As she unveiled work after work I became awed at the depth and extensiveness of her ouvre. Quietly, McGillivray has created a vast body of work. Her older work reaches back to deep and heavy primitivism, and her more recent work shines with the refined vibrancy of a new era, the emergence of a new logos.

The common motif across her vast body of work is the inter-relationship of humanity with the plant realm. The human form is frequently depicted as interpenetrated by root and shoot, vine and leaf. These icon paintings of the deep ecological plant realm are in my view the productions of something like a contemporary ‘vegetalista‘, a plant-shaman.

As a personality Yvonne is no less inspiring than her creations, and induced wonder in me as she poetically describes her experiences in nature and the world of visions, encountering natural languages, patterns, realms and beings that she magically transcribes into her art.

Yvonne kindly agreed to take part in this expose of her work.

Interview with Yvonne McGillivray

Daniel Mirante : Your work indicates a profound connection to the visionary realm of elementals, plant spirits, and spiritual rites of passage. How do you gain the inspiration and insight to be able to paint such mysteries?

Yvonne McGillivray : Living close to nature for many years, I became very aware of the natural cycles, the ways of the birds and animals, the plants, the weather, the seasons. Interacting and communicating with the web of life around me, opened me to receive the messages, signs and symbols that nature constantly provides.

Other inspiration and insights come from dreams and from visions received through meditation, shamanic journeying practises, music and sound.

Listening to certain sounds can open up portals into other realities of magic, mystery and spirit where we can journey and access ancestral memory, future possibilities and present awareness.

A painting unfolds and has its own journey into manifestation so it is often a mystery to me what will appear and what it has to reveal.

Daniel Mirante : What role do you feel sacred art could perform within the industrialized societies of the modern world?

Yvonne McGillivray : During these changing times the sacred, visionary, shamanic art that is being channelled can help to guide the way forward, provide hope, healing, teaching and transformation.

It can guide us back to the ways of spirit, nature, truth and beauty.

It can help to remind, to re-enchant and to reconnect people to the sacredness of all life, to the majesty, mystery and wonder of creation and our connection to all things.

The hearts and minds of the material driven cultures may be opened and the spark of imagination rekindled, and awareness and consciousness expanded.

By remembering our divinity, that which is infinite and eternal and waking up to our true nature, we can remember our place and purpose in this matrix of creation and can move forward on this evolutionary journey.

With roots firmly planted we can fly into realms beyond the imagination, into the multi dimensional worlds and realities that exist, to the source of all things.

______________________________

Article originally appeared in www.lila.info – Contemporary Visionary and Sacred Art
Yvonne McGillivray can create giclee and lithographs of her paintings to order, and has a limited number of originals for sale. Missives to : yvonnemc33@hotmail.com

Preface:
This article is not to attack anyones practices and beliefs, but it tries to elucidate where in the West we have underplayed the role of the Ayahuasca vine and beta-carbolines within our Western notion of Ayahuasca, which has, since the early 1990’s wave of entheogenic literature, been very DMT-centric. Such an view has begun to lead onto the attitude that smoking DMT or Changa is ‘the evolution of Ayahuasca’ or ’smokable Ayahuasca’. In this we risk falling into cultural appropriation, since the indigenous use of Ayahuasca (B.caapi) is many thousands of years old.

“ayahuasca” or “ayawaska” (“Spirit vine” or “vine of the souls”: in Quechua, aya means “spirit” while huasca or waska means “vine”) in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, and to a lesser extent in Brazil. The spelling ayahuasca is the hispanicized version of the name; many Quechua or Aymara speakers would prefer the spelling ayawaska. The name is properly that of the plant B. caapi, one of the primary sources of beta-carbolines for the brew.
Wikipedia- Ayahuasca entry

Ayahuasca is the indigenous Amazonian name for the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, where it has been used for thousands upon thousands of years in healing, sorcery, and cleansing. The vine is used as a gatekeeper to the realm of a myriad of medicinal plants, such as Ajo Sacha and Tobacco, which are ‘dieted’ in close proximity to the Vine.

Ayahuasca lives within a unique complex of customs, traditions, knowledge and wisdom which are strong to this day, and continue to develop within syncretic communities and movements such as UDV, Barquinha and Santo Daime, as well as through the unique and individualistic exploration with the tea in the Western world.

Ayahuasca in Psychedelic Literature

Beginning with ethnographic exploration, beat-generation literature, and the psychedelic research of the 1960’s, Ayahuasca research entered the Western world. Since the mid-1980’s Ayahuasca was popularised in North America and Europe through the writings of Terrence McKenna and other ethnobotanical luminaries such as Jim DeKorne and Jonathon Ott. This wave of literature was important and paradigm-shifting, despite the Ayahuasca often being understood from a Westernised ethnocentric perspective. The literature of this time focusses on the botanical classification of entheogenic plants and the principle psychedelic compounds they contain. Westerners approached indigenous traditions as pilgrims and explorers, ‘discovering’ the ways and means to work with the powerful psychedelic properties of shamanistic medicines.

Two books stand out as seminal from this time. ‘Ayahuasca Analogues’ by J.Ott, and ‘Ayahyasca Visions’ by Pablo Amaringo and Luis Eduardo Luna. It was perhaps only with the publication of ‘Ayahuasca Visions’ by Pablo Amaringo and Luis Eduardo Luna that the rich levels of meaning, knowledge and tradition connected with the indigenous Ayahuasca universe became evident. This was because the Ayahuasca was spoken of from the perspective of an Ayahuasquero – someone who had immersed themselves for many years within the culture of Ayahuasca practices and the accrued, empirical knowledge of countless generations of people working with the Ayahuasca potion. The phenomenology and shamanistic practices of the plants takes precedence in this information. The bias of knowledge is in furthering the internal horizon with the aid and agency of plant spirits and other intelligences accessible through the ambassador of the Ayahuasca.

‘Ayahuasca Analogues’
or
Potions-with-their-own-names

‘Ayahuasca Analogues’, by Ott, revealed the exciting prospect of developing Ayahuasca-type synergystic potions from plants in boreal climates. The book is composed of potentially useful plants that are identified as containing either DMT, 5-Meo DMT, and beta-carbolines. Analogues are plants or chemicals used in place of the traditional constituents of the ayahuasca brew. In the perspective of this book, analogues can produce an ‘ayahuasca-effect’. Two of the most common are Peganum harmala and Mimosa hostilis, as replacements for the B. caapi vine, and DMT-containing admixture plants, respectively. It discusses the prospect of Ayahuasca-analogues preventing psychedelic prohibition, and ushering in a pan-Gaian entheogenic revival. Whilst the book is an incredible contribution to human knowledge, it does present certain axioms that, in light of further research, could be analysed further.

Through ‘analogues’, many have experienced profound healing and accessed visionary states not entirely unlike those produced by traditional ayahuasca brews, and most agree that modern analogue plants are extremely powerful and deserving of respect. However, analogue brews are not the same as Ayahuasca and deserve unique status. This is because experienced ayahuasca drinkers who have also had the opportunity to drink ayahuasca admixture brews, such as tea made from Syrian rue and Mimosa, generally conclude that the effects are different.

And infact, many ‘Ayahuasca analogues’ are plants with their own histories and traditions as shamanistic catylists. They have their own names. Calling unique plant potions ‘Ayahuasca analogues’ encourages a uncreative approach to the specific identies and properties of other medicine plants. Different plants, such as Jurema (Mimosa Hostilis), Haoma (Syrian Rue) and Golden Wattle (Acacia) have their own names and their own unique teachings, if one is working with the plant and not a highly refined isolate.

Ott, in his ‘Ayahuasca Analogues’ book describes a series of experiments where he works to lower the beta-carboline component of the tea to a point where it is simply enough to allow tryptamines to be orally active. So, using the bare minimum of Caapi, and focusing only on the visionary DMT effects as the “main event” can result in the impression that Caapi and Rue, or any MAOI are similar and interchangeable. This view of the spiritual and entheogenic unimportance of the beta-carbolines has been assumed by many who have followed:

“Through the hard and potentially dangerous work of back yard shamans and amature ethnobotanists, any plants have been discovered that have the alkaloids necessary to produce the ayahausca effect…. The ayahuasca effect is simply the inhibition of enzymes in the body that normally degrade ingested DMT, allowing the DMT to pass though the body altering consciousness without being destroyed by the body’s enzymes.”
- Chen Chow Dorge

But Ayahuasca is not ’simply’ a vehicle for DMT. This is over-simplified to the point of fallacy. The Ayahuasca vine itself could only be considered a simple ‘inhibitor of the enzymes’ if it were without its own experiential and bio-active dimension.

