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1 16 THE Pomegranate 16 SPRING 2001 CHAS S. DAVY: I ve recently changed my posi-tion on transcendence, mostly due to readingEmmanuel Levinas Totality and Infinity. I usedto associate transcendent views exclusively withworld denying or world rejecting philoso-phies/beliefs. For Levinas, the idea of infinity istranscendence: the idea that there is more tothe other than the categories the self mightapply to it. This is transcendence that is foundonly in the particular, in actual lived Levinas, a person only finds God in relat-ing with other people in this metaphysical rela-tion of perceiving the infinite in the s nothing world denying about this. Inmy own work, I discuss this sort of relationbetween humans and other than human per-sons, developing it into an environmentalethic. In my view, neither reality nor nature canbe transcended in actual physical terms. This isall there is, but reality/nature is far more com-plex than human ideas of it.

2 Transcendence isin recognizing that there is more to knowabout the world, not in escaping the : As an aside, I d never heard ofpanentheism until around ten years ago whenthe recently retired Canon of Durham Cathe-dral, who came around to thinking we wereOK people, told me that this is what Wiccansare. I thought being theologically defined by aChristian theologian had its : I find it amusing/ironic as well, butalso find it useful as a way of delineating apotential common ground between somepagans views and some Christians (and othermonotheists ) views. At the same time, I m notconvinced of that attribution for Wicca. Theterm pan-en-theism suggests a kind of all-in-one-God-ism, where God is seen as bothimmanent and transcendent, but where there isno questioning of the oneness (monology) orpersonal nature of God. Most forms of (at leastBritish Traditional) Wicca, to me, do seemduotheistic a term I find quite can take a Manichean dualist formaccording to which one of the two deities isvalorized over the other (because they are seenas locked in opposition), or a complementarianform (that of partnership , to use Riane Eisler sterm), and the latter, I would say, describesWicca rather well.

3 GUS:Several people here apparently considerEnglish Traditional Wicca as butthis argument ignores the Dryghton. And thatis a central tenet of English Traditional practiceas I have experienced it both within Gardner-ian and King Stone we take the entire Gardnerian liturgy seri-ously we can say something like this: From theDryghton all things come, including the Godand Goddess. From them come all aspects ofGods and Goddesses. But just as we do not trycontacting the Dryghton as a means of con-tacting all deities, so often we do not try andcontact The Goddess, but rather focus in goodpolytheistic fashion on Bridget, Hekate, and soon. Other times we do the generic the level of practice, it sure seems polytheis-tic to me. The Dryghton is not personal. It is theSource. It is acknowledged, regarded as impor-tant, honored, and then the work focuses onthe Goddess and the God, either as a duo orpolytheistically. This discussion took place on an email listmaintained by the Nature Religions Scholars Network, whose members study religious traditions that regard nature as a source of spiritual authority.

4 The group meets and hearsresearch presentations each year during theannual meeting of the American Academy ofReligion. For more information, unfortunate tradition of misadventureattached to modern users of solanaceousentheogens. As well as the edible tomato,potato, chile and sweet peppers, andtomatillo, the botanical family ofSolanaceae includes that global drug ofchoice, tobacco. In addition, theSolanaceae include several plants withextensive associations with magic andshamanism, associations that spread fromAsia to the Americas. Notable amongthese are the several species of Datura( thorn apple or jimson weed ), Atropa( deadly nightshade ), Mandragora( mandrake ), and Hyoscyamus ( hen-bane ).4 None of these plants is an illegal narcotic in America; in fact, some aregrown as ornamental garden plants aswell as for pharmaceutical use and term entheogen,meaning becom-ing divine within , was developed bythree leading writers in the field: the lateR.

5 Gordon Wasson, Carl Ruck, andJonathan Ott. Ott, for instance, writesthat he uses entheogen as etymologicallyand culturally appropriate [and] non-prejudicial, compared to such terms as narcotic and psychedelic. 5 Cochrane s death, while intentional,also reflected just one of a series of exper-iments with solanaceous entheogens thathistorically have been associated withEuropean witchcraft, according to recordsleft by prosecutors and witnesses of thewitch trials from the 15th to 17th to his contemporaries,he had earlier conducted less-lethalexperiments using old flying ointment recipes. Although I would claim that the flying ointments (and other herbalpreparations) represent a significant, ver-ifiable link to an ancient Europeanshamanic practice perhaps the nearestIf Witches No Longer Fly: today s Pagans and theSolanaceous Plantsby Chas S. CliftonUniversity of Southern ColoradoOn the summer solstice of 1966,Robert Cochrane (magical name ofRoy Bowers), an important figurein the British Witchcraft revival, diedfrom a self-inflicted combination ofsleeping pills, whisky, and Atropa bel-ladonna or deadly nightshade.

