. In his unpublished account of the events leading up to Terence’s encounter with DMT, Watson speculates that, rather than fencing government research chemicals as he thought, he (Watson) was an unwitting participant in a “controlled release program” in which these chemicals were selectively disseminated into civilian populations while maintaining plausible deniability for the agencies conducting this covert program.

Terence indicated that his friend had imparted to him that the material had been boosted from a U.S. Army chemical-research operation down at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park. “Someone managed to get a fifty gallon drum of this material out of the inventory without anybody knowing.”
...
Terence appears to have minced facts, since the provenance of the material he smoked at Telegraph Avenue was not Army-sourced, but, according to Watson himself, from “Kesey’s circle”—and thus likely the work of Bear Stanley. Furthermore, the reference to a “fifty gallon drum” is a spectacular embellishment on the “six-inch-high cylindrical metallic containers” that, in Watson’s imagination, may or may not have housed DMT at the SRI.

This shines a bit moar light on the subject, but also raises some further questions. If Owsley was giving Nick an ass kicking about his DMT purity at Millbrook, how is it that the "orange mothballs" of Terence's first DMT encounter could have been sourced from Owsley? Did that first batch Terence tried come from an SRI "controlled distriubtion" or from the Pranksters?

It's my guess that the Kesey crew got handed off some of Nick's first batches of earwax back in '64 on that famous bus trip to Millbrook and this would be what Terence ecountered in that iconic "little glass pipe". Yet another quote in Mystery School suggests this to be the case:

As far as I know, there is no evidence of DMT use among Pranksters before the Millbrook meeting. It is plausible that Kesey & Co. departed Millbrook with a special gift. We know Ginsberg did, as he noted on his photo of Kerouac, stating: “I’d brought some back from Millbrook where I’d recently been with Neal Cassady in Kesey’s bus.”

Apparently by the 90's Terence wasn't rocking the earwax anymore:

I was unsurprised that being shpongled connoted DMT space, but it was what Raj said next that caused my eyebrows to elevate. A “pink packet” containing approximately 3 or 4 g of pink DMT crystal came into his guardianship in 1992/93, the contents of which were farmed out to numerous acquaintances over subsequent years.

Posford is unequivocal about the impact of DMT. Meditating on his first smoke with Raj, which he was told came from “Terence McKenna’s personal stash”

Is that all clear as mud? Hopefully that helps convolute this already convoluted topic just a little moar. :?

 

[Asher7]

Someone needs to make a really really detailed documentary about all this because I want to know. I'd do it myself but, I wasnt there so everything I could bring to the table is heresay.

I bet that was a fascenting time to be alive within that circle. Just to be a fly on the wall would get my jollies rockin'.

Why is it this isnt happening now? That whole era seems like full on glimse into enlightenment, or magic, something I'm not sure how to put into words, with everyone on board. The music, movies, the everything. Now it just seems like all you see is random people reporting on taking 9-al6-14-k21-charliebravo. There's no "magic". Where did the magic go?

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

One must keep in mind that Nick sand is credited with being the first to synthesize DMT clandestinely, rather than extracting it. Extraction of DMT from plant matter has a longer clandestine history.

Quick review:

·DMT was first synthesized in 1931 by Canadian chemist Richard Manske.

·In 1946 Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima was working with extractions from Mimosa tenuiflora, through these extractions Gonçalves de Lima produced a compound called "nigerine", however, in 1959 when
Gonçalves de Lima provided American chemists with a sample, it was confirmed that "nigerine" was in fact dimethyltryptamine.

·Also, In 1955 Evan Horning and a team of American chemists working with Anadenanthera peregrina formally isolated and identified dimethyltryptamine.

---------

Technically, a DMT extraction could have been preformed in biblical times...

I'll start with an example of purported chemistry use in the bible:

Here is the bible story:

Elijah encounters worshippers of Baal, and a challenge is proposed, each side will build an alter, and the alter which is set ablaze by God will signify whose God is real. Each side builds an alter. The alter fir Baal fails, however Elijah's alter catches fire after water is added to it.

The actual story:

Elijah wanted to show the people that idols have no power. Elijah asked for two bulls for a sacrifice. He asked for some wood. He gave a bull and some of the wood to the priests of Baal. He kept a bull and some wood for his sacrifice

Elijah told the priests not to burn the sacrifice. He told the priests to pray to their idol. He said Baal must burn the sacrifice

The wicked priests prayed to Baal all morning. They jumped on the altar and shouted. Baal did not answer. Baal was only an idol.

