The Queen of Sheba's Spices: Was Cannabis One?

17th-century AD painting of the Queen of Sheba from a church in Lalibela,
Ethiopia and now in the National Museum of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The biblical Queen of Sheba, who also appears (unnamed) in the Quran and is claimed by the Ethiopians as theirs, famously brought gold and spices to King Solomon, circa 950 BC. But what exactly did she bring and where was she from?

Two ancient Yemeni peoples, the Mineans and the Sabaeans, were involved in the lucrative spice trade. Some archaeologists think the Queen of Sheba was a Sabaean from the Semitic civilization of Saba (1200 BC–275 AD) in Southern Arabia, now Yemen.

The inscription on a wooden sarcophagus of 264 BC from Egypt now in the Cairo Museum shows it contained the body of Zayd’il bin Zayd, a Minaean trader who “imported myrrh and calamus for the temples of the gods of Egypt.” Researcher Sula Benet argues that in the earliest Greek translations of the Old Testament, "kan" was rendered as "reed," leading to the erroneous translation as "calamus" for "cannabis."

Modern scholars still cannot pinpoint the origin or species of many ancient spices—for example, cinnamon—and they find it strange that myrrh is not among the names of incense inscribed on South Arabian incense burners. Ldn from these artifacts is translated as ladanum, and Qlm identifies with calamus, also known as scented reed, which Pliny described as having "a specially fine scent which attracts people even from a long way off,” according to Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient Yemen (St. John Simpson, ed.).

In the oldest Sabaean inscriptions originating from the oasis of Marib, five deities are invoked, the most important being Athar, “behind whose name one recognizes the Babylonian Ishtar.” Athar was associated with the morning star (as was Ishtar). “The Sumerian herb called Sim.Ishara’, ‘aromatic of the Goddess Ishtar,’ is equated with the Akkadian qunnabu, ‘cannabis.'” (Erica Reiner, 1995, quoted by Chris Bennett in Entheogens and the Development of Culture, John Rush ed.)

Islamic legends of the Queen of Sheba (known as Bilqis) have a strange plot in which Solomon polishes the palace floor so that he can see the Queen’s legs, which were reputed to be the legs of a donkey. First-century AD author Josephus Flavius calls the Queen Nikaule or Nikaulis in his Jewish Antiquities.

This is one of the nicknames the Greeks gave to Empusa, the female demon famous for having the legs of a donkey mentioned in Aristophanes’ comedy The Frogs. Some think The Frogs focuses on the exiled general Alcibiades, who stole the sacrament kykeon from the temple of the grain goddess Demeter, and started partying with it at orgies at his home. The play brings in the sybaritic Dionysus as the new god of Eleusis, dethroning Demeter.

The Testament of Solomon, a Judaeo-Christian work dated between the first and third centuries AD, mentions Empusa under the name Onoskelis, which also means “donkey-legged woman.” The Testament, supposed to be the writings of the legendary King himself, says that he and Onoskelis were quite close and that she took an active part in the construction of the temple of Jerusalem by producing hempen ropes.

The Queen of Sheba, from a 15th-century manuscript
now at Staats - und Universitätsbibliothek Gottingen

This role is similar to that of the ancient Egyptian goddess Seshat, who was associated with the female Pharaoh Hathshepsut (1508–1458 BC) and “stretched the cord” made of hemp in temple-building rituals. In ancient Egyptian, Sheba means "star" or "seven," a number associated with Seshat, “She of the Seven Points” who has a seven-pointed leaf in her headdress. Wikipedia says: "In Egypt, beginning in the 18th dynasty, a Semitic goddess named Qudshu ('Holiness') begins to appear prominently, equated with the native Egyptian goddess Hathor. Some think this is Athirat/Ashratu [Asherah/Ishtar] under her Ugaritic name." Hathshepsut was from the 18th dynasty.

Solomon’s temple was dedicated "for the burning of the incense of sweet spices before him" (2 Chronicles 2:4). He built a temple to Asherah, which was later torn down by Josiah, as described in Kings 23:13.

Flavius identifies Sheba as "the woman who ruled Egypt and Ethiopia." Some think her name Nikaulis is derived from the Egyptian goddess Neith by way of Hathshepsut, and that The Queen of Sheba was Hathsepsut herself or one of her descendants. Sheba’s Ethiopian name is Makeda and was derived from Hathsehpsut’s throne name, Ma’at-Ka-Re, honoring the goddess Ma’at, the Queen of Heaven, a moniker for Asherah or Ishtar.

UPDATE 10/15: I was informed by a DJ in Jamaica that the Rastas sing about the Queen of Sheba bringing ganja to King Solomon.

She is included in the book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

Grace and Frankie Take a Trip

UPDATE 10/15: Both Tomlin and Fonda are included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory. 

Tokin Women Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, who intelligently addressed pot smoking as a means of empowering women in 9-5, have teamed up again for the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, along with Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman. In it, Tomlin and Fonda play 70-something women whose husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) suddenly announce they're in love and want to marry each other.

The first episode was a revelation. Tomlin's character Frankie, after attempting to squash her heartbreak with junk food, alcohol and cigarettes, instead finds some peyote buttons in her freezer and begins a vision quest. As the clip shown on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon reveals, Fonda's uptight character Grace accidentally joins in the experience and is told, "Brace yourself for some light vomiting, followed by life-altering hallucinations."

Mary Kay Place, who smoked pot with William Hurt in The Big Chill, appears in Episode 2, wherein Grace opens Frankie's freezer and says, "Oh, a bag of pot. She's going to be just fine."

In Episode 4, Christine Lahti guests, and the exchange is:
Grace: “All your clothes reek of pot.”
Frankie: “Because I wear hemp and not dead snakes on my feet.”

