Sacred Weeds
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Sacred Weeds was a four part television series of one hour documentaries investigating the cultural impact of psychoactive plants on a broad array of early civilisations.
The Reader in European Pre-History at Oxford University, Andrew Sherratt, was the series host. Each episode began and ended with Sherratt inscribing his diary with his reflections on the series' scientific and cultural investigations. The series was filmed at Hammerwood Park by the producer, Sarah Marris, and her production company TVF for Channel 4, a British television network.
In its four episodes, the series investigated the following psychoactive plants: magic mushrooms (Amanita muscaria), Henbane, salvia divinorum and the Blue Lily.
Each episode involved scientific research into the effects of the individual plant and an examination of its cultural significance.
Along with Sherratt, several researchers appeared in the series including: Michael Carmichael (Amanita muscaria and blue lily), Paul Devereux (Henbane), Daniel Siebert (Salvia divinorum), Alan Lloyd (Blue Lily), Ed Turpin (Amanita muscaria); Francoise Friedman (Salvia), Tim Kendall (Salvia), John Robbins (Salvia) and others.
The series ended with the investigation of the psychoactive effects of the blue lily, a sacred plant in ancient Egypt. Michael Carmichael, an ethnobotanist, suggested that the psychoactive effects of the blue lily and other psychoactive plants established a new foundation for understanding the origins of philosophy and religion in ancient Egypt. Alan Lloyd, the ranking Egyptologist, took a more cautious approach. After witnessing the effects of the plant in two volunteers, all parties agreed that it was a psychoactive plant. Sherratt accepted the new paradigm for the origins of ancient philosophy and religion in his summation of the series. After the four episodes, Sherratt assigned considerably more significance to the psychoactive properties of plants in ancient civilization and the prehistoric period than expert knowledge hitherto.