So the worshippers of Baal failed to burn the alter with prayer, then:

Elijah told the people to come close to him. Elijah told them he would pray to God. He said God would send fire down from heaven. God would burn his sacrifice. Elijah built an altar of stones. He dug around the altar. Elijah put the bull and some wood on the altar.

Elijah asked men to bring four barrels of water. He told them to pour the water on the sacrifice. Then he asked the men to bring four more barrels of water. Again they poured the water on the sacrifice. He told them to bring four more barrels of water. They poured the water on the sacrifice, too.

God sent fire down from heaven. The fire burned Elijah’s sacrifice. It burned the wood and the stones. It dried up all the water. The people saw the power of God. They knew the idols had no power. All the wicked priests of Baal were killed.

Elijah and the Priests of Baal

Elijah invited King Ahab to a challenge to see whether the Lord or Baal was the true God. The Lord’s fire came down. The people knew that Elijah’s God was the true God. The Lord sent rain.

www.lds.org

Ancient chemistry serves as a reasonable explanation, and Wood, Calcium oxide, sulphur, naphtha, and water we're all available to these ancients...

Let me explain:

Elijah could have known that mixing calcium oxide and water would generate an exothermic reaction, generating temperatures of over 600°F, so taking this knowledge he could have decided to take some sulphur, naphtha, and calcium oxide, and mix these ingredients into a paste, this paste could then be applied to the wood from the alter, then when the water was poured on the alter the water would react with the calcium oxide generating an exothermic reaction igniting the sulphur and naphtha, and ultimately catching the alter on fire.

It's basically a giant match, the wood, sulphur and the naphtha are like the match head and the calcium oxide and water are the ignition source...

This shows that ancient individuals could have been proficient in basic chemical reactions and procedures, they had the materials and that technically these ancients could have been able to extract DMT. They had some rudimentary chemical knowledge, they had naphtha and they had access to natural bases and acacia trees which contain DMT, such as acacia nilotica. It's entirely possible that ancients could have taken acacia plant matter and soaked it in a strongly basic water solution, then naphtha could have been floated over this basic water mixture, the mixture would be occasionally agitated, allowing the layers to fully separate between each agitation, Eventually, the DMT freebase saturated naphtha could have been decanted, and then evaporated providing crystalline DMT free-base.

...while there is no evidence that this ever occured, it's entirely possible.

--------

DMT is polymorphic and exists in pure yellow, and pure translucent crystals.

DMT samples were prepared following extraction from Mimosa tenuiflora inner barks or by laboratory synthesis and then its crystals were recrystallized from solutions of the alkaloid using either hexane or acetonitrile. Irrespective of source, crystals originating from synthesis were predominantly white crystals obtained using crystallization from hexane, whereas yellow samples following recrystallization with acetonitrile. Irrespective of source or solvent, two polymorphs appeared to exist with melting points, determined by DSC, of 57 °C to 58 °C for Form I and 45 °C to 46 °C for Form II.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026265X13000544

-eg

 

[starway6]

One must keep in mind that Nick sand is credited with being the first to synthesize DMT clandestinely, rather than extracting it. Extraction of DMT from plant matter has a longer clandestine history.


Nick also was the first to discover that dmt could be smoked!

And he was behind some of the purest LSD on the face of the earth..sunshine..windowpayne..microdot ..blotter....
the [orange sunshine was purified 3 times!!]

I had the chance to try an orange barrel of sunshine...it was FAST! acting.. colorfull and very visual!


Back in the day..dmt was heard of... but for trippers ACID WAS KING along with magic mushrooms in the form of a tablet.


Every one i knew back then.. prefered acid... to being blown out of a dmt cannon barrel..back then dmts reputation was that it was too forcfull and strong...

We even had trip weed then.. pot that grew wild along the railroad track that led into us steel manufacturing plant...

One to three hits and the come up was much like LSD!

It was believed that the [trip weed] ..a strain of pot that grew.. [short and bushy].. near the railroad tracks that delivered raw materials to the steel mill in gary indiana was strong and trippy because of the plants chemicles that were released into the air from giant smoke stacks..

Personaly i think it was some awesome aisian weed that started from roachs being thrown from train or track workers simply smoking it while maintaining the tracks...

There was also stories about more trip weed patches that grew around sewage plants ..or well fertalized corn fields..

 

[pitubo]

For starters, I refuse to believe that anything "biblical" bears any historic factuality or reality other than coincidental. It's a big bad fairy tale and a particularly ugly one at that.

Technically, a DMT extraction could have been preformed in biblical times...

This thread springs to mind.. About halfway, someone makes this observation:

This type of speculation really does not seem very welcome though...and while it's fun to imagine these things, it seems to get an overall negative response.