Ayahuasca is not an ‘effect’. It is the name of a plant, and the tea made from the plant. And its effects are unique. The indigenous Amazonian perspective is that Ayahuasca is the B.caapi vine, and the admixture plants are her “helpers.” It is no accident that the brew is called “Ayahuasca,” the name of the vine. Most of the common native names for the brew — Ayahuasca, Yage, Caapi, Natema, Caapi, Dapa, Mihi, Kahi, Pinde, Nixi, etc — are also names for the Vine, whereas there is no record of any group naming the brew for the tryptamine-containing admixtures. It took many decades for the importance of the admixture plants even to be recognized by ethnobotanists, because every indigenous group recorded as using Ayahuasca stressed the Vine, and not uncommonly use Vine alone, and admixtures vary widely while the Vine is the common denominator.

A DMT-centric view of Ayahuasca neglects the powerful influence of the beta-carbolines. The psychopharmacology of the beta-carbolines, in their specific and fluctuating levels within the vine, is poorly understood both pharmacologically and experientially in the West, and its role underappreciated by many psychonautic western researchers.

The Ayahuasca vine is not merely a facilitator for a DMT experience. It is a profound entheogenic plant teacher in its own right, and patterns any other plant taken with it according to its unique character. Although not considered ‘psychedelic’ to an conventional, LSD orientated Western standard, the vine is notheless capable of producing profound noetic experiences, visions, amplified dreams, anti-depressive effects, and both physical and spiritual cleansing. This is why in the Amazon it is often used by itself, or with many other plants. The vine is also known as a bearer of THH, which is a minimal MAOI, but generates receptor sites for serotonin thus producing a long lasting antidepressant effect. THH occurs in much greater concentration in B. caapi than in other plants bearing ß-carbolines, such as Peganum harmala (Syrian rue). THH may be (according to Dr Alexander Shulgin) completely absent from Syrian Rue. This is just one example how each plant has their own unique signature, chemically speaking. This doesn’t even cover the differences in spiritual character.

This dynamic aspect, the vine as an ambassador of the plant kingdom, is part of the very beauty of Ayahuasca traditions, which is corroded by a view of the vine as a mere delivery system for DMT.

The idea that a combination of plants results in a simple ‘ayahuasca effect’ depicts a vision of plants as simple repositories of alkaloids. The reality is each plant has its own unique biochemical signature, and this is what gives a plant its ‘character’ when consumed.

To briefly pay homage to the indigenous vision (the wisdom accured over millenia of first-hand phenomenological shamanistic experiences)… Plants are not simple repositories of chemicals. They are living dyanmic systems, organisms, which, when accessed from an entheogenic state of mind, reveal themselves as ‘plant-teachers’.

Banisteriopsis Caapi - Ayahuasca

Changa & Ayahuasca

To highlight the issue of cultural appropriation, recently, an interesting article has appeared on the internet penned by Chen Cho Dorge, claiming an ‘Evolution of Ayahuasca’. www.realitysandwich.com/changa_evolution_ayahuasca … discussing ‘changaya‘, a smoking mixture made from a DMT-rich alkaloid extract soaked into herbal carrier, sometimes including dried, potentised B-caapi leaf, the article rolls with the idea that the reader agree that this smoking mixture is Ayahuasca.

The article relays a definition of Ayahuasca which intentionally attempts to sever the word ‘Ayahuasca’ completely from the plant and its indigenous lineages, and asserts that the reader think of Ayahuasca as a DMT based ‘ayahuasca-effect’. It is a paradigm that is the logical outcome of a view of Ayahuasca where the role of the Ayahuasca vine is strongly overlooked. The early 1990’s wave of entheogenic literature was very DMT-centric. Such an view has begun to lead onto the attitude that smoking DMT or Changa is ‘the evolution of Ayahuasca’ or ’smokable Ayahuasca’.

In many peoples minds this is a form of cultural appropriation, because even though there is this push to call the smoke some sort of evolution of Ayahuasca, it removes the central role of the Ayahuasca vine as a medicinal tea and purgative, and makes the Ayahuasca vine – at the very most- a secondary ingredient.

“The sacred medicine that has historically provided incredible transformations in those who drink it has itself transformed. It has become Changa… Changa is quite possibly one of the most amazing innovations in the technology of the sacred in our lifetime.”
- Chen Chow Dorge

To claim any plant combination that enables DMT to become orally active is ‘Ayahuasca’, or more, that the DMT effect = ‘Ayahuasca effect’ = Ayahuasca itself, is trouble on grounds of cultural appropriation, because it ignores a living indigenous tradition, language, etymology, folklore, taxonomy. It is a conflation:

Conflation occurs when the identities of two or more individuals, concepts, or places, sharing some characteristics of one another, become confused until there seems to be only a single identity — the differences appear to become lost.[1] In logic, the practice of treating two distinct concepts as if they were one does often produce error or misunderstanding — but not always — as a fusion of distinct subjects tends to obscure analysis of relationships which are emphasized by contrasts.

A refined DMT alkaloid extract from acacia or mimosa (in the great majority of cases, extracted with non-lab grade petrochemicals), absorbed via the burning of a herbal carrier (which may or may not include caapi leaves), is a very different matter than imbibing an aqueous solution of the entire water soluble aspect of the plants. Such a smoking blend may be profound, entheogenic, and, if made cleanly enough and taken with intention and preperation, could be cleansing and healing.

But nobody in South America, the thousands of people working regularly with the tea as a sacrament, shamanistic tool or healing medicine, would recognise Changa as Ayahuasca. Changa is a tryptamine rich smoking mixture, where the actual Ayahuasca – the beta-carboline rich vine – may be slightly present or completely absent from Changa depending on the recipe.

Unless we want to inadvertantly decimate a living taxonomical, historical, and indigenous definition, it is useful to learn the individual names of entheogenic plants and not conflate them. With so little indigenous knowledge left in the world, we would do well to respect and preserve the diversity of knowledge, language and tradition.

To iterate, this is not a moral issue, of what is ‘better or worse’, ‘right or wrong’, its about taxonomy and language, and the accompanying paradigms around plant teachers.

Theres a difference in paradigm between an approach that looks at Ayahuasca as a DMT carrier, looks at the plants as delivery systems of a certain number of chemicals we know to be powerfully entheogenic, or looks at Ayahuasca through a systemic or ecological view, looks at the plants as being highly complex signals, highly complex communications, highly complex identities, where the powerful entheogenic substances like DMT and the beta-carbolines, are modulated, signatured and patterned by the total sum of all elements within the plant. Because a plant is made from hundreds if not thousands of different molecular patterns, all of which interact, all of which make up the plants own ‘true name’.

- Daniel Mirante, May 2010

Links

See also www.ayahuasca.com/ayahuasca-overviews/what-are-ayahuasca-analogues/

Don Pablo Amaringo, one of the most significant artists of our age, shaman of the highest order, and teacher to many, died November 16th.

The world of art has lost a truly original visionary – a seer in all senses of the word. I think we all join together in wishing him a safe passage to the other side of the river… -Laurence Caruana

Many blessings, thoughts and love to those who knew him personally. His art will continue to inspire wonder in many generations to come.

http://www.neip.info/downloads/edward/ebook.htm

Although the Daime works keep within the traditional shamanic parameters, one should take into consideration the remarks made by Couto, that, here, one is dealing with what he calls “collective shamanism”. The command of the works is held by more experienced shamans, but the shamanic activity is not, exclusively in the hands of a few initiates and all participants are considered apprentice shamans and even potential shamans. Taking part in the rituals is a way of learning the art, and it is thought that any of the participants of the ritual may display shamanic powers which are considered to be latent in human nature

Most indigenous Amazonian populations say they learned how to combine Ayahuasca directly from the plants and plant spirits as received instruction. For many westerners such an assertion is completely beyond their familiar paradigm and experience.

