To give the briefest glimpse of hemp’s potential:Fabric of any quality and consistency, from coarsest sackcloth to finest silk, without the need for pesticides or fertilisers, or, genetic modification: with twice the yield per acre of cotton, and at least three times its strength, absorbency, warmth and longevity.
Plastics of every kind, from earplugs to aeroplanes, packaging to insulation: biodegradable, without poisonous by-products, toxic fumes or excess CO2.
Finest bond paper that does not yellow or disintegrate through time, card and board, stronger and more enduring than wood pulp alternatives, renewable, sustainable: at five times the yield per acre of forest, and without producing acid rain.
For construction: hemp is ideal for fireproof insulation, and board made from hemp fibre has several times the tensile strength of wood-chip and can be fireproofed and weather proofed for walls and roofs. And, in time, given cannabis hemp’s extraordinary strength to weight ratio, likely an ideal material for bridges and skyscrapers.
For fuel: cannabis hemp produces more net biomass than any other plant on earth. With small adjustments in processing it can produce, ethanol, acetone charcoal, tar, creosote… and has the potential to replace all fossil fuels: without pollution, as it does not require poisonous processing chemicals, or produce excess CO2.
For food: hemp seed is the most nutritionally complete food on earth. Second only to soy in the plant kingdom as a protein source, but much higher for essential fatty acids, including Omega 3 and 6 oils and vitamins A and E, both powerful antioxidants: and, without genetic modification, pesticides or fertilisers.
And medicine, for literally thousands of ailments and diseases: from cancer to glaucoma, MS to depression, obesity to AIDS… the list appears endless, with the likelihood of overdose: Zero.
Cannabis hemp is also an excellent base for cosmetics, cleaning products, paints, varnish…
Plus, cannabis hemp works in harmony with the environment, grows just about everywhere, without fertilisers or pesticides, is renewable, sustainable, and with its long tap root, ideal for ground reparation.
All this from a plant anyone can grow in their garden! – sound too good to be true?
The most dangerous substance in the universe
As history is my witness, even without twentieth century technology, cannabis hemp has been interwoven with our evolution: From the spiritual gift of Shiva, the god Indra’s favourite drink and nectar of the gods in Vedic symbolism and tradition, cannabis hemp spread across culture and continent as our first and primary fibre, be it for clothing, fishing, bow strings, cordage… and as medicine, central to well-being: acknowledged since before the written word across Asia, and, come the twentieth century an ingredient in 50% of all medicines. Established as the best and most durable material for paper by the Chinese, a position unchallenged until industrialisation laid claim to the forests: and a jealously guarded secret, that did not find its way to Europe until the eighth century: on which, by the light of hemp oil lamps, monks and scholars produced our most enduring texts.
Artists painted with hemp oil paints on hemp canvas (canvas finding its entomological root in cannabis), and hempen rope and sail powered and steered Europe’s mighty galleons as they set sail to conquer the earth.
In the Americas, settlers set about conquering the continent with canvas covered wagons. The original Levi jeans were made from hempen sailcloth, riveted, tough enough for the 49ers to load their pockets with gold. Hemp could hardly be more central to US culture, for, together with its hempen flag, the declaration itself was drafted on hemp paper. Homesteads would invariably cultivate a ‘hemp patch’ and president after president sung hemp’s praises:
George Washington: “Make the most of Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!”
Thomas Jefferson: “Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth and protection of our country.”
Abraham Lincoln: “Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp and playing my Honer [harmonica].”
John Adams: “We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our consumption.”
Sentiments continuing into the Twentieth Century where Henry Ford, the great industrialist, asked: “Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making or the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?”
And finally, delving further into hidden history, one other use for this remarkable little weed. As settlers – Europe’s poverty stricken oppressed – began their quest for independence, to undermine British sterling, hemp became recognised as an alternative currency for trade and commerce: a currency all could find value in. Indeed, hemp was still used to pay taxes long after Limey had been vanquished from the ‘New World’.
