Reflections on Metzineria or the Path of Poisons (I)

11856525_963137350376001_2399106859075320339_oThe Path Enven­omed, what we call met­zine­r­ia or pon­zoñería in our moth­er tongues is, as its own name states, a Path, and so it implies some degree of move­ment ‑may it be up or down, for­wards or back­wards. But, as many oth­er paths, it must be must stride carefully.

Met­zine­r­ia is not only about plants but about spir­its that nur­ture and destroy us, their lives and death in our­selves. The cen­tral­i­ty of plants, how­ev­er, is due to the fact that each spec­i­men ‑each liv­ing being- offers a pow­er which can be encap­su­lat­ed in the phys­i­cal word, and so it makes it eas­i­er for us to inter­act with them.

The Human Body is to be seen as an Alem­bic, and the sub­stances that come in will change our state, and their own state as well. We may warm up, cool down, excite, relax, enjoy, suf­fer, laugh, cry, or, why not, even die. The Alem­bic is com­mand­ed to acknowl­edge the sub­stances and will even­tu­al­ly trans­form them into some­thing total­ly new, a con­junc­tion with the Poi­son we have cho­sen or we have been cho­sen by.

I pity those who mis­take the Path of Poi­sons with a mind­less psy­choac­tive drug intake using the excuse of the plants nat­ur­al ori­gin, for they are not able to see that any herbal spir­it, harm­less as it may appear, is a poten­tial Poi­son. For this path obeys the Paracel­sus max­i­mum, “All things are poi­son and noth­ing is with­out poison”.

We actu­al­ly can­not escape the pres­ence of poi­sons in this world, all beings are inter­pel­late by Poi­sons in their dai­ly exis­tence. The dif­fer­ence is that when fol­low­ing this path, we do so gain­ing con­scious­ness about our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and the alchem­i­cal process it entails.

One word of advice is that there are no less­er or greater Poi­sons, or, if you will, Poi­sons can­not be judged in terms of the strength of their effects, they are not pre­dictable, for each of the spir­its will have a dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship with us. There are dai­ly poi­sons that real­ly affect us even if we haven grown accus­tomed to them (cof­fee, alco­hol, sug­ar, tea, …), there are exot­ic poi­sons that may destroy us or do noth­ing to us (appar­ent­ly). In met­zine­r­ia no sit­u­a­tion can be exact­ly repeat­ed nor fore­seen, for every­thing changes con­stant­ly. In this sense, we should not have EXPECTATIONS regard­ing Poi­son, since they give us the mes­sage they want to give us, no mat­ter what we expect from them.

img_4538And yet, peo­ple often ask how to start tread­ing this path. First, of course, the most advis­able thing would be not fol­low­ing it, but isn’t that the key point that we just look for, i.e. the destruc­tion of the taboo, delv­ing into the forbidden?

If one wish­es to real­ly entail him­self in met­zine­r­ia, it would be advis­able to start under­stand­ing the impor­tance and dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties we are deal­ing with, because, at the end of the day, all Poi­sons are Spir­its hid­den under leaves and branch­es. We all start know­ing the plant, lov­ing the plant, fear­ing the plant (with a sacred respect­ful fear), con­nect­ing with the Spir­it that inhab­its it, but even­tu­al­ly we will need to ingest, smoke, drink, inhale, anoint it. For real. Then is when the dis­til­la­tion starts.

Some­times fear may par­a­lyze us, but we should be wise enough to acknowl­edge this fact, you will have to under­stand what you are fear­ing, what are you lack­ing? What are you crav­ing for?  Then you will know what poi­sons are call­ing you, which of them fright­en you, and will be able to give your­self to them, for the Poi­son is a teacher, about your­self, about the Path, about the Gods, about Death and Life.

Arti­cle writ­ten by Sem­pro­ni­ana Tort — Júlia Carreras

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Reflec­tions on met­zine­r­ia or the Path of Poi­sons (I) de Sem­pro­ni­ana Tort — Júlia Car­reras Tort està sub­jec­ta a una llicèn­cia de Reconeix­e­ment-NoCom­er­cial-SenseO­braDeriva­da 4.0 Inter­na­cional de Cre­ative Commons
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