The observation is made in relation to the exact same speculation as you are doing in this thread:

I'll start with an example of purported chemistry use in the bible:

Here is the bible story:

[snippety snip all the psychotic fairy tales about a mr. "jhwh" and his merry band of demons]

Ancient chemistry serves as a reasonable explanation, and Wood, Calcium oxide, sulphur, naphtha, and water we're all available to these ancients...

I emphatically refuse to accept that refined naphtha was available to the ancients of "biblical" times, until given at least some amount of reasonable indication of likeliness. They may have had access to crude petroleum, a tarry and smelly substance that no one would want to extract alkaloids with.

Particularly relevant to the fairy tale science you are proposing, is the fact that crude petroleum does not even remotely resemble water. When I read your proposal, my first thought was: "did he even try this himself, if only as a thought experiment?". But before writing this down as my objection, I read the transcript of the popular science tv programme "Ancient Discoveries - Lost Science of the Bible" from which you seem to have gotten your ideas.

00:31:30 Here, we have pieces of rock sulfur, and then the last thing that we'll do-- which is the last thing that elijah did-- elijah poured 12 barrels of water onto his altar.
00:31:41 We think that some of that water was naptha.
00:31:45 Naptha looks just like water; pours just like water.
00:31:49 And then we're going to try to ignite that with the heat we generate by adding water to quicklime.

Obviously, there needs to be less water than calcium oxide present, or else the copious amounts of steam generated would suffocate and quench any fire before it could get started. The tv programme hints that most of the "water" they use is in fact naphtha, which instantly negates all credibility of the historical applicability. There is no reason to assume that refined naphtha, resembling water, was available to the ancients.

Similarly, I would not be surprised if any actual water that was poored onto the staged experiment to react with calcium oxide turned out to be a highly saturated chlorate solution. Chlorates react violently with sulphur.

It's basically a giant match, the wood, sulphur and the naphtha are like the match head and the calcium oxide and water are the ignition source...

That does not match any composition of historical matches that I know of. Potassium chlorate frequently is part of the composition, which is why I make the presumption about its use in the tv programme's staged experiment.

This shows that ancient individuals could have been proficient in basic chemical reactions and procedures, they had the materials and that technically these ancients could have been able to extract DMT. They had some rudimentary chemical knowledge, they had naphtha and they had access to natural bases and acacia trees which contain DMT, such as acacia nilotica. It's entirely possible that ancients could have taken acacia plant matter and soaked it in a strongly basic water solution, then naphtha could have been floated over this basic water mixture, the mixture would be occasionally agitated, allowing the layers to fully separate between each agitation, Eventually, the DMT freebase saturated naphtha could have been decanted, and then evaporated providing crystalline DMT free-base.

...while there is no evidence that this ever occured, it's entirely possible.

Sure. Evaporate crude petroleum to recover crystalline dmt freebase.

I'm not going to partake in any of that if you don't mind.

 

[Aum_Shanti]

Sure. Evaporate crude petroleum to recover crystalline dmt freebase.

That might be a little harsh on the lungs...

Maybe that's why people at that time didn't get very old... :d

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

For starters, I refuse to believe that anything "biblical" bears any historic factuality or reality other than coincidental. It's a big bad fairy tale and a particularly ugly one at that.

Technically, a DMT extraction could have been preformed in biblical times...

This thread springs to mind.. About halfway, someone makes this observation:

This type of speculation really does not seem very welcome though...and while it's fun to imagine these things, it seems to get an overall negative response.

The observation is made in relation to the exact same speculation as you are doing in this thread:

I'll start with an example of purported chemistry use in the bible:

Here is the bible story:

[snippety snip all the psychotic fairy tales about a mr. "jhwh" and his merry band of demons]

Ancient chemistry serves as a reasonable explanation, and Wood, Calcium oxide, sulphur, naphtha, and water we're all available to these ancients...

I emphatically refuse to accept that refined naphtha was available to the ancients of "biblical" times, until given at least some amount of reasonable indication of likeliness. They may have had access to crude petroleum, a tarry and smelly substance that no one would want to extract alkaloids with.

Particularly relevant to the fairy tale science you are proposing, is the fact that crude petroleum does not even remotely resemble water. When I read your proposal, my first thought was: "did he even try this himself, if only as a thought experiment?". But before writing this down as my objection, I read the transcript of the popular science tv programme "Ancient Discoveries - Lost Science of the Bible" from which you seem to have gotten your ideas.

