Community | August 13, 2008 | 3 comments

Busted For Holy Smoke

source: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n780/a02.html?1042

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JackHerer
BRACEBRIDGE -- A man who claims he is an ordained minister was busted with almost half a kilo of pot yesterday during a traffic stop on Hwy. 11 near Bracebridge.

"Rev." Michel Nathier, 53, of the Church of the Universe, admitted he was smoking a joint when the OPP officer pulled him over but said he was committing a holy act.

"It's a sacrament," Nathier said in an interview after he was released from custody with a Sept. 2 court date.

PLANT BLESSED

Nathier said he has about 300 followers in the Sturgeon Falls area, near North Bay, who believe that marijuana is the blessed plant mentioned in the Bible as the "tree of life."

The church, which he said has chapters throughout Canada and the U.S., has two rules: Don't hurt yourself and don't hurt others -- and its followers routinely toke "the sacrament." It does not make one stoned, "just enlightened," he insists.

"Ok, but it's still illegal," said a good-natured OPP Insp. Ed Medved.

Nathier was initially stopped because he was swerving between lanes, Medved said.

When the officer stopped the car, a waft of the sacred herb came floating out, police said. The officer seized almost a half kilo of pot with a street value of between $1,500 and $3,000.

Nathier, who is already facing charges of possession of marijuana, has been arrested for possession 10 times in 10 years and has spent three years in jail. He'll fight the latest charge.

MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom
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3 comments // Busted For Holy Smoke

  • shortbusgeek
    • 0
      shortbusgeek  

    • It's time to legalize this plant. While I don't smoke it myself, being a libertarian, I think we're spending way too many tax dollars to try and rid America of something that's really not all that much of a real "problem". Alcohol causes quite a few more issues than Marijuana ever will. Yet another reason to support Bob Barr for President. Forget about his past voting record. He knew the Patriot Act was going to pass whether he voted for or against it, so he at least worked to ensure that it wasn't nearly as detrimental as it was originally going to be. He used to be hated by the Libertarian Party and the Marijuana Policy Project, but now both whole-heartedly support him now that he's seen the light. http://www.BobBarr2008.com

    • 3 years ago
  • Enjoy_Cannabis
    • 0
      Enjoy_Cannabis  

    • "Ok, but it's still illegal," said a good-natured OPP Insp. Ed Medved. " obviously freedom of religion is completely ignored here because this is the best argument they can come up with.

    • 3 years ago
  • JackHerer
    • 0
      JackHerer  
    • Image

    • Since the dawn of recorded history, secret sects of cannabis-using worshipers have tuned in to the potential of the human spirit, while mainstream religions, serving the interests of the state, have demonized their practices as dangerous, heretical and evil. Using entheogens to reach higher levels of consciousness, these secret sects have opened themselves to the utmost potential of humankind, but not without cost.

      In unholy, bloody purgings, ancient kings turned their temples to dust, sacrificed their priests on their own altars and scattered their followers. Still, their teachings remained. The inherent impulse to ingest psychedelics for spiritual illumination survived, as have the prohibitions of governments desperately grasping to limit the definitions of human consciousness.

      Psychedelic spirituality

      The secret, revolutionary truth of psychedelic spirituality is that the divine exists in each of us, that no one has to show it to us, and that we don't have to follow any one else's rules to get there. In the 60's, hippie folk turned on to the possibilities of psychedelic union with God, and communities advocating sacramental use of cannabis and other entheogens sprang up all over North America.

      In the US, Stephen Gaskin led the largest-ever hippie caravan across the country to Tennessee, where he founded "The Farm" in 1972. "There are spiritual levels of experience that people are heir to," writes Gaskin in his book, Cannabis Spirituality. "If you touch that spiritual vibration, it will touch you back. There isn't supposed to be an intermediary between you and God."

      The Church of the Universe, whose members believe that marijuana is the tree of life, was created around the same type of community-living model as The Farm. One day in 1969, standing on the ice of a spring-fed quarry in Puslinch County, Ontario, Walter Tucker had a vision of an alternative community, living in harmony with each other and the land. He quickly arranged to lease the land for a small monthly rate, called it "Clearwater Abbey," and founded a new religion based on a philosophy of community living, inward searching and sacramental cannabis.

      In a recent conversation with Reverend Tucker, he theologized that "When you join your spirit to the spirit of the plant world, marijuana especially, it brings you into connection with God."

      Jeff Brown joined the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church in the 70's, when he was about twenty, and learned about the mysteries of cannabis spirituality.

      "They taught us that marijuana is the body and blood of Christ and that it is a religious sacrament," Brown told Cannabis Culture. "One of the other things they taught us is that if you are looking for God you have to look for God within."

    • 3 years ago
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