THE POISON PATH II


With the very poison, a little of which would kill any other being, a man who understands poison would dispel another poison.
— Hevajra Tantra
The Sanskrit for "poison" is visam. In Buddhism, three poisons form the hub of
the Wheel of Life: kama-raga, "desire," or "greed," depicted as a red cock;
a grasping quality: reaching out, to attain: meristematic shoots after light,fungal hyphae seeking nourishment;
or hanging on, grasping backwards, clinging.
dvesa, "hatred" or "aversion," a green snake; and moha, "ignorance," "folly," "delusion," represented as a black hog. They chase each other and bite each others tails. Each poison is dependent on the others, and the whole cycle of birth and death is dependent upon them.
the snake's tongue flicking, smell is tasting the air, repellents
as important as attractants: amines of corruption, pheromones of disease,
bitterness in leaves
In rain-forest canopies the trees avoid each other: branches of each tree filling in just up to the others, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but a little space between, just
enough to foil crawling insects.
Some say the black hog is the mother of the other two; others disagree, saying that greed and hatred are equally fundamental.
Some say that all sentient beings can obtain buddhahood; others are less charitable,
as much as charity has anything to do with the veracity of spiritual laws.

What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon Poet
-John Keats, letter to Woodhouse, 1818 (in Dun 1970)


The Poison Path is the narrow way, the twisting path, or no path at all. You could make it, O Nobly Born, you just might survive, yes, but who could follow you? Better to send them down the big road, well trodden and paved; this Poison Path is no shortcut. The Poison Path is best suited to tricksters and magicians who, if
the stories are to be believed, come back to life after getting killed.
A special transmission outside the scriptures.
Poisonous dharma, poisonous datura, why be surprised that they grow together? A poison-filled cobra, what's he hiding? Medicines and powers, oak tree in the yard, a turtle-nosed snake.
Even today, right here, people are losing their lives, bitten by this snake.
— Hekigan Roku, The Blue Cliff Record

The poison becomes pervasive, and poisons the path itself.

Socrates compares the written texts Phaedrus has brought along to a PHARMAKON: a "drug"or"medicine," a filter which acts as both remedy and poison. . . . This charm, this spellbinding virtue, this power of fascination can be alternately or simultaneously — beneficent or maleficent. . . . Operating through seduction, the
P H A R M A K O N makes one stray from one's general, natural, habitual paths and laws.
-Jacques Derrida, Plato's Pharmacy

The primary poison is the Word — the Pharmakos — the one who stands-in-for. All other poisons function through this one, the signifying poison. Signifying monkey. Jesus should have been stoned, not crucified.

Pharmakos also meant "poisoner," and "sorcerer," and "magician." Plato banned the pharmakeus, the shaman, from his Republic in 480 B C . The Chinese kicked the shaman out of the government in the first century, along with her whole family.
Standing-in-for, the Logos. Morphine wearing the mask of endorphin, tetra- hydrocannabinol dressed up like anandamide. Molecules standing in for stimuli: sensation symbolized on the cortex, rhodopsin a metaphor of light. Intellect is mediated and mediator, a mapping of pattern to patterns of ions, ratio, concentration of amines, layers of neurotransmitters themselves in flux, charged and shaped by emotion and memory. Mind acts it out, moves moun- tains, changes its own environment, altering the very reactions that led to the alteration.
and that's a good trick
Patterns, likeness of pattern, and some analogous likeness of likeness: the swelling of sound in adagio and its neuronal reflection. The great bead game, poetry is poison — echoes of phonemes, ghosts standing in for ghosts.
Poson as defilement: klesa, the ten deffilements, the seven deadly sins, the speck of dust that spoils the immaculate mirror, Alaya, the "Store-Consciousness." The fly in the ointment is Beelzebub.
In the Lankavatara Sutra the klesa is an uninvited guest, the one who doesn't fit in or belong, Dionysus, perhaps, or a furry critter with pointy ears, Coyote, or maybe two gods, wandering together among mortals, disguised.
If the Tathagata-garbha or Alaya-vignana were not a mysterious mixture of purity and defilement, good and evil, this abrupt transformation (paravritti) of an entire personality would be an impossibility. That is to say, if the Garbha or the Alaya while absolutely neutral and colourless in itself did not yet harbour in itself a certain irrationality, no sentient beings would ever be a
Buddha, no enlightenment would be experienced by any human beings.
- D.T. Suzuki, The Lankavatara Sutra
The Alaya is the Ally.

The defilements are graffiti on the white wall of the Great Warehouse. Or maybe the storehouse walls are transparent, and the apparent graffiti our discrimination, itself the coloring — pigments, makeup — Empedocles' cunning artist mixing and applying his polychromatic pharmaka to votive offerings, creating men and women and trees. The Creator made the World from poisons.
Krankheit ist wohl der letzte Grund Des ganzen Schopferdrangs gewesen; Erschaffend konnte ich genesen, Erschaffend wurde ich gesund.
Disease at bottom brought about Creative urgence for, creating I soon could feel the pain abating, Creating, I could work it out.
— Heinrich Heine (in Freud, "On Narcissism")
There is no point to calling that defined as impure as being pure, or is there? "All the intrinsically pure defilements." All co-created, co-dependent impurities of thought and brain, flying at us like angels, or emerging from their own arising: a leaf, a horn, a dream, a voice that passed and dropped a word.
We are not trying to say that they are nice, these poisons, but "nice" is a relative, not a god.
Poison eyes, poison ears, poison songs: dreams within a dream.

We hope we have not poisoned the world in vain.

