This Page Last Updated December 27th, 2008 (new style reckoning)
Against Tobacco
There can be no doubt that tobacco is not good.
smoking is against God and against mankind. It is
important to understand that every object or action is either holy
or unholy, white or black, Christian or pagan, clean or
unclean. We need to hold onto what is good and abstain from what is bad.
For doers of heathen practices (like smokers, etc.) the Lord offers Good News, Christians must separate from heathen, Matt. 18: 17. It is heresy to contradict Christ. Tobacco is attributed to Satan, smoke pipes are even made
into the image of Satan.
Tobacco
use is a sin of “pleasure-loving” and may even constitute heresy of
the spirit, which separates us from God and pronounces a triple anathema upon
us. This unholy herb is putrefaction to God’s human temple. It is rightly
called an adolescent addiction, as most people that I know who use it began
doing so during that time of their life. Tobacco is known as strange incense
(Ex. 30:9), since it is offered to idols. It dirties the lips which need to be
kept clean and pure in order to offer proper affection. Once on the lips the
filth permeates all the way to the heart affecting our love and forgiveness,
making the heart rotten. Tobacco, in every sense, is truly devils incense.
As
sulfur is derived from petroleum, and since petroleum is spiritually defiling, it is most improper for God fearing persons to use a
match to light anything, let alone tobacco. The reason for this is most likely
because petroleum comes from the remains of all the damned people, plants and
animals left behind in Noah’s flood. This is further illustrated for us
by all the references in Sacred Scripture telling us that if we touch a dead
person we are defiled (Lev. 5:2; 21:1-4, 10-12; Num. 5:2; 6:7, 9-12; 9:6-10;
19:7-13, 16-22). Tobacco was originally used as a sacrifice to idols. If we add
butane lighters or other petroleum products to it, we should understand them
all to be an affront to the religious sensibility of good Christians.
Tobacco
is also unequivocally prohibited because it is an instantaneous intoxicant; we
are to have a sober mind if we wish to love God and mankind. Along with a very
lengthy list of other modern utilities, tobacco should be understood as
something which makes the anti-Christians happy. Old style Christians say that
behavior is changed for the worst in persons exposed to tobacco, calling it an
‘extraordinary sin.’ For such reasons tobacco is called a poison
and its use suicidal. Smoking is no better than heavy drinking.
We
should abhor tobacco as abominable. In this age of Great Apostasy smoking is
seen as being civilized or sophisticated, things which in no way should attract
a person who is dedicated to God. The more one interacts with society the more
such temptations will attack us. Make sure that your home is a sanctuary from
the storm that is around us, a safe harbor that can protect you and those you
care about. This “filth in the mouth” has a negative effect on
every segment of society. This is but one of the many signs that show the impending
doom that is ahead for this world. Even though we might see what seems like
great anti-smoking campaigns, like Michigan, Illinois and Texas banning smoking
by children, we should see this as ineffective since it is truthfully only an
imitation of faithful living before God.
Huron Indian
myth has it that in ancient times, when the land was barren and the people were
starving, the Great Spirit sent forth a woman to save humanity. As she traveled
over the world, everywhere her right hand touched the soil, there grew
potatoes. And everywhere her left hand touched the soil, there grew corn. And
when the world was rich and fertile, she sat down and rested. When she arose,
there grew tobacco . . .
TOBACCO
TIMELINE from http://www.cigarettesmokingkills.com/Timeline.html
There is no
indication of habitual tobacco use in the Ancient world except in the Americas.
1559: SPAIN:
Tobacco is first introduced in Europe.
1586: GERMANY:
'De plantis epitome utilissima’ offers one of first cautions of tobacco,
calling it a "violent herb".
1606: SPAIN:
King Philip Ill decrees that tobacco may only be grown in specific
locations--including Cuba, Santo Domingo, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Sale of
tobacco to foreigners is punishable by death.
1613-89:
RUSSIA: Tobacco prohibition under the early Romanoff’s.
1617: Emperor
of Mongolia places death penalty on using tobacco.
1633: REGULATION: TURKEY: Sultan Murad IV orders tobacco users
executed as infidels. As many as 18 a day were executed. Some historians consider
the ban an anti-plague measure, some a fire-prevention measure.
1634: REGULATION:
RUSSIA: Czar Alexis creates penalties for smoking: 1st offense is whipping, a
slit nose, and trasportation to Siberia. 2nd offense is execution.