Next, in Episode 5, Frankie is shown rolling a joint and then smoking it with Grace's daughter Brianna. "How did you survive her?" Frankie asks, meaning Grace. "This helped," is the reply (meaning the marijuana). Grace confronts her fears about the "drugs" that Frankie prefers.

All 13 episodes of Grace and Frankie are now available for binge-watching on Netflix.

Also see: 

When Will Women Have Fun with Weed on TV? (Season 2 review)

Grace & Frankie & Ruth & Maria (Season 4 review)

Grace & Frankie: Seniors Who Smoke (Cannabis Now review) 

Carly Fiorina: We Don't Need Your Stinkin' Tax Dollars

UPDATE: Fiorina has now said, "Drug addiction should not be criminalized" and has come out for states' right to legalize.

Carly Fioria has announced she’ll seek the Republicans nomination for President in 2016.

Named Fortune magazine’s “Most Powerful Woman in Business” in 1998, Fiorina took the helm of HP but failed to produce promised profits and was forced to resign. With a huge influx of her own cash, Fiorina won the Republican primary for Senate in California in 2010, challenging Senator Barbara Boxer (who recently co-sponsored the federal CARERS Act to legalize medical marijuana at the federal level just after announcing she will retire).

During her Senate race, Fiorina said the she opposed Prop. 19, which would have legalized adult use of marijuana in California, because “sending billions of dollars in new tax revenues to Sacramento is exactly the problem…because Sacramento—and Washington, DC—have a spending problem and will continue to spend the money we send them.”


Fiorina recently told Slate magazine she isn’t even for medical marijuana: “I remember when I had cancer and my doctor said, ‘Do you have any interest in medicinal marijuana?’ I did not,” she told Slate. “And they said, good, because marijuana today is such a complex compound, we don’t really know what’s in it, we don’t really know how it interacts with other substances or other medicines.”

Fiorina's announcement video (they have those now) took aim at Hillary, her opposing queen on the fast-filling chessboard. Also announcing today was Dr. Ben Carson, a neuroscientist not near as hot as Carl Hart who still quaintly believes in the gateway effect; expected in by the end of the week is Clinton nemesis and fellow Arkansas homeboy Mike Huckabee.

Fiorina may have been brought in to dilute any progressive shift on Hillary by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who co-sponsored the States' Rights to Medical Marijuana Act and voted against mandatory drug testing. His entry into the race prompted President Obama to joke that we could have another “pot-smoking socialist” in the White House.

Hillary is being pressured to go progressive on other issues. Her speech on racial disparities in our criminal justice system, where she said, “It's time to end the era of mass incarceration. We need a true national debate about how to reduce our prison population while keeping our communities safe,” was a welcome surprise to many and showed some of the old Hillary stuff.

Liz Mair and Marijuana

Rising (and sometimes falling) Republican strategist Liz Mair had expressed some interesting opinions about the War on Drugs on the April 24 edition of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher.

The Libertarian-minded Mair wasn't so surprised at the blockbuster news that nearly every examiner in the FBI Laboratory's microscopic hair comparison unit gave flawed testimony over more than a two-decade period, including 32 death-penalty cases. Acknowledging it was "obviously a horrible situation," Mair added, "It's the government. We don't instinctively trust them with a great deal."

Responding to Maher's statement that the US, with 4% of the world's population, incarcerates 22% of the prisoners worldwide, Mair noted that we've locked up "a bunch of people who have put there for doing very minimal nonviolent things. You look at pot convictions....This is what makes people feel that we're going a good job of being tough tough on crime because they look at the numbers, but it's not substantiated in any way, shape or form."

Conservative Weekly Standard columnist Christopher Caldwell then opined that the War on Drugs had brought down the murder rate, to which Maher responded, "If you want to cut the murder rate, end the War on Drugs." Mair agreed, "at least in Mexico."

If Mair, a former online strategist for Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina, is an augur of things to come for the Republican party, liberals might find some GOP allies on ending the War on Drugs. But what else will we have to swallow: privatized police forces or prosecutors?

Meanwhile, 35 Congressional Republicans joined California Libertarian and former Reagan speechwriter Dana Rohrabacher in voting to allow VA doctors to recommend medical marijuana. Sadly, the amendment failed by only 3 votes as 8 Democrats voted against it, including Joe Kennedy III, whose cousin Patrick (a former Ambien addict) is banging the anti-marijuana drum with his group SAM.

Cecily is Strong at the Correspondents' Dinner

SNL's Cecily Strong, who hosted this year's White House Correspondents' dinner last night, told some good jokes, like, "I'm not going to try and tell you politicians how to do politics...That would be like you guys telling me what to do with my body. Can you even imagine?"

The 31-year-old comedienne got a round of applause after asking the journalists in the crowd to raise their hands and say, "I solemnly swear not to talk about Hillary's appearance, because that is not journalism." She added, "Also Cecily Strong looks great tonight."

Strong mock-defended the Secret Service, calling them, "the only law enforcement agency that will get in trouble if a black man gets shot."  She told Obama, "Your hair is so white now, it can talk back to police." (He laughed heartily at that.)

Strong got down to the drug war with the joke, "This year Obama supported putting women on money, as opposed to the DEA agents who prefer to put money on women.” She also brought up Chris Christie’s belief that marijuana is a gateway drug, asking, “so like a bridge to other drugs, and he wants to shut that bridge down?”

Watch video of Strong's performance.

Strong joked that she was the first heterosexual woman in 20 years to host the event. Paula Poundstone was the first solo female host in 1992, and Elayne Boosler hosted the following year. Wanda Sykes hosted in 2009. According to Wikipedia, "Until 1962, the dinner was open only to men, even though WHCA's membership included women. At the urging of Helen Thomas, President John F. Kennedy refused to attend the dinner unless the ban on women was dropped."

One of Strong's recurring characters on SNL is the pseudo-activist "Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation With at at Party" who says things like, "Newsflash: Orphans are twice as likely not to have parents."

