The God Flower

Part history, part real-time reporting, and part ethnography, The God Flower is a provocative and radical history of cannabis and Western imperialism. For nearly as long as there have been people, there has been cannabis. From humanity’s origins in the Horn of Africa to the rural highlands of ancient Japan, the plant has featured in religious sacraments that have been the foundation for whole cultures. The history and ethnobotany of cannabis reveals a hidden truth: where the plant has thrived, so have radical and anti-imperialist politics. Where cannabis grows, colonialism weakens. In a revolutionary narrative that breaks from the Western propagandized version of world events, Casey Taylor blends together original reporting from Ethiopia to the Caribbean, the latest ethnobotanical research, studies of historical and religious documents, and recently declassified American intelligence materials. The result is an unforgettable people’s history that begins in ancient cultures and carries through to modern times, decentering Western colonial power along the way. Gripping first-person reporting collides with groundbreaking scholarship in The God Flower, producing both an unflinching critique of imperialism—which has always viewed cannabis with at best suspicion and more frequently open hostility—and an ode to a plant that has shaped our lives in more ways than we realize.