1634: REGULATION: EUROPE:
Greek Orthodox Church claims that it was tobacco smoke that intoxicated Noah
and so bans tobacco use.
1638: REGULATION:
CHINA: Use or sale of tobacco is made a crime punishable by decapitation.
1641 Russia’s Michael Romanov forbids the sale and use of tobacco. Users
and sellers are to be flogged. Later Russia makes tobacco a state monopoly.
1648 Czar Alexis Mikhailovich abolishes tobacco monopoly and reimposes
the ban on smoking.
1674: RUSSIA: Smoking Can Carry the Death Penalty. 1676: RUSSIA:
the smoking ban is lifted.
1698: RUSSIA: PETER THE GREAT establishes tobacco trade monopoly
with the English, against Church wishes.
1936 Stalin gets Spain to send gold reserves to Russia during the Spanish
Civil War, note that Spain was the first nation in Europe to smoke and now
nearly all in Russia smoke.
"SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart
Disease, Emphysema, and May Complicate Pregnancy."--Surgeon General’s
Warning, 1984.
Tobacco’s detractors included Russia’s 17th-century Czar Michael Feodorovich, who had third-time violators of his smoking ban beheaded. Smoking burns up all your good deeds, the holy angels will never sit next to you if you smoke.
With all the references to Orthodox nations like Russia forbidding tabacco I remember clearly seeing an old Antiochian WORD magazine, from the early 80’s, showing Metropolitan Philip on the cover proudly smoking a cigar in his western clerical collar outfit and clean shaven. What a sorry example. Of course we know well enough how Metropolitan Anthony Bashir preceded in this kind of fashion as well.
From the NYC Library web site I found these:
The outfit of a tobacco proprietor with his wares
AND
The publisher of the King James Bible gives this admonition
Arguably the best-known of the early tobacco literature is from King James. The king’s name does not appear as author; however, the author refers to himself as King throughout the work. Perhaps the best comment on James’ effort was by William Bragge (Bibliotheca Nicotiana, 1880) who noted that “he most quixotically broke his lance against one of the great appetites of man.”
King James condemns the use of tobacco primarily out of political, economic and racial motives as can be seen in his initial exhortations:
“And now good Country men let us (I pray you) consider, what honor or policy can move us to imitate the barbarous and beastly manners of the wild, godless, and slavish Indians, especially in so vile and stinking a custom? Shall we that disdain to imitate the manners of our neighbor France (having the stile of the first Christian Kingdom) and that cannot endure the spirit of the Spaniards (their King being now comparable in largenes of Dominions, to the great Emperor of Turkey)?”
“Shall we, I say, that have been so long civil and wealthy in Peace, famous and invincible in War, fortunate in both, we that have been ever able to aide any of our neighbors (but never deafened any of their ears with any of our supplications for assistance) shall we, I say, without blushing, abase our selves so far, as to imitate these beastly Indians, slaves to the Spaniards, refuse to the world, and as yet aliens from the holy Covenant of God? Why do we not as well imitate them in walking naked as they do in preferring glasses, feathers, and such toys, to gold and precious stones, as they do yea why do we not deny God and adore the Devil, as they do?”
King James didn’t buy any of the arguments being made for tobacco’s miraculous healing powers and argues that its popularity is due more to imitation and fashion.
“For such is the force of that natural Self-love in every one of us, and such is the corruption of envy bred in the breast of every one, as we cannot be content unless we imitate every thing that our fellows do, and so prove our selves capable of every thing whereof they are capable, like Apes, counterfeiting the manners of others, to our own destruction.”
“The argument that people have been cured of diverse diseases by taking tobacco is fallacious and rests on a confusion of cause and effect; the disease takes its natural course and declines, but it is not tobacco that wrought this miracle. If a man smoke himself to death with it (and many have done), O then some other disease must bear the blame for that fault.”
He rejects the notion that tobacco could act as a cure for all that ails you...
“O omnipotent power of Tobacco!” he exclaims, “And if it could by the smoke thereof chase out devils, as the smoke of Tobias fish did (which I am sure could smell no stronger) it would serve for a precious Relic, but for the superstitious Priests, and the insolent Puritans, to cast out devils withal!.”
