From Neurons to Nirvana is about the science of psychedelics — the quest to discover how psychoactive substances affect the neurological system and how those effects are related directly to how we understand the world around us; how they affect consciousness and what that means for our understanding of ourselves, our relationship with others, and our understanding of the world.

Hockenhull is working in partnership with executive producer Mark Achbar (The Corporation) and Betsy Carson, and with European co-producer Oval Filmemacher, Berlin. He has been developing and shooting this film over the last two years, filming extensively in Canada, the USA, and Europe.

You can help to make this film a reality. See how you can contribute here — and how you can get signed DVDs, exclusive downloads during production, music tracks, special imagistic loops for continuous ecstatic play on your monitor, an exclusive audio clip of Aldous Huxley recorded in the 1930s, and even co-production credit. Check it out.

Steve Beyer is the author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. His website and blog is at www.singingtotheplants.com.

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

Sweet, because as Pablo Amaringo came to this veil of tears, this veil of soulmaking, he bequeathed us a rich treasury of visions and encyclopaedic knowledge of the indigenous shamanic plant traditions of the Amazon. Although he has left us physically, his knowledge and skill as a seer and traveller into the spiritual realms of nature remain with humanity in the form of his art. His paintings are something to truly celebrate.

My hope is that the collectors and students of Pablo’s art will bring his work together to be photographed and archived, and that his friends and family can continue the work of decoding the rich plant mythologies and medicinal knowledge embedded in his work. May Pablo continue to inspire and change lives for generations to come.

- Daniel Mirante November 2009

Howard G. Charing & Peter Cloudsley interview the world famous visionary artist.

Pablo Amaringo is one of the world’s greatest visionary artists, and is renowned for his highly complex, colourful and intricate paintings of his visions from drinking the Ayahuasca brew.

He trained as a curandero in the Amazon, healing himself and others from the age of ten, but gave this up in 1977 to become a full-time painter and art teacher at his Usko-Ayar school. His book, Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman, co-authored with Luis Eduardo Luna, brought his work and the rich mythology of the Amazon to a wide audience in the West.

Pablo Amaringo was born Puerto Libertad, in the Peruvian Amazon. He was ten years old when he first took Ayahuasca—a visionary brew used in shamanism, to help him overcome a severe heart disease. The magical cure of this ailment via the healing plants led Pablo toward the life of a vegetalismo in which he worked for many years.

Howard and Peter met with Pablo at the school which he founded (Usko-Ayar school of painting) in Pucullpa where he lives and paints, and interviewed Pablo about his life as a shaman and artist.

What drew you to being a shaman?

It was a spiritual matter for me. I had thought that shamans deceived and lied to people, so I didn’t believe in them. I thought that Ayahuasca healed people because it was medicine, I didn’t believe in magic and spirits. No! Then in 1967 I saw a curandera3 miraculously heal my sister who had been in mortal agony with hepatitis, and could not either eat or speak, but with this single healing from the plants, she was cured in just two hours. That motivated me to start learning the science of vegetalismo

She was given Ayahuasca?

No, the Senora used the knowledge of Ayahuasca and chanted. That was during the day. That same night I drank and received the powers, but I didn’t know what I was being given. I saw many things. I sat like a king and watched! After that I dieted for five days, staying at home, without seeing many people.

After one month I began to feel what everybody else was feeling, it was a very strange thing! And I discovered I could sing the chants without even learning them. They came out beautifully and I wondered how it was possible that I knew them. I realised I had powers in me and I began to be a curandero when I cured a young man with a terrible headache, firstly I felt it and then he was better.

Is it an important part of the cure, to feel what the patient feels?

That was how the powers were given to me, but others say that when they take the Ayahuasca, they can see what the problem is with their patient. I didn’t even have to drink, I felt exactly where their pains were, and their emotions, everything.

What plant did you take on your diet?

Just Ayahuasca, but afterwards I took other plants at the same time as Ayahuasca, to learn more things.

Then you practiced as a curandero in Pucullpa?

Yes, and for many years I travelled to Madre de Dios, Cusco, Lima, Huanuco, Tingo Maria and Alto Ucayali. Wherever I went I cured people.

At that time Pucullpa was much smaller.

Yes, the houses were mostly wooden, with cultivation behind them, there were no high buildings. None of the streets had tarmac, they were of red mud, except for the one central Plaza. The road to Lima was terrible and it took a month or more to get there.

How do you communicate with plant spirits after you take them into you?

