The identity of Soma, the intoxicating beverage drunk during Vedic times, has been a hotly contested issue for hundreds of years in the east and west, with many people proposing their pet theories as to what the true identity of Soma was. Probably far too much mental energy has been spent attempting to solve a mystery which likely doesn’t change very much for humanity. The identity of Soma has been lost to history, the secrecy with which its identity was guarded eventually meaning that people eventually lost the ability to identify, harvest and process soma.
After reading this article, it should be startlingly clear to the unbiased reader that the identity of Soma, was a plant of the Desmodium Genus, most likely Phyllodium pullchellum, or a mixture of different Desmodium species, including Desmodium gangeticum.
The Desmodium genus is known to be psychoactive and contain many interesting alkaloids such 5-MeO-DMT, DMT and esoteric beta-carbolines. American entheobotanist Trout even released a free e-book “Trout’s notes on the genus Desmodium”
However, the use of Desmodiums as a source of DMT or 5-MeO is not commonly reported in the entheogenic world and you would be hard pressed to find any reports on the internet at all, as the plants are quite small, not yielding very much plant material and other sources like Mimosa hostilis root bark will yield a much higher % of DMT.
I first came across Phyllodium pullchellum in my research exploring 5-MeO-DMT and found it was very much psychoactive on its own from the right plant at the right time, with 100g of fresh leaves taken in a tea being very visionary. You can see a video here which documents my journey and how I discovered Phyllodium pullchellum.
After that time I discovered there had been a surprisingly large amount of research on Phyllodium pullchellum, including a study that showed that the beta carbolines in the Phylodium effected MAO inhibition in rats. There are also studies I found which describe how Phylllodium pullchellum is effective as a potent folk medicine.
I have taken a tea from the phyllodium about a dozen times now. I have also distributed and given tea from this plant to many dozens of people, with experiences varying from just feeling nauseous to closed eyed visuals, having profound communications with the plant, to becoming totally transported to living on an alien planet for a couple of hours. The primary effect I have discovered in this plant is its healing power, that I believe rivals or sometimes exceeds that of the heavy hitter healing psychoactive plants such as ayahuasca and iboga. I have also created an email list for people to share their experiences with this plant.
The famous mycologists and investment banker, Gordon Wasson had a hypothesis that Soma was an Amanita mushroom. Yet the Vedas are very clear that Soma is a plant, and gives many precise description of its nature, which also very much accords to the appearance of Phyllodium pullchellum. Apparently Wasson thought that the attempt to describe Soma as a plant was a red herring, designed to lead people away from the true identity of Soma!
For example, Phyllodium pullchellum is very often a tawny color, orangey-brown and yellow, as well as green. Here you can see some photos online of the plant which show this colouring. Matthew Clark wrote a book called “The Tawny One” proposing that Soma is a mixture of plants containing DMT and Syrian rue. In his book he states, “In the current climate of interest in psychoactive plants— indeed it is a very curious that a single plant with ayahuasca like or entheogenic properties has not yet been discovered in central Asia; though this is not to say that such a discovery is impossible in the future.” In this respect, Clark omits the Desmodiums, although he does mention Desmodium gangeticum in his book. By the way, Desmodium gangeticum could well be psychoactive by itself, as 5-MeO-DMT is psychoactive orally by itself as Jonathon Ott highlighted many years ago.
No serious psychedelic researcher could give credibility to the theory that Syrian rue, by itself could be the identity of Soma. Simply because, by itself, even at high doses, the entheogenic effects are just not that strong and present too much nausea.
Ephedra by itself doesn’t present any psychedelic effects at all, and is only a speedy concoction. The effects reported by Soma simply do not match up. Anyone who has taken Ephedra is not going to sing any songs about the experience or wax lyrical about it in any way.
The idea that Cannabis could be Soma, also don’t truly match up or align with the deeply religious and spiritual experiences that people did have with Soma, which can only be attributed to a brew containing 5-MeO or DMT, which are the most highly regarded entheogens in our modern day climate.
