Marihemp: Usage: Your Highness (Part 2 of 4)

Your Highness

Some Notes on Enjoying Marijuana

(Part 2 of 4) by Gary Stimeling

Drink It

The Sanskrit term bhang refers to the cheapest of the three major grades of cannabis in India, namely the unmanicured resinous female tops and small leaves. It also refers generally to all cannabis from Bengal (“bhang-land”), and specifically to hot or cold drinks made from the plant. Bhang residue has been found in pottery vessels from the Indus River valley dated to about 2700 B.C., but the beverage is undoubtedly far older than that. Lingam stones and other artifacts associated with the worship of Shiva, the patron god of cannabis, are known from the 6th millennium B.C. Today cups of bhang still are poured over lingam stones in sacrifice to Shiva. One of the oldest Hindu creation myths tells how the Indo-European god Vishnu lifted a curse pronounced by the earlier god Shiva upon the invaders by using a sacred mountain to churn “potent herbs” in a primeval ocean of milk in order to release the dew of life and turn it (the ocean) into a giant bowl of bhang. From this cannabinated sea emerged the whole world as we now know it.

There are dozens of recipes for bhang. Here, edited for modern readers, is the first one brought to the West. Popular among “Mahomedans of the better classes,” it was printed in the article “On the Preparation of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah,” in which William B. O’Shaughnessy, a physician of the British East India Company, introduced cannabis to European medicine [Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Bengal, 1838–1840; reprinted in Tod H. Mikuriya’s Marijuana: Medical Papers 1839–1972 (Medi-Comp Press, 2633 E. 27th St., Oakland CA, 1973)].

Wash 1¼ ounces (35 grams) of cannabis thoroughly in cold water to remove some of the bitter and nonpsychoactive water-soluble compounds. Dry it well. Rub and sift it to a fine powder, removing seeds and stems. Add it to a cup of full-fat milk diluted with a cup of water. Season to taste with dried ground melon and cucumber seeds, black pepper, and sugar. This may be taken cold or warmed. Just be careful not to let it boil, or the milk will curdle. Eat the grounds so as not to waste any THC. O’Shaughnessy says this serves two novices or one habitué, but if using prime buds from modern super-potent strains, it will do nicely for four or six. (For a hot tea version of bhang, see the Medical page.)

In India, bhang is sometimes prepared as a lassi, the wonderful yogurt shake that is made either tangy (with salt and cayenne, cumin, coriander, or other spices) or sweet (with sugar and some combination of cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, saffron, rose water, or other flavors). To do so, use full-fat yogurt, the kind with the cream on top. Here is a simple, effective, westernized milk shake from Adam Gottlieb’s Art and Science of Cooking with Cannabis (High Times / Level Press, 1974):

Remove seeds and stems from ½ ounce of marijuana and grind it to a powder. (As above, you may wish to soak it in cold water first.) Place the pot in a blender with a pint of half-and-half, and add 1 level teaspoon of lecithin granules. Blend for 2 minutes, then pour into a double boiler and heat gently for 10 minutes, being sure not to let it boil. While it’s heating, add two tablespoons of honey and stir to dissolve. Pour the mixture back into the blender and add ½ teaspoon vanilla extract. Cover and refrigerate several hours. Then mix briefly, pour into a glass, and serve with a straw. This recipe stones one or two people if the weed is average. If the material is especially good, you may double or triple the liquid for more servings.

Rub It In

About 650 B.C., an outcast Levite priest of Shiloh now known as E, the Elohist, wrote the scripture used in Israel. Some 200 years later, another priest named Ezra (Esdras in Hebrew), otherwise known as R, the Redactor (editor), cut and pasted it with other books as part of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, and Judges. In Exodus 30:23, E gives a recipe for holy anointing oil. (Quoted phrases are from the New English Bible).

