Peter Gorman has been places. He’s been inside, outside, upside, downside, this side, that side, and the other side. In the words of Dennis McKenna; Peter Gorman has “been way, way beyond the chrysanthemum on many a dark jungle night.” And that’s putting it mildly.

His new book Ayahuasca in My Blood: 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming, is brewed with an enchanting lucidity. To read it is to drink down a story, a whirlwind, a wild fire of spirits and curanderos, pirates and teachers, frogs and vines, snakes and shamanism, plants and visions woven across the arc of a quarter century’s worth of heavyweight Amazonian, Texan and New York City adventures.

Written with the total recall of an expert investigative journalist, prepared with the special flair and flavors of a Master Chef, the book is spun lavishly, elegantly. Reading the book places you deep in the forest, late at night, around a small campfire, listening to a savvy bard recount terrifying ghost stories. Stories you might only barely admit to believing. Thing is, these stories, and the storyteller, are realer than real. Furthermore, the ghosts in these stories appear to you in sharp focus, they surround, they approach, touch, terrify, cajole and, they are ones holding lights up to their faces.

Ayahuasca in My Blood articulates very clearly Gorman’s relationship with the realms of the “way, way beyond”. It must be said, however, that Peter has also been, and remains, very down-to-earth.

The heart of the book concerns Peter’s extraordinary experiences with ayahuasca. However, his struggles with his family, his work, his truck, his ranch in Texas, his life in NYC and his old bar in Iquitos all play major roles in an intense narrative that manages to include magnificent, informal biographies of three of his most important and respected teachers; Moises Torres Vienna, an ex-military man who first takes Gorman out into the deep green, imparting lessons in survival; Pablo, the powerful Matses headman who introduced Peter to sapo—the now legendary frog venom medicine; and of course the story of the humble and potent curandero, Don Julio Jerena.

Ayahuasca books are bursting forth like wildflowers, yet rare is it to find one’s self SCUBA diving through the veins of someone who’s traversed this terrain as long, deep and freaky as Gorman has.

Try as I might to avoid presumptions, or pull cliches, it must be said that Ayahuasca in My Blood is destined to become a classic. In fact it’s already there. More than that, it’s a valuable reflection on the nature of shamanism, a reflection that has not, to my knowledge, ever been illuminated in such a visceral way.

If one considers the spectrum of related literature—take for example William S. Burroughs’ The Yajé Letters, Terence McKenna’s True Hallucinations, Wade Davis’ One River, Jimmy Weiskopf’s Yajé: The New Purgatory, or Steve Beyer’s Singing to the Plants—Peter Gorman’s Ayahuasca in My Blood weighs in amongst these giants and, in many ways, ties them all together.

Like Gorman, William S. Burroughs stumbled into the role of being a precedent setting, right-place-at-the-right-time gringo drawn to the jungle and its medicines long before most of the world even caught a whisper of anything to do with ayahuasca. Terence McKenna went very, very deep and utterly lived (and loved) to tell the tale, however tall and unlikely it may have seemed to be. Wade Davis, the gifted writer and explorer, wove together a story of the jungle, plants, and his friends and mentors Richard Evans Schultes and Tim Plowman. Jimmy Weiskopf courageously detailed his own hell, transformation and learning, and Steve Beyer simply laid it all out in one fell swoop.

Ayahuasca in My Blood is a mix of all of the above. What distinguishes the book is in part due to Gorman’s style as a writer, he’s most certainly and abundantly endowed with the Irish gift of gab, and a memory of unparalleled clarity. However, perhaps more importantly, is in how this book casts, with tremendous verve, the doors of perception wide open, busting them off their hinges, sending them flying into the deepest void you care to imagine, where a great wind sweeps you clean off your feet, rockets you head over heels into a whole other ballgame, brings you back to reality, momentarily, then threatens you, teases you, provokes, challenges and simply never lets up until you find yourself dropped, like some kind of jungle-fied Dorothy, breathless, in the eye of a poltergeist tornado, with a snake in your stomach and bills to pay.

There are very few people alive who have 25 or more years experience with ayahuasca, most of them are the old mestizo and indigenous shamans of South America. Rarer still are those among this experienced group who are willing and able to write about their experiences. Peter Gorman, in opening his heart, his life and his talents, shares a masterwork in this respect; a tremendously earthy, rich, poetic, way-out and honestly magical artifact, gathered from the deepest of depths.

MORGAN MAHER: What first brought you to the Amazon jungle?

PETER GORMAN: I always loved travelling. Starting in high school I began to hitchhike, eventually crossing the U.S. several times and logging about 50,000 miles on my thumb. Feeling like I’d seen a good deal of the U.S., I headed out to Europe and then on to Mexico for a few months.

In Mexico I fell in love with the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas. I’d have gone back but the woman I lived with bought me a book on my return called Headhunters of the Amazon, by a fellow named Up de Graf. I think it was published in 1923, but it dealt with his time in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon from about 1896-1906 or something like that. Large sections of the book took place on the Yavari River, the border between Brazil and Peru. He painted it as a wild place, a no man’s land. So I decided to go see that river.

The nearest jumping off point was Iquitos, Peru, and so that’s where I went in 1984 with a couple of pals. I returned in 1985 to do a month of jungle survival training with a fantastic guide and teacher, Moises Torres Vienna.

I didn’t get to the Yavari right away, but did get there in 1986, and in 1988 spent some weeks there. A couple of years later I was able to secure my own boat and run the length of that river. It was as wild when I reached it as it sounded like it was for Up de Graf.

Much of the book, and your experiences in the jungle, is inspired and connected to your friend and teacher Don Julio Jerena. Could you tell us about Julio?

Julio…hmmm. Well, he was the local curandero—healer—on the Aucayacu River, about 212 km south of Iquitos, not far from the river town of Genero Herrera. I first met him in 1985, when Moises took me out that way. He was small, strong, handsome. He had a bright smile and ears that were too big for his head. But he had a light in his eyes that I’d rarely seen. He was impish, full of fun, and an amazing healer. He was also the father of a pretty huge brood: I know nine of his children—the youngest born when he was 70—and I’m told there are a few I’ve never met.

In real life, he supported his family with his military pension, which was several hundred dollars a month because he’d been in action in two wars as a young man, and as a fisherman. He was the simplest of men. He loved living on his little river, loved his small fields of yuca and sugarcane, corn and plantains. He loved his boiled fish and plantains. He loved to laugh. He was elegantly humble.

But he was also a man of immense power. When he walked in the jungle he didn’t slash at the underbrush, he sort of waved at it with his machete as though the suggestion that the vines part was enough to get the vines to part. And most of the time it almost seemed as that were true. He healed with a wonderful touch, using ayahuasca to connect with the spirits—the sentient side—of the plants he’d need to utilize to heal a wide variety of ailments. Over the years I saw him work on snakebites, sick children, cancer patients (that one was one of my guests, and she got several more years than she thought she would), fungal infections, parasites—a host of things a lot of medical doctors would have a tough time healing. And he loved doing that.

What lessons did he impart upon you?

How to laugh when kids are driving you up the wall. How to apply patience to jobs to get the work done. To realize that the spirit of ayahuasca and the spirits of the other plants, and the guardian spirits are the doctors and that if we’re lucky enough to get the chance to heal someone sometimes to never believe that we are the doctors. To understand that this world, this universe and the other realities are all connected and that we have the ability to connect with it all.