Meanwhile, Obama's "Anger Translator" from the event, Keegan-Michael Key, recently demonstrated with partner Jordan Peele Why Ganga is So Much Better than Coffee.

Joan Jett with a Joint

High Times has scored another interview with a female pot puffer, this time with rocker Joan Jett while on tour opening for The Who on their “The Who Hits 50” North American tour. 

Discussing shoulder problems the righteous guitarist has been dealing with, HT asked about the batch of high-CBD balms and lotions they sent to her, "How did they work out for your recovery?"

"Useful, very useful," she replied. "I don’t understand why marijuana was made into this evil thing so long ago. Beyond whether or not you smoke joints, you can’t deny the medical benefits of legalizing. It’s been definitely found to work for various issues."

"I saw an interview yesterday with a woman whose son was hurt in some kind of accident—head injury," she continued. "He’d have these pain explosions, and none of the drugs that the doctors could give him relieved it. But his mother gave him some pure cannabis oil, and that stopped his pain. But now the mother’s possibly in trouble. This kind of stuff is ridiculous—ridiculous. And that’s just on the medical side of things."

"On the personal side: Of course I smoke pot," she said. "It’s not a big deal. I think you have to be responsible, like with anything." 

On April 18, she was deservedly inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In her induction speech, Tokin' Woman Miley Cyrus said, "I'm going to start off this induction with the first time I wanted to have sex with Joan Jett. We were doing Oprah together, and I go up to Joan's hotel room. Joan opens the door, and I come in, and Kenny Laguna is laying in bed. I don't know what the fuck is going on. There's towels shoved underneath all the door cracks, shower caps around all the smoke detectors. Joan is running around spraying orange-smelling cleaner to mask the smell of 'the pot' (that's what you guys call it), and we go into her bathroom [where they smoked and talked]." She then talked about how Joan was the first woman to start her own record label, after all the other ones turned her down.

"I come from a place where Rock and Roll means something," Jett said in her acceptance speech. "It's the language of a subculture of integrity, rebellion, frustration, alienation, and the glue that sets several generations free of unnatural societal and self suppression. Rock and Roll is political. It is a meaningful way to express dissent, upset the status quo, stir up revolution, and fight for human rights." 

Jett's portrait by Mark Seliger in today's Rolling Stone profile (pictured above) shows her puffing on a phatty, and in case there's any doubt about what's in it, the story begins, "And she has a fat, torpedolike joint hanging from her mouth. The smoking, Jett says later, loosens up the edges and range of her distinctively craggy voice."

She also has "the best shit," according to Laguna, Jett's manager, co-producer and co-songwriter for the past 35 years. "Keith Richards had some of that," he announces with a hearty laugh, as Jett rolls her number on the mixing board before the take. "Said it gave him flashbacks to 1968."

UPDATES: In the 2018 documentary about Jett, Bad Reputation, Laguna is shown handing her a joint, which she smokes. The beginning of the Cyrus Hall of Fame intro is shown, but not the part about "the pot." The film interviews Tokin' Woman Kristen Stewart, who starred as Jett in the 2010 film The Runaways, along with Cyrus, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, Billie Joe Armstrong, Pete Townsend, Dave Grohl, and Michael J. Fox. It's said that Chrissie Hynde advised Jett to get herself together when she was drinking a lot after the breakup of her breakthrough all-female rock band The Runaways; perhaps pot helped with that. 

Jett and Cyrus performed together at the 2021 Superbowl TikTok Halftime Show. 

Drug War Victim Billie Holiday at 100

UPDATE 10/15: Holiday is included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

"By the 1930s, even before marijuana was criminalized, Billie Holiday's name had become a kind of password among marijuana smokers who had formed an ad hoc network of users across the country," wrote Buzzy Jackson in A Bad Woman Feeling Good. "Whenever you went to different cities," Holiday's friend Marie Bryant remembered, "soon enough a guy would knock on your hotel door with a phonograph and Louis's [Armstrong] and Billie's records...and a little thing of pot....And this happened all over the country, a society of people who just loved Billie."

The popular singer-like-no-other, born 100 years ago Tuesday, began to smoke marijuana in the early 1930s when you could buy a couple of joints for twenty-five cents. (Source: Meg Greene, Billie Holiday: A Biography)

At the famous Café Society in New York City, "everyone in that group smoked pot," remembered trumpeter Doc Cheatham. "They had a little room off the bandstand and some, including Mary Lou [Williams] and Billie [Holiday], would smoke pot in there. They would put me outside the door in a chair smoking a pipe that would cover the fumes of the pot." (Source: Morning Glory, a biography of Williams by Linda Dahl).

John Szwed’s 2015 book, Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth, tells a story of the actor Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester staying in New York with music producer John Hammond while Laughton cruised Harlem and met Holiday at the Alhambra Grill. Holiday took Laughton home to dinner with her mother Sadie, and “when he was leaving at dawn, he rather formally asked Billie if he might have 'some of those cigarettes to take to the ladies of London.' With the four hundred dollars that he gave her, she went around the corner to the apartment of white jazzman Mezz Mezzrow and bought every reefer he had. She fully expected that Laughton would share some of them with her, but he left without offering her even one stick.” 

At a 1937 recording session, Hammond managed to convince a record company executive that the marijuana smoke he smelled wasn't a problem. The result was "considered among the greatest recording sessions in jazz history." Holiday's voice interplayed with VIP Lester Young's saxophone on "He Ain't Got Rhythm," "This Year's Kisses," "Why Was I Born" and "I Must Have That Man," and lead to a lifelong collaboration.

