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I refer you to Terrence McKenna. You can watch many videos from him on YouTube.
I'd love to hear more
Some magic-users do use drugs to help them reach an hypnotic state, which is important for magick. However, drugs are unnecessary and many believe that using drugs for this purpose will discourage you from learning to do it on your own and thus hampers your overall magickal development. Addiction is also an obstacle to development and should be avoided as well, so something like poppy would be unsustainable over the long term anyway. However, I am a firm believer that every plant has wisdom so they're all worth studying, even if you never ingest them. After all, we study deadly poisons (do not passed stoned go directly to mortal agony) too; sometimes while wearing gloves and eye protection.
For most of us, cannabis and opiates are primarily medicinal. Medicine has been magick for much of human history and many witches still turn to traditional remedies. There is really no better remedy for pain and certain stomach complaints than cannabis and poppy also has powerful healing effects, though it must be used with a great deal more care (more care than the pharmaceutical industry puts into it). It is unfortunate that they are being abused and/or maligned when they should be the subjects of much closer study. There is much to be learned from these plants. That all being said, poppy has quite a few magickal applications that don't involve ingesting it. There are lots of different types of poppies too. Poppy has a page on this site.
this right here i love this .
"However, drugs are unnecessary and many believe that using drugs for this purpose will discourage you from learning to do it on your own and thus hampers your overall magickal development. Addiction is also an obstacle to development and should be avoided as well, so something like poppy would be unsustainable over the long term anyway."
Again, thank you for the advice.
««CONFESSION»» I my self am a long term heroin addict. I've been worried for some time about my addiction to opiates getting in the way of my craft. I know I shouldn't be on it in the first place, but to be honest, I don't see this ending any time soon. Does my addiction mean that I'm not a witch?
Addiction is a hurdle or a barrier. It makes things harder but it doesn't make things impossible. We all have things we have to overcome to reach our full potential, addiction is one of yours. A witches first task is to know herself, knowing what your handicaps are is a huge part of that. We all have them. If you practice witchcraft, you're a witch. To be a really good (as in effective) witch takes more than just casting spells, it takes research and discipline and practice, and addiction can get in the way of that - as it can with any vocation, but it doesn't make it impossible. If you know yourself, you can manage yourself and find ways to deal with or work around your issues so you can get things done. There are people with all sorts of diseases and disabilities who can still manage to be effective witches- you can too. It's just a lot of hard work.
And I have another soap box too.
You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of anyone else. I know it's hard for more reasons than I can probably imagine. Addiction isn't a moral failing (though I know people like to treat it as it is) it's a disease brought about by a natural process gone awry. Yes, you have to take an active role in giving yourself the disease, but most disease is the direct result of your actions; some are just more obvious than others. And many addictions are the result of mis-medicating other diseases that weren't otherwise being properly treated. That's why treating addiction is so damn complicated. Only you can heal yourself, by knowing yourself and seeking out the people who can best serve you on this journey- and you will need other people.
The truth is, this will never go away. It will always be with you, affecting your life and the way you think. If you can overcome it and stop using substances, great. But the addiction will still be there. So, one way or another, you're going to have to learn to be an effective witch (and everything else in your life) who is also an addict. But you'll be healthier and stronger when you've been able to stop using. (Maybe not at first, but eventually.)
Cannabis is said to be useful for healing (since it has medicinal properties), love, meditation, psychic awareness and enhancement of the magical properties of spells etc.
However, those last three factors could be due to its psychotropic effects - I'm fairly confident that our ancestors, on burning some, did indeed have visions! Some people advocate it's use in drug form to open the mind, but the vast majority of witches manage pretty well without. Hemp oil can be used in spellwork, as can hemp rope in e.g knot magic. Getting high might feel great at the time but the health effects outweigh the benefits, I personally like to keep my mind clear of drugs and alcohol when working the craft.
Poppies signify death and deep sleep, probably because of the opiate qualities of papaver somniferum. They are also useful in love spells, they signify those who died for love, and they are useful as aids for prosperity, which I think might arise from the fact that poppy seeds used to be expensive.
Having been prescribed medical grade morphine for acute pain, I know the sort of effect its sister heroin might have, and how warm her arms are! There have also been times when I've wished for morphine to cover emotional pain. However, pious as it may sound (sorry about this!) I find meditation to be as effective, with the bonus that I have a clear mind. That's largely because I don't have anything too horrific going on in my life that I need to mask.
For an addict, it's not an easy journey to get clean and stay clean but the negative health and social effects of drug addiction are ruinous. I can't imagine even being bothered to spell cast under the influence. my view is that drugs, when imbibed, have a negative effect on my powers of concentration. That's not to say that, when used externally in offerings etc they don't have magical power. Bear in mind that our ancestors views on magical properties probably did include a plant's ability to produce an altered mental state. It's debatable whether we should still view this as magical or not, but I think not for health reasons. I hope you're well and continuing your practise.