Some modern researchers have therefore appealed to blind chance, ‘coincidence’. Natural selection. Trial and error. An explanation that the scientific mind finds credible, and yet there is something improbable and lazy about the idea, unless factors were at work which raised the odds of the magical medicines discovery…

PARALLEL USE AND CONVERGENCE THEORY

One often touted inaccuracy about Ayahuasca is that both plants have to be combined for psycho-activity. In fact, banisteriopsis caapi is a powerful shamanistic plant teacher in its own right. Many tribes drink the vine on its own.

The vine has been used as a kind of ‘divinator’ for other plant medicines for a long time because it allows the person injesting to get a kind of deep readout of the property of a plant taken in combination with vine.

The Rubiaceae family has many medicinal plants, and perhaps Chacruna may have already been taken medicinally. There are obviously many plants that the indigenous people consume as medicines that are not evidently psychoactive. And many of these plants also have a history of being used within the context of Yage (banisteriopsis caapi) based potions.

There is a medicinal employment of a plant closely related to Psychotria Viridis, called Psychotria Ipecacuanha – i-pe-kaa-guéne, which is said to mean ‘road-side sick-making plant.’ It is used as a treatment for “bloody flux” – dysentery. There is also a Psychotria called Psychotria Emetica – guess what that does.

There is another Psychotria, ‘Sampakatishi’, the leaf juice is squeezed into the eyes for a sharpening of the senses that aids in hunting, and also it is used as a treatment for migraine.

To summarise this idea : Psychotria Viridis was employed as a purgative and intestinal cleanser… the medicinal uses of P.Viridis and Caapi may have been occurring parallel, then at some point their paths crossed. (As for Diplopterys Cabrerana, another primary Ayahuasca plant, is a liana similar in appearance to Banisteriopsis Caapi. It is likely plants of similar taxonomic appearance were reasonably assumed to have similar properties.)

SLOW METABOLISERS OF MAOI/LOW MAO-A PHENOTYPE THEORY

Here is another theory. It occurs to me that physiologically westerners are greatly different from the early inhabitants of the rainforest – in height, fat, and probably even vary with the basic processes of digestion and metabolism, because they had such a very different way of life, a completely different diet.

Is it possible that the early inhabitants, since they did not have a fermented/aged protein-rich diet, had not evolved a powerful MAO-A response ? And that consumption of psychotria, perhaps originally as an amoebic dysentery cure, could have induced some kind of mild psycho-activity in such sensitive beings with very ‘acute’ awareness (which was needed as hunters, gatherers and warriors within such an environment). ?

It is known that westerners have trouble getting strong entheogenic effects from the tryptamine snuffs such as virola and cebil without using very powerful basification and large doses. Similarly the amount of morning glory seeds consumed in traditional sessions are of an order of magnitude less than what Westerners seem to require for any psycho-activity. Could it be that the early forest dwellers were more sensitive to tryptamines because of their way of life as well as lacking a powerful MAO to break down environmental tryptamines ?

…what we think of as very grass roots tribes descended from civilisations such as the Inca or Tirona – had common roots where such knowledge was already established. The true gold of El Dorado was no metal…

Whilst a discovery like Ayahuasca may have occured against astronomical odds in an isolated context, such knowledge may have spread quickly. Tribes connect with each other through trade, through marriage, through war. A lot of tribes that are described as isolated were actually fugitives from the conquests… what we think of as very grass roots tribes descended from civilisations such as the Inca or Tirona – had common roots where such knowledge was already established. The true gold of El Dorado was no metal…

JAGUAR THEORY

On an aesthetic level this is a cute theory : Humans learnt the use of the Vine from the Jaguar.

Jaguar’s chew the leaves of banisteriopsis caapi, the indians believe, to improve its sensitivity for hunting, and the indigenous people took it originally for the same reason. It seems from an evolutionary perspective all sacred medicines have selective advantages in their use, as anti-parasitic, immune-boosting, or increasing ones capacity to acquire more food.

RESONANT INFORMATION THEORY

And now to return to the indigenous assertion that the plants themselves, or spiritual being associated with the plants, revealed the Great Medicine.

It has to be pointed out that there are many variations of Ayahuasca origin myths, varying from tribe to tribe. They may point to an underlying truth, that of an ultimately spiritual ordinance, but the great variety of myth must necessarily lead us out of a singular literalistic view. Its a human tendency to generate narratives and imaginings when the truth is lost in primordial time.

However it is a modern human tendency to dismiss the exquisitely sensitive capacities of our being, to sense the qualities of plants, either in very small quantities, or even through smell or proximity.

In Forest of Visions: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Spirituality, and the Santo Daime Tradition, Stephen Larsen writes:

“I met with one of the jungle pharmacists, a woman who makes potent preparations from indigenous wild plants. In an amazing conversation hampered by my limited Portuguese, I learned how elemental spirits of the rain forest appeared to her, sometimes even before the physical plant was discovered, and helped her understand the pharmaceutical uses of their plant. “Yes, but do they really work?” I heard myself asking, half hating myself for the sceptic’s question. “Yes,” she said simply, “they work.” Here in the jungle, I realized, there is not much room for placebos or double-blind studies — or for remedies that don’t work! Life seems precarious and precious. Healers need to heal well.”

We see throughout the animal communities that monkeys, bears, hedgehogs, peccaries, and birds including eagles, avail themselves of the naturally occurring medicinal plants surrounding them. How do animals know what to munch on ? They have no written pharmacopoeia, or oral traditions. Acquired and learned behaviours are certainly possible, but this does not explain the broad instances of animals using medicinal plants of their bio-regions.

How does the jaguar know about Ayahuasca ? Perhaps they quite simply feel it. And if they can tune into these plants through deep intuition/instinct, then humans in can as well.

How do they know that a plant is good for them ? How does the jaguar know about Ayahuasca ? Perhaps they quite simply feel it. And if they simply feel it, if they tune into these plants through deep intuition/instinct, then humans in bio-centric cultures certainly can as well.

The question is how is such ‘intuition’ possible ?Westerners have inherited a concept of self or mind from a Cartesian framework, which (theoretically and often experientially) severs the mind from body, body and mind from its greater ecological milieu. Consciousness and matter, mind and body, subject and object, process and substance always go together, as a unity, a non-dual duality, which for the indigenous cultures of the world is a lived experience needing no special distinction.

We participate in nature’s process, and are participated within our selves by nature. Alfred North Whitehead’s world is filled with “organisms” from elementary particles to human beings and galaxies. An organism is a focus of unification, a holon (in Arthur Koestler’s language) in which other organisms are nested in various hyper-cycles that constitute and define it, support and maintain it.

Just as the body is a liquid-crystalline continuum which registers our experiences and allows us to then act upon our experiences, with spontaneous choice, Laszlo (1995,1996) has proposed that the universe is a quantum holographic memory-medium, one with the experiences of every being, which in turn feeds back on it. In this way, each being exists due to the influences of the quantum holographic sea of information. This is all another way of saying ‘as above, so below‘.

Dr Mae-Wan Ho :

“It is truly a creative universe in that the future is not pre-ordained but spontaneously and freely made by every being, from elementary particles to galaxies, from microbes to the giant redwood trees, all mutually entangled in a universal wave-function that never collapses, but like a constantly changing cosmic consciousness, maintains and informs the universal whole”

If the universe of all beings co-evolves in a mutually correlated fashion, then certainly Gaia may be understood as a super-organism within which communication and coherence (synchronic order) can be established in ecological relationships. Synergies, symbiosis, and human-plant partnerships become established, as the web of life evolves. There is a self-organising play at work, beyond natural-selection and blind coincidence.

Certainly, many people working with Ayahuasca rediscover sensitivity toward the realm of nature, as if the phantom self had come down from its ivory tower to finally touch the earth, the real. And what the real is, has levels of organisation beyond what we may previously have thought possible. In the collapse of the mundane, cerebro-tonic left-brain dogmas, a new, enchanting and mysterious aspect to the world is revealed, as Thomas Berry put it, “The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects”.

Further reading

Sachahambi

(With thanks to Sachahambi for her balance in this area.)

Ayahuasca: An Ethnopharmacologic History
by Dennis J. McKenna, Ph.D.

IS THERE PURPOSE IN NATURE
Mae-Wan Ho

http://www.cts.cuni.cz/conf98/ho.htm

Recent scientific research suggests that neurogenesis – the growth of new brain cells – is a key to curing depression.

