Pubdate: Mon, 16 May 2011
Source: Daily Nexus (UC Santa Barbara, CA Edu)
Copyright: 2011 Daily Nexus
Contact:  http://www.dailynexus.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2729
Author: Kevin W. McCarty, Daily Nexus drug columnist Kevin W. McCarty 
is a pot prophet.

THE POINTLESSNESS OF POT PERSECUTION

The fight for the right to use hemp and laugh at one's rulers has been
happening constantly for centuries. The desire for a central authority
to control and regulate the natural interconnectedness of living
creatures stems from the fact that life is naturally awesome.
According to the Book of Genesis in the King James Bible - the
Judeo-Christian story of the creation of the universe - in the
beginning, "the Earth brought forth grass and herb-yielding seed after
its kind and the tree-yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after
his kind: and God saw that it was good."

Life's natural order is pleasurable and perfect enough to make a
central authority unnecessary and irrelevant to the point that the
authority must interrupt the natural flow of life to make itself seem
more important. Without such artificial fear of loss, the central
authority would quickly seem like arbitrary rules to the mind of the
people. The Bible even predicts the attempts by some people to
restrict the natural order and prohibit certain substances. "In latter
times, some shall ... speak lies in hypocrisy ... commanding to
abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with
thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every
creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received
with thanksgiving."

Religious beliefs across the world incorporate cannabis into their
rituals and beliefs, yet our governing authority speaks of the plant
as if it is evil. In ancient Japan, according to legendary hemp
scholar Jack Herer in his book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, cannabis
was used for the binding together of married couples to drive away
evil spirits and was thought to create laughter and happiness in marriage.

For the Buddhists in China, India and Tibet, many traditions, writings
and beliefs indicate that "Siddhartha" (the Buddha) himself used and
ate nothing but hemp and its seeds for six years before announcing his
truths and becoming the Buddha.

In pre-Christian Persia, the Zoroastrians used cannabis as their chief
religious sacrament. It served as a painkiller, a commune with the
gods and a raw material for lamp oil. In the Zoroastrian religion,
humans bear ultimate responsibility for all situations they are in and
for the way they act toward one another. Reward, punishment, happiness
and grief all depend on how individuals live their lives. The three
"Magi," or wise men, who attended the birth of Christ were likely cult
references to the Zoroastrians.

People all across the ancient world have recognized the value of hemp.
The Essenes, an ancient sect of Jews, used hemp medicinally, as did
other early Jews on Friday night services when they brought thousands
of cannabis incense burners to "hotbox" the Solomon's Temple.
Naturally, they would then go home to devour the largest meal of the
week.

In the Middle East, the Sufis of Islam were mystical priests who used
cannabis for divine revelation, insight and oneness with Allah. They
have been blazing for well over a millennium. In the centuries since,
new and creative ways have been devised by the central authority to
interrupt the flow of life and exercise tyranny over the stoned mind
of man.

Cannabis as a holy sacrament leads a user to find a personal truth
that may or may not align with the truth ordained by the central
authority. Because of this, all sorts of silly thoughts have been
introduced by the authority in order to make cannabis seem dangerous
or unnatural.

While embracing wine as a sacrament and tolerating beer and hard
liquor, the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church outlawed cannabis
ingestion in Spain in the 12th century and France in the 13th. Many
other natural remedies were simultaneously banned. Anyone using hemp
as a remedy or sacrament was labeled "witch." In 1484, Pope Innocent
VIII singled out cannabis healers and other herbalists, proclaiming
hemp an unholy sacrament of the second and third types of Satanic
mass. This persecution lasted for more than 150 years.

Despite this centuries-long attack by the most powerful political and
religious force in Western civilization, hemp cultivation continued in
Northern Europe, Africa and Asia. While the church persecuted cannabis
users in Europe, the Spanish Conquistadors were busy planting hemp
everywhere around the world to provide sails, rope and clothing.

Human society is capable of sustaining itself on nothing more than the
simple fruits of God's creation, such as cannabis. We only need a
nanny state to take care of us because we have become disconnected
from our natural niche within nature. We only need billions of dollars
of spending on health care because we as a population have no idea
what constitutes a natural healthy condition. These days, we only
fight wars because we still rely on a finite, petroleum-based economic
paradigm.

We don't need welfare. We don't need war. What we need is our hempseed
back and legal. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.