When you take any plant other than Ayahuasca, you connect through your dreams. Ajo sacha, Chric Sanango, Bobinsana etc. you learn while you are asleep. But with Ayahuasca no, you are conscious and awake. That is why it is the planta maestra – the eye through which you see the world, the universe. It is miraculous and sacred and you can learn from your studies far more with Ayahuasca than with other plants, but you must obey the ‘statutes’ of this plant, i.e. the rules. If you obey, no knowledge will be withheld from you.

My visions helped me understand the value of human beings, animals, the plants themselves, and many other things. The plants taught me the function they play in life, and the holistic meaning of all life. We all should give special attention and deference to Mother Nature. She deserves our love. And we should also show a healthy respect for her power!

How did you discover your gift of painting?

I used to make portraits and landscapes when I was 20 years old, but mostly using charcoal. But this didn’t earn me any money so I dedicated myself to other things, agriculture, raising animals and hairdressing, all kinds of things. I was working as secretary to the chief of customs here in the port of Pucullpa. One day my boss told me to paint two armchairs, and as I had never painted, I just slapped on the paint any old how, and it looked awful with lumps everywhere. But the boss didn’t reprimand me; he said how come you are good at everything except painting? I was a little hurt because he was always so impressed by everything I did. This made me think that if I was going to learn to paint, I would learn to do it well.

After three years working there I had a heart problem and returned to doing portraits in pencil beginning with my own portrait.

How did you begin painting visions?

Years passed and I used to say to my mother, when I am older I will paint several pictures of myself so that after I am dead people will know there has been a painter in the family! One day I was asked to accompany a foreign gentleman because I spoke a little English but I did not know that he was the biologist Denis McKenna. After some years he recommended me for a job in Sepagua but I was not able to take it up because my mother fell ill. So when he came back in 1985 I asked him if he would show my pictures in an exhibition he was organizing in Switzerland. They were small pictures, but later he returned with Luis Eduardo Luna who said how beautifully you paint Pablo. I can promote your work; do you want to be a world class painter?

I said no, I don’t want any of those things. I don’t know what a ‘world class’ painter is. I just want you to help me sell my pictures to make a little money. I was portraying the daily realities of people in the Amazon, how they sow and harvest, how they fish and celebrate their fiestas and so on. Luna said how is it I haven’t met you before now? Every year I have been coming for the last eight years, travelling up the Amazon through Brazil and Peru to Panama!

I asked him why he came. What was he looking for? We are interested in the magical plants of Peru from the coast, Sierra and Selva. I know what you are after, I said. I used to be a shaman ten years ago, what a shame you didn’t know me before, but now I have put all that behind me. I could have told you so much about what I had seen, I said. Then I started to think that I could paint for him all the things I had seen in my visions and all the things that were explained to me. But I had to do it in secret because even when people saw photos of what I painted, they said I had gone mad, that I was bedevilled and painting things of the demon!

They worried me with these remarks. I could never have had an exhibition here in Pucullpa. So Luna said paint for me then! And I made two pictures of visions for his next visit, and when he saw those pictures – one of which is in the Museum of Washington DC and the other in the University of Stockholm – they took hundreds of pictures of them. But I said he could take them away. And that’s what they did, wrapped up in a huge box. They sold them and sent me the money. After that they said we don’t want any more landscapes, only visions!

They studied them and said they found language and biology in the pictures so later I began to make explanations of them. But I could never show them to people here. That’s how it all started.

Are people still prejudiced here?

Yes, many are still. Once some religious people came and said that if the name of Jesus was spoken the paintings would explode. And they asked me to say Jesus. I said I can’t say that word, what for? They said to each other, he has got the devil in him, if he says Jesus, he will explode!

You have many amazing paintings here in your studio; can you tell us something about them?

The pictures are a means by which people can cross spiritual boundaries. Some people say they can only believe what they see, but there are thing which exist which cannot be seen. The pictures are for reminding people what we are and where we come from and where we are going. They are for people of any culture in the world although there is much that is taken from indigenous Amazonian culture. For example:

‘A Fines Espirituales’ (Spiritual Endeavour)

In this painting there are horses like humans, humans with tiger’s heads and a papagayo with a human body and so on. Looking at this painting, it reminds us of many of the Amazonian legends in which animals adopt human forms, does this painting relate to these stories?

That is correct, spirits cannot materialize easily, if they cannot take human form, they take animal form. They are made from the spirits of animals, but if they appear human, then they can reproduce with women in order that they can be incarnate in us. This is what you can discover through the visions of Ayahuasca and other plants like toé, chric sanango, ajo sacha etc. assuming you do the diet correctly, then the invisible world can become manifest to us. It is part of our mystic evolution. Everyone has a role to play inspiring, creating, evolving their minds to preserve the world. The spirits are working untiringly to protect Mother Nature – everything from the plants and animals to the circles of the planets.

