26/11/2025
🌿Fear of magical plants
There can be a lot of initial fear for people who are considering working with Magical plants, let us see if we can demystify some of those fears.
Fear of magical plants has several overlapping origins, which does not come from just one place, but is rather a mix of psychology, culture, history and media narratives, out of these the biggest instigator of fear must be history and media narratives, which is one we will have a look at today.
We have to remember that during the 1960-70’s there was a big increase in the use of magical plants, it was a time of sexual liberation and the birth of youth culture. This era was a very hedonistic time as freedoms were explored, many fueled by the large consumption of L*D or its laboratory listing LCD-25 better known as ergot, a fungus that grew on diseased kernels.
The media and governments strategy to control these times was to amplify extreme or fabricated cases and stories of people using L*D to instil fear. There were stories of magical plants being portrayed as being the culprits of causing psychosis and leading to brain damage, people jumping out of windows, or these plants turning people into unpredictable dangers. All these dramatic depictions reinforced the fear and stigma, independent of any scientific evidence, leading to society along with religious and conservative groups deciding to frame magical plants as morally dangerous.
All this negative media had the desired effect of creating a strong social stigma linking magical plants to chaos and the collapse of society. This may seem extreme now, but this is the power that the media and governments had to make us all have fear around the use of Magical Plants.
What we are looking to do here at The Shamans Art is to reframe this narrative on plants and shift the peoples perception, using scientific evidence and the vast experience from indigenous people across the globe, as well as our own ancestors from these lands, in the therapeutic and ceremonial use of these wonderful plant teachers.
Our next chat will be about how to use magical plants in a safe way.
“Garden Beings” By Izwoz.
