Datura (Toé) Experience & What I Learned : Taken for Spiritual/Religious Reasons

Background

This is a report of taking datura twice, transdermally (on the skin) in microdose (very small amounts) for spiritual/religious reasons.

I was lead to datura somehow spiritually... it's difficult to explain exactly how; whatever I did seemed to lead back to datura and I felt a strong pull towards the plant. At the same time I felt that there is something... I want to say 'wrong' with datura, but not 'wrong' as if datura has done something wrong or unnatural. Imagine a beautiful painting, but the artist used blood instead of paint... that type of feeling.

The amount I took would not have any effect on most people, but I am extremely sensitive to all substances, for example a single cup of coffee will give me jitters for a whole day and stop me from sleeping more than 12 hours later. Just food in general will change my mood depending on what type of food it is. And to clarify just how sensitive I am: I can see spirit, for example people's intentions making physical forms of cloudy light and/or their astral bodies doing something that represents what their intention is. I used to see this all of the time, but less so since I've stopped paying attention to it. I'm explaining this so you understand how I can get so much out of so little of the substance.

Preparation

I'd bought a datura metel and been looking after it for around 6 weeks. I was more respectful to my datura than the other plants, moving it in and out of the sun and rain, giving it extra nourishment. Sometimes giving it some energy.

I had read everything I could find on datura, including some anthropological reports on the traditional and shamanic uses of datura and brugmansia by Central and South American native groups. From what I read the safest way of preparing it is cold water infusion, not using metal tool (because metal offends the plant, I don't take this seriously but I followed it just in case, plus its a symbol of respect at least) and applied transdermally.

The plant had been putting out flowers and I had a sudden inspiration one day that I was going to take off the flowers and prepare them. I broke off 2 of the fully blooming flowers by cutting the stems with my fingernails. I put the 2 flowers into around 400ml of water in a covered jug, and left it outside in the shade. The next day I filtered this with coffee filter paper and added around 25% more volume of 99.8% food-grade alcohol as a preservative.

Note that this resulted in just over 500ml of liquid that contained only 2 flowers. The liquid has a slight flowery smell and yellowish color.

Experience 1 of 2

When cutting off the flowers at the stem with my fingernail, a moderate amount of juice from the plant went on my hand. Particularly it went under my fingernails which I imagine is an effective area for absorption. At first I didn't think much of it, but after a couple of minutes I started to think it might be an issue and washed my hands with strong soap 3 times. Then I continued the preparation.

Around 15 minutes later I was starting to feel funny. It's best described as come-up anxiety, which is the initial subtle feelings of something happening causing a feedback loop of anxiety. It's unclear how much of this was from the substance and how much from the feedback anxiety loop. I had no idea how much an effect this was going to have, but 15 minutes was pretty quick to feel something for most substances so I was a little worried. I took this opportunity to inform my wife what had happened and instructed her to give me some Huperzine A (which should act as an antidote) were I to start acting dangerously.

Side note: the anthropological reports on datura usage had stated that before consuming datura, native people would fast by eating something resembling a raw vegan diet for a week beforehand. Coincidentally (or probably not, but certainly not by my own conscious design) I had just finished 10 days of raw vegan diet that morning.

At around 1 hour I began to feel... good. Antidepressant effects, but different than anything else. For example, opiates make me okay with the disturbing 'something-is-wrong' feeling in my chest. But the datura made the feeling mostly go away.

From 1 hour mark to 2 hours it 'came up' and reached the peak at 2-3 hours. The peak was a feeling of energy and I'd say some degree of mania. It was most similar in feeling to LSD, but unlike LSD there was very little confusion or visual distortion. I felt brimming with energy and had thoughts and visions that a normal person would consider to be dramatically exaggerated stories or slightly manic, but I felt very much in control and my vision and thinking were clear. Also like LSD it comes in waves.

Most of the trip was a conversation with the spirit of datura. Or for the non-spiritual you could say that I spent the time talking with myself. Parts I remember from the conversation include:

I was worried that I had not been respectful enough to datura. I'd read one anecdote of some guy who'd be meditating next to his datura plant for a month before taking it.Datura assured me that I had been more than respectful. That the intention of the person is where the respect comes from or not. Anyone coming to learn was welcome and anyone coming to get something for themselves was... food. That you can meditate on the plant all day, but if your intention is still to get what you want then it makes no difference.

