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Phyto-inhalation as an olfactory experience

Author: Frank Fuchs
Healing through smoke, fragrance and breath.

Fumes of fragrant herbs and woods play an important role in many shamanistic rites and Asian healing. For example, in Ayurvedic aromatherapy, Tibetan, Japanese and Chinese natural medicine, medicinal plants are smoked on charcoal or ignited as incense sticks. The room air is sometimes saturated to the unbearable with aromatic vapors. Many of the medicinal and aromatic plants are considered sacred and are assigned to certain deities. Indians also use plants for healing or spiritual foresight in their sweat-tent ceremonies.

First traditions of the common inhalation of smoked herbs are already from the Hittites around 1500 before our era. Of the Scythians, a people living in the area of ​​today’s Russia at the turn of the century, there are reports that they smoked herbs in sweat tents and especially hemp and its seeds.

Even in the Catholic Church incense is still used for ritual purposes. Catholic churchgoers have told me that many churchgoers either have problems with the incense-laden air, so that they feel really sick of it, or that they get really high and pleasantly high. Author: Frank Fuchs
Healing through smoke, fragrance and breath.

Aroma islands in the open air.

The idea was presented to us by Georg Winter. In Singen (Baden-Württemberg), art projects were to be promoted as part of the Landesgartenschau. Georg Winter’s contribution was ingeniously simple and simple, but with a potential that appealed to us. Georg, then a lecturer at the University of Zurich, had the plan for a “laboratory for emergence and image organization”. This laboratory was to be built in a specially developed container in Singen’s pedestrian zone. Georg: “The BioAgit laboratory will be mass phenomena of pointing and recording. The terrain in Singen is further potentiated with artistic positions for this period. The combination of mass phenomena may be intoxicating and an overdose may lead to visotoxic phenomena. “

What was the man up to? Simply put, there should be a nursery, a flower and a drying room in the BioAgit laboratory, where Euphrasia and cannabis plants are grown, brought to flower, and then dried (“compacted”, ie winter). Eyebright (Euphrasia) and hemp (Cannabis Indica) were then vaporized in an “AroMat” developed by Frank Fuchs and blown into the outside air of the pedestrian zone. Georg Winter: “Cannabis Indica are plants that we usually do not encounter at Landesgartenschauen, probably because a potential impact on the viewer’s perception due to the special ingredients is possible …. What matters is that the design of the experimental setup the effect on the recipient is primarily constructed by himself, the subjective conception of reality makes the effect an invention “. With this reasoning and diligent persuasion, there was actually a permit for hemp cultivation of the Federal Opium Office (there is no federal Hemp), and for vaporising hemp and eyebright in the pedestrian zone. George’s concept explicitly stated that he should not write in the hemp press about this six-month trial. Other media, daily newspapers such as Süddeutsche, BZ; MoPoHamburg, u.a. reported. The concept proved him right, I do not know how many pseudo-cannabis friends were only poached to robbing for singing ….. So, however, our laboratory experiment was quite silent, the Swiss cuttings of various provenances could flourish in peace and mature. The raw wood container of the laboratory has remained “virginal”, no windows (and not even a Sprayer-Tag >> Maximum respect for respecting us! <<). The daily experiences at the laboratory were cause for pure joy. Depending on the wind direction and strength, the flavors were 50 meters and could be seen further. I got to know two very nice gentlemen from the Swabian Alb, who had their grandsons “sniffed” several times, and explained to them that grandfather had cultivated exactly this fragrant herb with “Hanfschein der Behörden” until the sixties. And the Hanfopas praised the growth of the previously profitable to grow herb on the poorest soils – their harvest was processed into fiber rope hemp. Pupils from a nearby school could also be seen sniffing again and again, although they soon realized (experts ??) that the AroMat vaporizer did not leak any fumes at all. The hot air to the vaporizer was carefully tempered so that the contained THC remained in the herb, only the aroma vapors arrived in the pedestrian area

The mood-enhancing effect of aromatic hemp steam without THC content can be considered as proven since this experiment. So many smiling people, they still smiled when they had read on boards, what comes to smell for a “devil’s weed” (the answer of a woman who was at first angry, that there is something “forbidden” raised: “Smells better as my balcony plants “).

