Comments on: On the Origins of Ayahuasca

By: Benny Shanon

Benny Shanon — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:04:11 +0000

Very nice – both rational and inspirational. I admire the plurality of responses you consider. Having reflected on this quite a bit, my personal bottom line would be your last, intuitive response. But, indeed, in order to get to it one may have to go through the consideration of the others.

By: EROCx1

EROCx1 — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:17:42 +0000

I once asked the plant spirit about this mystery of how the shamanic knowledge of mixing the vine with the leaf to make this potion came to be. It is because the plants told them to do so as stated by many. But the how is not the most significant, its the “why” that pleasantly surprised me and they “why” is because Chacruna and Yagé are in love each other. That is how the brew came to be. It was all much more intense and visual then language allows as anyone here can imagine. But to put into words it was the most touching love story I have even known.

By: Ipajii

Ipajii — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:44:48 +0000

Great piece of writing, very up-lifting. My girlfriend wants to learn more about ayahuasca, can you recommend any links and sources in Spanish; or indeed is it possible to get translations from this site?

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:30:07 +0000

Being that caapi is psychoactive all by itself — and is known to potentiate many substances — I cannot help but think that finding the recipe isn’t really on the order of monkeys typing Shakespeare. It seems perfectly logical that such a discovery would have been found through repeated mixtures featuring a known active component. The probability that natives were already drinking caapi mixed with all kinds of stuff when they stumbled upon chacruna seems almost obvious to me.

By: Marcello

Marcello — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:30:41 +0000

great article on this mystery! and interesting speculation on the nature of intuition… reminds me of Michael Talbot’s ‘Holographic Universe’