You touch on an important point about protecting nature; there is an increasing amount of damage that people are causing to the natural world, what is your view why humans do so much damage?

It is our lack of ingenuity, and above all imagination. We think we are the only ones here on earth, unique! We should all work like scientists, teachers, composers so that we can fully and creatively engage in the world, so in that way the world continues. If we play a part in the functioning of the universe we will not die. When I am old and about to die and cannot see well enough to paint, I will be talking other things instead, but I can still paint now and I am 68.

The plants in the painting are ishanga, maromara, pinon blanco, pinon colorado and pinon negro, lengua de perro, verbena. The ethnic elements are Shipibo5, Conibo, Shetebo, Amahuaca, and you can see the spells and spaceships.

‘Hondas de la Ayahuasca’ (Ayahuasca waves)

Here is represented the different grades of shaman. A suniruma is the highest expert sitting here, with dominion of the sky, then banco puma or banco sumi who has dominion of the land, finally the muraya who has dominion over the water.

You can see waves just like the effects of Ayahuasca – the mareacion. It comes strongly and it seems as if it is passing and then another one comes, like waves from a stone in the water. This is the sachamama6 which comes in different colours in the mareacion and protects the vegetation. It is a semi-mythological animal because it actually exists, a huge serpent which lives on the land but doesn’t move, so plants grow on top of it. You can be chopping a path with your machete and strike it unknowingly, until blood appears! If it sees you, it draws you into its mouth with its power, you cannot escape. You can see here the seven rays of the rainbow which portray this power.

You can also see angel serpents or sarafs who protect the sachamama.

El Principio de la Vida. (The Principle or beginning of life)

This painting is about the mystical beginning of life which can be accessed through drinking Ayahuasca. The first cell which divided for the first time was with the help of extra-terrestrial beings, spirits, and angels which enlisted sub atomic particles. The cells have taken millions of years to develop and evolve, and after making cells they created marine animals, fish, and large snakes to live amongst the plants.

They made the plants grow and finally terrestrial animals, lions and tigers and large flying animals. These inventions gave them the practice they needed for creating more, four legged animals, and domestic animals.

Wild plants were made for changing the environment while domestic plants, especially flowers, are for altering the heart, mind and spirit of people. In your garden its best to grown domestic plants, to put on your table to make you happy and give you love. We don’t understand plants and we look down on them but they are our fuel, our medicine, they give us health and life. All this has taken many thousands of years of work by the spirits.

Before a person is born, while still in the womb, we recapitulate evolution and pass through a snake-like phase, at another phase you can see horns. At this stage we are like a book in which you can read everything that will happen in your life, how many years you will live and so on. I was very astonished when I saw these things. It is very emotional. There are things you don’t see but it is not because they don’t exist. We just need the potential to see, but if we could see everything we would go mad. So we must be trained to learn and survive the big shock. For this you need to diet7.

Elsewhere they are drinking Ayahuasca in colourful clothes coming from the wisdom they are getting. All this is according to the “book” we spoke about. Much depends of what the mother eats when she is pregnant – she should eat natural food so the child will be strong, otherwise they are weak.

Bottom right corner, is the beginning of the blood, the spark of life, the spirit which enters when the mother is asleep while pregnant. You can see the uterus there and the waves which give the child his emotions and characteristics. That’s why this is called the beginning of life: just like waves which go into a TV to make a picture. With this you can deal with all the problems of life. Tinguna is the first cells of life to be formed. People don’t understand these things yet.

‘Yacaruna Huasi’ (The yacaruna’s house.)

The yacaruna are people that live in under the river in tunnels which are pictured here, and they lead to another world as you see. They play musical instruments to enchant people at midnight when all is silent under the moonlight. You can see dolphins, manatee (sea-cow), electric eel and charapa mama which are marine turtles. Then there are muraya (Shipibo shamans), water dogs, water horses and fish which fly when it rains very hard and fall out of the sky.

Would you like to add anything more about the importance of plants?

For me personally, though, they mean even more than this. Plants—in the great living book of nature—have shown me how to study life as an artist and shaman. They can help all of us to know the art of healing and to discover our own creativity, because the beauty of nature moves people to show reverence, fascination, and respect for the extent to which the forests give shelter to our souls.

The consciousness of plants is a constant source of information for medicine, alimentation, and art, and an example of the intelligence and creative imagination of nature. Much of my education I owe to the intelligence of these great teachers. Thus I consider myself to be the “representative” of plants, and for this reason I assert that if they cut down the trees and burn what’s left of the rainforests, it is the same as burning a whole library of books without ever having read them.

