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Psychoactive Lichen!!!...Novel Entheogen needs Research!

Migrated topic.
S

SKA

Rising Star
I was reading an article about animals consuming psychoactive herbs,fungi and plants.
In this article there was mention of a Psychoactive lichen that sheep are fond of.

I did some more research and found only this:
www.hipforums.com

Hip Forums

Over 500 Free Speech Forums on Hip subjects
www.hipforums.com www.hipforums.com
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=519823 (page 2 of this topic is more interresting)
People speak of extremely deep visionairy and psychedelic experiences with euphoria and sedation.

For the reccord, this is Lichen:
Foliose_lichen_130_d.gif

yellowLichen.jpg

The strange growths on trees and rocks, that seem like somewhere in between plants/algae and fungi I'm sure you're all familiar with.



Does anyone know more about this?
This defenitely needs more research.
 
Holy shit. Holy shit!!!

As a committed arctophile (northern traditional shamanism is what first got me interested in psychoactive plants), this is BIG STUFF.
And I've never heard of it. Some of the guys in the linked forums are right, googling this topic in English leads nowhere.

Question: Does anyone here speak Icelandic? I'd think it would be possible to find out about it via Icelandic websites.
 
"An unidentified saxicolous lichen was called Jievut hiawsik [lit. "Earth flower"] by the Pima of California. It was used as a good luck charm, and it was smoked for its narcotic effect (Curtin 1949)."

Huh...
I've seen tons of different kinds of lichen growing in these hills.
I wonder which ones have the goods?

Wish we had some way to analyze these.




"Isaac Howard described "earth flower" as being "reddish and white and different colors, and smells like violets."



If I ever come across a lichen similar, I'm definitely going to smoke some, and start low...
 
I wanted to go out today to see if I could find some Lichen growing on brick walls in my street, or on barks of trees in the local artificial mini-forrest.
Then I got the destinct feeling that Lichen may be growing much closer to me than that.
I opened my window and found some dark blue-gray crust-Lichen growing on the concrete ledge beneath my window on the outside.
I've seen many different types of Lichen all around. Yellow crests, Grey Crests, Red Crests and some stem-like, leaflike ones as well.

If only I had a friend who owned a Gas-Chromatography apperatus. :/

Oh Looky What I found!
The IAMSHAMAN-online shop sells a Lichen it claims to be Psychedelic:
Check it out.
Anything to back that up?

@ Banana Foreskin; Google Chrome has a Translation program. I know it can translate Hebrew to Dutch. Perhaps it can also Translate Icelandic to English.
Any idea on how to find Icelandic sites relating to Psycho Active Lichen?
 
this will be a difficult task. finding out wich lichen is the "Holy Grail"

Consider this.... . . . . .. .

there are more than 25,000 different species of lichen on earth.

there are 1,700 different species in Britain alone.

I have spent quite a bit of time around the artic circle.... Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, Northern Quebec, Russia, Finland, and Norway. One of the things that stick out in my mind about those areas is the abundance of lichen. Lichen is the predominant species of life in the far nothern and southern parts of the globe. Sparsley poulated parts of Earth.

Getting info may prove to be very difficult.

Finding lichen is simple. Look closely on most any roof top on earth, no matter what its made of..... wood, metal, masonry.

There are very few poisonous varieties of lichen and many edible species.
 
I think the trick here would be learning to ID the poisonous ones, as well as their characteristics.
Then try to stick with lichen that match the descriptions of ones used indiginously.
Start off low.

I have tripped in areas of my bioregion where I know natives in the past have as well. This has led me into a deep fascination with the natives that lived here.

When I read that article about the Pima and their lichen, something clicked. I've seen this stuff before. In a few months I will hunt for it, and report any findings.

In the mean time I'll be studying toxicity of lichen.
 
۩ said:
An unidentified saxicolous lichen was called Jievut hiawsik [lit. "Earth flower"] by the Pima of California. It was used as a good luck charm, and it was smoked for its narcotic effect (Curtin 1949)."
http://www.bluelight.ru/...showthread.php?t=519823
Click to expand...

