Color/Commentary

"The Americas are to the rest of the world a literal Garden of Eden, in the sense that the vast majority of truly hallucinogenic plants originate from there or were discovered and used there. This is somewhat of an irony for human culture, and [it has led] to a paradoxical situation in which the most powerful spiritual agents in nature have become accursed by an inexperienced, alien culture of conquest, only to become nearly lost to civilization as true endowments of nature for the betterment of humankind."