What lessons, or what kinds of lessons, have the plants taught, or continue to teach you?

That’s not easy to answer. I am just whoever I am. I’m a dad, a journalist, a guy trying to put good healthy food on the table. Someone who has cats and dogs and chickens and ducks and birds and a goat and who tries to remember to feed them all before I feed myself.

Would I be who I am if I’d never gone to the Amazon? If I’d never had ayahuasca? I don’t know. I would still be me, but I’d be a different me. But what part of that can I compartmentalize to say “Oh, that’s the ayahuasca?” versus just plain “Oh, that’s the experience of living, of raising kids” or whatnot?

A great deal of the work that ayahuasca and other plants have done on me, I think, relates to my heart. To the ability to love freely, knowing there’s no shortage of what you can give. To forgive freely, knowing that holding the anger or pain is only going to make you sick and will do no one any good.

I think I also understand the first inkling of healing others. Not that that’s something I can do, like a trick. But when my mother-in-law was dying, the plants let me put my hands on her back and absorb the heat her body was putting out. They allowed me to take it and eliminate it so that she could sleep. It blistered my hands but gave her rest.

There’s really a great deal of learning that’s gone on. It’s the compartmentalizing that’s difficult to do. In other words, I think I’m a better person than I might have otherwise turned out, but when I look in the mirror I see that I’m still full of flaws.

An important person in your life, and in the book, is your jungle teacher Moises Torres Vienna. Could you tell us about Moises.

Like Julio, Moises was one of three extraordinary teachers I have had as an adult. Four if you include my ex, who taught me an immense amount about the jungle she grew up in. But the three were different. I met Moises with my two pals on my first trip to Peru. We’d seen Cuzco and Machu Picchu and hiked in the Cordillera Blanca near Huaraz and had finally gotten down to the jungle in Iquitos, where I was instantly at home. On our first day there, Moises, a ruggedly handsome former trainer of jungle forces for both the Peruvian and American military, was by then retired and a guide. He approached my friends and I on the street in Iquitos and asked if we wanted a guide.

I was so tired of people saying they were guides by that time that I blew him off. I told my friends we should just catch a big riverboat somewhere and we’d wind up in a jungle town and find a real guide there, rather than use this smarmy little guy.

So we did. We took a boat that took us to a little town—at that time—called Requena on the Ucayali River, headwater for the Amazon. It was a fascinating place. But difficult for gringos, which it didn’t get many of. For a hotel we had to take a place where wood partitions ran halfway up the wall and were topped by wire mesh. The guy downstairs kept a burro that brayed all day and night. We were followed by maybe 100 people everywhere we went—which was up and down the single street of the place. No one could change US money, and nobody had food prepared in restaurants. When you came in and ordered, they went out to try to buy a chicken for your meal.

And nobody would take us into the jungle. They were all afraid of ghosts, Indians and jaguars. People went out as far as their chacras, fields, maybe 1000 yards behind the main street but that was pretty much it. Nobody we met in the nine days we spent there would even consider stepping into the canopy behind the last field.

We spent the nine days in that crazy little place—which has grown up a great deal in the last 26 years—because the water was low that time of year and no riverboats coming from further up the river at Pucallpa could navigate. A couple of days of rain raised the river sufficiently though, and just about the time we were acclimating to Requena, we were out of Peruvian money and had to return to Iquitos.

Shortly after we returned to our little hotel—I always took a single room so that I could make trip notes—there was a knock on the door of Larry and Chuck’s room. It was Moises. The guys got me and Moises asked how things had gone. I told him they’d gone great. He laughed. He said he knew we hadn’t gone to the jungle because nobody in Requena went to the jungle. They were all too afraid. But he would take us to the jungle if we liked. Full jungle was how he put it. Then he added the word “ayahuasca?” which none of us had ever heard of. He explained it was an hallucinogen that was a powerful traditional medicine. We could try it during our time in the full jungle if we liked.

We said okay, negotiated a price and then just as we were finished, he looked at my feet and said, “you can’t come. No boots, no jungle. Spine trees on the jungle floor.”

That was a new take. A Peruvian guide turning down a gringo’s money?

Then he laughed. “Don’t worry. I have a pair of boots that will fit you.”

When he returned that evening with a pair of size 10 leather workboots, I was sold.

Over the years we became great friends. He’d take me out on long hikes, teach me jungle survival—like what vines to drink from and which would kill you—how to figure out if a food was good to eat or poisonous, how to build shelters, set traps, avoid snakes or kill them if you had to, brought me to the Matses, helped me put together my first boat for a 30 day trip on the Yavari. He was patient with a lousy student, made certain his lessons were well learned, was tireless at the end of long hiking days when I was too beat to get a fire and food going, and never forgot to bring extra coffee and a couple of spare packs of smokes for me. And he laughed the whole time doing it. Just a wonderful teacher.

Another element of your experiences in the Amazon concerns your friendship with the Matsés. Could you speak a bit about the Matsés, and perhaps about Pablo in particular?

Now you’re on to the third of my three extraordinary teachers, Pablo, the curaka. Pablo, like Julio and Moises, had this fantastic light in his eyes. All three looked like they were chuckling on the inside, enjoying every minute of living, despite all three of them living in the physically difficult Amazon.

Moises and I ran into some Matses on the Aucayako in 1985. A year later I went to one of the rivers they have traditionally lived on, the Galvez River, which drains into the Yavari. We spent about a month on the river on that trip, moving from camp to camp—there were six camps of Matses at that time up there. Pablo’s was the smallest: Just he and his four wives and his friend Alberto and his two wives, and their kids. Maybe 20 kids all told, though I later met a number of Pablo’s older kids and in all he probably had 30.

Moises and Pablo had history. In 1970 or 1971, Pablo had been a young Matses among a band that had raided the city of Genaro Herrera. They stole machetes and axe heads, several women and two young longhaired Franciscan Friars or monks. They later killed the latter, probably when they discovered they weren’t women.

In retaliation, the Peruvian military bombed the Matses camps for four days. During that same time, Moises, then a sargeant in the military, led a ground group against the Matses. Despite being half-indigenous, Moises cared little for indigenous and always described the ferocity with which he killed some of them with a sort of perverse enjoyment. But he said that changed when he saw Pablo and some other Matses trying to down the Peruvian bombers with their bows and arrows. “They were completely unafraid,” he said. “And Pablo was the bravest. I admired his courage and we became friends because he said he admired my courage as well.”

Meeting Pablo was no disappointment. He took me hunting, showed me medicinal plants, gave me my first dose of sapo—frog sweat—and laughed when I was writhing in pain on the ground. He talked with plants and animals and swore they talked back. He’d blow nu-nu, a tobacco and macambo snuff, at the clouds to keep it from raining and damned if it might not be raining all around the little camp but not in it. He really was one of the last of the “antiguas”, the old timers who knew the old ways of the Matses, and those ways involved deep interaction with the jungle in ways that seem mysterious and magic to those of us who witness them but don’t understand them.

