Among Rastafari in England, smoking cannabis and tobacco is a professional activity that demonstrates dedication to the movement, aids in learning dialects, and enables communication with herbs as a 'plant teacher'—a natural divinatory mechanism providing esoteric knowledge to skilled adepts. This ethnographic research shows that smoking rituals facilitate multispecies communication between professional smokers and plant teachers, recasting agency in anthropological studies of smoking and deepening understanding of consciousness and intentionality in both humans and plants.
Rastafari is a Pan-African spiritual, socio-political, and ecological movement that uses Cannabis (the Herb) as an entheogenic agent to decolonize consciousness and promote well-being. The movement counters historical oppression from the trans-Atlantic slave trade by drawing on African "livity," a core spiritual lifestyle challenging global Black oppression. Smoking the Herb is a practice of knowing, healing, and decolonizing, enhanced by "reasoning" (a discursive process identifying root causes of injustice) and Nyahbinghi drumming, chanting, and dancing. These rituals foster InI-consciousness, an entheogenic connection between individuals and the divine. Rastafari language shifts consciousness toward positivity, forming a decolonial mindset that combines Herb effects with music to enter altered states producing healing and transmitting knowledge.