Why, Yes I Am: Presbyterian Mixture

[phil22]

I am a graduate of RTS so I should like this baccy. It is however not a favorite.

 

[pipinho]

I have been smoking alot of Presy Blend lately. It's just a great smoke for the summer. A light english blend with low N but enough flavor to make you keep smoking it. This plus online chess is a daily routine for me now. hahah

 

[locopony]

I have never tried it and probably never will because the religious connotation of the name.

 

[lestrout]

John - the 'Hebraic blends' were authored by one of our Morley's members with CraigT.
Presby, curiously, is one of the few blends that I didn't care for initially, but now it's firmly ensconced in my Top100>200 Cellar.
Any sentiments on whether the recent production has changed in formula and taste?
hp

les

 

[crazypipe]

 

[mso489]

Not every denomination or religion has its own tobacco blend. I think it is something of a

distinction. My dad's family was Presbyterian, and my mom's Congregationalist. We had an

aunt and uncle and cousins who at the time attended a Unitarian church, and we went with

them. My dad made endless fun, after we were home, about how they read Ralph Waldo

Emerson from the pulpit. So, you know where I ended up. But first I had a happy childhood

in a Community Church, first as an acolyte, and later as an usher. Unlike many, no hard

feelings about my religious upbringing. Also, growing up in Chicago, I grew up partly

Roman Catholic by osmosis. My buddy told me I was a pagan (pre-Vatican One) but it

didn't sound so bad to me. Hey, I'm a pagan; I'm still a pagan.

 

[drcarlo]

Entering the theological debate...
Interesting to see your comments on different brands of Christendom.

I my self left christendom 15 yrs ago and entered Islam. It is the best thing I ever did.
You won't find a muslim blend, since smoking is prohibited by the wast majority of the scholars of religion. I should stop smoking....but,...

 

[napulitano215]

There's debate on that a lot smoking in Islam. Some say it's the inhaling is makruh

 

[deathmetal]

My buddy told me I was a pagan (pre-Vatican One) but it

didn't sound so bad to me.

Nature-worshippers unite. Then again, there's something very Pagan about Calvinism.

 

[winton]

I am reminded of the story of two famous preachers of a previous century from different sides of the Atlantic finally met. The American was appalled that the British preacher smoked cigars. The British pastor was appalled that the American let himself get to 300+ lbs. It is always easier to see the sin in others.
Wow, this is an old post! Still haven't tried this blend. Still haven't developed a taste for English blends.
It amazes me how broad the pipesmoking community is. There are so many views. My favorite part of pipe shows is sitting down and talking with someone while smoking. FYI, never argue politics with someone who carries a copy of the constitution with him at all times.

 

[bigjohn]

I am Russian Orthodox so I suppose our blend would be incense like. Perhaps Pirate Kake?
What was I thinking...Ten Russians of course.

 

[stickframer]

Lol. Presbyterian is a good blend in my books.
This is my favorite review if it, from user Micheal Kindt on tobaccoreviews.com :

As a Catholic, I know that I will burn in the fiery pits of hell for all eternity for smoking this heretical weed, but, hey, you only die once.
On the can it says it's Virginias and Macedonians. George Washington was from Virginia and Alexander the Great was from Macedonia, so it has that going for it. I can't tell if it has Latakia in it or not. Some people say it does and some people say it doesn't. You know, I bet they're both wrong somehow.
The wife says the room note is nice, which means she can stay indoors while I smoke it. Togetherness, as everyone knows, is so important in a marriage.
The smell from the can is delightful, a sour, manure-y, farm-y-ness you city slickers wouldn't understand. I love it. If it was a deodorant, I'd be rubbing it into my armpits right now.
Smoking it is a subtle, nuanced, fragrant, somewhat spicy adventure. It's an adult tobacco and not for the Captain Black kids--easy going enough to smoke all day, but complex enough to make it well worth it. If I could say anything bad about it, it would be that I wish, perhaps, that it was a hair spicier.
The three main tobaccos in my current rotation are Presbyterian Mixture, Frog Morton's Cellar, and Balkan Sasieni. Presby is my favorite of the three and I reach for it most often.
Now, about handing out stars (this, by the way, is my first review)...
Do I give it four stars because I really, really like it, and, yes, I do highly recommend it? Or do I keep the four star rating for something really face-melting, really off-your-meds good? No idea, but I sure can't see myself sitting down and writing a review for a crappy tobacco--and believe you me I have smoked my share of those over the years.
So I guess expect a lot of glowing reviews. That is, until I get bored with reviewing pipe tobacco and vanish into the mists of the internet.
25 people found this review helpful.

