Henbane's active ingredient is scopolamine which, as with most strong anti-cholinergics, is a really bad trip. For Example: https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=110604
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4224707/
> In the Norwegian tradition, women put an ointment contain mixture of some plants such as BH on parts of the body with thin skin and became hallucinated
> It Soothsayers applied BH as a component of their hallucinatory mixture
As for the trip… we have it growing wild at our place, and I’ve been schooling myself as a herbalist/botanist, mostly for practical purposes. I’ve smoked it and had it in tea. It’s not a “oh wow I want to do that again!” but it’s also not “oh sweet Jesus no”. Floaty, tranquil, visuals not unlike DMT, and a terrible stomach upset.
Some locals still use it, as an alternative to hemlock, to stun fish.
One fun thing I found out today: Linnaea is a genus of honeysuckle named after botanist Carl Linnaeus whose name derives from the Swedish lind or linden tree. So it's a plant named after a person named after a plant!
I bet I could find a lot more examples like this if I kept digging. I only recently realized how common it is for names to derive from plants and I've had a lot of fun digging into it
Why is anyone using Hemlock to stun fish? Given there are dozens of plants that stun fish, it seems odd that folks would use one that's also absurdly toxic to humans.
Because they are criminals. This is strictly forbidden in most countries.
And because they are stupid and like to play with their own health
From what I understand it can be poisonous if consumed directly. You'd probably get poisoned from directly consuming tobacco leaves too so I wonder if this is a similar situation where smoking is safer than direct consumption
Would you describe the experience as a "trip" like other psychedelic plants and fungi?
And yes, it was a trip - but mild in the grand scheme of things.
Circe also used it in the Odyssey to turn Odysseus's men into pigs. Odysseus prevented succumbing to Circe's poison by taking galantamine from the flowers of Galanthus nivalis, which is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. Galantamine counteracts the effects of anticholinergics by inhibiting the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine.
What's that based on? I can't seem to find any mention (in this translation at least) of what Circe used. Beyond just "evil drugs", "baneful drugs" etc.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
At any rate it's not a translation issue. You can see in your link, which also has the original Greek, that the phrase used is "pharmaka lugros", which means precisely what the translation said. Maybe there is some other tradition besides Homer that handed it down, but it's healthy to have a lot of skepticism with claims like this.
Based on what little I know, that sound scary.