ANSLINGER TARGETS HOLIDAY 

Holiday was hunted down by no less than Harry J. Anslinger, the first and longtime "drug czar" who engineered laws and international treaties banning marijuana. According to newly published research by Johann Hari, Holiday got  her first threat from Anslinger's FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics) after she recorded "Strange Fruit," a lament against lynching, in 1939. Anslinger assigned agent Jimmy Fletcher to track Holiday's movements; he tried nailing her but ended up becoming an admirer. "She was the type who could make anyone sympathetic because she was the loving type," wrote Fletcher.

Later, "Holiday's ability to consume drugs and alcohol was legendary." (Greene.) She took stimulants to get through her performance schedule and afterwards took pills, drank, and smoked pot, eventually shooting heroin as well. No wonder: according to Hari's book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs her manager/pimp Louis McKay beat her so badly she would have to tape her ribs to go onstage. McKay sought out Anslinger and met with him in DC, agreeing to set Billie up for a bust for which she went to trial. Asking to be sent to a treatment facility, instead Holiday was forced to go cold turkey in jail while serving a year's sentence. Afterwards, she was stripped of her cabaret license as an ex-con and was unable to perform in any venue where alcohol was served.

But the persecution didn't stop there. Anslinger sent another agent, George White, to stalk Holiday in San Francisco, possibly planting drugs in her hotel room as he had with other women. “The hounding and the pressure drove me,” she wrote, “to think of trying the final solution, death.” Although a jury found her not guilty, the ordeal took a toll on her reputation and her health. Nonetheless, she refused to stop singing "Strange Fruit" even though other singers were too intimidated to do so.

Szwed's book mentions Tokin' Woman Tallulah Bankhead’s unsuccessful attempt to intervene personally with J. Edgar Hoover to exonerate Holiday of drug charges. It characterizes Holiday’s autobiography Lady Sings the Blues as the first cautionary tale of drugs by a celebrity, which she wrote in part so that she could get her cabaret card back and appear in clubs that served alcohol. The “gimmick” to sell it as a confessional backfired when it left her with “a life reduced to drugs.” The Laughton story, and others involving celebrities, e.g. Orson Wells, were omitted from the book due to objections from the publisher (and Bankhead). 

At the age of 44, Holiday was hospitalized after collapsing, and was arrested again when narcotics agents claimed they found a small amount of heroin in her room. Pressuring her to reveal her dealer, agents confiscated her record player, radio, candy, and flowers and handcuffed her to her bed. Two policeman stood at her door and turned away friends who tried to visit. Suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, Billie was once more forced to withdraw from heroin without treatment. She died in her hospital bed on July 15, 1959.

How The Irish Invented Slang (for Marijuana)

We all know that the Irish saved civilization (or so says the bestselling book by Thomas Cahill). Now comes the book, How the Irish Invented Slang, by Daniel Cassidy, who postulates that many slang words for which even the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) can't name the origin were in fact based on Gaelic.

After a friend died and left behind his Irish dictionary, Cassidy took his wife's advice and learned a word from it every night, soon noticing how similar the pronunciations were to slang words.

Flipping through the book in a bookstore (yes, they still exist), I came upon the word "Gage," the term by which Louis Armstrong so lovingly referred to marijuana. Cassidy proposed the word comes from the Gaelic word "Gaid," pronounced gad, gadge or gaj, and meaning twisted twigs, rope, or hemp.

That Armstrong would have picked up on this slang fits with Cassidy's matches for jazz terms with Irish ones, including "Jazz" itself, another word the OED has no clue about. Jazz is the phonetic spelling of the Irish and Gaelic word "teas," meaning "heat, passion, excitement, and highest temperature," Cassidy asserts.

Seen at  Linnaea's Café,
San Luis Obispo, CA

Another slang term Cassidy connects to Irish is Hep or Hip, which is thought by some to come from opium smokers who sat on one hip. But its meaning "well-informed, knowledgeable, wise, in-the-know; smart, stylish" could some from a simple contraction of the Irish word "aibi," pronounced h-ab ("mature, quick, clever").

Grouch, which Chico Marx said related to a "grouch bag" in which the Marx Brothers carried marijuana, is also possibly from Irish origin, via the word "Craite" (tormented, troubled, vexed, pained; annoyed).

And finally "Dude," what stoners like to call each other, can be traced to the Irish "Dud" (pronounced "dood") meaning a foolish-looking fellow; a clown. See: How The Irish Invented Dudes. 

Also read about Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, William Butler Yeats, and hashish. 

Kardashian Spouse Enters Iboga Treatment Facility

Scott Disick, who has understandable issues with reality as the Reality-TV spouse of Kourtney Kardashian, has entered rehab of an unusual type, according to TMZ: he's gone to a facility in Costa Rica that uses the psychedelic plant Iboga in its treatment.

I remember when two hippies showed up at a drug policy conference years ago, to talk about their efforts to get Ibogaine (extracted from the Iboga plant) imported as a treatment for heroin addiction. They'd hit upon the idea while sitting around with a bunch of friends, talking about the most intense drug they'd tried in the 60s. "It must have been Ibogaine," one of them said, "because I never went back to heroin after that."As they described it, during the first eight hours of an Ibogaine trip you re-live your past, in the second eight hours you see your present, and in the last eight hours you rewrite your future. Read more about Ibogaine therapy.

Disick's problem seems to be mainly with alcohol. Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson was dosed with the hallucinogen belladonna at Towns Hospital in 1933, leading to the revelation that enabled him to quit drinking. In his autobiography Pass It On, Wilson's description of the experience sounds psychedelic: "Suddenly, my room blazed with an indescribably white light. I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description." Wilson tried LSD in the 1950s (when it was still legal) under a doctor's supervision. He enthusiastically explored LSD's clinical use to treat alcoholism, encouraging his wife Lois to also try it. The organization Wilson founded ultimately objected and buried the research, much like the Catholic church left out the sacrament kykeon in its communion ceremonies, leaving only the meaningless vestiges. A new book reveals that today's AA works for less than 10% of its members, and is harmful to the others.