People who are not so dedicated to the study and experience of plants may not think this knowledge is so important to their lives—but even they should be conscious of the nutritional, medicinal, and scientific value of the plants they rely on for life.

My most sublime desire, though, is that every human being should begin to put as much attention as he or she can into the knowledge of plants, because they are the greatest healers of all. And all human beings should also put effort into the preservation and conservation of the rainforest, and care for it and the ecosystem, because damage to these not only prejudices the flora and fauna but humanity itself.

Even in the Amazon these days, many see plants as only a resource for building houses and to finance large families. People who have farms and raise animals also clear the forest to produce foodstuffs. Mestizos8 and native Indians log the largest trees to sell to industrial sawmills for subsistence. They have never heard of the word ecology!

I, Pablo, say to everybody who lives in the Amazon and the other forests of the world, that they must love the plants of their land, and everything that is there!

This expression of love must be a sincere and altruistic interest in the lasting well-being of others. We are not here simply to exist, but to enjoy life together with plants, animals, and loved ones, and to delight in contemplation of the beauty of nature. A shaman has in his mind and heart the attitude of conserving nature because he knows that life is for enjoying the company of this world’s countless delights.

Authors Bio:

Howard G. Charing: has worked some of the most respected and extraordinary shamans & healers in the Andes, the Amazon Rainforest, and the Philippines. With Peter Cloudsley he organises specialist retreats to the Amazon Rainforest at the dedicated centre located in the Mishana nature reserve. He has also co-authored Plant Spirit Shamanism published by Destiny Books (USA)

Peter Cloudsley: Since 1980, Peter has been researching Peruvian fiesta music. He has built up a documented archive of traditional music and interviews, and has collected for the British Museum. Throughout this time he has travelled extensively in Latin America, especially Peru, studying the wealth of music and diversity of popular religions. Peter has taught courses at the City Lit and elsewhere (on music and popular culture in Latin America).

For more information about our Amazon and Andean work, contact Eagle’s Wing Centre for Contemporary Shamanism. www.shamanism.co.uk
Email: eagleswing@shamanism.co.uk

In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages, their houses perched on stilts on the shores of the rivers that are their primary means of travel. Here in the jungle, they have retained features of the Hispanic tradition, including a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine. And they have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca.

The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues not only to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art but also to attract thousands of seekers each year with the promise of visionary experiences of their own.

In Singing to the Plants I try to set forth, in accessible form, just what this shamanism is about — what happens at an ayahuasca healing ceremony, how the apprentice shaman forms a spiritual relationship with the healing plant spirits, how sorcerers inflict the harm that the shaman heals, and the ways that plants are used in healing, love magic, and sorcery.

There is a website for the book and an accompanying blog at http://www.singingtotheplants.com/.

There are several reasons why I think a book on the mestizo shamanism of the Upper Amazon was worth writing at this time. Mestizo shamanism occupies an exceptional place among the shamanisms of the Upper Amazon, assimilating key features of indigenous shamanisms, and at the same time adapting and transforming them. There is today considerable interest in shamanism in general, and in Upper Amazonian shamanism in particular, especially its use of plant hallucinogens; yet there is currently no readily accessible text giving general consideration to the unique features of Amazonian shamanism and its relationship to shamanisms elsewhere in the world.

We now know much more about shamanism than when Mircea Eliade published his famous overview in 1951. There is now a wider range of excellent ethnographies, including many of Amazonian peoples; debates within the field have sharpened an awareness of many of the assumptions that underlay the fieldwork of many decades ago. Indeed, we now know, too, much more about ethnobotany, hallucinations, and the actions of such substances as dimethyltryptamine.

Moreover, ayahuasca shamanism has become part of global culture. The visionary ayahuasca paintings of Pablo César Amaringo are available to a world market in a sumptuous coffee-table book; international ayahuasca tourists exert a profound economic and cultural pull on previously isolated local practitioners; ayahuasca shamanism, once the terrain of anthropologists, is the subject of novels and spiritual memoirs. Ayahuasca shamans perform their healing rituals in Ontario and Wisconsin.

In Singing to the Plants I emphasize both the uniqueness of this highly eclectic and absorptive shamanism — plant spirits dressed in surgical scrubs, extraterrestrial doctors speaking computer language — and its deep roots in shamanist beliefs and practices, both healing and sorcery, common to the Upper Amazon. I have sought to understand this form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and my own personal experiences studying wilderness survival and plant healing in the Amazon.