00:31:30 Here, we have pieces of rock sulfur, and then the last thing that we'll do-- which is the last thing that elijah did-- elijah poured 12 barrels of water onto his altar.
00:31:41 We think that some of that water was naptha.
00:31:45 Naptha looks just like water; pours just like water.
00:31:49 And then we're going to try to ignite that with the heat we generate by adding water to quicklime.

Obviously, there needs to be less water than calcium oxide present, or else the copious amounts of steam generated would suffocate and quench any fire before it could get started. The tv programme hints that most of the "water" they use is in fact naphtha, which instantly negates all credibility of the historical applicability. There is no reason to assume that refined naphtha, resembling water, was available to the ancients.

Similarly, I would not be surprised if any actual water that was poored onto the staged experiment to react with calcium oxide turned out to be a highly saturated chlorate solution. Chlorates react violently with sulphur.

It's basically a giant match, the wood, sulphur and the naphtha are like the match head and the calcium oxide and water are the ignition source...

That does not match any composition of historical matches that I know of. Potassium chlorate frequently is part of the composition, which is why I make the presumption about its use in the tv programme's staged experiment.

This shows that ancient individuals could have been proficient in basic chemical reactions and procedures, they had the materials and that technically these ancients could have been able to extract DMT. They had some rudimentary chemical knowledge, they had naphtha and they had access to natural bases and acacia trees which contain DMT, such as acacia nilotica. It's entirely possible that ancients could have taken acacia plant matter and soaked it in a strongly basic water solution, then naphtha could have been floated over this basic water mixture, the mixture would be occasionally agitated, allowing the layers to fully separate between each agitation, Eventually, the DMT freebase saturated naphtha could have been decanted, and then evaporated providing crystalline DMT free-base.

...while there is no evidence that this ever occured, it's entirely possible.

Sure. Evaporate crude petroleum to recover crystalline dmt freebase.

I'm not going to partake in any of that if you don't mind.

This is hilarious, if you give scientific explanations to the bible the Christians get upset because it means that there was no miracle, just a crafty priest with some chemical knowledge that managed to fool (and murder*) the followers of baal. ...then the science oriented individuals get upset when you give scientific explanations of biblical stories because they refuse to believe that any thing "real" could be written in the bible...

*

God sent fire down from heaven. The fire burned Elijah’s sacrifice. It burned the wood and the stones. It dried up all the water. The people saw the power of God. They knew the idols had no power. All the wicked priests of Baal were killed.

Elijah and the Priests of Baal

Elijah invited King Ahab to a challenge to see whether the Lord or Baal was the true God. The Lord’s fire came down. The people knew that Elijah’s God was the true God. The Lord sent rain.

www.lds.org

Ok,

First of all, the bible was written by humans, the earliest copies date from around 300 years after the death of Jesus, though the conjecture is that earlier copies existed, before that the stories were said to be passed on by word of mouth. Then in 325ad under the order of Constantine the Council of Nicaea took the books of the bible, and edited and reorganized them into a suitable Roman version of Christianity. Regardless, these are accounts written in in at least 300ad which describe events which are quite older, and as a result actual history does seep through in some ways.

I'm not trying to say that they stories of the bible should be considered historical fact, but there are some historical accuracies contained with in it, specially regarding the culture of the time.

This thread springs to mind.. About halfway, someone makes this observation:

I know in that* thread I used the same example of Elijah and the worshippers of Baal, I ultimately came to these conclusions:

* Did our ancestors extract DMT? - Welcome discussion - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus

...Though while chemical bits of knowledge do appear through out the ancient world, sadly, there is no evidence of chemical extractions involving psychoactives, as far as I Know.

Though the Greeks had naptha and strong bases, I can't imagine how they would have understood how to use them for this very specific procedure...

Could the ancient Greeks or Egyptians have done this, it probably would have looked something like the "lazymans tek", soaking the plant matter in a water solution blended with a strong base for an extended period, then floating naptha on the basic solution to "grab" the DMT, occasionally agitating the mixture, then collecting the naptha after sufficient time had passed, and then allowing the naptha to evaporate to give DMT...

This type of speculation really does not seem very welcome though...and while it's fun to imagine these things, it seems to get an overall negative response.

-eg

I emphatically refuse to accept that refined naphtha was available to the ancients of "biblical" times, until given at least some amount of reasonable indication of likeliness. They may have had access to crude petroleum, a tarry and smelly substance that no one would want to extract alkaloids with.

yes, the naphtha of the ancients would have been found as a viscous, dark, liquid, and would require some form of distillation to ever be appropriate for an extraction.

Though distillation is all that would be needed to obtain decent naphtha. Distillation is an ancient art, around since biblical times, and while there is not any evidence that I know of, it's entirely possible that they could have distilled this crude petroleum ether.