I'd read another anecdote that datura is 'all about power'.Datura explained and showed to me that there was nothing wrong with power per se. I don't remember much but it made sense.

At some point I went to sit with the datura metel plant and decided to share energy with it. As I poured some energy into the plant from my hands, the plant in turn latched onto me, which I saw as its energy field grabbing my hand. It did so in a way that was greedy/lustful, which partially took me aback, but I didn't stop it. From this I gained a whole load of information, all of the following, suddenly at once:

I felt that merged with the spirit of datura, which now lived in me. I also understood that just by taking the datura once is already merging with the plant, but the energy exchange strengthened this bond. I learned that this is true of basically everything you consume, but most of the plants and animals are dumb so it doesn't make much difference. I learned that because I were also respectful and also useful/interesting (in a partnership way, not a bad way) to the spirit it would respect me too. I learned that people who took datura and were not respectful would find the spirit of datura hostile and it would consume their energy. I'm using the word 'respectful' but from datura's perspective it's more about whether the partnership is of any advantage to it. Both of us held individual sovereignty and I made it clear that if it ever attempts to take control of any part of me, it's out. On this point I didn't feel that it would, and I'm not sure that it works that way.

That night I had a dream in which I was eating raw flesh and drinking the blood from beheaded corpses. When I woke up the memory of it was gruesome, but in the dream it seemed normal. I didn't really want to be doing it either (not because it was bad, but because I wanted to be doing something else), but something/someone was telling me that I should just do it to get it over with. This was absolutely not a typical dream for me and it made me question whether datura is toxic to the soul, as it's not the type of behavior I condone even in dreams. In retrospect it felt almost like an initiation, although I could be reading into it too much.

Experience 2 of 2

A week or so later I started to experiment with the infused datura flower tincture. The first day I dipped a finger into the jar. Nothing happened. The next day I tried 2 fingers, then 3 fingers. Still nothing. I was doing something else for a week, then yesterday I just went for 5 fingers and also spread the juice around on my hands like you do with cream or alcohol gel.

I wasn't really expecting the datura finger-dip to have any effect yet, rather I was just slowly increasing the dose to try to safely determine its strength. That morning I had taken 1g of phenibut, which disguised the come-up, and it wasn't until I had the familiar LSD-esque concentration and energy, and manic thoughts about how I should become a vigilante to fight corruption by use of excessive violence until I was killed and became a martyr... that I realized I was under the influence of datura. Luckily I have experience with mania and recognized that its an exaggerated compensation for [in this case] feelings of helplessness against what I perceive to be wrongs being committed against society, it being okay to express in this way and get those feelings out. I felt better having imagined myself fighting, and then continued the story with the possibly-true belief that the imagination-fight is actually part of the real fight happening on another plane of reality.

I spent the rest of the trip listening to music and looking at things, which looked the same but also different in an unexplainable way, especially plants.

That night I dreamt something very strange.

In the dream I was standing somewhere and I had a controller like a dial that turned, like a fan controller. There were two dials, a level 1 dial with something like 5 options, and a level 2 dial with something like 13 options.

Each level and option I knew produced waves of what is best described as 'pure horror' that physically move towards me and as they pass over you feel the terrible feeling of some horrible thing. The first option of the first level was manageable and I understood it to be a sort of tutorial or introduction level. It was like watching a horror movie, that level of horror. A level that could be entertaining to some people. But that was just level 1, option 1.

For some reason I was stuck on the highest level 2, option 13. The idea of that was mad because I could only really take level 1, option 1. Even the second option would be too horrific for me, so it seemed unrealistic to be stuck on the worst level. Whilst I was clearly on that level, I could not remember any of the horror it produced because it was so bad that its like it wasn't happening. The part of me that was experiencing that level of horror was petrified, i.e. turned to stone, no longer conscious. Having somehow become aware of this I turned off the horror. It felt like I had just discovered and freed a part of myself that had been stuck there petrified on that level for some time. Then I woke up (it was around 2am, and coincidentally a full moon). Then I received a "download" of a whole series of information. For the next hour or so I was semi-conscious in some kind of trance streaming a whole load of information regarding horror, death, chaos, what it is, what it does and why.

What I got was this...

