Found this cool article today:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/kbx94a/ ... -for-shiva
The weed shake may attract many tourists who love to go 'out with a bhang,' but it has been an important part of Hindu culture for centuries. On holidays such as Holi in March (Indian New Year, best known elsewhere as that day when adults let their inner child go crazy and pelt each other with colored powder) and Shivatri in February (the holiday of the god Shiva) every Hindu in the North of the country—especially in Varanasi—drinks one of these shakes. Even the small kids get a bhang candy to join in the holy high. The weed grows in the Himalayas and is being sold in government-run bhang shops, but theoretically comes from above, from the Gods.
Since 1000 BC, bhang (literally meaning 'cannabis') is the communion wafer/sacramental bread of India: a piece of the god of destruction, Shiva. According to mythology, he is our universe's very first hippie god.
In ancient Hindu texts, the gods churned an ocean of milk in search of an elixir that would make them immortal. Once they found it, they ran off with it and spilled a couple of drops of the immortality water along the way. At each of the places where a drop was spilled from the pot, miracles occurred. Shiva, poisoned by a toxin called halahala that came free while churning the ocean, went to one of these miracle places in the mountains. There, he found bhang (weed), ate it, and was healed. The plant became his new favorite snack, and from then on, he passed his days being stoned and in deep meditation.
Hindus in Varanasi bond with bhang for spiritual reasons. They drink it to honor Shiva, to meditate better, to get closer to God, and to wash away their sins.
Bhang is also used in ayurvedic medicine. It is said to cure nervous disorders, skin diseases and wounds. In Medieval times, soldiers used to drink bhang before or after battle, just as Westerners drank hard liquor from flasks. It was said to give them an adrenaline rush, so they felt immortal and invincible, and lessened pain.
But bhang is so embedded nowadays that a lot of Hindus—especially men—use it more often than just on holidays. The spiced drink cools them down on hot days, but they also just like the whole 'being stoned' thing. A tourist gets one or two weed balls in his shake, but a local easily puts in ten.
Shiva is the reason why Hindus love to drink themselves high, and that Rastafaris on Caribbean islands have dreadlocks and smoke ganja. Ganja is Hindi for 'compressed female buds' and Shiva also had big 'jatta' (knots) in his hair because they were said to give him power. When Britons took the Indians to the Caribbean islands to work on sugar plantations, they brought their religion with them.
When you're in India, and in the distance you hear someone singing a song that starts with "Gang Bhang", there's no need to be afraid that you accidentally stumbled upon some sort of kama sutra cult. They're singing about their God and ganja at the Ganges, and they're probably just high.
Bhang - Shiva's cannabis drink
- Edge Guerrero
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Theres used to be pothead dinosaurs.
Theres used to be pothead dinosaurs.
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Don't be selfish, preserve this world for the next generations.
I'll never long for what might have been
Regret won't waste my life again
I won't look back I'll fight to remain
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