People suffering depression have an enlarged amygdala, a structure deep in the brain, which produces amongst other things stress hormones. An enlarged, overactive amygdala may produce too much cortizol, a fight-or-flight stress hormone. Too much cortizol can whittle away neural structures – especially in the hippocampus which is the cortizol shut off valve. In depressed people, this structure can be 15% smaller than the statistical average.

With the hippocampus function reduced and the amygdala enlarged and in overdrive, a damaging positive feedback loop gets established and eventually other neural structures such as the prefrontal cortex get damaged – the dentrites (the connections) get sheared away, leading to a tragic reduction of the full potential of a person.

Thus, depression is both a somatic and psychologically self-reinforcing cycle that requires intervention on several levels. The commonly persued course of action is via anti-depressants such as SSRI’s which increase serotonin.

The old theory for administering selective serotonin reuptake Inhibitors is that the brain is suffering from a lack of available serotonin, and that Prozac and other drugs in its class help by increasing the amount of serotonin circulating in the brain by reducing their uptake. However, it is well known such drugs take weeks to take effect, despite the fact that serotonin levels are boosted straight away.

Scientists are discovering that the mechanism is a lot more complicated than a simple lack of serotonin, but is rather enmeshed in the damage rendered by cortizol and related stress hormones, and impeded function of the hippocampus.

Serotonin can promote neurogenesis, the birth of new brain cells, and Prozac seems to work by promoting neurogenesis in the hippocampus. And not only SSRIs, but other antidepression treatments affect a type of protein that is involved in neurogenesis. It is established that SSRI’s help to increase levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the hippocampus. A neurotrophic factor is a protein, such as nerve growth factor, that promotes nerve cell growth and survival.

BDNF is a growth, sustainer and protector factor in the brain ; a neurogenesis hormone. Antidepressants apparently help keep hippocampal cells alive by boosting BDNF levels, inducing neurogenesis. Raising serotonin ups a protein known as CREB inside nerve cells, which also give rise to neurogenesis. This means that SSRI’s help to regenerate the hippocampus thus keeping the amygdala in balance.

This path of action restores the neurological balance which contributes (or else, determines) a healthy emotional life.

Banisteriopsis caapi, the Ayahuaca vine, is regarded by many that use it as an antidepressant. The mono-amine oxidase inhibiting beta-carbolines in the vine reduce the clearing of serotonin from the synaptic cleft : i.e MAOI is another angle from which serotonin can be boosted, which qualifies the use of MAOI in the treatment of depression back in the mid twentieth century.

It has been indicated that one of the constituents of the vine, THH, actually causes an increase in the density of platelet serotonin uptake sites in long-term users. It is likely that the increase of density of serotonin uptake sites in longterm users be an adaption to more monoamines in the system. . Increases in serotonin transporters could well be an adaptation to increased serotonin levels caused by MAO inhibition.

The additional power of Ayahuasca over commonly prescribed SSRI’s is that it allows people to experientially approach the early causal factors to their depression and work to symbolically resolve them, and cathart the primal pain and energies bound up in those repressed early experiences. After all, whilst we can address the run-away neurological consequences of deep trauma or chronic stress, the experiential gestalts themselves must be catharted and integrated. Ayahuasca allows conscious realization of how those experiences effect ones constitution and patterns of behaviour, giving beneficial insights into how the effects of the damaging influences on ones life can be greatly negated by changes of attitude and lifestyle.

Recommended Reading :

How Prozac Affects the Brain

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9171-how-prozac-affects-the-brain.html

Repairing the Mind

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg17924082.500

The Anatomy of Dispair

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18224455.700

Whilst the Great Spirit is Whole, God expresses itself through an unrolling, an evolution in temporal reality whereby new evolutionary forms and intelligences emerge to express the transcendental possibilities of Divinity. This is an outflow of love that cannot be contained. Thus we have life, thus we have our lives, our relationships, our circumstances.

And how often we walk dull and fogged, evading ourselves. For many years I was unable to fully look another in the eye, to be from essense to essense, because I believed the tears and sicknesses of the society I’ve been born into were my own personal shames. I incorperated it. I am prisoner and jailer both, though the door is always open to leave the samsara.

An angel of the plants took me beyond the body anchored in space and time, to the periphery of the universe, and I looked back upon the great creation, and I saw in that immensity a pattern in the world systems, a dance of souls, a galactic pillgrimage across many lives.

It is time for us to claim the lived gnosis that we dance from life to life, and we must sew carefully our deeds for they create the conditions of rebirth. As I journeyed into my past I approached the struggle of birth, and as I moved through birth I felt the karmic resonances that had conditioned the circumstances of my present life. A poor indian dying on the ground from sickness the invaders had brough to the land, my dying mind filled with wrath and sorrow, but also in my curses an incomprehension that these people were not ‘other’ but also One with my being, just as my family and the trees and the eagle and jaguar are One with my being.

The actions and thoughts of past lives condition the ground for ones present existence – particularly the extremes that swing back and forth in the universes orientating toward unity, urging beings toward the comprehension of unity even within the polarised situations of war and invasion, genocide and injustice : unity is still the underlying ontological prime.

Great empires rise and fall as the archetypal geometry of the universe unfolds and elaborates in its song of unity, and we are scattered across the aeons. Scattered by war and strife, tragedy and misfortunes. Many of us have cursed in our dying thoughts the actions and violence of the perpetrators, and in doing so we have been born within those very empires. The universe teaches unity above all else, it is always just a transition to something else. And lo, we find ourselves again on the other side, as we dance from life to life, birthing and returning in the great creation.

Thus we grow and learn, transmigrating across world systems from life to life over, aeons, learning and refinding ourselves in the changing times. And we continue this round, until… ? Until the unity of creation is fathomed, and the deepest knowledge flowers within this relatedness.

With this knowledge we can forgive our burdens and realise that death is but a birth, a refreshment, a balm and a re-creation. And the rememberance brings a solidity… the changing circumstances and problems of life attain an epiphenomenal status compared to the deeper and older story. We must not live in distraction ! This world is a beautiful and deep miracle !

Fill the boat with only that which is real, for the passing times will not sustain illusion. Following with love and compassion the ancient path, in the great round, ceasing the causes of the chains of strife, and rebuilding life anew.

Transparent Creation

When one comes to the end of oneself, the body and mind persist, but they are simply running along, and one is in the free fields of spirit.

Aya makes my ego fear and tremble, but it feeds my soul. It humbles the loud and decieving inner voices, and opens up a place in which I feel one with the hyperdimension of spirit.

In that hyperdimensional state, i seek to align myself to the heavenly spheres, and be a warrior of juramidam. the juramidam hears me, and instead of destroying me, works to destroy the illusion in me.

Beyond the crippling negative self-images, there are no serious crimes committed against my brothers and sisters, and that most often, I want the best and feel compassion. A mommentum of self forgiveness accumulates, leading me out of my despair.

Edifices of illusion persist like holographic structures, but with the help of seal medicine I swim underneath them, up and out of the titanic wreakages of history, and open into the beyond.

The pure One sends me an angel to deliver me from the idea that Ayahuasca is always hard and tough work. An angelic presence beautifies my consciousness, and I am overwhelmed by its lightness, highness and purity.

A true light pierces the encrustations around the heart and this is the beginning of a turing, a deep reorientation, from someone who looks at the past and regrets, to a reborn one who faces the future and the light.

Standing upright, despite the sorrow in the stomach and the urge to sleep and die. Stand and persist to shake off the discarnate entities that hijacked life and lived through the body and ego.

Walk the flowery path to the vaulted dome of grandfather and grandmother trees. Underneath, thousands of tiny trees grow and and nurtured. We are those seedlings, protected and under the guiding force of the ancient ones who have come before us and have fully become.

To be a vessel, become one with its ultimate way through learning in the Gaian realignment. We are sons and daughters of the pure One, we all are. Listen to the pure One and make choices according to that will. Anything asked for or desired, will be paid for, by burning, burning all the ego-serving and trivial motivations surrounding goals, until the ways are pure.

There are many bands, many levels and spectrums of the mareacion, and with the pure and good songs sing and dance toward that transcendental place, the celestial court, where the King sits on his fairytale throne, the professor of professors, who is our friend, as from vast places and strange places we all draw close to him for guidance.

The wisdom of plant teachers gives an upbringing most of us never had, gives a true education, heals institutionalisation, and points the way toward the great story of how this came to be, momment to momment.