Two parts by weight of myrrh and cassia to one part of cinnamon and “aromatic cane” (cannabis), to be steeped in olive oil and made as potent as possible “by the perfumer’s art.” (Myrrh is the fragrant healing resin of Commiphora species, also called balm of Gilead. Cassia, Cinnamomum cassia, is a tree whose aromatic inner bark is much like cinnamon.)

The priests were to anoint all parts of Yahweh’s shrine, the Tent of the Presence, with this oil, including all of the altars, lamps, incense burners, and other fixtures, thereby making them so holy that anything that so much as brushed against them immediately became the property of the priests. They were also to anoint their own heads with it, but, E warned, “It shall not be used for anointing the human body.” Moreover, this sacred oil was to be a priestly monopoly. Anyone else who used or duplicated it was to be disinherited. Asset forfeiture is an old game.

Cannabinoids, as well as essential oils from the other ingredients, would be absorbed into the bloodstream through the skin by such a practice. Some of the terpene (aroma molecule) precursors of the cannabinoids would also enter the brain directly via the olfactory nerve, enhancing the oil’s psychoactivity.

Olive oil in the lands around the Mediterranean, and ghee in India, were essential adjuncts to massage, and were widely used as creams to protect the face from dry winds. In India, sacred ghee (with hemp resin dissolved in it) is still valued for its psychoactivity in external use, as well as its effects in food. E’s pointed injunction against bodily use implies that such euphoriant oils were well known as sexual lubricants, both literal and figurative. The holy oil also was the prerogative of Hebrew kings, who were initiated by “anointing the head with oil.” Those kings who “turned away from the Lord” and worshipped the goddess Asherah certainly would have used it “for anointing the human body,” to prepare for their sacred marriage to the High Priestess, the act of love that made their kingship official.

References to sacred anointing oil in the Dead Sea Scrolls hidden by the Jewish Essenes in 68, and in the Nag Hammadi library, hidden by Christian Gnostics about 400, show that it was in ritual use in these communities. To facilitate childbirth, midwives were burning cannabis as incense, as well as anointing women with the oil, in a town near Jerusalem about 250. Mediterranean knowledge of the plant must have been augmented by the numerous 1st-century gurus, like Jesus of Nazareth and Apollonius of Tyana, who studied in India before returning to their native lands.

The anointing oil went underground in the centuries of orthodox Christian persecution, during which it evolved into witches’ flying ointments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Here, edited, is the simpler and safer of the two recipes given by Herman Slater in his Magickal Formulary, volume I [Magickal Childe, New York, 1987]:

In 100 grams (3½ ounces) of lard (or olive oil or ghee), mix thoroughly

5 grams of powdered hashish

a handful of ground dried hemp flowers

a handful of ground dried poppy flowers

a hefty pinch of finely ground sunflower seeds

a small pinch of powdered black hellebore root

Note: Black hellebore is used medically as a cardiac stimulant similar to digitalis, and also as a purgative vermifuge. It may have been included in this recipe to offset the physiological depressant effect of the poppies. Like digitalis, it is poisonous in more than a tiny dose, and should only be included if supplied and directed by a competent herbalist. Other species of hellebore, sometimes called bearsfoot, are even more poisonous and must be avoided entirely.

Extract It

There are many methods for extracting and concentrating the divine nectar, the sparkling resin droplets that sugar-frost female cannabis tops. This is an age-old endeavor, since it was obvious in prehistoric times that there was no risk of damage from an overdose.

Tincture. The Greek philosopher Democritus founded the science of biology and co-developed of the first theory of atoms. His concept of evolution — of the universe, of animals and plants, and of human culture — was neglected due to the triumph of Plato’s and Aristotle’s dogma of changeless metaphysical and social absolutes, which was used to justify absolutism in politics, and later in religion. A democrat who emphasized the importance of pleasure and individual freedom, Democritus also insisted on the responsibility of each person to make a creative contribution to society.

The key to a good life, Democritus taught, is keeping the fear of death from producing a habit of pessimism that ruins enjoyment. To do this, he said we must cultivate euthymia. The title of one of Democritus’s books, this word came to mean “cheerfulness” or “contentment,” but literally it means “good smoke” or “good incense.” Apparently it worked, for Democritus lived to the age of 104 (about 460–356 B.C.).