The Joe Rogan show recently featured an Iboga experience. 

Last August, Keeping up with the Kardashians showed Kris's mother M.J., who has cancer, taking some marijuana-laced gummy bears to help her appetite, and talking Kris into trying some for her neck pain. The two ladies are munching out and giggling it up until "Mr. Buzzkill" (Bruce Jenner) shows up.

In 2013, three Karsashians (Kim, Khloe and Kourtney) signed an open letter to President Obama calling for an end to the injustice of the war on drugs, along with 175 fellow entertainers, civil rights leaders, members of the faith community, business leaders and athletes.

Heart's Wilson Sisters Rock (and Roll)

UPDATE 2/20: Ann Wilson recently posted a vintage picture of her with a joint to her Facebook page under the headline, "Here's to Friday." 

Ann and Nancy Wilson, who with the band Heart made songs like "Crazy on You" and "Magic Man" rites of passage for my generation of women (and beyond), are Culture Magazine's latest cool coup interview for their March issue.

Come on home, girl
He said with a smile
You don't have to love me yet
Let's get high awhile
But try to understand
Try to understand
Try, try, try to understand
He's a magic man

Asked if the Seattle-based sisters were advocates for medical marijuana like fellow Culture Cover Girls Lily Tomlin, Melissa Etheridge, Margaret Cho, and Roseanne Barr, Ann replied:

"We think it should be legal in every state in the country! It’s obviously less dangerous and harmful than alcohol, and it has many good uses for people, especially people who are very ill, but also for people who suffer from anxiety, insomnia, or pain of different types. It’s just strange to me that we’re still even talking about it."

Along with 20 million others, you've probably seen the video of the Wilsons' performance of "Stairway To Heaven" accompanied by full choir and orchestra at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors. Sing it, sistas.

Goddess Magu, the Hemp Maiden

UPDATE 10/15: Magu is included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

Deep researcher Steven Hager posted an interesting Wikipedia page this morning regarding Magu (Chinese: 麻姑), a Taoist xian ("inspired sage," "ecstatic") whose name means Hemp Maiden or Goddess.

Magu’s name combines the Chinese character MA – which derives from a Zhou Dynasty ideograph showing plants drying in a shed – with GU, a kinship term for a woman also used in religious titles like Priestess. It’s been proposed that the name is related to the Old Persian word “magus” (magician, magi).

Ma Gu is often depicted flying on a crane, riding a deer or holding peaches or wine (symbols of longevity). She is associated with the elixir of life and is the protector of females. Before becoming immortal she freed slaves who were working for her evil father. She is often pictured on birthday cards in China, where cannabis has been continuously cultivated since Neolithic times, and the saying, "When you see a deer you know Ma Gu is near," is common. Magu Wine is made in Jianchang and Linchuan. Her harvest festival, when cannabis is traditionally gathered, celebrates the time “when the world was green.”

Magu is called Mago in Korea and Mako in Japan, where a saying “Magu scratches the itch” harkens to her long, crane-like fingernails. Several early folktales from Sichuan province associate Magu with caves, and one describes a shaman who invoked her. She is said to have ascended to immortality at Magu Shan ("Magu Mountain") in Nancheng. A second Magu Mountain is located in Jianchang county.

Magu was also goddess of Shandong's sacred Mount Tai, where cannabis "was supposed to be gathered on the seventh day of the seventh month," wrote Joseph Needham in Science and Civilization in China (1959). Needham wrote, “there is much reason for thinking that the ancient Taoists experimented systematically with hallucinogenic smokes…at all events the incense-burner remained the centre of changes and transformations….” The (ca. 570 CE) Daoist encyclopedia records that cannabis was added into ritual censers. 

A modern Taoist sect called the Way of Infinite Harmony worships Magu and advocates for the religious use of cannabis (but its Wiki page was just deleted).

Celebrating Disease at The Oscars, Instead of Combating It (with Cannabis)

When Julianne Moore (pictured) or Eddie Redmayne make their expected Oscar acceptance speeches on Sunday night, they ought to call for more research into the use of cannabis for the diseases that resulted in their award-worthy roles.

Redmayne and Moore both took the Golden Globe acting prize, him for playing the ALS-afflicted Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything" and her for portraying an Alzheimer's victim in "Still Alice."

Apart from offering meaty roles to actors, these diseases have nothing to recommend them. But cannabis has shown promise against both.

As documented in NORML's yearly booklet "Emerging Clinical Applications for Cannabis and Cannabinoids: A Review of the Recent Scientific Literature," over 4.5 million Americans are afflicted with Alzheimers, and an estimated 30,000 are living with ALS (aka Lou Gehrig's disease).

No approved treatments or medications are available to stop the progression of Alzheimers Disease (AD), and few pharmaceuticals have been FDA-approved to treat symptoms of the disease. A review of the recent scientific literature indicates that cannabinoid therapy may provide symptomatic relief to patients afflicted with AD while also moderating the progression of the disease.

Some experts believe that cannabinoids' neuroprotective properties could also play a role in moderating AD. Writing in the September 2007 issue of the British Journal of Pharmacology, investigators at Ireland's Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience concluded, "[C]annabinoids offer a multi‐faceted approach for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease by providing neuroprotection and reducing neuroinflammation, whilst simultaneously supporting the brain's intrinsic repair mechanisms by augmenting neurotrophin expression and enhancing neurogenesis. ... Manipulation of the cannabinoid pathway offers a pharmacological approach for the treatment of AD that may be efficacious than current treatment regimens."

Steven Hawking with Eddie Redmayne,
who plays him in "The Theory of Everything"

Recent preclinical findings indicate that cannabinoids can delay ALS progression. Writing in the March 2004 issue of the journal Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis & Other Motor Neuron Disorders, investigators at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco reported that the administration of THC both before and after the onset of ALS symptoms staved disease progression and prolonged survival in animals compared to untreated controls.