I found this here:

LICHEN
Common name: Lichen on stones
Pima name: Jievut hiawsik

As no specimens could be procured, I was unable to obtain the botanical identification of lichen. However, I learned that "earth flower" is the translation of both the Pima and the Papago name.

Mary Manuel introduced the subject by saying: "Men know more about this than I. The Pima men gather jievut hiawsik and carry it in their pockets to bring luck in killing game. The Maricopa are too superstitious to do that, for they fear if they carry the plant about too much, it will make them sick."
This lichen, which has a strong odor, is the color of grey ashes and grows on rocks and dead wood in certain spots on the hills. It has more religious meaning than any other plant, and is smoked, mixed with tobacco, at the summer dances, when its distinctive odor is noticeable. Like marihuana, the smoking of jievut hiawsik "makes young men crazy." "The Pima believe that if they smoke this lichen they can get any woman they want, but this is just a superstition," explained George Webb.

Isaac Howard described "earth flower" as being "reddish and white and different colors, and smells like violets." He says the lichen is ground into a powder which is not bound on sores or cuts, as it would produce blisters, but is sprinkled on the affected parts. Isaac told of a case where a girl, struck by a rattlesnake, was taken to a hospital and the wound was lanced by a doctor. As it did not heal, she returned home and my informant cured the wound by using the above remedy four times at intervals of several days. Another treatment, related by Mary Manuel, is to apply red coals, when the swelling begins, on wounds caused by snakes, scorpions, and black-widow spiders.
(Excerpt from: By the Prophet of the Earth: Ethnobotany of the Pima By L.S.M. Curtin. Chapter: "The plants and their uses")
Click to expand...
 
Wow this is fascinating! Going to be quoting from this link.

- First up alkaloids in lichen reacting with natural and abundant chemicals in the body to produce THC like effects.
A. Shulgin wrote about this in PIHKAL. The chemicals in some lichens can react with essential oils in some natural products (i think he used orange juice as the example) to make synthetic THC:

Ask Dr. Shulgin Online

ARCHIVE: April 2, 2001

THC and Lichens

Dear Dr. Shulgin:

In PIHKAL you have mentioned that the chemicals obtained from lichens can easily be brought to react with certain essential oils from natural sources, to make synthetic tetrahydrocannabinol. Are there more detailed references to this process beyond what is in your book? –Tengu

Dear Tengu:

There certainly are! The tetrahydrocannabinol molecule from Cannabis can be viewed as a combination of two very different halves.

The right half (as the structure is usually drawn) resembles the nucleus of many of the substituted benzene-ring containing components found throughout the lichen world. Isolation of these products can give the raw materials that can be converted to the compound olivetol, a simple amyl-substituted resorcinol compound.

The left half is a terpene which contains ten carbon atoms, and which is substantially identical to the essential oil, pulegone. This component makes up some 80 to 90% of the Oil of Pennyroyal.

The fusion of these two materials has been shown (Claussen et al., Tetrahedron Vol. 24 p. 2879 (1968)), to produce several products, one of which is delta-3-THC. This is a close structural isomer of delta-9-THC, the principal active component of marijuana, and is known to be active in man.

-- Dr. Shulgin
Click to expand...

An unidentified pyrenocarpous lichen was used by the Denís of Amazonian Brazil as an recreational snuff (Prance 1972).
Click to expand...
An unidentified saxicolous lichen was called Jievut hiawsik [lit. "Earth flower"] by the Pima of California. It was used as a good luck charm, and it was smoked for its narcotic effect (Curtin 1949).
Click to expand...

This is very interesting. Apparently stronger than all of other known psychedelics such as mushrooms and DMT and peyote?? Hope this is a real, true account! It is from a 2006 issue of Vice Magazine.
"Stoned on Stones"

"It was the most intense hallucinogenic experience that I've ever had, and I've done every trip there is," says Icelandic writer Smari Einarsson. "DMT, peyote...you name it. We have these magic mushrooms here that grow wild. I've eaten those more times thank I can count. They cannot even come close to the effect of these rocks." Volcanic rocks, which cover the Icelandic landscape, have been getting local kids high for five years now, ever since a local artist did a performance piece called Rock Soup. Jon Sigmundson's art piece was meant to make a commentary on Icelanders' high standard of living, which he believes relies on taking for granted third-world suffering. He made rock soup, he said in a written statement, to "try and live on nothing." The serendiptous discovery he made is that these rocks get you fuggin' wasted.

