Gnostic Media - Jan Irvin

What is Salvia divinorum? Is it only a party drug used by teenagers on idiotic YouTube videos? Or is it an ancient ritualistic plant that has been used by shamans for many generations for religious and healing purposes? Exactly what is Salvia and how does it reproduce? What are its effects and how dangerous is it?

Tonight we plunge back into the ancient ritualistic use of psychedelics and on to a little understood member of the psychedelic family, diviner's sage, Salvia divinorum.

Daniel Siebert is an independent researcher, pharmacognosist, ethnobotanist, educator, and author. He has been studying Salvia divinorum for over twenty years and was the first person to work on the human pharmacology of salvinorin A and to clearly identify this compound as the psychoactive principal of the plant. He has studied Salvia divinorum in its native habitat and has worked with it under the guidance of Mazatec shamans. His work appears in scientific journals and other publications. Mr. Siebert is the creator of the Salvia divinorum Research and Information Center web site (www.sagewisdom.org). This was the first Internet resource to focus exclusively on information about Salvia divinorum, and it continues to be the most comprehensive. Daniel Siebert was featured in the 1998 television documentary ³Sacred Weeds,² which aired on channel 4 in the United Kingdom.

His comments and opinions on Salvia divinorum have appeared in USA Today, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Scientific American, and many other newspapers and magazines. Similarly, he has discussed the plant on CNN, Fox News, ABC News ³Nightline,² the National Public Radio (NPR) program ³All Things Considered," and many other television and radio stations. He currently resides in Malibu, California and is completing work on a comprehensive book about Salvia divinorum.