In that sense, Matthew Clark, author of “The Tawny One” and I agree, that Soma was a tryptamine, and Clark does a very thorough job at going over the various theories and why they are not plausible. (And so I am not going to cover those arguments in this article)
Some maintain that Soma was not psychoactive at all, and that perspective is difficult to take to seriously, why human beings would venerate a plant thousands of times in religious texts, which is not psychoactive or did not give them transcendent visions? Anyone is struck by reading the Vedas just how many words are written to just to sing its praises, surely nothing has been praised in any language to the extent that Soma was in the Vedas.
The interesting thing about Phyllodium pulchellum is that it is the only plant I am aware of which is psychoactive in one preparation. Ayahuasca is a vine which contains beta-carbolines and you need another plant containing DMT to have a psychoactive beverage. I am also aware there is a tree traditionally used by indigenous Australians, which has beta-carbolines and DMT in one tree. The phyllodium tea when prepared from the plant, is a golden colour, which accords to the description in the vedas of how the tea appears, where they call Soma “hari”, meaning golden or tawny in Sanskrit.
One of the things that really struck me about the phyllodium tea when I first began to drink it was the rich and SWEET taste, and there are multiple references to the sweetness of the soma drink the in vedas. The sweetness of the phyllodium tea is exceptionally unusual for a psychoactive potion, most of which taste awfully bitter and present a very strong taste which present people with a steep entry fee.
The phyllodium taste though is so rich, and sweet, that it is still not easy to drink. I would describe it as a kind of Stevia tinged volatile incredibly strong “gin”, which leaves pressure in the temples and leaves you gasping a bit.
The other element which matches up strongly to description in the vedas is that phyllodium brings profound nausea. I no longer get nausea from drinking ayahuasca and other psychoactive plants, yet have often found myself often being completely nauseous from drinking the phyllodium tea, and vomiting is an almost inevitable part of it. In the vedas they say, “Even Indra becomes Nauseous drinking Soma”
Soma is often described as a “creeper” in the vedas, and having stalks. Phyllodium isn’t so much of a creeper as it doesn’t “creep” anywhere per se, but it does have large stalks and it does also clearly “hang down” as you can see in the photos above.
As the Hindupedia web site says about Soma,
“The twigs of the creeper were brown or tawny in color and would hang down. It used to grow on hills and mountains. Hence it was difficult for ordinary people to obtain it. Probably some of the hill-tribes were experts in collecting these creepers and supplying them.”
It makes sense that the preparation of Soma, they crushed the stalks between rocks. Yet, the stalks are quite dry, the “juice” is negligible and we don’t know for sure whether there are alkaloids in the stalks, or just in the leaves. Pretty much the only plant which you can crush to get juice out of is the sugar cane plant. Even Ephedra, which is quite juicy in nature, wouldn’t express very much juice if you crushed it between stones.
Soma is said to bestow immortality, which if that was strictly true, people from Vedic times would be living in our time or living many hundreds of years, which would have been documented to some degree. None of this is mentioned in the vedas about lifespans per se. What they do mention is that Soma bestows good health upon those who drink it, and many references in the Vedas make it clear in a way that I will not go into here that the soma brings good health, not some kind of life everlasting.
This “immortality” is more like the kind of health that ayahuascaros in the amazon have into their 80’s and 90’s, living in perfect health and full of energy, because they are drinking profoundly balancing and aligning plant medicines. Soma is perceived to have the quality of increasing immortality, but that is not what the Vedas say, they clearly talk of Soma as a medicine, which PROLONGS existence, not necessarily creating immortality, but through alleviating maladies, creates a longer life.
“Our maladies have lost their strength and vanished: they feared, and passed away into the darkness.
Soma hath risen in us, exceeding mighty, and we are come where men prolong existence.”
Ephedra, nor Amanita have known to have such beneficial properties, but ayahuasca does. One need only go to the amazon and meet curanderos in their 80’s chasing after young women to see how ayahuasca enables longevity and vitality. Needless to say, ayahuasca doesn’t appear to extend life or enable people to live to anything like 120 years of age, but it does appear to enable a higher degree of health and vitality in old age.