I feel like I have become a whisp of air upon a high mountain, nowhere to be found at all, with light shining right through.

I will end a hummingbird
sipping nectar from the sun.
Past is ashes. today is a new day.
The frequencies of light play.
out of the maze of self-grasping
The angelic domains, mandalic, encircling
And a new era has begun.

There is something more to human consciousness, to our whole experiential journey through life, than we currently acknowledge.

Interpretation of the nature of religious experience or ‘transpersonal states of consciousness’ varies widely. Many people who have experienced the integrative healing, creatively inspiring and psycho-spiritually transformative power of transpersonal states are less likely to dismiss their experiences as neuro-chemical aberrations, accidents, or self-hypnosis. Impressed by the extremely coherent information and stunning organisational complexity of visionary journeys, they are more likely to be left with a revived sense of wonder and conviction that there is more – in some sense – to human consciousness, to our whole experiential journey through life, than we currently acknowledge.

This does not however mean we need immediately to adopt simplistic spiritualistic or religious ideas. Religious vocations originally developed around maintaining the tenuous relationship with transpersonal dimensions of consciousness, and preserving the cumulated knowledge of these shamanic journeys. But when the experiential basis is lost, this cumulated knowledge degrades into static dogma that can be twisted and bent to exercise power and prejudice, and the rituals that once constituted the symbolic scaffolding for journeys into immaterial information fields (Bricoleur 2003) become empty re-enactments without any authentic dimensions.

Yet despite the memetic theory of religion espoused by popularist scientists such as Richard Dawkins, there exists a latent and biologically grounded potential for the human psyche to undergo reorganisations, an integrative arc of healing, that includes encounters with experiential realms strongly reminiscent of world spiritual mythology. This visionary or shamanic transformation can induce integrative healing, creative inspiration and existential transformation. It is this visionary journey into the endogenous imaginal dreamtime that is the psychobiological ground of most spiritual mythology and imagery.

Today our extreme occupation with the seemingly external has reduced our ability to enter mytho-poetic states. Scientism and the devaluing of the arts pervade the education system. Anyone expressing behaviour beyond the norm, risks loosing everything to a primitive system of medical psychiatry. Modern psychiatry, maintained by the mega-profitable pharmaceutical industries, has an institutional ignorance of the powerfully cathartic and complex dynamics of transpersonal states. Its implicit materialist and linear paradigm and poorly trained workers are ill-equipped to deal with the crisis and transformation of meaning and flux of axioms in peoples lives.

Yet, the shamanic narrative persists and has growth throughout the 20th into the 21st century, disseminated by radical anthropologists, ethnobotanists, scholars, artists, and therapists. The message remains that humanity has a dual nature, a life of the external world, and the life of the inner, unconscious. And that if these worlds can be reconciled, and made one again, then the fertility circuit will be maintained, and the human condition in time redeemed.

The rediscovery of the dynamics of transpersonal healing is one of the exciting aspects of the times we live in. It opens up therapeutic forms that do not depend on external verbal exchanges but through opening doors to dynamic experiential journeys whereby the self-healing capacities of the psyche can come into play. However with transpersonal healing comes certain challenges, including confrontation with pain and fear, the death of old ways of seeing the world, and inner journeys involving phenomenological realms and powers that mainstream society does not accept the existence of.

Shamanism and Mythic Recreation in Capitalist Cultures

Many people earnestly wish to work toward a mythic restoration of the West. Thousands of westerners are working toward an actualization of latent potentials via a revival of Shamanic ritualistic forms. Much modern interest in shamanism has focused on the use of psychoactive plants intrinsic to the healing and visionary practices of shamans. Yet the Westerner must be very careful in any approach toward integrating the plant traditions. We lack an integrative framework and wise experienced elders.

Particularly, the background of sickness, drug abuse, illusion, escapism, trend, toxification and destruction of our bodies and environment endemic to our society may taint our notions of psychoactive plants. In this context we may use them as unusual means of hurting ourselves. Without deconditioning from these unconscious self-destructive behaviors it is very difficult to approach the profound reality of shamanic practices without dragging in the dysfunction of our own culture.

That said, entheogenic plants are powerful tools and it is quite possible to use them in a truly life-positive manner to provoke growth in new directions and to creatively solve challenges on ones life journey. It is said that shamanism is not about the nature of reality, but about the life and death of human beings. In short, these tools can enable us to live better and cope with the prospect and passage of dying better.

Vegetalista

Shamanic ecstasy is so innate, primary, rooted in biology, and transcending of cultural differences, that shamanism is theoretically recoverable by even demythologized Westerners. It is very helpful to look to others cultures, whose Shamanic traditions are relatively more intact, for the purpose of reviving the techniques of ecstasy and ritual approaches, in order to develop a pan-Gaian shamanism appropriate to our global civilization and contemporary knowledge of ecology and cosmology.

In the New World, Shamanic practitioners are the keepers of an incredible amount of ecosystemic knowledge, such as the seasonal variations governing foods and medicines. Before the genocidal invasions of the Europeans, this sophisticated; highly connected knowledge enabled sustainable agricultural practices that supported millions of people. The peoples of the Amazon live within the infinitely complex ecosystems of the Amazon Rainforest, abundant with reptiles, insects, amphibians, birds and mammals, rivers, and forests. Accordingly, the plant kingdoms of the rainforests are a primary orientation of life, spiritually and physically.

In the Mestizo populations growing on the banks of major Amazon tributaries throughout Peru, the shaman of plant knowledge and medicine, who communicate with Sacha Runa (elemental spirits of the plants), are known as Vegetalista. The vegetalista regards plants as teachers, hosts to elemental spirits that can communicate with human beings. Ayahuasca is a revered and respected sacred medicine, considered a spiritual and physiological panacea par excellence. Ayahuasca is regarded as a Grandfather or Grandmother, because its medicine can instruct in healing, visionary insight, and the art of using other plants for various purposes. Sometimes it is referred to simply as la medicina – the Medicine. It is employed across the Amazon basin for the treatment of disease and to access to the visionary or mythological world that provides revelation, blessing, healing, and ontological solace (Dobkin De rios 1972, Andritsky 1984).

Ayahuasca Tea : La Purga

The use of Ayahuasca may well be primordial, its use extending back to the earliest aboriginal inhabitants of the region (Schultes and Hofman 1992). The ethnographer McEwan (2001) believes that abstract liminal patterns such as zigzags, serrated lines and geometric forms found on traditional textiles, pottery and body art of various tribes represent the perceptual threshold between everyday and transpersonal realms of consciousness. These relics, combined with an abundance of myths describing the origin of Ayahuasca as deeply intertwined cosmologically with the creation of the universe, earth, and tribal people, indicate a long history of human use.

Banisteriopsis caapi, often refered to as Yage, constitutes the common base ingredient of Ayahuasca tea. B.caapi contains beta-carbolines that exhibit sedative, hypnotic, anti-depressant, monoamine oxidase inhibiting, and occassionally entheogenic activity (McKenna DJ, Callaway JC, Grob CS 1996). The vine is traditionally married with another plant – Ayahuasca is a synergystic potion. Typically it is mixed with a tryptamine carrying plant. The foliage of Psychotria viridis (Chacruna) is the principle admixture of Ayahuasca potions employed throughout Peru and Brazil. In Columbia and Amazonian Ecuador, the plant Diplopterys cabrerana (Chaliponga) is often used instead. The combination of Yage vine with Chacruna or Chaliponga is sometimes known as a marriage of power and light . This marriage is necessary to unlock the shamanic mareacion and its visionary mythological vistas. Without marriage, the Yage vine alone is a purifier, a purgative, a physical medicine and anti-depressant but generally not a visionary catalyst.

It is a consistent belief that for Ayahuasca to teach its medicine it is necessary to follow a program of cleansing via diet, sexual abstinence and purgatives for at least 6 months during the period of apprenticeship, for preparing the body and mind of neophyte so he becomes perceptive of Sacha Runa and other energetic forces. This may be prolonged to several years in one has a true vocation to becoming a powerful, disciplined shaman. In some cases the spirits will appear and prescribe the duration and character of the diet. No salt, sugar, alcohol, pork, peppers, fats, farm chicken, certain fruits and vegetables and cold beverages can be ingested (Dobkin de Rios 1973, Chevalier 1982, Luna 1984). The most important food prohibition is the avoidance of pork. The idea is that pig, farm chicken, fish and cold beverages espantan a los vegetales – make the plant spirits escape. Some of the plant teachers can be jealous; if the diet is broken they may punish the offender by causing an illness. This is expressed by the saying that the plants kutichiy , which means to take back teachings, good luck or health that has been imparted by the medicine plants.