The King believes that tobacco use is undermining the physical as well as the moral health of the country. “In the times of the many glorious and victorious battles fought by this Nation, there was no word of Tobacco. But now if it were time of wars, and that you were to make some sudden Cavalcado upon your enemies, if any of you should seek leisure to stay behind his fellows for taking of Tobacco, for my part I should never be sorry for any evil chance that might befall him. To take a custom in any thing that cannot be left again, is most harmful to the people of any land.”
The King notes that smoking in public had increased to the point that people were forced to take it up in a strange kind of self-defense “partly because they were ashamed to seem singular, and partly, to be as one that was content to eat Garlic (which he did not love) that he might not be troubled with the smell of it, in the breath of his fellow.”
“Moreover, which is a great iniquity, and against all humanity, the husband shall not be ashamed, to reduce thereby his delicate, wholesome and clean complexioned wife, to that extremity, that either she must also corrupt her sweet breath therewith or else resolve to live in a perpetual! stinking torment.”
The English social class system operated at full strength when it came to King James’ ideas about who should and who should not be allowed to indulge in tobacco. “and is now at this Day, through evil Custom and the Toleration thereof, excessively taken by a number of riotous and disordered Persons of mean and base Condition, who, contrary to the use which Persons of good Calling and Quality make thereof, do spend most of their time in that idle Vanity, to the evil example and corrupting of others, and also do consume those Wages which many of them get by their Labor, and wherewith there Families should be relieved, not caring at what Price they buy that Drug, but rather devising how to add to it other Mixture, thereby to make it the more delightful to their Taste, though so much the more costly to their Purse; by which great and immoderate taking of Tobacco the Health of a great number of our People is impaired, and their Bodies weakened and made unfit for Labor, the Estates of many mean Persons so decayed and consumed as they are thereby driven to unthrifty Shift only to maintain their gluttonous exercise thereof, besides that also a great part of the Treasure of our Land is spent and exhausted by this only Drug so licentiously abused by the meaner sort, all which enormous Inconveniences ensuing thereupon.”
The close of James’ Counterblast is perhaps the best known part of the document:
“Have you not reason then to be ashamed, and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming your selves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you: by the custom thereof making your selves to be wondered at by all foreign civil Nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and condemned. A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful! to the Nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”
King James’ attitude was reflected in the ruling monarchs of much of the rest of Europe. In France of this same period men were challenged to duels for calling another person a tobacco drinker. In Berlin in the mid-1600s smoking was punished with jail and the pillory. In 1624 the Pope officially threatened the users of snuff with excommunication - it seemed that their sneezing was entirely too similar to a sexual orgasm.
This, by the way, is the origin of the blessing which accompanies a sneeze - the Vatican declared that anyone who sneezes suffers a momentary lapse in consciousness during which demons or the devil himself may enter, unless that momentarily disconnected soul is protected by the blessing of someone in the vicinity - even a total stranger. It’s also the reason, of course, for making marriage a holy, sanctified state - so that people can have orgasms and be protected from demons during their out-of-body moments - protected by god, so to speak.
Laws and sermons - tobacco triumphed over them all. While Royal
Jamie ranted, Sir Walter Raleigh (akin to the famous cigarette
company) founded a veritable smoking club of the wits and sages of the age, who
smoked their pipes and discursed at the Mermaid Tavern. Around Sir Walter’s
social board assembled more genius and talent than the world had ever witnessed
before. Among the constant members were Selden, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson,
and Shakespeare.
King James didn’t like Raleigh at all anyway, and this kind of
public flaunting of the King’s wishes was probably what led to Raleigh’s
execution. Not that Raleigh wasn’t warned.
When smoking was still a brand-new fad, King James was astonished and offended at the wide and swift acceptance it had gained saying,
“And for the vanities committed in this filthy custom, is it not great vanity and uselessness that at table, a place of respect, of cleanness, and of modesty, men should not be ashamed to sit tossing off tobacco-pipes, and puffing off the smoke one to another, making the filthy fumes thereof to exhale across the dishes, and infect the air, when very often men that abhor it are at their repast? . . But not only meal time, but no other time, nor action, is exempted from the public use of this uncivil trick. Is it a great vanity that a man can not welcome his friend now, but straightway they must be in hand with tobacco? No, it has become, in place of a curse, a point of good-fellowship and he that will refuse to take a pipe with his fellows is accounted peevish, and no good company yea, the mistress can not in more mannerly kind entertain her servant than by giving him, out of her fair hand, a pipe of tobacco.”