“We have drunk of the soma; we have become immortal, we have seen the light; we have found the Gods…”
– Rig Veda 8.48.3
In fact, the immortality they are talking of here, is a REALISATION of immortality of the soul, a connection to the light (the one) and the gods (the many), and in some respects this line talks about the convergence of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT, as 5-MeO-DMT will connect people to the light, the one consciousness, and DMT will enable an awareness of the gods, of the manifold nature of dual existence in its complexity and sophistication.
Only psychoactive plants enable witnessing of the gods, and enable a seeing of the proverbial light. Light itself is not typically found in DMT containing brews like ayahuasca, but light itself and the kind of non-dual consciousness that 5-MeO-DMT provides. Indeed, there has been a resurgence of the usage of 5-MeO in recent years, with many of the serious 5-MeO explorers finding great guidance and maps in the Vedic literature.
A look at GPS co-ordinates for Phyllodium pullchellum in India show that there are 9 GPS co-ordinates in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal and especially in India near Dehradun. There are 23 other GPS co-ordinates in the whole of the Indian continent, mostly in the South of India for example in Tamil Nadu. Dehradun is in the mountains, which accords to an area in northern western India where Vedic civilisation began in India.
I have visited several places in Asia to collect phyllodium, mostly in Thailand, as the infrastructure there is quite good and I can easily hire a car there. I would drive around all day, walk around in the forrest and sometimes not find any plants at all. Sometimes I would find just a few plants, other times I found whole big patches of phyllodium growing.
I quickly found out that phyllodium didn’t store very well. It would be best to harvest and drink it on the same night. If the refrigerated tea was left a week or two potency and QUALITY of effect seemed to have reduced significantly.
This finding ties into early Indian research on Desmodium gangeticum by Ghosal and Bhattacharya.
“Assays with fresh green or air dried and preserved plants indicated that the alkaloid content of the aerial portions of green plant material was more than three times the amount present in dry and preserved samples. The roots of D. gangeticum showed no such phenomenon.”
– Ghosal & Bhattacharya 1972.
I have experimented with different methods of fermenting the phyllodium tea and found that a fermented Phyllodium brew is still AS psychoactive as a fresh brew after two months. However, I have to say there was some spirit missing from the fermented brew. However, I have found that Acacia brews drunk after a few months also simply don’t have the punchiness of a fresh tea.
To preserve the qualities of the Phyllodium over time, would make sense why Soma is said to be a fermented drink. Why bother to ferment to ferment if you do not have to? Consider also that the Phyllodium flowers once a year, with its resplendent peacock like flowers, which gives it its common name “showy desmodium”. Other times of the year, you can still harvest from it, but will only get less than half the plant matter and my initial bioassays tell me that the flowering plant has a better alkaloid profile, with more tryptamine content than the plant which has not flowered.
I have not carried out research into Desmodium gangeticum, but I believe it may have a central role to play in the identity of Soma. Indeed, as some like Trout and Ananda have pointed out, one of the Sanskrit words for Desmodium Gangeticum “saumya” or “amsúmat” , which means rich in Soma juice. It could well be that Desmodium Gangeticum was used as an admixture to the Phyllodium pullchellum.
The Desmodium Gangeticum also contains interesting beta-carbolines discovered by GHOSAL and BANERJEE, 6-Methoxy-N-methyl-β-carbolinium and Nb-Methyl-H4-harman in stem leaf, surely these esoteric beta-carbolines are worthy of much research.
There is a chance that Desmodium gangeticum could even be the primary Soma plant, but a lack of consistent beta-carbolines in the leaf and a lack of matching elements that phyllodium has to how the soma plant was described, make that rather unlikely. What doesn’t match up is how in the Vedas, they repeatedly say that the Soma plant is pressed to make the Soma juice. I really cannot see why there would be a reason they did this. What I have noticed is that the phyllodium leaves do maintain a fair bit of wetness, and if you were fermenting them, the pressing could involve extracting out all of the liquid in the plant matter.
Below are three my experiences with Phyllodium tea which can give people an idea of what could be experienced drinking phyllodium tea.
