The alchemical roots of the sinsemilla technique are one of the many things delved into in a forthcoming podcast episode I just recorded with Jason of Curious About Cannabis.
Meantime, if that’s your cup of tea / bhang you can check out the Cannabis & Alchemy episode I recorded with Conor of CANNAMANtv below – mostly it’s fairly accurate, I reckon….
The image above shows Virupa (‘Ugly One’), who’s one of the 84 Mahasiddhas of Tantric Buddhism but also probably features in the list of Nine Nāths in the Ānandakanda (‘Root of Bliss’).
The Ānandakanda is a C15 alchemical compendium and the first text in history to describe the sinsemilla technique for producing potent, resinous seedless bud (ganja).
The image of Virupa is from C15 Tibet, where he is a central figure of the Sakya school of Tantric Buddhism. To be clear, cannabis is not known to feature in Tantric Buddhist ritual meditation!
Virupa himself probably lived around C8 or C9 in India. He visited Srisailam, the likely site of the much much later compilation of the Ānandakanda.
So far as getting high goes, Virupa himself is famous not for cannabis but for his drinking songs and tavern antics, perhaps most of all for halting the movement of the sun by pinning a sunbeam to the bar when a barmaid refused to serve him more grog…. naturally…
