Exploring the Mind-Bending World of Salvia Divinorum

Within around thirty seconds of smoking the dark herbal extract the effects rapidly began, and I felt my entire sense of identity suddenly shift. I was instantly transformed from a human being into a tiny disembodied speck of consciousness -- completely bewildered as to what I was and amnesic of my former identity. I was suspended in a hyperspatial dimension, a crystalline network of pulsing energies, that was filled with countless other miniature beings like me. I found myself inside of a kind of space within space, that appeared to transcend the whole three-dimensional universe. Suddenly, my identity shifted again, as a portion of the space and beings around me folded and twisted into me, becoming a part of me. More and more layers of the space around me continued folding in and becoming a part of my expanding sense of identity -- until, finally, I was my familiar human self again. This strange and somewhat unsettling experience was the result of my smoking an extract made from the hallucinogenic leaves of the Salvia divinorum plant.

Although the Latin name for the Mexican sage Salvia divinorum literally translates as "sage of the seers," this powerful hallucinogenic plant goes by a number of other names, such as Shka Pastora ("Leaves of the Shepherdess"), Diviner's Sage, ska María Pastora, yerba de Maria, Magic Mint, Sally-D, and salvia. Until fairly recently, this innocent-looking member of the mint family -- whose hallucinogenic powers can dwarf those of magic mushrooms and LSD -- was virtually unknown outside of a small region of Central Mexico, where it has been used as a shamanic healing tool by the Mazatec Indians in Oaxaca for at least hundreds of years. The Mazatec shamans use salvia to facilitate divinatory or visionary states of consciousness during their spiritual healing sessions when psilocybin mushrooms aren't in season. According to ethnobotanist Daniel Siebert, "The Mazatec shamans primarily take it ceremonially as a tool for gaining access to the supernatural world or what they believe to be the realm of divine beings and supernatural entities."

The Salvia divinorum plant is a sprawling perennial herb found in moist, isolated, and shaded regions of Oaxaca, where it grows to well over a meter in height. Salvia has hollow square stems, large green leaves, and occasional white and purple flowers -- but only rarely produces viable seed. There's nothing particularly striking about the way that this plant looks, and it easily blends in with ordinary house plants. Like corn and bananas, salvia is thought to be a cultigen. This means that it is not known to grow in the wild. It may have been bred in cultivation, or it may have grown wild in Central Mexico at one time. Salvia leaves contain the extremely potent dissociative psychedelic compound salvinorin A.

Salvia has had a relatively hidden existence for most of its history -- known only to the Mazatec Indians, and a small handful of anthropologists, who were dubious about its psychoactive properties. However, since the mid-1990s it has been widely available in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the globe, largely as a smokable herb. Salvia's popularity is primarily due to the discussion of its psychoactive properties on the internet, and improved methods of ingestion that have been developed, as well as vendors promoting its sale as a legal hallucinogen online, where many businesses sell live Salvia divinorum plants, dried leaves, extracts, and other preparations.

The late ethnobotanist Terence McKenna was one of the first westerners to start publicly discussing salvia's strange hallucinogenic effects during the mid-90s, not long after ethnobotanist Daniel Siebert discovered the psychoactive properties of salvinorin A in 1993 -- as well as the proper methods for ingesting it to obtain hallucinogenic effects. Salvinorin A does not appear to be active when eaten, and it may be destroyed in the digestive system, but it can be smoked or absorbed sublingually through the mucus membranes in one's mouth.