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Holy Smoke!: When Tobacco Was A Religious Ritual

Many cigar smokers know that their chosen indulgence was once, for many Native American groups, part of religious ceremonies. But do they also know that as late as 1586, one British scientist was so taken with the mind- and feeling-altering powers of tobacco as to call it a "holy smoke"?

Visitors to the so-called "New World" noted the use of tobacco almost immediately - in fact as early as Christopher Columbus's first voyage of 1492. Two of his sailors, Rodrigo de Xerez and Luis de Torres, took a trip to survey parts of what later became Cuba, and on October 28 of that year they noticed two natives sucking burning leaves through a tube made of other leaves. (Columbus's account of his first voyage, as edited by Bartolomeo de Las Casas - a noted early critic of European abuses of Native Americans - wasn't published until the nineteenth century, however.)

Modern-day historians, in fact, theorize that religious uses of the plant among Mayans and other Central American Indian peoples go back centuries before European plunder. These students of ancient cultures suggest that the practice of ritual smoking began among shamans. To name a few examples of the ways tobacco figured in ancient Central American religious practices: Ancient Aztecs, according to historian Francis Robicsek, thought that tobacco was the form in which the goddess Cihuacoahuatl became incarnate. The goddess's body was literally made from tobacco. And the modern-day ceremonies of the Lacandones, a group that continues ancient Mayan rituals, perform a ritual involving the presentation of tobacco to a god, who is also often depicted as a smoker. In various times and circumstances, among various peoples, it was used to diagnose illnesses, exorcize demons, treat the symptoms of various diseases, and feed the spirits that gave shamans their power. In these cases, it was usually cigars that were used to deliver the needed jolt of nicotine, because smoking tobacco offers the most efficient means of delivering the needed chemicals.

But this reverent attitude toward the smoking of tobacco didn't exactly disappear when Europeans adopted the use of what would one day be known as the devil's weed. Spanish physician Nicolas Monardes can be found pronouncing a very different sentence on the plant in 1571, calling it a "holy herb" with essential curative powers for the sick and even strengthening powers for the well. He thought it could cure syphilis, among other things. Though he doesn't prescribe it for religious purposes, he does seem to have an almost religious reverence for it.

Tobacco spread to parts of Africa during this period, and has come to play a role in some African peoples' spiritual technologies. According to writer Allen Roberts, the Sotho people group, for example, in southern Africa, believes that tobacco brings a mental clarity in which it's easier to hear the voices of one's ancestors. Some groups offer tobacco to their ancestors or even place some smokes in the mouth of a statue of a spirit being so it can partake.

But the link between smoking and spirituality hasn't died out entirely in Europe and the United States, either. During the 1990s, as cigar smoking became once again a popular pastime, a number of United States religious colleges saw students establish (no kidding) "Scripture and Stogies" Bible study groups. These groups insist there's no more appropriate companion to their studies of their religious tradition than a good contemplative smoke.

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