Datura is quite prolific throughout the New World. I've tried it a few times just to see what it is all about and generally it makes it so you can't focus on anything. I ended up at a Denny's after a concert and couldn't even read the menu. The memory loss was notable. Shadows were more pronounced. Then, I tried what was supposedly one of Carlos Castaneda's ways of preparing it and got a quite different effect. Reds were more pronounced and it was quite a dream like state, but not euphoric. Marines poison themselves with it once in a while on camp Pendleton, after hearing it was a drug. At one point, a number of years ago, I came across some kind of research that George Soros was involved in. It was seemingly an attempt at a mind control drug. It was mostly finacnial information, so there was definitely a bit of guesswork to it. Scopolamine is seemingly used in places like Columbia to get people to willingly empty out their ATM or participate in their own rape and then have no recollection. One experiment suggested that a mixture of scopolamine, benzodiazepene and an anti-seizure medication was an efficient mind control drug where the victim would neither remember nor require a large dose and would follow calmly given instructions. So, of course, one of my friends volunteered to try it and it seemingly works. So long as the person giving the instructions is calm and the instructions are not too complex, it is seemingly involuntary hypnotism. These drugs are cheap and easy to get and the dosage is relatively small. There is no euphoria or high and the memory of the person who takes them is pretty blank, afterwards. Historically, it seems that small groups have had knowledge and access to a variety of drugs that were only "recently" discovered. LSD supposedly had known counterparts in ergot fungus... LSA... and caused a frenzy and dancing in a town in like the 1500s. "The Dancing Plague." I imagine that occult groups have been holding onto occult knowledge regarding these plants for a long time. Given that no one knew about them and had no explanation, at the time, the sky was the limit for using these drugs in manipulations. LSA, found in ergot and hawaiian baby woodrose, could easily have explained the "Golden Plates" being seen by the "mind's eye" of the witnesses. I have tried the LSA from morning glory seeds and it definitely creates a euphoria more mild than LSD and creates halos around everything. The visuals are far from what LSD gives people, but it definitely gives a divine feeling and sight of the world around you. The Salamander Letter was an interesting one. Salamanders, in the occult sense, are considered gatekeepers between the world of the living and the world of the dead and some of them even produce tetrodotoxin. The salamander letter was supposedly written by Martin Harris to William Wines Phelps, an early convert in the Latter-day Saint movement. Harris served for a short period of time as scribe for the translation of the golden plates, and assisted in the financing of the first printing of the Book of Mormon. While there was "the absence of any indication of forgery in the letter itself, there was also no evidence that it was genuine." Luman Walters was an occult practitioner who was associated with the Smith family and their "money digging". Luman Walters is reported in history as a "clarevoyant" who moved to Ohio, where Joseph Smith would attempt to initiate the United Order of Enoch where church members would hand over their wealth to Joseph Smith while he printed worthless money for his bank. In the 1850s, it seems that Brigham Young referred to Luman Walters as a "necromancer". Point being, occult knowledge and practices, including the use of mind altering chemicals, seems to have played a role in the early history of the Mormon church.

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