Eagle’s Wing

The Magical Art of the Shipibo People of the Upper Amazon

Underlying the intricate geometric patterns of great complexity displayed in the art of the Shipibo people is a concept of an all pervading magical reality which can challenge the Western linguistic heritage and rational mind.

These patterns are more than an expression of the one-ness of creation, the inter-changeability of light and sound, the union or fusion of perceived opposites, it is an ongoing dialogue or communion with the spiritual world and powers of the Rainforest. The visionary art of the Shipibo brings this paradigm into a physical form. The Ethnologist Angelika Gebhart-Sayer, calls this “visual music”.

The Shipibo are one of the largest ethnic groups in the Peruvian Amazon. These ethnic groups each have their own languages, traditions and culture. The Shipibo which currently number about 20,000 are spread out in communities through the Pucallpa / Ucayali river region. They are highly regarded in the Amazon as being masters of Ayahuasca, and many aspiring shamans and Ayahuasqueros from the region study with the Shipibo to learn their language, chants, and plant medicine knowledge.

All the textile painting, embroidery, and artisan craft is carried out by the women. From a young age the Shipibo females are initiated by their mothers and grandmothers into this practice. Teresa a Shipiba who works with us on our Amazon Retreats tells that “when I was a young girl, my mother squeezed drops of the Piripiri (a species of Cyperus sp.) berries into my eyes so that I would have the vision for the designs; this is only done once and lasts a lifetime”.

The intricate Shipibo designs have their origin in the non-manifest and ineffable world in the spirit of the Rainforest and all who live there. The designs are a representation of the Cosmic Serpent, the Anaconda, the great Mother, creator of the universe called Ronin Kene. For the Shipibo the skin of Ronin Kene has a radiating, electrifying vibration of light, colour, sound, movement and is the embodiment of all possible patterns and designs past, present, and future. The designs that the Shipibo paint are channels or conduits for this multi-sensorial vibrational fusion of form, light and sound. Although in our cultural paradigm we perceive that the geometric patterns are bound within the border of the textile or ceramic vessel, to the Shipibo the patterns extend far beyond these borders and permeate the entire world.

One of the challenges for the Western mind is to acknowledge the relationship between the Shipibo designs and music. For the Shipibo can “listen” to a song or chant by looking at the designs, and inversely paint a pattern by listening to a song or music.

As an astonishing demonstration of this I witnessed two Shipiba paint a large ceremonial ceramic pot known as a Mahuetá. The pot was nearly five feet high and had a diameter of about three feet, each of the Shipiba couldn’t see what the other was painting, yet both were whistling the same song, and when they had finished both sides of the complex geometric pattern were identical and matched each side perfectly.

The Shipibo designs are traditionally carried out on natural un-dyed cotton (which they often grow themselves) or on cotton dyed in mahogany bark (usually three or four times) which gives the distinctive brown colour. They paint either using a pointed piece of chonta (bamboo) or an iron nail with the juice of the crushed Huito (Genipa americana) berry fruits which turns into a blue- brown-black dye once exposed to air.

Each of the designs are unique, even the very small pieces, and they cannot be commercially or mass produced. In Lima I met with a woman who had set up a government funded community project which amongst other matters established a collective for the Shipibo to sell their artisan work and paintings. She tells that a major USA corporation (Pier 1 Imports), enamoured by these designs ordered via the project twenty thousand textiles with the same design, this order could never be fulfilled, the Shipibo could simply not comprehend the concept of replicating identical designs.

The Shipibo believe that our state of health (which includes physical and psychological) is dependent on the balanced union between mind, spirit and body. If an imbalance in this occurs such as through emotions of envy, hate, anger, this will generate a negative effect on the health of that person. The shaman will re-establish the balance by chanting the icaros which are the geometric patterns of harmony made manifest in sound into the body of the person. The shaman in effect transforms the visual code into an acoustic code.

A key element in this magical dialogue with the energy which permeates creation and is embedded in the Shipibo designs is the work with ayahuasca by the Shipibo shamans or muraya. In the deep ayahuasca trance, the ayahuasca reveals to the shaman the luminous geometric patterns of energy. These filaments drift towards the mouth of the shaman where it metamorphoses into a chant or icaro. The icaro is a conduit for the patterns of creation which then permeate the body of the shaman’s patient bringing harmony in the form of the geometric patterns which re-balances the patient’s body. The vocal range of the Shipibo shaman’s when they chant the icaros is astonishing, they can range from the highest falsetto one moment to a sound which resembles a thumping pile driver, and then to a gentle soothing melodic lullaby. Speaking personally of my experience with this, is a feeling that every cell in my body is floating and embraced in a nurturing all-encompassing vibration, even the air around me is vibrating in acoustic resonance with the icaro of the maestro. The shaman knows when the healing is complete as the design is clearly distinct in the patient’s body. It make take a few sessions to complete this, and when completed the geometric healing designs are embedded in the patient’s body, this is called an Arkana. This internal patterning is deemed to be permanent and to protect a person’s spirit.

