Pharmako/Dynamis: Stimulating Plants, Potions and Herbcraft

Rating:
Summary: the way to go
Review: a wonderfully creative book - in design and content. This incredible, magical book was obviously formed from an amazing mind who looked beyond normal book requirements and envisioned something that would satisfy (like the subject matter) beyond expectations.

Bravo to the author, publisher and designer for an all-around spectacular work.

Rating:
Summary: The whole Pharmako series is worth reading
Review: Dale Pendell's "Pharmako" series is an excellent resource for those interested in the relation of human cultures to plants, especially plants with consciousness-changing properties. The author devotes sections to each of a wide array of different plants, as well as sections dealing tangentially with aspects of the "Poison Path". One of the most refreshing aspects of the series is the way it deals with the whole spectrum of these plants - coffee, chocolate, marijuana, opium, tobacco, wine and beer, cocaine, and many others, on the same footing. One of the few other books to take this perspective - Terrence McKenna's "Food of the Gods" - is also well worth reading, but is shorter, deals with a narrower range of "allies", and lacks some of the poetic and stylistic verve of Dale Pendell's books.

Another comparison - to Hoffmann and Schultes' "Plants of the Gods" is in order, as both have encyclopaedic range, but the Pharmako series takes a more integrated viewpoint, and (again) is longer. When the series is complete (with Pharmako/Gnosis) I expect it to be one of the fullest and most useful references on this fascinating subject.

One feature which recommends this series is the variety of perspectives which the subsections of each chapter bring to each plant: we learn about botany, about pharmacology, history, religious uses, personal views of the effects, poetic odes, esoteric commentary, and more. The author takes seriously the question of how to report on plants whose effects involve changes in consciousness: he lets the narrative voice reflect some of the kinds of awareness associated to each (one reason the book on stimulants ended up being so long that the two-book series turned into a three-book series!)

If you interest in these plants is scientific, historical, religious, or whatever else, you'll surely find facets of this multi-sided work that appeal - and you may discover an interest in the others. If you merely want to see an innovative kind of reportage, you may even discover an interest in the subject.

Warmly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Stimulating plants....
Review: Since my own interests include gardening, herbs, plant poisons, and natural pharmaceuticals such as caffeine, I quickly decided Dale Pendell's PHARMAKO-DYNAMIS and PHARMAKO-POEIA were must-read books for me. These books are also for historians, drug counselors, people who write laws associated with drug use, those concerned with the impoverishment of countries invaded by world-based industrialized corporations, and drug users. Think you aren't a drug user? Other than tea, coffee, chocolate, wine, beer, the paregoric my mother fed me as a child, and the aether and morphine I ingested at different times as a hospital patient, neither am I. Incidentally, paregoric and morphine are related to opium and it's offspring heroin.

Pendell suggests the reader can begin anywhere in either of his two books and arrive at the same place. I read the sections that interested me most and then backfilled. I ended up reading all of PHARMAKO-DYNAMIS (the second volume) first. This volume includes essays on coffee, tea, chocolate, kola, betel, Ma Huang (Ephedera), Khat, Coca, and Nutmeg. Nutmeg?? Yes, nutmeg is a "drug" or herb of choice for some. You probably knew the poppy seeds on your bagel could lead to a positive on a drug test, but you might not have known that nutmeg in the proper doses could lead to euphoria, delirious visions, or headaches. Pendell says he prefers his nutmeg in eggnog.

Pendell writes provocatively, " Billions of dollars are spent to keep adults from having access to methamphetamines, while Adderall (amphetamine) and Ritalin (methylphenidate) are widely prescribed for children." Many of the plants with "suspect" pharmaceutical uses have been cultivated for thousands of years. Coca has been around for five to seven thousand years, and until the drug czars cracked down, it was an ingredient in Coca-Cola. The soft drink no longer includes it's namesake, but devotees can find the real stuff without a great deal of difficulty. Pendell characterizes the attempt by governments to control "drugs" as a continuation of the 19th Century Spice Wars, and more or less an unmitigated disaster (and given the recent news the Columbian drug lords may have links to terrorism, one must be concerned about this).

My favorite drug, or drug of choice is tea (Camilla Sinensis). Fortunately, all sorts of benefits are associated with tea drinking. Another favorite is cacoa, a favorite drink of shamans and Goethe, who had a life-long interest in both the drink and the mysticism. Goethe once wrote..."Four epochs of the sciences: childlike, poetic, superstitious; empirical, investigative, curious; dogmatic, didactic, pedantic; and ideal, methodical, mystical." Pendell covers each with the plant substances he explores.