Description
I only bring on people I believe in. I've had some really beautiful experiences with Amentara's blue lotus, and Christian's story speaks for itself.
If you want to explore the plants from this conversation, use code LACROIX22 for 22% off your first order:
https://www.amentara.com/go/lacroix
The red and white mushroom on Santa's suit, in Super Mario and on your phone's emoji keyboard was sacred long before it was a cartoon. Egypt burned blue lotus in its ceremonies. The Vedas sang hymns to Soma. Siberian shamans dressed in red and white and came down through the smoke hole in winter carrying Amanita muscaria. Today the same plants are called poison, or drugs.
Matthew LaCroix is joined by Christian Rasmussen, founder of Amentara, for a conversation about the plant medicines of the ancient world and why the modern world turned against them. Matt's argument: the war on drugs was never about drugs. It was a war on consciousness.
Christian tells how he found Amanita muscaria: a brutal benzodiazepine withdrawal, a patch of red mushrooms on a hike one year to the day after he quit, and a company that grew out of it. Then the November 2023 morning when SWAT, the DEA and Homeland Security raided his building over a mushroom that is legal in every state except Louisiana. The field test said psilocybin. The lab said no. They let him wait six months for the result.
From there the two go back in time. Shamanism as the oldest religion on Earth. The mushroom in early Christian art. John Allegro and the Dead Sea Scrolls. R. Gordon Wasson and the Soma of the Vedas. Blue lotus in Egyptian ceremony and in the tomb of Tutankhamun. How a Siberian solstice rite became Christmas: the tree brought inside, the mushrooms hung to dry above the fire, the reindeer that seek them out. And why the red mushroom appears in fairy tales at the exact moment the ordinary turns extraordinary.
Matt closes on the Hermetic teaching that humanity fell in love with its shadow, and makes the case that these plants were built in as the way back.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open
1:04 Matthew LaCroix and Christian Rasmussen
3:06 Benzodiazepines and a dark night of the soul
8:08 A patch of Amanita muscaria on a hike
14:58 When medicine came from plants
20:18 A thousand year myth: why Amanita is called poison
22:38 The 2023 raid: SWAT, the DEA and Homeland Security
28:34 The war on drugs was a war on consciousness
34:26 The Matrix, the red pill and the conditioned mind
37:48 The great awakening and the global dark night
42:51 The Hermetic shadow, and the way back
48:01 How the ancients saw sacred plants: Jesus, Allegro, Wasson and Soma
53:22 From Kali Yuga to Satya Yuga
55:43 Ceremony, intention and respect
1:00:40 Dark journeys and integration
1:02:29 Blue lotus in ancient Egypt
1:04:19 How microdosing Amanita works
1:09:05 Super Mario, Santa Claus and the reindeer of Lapland
1:11:43 Siberian shamans and the origin of Christmas
1:14:44 Why is this mushroom everywhere?
1:15:55 The gentlest of the plant teachers
1:21:32 Why the source of a sacred plant matters
1:25:40 The body as a temple
1:28:49 How to start, and Amentara's plants
1:36:25 Reefer Madness and the fear of plants
1:40:00 Healing the world starts inside
1:42:38 Where to find Christian
GUEST
Christian Rasmussen is the founder of Amentara, which sources wild Amanita muscaria, blue lotus, kanna and more than twenty other traditional plants.
https://www.amentara.com/go/lacroix