Angelika Gebhart-Sayer, Professor of Ethnology, University of Marburg writes that “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 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. The designs are permanent and remain with a person’s spirit even after death.”.

Whilst it is not easy for Westerner’s to enter and engage with the world view of the Shipibo which has been developed far away from our linguistic structures and psychological models, there is an underlying sophisticated and complex symbolic language embedded in these geometric patterns. The main figures in the Shipibo designs are the square, the rhombus, the octagon, and the cross. The symmetry of the patterns emanating from the centre (which is our world) is a representation of the outer and inner worlds, a map of the cosmos. The cross represents the Southern Cross constellation which dominates the night sky and divides the cosmos into four quadrants, the intersection of the arms of the cross is the centre of the universe, and becomes the cosmic cross. The cosmic cross represents the eternal spirit of a person and the union of the masculine and feminine principles the very cycle of life and death which reminds us of the great act of procreation of not only the universe, but also of humanity, and our individual selves.

The smaller flowing patterns within the geometric forms are the radiating power of the Cosmic Serpent which turns this way and that, betwixt and between constantly creating the universe as it moves. The circles are often a direct representation of the Cosmic Anaconda, and within the circle itself is the central point of creation.

In the Western tradition, from the Pythagoreans, and Plato through the Renaissance music was used to heal the body and to elevate the soul. It was also believed that earthly music was no more than a faint echo of the universal ‘harmony of the spheres’. This view of the harmony of the universe was held both by artists and scientists until the mechanistic universe of Newton.

Joseph Campbell the foremost scholar of mythology suggests that there is a universe of harmonic vibrations which the human collective unconscious has always been in communion with. Our beings beat to the ancient rhythms of the cosmos. The traditional ways of the Shipibo and other indigenous peoples still reflect the primal rhythm, and their perception of the universal forces made physical is truly a communion with the infinite.

Article Source: Communion With The Infinite – The Visual Music of the Shipibo tribe of the Amazon

Outside the Amazon, artists not born into or raised in indigenous or mestizo ayahuasca-using cultures, including such well-known visionary artists as Alex Grey, Robert Venosa, and Martina Hoffmann, have also rendered visual experiences attributed to the ingestion of ayahuasca or DMT. For want of a better term, I will call this body of work DMT art.

There are some remarkable convergences between DMT art and the abstract representations of the ayahuasca experience in indigenous Amazonian art. The indigenous work on the left, below, by Cashinahua artist Arlindo Daureano Estevão, represents the different worlds of the ayahuasca vision as houses with doors to be entered and paths linking the different contained spaces. This type of design is called nawan kene pua, or stranger’s design, since it is a map that keeps one from getting lost in the ayahuasca world. This abstract representation is strikingly reflected in the work on the right, below, entitled DMT, by photographer Peter Kosinski. It is difficult to say whether such convergences are due to acquaintance with indigenous art or to similarities in the visionary experience.

Arlindo Daureano Estevão, Nawan Kene Pua	Peter Kosinski, DMT

Similarly, on the left below is a traditional Shipibo woven cloth, whose design represents a sacred pattern derived from a cosmic anaconda whose skin embodies all possible designs. Shipibo shamans employ these patterns to reorder the bodies of persons who are sick. Certain diseases are thought to be caused by harmful, messy designs on the wsick body, which the shaman must magically unravel and replace with orderly designs. After drinking ayahuasca, the Shipibo shaman sees a luminous design in the air. When this design floats down and touches the shaman’s lips it becomes transformed into a song the shaman sings. Different elements of the song relate to different elements of the design; for example, the end of each verse is associated with the end-curl of a design motif. When the patient is cured, the design has become clear, neat, and complete. Again, this abstract representation is strikingly reflected in Vibrata Chromodoris’s Emergence, below on the right.

Anonymous, Shipibo Woven Cloth	Vibrata Chromodoris, Emergence

However, most DMT art is representational rather than abstract, and taps into the work of mestizo Amazon visionary artists. The first painting below is by mestizo artist Pablo Amaringo; the remaining pieces are DMT art by artists from outside the Amazon, all working with content recognizably similar to that of Amaringo, although not necessarily in the same naïve outsider style.