 

[eddiegrob]

It is fairly well-known that the reason it's called Presbyterian Mixture is because originally (circa 1918) it was blended specially for a Presbyterian bishop or a similar elder of that church in England. He offered some of it to a future Prime Minister who henceforth became known as a diehard devotee of this blend and who famously named it in honor of the bishop/elder. It was actually the Prime Minister whose preference for this blend popularized it. I don't know what his religion was, but he always claimed that PM helped him think and he couldn't do without it. So, the PM smoked a lot of PM. I don't think that the present iteration of PM necessarily retains all the sterling qualities that endeared it to the Prime Minister. I know of longtime devotees of this blend who no longer like it and claimed that it has declined in quality. Just the messenger here.

 

[ericusrex]

Mikey's tobacco reviews are all just as entertaining as this one. Sadly he only did a handful of reviews before disappearing.

 

[mso489]

My wife's late father joined the Presbyterian church instead of the family's preferred Methodist for some, and Baptist for others, since he felt it would be more tolerant of his cigars and an occasional beer at the American Legion hall. So the pipe tobacco recalls that subtle wrinkle in denominational differences in rural Missouri. Today, I suspect a blender might get grief if he chose to name a blend after a denomination. My father's family were Presbyterian, and my dad and gramps were both pipe smokers.

 

[fearsclave]

Just had a bowl of the stuff just now. Rather enjoyed it. Nothing particularly remarkable, but no detectable vices and you can smoke large bowlfuls of it without getting too much nicotine. Quite like it.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

I Just finished another bowl.

I find this blend specifically enjoyable because it's so gentle and the flavor stays pretty firmly on the creamy/savory side.

 

[theediabeticman]

I'm Baptist....this is a top five blend :nana:

 

[deathmetal]

I always enjoyed The Perennial Philosophy. Like Unitarianism, but instead of trying to enclose all religions in one big container, it finds commonality between them:

But under all this confusion of tongues and myths, of local histories and particularist doctrines, there remains a Highest Common Factor, which is the Perennial Philosophy in what may be called its chemically pure state. This final purity can never, of course, be expressed by any verbal statement of the philosophy, however undogmatic that statement may be, however deliberately syncretistic. The very fact that it is set down at a certain time by a certain writer, using this or that language, automatically imposes a certain sociological and personal bias on the doctrines so formulated. It is only the act of contemplation when words and even personality are transcended, that the pure state of the Perennial Philosophy can actually be known. The records left by those who have known it in this way make it abundantly clear that all of them, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Hebrew, Taoist, Christian, or Mohammedan, were attempting to describe the same essentially indescribable Fact.

The original scriptures of most religions are poetical and unsystematic. Theology, which generally takes the form of a reasoned commentary on the parables and aphorisms of the scriptures, tends to make its appearance at a later stage of religious history. The Bhagavad-Gita occupies an intermediate position between scripture and theology; for it combines the poetical qualities of the first with the clear-cut methodicalness of the second. The book may be described, writes Ananda K. Coomaraswamy in his admirable Hinduism and Buddhism, “as a compendium of the whole Vedic doctrine to be found in the earlier Vedas, Brahmanas and Upanishads, and being therefore the basis of all the later developments, it can be regarded as the focus of all Indian religion” is also one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the Perennial Philosophy ever to have been made. Hence its enduring value, not only for Indians, but for all mankind.