Purification through purging and diet allows one to exist in a higher energetic state. Ajo Sacha – Mansoa hymenaeamanilkara, and Mucura – Petiveria alliacea are both used in limpias , cleansing baths, and are considered to aid in the expulsion of saladera (phlegm) from the organism. The curanderos prepare the leaves of Mucura or Ajos Sacha into an aqueous infusion, then the client washes themselves with the liquid and rinses the mouth out to cleanse them of the accumulated saladera that is causing bad luck and ill health (Dobkin de Rios 1981). The vegetalista whistles the appropriate icaro over the patient whilst painting the person with the liquid (Luna 1984).

Synaesthetic Languages

Ayahuasca changes perceptual modalities in a dynamic yet nonetheless lawful way. This aspect of pattern within its effects makes the visionary state an inter-subjective territory and opens the way to interesting forms of healing and communication.

An Icaro is a magical song, a prayer, a melody – either whistled or sang – that functions in such a way. These songs are vibrations that smash the symmetry of the air into patterns, and these patterns are carried via the nervous system into consciousness, where the magic melody asserts energetic effects. They are forms of prayer that induce psychobiological effects and prevents people from becoming stuck in an aspect of the visionary experience. Don Francisco Montes Shuña (a Pucallpa-born maestro, of Capanahua descent, founder Sachamama Ethnobotanical Garden, cousin of Pablo Amaringo) defines the icaro as an “air or force charged with positive energy” – i.e. with healing power – “that all curanderos store inside their body”, and are used to pull out the negative energy from the body of a patient. The plant with which a curandero has dieted, is regarded as the teacher of these power songs. A plant maestro may have learned many songs that to a great extent represent his power within the realms of Ayahuasca healing and visionary gnosis.

The Ucaylai, one of the headwaters of the Amazon has a reputation within Peru for being an area of intense shamanic activity. For the Shipibo, Conibo and Stetebo who live in this region, patterns elicited by shamanic states of consciousness are regarded as a synaesthetic ideographic language that has become integral to their aesthetic sensibility. 200 years ago their buildings, skin, ceramics and textiles, as well as mysterious shaman books (now lost, see Gebhart-Sayer, 1985) were all adorned with their distinctive, delicate pattern style.

Shipibo-conibo vegetalista say that geometric visionary designs are the symbolic visual aspect of healing songs (icaro s). The shaman says, “My song is a result of the design image”. Nishi Ibo (the spirit of Ayahuasca) reveals before the shaman quiquin design medicine, as luminescent geometric configurations. The shaman heals his patient through the application of the song-design, which saturates the patients body and is believed to untangle distorted physical and psycho-spiritual energies, restoring harmony to the somatic, psychic and spiritual systems of the patient. (Gebhart-Sayer, 1985)

“Essentially, Shipibo-Conibo therapy is a matter of visionary design application in connection with aura restoration… the shaman heals his patient through the application of a visionary design… every person feels spiritually permeated and saturated with designs. The designs remain with a persons spirit even after death…” (Gebhart-Sayer, 1985)

“I asked Don Basilio what comprised the arkana (shamanic defenses) he had sung over me… He took one of the beautifully decorated skirts used by Shipibo women, and pointing to the design, he said to me, “I put these in your body.” This was a confirmation of the work carried out by Angelika Gebhart-Sayer in which she shows that the patterns used in the body paint, textiles, ceramics and other utensils of the Shipibo are symbolic representations of songs (icaro s) (L. E Luna, 1991)

Ayahuasca Healing

There is clearly a great deal of valuable traditional knowledge that has developed over countless generations of humans working with Ayahuasca. But what does it feel like to imbibe such a magic potion ? Describing such states of being is a challenging creative task. In fact Ayahuasca is so tremendously novel a potion that even for regular drinkers the territory can be unpredictable, and responses also vary between different physical and mental constitutions.

Drinking the tea often entails a phase of purging and resolving traumatic experiences that have imprinted and in some way constrained the body and mind (see the work of Stan Grof and Christopher Bach etc.). This purging is a deep cleansing, thorough and not an easy thing to experience. It could be described as something of an ordeal. As part of this process, conventional ways of organising or ‘thinking about the world’ are undermined through a shift that occurs deep in our emotional body. This phase has been described in the ethnographic literature of shamanism, as a shamanic initiation involving dismemberment. An author, writing of the state of psychiatry in the 1960’s, spoke of ‘decompartmentalisation’. All the conventional categories are flooded to breaking point, the dams burst, and new connections are made.

The clearer ones system, the better able one is to receive and integrate spiritual energies the knowledge of Ayahuasca. The concept of subtle body phlegm is an important one in New World shamanism. “Vegetalistas say that Ayahuasca is needed for cleansing all the flemosidades (phlegm formations) that accumulate in the intestines” (Luna 1984). The flemosidades are believed to arise from environmental toxins, certain foods, trauma (soul loss), and moral transgressions such as ill will, etc. Analogous to blockages of chi in the meridians, or prana in the nadis, flemosidades disrupt the smooth functioning of the body and mind. Clearing the flemosidades prepares the body to journey deeper into health and wisdom. Therefore, the clearer and healthier one is, the easier it is to manage the physical symptoms of Ayahuasca cleansing.

When the body is loaded with toxins, pesticides, fertilizers, and fungicides from poor food, pyro-toxins from tobacco smoke, ozone and other oxidants from air pollution, chlorine, lead, phosphates and fluoride in drinking water, Ayahuasca gives the body an opportunity to expel some of these poisons via vomiting and diarrhea. Ayahuasca is known by Mestizo s as ‘la purga’. It is helpful to remember what purging represents – a state of purgatory, a sometimes-painful place where the light of heaven burns up ill deeds. The fire of hell is the light of heaven; they are one and the same emanation of the Clear Light of awareness upon which we project our benevolent and wrathful realities.

The purge is experienced as a radical detoxification occurring on physical, energetic, emotional, psychological and spiritual levels. The vine can feel like something living, snaking through the intestines then insinuating itself into every capillary of ones being, leaching out things that are causing harm. This phase of the journey can be driving, relentless and sometimes shocking in its similarity to ‘exorcism’. Alternately it can be experienced as incredibly gentle and merciful, like being in the infinitely tender arms of the Great Mother or angelic beings. Much is determined by how aligned and transparent one is, and how much one is able to witness and stay present rather than fall into reactive and defensive patterns. Staying present with humility of mind is a skill that some people progressively develop through drinking.

Journeys into Divine Creation

Many westerners approach Ayahuasca because they believe it may provide information that may elucidate the ‘meaning of life’. Rather than providing complete answers, Ayahuasca respects the great mysteries of life, and makes them more fertile. No final answers or conclusions snap into view. Like science, practices that facilitate transpersonal expansion of consciousness – yoga – are methods of knowledge, gaining information through empiricism.

Perception broadens, and so does knowledge of the weave of the world, which increases understandings of the patterns and forms of life, and this allows increasing levels of appropriateness and right relations within life praxis, because the relationship between self and world is better understood. But there are always fresh vistas, and no finalities have come into view. If anything, wisdom is shown to be responsive and dynamic, not a collection of static pieces of knowledge. There is a time for everything, and no single rule for anything. Only the fearful mind seeks premature confines, and in a ‘hermetic’ box life dies.

“The spirit is at play, energy is eternal delight, both matter, life and mind are expressions of the cosmic logos. This world is the expression of the divine logos that the primordial man and woman create through each other. At play in the fields of creation, characterized by differences and boundaries, Shiva and Shakti play in creativity and love. Shiva and Shakti is man and woman, liberated and in love, who have set each other free. This universe is an overflow of this love, an expression of the exuberance of this love.”

Ayahuasca unfolds experiential passages that can often constitute an organized, intelligent experiential journey. The sequence and content of the experience can appear lucidly intelligent and deeply meaningful for the drinker. These journeys can include deep encounters with ones biographic history, constitution, web of relationships, and even participatory engagements in mythopoetic realms of staggering realism, beauty, organizational complexity, and profoundly meaningful narrative, which subsequently catalyze changes to paradigms of cosmos and self.