Pablo Amaringo, Ayahuasca and Chacruna (Detail)	Robert Venosa, Ayahuasca Dream (Detail)
Cyril Lanier, Ayahuasca Vision of the Blue Perfume	Michael Jacobs, Ayahuasca Dream

But even more striking, I think, are two motifs that appear with some frequency in DMT art but not in the indigenous or mestizo artistic traditions. The first of these I will call The Face — that is, a recognizably humanoid face with eyes, a nose, and a mouth, often filling the entire frame, and often constructed from smaller units, either geometric figures or dots. These figures are often described as a being, an entity, or a visitation. For example, Robert Essig says of his painting DMT Entity, below on the right, “This image was inspired from my first unnatural encounter with the spirit molecule. An Entity that seemed extremely real and intelligent appeared before me with terrific precision and speed. It dissipated as soon as I imposed my will upon it.”

Alex Grey, Ayahuasca Visitation	Robert Essig, DMT Entity

Indeed, The Face often appears in works that are not conceptually about The Face. In Luke Brown’s Pineal Feline, for example, below on the right, the titular face is that of a cat, at the bottom center of the painting; what then makes up The Face are floral arabesques and ornamentation of the cat’s face, almost entirely buried within — indeed, reduced almost to a decorative adornment of — The Face. Similarly, in Martina Hoffman’s La Chacruna, below on the left, The Face decomposes, upon closer inspection, into arabesques, including snakes and elephant heads, elaborated upon the relatively small face of the goddess, in the upper middle of the painting.

Martina Hoffmann, La Chacruna	Luke Brown, Pineal Feline

Sometimes The Face is deconstructed to simpler, rather than more complex, elements. At that point, we can begin to see the basic patterns from which complex Faces are constructed.

Dennis Konstantin, DMT Entity	Nisvan, Ayahuasca Vision (Detail)

What is interesting here is that underlying The Face is a relatively simple symmetric pattern, not unlike the abstract patterns of indigenous Amazonian ayahuasca art, but here cognitively assembled into a recognizable human face. Perhaps that is why Essig’s Face dissipated as soon as he imposed his will upon it; attempting to control the image distracted the perceiver from its imposed structural coherence.

Another recurring motif we can call the wingspread. This is a pattern very similar to the wings of a moth or dragonfly. Below, for example, is a more or less typical moth — actually, the tobacco hornworm moth (Maduca sexta):

Wingspread Moth

We can see this wingspread motif reproduced with increasing elaboration in the following pictures:

Strikingly, this wingspread pattern is often hidden rather than explicit, providing a formal structure rather than any content; look, for example, at the wingspread position of the hands in Alex Grey’s Light Weaver, especially in conjunction with, say, Robert Venosa’s Yagé Guide, above. The wingspread pattern underlies the purely formal similarity between Mariela de la Paz’s Ayahuaska at the Gates of San Pedro and Alejandre Segrégio’s Presente Divino. Indeed, sometimes this structure is so deeply embedded as to be difficult to discern, until the pattern suddenly emerges, as with the darker rock formation in Olga Spiegel’s Rendezvous.

From m a p s • v o l u m e X n u m b e r 3 • c r e a t i v i t y 2 0 0 0

I am a cognitive psychologist who is studying the phenomenology of the ayahuasca experience. My study is based on extended firsthand experience as well as on the interviewing of a great number of persons in different places and contexts. In the publications cited the reader can find background information about both ayahuasca and the program of my research; for further theoretical discussion, see my forthcoming book The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience.

Phenomenologically, the effects of ayahuasca are multifarious — they include hallucinatory effects in all perceptual modalities, psychological insights, intellectual ideations, spiritual uplifting and mystical experiences. As discussed at length in the book mentioned above, many facets of these may be attributed to enhanced creativity. This characterization is also in line with that made by Dan Merkur (1998) with respect to psychotropic substances in general. According to Merkur, the sole effect of these substances is the induction of enhanced imagination. I do not think that this is the sole effect of these substances, but I do agree that it is a central one. Let me begin with the visual effects that ayahuasca induces. When powerful, these consist of majestic visions that are comparable to cinematographic films of a phantasmagoric nature. The indigenous Amazonian users of ayahuasca believed that these visions reveal other, independently existing realities; many modern drinkers share these beliefs. While not denying the marvelous, otherworldly character of the visions, as a scientific-minded investigator I would rather account for them in psychological, not ontological, terms. Apparently, ayahuasca can push the human mind to heights of creativity that by far exceed those encountered ordinarily. I myself have realized this in conjunction with a vision in which I was guided through an exhibition displaying the works of an entire culture. The exhibits included beautiful artistic objects and artifacts that resembled nothing that I had ever seen before in my entire life. What was striking was that they all adhered to one coherent style. Seeing them I reflected: “If all this is created by my mind, then the mind is indeed by far more mysterious than any cognitive psychologist has envisioned.” Since then this reflection remains very much with me: If it is the mind itself that produces the visions seen with ayahuasca, then the creative powers of the mind transcend anything that psychologists normally speak of.