James was not the only ruler who made laws against smoking. The
“Terrible Turk,” Ammurath the Fourth, had smokers dragged from
their hiding places in their homes and strangled for their neighbor’s
amusement and edification. In Boris Godunow’s Russia, the admirers of the
heavenly herb had a pipe-stem run through the cartilage of their noses. Urban
VII issued a Bull against the habit, while the Calvinists at Geneva declared
that smoking was one of the sins forbidden by the Decalogue...
From
http://www.siue.edu/~jbueno/COURSES/FL111C/AIDS/Topical_Index/tabaco.htm
“Nicotine is enshrined among the Whites only as a drug, as a taste,
as a habit, along with the seeking after mild and tasty forms, while the Native
peoples make tobacco a heritage from the gods, a strange path which juts from
there into this world and leads to the very ends of magic.”
Clyde Kluckholn, 1908
Blessing and Sin
Tobacco has been condemned for centuries as evil, sinful and poisonous, the Weed of Witches and Warlocks, an herb “destructive of mind and body.” Columbus and his companions were the first Europeans to encounter Tobacco and the Admiral’s journal describes what they saw.
Among other evil customs, they (the Indians) persist in one which is very pernicious, that of smoking, called by them tobacco, for the purpose of producing insensibility. This they effect by a certain herb, which, as far as I can learn, is of a poisonous quality. The chiefs, or principal men, have small hollow sticks, about a span long, made in a forked manner, the two ends of which are inserted into the nostrils, while the other extremity is applied to the burning leaves, which are rolled up in the manner of pastiles. They inhale the smoke till they fall down in a state of insensibility, in which they remain as if intoxicated.
Early writers
like Lescarbot found that their countrymen were rapidly succumbing to this New
World practice
“Our
Frenchmen who visited the savages are for the most part infatuated with this
intoxication of petun [tobacco], so much so that they cannot dispense with it,
no more than with eating and drinking, and they spend good money on this, for
the good petun which comes from Brazil sometimes costs a dollar (ecu) the
pound.”
John Hawkins
observed in 1564 that the French in Florida used tobacco for the same purposes
as the natives. A. Thevet, who visited Brazil in 1555-56, noticed the
Christians living there as “marvelously eager for this herb and
perfume.” Gabriel Soares de Souza (Noticia do Brazil, written in 1587), a
Portuguese farmer, who lived in Brazil for seventeen years from about 1570,
informs us that tobacco leaves were much esteemed by the Indians, Mamelucos
(Africans), and Portuguese, who “drank” the smoke by placing
together many leaves wrapped in a palm-leaf; they used, accordingly, the cigar.
The earliest English account of the use of tobacco was by John Sparke the Younger, in an account published by Hakluyt in 1589, where he writes that John Hawkins, ranging along the coast of Florida for fresh water in July, 1565, came upon the French settlement there under Laudoniere, and found that:
“The Floridians when they travel have a kind of herb dried, which with a cane, and an earthen cup in the end, with fire, and the dried herbs put together, do suck through the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfies their hunger, and therewith they live four or five days without meat or drink, and this all the Frenchmen used for this purpose: yet do they horde opinion withal, that it causeth water and fleame to void from their stomachs.”
In “Treatise of Brazil,” written in 1601 and published by Purchas, also describes the mode of cigar smoking in Brazil and winds up by saying,
“The women also do drink it, but they are such as are old and sickly, for it is very medicinal unto them, especially for the cough, the head-ache, and the disease of the stomach, and hence come a great manic of the Portugal’s to drink it, and have taken it for a vice or for idleness, imitating the Indians to spend days and nights about it.”
The Ottoman Turks were among the more extreme of official reactions - they imposed the death penalty for smoking.
“It was chiefly for tobacco that he made many heads fly. He caused two men in one day to be beheaded in the streets because they were smoking tobacco. He had prohibited it some days before because, as it was said, the smoke had got up into his nose. But I rather think that it was in imitation of his uncle Sultan Amurat (1623-40), who did all he could to hinder it as long as he lived. He caused some to be hanged with a pipe through their nose, others with tobacco hanging around their neck, and never pardoned any. I believe that the chief reason that Sultan Amurat prohibited tobacco was because of the fires that do so much mischief in Constantinople when they happen, which most commonly are occasioned by people that fall asleep with a pipe in their mouth.”