It is actually the lichen that lives on the rocks that gets you off. You take a few stones, boil them in a pot of water, strain it all through a colander, and drink it down like tea. Some people add ginger and honey, but it has a nice taste undiluted. It's very earthy. People who have "taken stones," as it's called, share strikingly similar stories. "Trolls," says a young Icelandic girl who was interviewed at local Reykjavik bar Sirkus.She'll only give her first name, which is Essa. "Every time we do stones, we see the same group of trolls. They are no unkind, but they aren't overly friendly either," she says. "Mostly what they do is advise you. You always come away from a stones trip with a question that you had on your mind answered. You also the most vivd colors ever. It's like living in Fantasia!"

PAUL LUP-TZE"
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Wow! Thanks for bringing this to attention!

edit: Also found an identified psychoactive lichen!
A novel species of Dictyonema was used by the Waorani as a hallucinogen. They called the lichen Ne/ne/ndape/ and used it in shamanistic rituals (Davis and Yost 1983).
Click to expand...
ctyonema sp. HALLUCINOGEN Waorani
Area: Eastern Ecuador
Notes: last used ca. 1900, but formerly used in shamanistic ritual. Caused severe headaches and confusion. Very rare.
Davis, EW; Yost, JA. 1983. Novel hallucinogens from eastern Ecuador. Botanical Museum Leaflets (Peabody Museum) 29 (3): 291-295.
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This link has a section called "Uses of lichen by people" that lists a few snuffs and aphrodisiacs. Also some medicinal uses. Lots of them! Tons of incredible information on where lichens and peoples meet around the world -- super interesting.
 
I fully understand the issue of trying to identify psychoactive lichen when starting the search from scratch...

But the thing is, we don't HAVE to start the search from scratch. The Icelanders know which lichen they are ingesting! And given the article, doesn't it sound like the lichen contains some form of tryptamine?! Really, we just need to find more information from Iceland and there's the possibility of having uncovered an entirely new visionary hallucinogen...
 
Indeed. We need someone that speaks icelandic, or at least someone that could get in touch with someone that knows more about it. I am sure there are some of them on this forum.

On the subject of new psychoactive plants. Check this one out. Its a liverworth.
shredon entheogen.com said:
Very new to the forum, so please forgive any ignorance, general stupidity and misspellings. Anyhow:
A botany professor once old me (and a few other fellow students) how a friend of his once eat (he didn't say how much) Gymnocolea inflata, just to test out rumours that it might be used to induse vomiting. Why he wanted to try this out, I really don't know.
His friend then proceeded to have serious hallusinations.
Has anyone heard anything about something like this? Or psycoactive mosses at all?
They tried this (my prof. said), because it was a traditional cure among the naitive indians in North America.
Any thoughts?
- shred
Click to expand...
There is a bit more information on a norwegian forum. If there is anyone interested, I could dig up and translate some of it. Supposedly it is active in minute doses.
 
Very interesting, Dagger. I'd love to know whatever you can find out! Norwegian forums could be quite fruitful for this search! There are definitely communities on the web or otherwise contactable somewhere that have access to this information like it is nothing special. But how do we find them?

Randomly searching around for people from Iceland on drug related forums to possibly PM, I found the number and email of an Icelandic rehab facility. Surely if kids have been abusing it the rehab facilities are aware? Bet they're not too keen on handing out drugs for the rest of the world to use though, might be a little tricky to extract some information. Perhaps they can point me in the direction of a national college or something that does research into the issue.

I also found anecdotal evidence that the drug culture is somewhat underground and hidden in Iceland, and is biggest in Reykjavik, which happens to be where the rehab facility is from. This link contains the contact info (edit: and here is one, two, three, four more rehabs in Reykjavik). Does anyone have a good suggestion on how to go about contacting them? Typing up a letter and translating it through google would probably work failing all, but someone who spoke Icelandic or other common languages in Reykjavik (no idea what those would be) would be way more likely to succeed.
 
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