As explained in Shanon (1998b), ayahuasca can also induce very impressive ideations. It is very typical for ayahuasca drinkers to report that the brew makes them think faster and better — indeed, makes them more intelligent. Several of my informants reported the feeling of potentially being able to know everything; I too had this experience. While, this overall feeling is not objectively provable, my data do reveal some ideations which are truly impressive. Especially let me mention philosophical insights attained by drinkers without prior formal education. Some of these resemble ideas encountered in classical works as those of Plato, Plotinus, Spinoza and Hegel. Significant insights are more likely to be encountered in domains in which drinkers have special competence. Personally, with ayahuasca, I had many insights regarding my professional field of expertise and to which, following further critical scrutiny, I still hold. I have heard the same from other persons. It is in this vein that I would interpret the common reports of indigenous medicine-men that ayahuasca reveals to them the diagnosis of their patients’ afflictions and instructs them on how to cure them. The traditional interpretation is that the information comes by way of supra-natural revelation. On the basis of both my general theoretical approach and checks I have conducted empirically, I would rather say that what happens is the result of heightened sensitivity and insight in a domain in which the shaman already has substantial knowledge and expertise.

As emphasized in my book, some salient effects of ayahuasca pertain to overt performances. Impressive performances that I have witnessed myself included instrument playing, singing, dancing, tai-chi-like movements, and acting. In these, drinkers exhibited technical agility, aesthetic delicacy, accuracy and coordinated motor control which by far exceeded their normal abilities. Here is one experience of my own. Once during a private ayahuasca session, on the spur of the moment, I decided to play the piano. In an amateur fashion, I have been playing the piano since childhood. I have played only classical music, always from the score, never improvising and very seldom with an audience. Here, for the first time in my life, I began to improvise. I played for more than an hour, and the manner of my playing was different from anything I have ever experienced. It was executed in one unfaltering flow, constituting an ongoing narration that was being composed as it was being executed. It appeared that my fingers just knew where to go. Throughout this act, my technical performance astounded me. Another person was present and he was very moved by it. When the session ended, it occurred to me that I had had the most wonderful piano lesson of my life. Since then I have been free-playing without ayahuasca. The quality of this playing is not like that under the intoxication, but it does exhibit some features that my piano playing never did before that ayahuasca session. Let me conclude with a word of caution. I have met many who believed that ayahuasca enabled them to do things they knew nothing of. For instance, many of my informants vouched that they heard people speak in languages completely foreign to them. I have checked into the matter and found no empirical support for that. In general, I would strongly advise against simplistic, reductionist views of the effects of ayahuasca (and psychoactive substances in general). I do not think that these effects are direct, biologically-determined products of chemical substances that act upon the brain. Rather, as argued at length in my book, what happens in the course of the ayahuasca inebriation is a joint product of both the substance and the person consuming it. An analogy that comes to mind is that of a race car. Obviously, without the vehicle, the driver would not be able to attain the fast speeds he/she does; at the same time, in order to drive the car and obtain good performances from it, one should be an experienced driver. Likewise with ayahuasca: This brew can endow human beings with special creative energy but what will be done with this energy depends on the individual in question. •

Benny Shanon (Israel)
msshanon@mscc.huji.ac.il

References
Merkur, D. 1998. The Ecstatic Imagination: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of Self-Actualization. State University of New York Press. Shanon, B. 1997. “A cognitive-psychological study of ayahuasca,” MAPS Bulletin 7: 13-15.
Shanon, B. 1998a. “Cognitive psychology and the study of Ayahuasca,” Yearbook of Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness 7 (in press). Edited by C. Rätsch & J. Baker. Berlin: VWB Verlag.
Shanon, B. 1998b. “Ideas and reflections associated with Ayahuasca visions,” MAPS Bulletin 8: 18-21.
Shanon, B. 1999. “Ayahuasca visions: A comparative cognitive investigation,” Yearbook for Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness 8 (in press). Edited by C. Rätsch & J. Baker. Berlin: VWB Verlag.

http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v10n3/10318sha.html

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…