The Sacred Datura

Shiva's Magical Flower

The flowering poisonous plant known as Datura stramonium (or just Datura, Dhatura, or Dhattura) is currently blooming abundantly in the wild along the mountain trails where my family and I hike daily near our home in northern New Mexico.

Datura is a dangerous potent plant so I do not advise you to harvest or interact with it on your own. Nothing in this post constitutes medical advice, and I am providing a description of the historical uses of the plant for entertainment purposes only.

Also commonly known as thornapple and jimsonweed, Datura is a member of the nightshade family. Sometimes it is confused with the moonflower because they look slightly similar. However, they also have many differences. Datura has an unpleasant smell, while the moonflower vine has sweet-scented blooms. Datura leaves are arrow-shaped; moonflower leaves are heart-shaped. Datura flowers have deeper trumpets than moonflower blooms, and the seeds of Datura are covered in spiky burrs.

This is moonflower:

Datura is also called devil's trumpet or devil's weed (not to be confused with angel's trumpet, which is placed in the closely related genus Brugmansia). The difference is that angel’s trumpet plants (Brugmansia) have flowers that point down, while the devil's trumpet (Datura) have flowers that point up.

These are angel’s trumpets:

These are Datura/devil’s trumpets/jimson weed:

The alluring Datura grows abundantly in the high mountain desert of New Mexico where it is considered an invasive weed. Modernist artist Georgia O’Keefe, who lived in northern New Mexico, often painted various magnified flowers including these. She once said, "When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else.”

Jimson Weed, by Georgia O’Keefe, 1936

Datura flowers are followed by rounded and knobby walnut-sized fruits covered with sharp and spiky spines. The fruit splits open when ripe to release the numerous seeds inside.

The seeds have long been used along with the Datura leaves in both traditional and modern medicine as treatment for infections, injuries, cancer, tumors, mental illness, and even as an aphrodisiac. For instance, in olden times, Datura was boiled with hog’s grease to make a healing salve for burns. It was actually brought to the New World from England for medicinal purposes. The name “jimson weed” is a corruption of the original term “Jamestown weed,” in reference to its use in the Virginia colony in the early seventeenth century.

Jimsonweed has long been used by native Americans as a medicine. The Aztecs used it for centuries in poultices to soothe scalds and burns. Some Indians also used it as an anesthetic while setting bone fractures. In this century jimsonweed extract—stramonium—has been used as a muscle relaxant, in cigarettes for asthmatics, and as a palliative for hemorrhoids. It has been used to treat rabies and to knock out intended victims of the French Revolution’s guillotine and candidates for the strangling cord of India’s “thuggee” death cult. High Times: “Flashback Friday: Jimsonweed, The World’s Worst Dope: Just Stay Away From It,” by Steve Block. Re-published on August 30, 2019. Originally published in the December, 1975 issue of High Times.

Jimsonweed is hallucinogenic, and its leaves and seeds are mixed with ganja (cannabis) and smoked by naga sadhus in India.

Naga Sadhu Smoking Ganja at Sagarmela, India, 2018: Muktinava Barua Chowdhury

Jimsonweed is also mentioned in Carlos Castañeda's books on Mexican shamanism, in which Don Juan Matus, the Yaqui sorcerer, teacher, and "Man of Knowledge,” called it the “million paths of knowledge.” After ingesting jimsonweed, Castañeda described it as a doorway to enlightened consciousness.

In Medieval Europe and England, solanaceous plants such as Datura were utilized for their mind-altering properties. It appears that in European and other native religions, witches and shamans originally held the sacred knowledge required to utilize these powerful plants safely. They were used in pagan rituals and as components of the infamous flying ‘green ointments’ in witchcraft practices. HerbalGram, Issue #69: “JimsonWeed: History, Perceptions, Traditional Uses, and Potential Therapeutic Benefits of the Genus Datura,” pp 40-50, Busia and Heckels, 2006.

The name Datura/Dhattura comes from the early Sanskrit “dahatura,” meaning "divine inebriation.” According to Hindu/Vedic tradition, Dhattura is used to adorn the Shiva Lingum in many Shiva temples. Dhattura garlands are given as propitiation to Lord Shiva for various matters including financial problems, and are available to purchase outside many Shiva temples.

In the Vamana Purana, it is told that the Datura flower appeared from the chest of Lord Shiva. Offering it to Shiva is thought to help release mental, emotional, and physical toxins as a karma cleansing process, just as Shiva in the form as Neelakantha drank the poison of the world. Datura is also associated with Lord Shiva as it is an entheogenic substance which, though highly dangerous and poisonous, has been historically used to awaken higher consciousness.

The Datura flowers are usually in bloom by the time we move into the Shravana month, which is the fifth month of the Vedic lunar calendar that typically begins in mid-to-late July and ends by mid-to-late-August. During the Shravana month, the universe is rejuvenated by the Shiva Tattva, the highest, purest, transcendental essence of nature, which purifies body, mind and spirit through various rituals like fasting, mantra japa, prayer, pujas, and offerings.

Parvati and Shiva Share the Intoxicating Datura Fruit. Private Collection, Sothebys.