For medicines, it seemed—and I knew Pablo over a 20 year period, maybe eight long visits in all—like every plant was a cure. If it wasn’t a cure it provided food or shelter or the material to make hammocks with. He’d use plant medicines like nu-nu to see where to hunt the following day—and he had to hunt well to feed all those wives and kids. He shared everything with me, even tried to get me to go on a raid to a distant village to rob some champi—young girls so that I could have a couple of wives. That was the only adventure on which I turned him down.

He’s the man responsible for the medical breakthroughs now being made using the peptides from his sapo frog—which turned out, when I was able to bring it out of the jungle—to be the phylomedusa bicolor, the giant monkey tree frog. And because of his work—primarily—on plant collecting with me for Shaman Pharmaceuticals in the early 1990s, he’s the reason that all of the Matses are now the only tribal group in all of Peru that now has permanently demarked land along with air, water and mineral rights. That was something Shaman arranged after the second of my very successful medicinal plant collecting trips on the Yavari and Galvez rivers. My trips, but it was Pablo and a couple of others at different camps, who produced the goods for Shaman. I was just the conduit.

I’ve written a lot about Pablo and plant collecting, and someday I would like to just write about Pablo the person. He was just an hilarious character top to bottom.

How has your life changed over the course of more than 25 years learning and working with ayahuasca?

Well, now that you’ve gotten me talking about my three great human teachers, I will add ayahuasca as my great plant-spirit teacher. My life changed? Don’t know because it’s the only life I’ve had. And that includes those guys, that jungle, those rivers, the sounds, the shapes, the food, the rain, the crossing of log bridges… and ayahuasca is a big part of that. But my life also includes being an investigative journalist, a dad, a brother, a plumber when the sink gets clogged, and everything else that goes into living. For me, it’s just a life. Ayahuasca and the jungle are not separate, have not been separate from my normal life since I met them. Sometimes I’m in the U.S, sometimes in the jungle, but it’s all one life.

I really think that ayahuasca, more than anything, has shown me in a very real and concrete way, that things like personal guardians exist, that everything is sentient and must be respected on equal value with everything else. I mean the old coffee grinds as well as the tallest tree, as well as that fly that’s buzzing around you incessantly. It’s showed me the value of life in a way I was taught but didn’t understand. It’s allowed me to see the other realms, to even sometimes operate in them to affect changes in this realm. It’s filled me with wonderment about every single day. I wake up wondering what’s going to be shown to me every morning and I love that.

I might have done that without my three teachers and ayahuasca, but I’m not sure. I do know that I used to push love away, thinking somehow I wasn’t good enough or worthy, and that in the last 10 years I’ve learned to say “give it here! Gimme what you got!” and to give it away freely as well. That’s one place where I think the change in me is noticeable. To me at least.

In what ways has your experience and relationship with ayahuasca affected your day-to-day life?

Well, I like that I can fly now, And having superstrength is a gas….kidding. Ayahuasca is part of my day to day life, so I don’t know, beyond what I’ve said about giving and receiving love, how else it’s changed things. The spirits in general, have been helpful: they’ll sometimes tell me what plants a person needs to use to rid themselves of a physical ailment, or get in my face if I start overreacting to the kids and bring out the dad voice too quickly. They remind me when I’ve had too much to drink and think I can drive just to the corner….and then they’ll make the keys disappear if I try to ignore them. And I am very glad they do those things. I’m very appreciative.

Your book is filled with amazingly detailed descriptions of your ayahuasca visions. Perhaps they could even be described as experiences, in that you tend to go far beyond what may be commonly associated as “ayahuasca visions”. For example you describe going to “The red room. The place where the healing happens”, or the market “where you get the medicines” or Joe’s Café. What do these kinds of places mean to you, and how have they changed your perception reality?

Those places are real places. Something to remember is that our human brain needs to compartmentalize things. Since we’re not brought up dealing with spirits on a day-to-day basis, when we run into one, we tend to give it a human or monstrous shape—a shape it might not have at all. But our brain needs to be able to process things so we give those spirits a shape, a name, a visual we can deal with so our brain won’t explode from not knowing how to process the information.

Now the “red room” is how I see a particular place. That place is an unmeasurably large cavern where all of the pain and suffering, all of the rotten deeds and selfish acts go. And in that place there are spirits who know how to transform that pain and horror into something positive so it can be let out into our world again without hurting anyone anymore. So when I’m called on to take someone’s pain or grief or whatnot, I don’t want to just keep it or it’ll stay with me. So having been shown the red room—and someone else’s brain would have them perceive it entirely differently—I know that’s the perfect place to put that awful stuff I’ve taken out of somebody. So to me it’s a place of transformation for rotten, pain and anguish causing feelings and suffering that’s very accessible in real life terms. I just open the door—which happens to be right next to me when I need it—and ask those spirits to take that junk and transform it into something good.

The market to get the medicines is another interesting place. I’m not someone who knows all the plants—heck I probably know less than the average person. Still, I’m sometimes asked to come up with a remedy for someone. And the guardians—call them guardian angels if that’s more comfortable, though they don’t look like classic angels to me—know that, so they very nicely introduced me to a market filled with plants. And when someone needs something, I go to that market—no, you can’t see it, it’s only in my perception the way it is—and shout out the name of the illness or problem that needs fixing. And the plants are so freaking generous they just sometimes shout out the name or names of those that I’ll need. And then I’ll write them down and relay the information. Ridiculous on the face of it, and I’ll probably be sent to the looney bin for even suggesting what I’ve just said. Still, even when I’m given a plant name I’ve never heard of, I can usually find it on the net and because the plants are so generous, the use of the plant is generally spot on for what needs healing.

Joe’s Café is another spot. Just a little café where you get to see things not normally visible to the human eye. It’s not around all the time, just when I need it.

Now, the most important thing to remember with all these places, these gifts, is that I’ve been warned they can’t be used selfishly. I couldn’t go to Joe’s Café and see who is going to win a ball game tomorrow night. If I did and then bet on the outcome, I’m sure I’d lose, and not only that, I’d probably never be allowed to go to the café again.

Also important to remember is that while this stuff is crazy, it’s not. It’s just accessing other realities that exist but move at maybe a different vibratory speed than the reality in which we exists does.

And facilitating access to those realities are what the plant teachers like Ayahuasca and San Pedro and Peyote do. The codicil—if that’s the right word—is that once you’ve opened the door to those realities, once you’ve broadened the bandwidth of your sight to see those realities or experience them, you probably won’t be able to fully close that door again. And that’s pretty frightening to some people. I mean, to say there are ghosts is one thing. To have them waking you at 3 AM while they clomp around the kitchen is quite another.

What guides you?

A simple sense that this could be a wonderful world if we’d all just pitch in and make it one. In journalism my work involves trying to expose rotten and vile things so that we can see them for what they are and eliminate them. Sometimes that means exposing the horror the war on drugs creates—from politically/financially motivated private prisons to mandatory sentencing laws to property forfeiture, to keeping hemp illegal when it might do so much good if its status was changed.

Other times I’m motivated because I see the poor getting shafted in a million ways, or how the U.S. can manipulate politics around the globe to ensure benefit to private companies at the expense of whole populations.

Those things motivate me and they become my guide posts as well. I’m not going to fix this damned world, but I am damned sure allowed to keep trying in my own way.

