Wednesday evening at 21 pm on our YouTube channel we will have the pleasure of having a guest George Samorini, internationally renowned ethnobotanist, for the presentation of the Italian edition of "Plants of the godsโ, The historic text on sacred and psychotropic plants by Albert Hofmann, Richard Schultes and Christian Ratsch, recently published in Italy, in a collector's edition, by Venexia Editrice, which will also attend the meeting.
ABSTRACT:
โPlants of the gods. Their sacred, healing and hallucinogenic powers โby Albert Hofmann, Christian Ratsch and Richard Evans Schultes (Venexia, 2021), the result of the synergistic work of three scientific titans, is rightly considered a basic text in the field of psychotropic plants. It provides a fundamental testimony on the "plants of the gods", retracing the path of their use and their contribution to culture. In traditions around the world, plants have always played an important role thanks to their nourishing, healing and transforming properties. In particular, the most powerful ones transport the human mind to other dimensions of consciousness and have always been considered sacred. In this volume, the authors illustrate the use of hallucinogens in shamanic rituals, along with detailed explanations of plant biochemistry and the prayers, dances, and sacred songs with which they are associated. The text of this botanical encyclopedia is accompanied by 400 color photos of plants, people, ceremonies and art related to the ritual use of the world's psychoactive flora. We will have the opportunity to discuss it in the company of Giorgio Samorini, an internationally renowned ethnobotanist, and Venexia Editrice.
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GIORGIO SAMORINI
He was co-founder (1991) and president (1995-1997) of the Italian Society for the Study of States of Consciousness, based at the Civic Museum of Rovereto. In 1997 he founded and directed, together with the botanist Francesco Festi, the Eleusis magazine. Psiocoactive Plants and Compounds, published by the Civic Museum of Rovereto. He has published articles in various Italian and foreign scientific journals, including Annali Museo Civico Rovereto, Bulletin Camuno Prehistoric Studies, African Archeology, Drug Addiction Medicine, Mycology Pages, Archives of Indo-Mediterranean Studies, Acta Phytotherapeutica, International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, Jahrbuch fรผr Ethnomedizine, Journal of Psychedelic Studies. Among his researches, we recall those carried out in Tassili (Sahara, Algeria), where in 1988-89 he studied prehistoric rock paintings, hypothesizing the existence of an ancient religious cult based on the use of psychoactive mushrooms, among the relative population to the pictorial phase called the โRound Headsโ, dated to 9.000-7.000 years ago. In 1994, in Kerala (South India) he studied particular megalithic finds, called kuda kallu (umbrella stones), dated between 1000 BC and 100 AD, identifying them as symbolic effigies of hallucinogenic mushrooms formerly used by those megalithic populations for religious purposes. In the years 1990-1999, in Gabon, in some Fang communities, he studied the religious cult of Bwiti, based on the use of the hallucinogenic iboga plant (Tabernanthe iboga Baill., Apocynaceae), and in 1993 he underwent the hard rite of initiation buitista (tobe si). In 1996 he brought to the attention of the scientific community a set of historical medical documents that highlighted a forgotten glimpse of the history of Italian medicine of the XNUMXth century inherent to Indian hemp. He dealt with the hallucinogenic mushrooms present in the Italian territory, in particular by mapping the spread of Psilocybe semilanceata (Fr.) Quรฉl. (Strophariaceae), popularly called mushroom, and has studied the relationship of hallucinogenic plants and fungi with different ancient and medieval European cultures, with specific research on the ethnobotany of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In the period 2003-2006 he specialized in the identification and scientific interpretation of smart drugs. He has elaborated an informative compendium on the phenomenon of animals that take drugs in nature, collecting and summarizing data drawn from the various researches conducted by ethologists on this particular animal behavior; in the years 2000-2001 his researches had a wide coverage in the mass media. In his research he highlighted the importance of studying psychoactive drugs outside of merely problematic contexts, attributing the skills of the study of phenomenological aspects to a desired specific scientific discipline of a multidisciplinary nature, by the author called Science of Drugs, and inspired to the research work on โnervous foodsโ and on the desirability of a โScience of nervous foodsโ promoted in the nineteenth century by the Italian doctor Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1910).
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