Georg Winter has gone a long way through the institutions, perseveringly following meticulously all the necessary and senseless editions of those responsible, or so persistently refuting them until he could do what he had in mind. He continues to do so, e.g. 2001 at the event “Parallelwelten” of the Federal Institute for Occupational Medicine in Düsseldorf, where he also produced fragrant scents for the audience with Frank Fuchs equipment. He is also on the road with lectures on the BioAgit concept. The BioAgit lab is stored and awaits the things that are coming.

Art is when the senses are surprised by it. Group vaporizing

An AroMat has become several, and they are constantly in use. After the great success in singing we would like to have presented him at the CannaBusiness 2000 with the same herbs. That was probably not the right time for the management at the time. We then “treated” the hall with clary sage aroma. Aside from aromatherapy experienced, hardly anyone has (consciously) noticed it. But the mood-enhancing scent of the clary sage has unconsciously conjured many happy faces (Thanks Gudrun from “Bakul”!). This is the purpose of our sense of space: not to put an obtrusive “cloud of perfume” in the rooms, but to create subliminal (after winter) conditions and a spiritually open-minded climate. Anyone visiting a concert by the “Hodschas”, a Greek-Turkish coffeehouse band, will not only hear, but also smell. The hodja have their own scent of cinnamon bark and coriander, which set the listener in the right mood right from the start.

We were able to experience new dimensions in the Liquid-Sound-Therme in Bad Sulza: in warm saltwater pools one bathes in music. Underwater speakers create a beguiling mix of sensory impressions that present the listener with music as a floating experience. A month-long exhibition entitled “Sound, Fragrance, Light” (Licht: Bernhard Bauer, Sounds: The Spyra) was very popular there, especially because visitors to the “Bar of well-being” were allowed to individually enhance the room fragrance on the AroMed vaporizer (headline of a review) in the “Thüringische Allgemeine Zeitung”: “Kiffen gegen Kopfschmerz”). Performances at full moon concerts with well-known DJs (moveD, mojo club, Flash Goerdten) followed in the Liquid-Sound-Therme. The e-music was also treated olfactorily. For “Baroque under water” in the Liquid Sound Temple, there were rose scents.

My most intense musical experience in combination with fragrances was the performance of a huge “Odemophon-Orchester”. Odemophon is the umbrella term for circular-breathing blowpipes such as Didgeridoo (Indigenous-Australian), Dord (Celtic-Irish) or Fujara (Japanese). For someone who was not there, it’s unimaginable what emotional goals will be opened by 100 Odemophon players. An intense eucalyptus scent intensified the “Aussie Outback character” of the sensation that fused about 400 present listeners from 10 to 80 with the sounds of the musicians. The evening ended relaxed with agarwood fragrance and a hot brine bath in the Liquid-Sound-Therme ……

The Real Monty. An Evening with Howard Marks

Howard Marks: Aity Frank only joins us for some gigs; we should have done the whole tour with his fumigation. Though you have only this faint smell, the presence of wonderful hemp fragrance did make everyone open-minded.

On Howard’s last tour to Germany, I told him about aromatic rooms and islands of fragrance. His only question: “Can we do it with the real monty like in singing (can you do that with the right stuff like in singing)?” … So we did … We had a tour with Jive in the truest sense of the word word. Britain in December 2001 is not the country where the joints burn. The first Holland-style CoffeeShop just outside Manchester had just been closed by the authorities. And the public, obviously a lot of stoners, did not dare, as I could often see on Howard’s Germany tour, outing the public Bekennerrauchens: no homemade cigarette for Howard. But smelled it while Howard’s lecture – a mammoth gig, two times about 1 hour, then answering public questions – pleasant after the herb, whose smuggling stories he told …. Of course, as in singing no THC was blown into the air, but only the aroma essence of hemp flowers (THC content according to the investigating laboratory: 100 mg / kg!). Many nice people were always looking for the grow room ….

Fragrance reminder can trigger placebo effects. If I had long suspected this, at least after the evenings with Howard Marks, I’m convinced of it!