summer tour • Taboo Tonics & Treasured Toxins: Ethnobotany of the Misunderstood Entheogens • MN!

🔮 TABOO TONICS & TREASURED TOXINS: ETHNOBOTANY OF THE MISUNDERSTOOD ENTHEOGENS 🔮

A Pre-Game Lecture to kick off the Big Psych Symposium!! Open to the public- no conference registration is required (though I highly recommend it! 😊 )

Friday August 16th, 1-3pm central
Minneapolis, MN (location provided upon sign-up)

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Toxin and tonic. Nectar and venom. What is the difference, after all?

Here in 21st century pop culture, our attitudes have been corralled to fear poison in some contexts yet embrace it without hesitation in others. And yet, the traditional use of “baneful” plants & fungi remains valued world-wide for intentional rites of initiation, divination, practical medication, and edification.

What is the allure of riding these edges between danger and delight… and could these practices be an evolutionary tool? What is the through-line between the most vilified flora, funga, and fauna, colonization, birth workers, and “witches”?

Beacons like Datura, Tobacco, Amanita muscaria, Calamus, and Ergot remain favorites in our mythology and medicine cabinets, ancestral and modern stash bags, and yes, even allopathic doctors kits! But why?

How do these compounds support the dance between pain and pleasure, baseline consciousness and the dreamtime, and making sense of the concentric rings of being with the present and the vision, self and world?

In this community curiosity session, we will take a lively look at the mythology & taboo history of herby women’s wisdom, inner alchemy, and the ethnobotany of many a misunderstood pharmakon. Deeper still, we will examine the role of this type of active inquiry, including it’s modern adaptations, with philosophical considerations for the especially pertinent nuance between & beyond the binary of poison and medicine.

There may even be a little mischievous but friendly gnome with a basket of strange and wonderful elixirs... you will have to be there to find out!

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A special thank you to our friends at Big Psych Symposium!! Check out the "Let's Learn Together" tab for more info about the fantastic conference to follow this lecture!

Capacity is limited, so your advanced registration is recommended! Tickets may be available at the door if space allows. Don't hesitate to contact BSB with any questions you may have. As always, no one turned away for lack of funds.