Month: April 2010

the Ayahuasca vine

Notes on the Western Paradigm of Ayahuasca

To claim any plant combination that enables DMT to become orally active is ‘Ayahuasca’, is to ignore a living indigenous tradition, language, etymology, folklore, taxonomy. And more… calling unique plant potions ‘Ayahuasca analogues’ encourages a lazy approach to the specific identies and properties of other medicine plants.

Peru: Hunt Oil Contract to Reignite Amazon Uprising?

Only the most controversial of President Alan García’s legislative decrees, which triggered the uprising, have been overturned. These decrees-promulgated under special powers granted to García by Peru’s congress in 2008 to ready the country for the new U.S. free trade agreement-would undo a generation of progress in protecting indigenous territorial rights in the rainforest, opening indigenous lands to oil drilling, logging, and other forms of resource extraction as never before.

On a personal note

I was asked about the Barquinha’s astrology. There isn’t any (I was told). Stars are a part of the creation. One can learn anything from anything. Some people can learn things by looking at stars. In the Barquinha they look at God. For a week I was preparing with prayers, candles, intensions… Daime work at the Barquinha of Dona Gabriel each day… Came the 27th, a Saturday before the Semana Santa and the entity Don Rafael was going to operate me. Finally I am going to heal the pain in my back which does not leave me alone ever since I had hernia of a disk two and a half years ago. It is normal that such treatments are done over 3 ceremonies (three 27th) but I had only one (two to come). I did not know I was supposed to bring something to lie on, and sitting was never as difficult as it was that night. I did not know what to expect… we were seven or eight people in a dark room, drinking …