The Vision

Horror (and not evil) is a tangible thing. Horror exists because it is everything that is rejected by consciousness. The primary thing rejected by consciousness is unconsciousness, but also a whole bunch of feelings that are the opposites of love, health, happiness, ease and good humor.

However, horror is also the chaos from which consciousness grows. A good analogy for this is that horror is the dark, murky and worm-infested soil that a plant (which represents consciousness in the analogy) grows in. But this chaos also contains positive attributes, because it contains everything unconditionally, just not in any useful form. To be clear, consciousness is selective and chaos is not selective, so consciousness grows by selecting desirable qualities that it finds within chaos. Just like a plant grows.

Consciousness then, starts with a seed, which on its most abstract level is an instruction that selects one thing over another, i.e. a desire. From this a process of selecting that which is desirable and rejecting that which is undesirable, a form is grown out of chaos that has selected desirable properties.

When consciousness then looks at chaos it sees the opposite of what it desires, which is the definition of what it doesn't want. It sees everything its been rejecting, everything it considers ugly, unpleasant and distasteful. Why? Because the chaos, while it contains everything, contains a massively higher concentration of these rejected qualities than what exists in the conscious form, hence the undesirable qualities stand out. Chaos then symbolizes unconsciousness, death, etc.

The process of growing the conscious form isn't so straightforward that its always right the first time. It's important to trim the tree, so to speak. Datura can be used for this. If you imagine your spirit is a tree, by taking datura you are subjecting the tree to horror. A little horror makes you stronger. It makes you stronger because it separates the parts of you that are prepared to hold on to your form from those that are quick to change sides.

In the movie "Kingsman", the final test to become a secret agent is one in which they are kidnapped and tied to a railway with an oncoming train. They're told if the spill the secrets they'll be set free. Once they've made their decision it's revealed that this was the final trial to see if they really are loyal to the cause. The purpose of datura is like this, it tests the allegiance of your spirit to your soul, and it works because any part of you that is not committed will leave. It trims the tree.

Quite obviously this only works if you're ready for it. That's not 'ready' in a mystical sense. It's literally useful only if you need it, and otherwise its deadly. The tree has to be trimmed exactly the right amount. It's the spirit of death and its useful only if a piece of you needs to die that is otherwise holding you back.

Horror, death and chaos then are very similar concepts. But here's another interesting thing: horror and death are seductive. They're seductive because its a very, very cheap and easy way to get power, which is some kind of consciousness-alternative. The 'dark side' from Star Wars does a pretty good job of explaining that choice. However, the difference between Star Wars' dark side and the real dark side is that the real one is more clearly wrong. One has to actually make the decision to sacrifice the purest part of themselves in exchange for power, which is quite obviously a bad idea even from a selfish perspective. Or to look at it another way, if one does something very horrific, the nicer parts of their spirit will leave, making them less nice, then they are capable of more horror, and so on.

The power is not given to them as much as the willingness to do evil is itself a kind of power. For example: someone who wants you to do something and you know has killed someone previously is much more likely to get their way than someone who is very nice. Hence doing things that are wrong has the interesting property of immediately increasing the amount of 'power' that being has over others. Technically this gives them more ability to exercise their desires, more ability to become greater. But what happens is that once the person has willingly sacrificed the better part of themselves, they are now slightly more bad and so have no problem sacrificing the next best part... and so on. Such a person is essentially killing themselves to get a feeling of being more alive. Interestingly the process of something dying is called 'corruption' as is the process of abusing power. It is death of the soul. Datura has no problem helping people in this latter category on their downward spiral.

Datura itself maintains its conscious individuality in alliance with a much more powerful 'good' entity for which datura is serving as its accepted 'dark side' for trimming the tree and such useful purposes that increase overall consciousness and goodness. Without such an ally, playing with death can only lead to one's own death.

Ending Statement

Datura is very useful, even vital, if used correctly and respectfully... and if not used correctly can lead to trauma, death, or worse: death of the soul. Unless you know what you are doing, stay away from it. Even in microdose I can feel its subtle effects in which it slowly twists the mind, which is no problem for me only because I have a lot of experience with such things.

On the other hand, if you're a highly experienced shaman/sorcerer and you know yourself (you know which parts of you are the real you) then it's really not that bad. I've found it quite refreshing.

There are other uses of Datura that I have not explored, such as necromancy (speaking to the dead.) I'm sure there are plenty of other perfectly good reasons to commune with death and subject yourself to horror.