Ayahuasca teaches that we often live in a habituated state of contraction and fear, and that it is possible through spiritual work, through listening to our voice of conscience, and through learning discipline and compassion to straight paths in our lives on earth, to move beyond this contraction and fragmentation to higher levels of our human nature, where our powers of imagination, intuition and sensitivity become abundant.

Some of the deepest and simplest lessons that Ayahuasca has impressed upon me is to find my prayer and stay present and grounded in love, because life is a gift. What does it mean, to say life is a gift ? For me it means life is a very precious and beautiful thing, because it is the means to be in this chthonic, mineralogical, biological garden of innocence and experience. It is a fascinating, bizzare and wondrous space of experience, encounter, adventure and creativity. This is not to ignore its painful, traumatic and shocking aspects. But the terror of existence is fully balanced with its love and beauty, and death is the end of our limits, a wondrous, phoenix-like release from the bondage of gravity, illusion and pain.

In this way, Ayahuasca is not a means for escape or a catylist for transcendence. It is primarily a teacher of deep immanence. Whilst it reveals a greater backdrop of spiritual and cosmic/energetic interconnectivity, this great weave always re-converges in the dancing, sentient monads of consciousness that are the beings that create the Gaian web of life. Ayahuasca does not divest us of responsibility to ourselves, our families, our bioregions, our planet, or our relationship to God, Mystery, Great Spirit. Rather, it teaches and emphasizes deep interconnectivity.

One of the prayers recited to consecrate the space within Brazilian Santo Daime rituals talks of “perfect communion between my higher and lower self”. Ayahuasca brings the distant polarities of our being to bear upon each other, so that the light irradiates the unconscious, revealing the vistas of our ancestral and genetic karma, for forgiveness to be received. The aspects we carry that are incompatible with this vast vision of life are addressed and worked upon. The rigidity, pomposity and self-inflatedness of the ego-simulation are shown up for what they are – creations. And so an opportunity is presented to re-create ones life, through ones innermost attitudes and ethical praxis.

In the pattern of the human essence exists the impulse for creation: To create, play, evolve, and to explore the infinite varieties and manifestations of love. Humans reflect the cosmic creativity. Through this journey, the self accomplishes a regeneration of its imaginal capacity and its wholeness. Through unblocking the fertility circuit, unblocking tense, fear based control mechanisms, those pranic creative energies through which we are most aligned to spirit, can be expressed, as a gift to and from the source. As Tolkein has written:

“You call a tree a tree, he said, and you think nothing more of the word … You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth. We have come from God… and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God.Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a “sub-creator” and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall.”

Unity

“I feel deep connection with the Earth, that this love is in some way coming from Gaia and through me like I am a channel. The love, freedom, peace and harmony of creation, her boundless love, too great to fully accept, we have so many partitions within us that prevent us from being clear channels, givers and receivers of Love, Peace and Harmony. Our Earth suffers through a split between our culture and the freedom and love of creation. We fear death and wall ourselves up in our ego, in mental constructs. We halt the flow and fresh prana turns to putrefying ponds within this creation. This is a shadow within the earth. I felt again the need for love, for love to come through us and return unto the winds, fires, waters and earth. And love to the forgotten and the cast-away, the dead and the despised – the cosmic placenta of creation. I gave love to the forgotten, the underworld. I felt immense compassion rising to meet the darkness for healing.”
Samuel, 40

Transpersonal ecstasy obliterates the fragmentation between organism and environment, soma and psyche, Thanatos and Eros. It is to heal in the most fundamental way, to move beyond the life and happiness squandering, agitating and knotting force of fear itself, beyond the dissociated, enclosed, contracted fear state that exists as the underlying tone of many peoples consciousness, the same impulse of fear that causes us to separate from nature, to wall ourselves up, to deny change, and so deny death and rebirth.

In shamanic states of being, relations with phenomena previously experienced as separate and conflicting become understood in their greater harmony. This is the unitive experience; of unity remembered, of re-cognising all animals, plants, the planet and the cosmos as aspects of a vast ecology of spirit. As Thomas Berry put it so well, “The universe is not a collection of objects, it is a community of subjects”. In the perception of this greater, divine unity, that tone of underlying fear is reduced. With reduced fear is the reduction of the urge to control. We begin to allow ourselves to be open system, in the flow of transformations and pattern of relations that is nature. Where this leads, is deeper and deeper into the profound mystery of Life, existence, eternity, and a renewal of the energies of healing and creativity, a reconnecting of the fertility circuit that is the foundation of life.

Shamanism is a means to perform this important work. One of the lessons of shamanic work is that of our deep unity with the creative force of the universe. This gnosis heals psychophysical blockages that have hindered us, it dissolves toxic shames and double binds under a sense of wisdom and love we may not have known we had in us. This is a recovery of something special and sacred, and perhaps innate and natural, within the profaned human condition.

This healing represents the end of survival – and the beginning of Life.

I have been recovering from viral meningitis but my return to a feeling of life-force and health had been slow and impeded by winter and food poisoning. So basically, very run down. The weekend was very much involved in deep somatic cleansing.

After I drank the first glass of some highly concentrated Ayahuasca (banisteriopsis caapi and psychotria viridis) I sat in silent meditation, with no effects until about 40 minutes in.

From a momment of complete sobriety, the next momment I was bowled over by the blazing symbol of the Cross and the descent of the Christ archetype, the presence of a loving brother, whose emination proceeded to instantaniously burn away with great power the obscurations around my heart chakra. From one minute being totally closed, I was immedately connected with lifeforce and love to my immediate family, and silently wept for the love I have for them, and lamented for the blockages and confusions that exist between us. I felt deep love for my younger brother and he appeared before me in the nature of his soul or essense – not his earthly self. And he was a prince, a beautiful shining man who sent blessings and support for me in my work, and assured me that I could always call upon him.

My mind kicked in strong at this point and I ‘descended’ a few levels into the chthonic astral, the blazing, refractive hall of mirrors with amazing plantlike octopoid entities seemingly wanting some attention. The feeling was extremely psychedelic and hyperdimensional. I grounded in my solar plexus and persisted with my concentration. I went through some issues about self-responsibility. Early in the session a man had brought a sacred dagger, and I had mixed feelings about such a weapon being in the medicine space, due to my own paranoia of whether I could trust myself. The symbol of the sword was one ancient quintessence of masculinity and responsibilty. The voice came ‘put the penis down and take up the sword of your father’.

The transformation was an interuption of the ouroboric, self-referential, introverted and entropic feedback loops which kept my mind ‘playing with itself’ in a way analagous to physical masturbation. I had several embodied and mental representations of this closed-system loop. The sword blazed before me in the astral and it was a different kind of sword than I recieved from a cosmic bodhitsatva several years ago. This sword was a shard of energy hewn by God for those that put themselves to the work of the Acknowledgement, it is the sword of self-responsibility but it is also a symbol of rejecting the path of harbouring and entertaining twisted ways… it is a means of breaking bondage to Sheol and standing firm with cetain kind of entities. It is a different movement than incorperation or acceptance, it is less receptive – it is more individuated and affirming of a higher truth in the presence of jarring and disturbing forces.

When I took the sword I was presented with the Maelstrom, which is like a door opening to a howling realm of all kinds of shells, creation very far from the irradience of the source, and seeking to move further from the source in their own egoic agendas. I saw the pathways in which I have been hijacked throughout life, I felt deeply into early psychedelic experiences where I had ‘unconsciously’ moved into these places, and where I had used magic to align myself with those forces because of passing glamor, intellectual pride, and quasi-pleasure. I saw the fate of those that take arrogant and twisted paths, holding something back from the Great Spirit in the mistaken belief they can aquire something and hold onto it for themselves.

I saw the movement of partiality and lack of openness shading into a gradual and pernicious diminuition of character and of light. Pay Attention ! This life is a journey from Dark to Light, through the moral and spiritual conundrums we live within. I understood the nature of Sheol and how deep I have been, up to my neck, and what work it takes to repair oneself.

At this point of extrication I came face to face with evil. I wanted to run away, to move my body, to escape, but since the confrontation was spiritual, there was nowhere to run. I remembered the sword, and the truth of the heart, and sat, and stared back, praying for mercy and grace and light and strength. I prayed to these entities of the realm of shells, to “Soften and Know Yourself”. I never believe it is too late.