Plastic, paper, pharmaceuticals, fuel, food, fabric, finance, soil enhancer, pollution devourer, spiritual benefactor: cannabis hemp is a complete companion, and the answer to a prayer for our desperately beleaguered and polarised world. Cannabis hemp, together with its multitudinous material uses, also engenders balance and harmony, through its catalysing effects towards spirituality: and returning value to nature, where, in reality, it belongs.
But, the more one owns: property, status, ego, power…, the less one finds a taste or use for cannabis hemp. Silk for nobles, canvas for peasants, meat for the elite, gruel (originally hemp seed) for the surf, alcohol for society, grass for the dispossessed, materialism for the wealthy, spirituality for the poor.
So through history, it was ever thus: hemp had its place, service, for the job at hand: functional, reliable, adaptable, and cheap – and everywhere. Shiva’s gift to the wretched: sustenance, shelter and spirituality.
Until now, where nature is outlawed. Outlawed, not for it’s danger to humanity, far from it, cannabis hemp could catalyse our saviour: but to the power hungry egotists who would own our world – and others besides.
Cannabis hemp comes head-to-head with all of our world’s most powerful corporations: oil, big pharma, big cotton, lumber, seeds and genetic modification, alcohol and tobacco, and the war machine. Furthermore, what government, after decades of dishonest and ill conceived laws that have destroyed the lives of millions (with law enforcement and private prisons now as powerful lobbying groups in their own right), could ever dare recognise their woeful error and duplicitous complicity in the persecution and attempted annihilation of God’s greatest gift to humanity?
So we are left with a world of poisonous chemical, genetically modified unnatural alternatives, dictated and dispensed by a handful of merchants and their whores defining our world order, who see power and wealth and expansion as primary objectives in themselves. A world without balance or harmony, driven by materialism and insecurity, where all must remain hungry and all must remain fearful, forever: as fuel, for the insatiable engine of capitalism.
To governments and corporations, and bankers: Cannabis Hemp is indeed, the most dangerous substance in the universe.
A personal perspective:
It is easy to become trapped in the brutality and injustices of our polarised, intolerant world, or overwhelmed by the sensory images that bombard us 24/7, together with the fragmented sound bites fed to us as truth. A chaotic mass of apparently unrelated data, seemingly incoherent and disparate, yet nevertheless, designed to shape the thought and motivation of populations: hungry, fearful, clueless populations.
Cannabis engenders dispassionate reflection and harmony with all. It diffuses blame with understanding, prompting us to stand back and consider the bigger picture, to take a holistic perspective: beyond the establishment narrative. Beyond little stories in boxes, couched in terms of ‘good and evil’, that invariably hide strategic and economic motivation and racial and religious bigotry, and consequences beyond the pocket story. In today’s world, even to suggest such connections, brands one a psychotic or a terrorist, or some other such label, packaging the non-conformer as at odds with establishment order and establishment thinking.
And this, to me, is where the true beauty (and danger) of cannabis lies: in smashing illusions, opening doors of perception – beyond the personal and possessive, beyond the immediate and simplistic, beyond the agenda driven bullshit defining parameters and perspectives – as a gateway to nature and the now, to being, and as the progenitor of question and a catalyst to wonder.
Our tree of life, real life: imbuing holism and harmony, reflection and understanding, peace, and love. So to those who would command, who would see our world owned and who would live off hate and the toil of others, Shiva’s seminal offering truly is: the most dangerous substance in the universe.
Sources: (video): The Union – Run from the Cure – The Hemp Revolution – Magic Weed – The Hemplands Conspiracy – Hemp and the rule of Law – The Medicinal use of Cannabis – In Pot we Trust – The Emperor of Hemp – Hemp for Victory – The History of Marijuana – American Drug War, the Last White Hope
(books/literature): Cannabis, a History – Shiva, the Wild God of Power and Ecstasy – The Forbidden Medicine – The Emperor Wears no Clothes – The Shafer report
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