Experts are calling for clinical trials to assess cannabinoids for the treatment of ALS. Writing in the American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Medicine in 2010, a team of investigators reported, "Based on the currently available scientific data, it is reasonable to think that cannabis might significantly slow the progression of ALS, potentially extending life expectancy and substantially reducing the overall burden of the disease."

Cannabis has also been shown to be helpful for chronic pain, which Jennifer Aniston's character suffers in "Cake." (She was nominated for other awards but snubbed by the Academy.) But even some veterans are being told they must choose between cannabis and prescription meds these days.

Tiffany's...or a Toke? Holly Chose Shopping Therapy Over Marijuana

"I've had a little go at marijuana. It's not half so destructive as brandy. Cheaper, too. Unfortunately, I prefer brandy."

This is what Miss Holly Golightly said to the press after being arrested for carrying messages from imprisoned mobster Sally Tomato in the 1958 Truman Capote novella "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

The 1961 film starring Audrey Hepburn (pictured) erased this, and all marijuana references, while retaining the plot that implicated Holly in a drug-dealing ring. After her arrest she loses her Brazilian boyfriend (with whom, in the book, she is pregnant; she miscarries while in jail). Still she refuses to narc on her friend Sally, saying, "Testify against a friend I will not. Not even if they can prove he doped Sister Kenny."

Unlike in the movie, the book contains no happy ending for Holly, who Capote said was based on a real 17-year-old girl he knew (absent the Sally Tomato connection).

"I always knew she was a hop-hop head with no more morals than a hound-bitch in heat. She belongs in prison," stammered Holly's so-called friend who married her former beau Rusty Trawler when called for help. Ironically, marijuana is first introduced in the book when Holly describes in a conversation with the book's narrator (Paul in the movie) her fondness for Tiffany's as an antidote to the "mean reds":

"You're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don't know what it is. You've had that feeling?"

"Quite often. Some people call it angst."

"All right. Angst. But what do you do about it?"

"Well, a drink helps."

“I’ve tried that. I’ve tried aspirin, too. Rusty thinks I should smoke marijuana, and I did for a while, but it only makes me giggle. What I’ve found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away..."


The film was fine with depicting Hepburn as a bit of a prostitute, and Paul as a kept man (unlike the unnamed narrator in the novella, a working man who faced the draft when he lost his job). Marijuana wasn't completely taboo for movies at that time: it appears in Sweet Bird of Youth the following year (as a means by which Paul Newman's character tries to bribe the aging actress Alexandra del Lago) and it was similarly smeared in 1957's Sweet Smell of Success.

A Broadway play more true to Capote's book was mounted in 2012. London's Royal Albert Hall just announced on Valentine's Day it would host a "live" screening of the film, complete with orchestra, in June. They called Holly, with "gargantuan cigarette holder in hand – one of the most recognisable and arresting images in cinema." (She smoked strong Picayune cigarettes in the book.)

In the film, Holly mischievously waters a marijuana-like plant with a drink while standing in front of a mirror (shown). Later, just after the cat is entranced by Holly's twirling cigarette holder, a party guest is depicted laughing hysterically, then crying, at a mirror. A nod to marijuana's effects?

Capote said of marijuana, "Pot makes the most stupid people sound amusing—that's the best thing about it. They never turn mean, they laugh at everything, and they turn charming even if they are dull."  He reminisced about "smoking up a storm" at the movies during his adolescence, saying, "I remember smoking all the way through a Bette Davis movie, laughing louder and louder as she got cloudier and cloudier." The author tried LSD twice, given to him by a doctor while it was still legal. Hepburn was a heavy tobacco smoker who suffered from asthma and died of cancer at only 63.

Rather than being romantically involved with Holly as in the movie, in the book and life, Paul/Truman was her gay friend. Capote wouldn't speculate about Holly being a lesbian, but pointed out that 80% prostitutes are. Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar portraying Capote in 2005 and Robert Morse won a Tony for playing him on Broadway in 1990.

ADDENDUM: I recently found that Capote mentioned “kef” in his introduction to My Sister’s Hand in Mine: the Collected Works of Jane Bowles. “Tangiers is composed of two mismatching parts, one of them a dull modern area stuffed with office buildings and tall gloomy dwellings, and the other a casbah descending through a medieval puzzlement of alleys and alcoves and kef-odored, mint-scented piazzas down to the crawling with sailors, ship horn-hollering port," he wrote. "The Bowles have established themselves in both sectors—have a sterilized, tout comfort apartment in the newer quarter, and also a refuge hidden away in the darker Arab neighborhood: a native house that must be one of the cities tiniest habitations—ceilings so low that one has almost literally to move on hands and knees from room to room; but the rooms themselves are like a charming series of postcard-sized Vuillards—Moorish cushions spilling over Moorish-patterned carpets, all cozy as a raspberry tart and illuminated by intricate lanterns and windows that allow the light of sea skies and views that encompass minarets and ships and the blue-washed rooftops of native tenements receding lie a ghostly staircase to the clamorous shoreline. Or that is how I remember it on the occasion of a single visit made at sunset on an evening, oh, fifteen years ago.” 

When author Jane Bowles arrived in Tanger, her husband Paul wrote, she had a traumatic experience with majoun and never tried it again. Although Paul repeatedly warned against taking too much, due to delayed onset, Jane impatiently gobbled a second helping and overdosed. "Illogically enough, from that day on, she remained an implacable enemy of all forms of cannabis. The fact that her experience had been due solely to an overdose seemed to her beside the point," Bowles wrote.