Democritus must have known cannabis well, as he studied in Egypt, Ethiopia, Persia, and India. He wrote sixty or seventy treatises, all of which are lost. In one surviving fragment he mentions a potent drink made of wine, myrrh, and cannabis. In this passage, his name for the herb is potamaugis, literally “sunlight on the river,” with wordplay on potema, which means both “flight” and “potion.” The fragment says potamaugis often brings on bouts of mirth. It should be no surprise that Democritus was called “the laughing philosopher.”

Some scholars believe that cannabis was also known as nepenthes (“no grief”), the herb that Homer says Helen added to wine for grief-stricken survivors of the Trojan War (Odyssey 4.219–232), having learned its use in Egypt. A Gnostic tradition claims that the drink given to Jesus on the sponge was an anesthetic drug (cannabis and/or opium?) in wine, which enabled him to survive the ordeal of crucifixion and later to marry Mary Magdalene and raise children with her. [See Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (rev. ed., Dell, New York, 1983) for more on this historical question.] This drug may have been like the hemp wine used as an anesthetic by Hua To (141–?) the Chinese “god of surgery.”

Yet something may be missing from the story here. Wine does not contain enough alcohol to make a very potent tincture, even if hashish is steeped in it for a long time. Part of the procedure may be lost. Was an oil extract somehow emulsified with an extract in wine? Were there early experiments in distillation missing from the historical record?

Cannabis tinctures didn’t come into their own until the second half of the 19th century, when they were available over the counter at many pharmacies in Europe and the United States. In his 1857 memoir The Hasheesh Eater [reprinted by Level Press, San Francisco, 1975], a teenaged psychonaut named Fitz Hugh Ludlow immortalized Tilden’s C. Indica Extract, bought without fear or fanfare for six cents a dose in Poughkeepsie, New York. For a comparable recipe, please see under “Taking Your Medicine” on the Medical page.

Kif, a variant of Arabic kayf or kef, meaning “pleasure,” “contentment,” or “bliss,” is a name for cannabis throughout the Maghreb — Morocco, Libya, and Tunisia. According to a proverb there, “A puff of kif in the morning is like having a hundred camels in the courtyard.” Since the worldwide spread of tobacco in the 17th century, kif also has referred to manicured tops painstakingly chopped with a lesser amount of black tobacco into a fine powder. Among pot smokers in the United States, kif has once more come to mean cannabis without tobacco, a dust of resin capsules purified from the rest of the dried plant material as completely as possible by sifting it through cloth or fine screens. If warmed and pressed into blocks, it becomes hashish.

Moroccan and Jamaican fishermen smoke cannabis to help them navigate better, especially on dark nights. In July 2004, a report in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology confirmed that, during the course of “numerous inhalations” of kif, Moroccan fishermen did indeed make “consistent improvements” as measured by a machine used to test night vision.

Hashish (Indian charas) is the psychoactive resin removed from the plant and pressed into blocks or cakes, or rolled into balls, fingers, or other shapes. It has been collected and traded throughout recorded history.

As chocolate is to the taste buds, so hashish is to the olfactory nerve endings — the most intense, complex, and pleasurable stimulation of all. Unless the hash is crumbly, it should be prepared for smoking by spearing a piece of it with a pin and gently warming it with a match or lighter flame. It can then be broken apart so it can be lit in the pipe more readily. Do not neglect to inhale its aroma during this procedure. It is a high all its own.

Hashish can be collected merely by rubbing the ripe female tops between the hands until a layer of resin builds up, then scraping it off with a dull knife. Hand rubbing was doubtless the earliest method. It yields the freshest and purest hash, but it is the most time consuming and least efficient way in terms of yield per plant. In Nepal, Kashmir, and the Himalayan foothills of India, some gatherers of premium hash don leather jackets and run through the hemp fields waving their arms, then scrape the resin off their coats. This ancient method also gives a superb product but is inefficient.

