thank you for your rigor Beloved hermano 
worth every second of it 
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Some more on cannabis as a psychedelic medicine. This is an interview with Becca Williams who is offering a course on this through the Shift Network. She combines cannabis with pranayama and mudras as a way to do emotional healing of old trauma. This is an interesting interview that included guided meditations and breathwork. It’s also partly an ad for her upcoming course through the Shift Network, so just listen to whatever parts interest you. The interview starts after the first 15 minutes.
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And orgies…:
" The Bacchanalia were unofficial, privately funded popular Roman festivals of Bacchus, based on various ecstatic elements of the Greek Dionysia. They were almost certainly associated with Rome’s native cult of Liber, and probably arrived in Rome itself around 200 BC. Like all mystery religions of the ancient world, very little is known of their rites. They seem to have been popular and well-organised throughout the central and southern Italian peninsula.[1][2]
Livy, writing some 200 years after the event, offers a scandalized and extremely colourful account of the Bacchanalia, with frenzied rites, sexually violent initiations of both sexes, all ages and all social classes; he represents the cult as a murderous instrument of conspiracy against the state. Livy claims that seven thousand cult leaders and followers were arrested, and that most were executed. Livy believed the Bacchanalia scandal to be one of several indications of Rome’s inexorable moral decay. Modern scholars take a skeptical approach to Livy’s allegations.[1]
The cult was not banned. Senatorial legislation to reform the Bacchanalia in 186 BC attempted to control their size, organisation, and priesthoods, under threat of the death penalty. This may have been motivated less by the kind of lurid and dramatic rumours that Livy describes than by the Senate’s determination to assert its civil, moral and religious authority over Rome and its allies, after the prolonged social, political and military crisis of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC). The reformed Bacchanalia rites may have been merged with the Liberalia festival. Bacchus, Liber and Dionysus became virtually interchangeable from the late Republican era (133 BC and onward), and their mystery cults persisted well into the Principate of the Roman Imperial era."
The less carnal of these activies and more spritual associations of revelry in the ancient world were more likely tired to the god Apollo:
(Book 1 gives an example of how they appeased the gods wrath with festivals, singing, food and wine):
Full book here:
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Thank you!
I do not smoke at all in “real life” just on festivals.
Not even socially. So I am always on break because I just do not like how it makes me feel afterwards and my meditation is not as sharp.
I however do believe in its medicinal qualities and used it in a medicinal way before.
I also think different from from smoking is better for that!
I have never tried meditating on cannabis, for me somehow it sounds counterintuitive (as for me cannabis clouds the mind) but I will definitely look into the resources you shared above!
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Many of the Shiva Yogis use ganja as their sacramental plant medicine.
This mentions the mythology that Cannabis came from drops of poison that were transmuted by Shiva.
I’ve also heard that it is easy to get Bhang, which is like a cannabis milkshake, in India. Bhang is also drunk at Sufi festivals in Pakistan.
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This I think is the best way to do it, very infrequently, or not at all.
The second time I did it, out in nature and alone, gave me a really mind blowing experience. I did it as a thank you to the Ancestors who lived on the land, and had shown me such a beautiful camping trip. Long story short, my mind was blown by the events that followed:
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Did not know about this.
Sounds delicious. I thought Muslims were forbidden to smoke or use alcohol?
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The Sufis seem to be looser about cannabis than other more Orthodox Muslims. I have an American Sufi friend who has spent time in Sufi ceremonies in Turkey. He said that in the evenings after the ceremonies, many of them would sit around and smoke hash and socialize. This was not spiritual or ceremonial use but social use. But they are still strict about alcohol. They seem to recognize that alcohol is the more dangerous drug (much different than Western views on this).
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Cannabis Bhang used in a religious festival in Pakistan.
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Agreed
Very interesting, thank you for letting me know this.
I know at least 2 Muslims who drink occasionally, but would not consider them strict practitioners of the faith.
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Yeah they’re “Jack Muslims” . . . kind of like “Jack Mormons” 
Also Rumi frequently uses the metaphor of being intoxicated with wine as a metaphor for being intoxicated with the Divine. Makes me wonder if he had any direct experience with alcohol intoxication?
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You are right on this
Would not shock me.
Rumi may have been a Christian or Jew before he converted to Muslim, then Sufi, who knows???
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Much prefer the LIGHT ‘Hangover’ from this
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He was born into a Muslim culture in Persia, in a region that is now part of Afghanistan. He later moved to Turkey. During that time period in Turkey there was a lot of close friendship and exchange of ideas between Sufi Muslims and Christian and Jewish mystics. If he was a devout Muslim, it’s unlikely that he actually tried wine, but who knows? He definitely heard about it and used it a lot as a metaphor.
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Interesting. Yes, Donovan came out of the folk scene whereas the Beatles came out of Rock’n Roll, so their guitar techniques were quite different. And yeah, interesting how the Beatles became more acoustic after this. Donovan has stuck with his TM practice to this day. Lennon I believe went back to a phase of heavy LSD use for a bit, he eventually even got addicted to heroin. Check out his song “Cold Turkey” about the agony of opioid withdrawal. George went from TM to the Bhakti path of the Hare Krishna movement.
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Lord Shiva smoking ganja.
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thank you for sharing!
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