My experience of it is that duration is often quite short, about 2 hours. It is friendly, and a proactive healer, the spirit of the plant carries out quite intricate surgery on the soul. It doesn’t take you into the dark like ayahuasca does, there is something very stable and nurturing about the experience.
Where to now with the Phyllodium? Considering it is not that easy to find in the wild, there is not likely to be a culture of people taking it from the wild and ingesting it, and I have not even received one message from anyone who gone out and found a plant and made a tea from it. People in Australia are beginning to grow the plant, and actually some have been growing it for many years. I have seen 8 year old plants growing in Austrlia, which clearly do not produce much plant material, maybe half a kilo of fresh plant matter at best.
The only real way forward I see is if Phyllodium were commercially grown as a medicine. Perhaps after 3-4 years one plant would have enough plant matter for one drink without harming the plant too much.
It would be nice to remembered in hundreds of year as the human being who discovered that the phyllodium is a fantastic psychoactive plant medicine, however, I don’t really care about being recognised for having discovered that Phyllodium is the identity of the Vedic Soma, what is perhaps more important is beginning to get this medicine out to people, as it is gentle, healing, short acting and a powerful spiritual healer, as has many advantages for treating people than its fellow heavy hitters like Ayahuasca and Iboga.
27th of October 2017, Pai, Thailand
I have problems getting up, end up getting up at 10am! Sleeping in. Thailand makes me feel lazy.
I bottle up the liquid and it is exactly one liter. I put it into 2 500ml glass bottles, then pour out what I assume is 100ml (50g fresh) and put it in a glass. Again, I feel like I am being conservative with the dose. I see no reason to rush into a deep experience with this plant and just feel like I’m making friends with it.
I procrastinate drinking it a fair while. Eventually I drink at 12.15pm. It tastes strong and I drink it all down in one go!
I put on this music mix and lie down.
I can feel it quite quickly it working on me. The first thing I feel is it working on my liver, clearing heat, which is what PP is used for in Chinese medicine. It feels really effective, going in there to the sides in quite a lot of details, more than I felt with ayahuasca for example. Opening up channels.
Then the nausea comes, it is quite strong. I end up throwing up twice, keep heaving bringing it up. And there is also diarrhea which is quite strong too.
About an hour and 20 minutes after taking it, I am going through a tunnel, which is hard to interpret. Lots of images whirring past me. I am a bit in shock. Something in me is not able to register it is becoming SO visual.
The visuals last about 90-120 minutes. But I cannot keep track of time as I am too IN IT and surprised.
I am seeing things like asians go in and out of shops. There is a landscape, of beings, people doing their thing. It seems kind of normal. The visuals are quite crisp, especially for the dose I have taken. The colors are quite bright.
At one point there is an old wizard communicating with me, there are spells emanating from him, good spells. At no point does the communication seem very direct. Like I said, it was hard to interpret, just from the shock of it happening, and the nature of it seems so new, I cannot compute it or bring it back to memory so well.
When it ends, I go back through the tunnel, with these arms waving at me, like asian sculptures, dancing men or women or god’s or goddesses, endless arms waving, as art.
Then I don’t want to move for a couple of hours until 5.30pm.
I am in a deep place, in a reverie, the plants communicate to me with these cartoons, of the kind I experience with Iboga. They seem somehow trivial, but I understand it is only the plant trying to be entertaining. I get a great sense of friendliness and humility from this plant, wise old power, the same impression I get from Iboga.
Overall this experience felt very solid. High energy. Happiness. Brightness. For sure, this seemed like DMT more than 5-MeO. At least for this strain, it means that the DMT content is a lot higher than you would expect in the strains I collected.
9th of June 2108, Chang Mai, Thailand.
I tested the first cookup on Sunday night with 30 grams fresh, being somewhat conservative, as I cooked it twice and didn’t cook the twigs. I only got some visual patterns and not much medicinal effect. Last night I took 90 grams fresh, which was 150ml of tea.
The taste is not TOO BAD, it is sweet and astringent. The effects come in about an hour, and I start to see some visuals which are very clear and crisp. Then it was a swirling patterns of very colorful crisp lines, and intricate circles, something I have never seen in any vision before. But then it crashed, the pattern appeared to die! Hit the wall!
