This paper seeks to emphasize what may be the most primary mode of altering consciousness in the ancient world: namely, the burning of substances for inhalation in enclosed areas. While there is abundant literature on archaic uses of entheogenic plants, the literature on psychoactive incenses is quite deficient. From the tents of nomadic tribes to the small meditation rooms of Taoist adepts, the smoldering fumes of plants and resins have been used to invoke and banish and for shamanic travels since humanity mastered fire. The text provides details of primary “incense cults” while highlighting some commonalities and shared influences when possible. Further speculation suggests that selective burning of certain substances, such as mercury and sulphur, may have contributed to their lasting use and veneration in alchemy from India and China to the Arabian and European protochemists. This article would have a companion online database for images and further examples of ingredients in various incenses from China to ancient Greece.
inhalants
Antiquity of the Use of New World Hallucinogens
A review of psychoactive plants known from archaeological contexts and artistic representations shows that their use has spanned centuries, continuing in places in Mexico and South America to the present day. The discovery of the unusual properties of these plants took place as part of the exploration of the physical milieu of the Western Hemisphere. That these plants must in some cases be made into infusions in order to be consumed reveals ancient enterprise in manipulating aspects of the environment. The surprising results obtained from treating psychoactive plants allowed their users to communicate more directly with the unseen world which they believed to exist.
It was the great German toxicologist Louis Lewin (1931) who wrote that “from the beginning of our knowledge of man, we find him consuming substances of no nutritive value, but taken for the sole purpose of producing for a certain time a feeling of contentment, ease and comfort.”
There is ample material proof that narcotics and other psychoactive plants, such as hallucinogens, were employed in many cultures in both hemispheres thousands of years ago. The material proof exists in some archaeological specimens of the plants in contexts indicating magico-religious use and in art forms such as paintings, rock carvings, golden amulets, ceramic artifacts, stone figurines, and monuments.