Are you familiar with Greek fire? My research in this area leads me to believe that naphtha distillation would have been well within the limits of the ancients.

Particularly relevant to the fairy tale science you are proposing, is the fact that crude petroleum does not even remotely resemble water. When I read your proposal, my first thought was: "did he even try this himself, if only as a thought experiment?". But before writing this down as my objection, I read the transcript of the popular science tv programme "Ancient Discoveries - Lost Science of the Bible" from which you seem to have gotten your ideas.

It's not "fairy tale science" I have seen a miniature experiment of Elijah alter work just fine in my organic chemistry course...I'll get back to that, first:

In the thread that you cited where I originally got into This topic I left the link to that television program, which was not the original source of these ideas.

Did our ancestors extract DMT? - Welcome discussion - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus

Ok, back to where I was, Believe it or not in organic chemistry one we were told this story and recreated a miniature version of Elijah's alter, not by the methods described by "ancient discoveries" in the link I posted, but by taking sulphur, naphtha, and calcium oxide and mixing these into a paste, this paste was then applied to the wood, and when water was added sure enough the miniature model alter ignited.

Obviously, there needs to be less water than calcium oxide present, or else the copious amounts of steam generated would suffocate and quench any fire before it could get started. The tv programme hints that most of the "water" they use is in fact naphtha, which instantly negates all credibility of the historical applicability. There is no reason to assume that refined naphtha, resembling water, was available to the ancients.

No, the steam is not an issue if you build the alter the way in which the bible describes:

Elijah told the people to come close to him. Elijah told them he would pray to God. He said God would send fire down from heaven. God would burn his sacrifice. Elijah built an altar of stones. He dug around the altar. Elijah put the bull and some wood on the altar

Elijah and the Priests of Baal

Elijah invited King Ahab to a challenge to see whether the Lord or Baal was the true God. The Lord’s fire came down. The people knew that Elijah’s God was the true God. The Lord sent rain.

www.lds.org

He digs a ditch around the alter for the water to flow into, the water touches the calcium oxide, sulphur, and naphtha paste, starting the exothermic reaction and igniting the sulphur and the naphtha, then it drains into a ditch surrounding the alter preventing the steam from quenching the fire, the water in the ditch eventually evaporates if the fire is aloud to burn long enough.

The tv program hints a lot of things, again, I don't think they were pouring naphtha onto the alter passing it off as water, they were pouring water onto the alter, as I explained above.

That program was not the source of these ideas, and was NIT mentioned initially in this thread because if the discrepancies between the notion a which I proposed and those proposed by that program.

There is no reason why you would need distilled naphtha for this to work, the naphtha is mixed into a paste with sulphur and calcium oxide and applied to the wood.

That does not match any composition of historical matches that I know of. Potassium chlorate frequently is part of the composition, which is why I make the presumption about its use in the tv programme's staged experiment.

I never claimed it resembles any historical match, I said "it is like a giant match" and it is, a match is a wood stick with a sulphur mixture at its head and an ecellerant soaked around the top part of the wood of the match and the sulphur head, it's a good metaphor in my mind.

In the "Elijah's alter experiment" sulphur is present on wood, with naphtha as an accelerant, just like a match, the water and calcium oxide are the ignition source, hence, it's like a giant match with a calcium oxide and water ignition source. Historical matches are not relevant to this metaphor.


-------

Misc. Reference to ancient naphtha

35 1 As he traversed all Babylonia, which at once submitted to him, he was most of all amazed at the chasm from which fire continually streamed forth as from a spring, and at the stream of naphtha, so abundant as to form a lake, not far from the chasm. 2 This naphtha is in other ways like asphaltum, but is so sensitive to fire that, before the flame touches it, it is kindled by the very radiance about the flame and often sets fire also to the intervening air. 3 To show its nature and power, the Barbarians sprinkled the street leading to Alexander's quarters with small quantities of the liquid; then, standing at the farther end of the street, they applied their torches to the moistened spots; for it was now getting dark. 4 The first spots at once caught fire, and without an appreciable interval of time, but with the speed of thought, the flame darted to the other end, and the street was one continuous fire.

-The Parallel Lives by Plutarch

Plutarch • Life of Alexander (Part 3 of 7)

An English translation. All of Plutarch's Lives are onsite; in turn part of a very large site on classical Antiquity.

penelope.uchicago.edu

-eg

 

[Metashaman]

The Entheogen Review - Complete (1992-2008) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The Entheogen Review - Complete (1992-2008)

archive.org

Page eleven first magazine. (Thanks Dreamer for pointing me to this).

How they did it in the 90's.

~Fate