What happened next was very strange. There was an apologetic lady, apparently from the beurocracy of my brain, saying the Phyllodium didn’t have the required paperwork/was not allowed access to my brain!
From that point in, the visions were not as clear and crisp, but I could feel it in my body, doing things, carrying out healing work. That feeling was very clear, it was like there were implements like swizzling lithe kitchen appliances INSIDE my body. Pushing things out. Clearing channels. In my liver it pushed out these cords which appeared over the liver, pulled out like strings, which then shaped itself into an old style sailing ship, which then slipped off my stomach! Over my right shoulder, I could see this colored train car thing, pull up this whole big piece of black stuff.
But also, I was being attacked by beings a LOT. I figured these beings found this occurrence threatening, I hadn’t really seen beings like this before. They were strange and alien, a bit clunky and doufousy like the aliens you see in Star Wars. So a lot of my time then was involved in
torping them to their demise.
At one point in the later in the piece I threw up. I drank at 8.40pm and by 11.30pm it was largely all over. So generally it seems to last about 2 hours and I was able to go to sleep just fine after that. I felt very good the next day.
January 2020, Cagayan Valley, Northern Luzon, Phillipines
So that night, at 9pm, I take 120ml of a different brew, equivalent of 300grams fresh.
The taste is so potent and the liquid so thick. Within about half an hour, I am spinning a bit and end up throwing up. Then I get this incredible warmth in my brain, like I’ve only ever felt like when I first began taking Acacia Phlebophylla orally with Syrian rue. I can feel an opening in my crown, a toroidal field vibrating with vibrant clarity and I think this experience going to be quite strong!
I start to see geometric patterns in my field, like a kaleidoscope, but it is distinctive of the plant, the patterns are made from its texture, its living flesh, its own nature.
I actually feel very high, like I am bathing in this simmering warmth, my brain being nurtured and caressed in a way I have only come close to with low dose mushrooms in the float tank after 3 hours.
Then I see a form, it is a male figure, the visuals are not crisp, a bit fuzzy. But I recognise it as the deva of the plant, very down to earth, and present. I realise over these weeks I have a deep love of this plant, that brings tears to my eyes at times. The deva as a man, goes into my heart, and pulls and manipulates something like a valve in my heart chakra over about 30 seconds. And all this black stuff comes pouring out, a black cylindrical shit, like it is like popping a zit.
Then the deva takes me to this machine, it is like a car, a big bit of technology and puts me against it, and this technology doing something to me, but I am not sure what. All this time, I am continuosly feeling this warmth and fuzziness in my brain, which makes me feel about as “high” as I’ve ever been.
And I am also feeling flows of energy in my solar plexus, in front of my body, flanges and pulsing. The good feeling in my brain continues, and start to see names of places appear in front of me all over the world, I cannot figure it out for a while, but then I get it! The plant is mapping me! It is using me to map the world, bit by bit, but incredibly fast, this reminds of me of ketamine experiences, whereby the ketamine showed humanity as this being that is being simultaneously in all the places on earth. It is like the plant, is using me to introduce itself to the human species and all the corners of the present matrix of the world.
Then I see more of this geometric artwork. The experience seems to fade and it is already 11.30pm and 2 hours have passed, but it only feels like half an hour has passed.
Then I start to get attacked by beings, it is all a bit messy, and kind of typical for me, I alternately cannot SEE that clearly, and then momentarily have these very vivid experiences of these beings, so I’m just torping like a mother fucker. And I’m not worried about neighbors response, as dogs are barking all the time in this neighborhood, and people will think my torping is just another dog!
At around 1am, I get the runs, not badly, but it does require some running downstairs on my part.
Eventually the window between this world and that world closes up, and I am able to get to sleep.
About 3am I wake up, and have this vision of liquid coming from an orifice, and it takes me a little while to twig, but decide to ignore it. At 5am, I realise that was a mistake to ignore this message, as I have spoiled my underwear and there is a little ugly brown spot on the bedsheet.