Throughout the hash belt, from Morocco to Nepal, the product is made commercially using some variant of a process first described in print by Henri de Monfreid. British rulers had banned cannabis in Egypt in 1915; the French outlawed it in their own country in 1916. These laws immediately created a lucrative black market. Monfreid, a French ethnographer and poet, jumped in to make his fortune, then wrote about his adventures in four books published between 1934 and 1962, though he claims he never tried the drug himself. In his first book, The Hashish Crossing, he describes a cannabis farm in Greece. There the male plants were pulled to grow the females seedless to maturity. After harvest, they were hung up to dry. Then, on a cold day when the resin-capsule stalks would be especially brittle, the plants were rubbed to powder between two sheets of canvas. The powder was stored in sacks until an order was received. Sometimes these bags would be methodically pounded to further separate the resin capsules from the plant material. The best grade was the resin that flew out through the cloth and settled to the floor in a closed room, to be shoveled up and processed. Each grade was passed through a fine metal sieve and measured into linen bags, in which it was warmed and pressed into blocks in a large screw press.

In 1997, a traveler writing under the name Primo described a similar technique in “Kif in the Rif,” (part of the Hip Travel Guide): “Three young men were working, whacking tubs of kif with wooden sticks. The rhythm of their pounding was like a deep tribal music. Their eyes were red from the resin that formed a yellow cloud in the room. There was so much resin in the room it was piling up in drifts against the walls. We had to close the door to keep it from floating out.”

Robert Connell Clarke’s sublime Hashish [Red Eye Press, P.O. Box 65751, Los Angeles CA 90065-0751, 1998] is the definitive one-stop treatment of the whole subject. The book includes information on water extraction, that is, ways to make bubble hash, the purest cannabinoids achievable without laboratory techniques. More information and equipment can be found via many Web sites, such as BubbleBag. Cannabis Heaven lists and rate a large number of Bubble Sites. You may also wish to learn a bit about BubbleMan, the Dionysus of Delta-9, the Apostle of Bubble.

Hash Oil. Many of those who partook of the cannabis underground in the Seventies fondly remember the hash oil that was occasionally available. It has become much rarer since then, because fewer chemists are willing to take the risk of setting up a lab to make it in commercial quantity. While hash oil lacks some of the sensual aromatic ecstasy of hashish, it delivers a stronger, clearer high that is still controllable by the titration of dosage possible with smoking, though of course it can be used in food and drink as well. Actually, hash oil is not smoked, but rather vaporized. The participant takes a drop out of the vial with a pin and places it on a piece of aluminum foil or in one of those funny little glass pipes with a spherical glass bowl on the end with a small opening at the top. Antiques for a while, with slight modification they became crack pipes in the Eighties, and now are returning for bubble hash. One holds a flame under the oil and draws in the vapor as it rises. The plastic casing of a Bic pen was a common inhaler for the tin-foil method.

The female cannabis plant stores her psychoactive goodies in trichomes — clear, round resin capsules atop short hairs on the flowers and small leaves. To the naked eye they look like dewdrops or sugar crystals. By the end of the 19th century, chemists had extracted a crude red oil from the accumulated trichomes (hashish). In 1940, chemist Roger Adams learned how to purify this oil and fractionate the various cannabinoids from it. (See the Medical page for a list of the known cannabinoids.) These methods were adapted and promulgated for underground use in two classic pamphlets: David Hoye’s Cannabis Alchemy: The Art of Modern Hashmaking [High Times / Level Press, 1973] and Dr. Atomic’s Marijuana Multiplier, by Larry S. Todd [Kistone Press, 1974].

These operations lie beyond the scope of this essay (and the expertise of its author). The instructions cannot be condensed without some danger to the operator. More information, including a simple method using butane, can be found at the Lycaeum hash oil page, the Vaults of Erowid hash oil page, and at Brain Resin, just to name a few of the best sites.