Semen of the Sun
A short story of my encounters with tryptamine containing plants of South America (A brief tryptamine primer)
The Virola Experience:
Oh my friend, have I got something to tell you. Last night as I was reading my copy of shulte's "The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens" my interest in Epena grew greatly. I have been working with various Virola species and preperations for the past 3 years with no success. I had acquired some fine powder which was said to be filtered virola resin. This stock floated around several capable individuals and finally ended up in Kevin Trouts hands who found it to not likely be virola resin. He sent it on over to me, and after applying various preperation methods to it, I too found it to be most likely powdered bark. Darn peruvians tried to fool us. Anyways thankfully a good friend of mine with some sexy connections somehow obtained a quantity of true resin. This beautiful sticky gum is reddish brown in color and bubbles up quickly when heated, producing a pleasant tasting smoke, which did not seem to have any psychoactivity.
I took a small glass evaporation dish and took a pinch of the resin, about the size of a pea, and sat it in the middle of the dish. Heat was gently applied to the glass with a lighter from underneath and the resin slowly boiled and bubbled up. No smoke was produced. The resin bubbled up and filled with air. I took a knife and pressed into the resin which quickly became hard. Using the knife, I began chopping the toasted resin up into a fine powder. I poured it out onto my copy of "The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens" formed a small line and turned off the television. My wife walked in as I was insufflating the semen of the sun. I gave her a quick heads up that I may be travelling to another world for awhile. Being use to this sort of thing, she gave me a confident nod and bid me farewell as I set off on the voyage.
At first, there was no pain in my sinuses but that was to come soon. After about one 15 seconds the strong tryptamine feeling was felt pulsing up and down my spine and into my brain. I couldn't help but arche my back and neck behind me and stare up at the ceiling. There was nothing that I would call a hallucination but my visual field seemed to be trying to form some strange patterns, although couldn't quite make out what I was seeing. The intensity of that pineal feeling grew greatly and soon every atom within my body began to pulsate with the energy of epena. I looked over at my wife, eyes rolling back in my head, and asked her how much time has passed. Only about one minute thirty seconds had passed. This level of intensity dominated the experience for probably another 5 minutes. Soon the pain began. My sinuses had just been raped and my face was paying for it. I spent the rest of the night, form here on out untill I fell asleep, trying to clear out my sinuses by snorting water and making some strange noises I never knew I was capable of making. After about 10 minutes the effects of the snuff had completely subsided besides the intense pain. When it was over I was certain that I had tasted of Epena.
Comparing the two
Epena is much different in effect than cebil. Cebil has more of a punched in the face feeling due to the raising of the blood pressure. I sort of visualize the cebil experience as the Hekula Spirit standing in front of me, and as I snort the calcinated seed mix, he puts on his psychedelic boxing gloves and punches my in the pineal gland. After the initial pain of the yopo intoxication, you begin to see colorfull splotches, very much like what you see after being punched in the face. Yopo is very easy to prepare, which took me nearly 2 1/2 years to perfect the preperation method. If it wasn't for sites like Erowid and the message boards, I may have never learned to unlock the secrets of the anadenanthera snuff.
Working with cebil
The tedious task of peeling the shells off of the seeds can become trance like. After cracking and peeling the seed coats, the seeds are heated and voided of water. (this may also be done prior to peeling, which makes the task a bit easier) The act of toasting the seeds teaches us that the Yopo Using Oronico Natives had an understanding of chemistry as the tryptamine are not water soluble, thus removing some of the impurities of the seed. The seeds may be toasted on a stove top in a frying pan, which sometimes results in loosing some seeds as they pop and fly out of the pan. They can also be toasted in a toaster oven, which is what I prefer.
The seeds are then powdered in a mortar and pestle and weighed out. I usually weigh out 400mg of the toasted seed powder. Next 1/4th Calcium Oxide is mixed in with the seeds, which would be 100mg edible lime. I have heard of natives using toasted sweet potato peels as an alternative to lime. The act of basifying it like this makes it more soluble in our sinuses. My Argentine friend informed me that this basified snuff is also soluble in the mucus membranes of our mouth, between the cheek and gum, which is suppost to produce intense effects similiar to insnufflating it. For me, a usual dose of the cebil snuff is about 75mg, while my fellow explorers have been known to snort several 200mg lines during a single session. When people began to report on the act of smoking the seeds producing "psychedelic" effects, I was a bit disinterested and unconvinced. I very much doubted that it would produce any such effect and that it was a sort of half assed way of utilizing the seeds, as the true believers would suffer through the pain of insufflation. However, after doing a bit more research on the traditional consumption methods I had learned how even the natives administrated cebil via this method. I found it interesting too that in Plants of the Gods the seeds of colubrina are reportedly "used as an additive for beer." then stated "Primarily they are used in shamanism", which would seem to indicate that shamans utilized vilca by adding it to beer. I have yet to hear reports of this method.
Extracts
Alcohol extracts of the deshelled seeds may be easily made by powdering the seeds and soaking in etoh. I also heat this solution up (by placing in a double boiler) in hopes of possibly pulling a bit more of the tryptamine alkaloids from the seeds. After heating the solution, filter the solution via a gravity filter to remove the solids then evaporate it in a pyrex dish. A second pull was attempted but yielded only a clear looking liquid, suggesting most of the components were extracted the first time around. If one wishes to extract the alkaloids with an acidic solution be certain to rebasify the solution afterwards (I would assume after removing the fats and inactive components, possibly with naptha) to convert the solution into its freebase form. The salts require higher temperatures to vaporize however the base has a lower point and can easily be vaporized in a glass pipe.
