Cannabis & Alchemy Podcast (Part 3)

Here’s part three, in which Conor and I roam across further cannabis-rich terrain, wherein we encounter

  • The rebellious cannabis-fuelled mystic warrior brotherhoods of Persianate Islam (ayyars, javanmards, or futuvvat)
  • Anarchist qalandar dervishes, the original hashish fiends par excellence
  • How traditional strains and the products produced from them – old-school ganja and charas – are far the best for inspiration
  • Sahaj or sahaja – though I forget to mention the word itself – which is basically untranslatable but translates as ‘innate’, ‘natural’, ‘connate’, or ‘co-emergent’. Sahaj is at the root and heights of all Siddha traditions, whether Nāth or Buddhist, and whether meditating in a mountain cave or bombed out on ganja begging on a street corner. For as good an explanation as any of sahaj you could try the doha songs of the Siddhas themselves.

The featured image shows a group of qalandar dervishes in Samarkand (1870s), a very ancient centre of Central Asian cannabis culture and Persianate mysticism.