Bear Blend was created by Anthony Singing Bear a musician with Native American roots. Bear, as everyone calls him, was living on an organic farm in Meigs County, Ohio in 2000. Although he and his brother started the farm to grow organic vegetables, they soon realized that they had moved right into a neighborhood of very knowledgable herbalists. After studying wild herbs, flowers and traditional Native American lore for several years, Anthony began experimenting with different smoking herbs harvested right on his land.
Becoming more and more intrigued in the potential healing and psychoactive effects of smoking herbs, Anthony experimented extensively with smoking. After all, who decided that tobacco was the only things to smoke? He soon realized that many traditional smoking blends were actually blends of several different herbs. In fact, even the word tobacco originated from the word “tabaq” which referred a variety of herbs that were smoked in traditional turkish smoking houses.* In fact, it remains a mystery how tobacco came to be known as only one herb, namely Nicotiana, with bleached white paper, fiberglass filters and hundreds of additives. Only a couple hundred years ago many different cultures smoked blends of several different herbs.
After smoking the blend himself for more than 5 years, Anthony had a spiritual awakening during a traditional peruvian ceremony that made him realize the importance of smoking as a ritual. In the pipe smoking ceremonies, it was believed that the smoke from the herbs would combine with your prayers inside of your lungs and carry those prayers to the sky father. Looking around, he was suddenly all too aware that everyone who was smoking was praying mindlessly without realizing what they were doing. He became convinced that it was his mission to package this smoking blend and begin to educate others about the history and ceremony of smoking.