Then there are my jungle groups, where I take guests out into the deep green and have them experience the jungle and ayahuasca in a pretty traditional setting. So many of those guests are so ripe for change, so hoping to change their lives—even if they don’t know it—that those trips often are just the thing they needed to either find a new direction in their lives or to give them the courage to deal with their lives in a more positive way. Those people, already good people, mostly just need a little polishing after life has kicked them around some. And I love being able to put them in touch with the things that can polish them up. Cause that makes a better world too.

What is important to you?

My kids, my friends, the under-served, underprivileged, the folks getting the short end of things. And my ex-wife’s new babies. And my granddaughter. And the dog and cats and everything else we take care of. What’s important to me is to keep looking at life like a new thing. To keep working to get the same gleam in my eye over living that Julio, Moises and Pablo always did.

What is the most frightening thing you’ve encountered?

My own selfish behaviour. Watching and being forced to relive some of the stupid, selfish things I’ve done over and over before Ayahuasca will let me vomit them out. The spirits can be demanding and they can be very very frightening, but in the end it’s my own negativity, my own failures, my own stupidity, my own self-centeredness that provokes the greatest fear. And when the medicine tells me we’re going to be working on something related to that on a given night, well, many times I have tried my best to run away from the experience out of sheer terror.

You’ve experienced many different peoples, plants and places. What is it about the Amazon and ayahuasca that continues to captivate you so?

In all my time in Peru, both as a guest and when I lived there and ran my bar, I have never once gone to sleep without having learned something new. That is a very amazing thing to be able to say. And that is something that keeps the Amazon, the jungle, the rivers, the medicine fresh. It just thrills me to be there.

Of course, there’s a lot about it I don’t like. I don’t like the noise of the motorcars, I don’t like the dust in the air and the diesel fuel smells in Iquitos. I can get bored when I have done my work for the day—and when I get bored I want a drink to get a party going, and that’s led to some hilarious and not so hilarious events over the years. But overall, something still happens every day, and I mean every day, that makes me look at the world with just a slightly different pair of eyes when I go to bed than I had when I woke up. That’s a pretty irresistible lure for me.

I’ve asked this kind of question before, and I know you’re a fantastic chef so I’ll ask you, too; You’re out in the jungle, you’ve packed some fruit and vegetables with you and some supplies. You’re hungry, you’ve got a few of your team with you, some of them just returned from hunting, others from fishing. It’s a beautiful day and you’ve all worked very hard. What are you going to cook up?

Well, I’m not much on most jungle meats—I’m just not big on monkeys and sloths and such—but if my guys happened to come on a majas, a large jungle rodent, well, for sure we’re gonna roast some of that. It’s one of the few animals in the jungle that has fat on it, and when that fat starts to drip into the flames, well…..

Now if the guys were attacked by a cayman and had to kill it, we’d cut the tail into thick steaks and grill them, then slather them in lime and garlic…

If the guys fishing happened to bring back a couple of fat piranha’s, well, put those guys on the grill and toss a bit of vinegar on them, and some wild cilantro if we can find some. Piranha are some of the best eating fish in the world.

For fruits, I can always go for a thick slice of jungle papaya with lime juice and a bit of salt.

For starch, I’d try to find a couple of yuca roots. Just boil them simply is good by me, or, if you’ve got a bit of oil, sauté them babies.

For veggies, let’s do a stir fry with ginger, cabbage, cauliflower, green beans, tomatoes, spinach and whatever else we’ve got or can find.

If we have some Ucayali beans—kind of like a pinto bean that comes from the Amazon–with us and we were smart enough to start them early, well, we’d have a little oil with lots of garlic and onion—or onion grass if we don’t have onions—in the pot. When that was just right, I’d fill the pot with water, add the beans when it’s boiling, toss in several diced tomatoes and some acholte or cumin other local spice. And four hours later, when the beans were ready, I’d finish it off with fresh cilantro. If we don’t have any, I’d put some Yerba Louisa, lemon grass, in to give it that final bite.

That sounds like a pretty good meal to me, even if nobody has any majas or cayman tail or piranha.

Your book is fecund, and flowing with amazing stories and experiences. Any stories that you would have loved to fit in, but somehow couldn’t? Anything left untold?

There are a lifetime of stories not in the book. The book concentrates on ayahuasca and my relationship with it. There is some jungle, some damned good adventure, some love, some loss, victories and defeats, but it’s primarily about ayahuasca’s relation to all of that. Each of the two plant collecting trips in my own boats from Iquitos to Leticia to Angamos and up the Galvez—30-plus day trips after the month of finding and rebuilding the old boats I used—could be it’s own book. Trips up the Rio Napo are not even mentioned. A hike from Tamishacu to the Rio Midi is passed over. That was a good one. It was my first time, real time spent on the Yavari River. Moises and I hiked maybe four days to a little town on the Rio Midi, which lets out into the Yavari. Our plan was to make a balsa raft and float to the Yavari and from there, float down to Leticia in Colombia, where we would catch a boat down to Iquitos. Problem was, the river was too low for that. Also, there was very little balsa available.

We arrived in the little town just as they were starting a 3-day celebration of Peru’s Independence from Spain. That was quite a party. People came from all over that part of the jungle to dance, sing, drink and feast nonstop. You’d be given a huge gourd of fermented masato, maybe a quart, and drink it down till it was finished. Everyone would cheer. Then they’d give you another, and another. So you had to vomit out what you drank to make room for more. So everybody was vomiting, and drinking and vomiting….most wonderfully hilarious party I ever attended. And this was good masato—the yuca had been properly chewed and spit out by the women, helping it ferment and giving it just the right texture. Bit of an acquired taste.

At the end of the party, with no raft, we convinced one of the partygoers to take us down to the Yavari and then down to Leticia. The problem was, he had little gas. Just about enough for the few hours it would take his little 15 Hp motor to the mouth of the Midi.

Moises was certain that once we got there we could get gasoline to continue the trip. Well, we went from one little shack—they were pretty well spread out—to another on our first day on the Yavari and came up empty. We had to paddle with one oar as that’s all the man had, most of that day. And that night we got stuck in a very slow whirlpool that simply spun us around and around all night long. We all woke up sick from the spinning.

On the second day, Moises changed tact. He ordered me to carry our shotgun, and he’d approach a little hut owned by some fisherman and I’ve have to point that shotgun in the general direction of someone and he’d demand whatever gas they had. Now most everybody out there had a half a gallon of gas stashed somewhere, so we spent days going half-gallon by half-gallon, essentially stealing everybody’s gas on the river. We promised we’d return it when the boatman came back upriver, but nobody believed us.

So there we were, stealing gas, and our boatman was sure we were gonna leave him stranded in Leticia with no gas for himself and no gas to pay back to people, so he was afraid he was going to get killed when he returned home.

He wasn’t. We were good for our word. In the Brazilian town of Benjamin Constant, right next to Leticia, we stopped at a floating service station and I bought—on credit—two 55 gallon drums of gasoline. The boatman got one for his work, and everybody else was to get double what we took from them at shotgun point.

It wound up working out fine, and everybody remembered me as a good guy when I returned to them in my own boat a couple of years later. We just laughed about it over masato.