As anti-smoking campaigns go, this was serious, yet the Turks kept right on smoking along with the rest of the world.
The 17th century Czar Alexis of Russia decreed that smokers should be whipped, have their noses slit, and then be transported to Siberia. In Austria, smokers were heavily fined for the first offense, pilloried for the second, whipped and jailed for the third. Smokers were frequently suspected of being poisoners and witches. Many a witch burned at the stake owned her fate to having been discovered using tobacco. Even in the enlightened 19th century, in many countries and kingdoms, it was still forbidden to smoke in public, or on the street, or even inside one’s own home - if one happened to be a woman.
The Clergy were against smoking from the very first as American parsons thundered from their pulpits against Satan’s little soul destroyer, the cigarette. Girls who smoked and went dancing with young men, preachers of the twenties sermonized, were fast girls on the road to damnation, who would automatically become prostitutes. The prohibition movement fought not only against “Demon Rum” but also against “Devil Tobacco”
Young ladies
were instructed to tell suitors who indulged in either
“You may not see me, John, while the breath of alcohol and tobacco is on your lips. But I shall pray for you, pray to God to deliver you from these evil habits. And, if a year from now, you can say that in that time you have totally abstained, then, John, with the permission of Papa and Mama, you may call on me again.”
Carrie Nation not only smashed saloons with her hatchet, she also snatched cigars from the mouths of passersby, screaming “You rum-soaked, beer swilling Tobacco fiend, how do you dare corrupt children’s morals by smoking this horrid thing?” While preachers and moralists condemned smoking for its sinfulness, doctors lectured on the baleful effects of tobacco on the brain, the lungs and the nervous system, calling it a drug worse than opium.
None of this could stem the triumphant march of tobacco, just as today’s warnings, printed on every pack of cigarettes, that the Surgeon General has declared cigarettes dangerous to the user’s health have not had a significant impact on smoking. For every blast against the “Filthy Weed,” there was a panegyric to the “Plant Divine”
General Gordon was said to have had but one fault - he smoked too
much. His enemy and conqueror, the Mahdi of the Sudan, on the other hand,
punished smoking with eighty lashes of a hippopotamus whip. He said that
smoking was against the Koran.
Finally, it is said that many heroes of the American Revolution in
their younger years made money smuggling tea, rum, molasses and tobacco - just
about anything on which the British Government had placed a tax.
It is said that tobacco is “the ruin and overthrow of body
and soul.”
It was from 1583, when Drake returned from Virginia, that the
habit of smoking began to conquer England. It was taken up with an
“enthusiasm unknown on the Continent.”
By various acts passed in the reign of Charles II (1660-85), the planting
of tobacco was forbidden in England in favor of the colonies, on forfeiture of
forty shillings for every rod of ground thus cultivated, excepting in physic
gardens, where it was allowed in quantities not exceeding half a pole of
ground. Justices of peace were empowered to issue warrants to constables to
search after and destroy the plants. It appears that walnut-tree leaves were
used as a substitute for tobacco; for the cutting of such leaves, or any other
leaves (not being tobacco leaves) or coloring them so as to resemble tobacco or
selling these mixed or unmixed for tobacco was forbidden under a penalty of
forfeiting five shillings a pound.
As the late Sioux Medicine Man, Lame Deer, used to say,
“The pipe is the Indian’s blood and flesh. Its red pipe bowl is the blood, the opening the Indian’s mouth, the stem the Indian’s spine, the smoke his sacred breath, wafting up the smoker’s prayers to Wakan Tanka, the Grandfather Spirit above. With the pipe in your hand, you can speak nothing but the truth.”
True herbal tobacco can be very potent if misused. The following account is from an American Indian tribe which smoked and loved the pure, potent plant.
He feels good over all his meat when he takes it into his lungs. Sometimes he rolls up his eyes. And sometimes he falls over, backward he falls over backward. He puts his pipe quickly on the ground, then he falls over. Then they laugh at him, they all laugh at him. Nobody takes heed, when one faints from smoking, but if he faints because he is sick, then they throw water on him. When it is from tobacco that he faints, he does not lie there stiff long.
Sometimes when the tobacco is strong the man himself when he smokes does not know when he faints away. Sometimes he falls to the ground and does not know it. Somebody else says “Look, he is fainting”. They see his hands shake. He feels good for a long time after he smokes, if he likes to smoke he feels good for a long while. Sometimes he falls on the ground he feels faint.