Jane, who seemed to prefer alcohol, doesn't seem to address cannabis in any of her stories, but in one of them, "Everything Is Nice," a Moslem woman named Zodelia that the narrator meets on the street comments about the dual life that the Bowles lead in the city, spending half their time with Moslem friends, and half with "Nazarenes" at the hotel. The narrator is taken to a tea party, where she eats "dusty" cakes. The story ends, "When she reached the place where she had met Zodelia she went over to the wall and leaned on it. Although the sun had sank behind the houses, the sky was still luminous and the blue of the wall had deepened. She rubbed her fingertips along it: the wash was fresh and a little of the powdery stuff came off. And she remembered how once she had reached out to touch the face of a clown because it had awakened some longing. It had happened at a little circus, but not when she was a child."

In Paul Bowles's semi-autobiographical novel The Sheltering Sky, the characters Port and Kit Moresby were based on him and Jane. Debra Winger played Kit in the film adaptation of the novel.

Madonna Brings Back Baal at the Grammys

Madonna continued her pop culture interpretations of ancient myths last night on the Grammys, cavorting in a bright red bullfighter's costume with a herd of male dancers wearing bull horns on their heads. Some commentators recoiled at the "Santanic" imagery of the piece, and they're not far off.

Throughout the Old Testament, prophet after prophet warns the children of Israel that God will bring misery upon them unless they cease to burn incense to worship the god Baal. Some scholars think that the “burnt offerings” that were made to Baal and/or his consort Ashtoreth were cannabis, mistranslated as “calamus” from caneh bosm (sweet or good cane) in scripture.

Astarte with horns.
The Louvre.

Baal was depicted, in some regions, as a horned god, and his horns were adopted for the Christian concept of the Devil. Ashtoreth was the biblical name for Asherah (or sometimes Athirat) or Astarte/Ishtar, who was also depicted as horned.

In 1875 British General Charles Gordon, sent to suppress a Muslim revolt in the Sudan, wrote, “In the choice between God & Baal, they choose Baal.” He was beheaded by Muslim rebels (as depicted in the 1966 movie Khartoum with Charlton Heston as Gordon and Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi). Today we're obsessed with Balls.

Baal was also called Bel, a descendant of Belili, the Sumerian White Goddess. Jezebel, whose name means "where is Bel?" was a Phoenician princess in the 9th century who married Ahab the prince of Israel, but maintained her loyalty to Bel. To this day “a Jezebel” is a term applied to a fallen woman not to be trusted; it was the name of a Bette Davis movie wherein she betrays her fiancé by wearing a red dress instead of a white one to a ball. But the name's been resurrected as a hip website for women. 

Elsewhere in the Grammys broadcast, Rihanna rocked with VIP Paul McCartney and Kanye West; Eric Church gave the most powerful performance since Neil Young's "Southern Man," and GaGa was good with Tony Bennett (but it shoulda been Amy). Tenacious D took Best Metal Performance and the late Joan Rivers was awarded her first Grammy. Finally, Sam Smith won best new artist and best song for aping Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down."

Excerpted in part from the forthcoming book Tokin Women, A 4000-Year Herstory from Evangelista Sista Press. 

Super-Bowl Sundae: The Drug References & Boys and their Balls

I really just watch it for the cultural references, but the game this year is, I’ve got to admit, pretty thrilling so far.

The ads for the first half of this year’s Superbowl game featured Viagra pumping up a Fiat, Budweiser taking on craft beers, Walter White as “Almost Greg” in a pharmacy for Esurance, and Jeff Bridges wearing a Dudelike sweater and Om-ing for  Square Space. Katy Perry played the “Pepsi Halftime Show” but it was Coke that the Internet server technician spilled into the Matrix in an ad, making love from hate in a kind of LSD-in-the-water fantasy fulfilled (with the wrong substance).

Perry was seen smoking pot out of an apple on the Warped Tour circa 2008, and gave a "thumbs up" to California's cannabis legalization ballot measure in 2010, but replied when asked by Rolling Stone about marijuana in 2014: "I can't do that stuff. I'd be like in the corner: 'Are you trying to kill me?!'" Can’t blame her in this violent society she’s bombarded with, starting with football itself. The program advertised appearing after the game is “Blacklist” with pyrotechnics as violent as they come; a Nascar bad-boy ad also had a firey crash; action star Danny Trejo played Marcia Brady sans her Snickers; and the ultra creepy "Shades of Grey" was advertised as inciting "countless" fantasies.

Perry’s a talented enough singer (she got me singing "Firework" with the autistic girl). But she had to turn her boobs into whipped cream canisters and her nipples into nozzles to get attention. For today’s show, she did up her life-giving breasts with nuclear symbols at Bikini Beach (pictured). She had good line at the press conference about her performance not being “deflating” (I suspect Bruce Vilanch’s hand). Perry is only the fourth woman to headline a Halftime show, counting Janet Jackson (with the famous “Wardrobe Malfunction”), Beyoncé, and Madonna (who reached to Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra).

Perry's show was augmented with pothead Lenny Kravitz, whose “Stand By My Woman Now” was the most respectful song even written to the female sex. While on tour in Croatia in 2005, Kravitz told Gloria magazine that he had smoked pot with Mick Jagger, calling it a "great privilege."

Missy Elliott, the first female Hip-Hop artist to appear at a Superbowl, brought the energy to a higher level than Perry did riding a monster mechanical tiger. Elliott reportedly confessed that she tried “a Jamaica brownie” on her trip in Jamaica in 2005 and told journalists at the press conference that she was high.

Jennifer Aniston in her Lip Flip with Jimmy Fallon backed the Seahawks because, "We got the weed man" (even though New Englanders smoke more pot per capita than any other region). It's nice to see the 5' 11" black Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson holding his own with Giselle's husband, tying up the game by the half. Last year, Wilson became just the second Black starting quarterback to win a Super Bowl, and the shortest quarterback to have ever won a Super Bowl. (Wikipedia)

When Kurt Warner walked the Lombardi trophy in after the game, all the Patriots copped a feel on the metal ball. Meanwhile, our formerly macho cars are indeed getting a Viagra boost with fake engine noise (and no spare tires); and Rachel Maddow had the best bit ever on boys' fascination with balls, deflated and otherwise.