There was also no room, or place in the book, for a recent story when I came on an illegal logging operation and some of my team and I, at my direction, cut all the logs in the log raft loose and floated them down to a large lake where they dispersed everywhere. My hope was that the logger would have to spend enough time regathering them that he’d lose his profit and decide not to illegally log anymore, at least on that river.

And there was very little room in the book for talking about being the only gringo in a place like Iquitos to run a bar. And one that was on an old port on the roughest corner in town. There were a million stories out of that place, and I think people still talk about The Cold Beer Blues Bar down there, even when I’m not around. I probably still get 30 emails a year from strangers asking where it is. And it’s been closed for almost 10 years.

And the markets, and having an extended family, and getting friends out of jail and run ins with DEA types and military guys and getting bitten by piranas and flesh eating spider bites and having to do nearly a whole trip on a broken ankle and having an intestine explode in the middle of a trip and what it’s like to hang around the docks in the third world, or fly in little Cessna’s without any instrumentation over that vast forest, or collecting artifacts for the Museum of Natural History in New York, running into huge boas, having a boat of mine attacked by black cayman … there are lots of things in the book, and I hope it’s a great read and all that, but there’s lots more to tell. It’s been one heck of a life.

Peter Gorman’s Ayahuasca in My Blood: 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming is available now.

]]> http://www.ayahuasca.com/spirit/bloodletting-with-peter-gorman/feed/ 2 http://www.ayahuasca.com/spirit/primordial-and-traditional-culture/self-control/ http://www.ayahuasca.com/spirit/primordial-and-traditional-culture/self-control/#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 11:37:47 +0000 Steve Beyer http://www.ayahuasca.com/?p=428 Steve Beyer, author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, talks about the differences — and similarities — between healers and sorcerers in the Upper Amazon.]]> by Steve Beyer

There is a theme woven through the shamanisms of the Upper Amazon — that human beings in general, and shamans in particular, have powerful urges to harm other humans. The difference between a healer and a sorcerer is that the former is able to bring these urges under control, while the latter either cannot or does not want to.

Thus, what distinguishes a healer from a sorcerer is self-control. This self-control must be exercised specifically in two areas — first, in keeping to la dieta, the restricted diet; and, second, in resisting the urge to use the magical darts acquired at initiation for frivolous or selfish purposes. Shamans who master their desires may use their powers to heal; those who give in to desire, by their lack of self-control, become sorcerers, followers of the easy path.

As simple as the restricted diet seems, it is hard to keep. Food without salt or sugar is bland and boring; I have tried to live on just fish and plantains, and, believe me, the craving for salt or sugar can become intense. Commenting on a similar diet among Achuar apprentice shamans, limited to plantains, boiled palm hearts, and small fish, anthropologist Philippe Descola calls it “dauntingly dull.” In order to be a shaman, one Napo Runa elder says, “one has to suffer much with all this fasting.” Thus, la dieta is a form of self-imposed discipline, which makes the apprentice or shaman worthy of the love of the plants.

Secoya shaman Fernando Payaguaje, speaking of the restricted diet kept when drinking yagé, says: “Some people drink yagé only to the point of reaching the power to practice witchcraft; with these crafts they can kill people. A much greater effort and consumption of yagé is required to reach the highest level, where one gains access to the visions and power of healing. To become a sorcerer is easy and fast.” As anthropologist Françoise Barbira Freedman puts it, shamans who master their emotions and aggressive desires use their powers to heal; apprentices who break the rules of their ascetic training become weak, and therefore become sorcerers.

Similarly, a significant part of the initiation process is for the new shaman to demonstrate the self-control which separates healers from sorcerers. Self-control is manifested in resisting the immediate urge to use newly acquired powers to cause harm. Among the Shuar, there is a general sentiment among the people that becoming a shaman — acquiring tsentsak, magic darts — creates an irresistible desire to do harm, that “the tsentsak make you do bad things.” Shuar shamans themselves dispute this. While the tsentsak indeed tempt one to harm, the desire can be resisted; those who “study with the aim to cure” become healers.

Shuar shaman Alejandro Tsakímp describes one of these temptations as the urge to try out the new darts on an animal — “a dog or a bird, anything that has blood.” Once one does that, once one “starts doing harm, killing animals, one cannot cure,” but becomes a maliciador, a sorcerer. Similarly, the Desana believe that sorcery is very dangerous, apt to rebound on its practitioner, and to be used only in narrowly defined circumstances — for revenge on a sorcerer who has killed a family member, for example. Thus it is the novice, the inexperienced, the untrained person who causes sickness — who lacks the self-control imposed by the shamanic initiation, who experiments with evil spells, who uses them carelessly and irresponsibly, just to see if they work.

This self-control is often expressed in terms of regurgitation and reingestion of shamanic power. Anong the Shuar, after a month of apprenticeship, a tsentsak comes out of the apprentice’s mouth. The apprentice must resist the temptation to use this dart to harm his enemies; in order to become a healing shaman, the apprentice must swallow what he himself has regurgitated. Among the Canelos Quichua, the master coughs up spirit helpers in the form of darts, which the apprentice swallows; here, too, the darts come out of the apprentice’s body and tempt him to use them against his enemies; again, the apprentice must avoid the temptation and reswallow the darts, for only in this way can he become a healer.

This self-control is sometimes also put in terms of turning down gifts from the spirits. The spirits of the plants may offer the apprentice great powers and gifts that can cause harm. If the apprentice is weak and accepts them, he will become a sorcerer. Such gifts might include phlegm which is red, or bones, or thorns, or razor blades. Only later will the spirits present the apprentice with other and greater gifts — the gifts of healing and of love magic.

Self-control is thus central. It is difficult to control lust and abstain from sorcery; even experienced shamans must work hard to maintain control over their powers, which are often conceptualized as having their own volitions.The pathogenic objects that are kept within the shaman’s body, often embedded in some phlegm- or saliva-like substance, are also in some sense autonomous, alive, spirits, sometimes with their own needs and desires, including a need for nourishment, often supplied by tobacco. If not fed properly, they can turn on their possessor, or seek their food elsewhere.

The magic darts kept within the chest of a Shuar shaman, for example, are living spirits, who can control the actions of a shaman who does not have sufficient self-control. The magic darts want to kill, and it requires hard work to keep them under control and use them for healing rather than attack. Similarly, the Parakanã of Eastern Amazonia believe that shamans possess pathogenic agents that cause sickness, called karowara. When animated by a shaman, karowara are tiny pointed objects; inside the victim’s body, they take the concrete form of monkey teeth, some species of beetle, stingray stings, and sharp-pointed bones. Karowara have no independent volition; but they have a compulsion to eat human flesh.

In this way, the pathogenic objects hidden within the shaman’s body enact the Amazonian belief in innate human aggressiveness. To be a healer is to keep this powerful force in check by great effort.

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.

“In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery…”
- Cormac McCarthy

Life on this planet lives through virtue of interconnectivity. All of nature exists as an evolving web of consciousness. The light of the sun floods the elemental networks of the planet with energy that builds fractal realms of biological sentience and experience. This world-creation is a sparkling summit of universal complexity.