They say that some old men have to walk with a cane when they have finished smoking, they feel it so over their whole meat. I used to see them, the old men. It was the strong tobacco that was what they liked. They fall on the ground. They awaken, and they smoke again. People always laugh at the old men smoking. When they smoke they talk in the sweathouse. All at once one man quits talking. That is the way they used to do in the old times. They used to like the tobacco so well. They used to like the tobacco strong. Whenever they faint from tobacco, they always get ashamed. They used to do that way, get stunned.
Sometimes one fellow will have so strong tobacco that nobody can stand it without fainting, it is so strong. He feels proud of his strong tobacco. Some were fainters when they smoked, others never did faint. Some faint when the tobacco gets strong from them, and others do not.
Vaskok was a fainter when he smoked. Everybody knew that Vaskok was a fainter. Vaskok used to faint, but he liked it. When he first starts to smoke he does not fall. It is when he finishes smoking a pipeful of tobacco that he falls; it is then as it gets strong for him that he falls.
The second reason for the tolerance of the “filthy, stinking weed” was, of course, the enormous profits derived from it. It was Tobacco which kept the American colonies going. Hard cash being scarce to non-existent, tobacco was made legal tender just about everywhere. One 19th century historian wrote:
“So prominent is the place that tobacco occupies in the early records of the middle Southern States, that its cultivation and commercial associations may be said to form the basis of their history. It was the direct source of their wealth, and became for a while the representative of gold and silver; the standard value of other merchantable products; and this tradition was further preserved by the stamping of a tobacco-leaf upon the old continental money used in the Revolution.”
Governments quickly caught on to the fact that so-called “sin
taxes” filled the royal exchequers as nothing else. Sinfulness and
filthiness could be overlooked as long as the sinner could be made to pay for
it - to pay mightily every time he indulged his habit. Tobacco taxes became the
subject of parliamentary battles. Lord Chesterfield was politically ruined for stubbornly
resisting Walpole’s increased excise tax on Tobacco and wine.
One American writing in 1855, mused:
“How did the people of all time, up to 1500, manage without the
“weed.” What was Caesar’s “way” when for the
moment annoyed? - did he bite his fingers, pace his room, or rap his knuckles
on his armor? Napoleon, under such circumstances took snuff. It would seem that
the portrait of Diogenes, housed in his tub, was never complete, because he had
not a rude pipe sticking through the opening, while the blue smoke curled about
his independent head. Yet this might have spoiled his best accredited saying,
because his telling Alexander to “get out of his sunshine,” is more
sublime than saying that “he did not care a whiff of tobacco smoke for
any king in pagandom,” as is daily observed by kindred philosophers in
these modern times.”
The pipe of pipes is the near-eastern Hookah - in the words of a Victorian traveler, “In this magnificent instrument, the Oriental Hookah, the smoke is sublimated and cooled by passing through water. Thus relieved of every foreign substance, the Persian drinks it in as the breath of heaven”.
In many parts of the East it is the mark of signal hospitality to place the hookah in the center of the apartment, and pass the long, flexible tube from guest to guest, each one taking a whiff in turn. Sometimes the liquid contained in the bowl is rosewater, in such case the smoke not only loses its solid particles but also acquires additional fragrance. The ornamentation, in diamonds and other precious stones, on some of the hookahs belonging to princes, exceeds beliefs in many instances even surpassing all the other crown jewels in value.
Ralph Linton’s early writings contained this excellent
description of the place of tobacco in Native American spiritual and everyday
life.
Even if documentary evidence of the New World origin of tobacco were lacking, its importance in the religious and ceremonial life of the Indians would leave little doubt of the antiquity of its use among them. Among all the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains tobacco was the favorite offering to the supernatural powers and among the Central Algonquians no ceremony could take place without it. As a sacrifice it might be burned as incense, cast into the air or on the ground, or buried. There were sacred places at which every visitor left a tobacco offering, and during storms it was thrown into lakes and rivers to appease the under-water powers.
An early ethnologist gives us this description of the calumet:
“From the meager descriptions of the calumet and its uses it would seem that it has a ceremonially symbolic history independent of that of the pipe; and that when the pipe became an altar, by its employment for burning sacrificial tobacco to the gods, convenience and convention united the already highly symbolic calumet shafts and the sacrificial tobacco altar, the pipe bowl; hence it became one of the most profoundly sacred objects known to the Indians of northern America.
