Editorial notes: This post was found in ‘Draft’ mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 12/05/2016
I first heard this story while smoking a thick reefer, bathing in a hot water spring in the interior of Fiji. I had travelled by cattle truck, foot and horse to arrive at this place. And it was good. I had long hair and was Israeli, so they called me Jesus.
Anyway, that was that. And there are many stories I could tell. But this particular story, this one, I heard again only recently.
I had smoked weed up and down the country, but I was never blown out of the water until I travelled south to where the Islanders and refugees of war were building their communities. That’s when I heard the story a second time. Since then I’ve seen signs and wonders… I’m not here to convince you. This is just a story I heard – a modern myth, and one that perhaps is not well known.
The story I heard twice is told under the heading “A story thrice told” (this being the third time). But I have supplemented it with research I have done. Most references are available through JSTOR and are listed below.
More echoes in the green smoke
Well before the Muslim assassins were to discover motivation in the green leaf, the Zoroastrian Aryans developed a highly technical mapping of the human psyche, referenced according to archetypal, theistic motifs. The great masters of that righteous and unforgiving age could (it was said) imprint their mind upon the sunlight or even a person’s name so that perceiving these things would always occur through the subtle modulation of their (i.e. the master’s) personality. The great Abu Yūsuf Yaʻqūb – student of Muḥammad ibn Ishaq, a student of the master Hassan-i Sabbah (the great, the terrible, the founder of the assassins) – is said to have cultivated and smoked hashish discovered growing in the remains of a Zoroastrian monastery. Only fragments of descriptions survive, the most potent of which reads:
They have marked their smoke with memories of their infidel beliefs (may the true lord punish them for all eternity). I have seen the shadow of Angra Mainyu in the spaces between my thoughts and between my dreams. It is a horror that consumes all faith.
That is the most convincing historical record. Other examples depend on evidence even more paltry. I list some here but any particular case should be held in scepticism.
- Eustathios Makrembolites’ The Story of Hysmine and Hysminia (1173) contains a dream sequence in which Odysseus is given incense to inhale by which he may “become witness to the gods of old whose followers imprinted their memory in the space between thoughts”.
- Jordanus de Severac in Mirabilia (1332) describes a herb that when smoked, reveals false gods as true
- Alfred de Musset in his draft (1826) translations of de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater describes visions of a Persian poet. Compare with Balzac’s diary entries in the second half of 1849.
- Butler Hospital records (most extensively in 1897-8) describe a patient Winfield Scott Lovecraft who claims to have developed a “clarifying sense for those things that should not be,” after visiting a Chinese smoke den five years earlier. Whether his son shared these experiences, communicated with his father, or mimicked them de novo is a matter of speculation.
Some more background for the next part:
- Cannabis was brought to Jamaica by indentured labourers from India.
- Editors note: More precisely, it was brought over by practitioners of a Jainist sect who likely believed that the soul of a prophet (a Tirthankara) was contained in the plant. The likelihood of this will depend on one’s opinion regarding the effects of hybridization, as will become clear below.
- The great Haile Selassie I, the son of God, visited Jamaica [in 1966] where he conducted a private meeting [including with the Rasta Mortimer Planno]. It was during this time that the “ceremony of the green echo” was conducted and the spirit of Haile Selassie inducted into a Marijuana seed. This seed was planted and grown with great care.
- Upon smoking a leaf from this lineage, Bob Marley [it is claimed] said that “The voice of the king speaks as the clouds that speak rain”.
- The story continues [becoming even vaguer] that some sects carry and nurture the descendent of this plant. That they smoke it to witness the battle of Zion and Babylon. And that non-believers who smoke it are convinced through visions of peace and destiny.
A story thrice told
An autobiographical epilogue
The guy obviously needed the money, but insisted that what I was buying was a “bastard seed”. He said it originated from Bob Marley’s own fields [unlikely], but back-bred with an ancient crop gifted to man by the Indian gods [unlikely].