And yet, modern humanity lives in a state of distraction and fragmentation, lost within an exclusive, secular faith of primitive linear reason, disconnected from the many modes of understanding and perception that bring balance and health. The loss of a harmonious participation with ones bio-region results in a tragic destruction of bio-diversity and diminution of quality of life.

Re-cultivating our full humanness and interconnectivity can assist the wholeness and integrity of our communities and the ecologies we are inextricably one with. Many existing indigenous communities retain traditions that maintain interconnection with the spirits and ancestors of their bio-region. For the ancient indigenous ways are expressions of the land itself, not human creations. Over many hundreds of thousands of years, the ceremonies, medicine, arts and stories generated through shamanic practices have assisted human groups in maintaining harmony between nature and culture, body and mind.

There are many different names across cultures for people who initiate ecological and spiritual knowledge and healing within their communities. Some of these names include Shamans (Tungus, Siberia), vegetalista (Mestizo, Peru), Dukun (Indonesia), Huna (Hawaii). Such people cultivate ways of understanding that employ intuition, creativity, and exploration of the Divine Imagination or ‘Dreaming’. From within their own unique traditions, they traverse the underworlds and heavens of the World Tree to divinate, to cure, to learn. They are often deeply knowledgeable of the medicine of plants, therapeutic touch, and work as helpers and guides at the transformational passages of birth, living and dying. They work as initiators of collective ecstatic ritual.

People living within technological capitalist cultures cannot healthily appropriate or mimic these traditions, but we can still learn much from contact with traditional wisdom and their methods of spiritual development, and ‘Learn How To Learn’ from that wisdom. Such wisdom can help to deepen our own connection with the earth where we stand, honoring the spirit of the land and developing our own rituals, celebrations, healing ceremonies, rekindling our ancestral memory, and reawakening our innate planetary memory…

The Land

Animist cultures view plants and features of their ecosystem as fellow sentient subjects, not as material objects. Plants and fungi are revered in the many Amazonian cultures as ‘plant teachers’, non-human people who are fellow subjects in the universe, communicable, and to be respected.

In Amazonian vegetalismo practices, the ritual consumption of the sacred plant potion Ayahuasca reveals the world of nature multi-dimensional society, a system of spiritual relations in an all-encompassing fertility circuit. From the inner dialog, the vegetalista learns the medicinal and magical properties of plants, and learns to see deeper into the spiritual ecology of the deep forests.

The attitude of dialog even extends to the mineral kingdom and features of the landscape(stone people,crystal realms,earth elementals). Such dialog or ‘eco-sophy’ with ‘more than human’ nature is common to Animist cultures. In Tibetan Bon Po, mountains are considered spiritual mandalas, with the summit being the center-most point where the deity of the mountain is most present. In African Animist cosmology, rivers are presided over by the orisha (spirit, totem) Oshun, present in the currents and eddies of the river where her force moves ever onward…

The deep ecologist Rupert Sheldrake suggests thinking of our bio-regions and ‘places’ in terms of “spheres of action, operation or investigation”. Humans with shamanic awareness do not treat their environment as contemporary humans tend to do, as inert backdrops for their ego-drama, but rather as nested, interacting field of sentience which one must relate to appropriately, with respect and receptivity.

“Places traditionally associated with the presence of nature spirits are not distributed equally across the landscape. They are concentrated in particular areas, such as hill tops,waterfalls, springs, streams and rivers, in and around various trees, in caves and grottoes … these fields must be embedded within larger fields, such as the fields of river systems and mountain chains… and ultimately Gaia and the entire solar system.”

Sacred places would be protected across generations, no one would want to upset the balance as they knew the consequences would ripple throughout the entire web of creation. This way of respect encompasses the animal kingdom and the hunters respect for the spirit of their life givers.

In such a cosmology, the entire universe consists of ‘vibratory organisms’ ranging from elementary particles to galaxies, with each organism participating in every other. Shamans, curanderos, develops a sensitivity, a sympathetic resonance with this vibrant sentient whole. The purpose of cultivating harmonious communication is to maximize the nurture and fertility within the ecosystem and community.

Communal Shamanic Rituals

Compared to the often solitary heroic image of the shaman that capitalist cultures have inherited from new age literature, it is common that shamanic practices operate within groups of close affiliation, extended families and tribes. A communal context supports ecstatic experiences, creates bonding, filial love, and communal cohesion. By communities collectively entering into catharsis and mystical union, differences and conflicts in the community are worked through.

In South America the complex interweaving of many spiritual lines from different cultures have come to mix and be re-formed within the overwhelming natural vitality of the Amazon. Such community traditions include Barquina, Unio de Vegetal and Santo Daime. These shamanic lineages combine elements of African cosmology and ritual with Amazonian plant traditions and the symbology of Christianity (itself a syncretic mythology). They are living traditions, evolving their doctrines (teachings) through songs and chants received in the shamanic ‘miracao’, the realm of visions, akashic memory and contact with spiritual intelligences.

In such lineages, the entire community, not just a solitary shaman, imbibes sacrament, dances, sings, chants, prays, channels spirits and heals. Mystical and transpersonal experiences are held in the ritual vessel through the consecration of prayers and the collective experience of the group. Different spiritual works are developed, some for healing, some for spiritual purification, some for jubilation and festivities.

In such shamanic ceremonies, end is joined with beginning. The shamanic dance connects to the first dances deep in mythic time. In the transcendence of history, one returns to cyclic time, creating a sympathetic bridge to all cultures and peoples across time and space. In the deep ecstatic trance people will dialog with or even physically incorporate spirits of ancestors, of the land, and of higher dimensions. They emerge into the group experience to share wisdom and healing energies. In the African Jurema and Cambondle cults it is common for people to personify and enact representations of the ecosystem, such as Yemanja, the ocean, or ‘Princesa Jurema’, the ‘princess’ of the Jurema tree imbibed in ceremonies.

These new lines of tradition indicate that ancient methods for collective shamanism can migrate and adapt to new conditions in order to work with the specific plants and energies of the bio-region.

Shamanism and Reason

The role of shamanism in the Western world diminished through complex social forces. In the Classic world the role of the shaman sometimes survived the development of agriculture and city-states in the form of gnostic mystery schools. Such groups preserved and cultivated ancient lines of Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebrew and Christian spiritual wisdom, but became dispersed and suppressed by the development and centralization of the Roman Christian Empire, with its vast mandate to standardize religious beliefs, and so the western world lost the intuitive, metaphoric and systemic perceptions of shamanic ecstasy.

The demands for social conformity under the militaristic and economic values of Empire lead to a ‘mono-phasic’ consciousness – a way of life that insisted upon just one limited perceptive mode; rationality, and an essentially materialistic orientation toward the natural world.

“Monophasic consciousness, most often embodied as the scientific method, disavows the validity of any knowledge accessed through transrational processes. Perceptual diversity is important for evolutionary competence and human adaptability. Already, without it, the monophasic consciousness of Western, developed nations has led to loss of cultural diversity and biodiversity.”
- Perceptual Diversity:Is Polyphasic Consciousness Necessary for Global Survival? By Tara W. Lumpkin

Because western civilization suffers from mono-phasic consciousness – the inflexible rigidity of a primitive and linear ‘reason’, which arrogantly exalts itself as a superior approach to existence – we have neglected the intuitive, metaphoric, integrative and non-linear capacities that bring balance to reason and allow a meaningful connection to the natural world and the imaginal realms.