As the colors and other adornments of the shaft represent symbolically various dominant gods of the Indian pantheon, it follows that the symbolism of the calumet and pipe represented a veritable executive council of the gods. Moreover, in some of the elaborate ceremonies in which it was necessary to portray this symbolism the employment of two shafts became necessary, because the one with its colors and accessory adornments represented the procreative male power and his aid, and was denominated the male, the fatherhood of nature; and the other with its colors and necessary adornments represented the reproductive female power and her aid, and was denominated the female, the motherhood of nature.”
The calumet was employed by ambassadors and travelers as a passport; it was used in ceremonies designed to conciliate foreign and hostile nations and to conclude lasting peace; to ratify the alliance of friendly tribes; to secure favorable weather for journeys; to bring needed rain; and to attest contracts and treaties which could not be violated without incurring the wrath of the gods. The use of the calumet was inculcated by religious precept and example. A chant and a dance were employed together as an invocation to one or more of the gods. By naming in the chant the souls of those against whom war must be waged, such persons were doomed to die at the hands of the person so naming them. The dance and chant were rather in honor of the calumet than with the calumet.
Ralph Linton writes,
The Omaha and cognate names for this dance and chant signify “to make a sacred kinship” but not “to dance.” This is a key to the esoteric significance of the use of the calumet. The one for whom the dance for the calumet was performed became thereby the adopted son of the performer. One might ask another to dance the Calumet dance for him, or one might offer to perform this dance for another, but in either case the offer or invitation could be declined.
Snuff-taking surely is the untidiest form of using tobacco.
Historians have always described the clothing of heavy users, such as Frederic
the Great/as disfigured by being covered with snot and snuff. It took hardy men
with iron constitutions to acquire the habit. Heavy snuffers had permanently
inflamed eyes, a sore proboscis, and a weak, damaged sense of smell.
Up to 1900, the Czars of Russia still made presents of enameled
snuff boxes to their favorites. These masterworks usually bore the giver’s
likeness on the lid, set in diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds. One of them was
valued at a quarter million gold rubles.
An early Victorian writer thundered,
“Of all the detestable, obnoxious, offensive, unnecessary, and abominable imitations which dear woman is guilty of inheriting from fallen, depraved, corrupt, and wicked man, that of snuff-dipping stands preeminent. How the second edition of angels - the ne plus ultra of heaven’s best workmanship - the idol of man, the diamond of song - the gem of prose, and the crowning glory of humanity, can concentrate a table spoonful of pulverized poison, that would kill a rattlesnake, and prove certain death to every living creature except the tobacco worm, is to us at variance with all philosophy, reason, scripture, taste, and refinement, and utterly incomprehensible.”
Perhaps the best thing that can be said about snuff is that in a
time of open sewers, when pigs roamed in the gutters of big cities, and chamber
pots were emptied into the streets - it totally destroyed the sense of smell of
the user.
From the start the tobacco industry relied almost completely on
the slave trade. It is important to learn all the abuses that created the
tobacco epidemic on our hands today. Something few people realize is the fact
that due to a vain habit like tobacco, many people were severely enslaved. What
a price to pay. Another bad habit that used inhumane slavery was the
cultivation of sugar, which is often called a drug and sometimes uses blood as
a whitener, blood is forbidden to Christians (Acts 15:29). Let us not forget
all the cotton fields, which are where the majority of man made pesticides are
used. I think about it every time I put one of these toxic shirts on.
From -
http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/
Tobacco and Slavery
“We use to get sick of seeing the weed. We use to work from sun to sun in the old tabaccy field. We worked till my back felt like it was ready to pop in two. Marse did not raise anything but tabaccy, accept a little wheat and corn for eating, and us black people had to look after that ‘baccy like it was gold.”--Henrietta Perry, Slave Narrative from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938
Columbus encountered tobacco on his first
voyage to the Americas in 1492. It is believed he was offered dried tobacco by
the Arawaks of San Salvador on the day he landed, October 12. That November,
Bartolome de las Casas reports that two of Columbus’ men saw a group of Tainos
who “were going to their villages, with a firebrand in their hand, and
herbs to drink the smoke thereof, as they are accustomed.” The Taino word
for tobacco leaves sounded something like cohiba, and was transformed by
the Spanish into a name for their island: Cuba. One of the two men, Rodrigo de
Jerez, tried a “firebrand” and accepted gifts of tobacco. Upon his
return to Spain, he was imprisoned for several years by the Holy Inquisition on
suspicion of “consorting with the devil” for emitting smoke from his
nose and mouth, having adopted the pagan custom. (This was not the toughest
anti-smoking punishment recorded; Pope Urban VIII would excommunicate any
Catholic who smoked or used snuff in a holy place, while Russian Czar Alexis
Romanov, Ottoman Sultan Murad IV, Persian Shah Abbas I, and Ming Emperor Chong
Zhen put smokers to death.)