6 Although asubsequent inquest returned a verdict of suicide while the balance of the mindwas disturbed, some of Cochrane sfriends and coveners believed his act hadbeen one of ritual communion with thegods, while others leaned towards a delib-erate self-sacrifice on the model of theDivine people who knew himmost closely, however, viewed his death assuicide resulting from a marital break-upand a failed love the motivation forCochrane s death, his influence has per-sisted. His correspondence during theyears just before his death with a youngAmerican Air Force enlisted man heavilyinfluenced, through a typically tortuouschain of transmission, several AmericanWitchcraft traditions, including 1734, the Roebuck, and the Mohsian tradition,and he is remembered by one of hisformer coveners, the English writerDoreen Valiente, as perhaps the mostpowerful and gifted personality to haveappeared in modern witchcraft.

7 3In one sense, Cochrane carried on anaccused witches. These men, such as theoften-quoted physician Andres deLaguna, offered an essentially materialistcounter-argument against the theologicalarguments of both secular and religiouscourts. Against the belief that the witch-craft being prosecuted involved actualgatherings of devil-worshipers, the skep-tics pointed out that the flying ointmentsmerely produced a stupor from which the deluded user awoke, claiming to haveexperienced nocturnal flight, orgies offood and sex, and so forth. Therefore,prosecuting them for witchcraft was awaste of time. What Andres de Laguna and other rationalist critics of the witch-trialprocess apparently failed or did notwish to do was to see the theologicalcontent of entheogen use. Given thesepreparations risky nature, the personseeking recreational highs would havemore likely turned to alcohol.

8 As theDutch botanist Peter A. G. M. de Smetwrote by analogy, The essence of theCatholic mass for the churchgoer is cer-tainly missed by saying that mass wine isprepared from Vitis vinifera L. (Vitaceae)and that it contains about 13 percent ofthe inebriating substance ethyl alcoholbefore it is diluted by the priest. 9 Various fragmentary recipes for flyingointments survive: in the 1970s, theDanish botanical writer Harold announced that only sixteenthing to Margaret Murray s Old Reli-gion, my research suggests that NorthAmerican and British Neopagans todaylargely avoid them. The exceptions, how-ever, tend to insist along with some his-torians of religion such as HustonSmith that the ritual use of these sub-stances is to some degree essential, plac-ing the users in touch with the sacredwildness at the heart of these modernnature-based traditions. Sharon Devlin, aCalifornia Witch, told writer MargotAdler in the 1970s, Flying ointmentswere used in ancent times.

9 Our ancestorsdefinitely used drugs. Frankly, mostPagans and Witches are stumbling aroundin the dark .. I want people to start get-ting off. Drugs .. are an essential part ofmagical rites. 7As Devlin rightly noted, solanaceousentheogens are ancient as well as geo-graphically widespread. Commenting onportrayals of Datura in the art ofpharaonic Egypt, the ethnobotanistWilliam A. Emboden, Jr., writes: Its psy-choactive properties are extraordinary,and one of the usual modalities in theDaturaexperience is that of mysticalflight, an out-of-the-body sensation. 8 Emboden s mention of flight leads to thefamous employment of the Solanaceae inthe flying ointments of the witch-trialperiod. During the 16th century, severalskeptical physicians conducted experi-ments with ointments seized from 18 THE Pomegranate 16 SPRING 2001 CHAS S. "flying ointments" represent a significant, verifiable link to anancient European shamanic practice perhaps the nearest thingto Margaret Murray s "Old Religion".

10 Cherry bark, and a host of seeds andweeds have been used, often with disas-trous results, by a new generation ofexperimentalists. 12 Further discussion of contemporaryentheogen use has been complicated bythe war on drugs waged at various levelsin Western countries, which has compli-cated both academic and practitioner-based discussion of any entheogen. Thatattitude may now be changing, for as Hofmann, the nonagenarian Swissdiscoverer of LSD, remarked in a recentinterview, After years of silence, therehave recently been some investigations[of scientific research on psychedelic drugs] in Switzerland and Germany andalso in the United States. 13 Given contemporary Pagans extensivemining of earlier Pagan cultures, com-plete with study of dead or marginal lan-guages (for example, Old Norse or Irish),archaeological sites and artifacts, texts,and imaginative reconstructions of thepast, the omission of ancient ritualentheogens from this looking backwardsseems noteworthy.