Another sacred plant for the Amerindians is tobacco. Tobacco is a plant which allows special communion and communication with the spiritual world. It is an offering which pleases the ancestors, a medium by which we testify of our gratitude for life and the beauty of the world, and it offers our spirit a special inspiration to hear Divine will in us. Tobacco was even sometimes used as a medicine for certain health problems. Tobacco originally came from the Americas.

Westerners have no idea of what they are doing when they light a cigarette. By misusing a sacred sacrament, and tobacco is exactly that for traditional Native Americans, they harm their spirit and body. This is typical of the misuse of all sacred substances. When a “teaching plant” as we call these special plants that can alter ordinary perception and lead to superior consciousness, is misused, it has an opposite, perverse effect. The spiritual energy cannot release itself, because the personal gratification intention with which the tobacco is used will turn against the person and cause a decrease of the vital energy as well as poisoning, which can eventually lead to disease and death. Furthermore, Westerners, by their thirst for profit, have filled tobacco with chemicals and by-products to increase certain cosmetic, addictive and commercial qualities. To traditional philosophy this is blasphemous. If they could spend more time listening to our wisdom, which persists even today, we would not witness thousands of persons suffering from a plant which, properly used, could lead them towards a better understanding of spirit, religious community and unity with nature.