The American slave trade was an
international business. It began in Western Africa, where prisoners were taken
for sale to European and American slave traders, and continued in permanent and
impromptu slave markets in the United States, ultimately concentrated in the
South. Not only were some half a million Africans ripped from their lives and
families to be imported to the New World, but the enslaved were bred for sale
on American soil and transported, often under brutal conditions, throughout the
slave states.
Students can learn more about the workings
of the sugar industry and an African-American inventor who helped revolutionize
the processing of sugar by reading
From a Sugar Bowl to the International Space Station:
Norbert Rillieux, African-American Inventor.
A person can, theoretically, still be sold
into slavery in the United States as the thirteenth amendment allows slavery as
a punishment for crime. In a way, tobacco is just that, slavery. If people knew
how tobacco makes us slaves to it, they might never have ever begun to use it.
The next 5 points are from
http://www.redcross.org/services/hss/tips/smoking.html
1. Each year, 390,000 American die from the effects of smoking.
2. Cigarette smokers have more than twice the risk of heart attack.
3. Cigarette smokers have two to four times the chance of cardiac arrest.
4. Giving up smoking rapidly reduces the risk of heart disease. After a number of years, the risk of heart disease diminishes to the same level as a person who has never smoked.
5. A pregnant woman who smokes increases her baby's chances of infant crib death.
from
http://quitsmoking.about.com/cs/nicotinepatch/a/healthrisks_2.htm
Smoking can cause the following
effects: Our hair to smell and be stained, our brain to have strokes, us to be
addicted and suffer from withdraw, alter our brain chemistry, anxiety from the
harm our smoking causes to others, the eyes can sting or become watery and
blink more, even cause blindness, loss of sense of smell, skin wrinkles and premature
aging, teeth discoloration or loss and gum disease, cancer of the lips, mouth throat
and larynx, sore throat, loss of taste, halitosis, poor blood circulation, tar
stained fingers, lung cancer, coughing, shortness of breath, colds and flu,
pneumonia, asthma, emphysema, block and weaken heart arteries, cancer of the
esophagus, liver cancer, stomach cancer, ulcers, Aortic aneurysm, kidney and
bladder cancer, Osteoporosis, spine and hip fractures, infertility, female
period pains, early menopause, cervix cancer, Leukemia, leg pain and gangrene,
weakening of the immune system. Smoking is destructive and deadly.
“Smoking harms nearly every organ in the human body, increases the risk of at least 10 different cancers, and accounts for some 30 percent of all cancer deaths, yet despite all that, more than one in five Americans still smokes.” said Joanne Pike, vice president, Corporate Initiatives for the American Cancer Society.
Smoking causes gangrene, miscarriage, 92% of oral cancer, neck cancer, lung tuberculosis and also causes people to be impatient.
Some Other Related Links
The heart and lung of a Non-smoker and that of a Smoker
This link shows a smoker’s lungs looking
like barbeque beef.
A person with “Smoker’s lung” ends up using pressed air. It is like breathing
through a straw.
“Faces of spit tobacco use”
It can be worse, this unclean mouth
environment can kill.
Fact sheet
on Environmental Tobacco Smoke – Secondhand Smoke
Secondhand Smoke a Leaves Kids Prone to Severe Infections.
Marijauna Joint a Equals Five Cigarettes.
Doctors during the 50’s and 60’s were trying to tell the American government and people that smoking was healthy (We should not always believe the government or doctors). Here are two videos. Doctors offered cigarettes in their offices. and there were many reports by doctors that said Cigarettes Are Good For You.
Cannabis Bigger Cancer Risk Than Cigaretts
Pesticides found in tobacco smoke at dangerous levels.
Burning sugar can kill, it is in cigarettes (Video Report)