As a counterbalance to the unprecedented split between mind and nature which was the Industrial Revolution, the art and prose of the Romantics inaugurated a quest to break out of the tyranny of ‘Newton’s sleep’. The psychologist Jung, influenced by Romantic and Gnostic lines, exhorted an enrichment of reason “with a knowledge of man’s psychic foundation”, the lower stories of our “species’ house”. Jung encouraged the holding of both reason and the primordial mind in consciousness simultaneously, so a new synthesis could emerge. His work opened the way for a myriad of inquiries into the mysteries of consciousness which has transformed the fields of psychology, ethnography and anthropology.

Establishing a living bridge between the primal and the modern may be the evolutionary task of our time.

Shamanism and Simulcra

The New Age movement represents the desire to reclaim full humanness but often falls into the entrapments of simulation. In seeking to cultivate a ’shaman-ism’ we often fall into simulcra. In his critique of the modern age, Baudrillard claims that contemporary society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that the modern human experience is of a simulation of reality rather than reality itself.

‘Shamanism’ within the New Age is arguably a simulcra. It is a term invented by anthropologists to refer to the practices of spiritual healers and communal rites of passage in nature-orientated communities. By employed this singular umbrella term, anthropologists, ethnographers, and other Western scholars have simplified and exaggerated the universality of traditional cultures, who have their own names for their sacred practices.

Neoshamanism and ‘core shamanism’ are based on the idea that removing the cultural references and symbology reveals a core system of practice, which can be taught through commercial workshops and courses. This concept overlooks the unique influence of ancestral connection to place, and that symbols and metaphor are of essence to shamanic practices. The weave of symbols used in prayer, invocation and healing interconnect with the bio-region, community, ancestors and spiritual powers.

The symbols and metaphor of shamanic ritual have a powerful integrative potential because they express deep structures of relationships between the false dualism of inner and outer, mind and matter.

Shamanism and Colonialism

Alice Kehoe in her book Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking, asserts that New Age forms of Shamanism, misrepresent and ‘dilute’ genuine indigenous practices and may also reinforce racist ideas such as the Noble Savage. Many members of traditional, indigenous cultures and religions, such as Native American and First Nations activists, are suspicious of ‘neoshamanism’ and ‘plastic shamanism’, believing it to rely heavily on cultural appropriation and the commodification of their traditions.

Hobson, a Cherokee writer, coined the term ‘the whiteshaman movement’, criticising the trend of ‘white’ authors to assume the persona of Native American shamans in their writings, or else work as interpreters of Native American spirituality, and in doing so inadvertantly reinforce cultural stereotypes and distortions. Adding to this contemporary confusion is that ‘indigenous’ is a colonial concept, as are ‘aboriginal’, ‘native’, and ’shamanism’.

A promising solution to escape being enmeshed in polarizing colonial terminology is the recognizing of the diversity of original languages and traditions, anchored in the experience of a community within its bio-region. All ancient traditions have arisen from an ancient and unique interconnection with the land and sky, and with the discipline of self-enquiry, a ‘philosophical’ enterprise that must integrate and incorporate all aspects of being, including those so surpressed in our culture, the mythic, symbolic, imaginal, intuitive and creative. And so it is to the land and skies, both inner and outer, that the people living within material technological cultures must look to revive their true being.

Bioregional Shamanic Gnosis

The practices of the shaman, the vegetalista, the kuna, the priest, are each distinct expressions of the experiences of a peoples journey through time and the innate mysteries of the natural world. For people without their own shamanic traditions, the interconnection with the earth and the education it gives exists here and now to be rekindled. Even in our fragmentary technological world, we are still part of ‘The Dreaming’. All creatures, organic and inorganic, human and non-human, live by the Dreamings that play through them. This earth-centered, animist approach to reclaiming full humanity has been called ‘bio-regional animism’ or ‘deep ecology’.

Bio-Regional Animism seeks to re-cultivates the sacred relationship of humans and the eco-systems they inhabit by recognizing the lessons taught by animist cultures worldwide, past and the present, and applying the animist process to our eco-systems. It spiritually relates our modern culture to the forest, rivers, mountains, animals, energies, and scientific principles as individuals with inherent worth and dignity. Knowing where your water and food comes from, social activities of local wildlife, and the medicinal value of indigenous plants, builds the foundation for relating to our ecosystem through ceremonies and meditations. This is achieved by discarding the dualism of modern society, and realizing there is only spirit.

Such an approach, that negates the dualistic concept of mind and matter, spiritual and physical, has been termed ‘co-essence’.

Co-Essence

Co-essence describes how the spiritual essence is shared and flows between beings and realms. Co-essence describes this experience of shared connection, symbiosis, the necessary and extensive interdependence, co-existence, of the Web of life. Co-essence recognizes that our essence is shared, that my essence is as much in you as in me.

Correlates to the concept of ‘co-essence are found in the pan-Mesoamerican beliefs of nagualismo and tonalismo, signifying the transformation of a person into an animal, and a person’s companion animal or destiny, which everyone is believed to possess. Such aspects of co-essence embody peoples ties to the earth, nature, and fate, as mediated by animals and bio-regions.

Co-essence is a body wisdom that is cultivated in many shamanic practices. By inducing altered states of consciousness through the body – prolonged dancing, singing, extreme heat or cold, plant psychedelics, hyper-ventilation – the gates of perception are opened, revealing the systemic co-essence of nature.

The cultivation of systemic perception and the experience of interconnectivity brings about a paradigm in health and living that is fundamentally ecological because we no longer regard nature as ‘other’. We feel, to use chaos physicist and evolutionary biologist Stuart Kauffman’s phrase, ‘At Home in the Universe’.

We come to feel ‘in’ the world rather than on it. We are brought down to our humblest bacterial roots and understand ourselves as channels of the elements in this creative, vivid and mysterious planetary process. We understand ourselves to be more humble than we may have thought, yet simultaneously more, through virtue of our fundamental interconnection with everything else.

This experience re-configures the ingrained and unquestioned mode of thinking of reality in terms of ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’, ‘mind’ and ‘matter’. The transpersonal experience confronts and calls into question these conventional categories with which we cut up and rationalize the flowing mystery of our experience within this world. There dawns an understanding that is much more supple, where the snake bites its tale, and the distinctions between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ become more dynamic and fluid.

We share and are connected in a greater movement we are creating together. Our thoughts are each others thoughts, a collective chorus of life, the unified thoughts of the uni-verse, the One Song. We are all part of each other. As the Huichol say “Todos unidos !” – All united.

After 8 years of integrated research and experiential learning on this topic, I wanted to write this article about the ancient South American shamanic tradition of Ayahuasca dieta. May this article demystify this beautiful practice, clearing up misconceptions and empowering informed relationships with the tradition.

Please do to add questions, differences of opinion, or additional information as you see fit, and it will most likely get integrated into this body of information as it gets passed along.

What is Vegetalismo and Dieta?

Dieta is an ancient traditional practice usually done by curanderos, or Ayahuasca healers (commonly referred to as ayahuasqeros or shamans), from the beginners in training to the experienced masters. It is a way that Ayahuasca has taught humans to develop relationships with certain other, non-psychedelic master healing plants of the Amazonian pharmacopia. Curanderos specializing in dieta are often called vegetalistas.