Perry's Firework Finale was stellar and for what was spent on it, we could probably have fed every hungry child in the world Superbowl Suppers for a month. Not to mention, the $9 million-per-spot ads, the $44 million Roger Goodell makes yearly for "a job a 2-year-old could do" and all the dollars down the drain on political "speech." When will we ever grow up?

Jim Croce and Cannabis

The Pennsylvania-born Jim Croce was a working man's poet, and a master of the long phrase, penning lyrics like, "'Cause I got them steadily depressin' low-down, mind-messin', workin at the car wash blues" or "And the roller derby program said that she was built like a 'frigerator with a head." The artist whose song "Time in a Bottle" was the theme of my 1975 high school prom remains current: a character on Amazon TV's Transparent "married" Croce at the age of 4; his song "Operator" was heard on the show's pilot program.

Croce's wife and musical collaborator Ingrid describes evenings with Jim passing a joint around with friends, trading songs and stories in the 2012 biography I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story.

During one such session, Jim treated the group to his song "Careful Man," with a cigarette dangling from his lip:

I don't gamble, I don't fight,
I don't be hangin' in the bars at night,
Yeah, I used to be a fighter but
Now I am a wiser man.
I don't drink much, I don't smoke,
I don't be hardly mess around with no dope.
Yeah, I used to be a problem but
Now I am a careful man.

After Croce died in a tragic plane crash in September 1973, small amounts of marijuana were found on two of the other passengers. Ingrid had to sue for insurance payments the aviation company tried to deny her because pot was on the plane. She won, and now works as the chef of the San Diego eatery Croce's (pictured) where great music and a delightful atmosphere are to be found. Last Saturday, it was Jazz Brunch with the splendid guitarist Patrick Berrogain.

Croce's death came months after his song "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" hit #1 on the US charts, and one day before his single "I Got a Name" was released.  

In "Hard Time Losin' Man,"  Croce displayed his wonderful sense of humor, singing:

Friday night, feelin' right
I head out on the street;
Standin' in the doorway
Was a dealer known as Pete.
Well he sold me a dime of some super fine
Dynamite from Mexico
I spent all that night
Just tryin' to get right
On a ounce of oregano.

Modern Marijuana Family

Tonight's Modern Family had a cute plot about the low-class marijuana dispensary owners who move next door to the uptight Claire and her doofus hubby Phil (pictured).

After their neighbors park a monstrous boat in their driveway against city code, Phil and Claire attempt to break (unleaded) banana bread with them and convince them to launch the vessel elsewhere. When negotiations break down Phil resorts to bringing his father to camp out with his RV on the street.

The plan backfires when Phil's dad (Fred Willard) and his senior buddies start partying with the offending neighbors. The next morning, the boorish boat owner buries the hatchet with Phil, only to find out Claire has "narced" them out. The episode might have been titled, "Can't we all just get a bong?"

Marijuana has popped up before on the show, as in this clip.

UPDATE 2/15: The Wall Street Journal has taken notice.

Queen Latifah Portrays Empress Bessie Smith

This is what I call near-perfect casting: Queen Latifah (pictured) playing Bessie Smith in the HBO biopic Bessie, to air this spring.

Born to a large, poor family in Tennessee, Bessie joined a traveling minstrel show at age 14 and was mentored by Ma Rainey. She was soon performing on stages all over the country as The Empress of the Blues. "She was unquestionably the greatest of the vaudeville blues singers and brought the emotional intensity, personal involvement, and expression of blues singing into the jazz repertory with unexcelled artistry," writes PBS on their Ken Burns Jazz page.

“Bessie Smith smoked ‘reefers’ throughout her career, as did many others in the music industry,” wrote Buzzy Jackson in A Bad Woman Feeling Good. “[S]he was more than merely famous, she was a living symbol of personal freedom: she did what she liked; she spoke her mind, no matter how outrageous her opinion; she flouted bourgeois norms and engaged in alcohol, drugs, and recreational sex.”

In 1933, Smith recorded “Gimmie a Pigfoot” featuring Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden. In the last verse, instead of asking for a pigfoot, Smith sings, “Gimmie a reefer”:



Queen Latifah (aka Dana Owens) has graced the airwaves, films and TV since her groundbreaking 1989 debut All Hail The Queen set the standard for female rappers, and paved the way for future women in hip-hop to make their way onto the charts. Her standout performance in the 2002 film adaptation of Chicago earned her nominations for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a SAG Award. Her jazzy The Dana Owens Album was nominated for a Grammy in 2005, the year she hosted the awards show.

In 1996 she was arrested with marijuana and a gun in her car. The CHP officer who made the stop "asked Miss Owens if she had been smoking and she said yes."

Latifah was first offered the role of Bessie 22 years ago when she a "full-on rapper" who didn't know who Smith was. Now she says she identifies with her. "I know what it's like to play through the pain, to keep your head up...to immerse yourself in music," she said.

What Were the Addams Family Smoking?

From my youthful TV watching, I seem to recall Morticia (Carolyn Jones) and Gomez (John Astin) of "The Addams Family" (1964-66) smoking regularly from a Turkish hookah. One researcher claims the hookah was scrubbed from later re-runs, but I've found this video showing them smoking: 



Based on a series of New Yorker cartoons by Charles Addams that debuted in 1938, the TV series is enduringly popular in reruns; an animated series (starting with an appearance on Scooby Doo in 1972) followed, as did two films and a musical.

Despite being offbeat and morbid, the Addams Family were loving and accepting. Just like pot smokers.

A hookah also appeared regularly on the TV series Bewitched from the same era, smoked by Endora and Dr. Bombay.