The
work is taken from a book called Hemp
Lifeline to the Future By Chris Conrad,
Creative Xpressions publications Los
Angeles, California.
The reason hemp was made illegal was in
order to sell oil instead of using the oil
from hemp seeds.
No-one has ever found any detrimental
effects from the herb.
There is a control mechanism in place, as
part of the veil of illusion which centres
around this very point.
Once the veil of illusion is lifted on
this subject, the answers and reality are
blatantly obvious.
Problems in understanding are usually
caused by inexperienced users who classify
a normal garden herb along with the
manufactured evil drugs, due to a quirk of
the law.
In
1894, the British Raj Commission made a
study of hemp drugs in Indian belief
systems, and reported that.......
"Yogis...
take
deep
draughts
of
bhang
that
they
may
centre
their thoughts on the eternal ... By the
help of bhang, ascetics pass days without
food or drink. The supporting power of
bhang has brought many a Hindu
family safe through the miseries of
famine. To forbid, or even seriously
restrict use of so holy and gracious a
herb as hemp would cause widespread
suffering, deep seated anger and
annoyance to the large bands of worshipped
ascetics...
Obviously
the
British
Commission
were
not
aware
that
ascetics
do
not have deep seated anger, but
nevertheless, their observations are
reasonably accurate.
The
Hindu and the Holy Herb
One
of
the fundamental texts of Hinduism, the Rig
Veda, from 1500 BC, says "Drug plants
preceded even the gods by three ages."
Cannabis was a gift from the gods, who
spilled a drop of nectar onto the earth.
Where it touched the ground, the hemp
plant sprouted.(2). Hindus believe that
Lord Shiva brought the plant down from the
Himalayas for human use and enjoyment. One
day, Shiva went off by himself in the
fields. The shade of a tall cannabis plant
brought him comfort and refuge from the
blazing sun. He tasted its leaves and felt
so refreshed that he adopted it as his
favourite food, hence the title: "Lord of
Bhang."(3) Cannabis is also called
Indrica, the food of the God Indra. The
Supreme Lord Krishna at one point in the
Bhagavad-gita, "I am the Healing Herb."(4)
In late Vedic India, cannabis was used in
fire ceremonies for good fortune as well
as for healing. The fourth book of the
Vedas, the last accepted into the orthodox
religion, written around 1400 BC, calls it
one of the "five kingdoms of herbs ...
which release anxiety.
(2)Schultes,
Richard
&
hofmann, Albert. Over de Planten der Goden.
Spectrum Boek.Utrecht Holland. 1983 p.92
(3)Abel, E. Marihuana: The first 12,000
years. Plenum Press. NY NY. 1980 p.17
(4)Bhagavad-gita Ch 9:16
I figure
this video will stimulate some potentially
useful discussion. It features portions of
an interesting WWII-era production, titled Hemp
for Victory, made by the U.S.
government to encourage U.S. farmers into
the cultivation of hemp to fill the
escalating demand for industrial fibre
during the war. This was not too long after
the U.S. had introduced, during the height
of the Great Depression, the 1937 Marihuana
tax, which had had the opposite effect. (It
goes to show the power that government
policies can wield in rapidly influencing
social priorities.)
Some of you
will know, and some of you will not, that
hemp has been used since ancient times. Sails
were made of it, ropes were made of it,
clothes were made of it. People ate it
(seed), wrote on it (paper), lit their homes
with it (oil), and fed their animals with it
(what was left!). Indeed, some say there’s very
little you can’t make from it. As the
video shows, Henry Ford even made cars
and car parts out of it. Not only were
they stronger and lighter than metal parts,
but they were biodegradable too!
By all
accounts, Ancient China is where
hemp was cultivated from its wild botanic
ancestors. China was, up until their recent
surrender to modern Agribusiness interests,
one of the only nations that managed to
maintain their agricultural systems on the
same land for thousands of years without
depleting its soil — and despite having very
high population densities. (See Farmers of Forty Centuries,
300kb PDF.) That hemp played an important
role in supplying many of their basic human
requirements sustainably over this entire
period is worthy of note considering this
historically significant accomplishment.
Hemp can be
used as a ‘mop crop’ (phytoremediation), to
take impurities, excess nutrients and heavy
metals out of water and soil. It can be
grown virtually everywhere on earth and
although it doesn’t like wet feet too much
(it prefers reasonably well-drained soils),
it is not otherwise particularly demanding.
I
personally think that, like pretty much
anything we do today, hemp would become a
problem if applied at the largest scale.
Introduce centralised, monocrop hemp systems
and I’m sure we’ll suffer penalties in soil
health and chemical use — but on a small
scale the plant seems only meritorious. This little report
seems to confirm my thoughts here — talking
about the difficulties of an economy of
scale with hemp’s particular
characteristics.
Some of you
may recall that I
had the privilege of seeing hemp use in
its traditional form — by the Hmong
people living in the mountainous north of
Vietnam, only a couple of clicks from the
Chinese border. The Hmong are originally
from China (actually, there is a lot of
evidence to show that they were in China
before the Chinese) and there they grew hemp
from seed, harvested the plants, separated
the fibres, dyed them with plant dyes and
weaved their own colourful clothing, and
they did it for century upon century,
without a Gap store in sight.
Today
there are all kinds of economic interests
and incentives stopping all kinds of
appropriate technologies. Is hemp yet
another casualty in the competition for our
consumer dollars?
It’d
be great to hear practical reports from
readers who have experience working with the
plant and who’ve produced useful products
with it. Have permies out there found
practical, viable and valuable uses and
systems for hemp, the non-THC plant of the
cannabis genus?