The intent of our teaching is like a poison-smeared drum. Once it is
beaten, those who hear it, near and far, all perish. That those who hear it perish is surely true. But what about the deaf?
- Zen Master Shiqi Xinyue, "Stone River" (in Cleary 1990)


DALE PENDELL


excerpt from "Pharmako Poeia- Plant Powers, Poisons and Herbcraft"

E U P H O R IC A

Approach the God of Dreams with sword drawn.

The First Doctor was a woman wise and compassionate. Because of her skill, her receptivity, her strength,and her integrity, the gods looked upon her with favor.
The First Doctor had many patients, but few medicines. She had songs, she had cereals, but the terrible cries of her patients drove her into the mountains seeking a vision of power.
In the mountains she fasted, then ate. Sang, then was quiet. She waited, she lived alone in the mountains. She met the animals, and then she met the plants.
And the gods — the spirits of the earth, the spirit of the sky, the spirits of the plants and the animals and the spirits of her ancestors — pleased with her, granted her a wish.
Briefly, the First Doctor considered. There were so many things for which one might ask: power, sustenance, energy, vision, love.
"You may have whatever you wish," the gods repeated, "from the least to the greatest."
"Then, O Gods, give me that medicine that cures pain, the medicine that eases suffering."
And the gods responded. They gave her the opium poppy, and they told her she had chosen wisely.
"After food," they told her, "this plant is our greatest gift. Use it wisely and unselfishly. It is never wrong to ease the suffering of those who do not know the secret. But remember, for yourself, who are a doctor, this plant shall ever be a poison."

The danger is smoking as a defense against some moral disequilibrium. Then it is difficult to approach the drug in the way it must be approached, as wild beasts should be approached — without fear.
-Jean Cocteau, Opium: Diary of a Cure

Wine robs a man of his self-possession: opium sustains and reinforces it . . . wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance; and, beyond a certain point, it is sure to volatilize and to disperse the intellectual energies; whereas opium always seems to compose what had been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted.
— Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

Alcohol provokes fits of madness. Opium provokes fits of wisdom
—Jean Cocteau

Opium: Diary of a Cure


Euphoria is a middle child, born between consciousness and sleep. It is a condition of peace and well-being, like that which follows orgasm, and not everyone reacts to it the same way. Some are entranced by the radical stillness, and lie unmoving, without thoughts. Others are so glad to be freed from the rude pushing and shoving of desire that they take advantage of their reprieve and set about finishing some piece of work. Some just let their minds drift, half awake, half dreaming, and let the yearning visions try to coax their souls up from the somatic twilight of their bodies.

Perhaps we desire death: or why is poison so sweet? Why do the little Sirens
Make kindlier music, for a man caught in the net of the world Between news-cast and work-desk, — The little chirping Sirens, alcohol, amusement, opiates, And the carefully sterilized lust, —
Than the angels of life?
— Robinson Jeffers, "Sirens"

the Ally: Like Mayakovsky, we play Russian roulette. That is why luck is so vitally important.

Pain is the first teacher we deny.


DALE PENDELL


excerpt from "Pharmako Poeia- Plant Powers, Poisons and Herbcraft"

THE POISON PATH I

For instance, one man will have faith enough to eat all kinds of food, while a weaker man eats only vegetables.
The man who eats must not hold in contempt the man who does not, and he who does not eat must not pass
judgement on the one who does; for God has accepted him. . . .

Let us therefore cease judging one another, but rather make this simple judgement: that no obstacle or stumbling-block be placed in a brother's way.
I am absolutely convinced, as a Christian, that nothing is impure in itself; only, if a man considers a particular thing impure, then to him it is impure. . . .
What for you is a good thing must not become an occasion for slanderous talk; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but justice, peace, and joy, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
— Rom 14:2—3, 13—14, 16—17


The matter of the stumbling brother is the cross of the Poison Path: on this trope turn the intersecting greater and lesser vehicles, the right-hand path and the left. Skilled poisoners avoid ruin, but in the struggle for "justice, peace, and joy" in the Kali Yuga, ruin may come on her own wings. And the Ten of Swords most readily approaches those who are unlucky.

How can you tell if you are lucky or unlucky? This is most important. If you are not lucky, you will surely stumble. Then the lucky ones must share the guilt. The question of the stumbling brother is relevant to the debate about legalization of crack cocaine and the possible "devastation of the Black community" that might result (as if the Black community were not al- ready devastated by the current illegality of crack). Relevant, that's all. But we stray.

How can you tell if you are lucky? In his letter to the Romans, Paul is clear that he has two teachings, that there is an exoteric path and that there is an esoteric path. He states unambiguously that he knows that all substances are by nature pure, that Jesus told him so. The issue then is stumbling. Another's stumbling. An- other who does not understand that all substances are pure. And since our way is the eclectic path of the magicians, we will step over the scores of stumbled bodies that accomplished poisoners such as Aleister Crowley leave in their wake, and toss off a couple of obstacles of our own.

You can tell if someone is lucky by their marks. Scars are particularly revealing. Even the lucky have close calls. But how did the wound heal over? Is the person in question marked for calamity? Or for ruin? The same way that some people bear the marks of survival, others are marked for ruin and failure — it is written on them. And I don't mean in any fatalistic sense, but writ by pattern.

Never share poisons with the unlucky. And, as Nelson Algren said, don't sleep with them, either.

Best for all that they never hear a word about poisons. Or about power. Or about Paul. If they do, later, well, you know the rest . . .

The danger, of course, is that you who are reading this consider yourself, ipso facto, one of the lucky.



DALE PENDELL


excerpt from "Pharmako Poeia- Plant Powers, Poisons and Herbcraft"