Making a Vaporizer for your yopo resin
A glass vaporizer pipe with a mouth piece can easily be made from a glass eye dropper. Take the rubber bulb and stab a hole in the very tip of it. Now slide the tip of the bulb over the business end of the dropper. A filter can be made by using a scouring pad, but be sure to heat it to remove any toxic residues first. Simply push the filter into the large open end where the bulb once was and place your lips over the rubber bulb mouth piece. This is a very effective pipe as it keeps your lips from being burned while smoking the extract.
Toad Venom and Bufotenine
Epena had always interested me more so than yopo due to its lower Bufotenine content, as I am not a big fan of that ever-so-painfull drug bufotenine. The toxic venom of bufo alvarius contains alkaloid concentrations very similiar cebil and epena. The glands of a healthy happy mature toad can be gently squezed from the sides, like popping a zit, and squirted onto a glass collection plate. Once dried the venom can be scraped up and stored in a glass vile. The venom dries into a very fine crystalline sparkly powder. A small amount of the venom can be placed into the glass vaporizer pipe resulting in a very powerful spiritual experience. My first time smoking TV (Toad Venom) I was at home, sitting in my dimly lit living room in a comfortable chair. I layed back in the chair and had turned on the lamp which was directly over my head. I slowly breathed in the smoke of the vaporized TV, which strangley tasted very much like a toad. I found this observation to be rather funny but refrained from giving way to laughter and folly to remain in a respectful and sacred mind set. The effects came on quickly and it was very much like what I expected. The experience was void of visual hallucinations but that was simply not an issue as the profound concepts and understandings gained from it far outweigh the experience of hallucinations.
TV = GOD?
I recalled the feelings I felt during my youth experiences of worshipping Jesus. I was impressed with the nearly identical feelings in my body that where produced during what I recall as being divine spiritual awakenings. The act of singing in harmony, with a congregation of 300 other individuals, all there for the same purpose is a pretty powerful experience and can easily result in altered states of mind. I now understand that what I experienced during my "Spiritual Awakening" was a huge increase of these psychedelic indogenous neurotransmitters. Anyways, back to the experience of TV. As I reclined back in my chair with my eyes closed, the love of God filled my entire being and a huge smile quickly spanned my entire face. It had been years since I felt that divine love and it sparked an interest in exploring my spiritually once again. I recall looking up and visualizing the lamp above me as the light and love of God, feeling a warmth engulf my body like a blanket of bliss covering me on a cold winter day.
Sharing the Gospel
Immediatelly after the experience of Toad Venom I was very excited and filled with motivated energy. I felt as though I had recalled my purpose and reason for living. It is rather humorous that smoking something that looks like cum and came out of a toads back is the very thing that made me feel this way. I went next door to visit my friend, who was my business partner at that time, and spread to him the truth that had just been revealed to me. With him was the man who would later become my mentor and spiritual advisor. I told them of the experience, as they where anxious to hear the results. They became fixated on this substance and repeated the experience themselves.
The story of a hardhead: natural tolerance
Strangely my brother-in-law, who is rather hard headed to tryptamine, had tried TV on numerous occasions with absolutely no results. He is very capable of smoking and retaining it in his lungs, which he did for some time, then took another hit and another. Yet he felt nothing and had absolutely no appearant behavoiral changes. He seems to have a resistance to the effects of psilocybe mushrooms as well. Two grams of dried cubes, which would normally be a very nice dose for me, has no effect on him. Seven Argyreia nervosa seeds, powdered and consumed in a gel cap had no effect on him, while seeds from the same stock produced a 12 hour psychedelic experience in me. 50 Rivea corymbosa seeds, which I had prior confirmed to be an effective dose, had no effect on him. His sister, who is my wife, seems to have no natural tolerance to tryptamine like he does. She responds to normal doses of tryptamine psychedelics in the expected way.
This natural tolerance indicates that his neurochemistry differs greatly to that of most others. He claims that throughout his life he has not had any sort spiritual experiences nor has he ever had much interest in spirituality. He does not believe in God or any other diety although he is a very creative and artistic individual. Does this spiritual void and apathy result in a natural tolerance to the very chemical, dimethyltryptamine, that is thought to be the origin of spiritual experience? Are those who do not believe in the soul or anything else outside of their understanding of reality less capable of having a psychedelic experience? Does the lack of spirituality during a lifetime result in the under/over development of receptor sites in the pineal gland? Or is it that the genetic make-up of some individuals prevent them from experience divine states of mind whether induced through spirituality or with psychedelics?
For some time it was a goal of mine to see a psychedelic experience result in some form of spiritual curiosity or pondering of existance. However, that can be rather difficult if he is appearantly not capable of having a tryptamine induced psychedelic experience. The more time I spend observing his behavior the more I am starting to notice that he expresses spirituality through untraditional means. His sister and I had a rough time during the first few years of our marriage because her way of expressing "love" is completely different than mine, due to the way our parents had raised us. We both had to learn to adapt and learn to express our feelings in ways the other could interpret. The same thing is true with her brother and spirituality. When he smokes pot he often spends the majority of his high playing the guitar and drawing. Creativity is his form of spirituality and experiencing alternate realities.
Go Back To Essays Section.