I came to one of the dominions of ‘lost angels’ – Los Angeles… my spirit particulated into several eminations and I descended into crack houses, to abide with the poor spirits there, in their sorrow and disorientation. I gave my love within this hell, and gave thanks to the vine that lets me do this work.

As my thoughts turned to the vine I went into the foundry of evolution, the Pangaean couldron of the deepest primordial rainforest, where lizards evolved over aeons into birds, where simians played in the tree canopies. The richness, baroque, elemental purity and creativity enlivened me, and there I saw the vine, sinewy and silent, snaking around the trees in the ancient gardens. Its meditative presence was profound, and I understood something of why it is called the Maestra or Madre of the Garden.

I was taken by two resplendent angels into the spiritual matrix of the earth’s creation and the sacred geometry of bio-spiritual evolution in a series of unfathomable visions. I felt deeply the influence of the sun and the irradient clear purity informing and designing the very structures of life with an encoded divine plan. I saw humanity as a crystalis, a method for generating Angels in the unfathomable clear light. I saw the work of purification as the burning of the crystalis around the divine manifestation – the fruit of what we may be, represented by the angel wings – the wings that let us soar in the astral.

I felt that the Acknowledgement, as I call it, which I suppose you could call the Galactic Alignment with the milky way, or the Day of Judgement, or the Singularity, is very near and all our dates are a mere approximation. We live within short days of mercy where we have the oportunity to align, to soften ourselves, to do as much psychocognitive archeology as we can, so when this Acknowledgement comes, when this vibration as deep as the cosmos comes, and the world of illusion passes away, that we are upheld by the love we have all shared, recieved, channelled, that our hearts have been decent and we have been in this world for more than ourselves, and we have ‘put ourselves on the cross’ – burnt karma, done that hard work, because it is the right thing to do.

In this place the continuum of ancestral and spiritual life was a continual reality of revelation. This revelation was a perfect dialogue between the ancestral/underworld/historical and the light/present/celestial realms, I was mediator seeking to bring together the opposites into restored unity by intent and prayer.

I felt no longer that God has left its creation. Instead, all manifest life was the face of God, the surface emination, looking outward toward itself. I felt the interaction between the group as a jewelled web, reflecting love energy in innumerable forms and flavours. The universe is something that surfaces as the infinite spirit flows, and its magic is the magic of God, the Lila. I felt the divine light as dripping crystal fire from every centre, radiating through a divine spectrum of archetype, angel, solar and planetary formations.

The whole-being felt the transience of the biological, and felt that the sole purpose for my present manifestation was to burn karma, to burn the sins of the fathers, to forgive, move on, and refresh the planetary so the energy was clear enough that a more perfect image of the celestial could arise in space-time. In the face of the mystery of death and the infinities of time and space I consecrated and sanctified the work and entrusted my heart to the highest Light.

I felt blessed by innumerable teachings pouring into heart. Incredible human wisdoms about life and the relation of the transpersonal to the personal. I felt strongly the benefits of this light and energy as it radiated and refreshed inner stagnation with its celestial, solar flare vibration.

Ultimately, I found unity in the solar, light continuum dancing and scintilating through All. I cease to exist, ‘I’ am not in creation. The diamond earth shines in the inherent purity of its diamond life. Sensitive to every occurence, heart still beating, yet the mind has ceased to be an entity. It is simply the world and the world is it.

I know that in time even the most lost atoms of mind will discover in the innermost centre of its constituent nature the indivisible light, that oneness, which shares in the indestructible purity of the Whole. To bring love and unity to all facets, to open relatedness between the shadow and the light, the dichotomies, so they are seen in unison as complimentary and sacred first principles of God emination.

Santifying and consecrating the heart to God, always placing ones being and faith in the highest Light.
“We are bacteria”
We are here.
“We are doomed”
Here We Are, NOW.

What next ?
Warm Heart
Good feeling
Kindness.
And the garden of Eden which is just manifesting as we love one another.

I saw the creation of a New Earth, and incarnated in that garden. The colours were electric. It was multidimensional, coming through senses and channels I do not possess in my earthly state. The elements were running free, everyone was alit with eyes, eyes, eyes of wonder at the vividness of this freshly hewn world, fresh from the foundry of creation, with snow on the mountains, and fresh water in the fountains, and that we all find ourselves there, in a world that reverberates with Love and Peace.

The following article by Daniel Mirante (www.lila.info) discusses the deep ecological current within visionary art. A work in progress, to be regularly updated.

‘Nectarian’ describes a current within visionary or spirit art, it describes the work of the birds and bees as they sip nectar and distill honey from the flowering plants of primodial Gaia. It describes the rich symbiosis of life, that everything that exists, lives. And all that lives is One.

The hummingbird is the quintessential symbol of the Nectarian form of art. In Brazil the hummingbird is called the ‘beija-flor’ – kisser-of-flowers. This beautiful poetic term describes the deep sensuality of the intimate engagement with Nature. Nature is all that we know. Our entire brains and minds are Nature and generated by nature to interface with nature.

Nature is everything, the Kali-like wrath and the deep sweetness. The Nectarian vision encompasses all, and displays an all-encompassing fertility circuit in which beings can intimately couple with the cosmic and Gaian processes in non-dual ways. In the Nectarian vision we already live within a Spirit realm, a spiritual wilderness that completely transcends the division between inner and outer, imagination and reason, consciousness and matter.

Nature is the originator of language and by observing her flows we come into awareness of the cycles and patterns that govern our lives. Observance of nature is the progenitor of metaphor, and metaphor is the foundation of poetry, myth, shamanry and visual art.

Nectarian art is distinguished from most visionary art by its insistence of an anchoring within bodily and Gaian relatedness, including all our relations, the species both similar (dolphins, monkeys, cats) and dissimilar to ourselves (such as plankton, bacteria, and stellar bodies such as spiral galaxies and stars). Much visionary art purports to represent transcendent spiritual dimensions which are full of high saturation patterns, linguistic codes, esoteric symbols and glyphs. Nectarian art represents these spirit-glyphs in their immanent form, subtly informing the flowing patterns of water, bark and leaves, as well as the gothic-organic geometries of the human body, in the divine natural subtleties of colors and tones that nature effortlessly composes. There is nothing esoteric in Nectarian art, it does not depend upon an esoteric tradition for its interpretation, although the more ecologically connected participant would likely find more to appreciate in sympathy.

Rather than representing the ‘exclusive divinity’ of human self-hood the nectarian vision is selfless as a flock of birds, as wolves and deer in the chase, or a primordial tao shamaness riding the clouds. Observing the current of life on this planet one senses a vast and selfless process of intelligence, a vast metabolism, which is at the same time a vast sentience of cosmic drama, storytelling, and experience, which flows completely beyond our rigid and fragile categorical orderings.

Nectarian art affirms our journey on this planet as something to be celebrated and affirmed, rather than something to ‘transcend’ through some kind of spiritual development. It is thus similar to the left-hand path of tantric yogi’s. It is also similar in this sense in its celebration of voluptuous poly-amorous sexuality, woman, child, community and nurturing energies. We see such celebration in the work of Mark Henson, who’s psychedelic tantric paintings are reminiscent of Chola dynasty bronzes and tantric indian temple sculpture.

The ‘modern’ art establishment overlooks such art, for such an institutionalized mind finds Nectarian art embarrassing it in its lack of self-conscious irony and its unchecked enthusiasm for the experience of wonder. Despite this, many of the great artists throughout history have been Nectarian in orientation.

Nectarian art is vastly informed by dialog with plant teachers and fertile ecosystems. It is thus fundamentally shamanic and in its purest sense bioregional – reflective of the forms, traditions, and cycles innate to ones lands. Though it is true that ‘every part contains the whole’ tapping into ones locality one indeed finds ‘the all’.

In an age of climate chaos and an increasing awareness of both the beauty and fragility of ecological complexity, Nectarian art serves as a ‘medicine culture’, a prayer, affirmation and celebration of ‘the real’, the infinitely deep and ornate planetary jeweled garden in which we live our lives.

Some notable Nectarian artists :

Mark Henson
Maura Holden
Pablo Amaringo
Jarah Tree
Frida Kahlo
William Blake
Breugel
Gaudi

And many many more…