At the core of the Perennial Philosophy we find four fundamental doctrines.

First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness--the world of things and animals and men and even gods--is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.

Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.

Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.

Fourth: man’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.

In Hinduism the first of these four doctrines is stated in the most categorical terms. The Divine Ground is Brahman, whose creative, sustaining and transforming aspects are manifested the Hindu trinity. A hierarchy of manifestations connects inanimate matter with man, gods, High Gods, and the undifferentiated Godhead beyond.

In Mahayana Buddhism the Divine Ground is called Mind or the Pure Light of the Void, the place of the High Gods is taken by the Dhyani-Buddhas.

Similar conceptions are perfectly compatible with Christianity and have in fact been entertained, explicitly or implicitly, by many Catholic and Protestant mystics, when formulating a philosophy to fit facts observed by super-rational intuition. Thus, for Eckhart and Ruysbroeck, there is an Abyss of Godhead underlying the Trinity, just as Brahman underlies Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Suso has even left a diagrammatic picture of the relations subsisting between Godhead, triune God and creatures. In this very curious and interesting drawing a chain of manifestation connects the mysterious symbol of the Divine Ground with the three Persons of the Trinity, and the Trinity in turn is connected in a descending scale with angels and human beings. These last, as the drawing vividly shows, may make one of two choices. They can either live the life of the outer man, the life of the separative selfhood; in which case they are lost (for, in the words of the Theologia Germanica, “nothing burns in hell but the self”). Or else they can identify themselves with the inner man, in which case it becomes possible for them, as Suso shows, to ascend again, through unitive knowledge, to the Trinity and even, beyond they Trinity, to the ultimate Unity of the Divine Ground.

Within the Mohammedan tradition such a rationalization of the immediate mystical experience would have been dangerously unorthodox. Nevertheless, one has the impression, while reading certain Sufi texts, that their authors did in fact conceive of al haqq, the Real, as being the Divine Ground or Unity of Allah, underlying the active and personal aspects of the Godhead.

The second doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy--that it is possible to know the Divine Ground by a direct intuition higher than discursive reasoning--is to be found in all the great religions of the world. A philosopher who is content merely to know about the ultimate Reality--theoretically and by hearsay--is compared by Buddha to a herdsman of other men’s cows. Mohammed uses an even homelier barnyard metaphor. For him the philosopher who has not realized his metaphysics is just an ass bearing a load of books. Christian, Hindu, Taoist teachers wrote no less emphatically about the absurd pretensions of mere learning and analytic reasoning. In the words of the Anglican Prayer Book, our eternal life, now and hereafter, “stands in the knowledge of God”; and this knowledge is not discursive, but “of the heart,” a super-rational intuition, direct, synthetic and timeless.

The third doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy, that which affirms the double nature of man, if fundamental in all the higher religions. The unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground has, as its necessary condition, self-abnegation and charity. Only by means of self-abnegation and charity can we clear away the evil, folly and ignorance which constitute the thing we call our personality and prevent us from becoming aware of the spark of divinity illuminating the inner man. but the spark within is akin to the Divine Ground. By identifying ourselves with the first we can come to unitive knowledge of the second. These empirical facts of the spiritual life have been variously rationalized in terms of the theologies of the various religions. The Hindus categorically affirm that thou art That--that the indwelling Atman is the same as Brahman. For orthodox Christianity there is not an identity between the spark and God. union of the human spirit with God takes place--union so complete that the word deification is applied to it; but it is not the union of identical substances.
http://parvati.tripod.com/perennial.html

Short excerpt, interesting stuff.
And Presbyterian? Any tobacco this divisive has to be worth experiencing, even if it's light on the glorious nicotine.