The lungs of the Earth. The most biodiverse place of Gaia. The home of the Ayahuasca vine and countless other medicinal species of plant., as well as known and unknown indigenous cultures.
For decades, researchers have puzzled over the mystery of the origin of Ayahuasca, especially the question of how the synergy was discovered between the the two components of the brew: the vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) with a monoamine oxidase inhibiting (MAOI) action and the leaf (Psychotria viridis or Diplopterys cabrerana), which requires that MAOI action to make their dimethyltryptamine (DMT) orally active.
If you have decided to travel to Peru or other areas in South America to drink ayahuasca, I hope that you have a wonderful experience and return safely to tell everyone about your adventures. Here are several things you can do to help ensure that your trip is safe and productive.
Steve Beyer is a researcher in ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, shamanism, and hallucinogenic plants and fungi. His interests center on the indigenous ceremonial use of the sacred plants — ayahuasca and other psychoactive and healing plants in the Amazon, peyote in ceremonies of the Native American Church, huachuma in Peruvian mesa rituals, and teonanácatl and other mushrooms and plants in Mesoamerican healing ceremonies — and on the legal status, uses, effects, and therapeutic potential of naturally occurring and synthesized hallucinogens, empathogens, and entheogens.He is the author of Singing to the plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. Jan Irvin is an independent researcher, author, and lecturer. He is the author of several books, including The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity, and co-author of Astrotheology & Shamanism: Christianity’s Pagan Roots. He is the curator of the official website for John Marco Allegro, the controversial Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, and in 2009 he republished Allegro’s famous 1970 classic, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, in a fortieth anniversary edition. Jan is the editor of …
The bodies of Amazon rainforest activist Joao Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espirito Santo are carried to burial by friends and relatives, in the municipal cemetery of Maraba, in Brazil, on May 26, 2011. The identity of those responsible for the shooting in northern Brazil on Tuesday has not yet been determined, but da Silva predicted his own death six months ago, and was the recipient of frequent death threats by illegal loggers and cattle ranchers. “I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment — because I denounce the loggers and charcoal producers,” he said. Watch his speech at TEDxAmazonia, below, in which he says he believes killing trees in the rainforest is murder (click the “cc” button in the player for English subtitles). ; The murders of da Silva and his wife took place as Brazil’s Congress debates a divisive bill that threatens to further expand deforestation. Da Silva and Espirito Santo were active in the …
A manuscript that links Conan Doyle, fellow novelist H Rider Haggard and a hallucinogenic plant from South America
This is an edited transcript of a series of conversations between Howard G. Charing, author of The Ayahuasca Visions of Pablo Amaringo, and Steve Beyer, author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. These talks took place during the summer of 2010, at the kitchen table and on the front stoop of Steve’s house in Chicago. Some drinking and cigar smoking was involved. Howard: I read Singing to the Plants several times, and I found it not only an extremely well researched book but also inspirational; it came through to me as a true labor of love. I understand that you originally envisioned the book to address more of an academic, anthropological audience, which is the reason that you wanted it to be published by the University of New Mexico Press; but you have created much more than an academic work. When you talk about your teachers, doña María and don Roberto, your warmth, humanity, and respect for them shines through. You asked them to describe their history, …
Amazing new footage of a tribe under voluntary isolation from brasil. One of the new threats to these tribes are the migration of Voluntarily Isolated Indigenous Peoples from Peru, escaping illegal logging and oil companies. Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, has publicly suggested the Voluntarily Isolated Indigenous Peoples do not exist. In an article published in Peru’s El Comercio newspaper in october 2007, he is quoted saying: “Against oil, they (the environmentalists) have created the figure of the ‘uncontacted’ native jungle dweller; that is, unknown but presumed, and thus millions of hectares cannot be explored, and Peru’s petroleum must remain underground while the world is paying US$90 per barrel. They prefer that Peru continue importing its oil and getting poorer.” PLEASE watch the footage and sign the Petition urging Alan Garcia to Protect the “uncontacted” tribes of Peru!
The use of entheogens such as ayahuasca is exemplary of the long and ongoing tradition in many cultures to employ psychoactives as tools that stimulate foundational types of understanding. That such substances are capable of stimulating profoundly transcendent experiences is evident from both the academic literature and anecdotal reports. This article attempts to present these concepts in such a way that the possibility of using entheogens as tools is taken seriously by those with an interest in new and transformative ideas in education.
Steve Beyer, author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, questions the Western conventional wisdom that the sole function of the beta-carbolines in the ayahuasca drink is simply to allow DMT to become orally active, and explores the scientific and ethnographic literature for evidence of beta-carboline psychoactivity.
I am here for only one cause – to defend the life and the sovereignty of indigenous peoples. I am not just one person; I represent all our indigenous peoples. The government must respect my right to continue fighting for our rights as indigenous peoples. – Alberto Pizango
The name of the game is INFRASTRUCTURE FOR DEEPER INTEGRATION IN SOUTH AMERICA. Also known as IIRSA. “The Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) is a bold effort by the governments of South America to construct a new infrastructure network for the continent, including roads, waterways, ports, and energy and communications interconnections.Many of the projects seek to provide road and river outlets to ocean ports, with the goal of providing incentives to increase exports of primary materials such as soybeans and other grains, timber, and minerals. ” (from http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/latin-america/iirsa) Roads and rivers would be used to facilitate easier trade. Dr. Pitou van Dijck, is stating in his article: “The rise of China, however, not only contributes to Brazil’s export potential but may also jeopardize Brazil’s aspirations of becoming a platform for automobile assembly for the international market. Indeed, IIRSA’s plans for the construction of several transcontinental roads, linking the Atlantic side of the region with the Pacific, the so-called bioceánicas, not only facilitates Latin America’s export drive but may also …
Yasuni National Park has been deemed by 50 of the worlds top scientists as the most biodiverse area on Earth. Knowing about the incredible abundance of species who make Yasuni their home we must do all that we can to help protect this area. The Ecuadorean government has agreed to leave the oil in the ground if the international community pay half the value. This is the real Avatar. Now is the time for the world to come together to protect the most precious place we have left on Earth.
An interview with Martin von Hildebrand, founder at head of Gaia Amazonas describes his work with indigenous groups in Colombia, and their quest towards the reclamation of over 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest.
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.
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.
Following the Inambari Hydroelectric Project, the Peruvian government would build a dam that would flood 41000 hectares of rainforest. 75% of the hydroelectric energy produced by the dam would be then sold to Brasil.
Arequipa: “informal” miners speak of six deaths and several disappearances during yesterday´s night and this morning´s protests in Arequipa.
Gold Miners in the jungle of Peru are protesting against a new law that would force them into controlled, limited mining.
