Wade Davis: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World

Speaker: Wade Davis
From: The Long Now Foundation
Location: Cowell Theatre: San Francisco, CA
Download: Mp3
Download: PDF Transcript
Date: January 13, 2010

Anthropologist Wade Davis is one of the world's great story tellers, with personal adventures to match. An Explorer-in-Residence at National Geographic, he specializes in hanging out with traditional peoples and exploring their religious practices.

He first came to public notice with his discovery of the reality of zombies in Haitian voodoo and the substance used to poison them---chronicled in his 1985 book, The Serpent and the Rainbow. He is the author of 13 books, including One River and Shadows in the Suns, and has hosted, written, and starred in numerous television specials, including "Earthguide," "Light at the Edge of the World," "Spirit of the Mask," and "Forests Forever." This talk is based on the prestigious Massey Lectures that Davis gave in Canada in 2009.

W. Davis: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World from The Long Now Foundation on FORA.tv

Summary

What does it mean to be human and alive?

The thousands of different cultures and languages on Earth have compellingly different answers to that question. "We are a wildly imaginative and creative species," declares Wade Davis, and then proves it with his accounts and photographs of humanity plumbing the soul of culture, of psyche, and of landscape.

The threat to cultures is often ideological, Davis notes, such as when Mao whispered in the ear of the Dalai Lama that "all religion is poison," set about destroying Tibetan culture.

The genius of culture is the ability to survive in impossible conditions, Davis concludes. We cannot afford to lose any of that variety of skills, because we are not only impoverished without it, we are vulnerable without it.

www.GaianBotanicals.com

Wade Davis author of The Wayfinders at the 2009 Massey Lecture in the Convocation Hall, Toronto, October 31, 2009.

Peyote to LSD - A Psychedelic Odyssey

Peyote to Lsd: Psychedelic Odyssey

From: Wade Davis Blog

In this feature length documentary, renowned botanist, explorer, and author Wade Davis, follows in the footsteps of his mentor to experience for himself the mind bending discoveries that Professor Richard Evans Schultes brought to the western world. Get an insight into native ceremonies and learn the secrets of shamans and medicine men. Retrace the thrilling exploration that transferred ancient knowledge to the developed world. Finally, visit laboratories in Switzerland to explore the evolution of psychedelic substances from sacred plants to LSD. Legendary writers, musicians, and Beat poets offer insight into the counterculture and mainstream influence of botanical compounds.

www.EROCx1.com

Dr. Richard Evans Schultes: Hallucinogenic Plants

 
From: Gnostic Media Podcast #79
Professor Richard Evans Schultes Lecture
Download: FREE Mp3 [right click, save as]
Subscribe: HERE

This episode of the Gnostic media podcast features a rare lecture Dr. Richard Evans Schultes on the topic of: Hallucinogenic Plants. I have an original BPC [Botanical Preservation Corps] cassette of this talk but there in no info on it other the #028. For those not familiar with Professor Schultes, he is widely considered The Father of Modern Ethnobotany and the real life Indiana Jones. Some of his students include Tim Plowman, Andrew Weil and Wade Davis. He coauthored Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers with Albert Hofmann and Christian Rätsch.

Richard Evans Schultes was a Boston-born and Harvard-educated botanical explorer, ethnobotanist and conservationist. To research his undergraduate thesis at Harvard, he travelled to Oklahoma with Weston LaBarre in 1936 to study the use of peyote among the Kiowa. In 1938 he travelled to Oaxaca, Mexico with Pablo Reko to seek the identity of teonanacatl. He and Reko were successful at identifying the species of mushrooms used by the Mazatec Indians and were the first to record the species used for their psychoactive properties.

In 1939 Schultes again travelled to Mexico in a successful attempt to verify the identity of Ololiúqui. He travelled throughout Mexico for a few years researching and collecting botanical medicines, hallucinogens, and poisons, before earning his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941. He soon became caught up in World War II when he was recruited by the United States to find an Amazonian source for rubber. He spent the next ten years working on this project.

In 1953 Schultes became the curator of the Orchid Herbarium at Harvard. He served as Curator of Ethnobotany for the Harvard Botanical Museum from 1958 to 1967 and as Executive Director from 1967-1970. In 1970 he was named Professor of Biology and Director of the Botanical Museum, positions he held until his retirement in 1985.

Schultes was a prolific writer, published over 450 technical papers and nine books on Ethnobotany, and was widely recognized as one of the most distinguished figures in the field. He received many awards for his work including the Cross of Boyaca (Colombia's highest honor), the annual Gold Medal of the World Wildlife Fund, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the Linnean Gold Medal (the highest award in the field of botany).

Schultes left our world and became one with the ancestor spirits in 2001.

 

Links:
EROWID: Richard Evans Schultes
Wikipedia: Richard Evans Schultes
Chapter from John Allen’s: Mushroom Pioneers
Buy superior Ethnobotanicals: GaianBotanicals.com
The American Academy of Achievement: Interview 
Interview by Peter Gorman: HIGH TIMES Magazine
Richard Evans Schultes: A Tribute & Bibliography in PDF
Heffter Review #1: Antiquity of the Use of New World Hallucinogens

Golden Guide: Hallucinogenic plants
 
Ethnobotany: evolution of a discipline Google Books

www.GaianBotanicals.com

2 TED Talks: Featuring Wade Davis

Wade Davis Ph.D. is a Harvard graduate and former student of Professor Richard Evans Shultes. He holds degrees in Anthropology, Biology and Ethnobotany and is also a professional writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently working with National Geographic. The feature film "Serpent and the Rainbow" was based on Davis's doctoral thesis on Haitian Voodoo Witchdoctors and the science behind zombification. He has done extensive fieldwork with Ayahuasca, Magic Mushrooms, DMT containing snuffs and other entheogens / psychotropic plant medicines. Last but not least he is dedicated conservationist who believes humanity's greatest legacy is the "ethnosphere," the cultural counterpart to the biosphere, and "the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness." He beautifully articulates the intellectual, emotional and moral reasons why it's in everyone's best interest to preserve the world's cultures.. I'm certain you will enjoy these TED talks, they are well worth your time to watch or listen to.

Download: in Mp3 Format

Wade Davis: Cultures at the far edge of the world with stunning photos and stories, National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the world's indigenous cultures, which are disappearing from the planet at an alarming rate. 

You can learn more about the Kogi HERE. Also in the National Geographic story entitled "Keepers of the World"

Wade Davis serves on the councils of Ecotrust and other NGOs working to protect diversity. He also co-founded Cultures on the Edge, a quarterly online magazine designed to raise awareness of threatened communities.