On the other hand, the same secret of priestcraft is known on the other side of the Atlantic. We may or may not believe in the myth of lost Atlantis and the transmitted ritual, but both the Zaquis of Sonora and the Tamachecks of Guatemala possess a ritual observance in which cannabis Americana, a new cousin of the cannabis indica, is the stimulant agent. Other tribes use a brew of the mescal bean, but this is a purely American species and the active principle anhalonium,[37] does not act on precisely the same nerve centres as the cannabinote principle of the hemps. In both cases the induction of a species of intoxication by means of the sacred herbs gathered in certain lunar or astrological aspects is held by the natives to be the basis of the communion with the spirits of the departed dead. The Spiritualist believes that there are spirits of the dead, the physiologist claims that the “spirits” are hallucinatory or that they are merely reflex as from the subconscious mind of the individual or of other individuals. This twin explanation runs through all psychic phenomena, but not until all phenomena known to be produced by Spiritualist circles can be produced under hypnosis will the Spiritualist theory be finally disproved. The rank and file of Spiritualists are unaware that the scientific world has a demonstrable answer to nine-tenths of the wonder that the believing Spiritualist is convinced can only occur by means of discarnate spirit intelligences. But the honest investigator should bear in mind that only certain rare phenomena remain unchallenged and are at present unattainable by practising psychologists. When the phenomena of materialization--the externalization of force--are producible by hypnotists, then the whole spirit hypothesis is imperilled, for the scientists will be able to produce these effects not by spirit intervention but at the behest of human will. Still, for the moment, the uncritical white, like the barbarous Indian, is justified in his belief in external spirit agency as the only explanation for the apparently miraculous. A friend of mine who had been a member of an exploring expedition whose mission was to trace a tributary of the river Usmacinta in Chiapas on the Mexico-Guatemala border to its source in the volcanic country round the unknown Lago de Peten, made a careful study of the ritual of the Tamachacks. These people still carry out a pre-Columbian religion which antedates that of the Aztec and Toltec civilizations both of Mexico and the Yucatan peninsula. Essentially symbolic in that it takes into account primitive nature and ancestor worship, the basis of the cult is the evocation of the spirits of the departed dead for tribal and personal counsel and consultation. The means employed in the production of the psychic state is the smoke of the _cannabis americana_. The native name of this herb is _marihuana_.