In a dieta, which may last between a week and 4 months, or in some cases longer, the dieter creates a clear, sacred space inside their body and immediate surroundings by eating only a few basic foods, having extremely limited social contact, and abstaining from all kinds of sex. This creates a private setting in which one can have an intimate and focused encounter with the plants.

The diet usually begins with an Ayahuasca ceremony at night, followed by the consumption of a special tea made from whichever master plant has been chosen for this dieta. This tea is usually drunk every morning for the first 1- 7 days. More Ayahuasca ceremonies are then commonly dispersed through the rest of the diet, a common one being on the last night.

This strict regimens of abstinence, combined with the injestion of the master plant and the insight and guidance of the ceremonies, has a wonderful effect of helping to create a deep and loving relationship with the spirits of these master plants, which can be beneficial in many profound ways.

Why Practice Dieta?

Of course, abstaining from most foods and having only the 4 main dieta foods can be incredibly purifying for a body which has been assaulted by food toxins, chemicals, allergens and the like for most of its life, although this should not be the only reason to do it, as there are other Ayahuasca compatible diets which are much healthier as a cleanse.

Traditionally, dieta has been practiced by those aspiring to become facilitators of Ayahuasca ceremonies, or “curanderos” – Ayahuasca healers. The spiritual alliance with the various master plants, created through many long dietas, is widely considered absolutely essential to developing the important qualities necessary to hold space for others in these ceremonies.

Still, many facilitators run these ceremonies without having practiced dieta at all. I am not necessarily saying that all of these people shouldn’t be doing so, as many years of experience with Ayahuasca alone counts for a lot too. Yet, it’s clear to me that those facilitators are really missing out on some important aspects of the work, and this can be quite problematic sometimes.

With that said, those not intending to run ceremonies still sometimes do dieta for its healing benefits alone! Despite its fallbacks as a health cleanse, the master plants are such powerful healers and teachers, that the experience can be very transformative and beneficial in the individual’s life, and in a lasting way at that!

Many people tend to do dieta just as a way of having a more extended Ayahuasca experience, packing their time with many ceremonies and deepening the effects of the Ayahuasca with the cleansing aspect of the diet.

However, to those people I would recommend another similar practice which does not involve the master plants, and allows a wider variety of vegetables and fruits. This “Ayahuasca diet” is commonly confused with dieta. It is simply, no salt, no refined sugar, no oil or hot spicy foods, no sex, and not too much stimulus or excitement. The foods can be fine tuned with great intention to maintain balance and optimum health.

Can dieta work without Ayahuasca?

Yes. Many people who, for whatever reason, have found that Ayahuasca is not for them, continue to practice dieta for the healing relationship with the master plants.

While Ayahuasca has the ability to hugely bless, assist, and illuminate the process on many levels, it is not necessary for a succesful diet. The insight and mental awareness that the ceremonies may bring to the relationship is helpful, but the interaction is still taking place on a subtle spirit level, wheather you are mentally seeing and understanding it or not.

Do I need a skilled shaman to facilitate my dieta?

For your first dieta, and especially if you don’t have a lot of experience with Ayahuasca, I would strongly recommend working with a skilled and trusted ayahuascero, and allowing them to facilitate the whole process for you.

Once you have some experience with Ayahuasca and are familliar with the best practices of how to make a ceremony and take good care of yourself while doing so, it is better to do the ceremonies alone. This emphasizes the solitude of dieta and gives you the space to learn through personal experience, how to hold the space yourself.

As a sidenote, I do not really recommend doing ceremonies alone outside of dieta until you are at the point of hosting them for others as well. There is really no reason to deprive yourself of a shaman’s important role. In my opinion, money issues are usually not a good reason.

However, even if you do your ceremonies in solitude and are able to make or obtain the Ayahuasca, you might want to make sure your master plant medicine comes from a curandero, as each plant has a very specific way of being prepared, and it also requires knowledge to be able to choose an appropriate plant.

In many cases, any shaman who is making your medicine will also want to host your diet, in order to chaperone your process and help make sure you don’t do anything stupid. At first, that might be greatly helpful as well, and it’s always interesting to watch how these curanderos work dieta.

Once you have done some considerable research about master plants for dieta, and learned the way to prepare the one that you choose for yourself, from a very informed place, I would say that, using this guide, you should be good to go doing dieta without another facilitator.

What are the dieta rules?

From shamanic lineage to lineage, and region to region, the rules of dieta tend to vary a little bit. Some take an extremely strict approach, and others bend some rules and are more laid back about certain things. There is so much conflicting information out there, and many strong opinions.

I have studied primarily along a stricter tradition, but have been informed by my discussions with a variety of other curanderos on the topic, and my continuous Internet research. The rules I present here are foundational to the tradition and are widely accepted.

There are three main foods that are allowed : fresh water fish with scales and teeth, green unripe plantain, and plain white rice. Absolutely no oils, seasonings, salt… etc. may be added. This is a no salt, no sugar of any kind, and very little flavour kind of diet.

There are some who believe you can have just a little bit of sugarless boiled root vegetables near the end of the dieta, but I do not support this and strongly advise against it. Still others support eating fruit during dieta – I believe that this is a dangerous misconception, based on confusion between Ayahuasca diet and dieta.

There are 5 teas that are allowed as well : lemon grass, lemon leaf, chujuhuasca, basil and cat’s claw. Chujuhuasca and cat’s claw also happen to be cancer treating plants.

No sex of any kind, including masturbation, is allowed, and so in that light it is discouraged to spend much time thinking sexy thoughts. Additionally, some stricter traditions do not permit any touching of other people for any reason.

Soap, shampoo and toothpaste are strictly prohibited. Also, better not to use any moisturizers, creams, cleansers, sunscreen, insect repellant, lip gloss, mouth wash, inhalers, body spray… etc. When absolutely necessary, a small amount of all natural disinfectant or itch treatment for bites can be allowed, in moderation.

Any vitamins or prescription drugs of any kind are definitely not allowed. If you have a condition which does not allow you to go without them for the period of a dieta, then you are not a candidate for dieta.

Very important during dieta is solitude and the time and space for rest and reflection. This is the rule that is most commonly bent or broken, as some people fully engage the world in many ways, working, teaching and socializing. Speaking from experience, I strongly advise against such activities while in this very special state.

The strictest form of dieta insists on absolutely no talking to anyone for any reason. This could be an expensive ideal, however, depending on the practicalities at hand. I have adapted this to no talking, except at meal times, when I will have practical interactions with others. A little talking can be fine, but out of respect to the plants, do not talk about the details of your ceremonies or insights with the master plants until the diet is over.

While it’s good to stay relaxed and centered, activities like walking, exercise, dance and yoga are encouraged. You have to do things that keep you from going insane with boredom. Reading, burning insense, practicing an instrument and all that sort of thing are great.

I once asked a curandero if it’s OK to listen to music. He replied that it’s fine, as long as you’re not doing it as a form of escapism. It’s important to stay present and remain focused on your personal journey with the plants, rather than mentally running away from stuff that might be coming up for you. With that being said, TV and movies are highly stimulating, and are therefore discouraged.

What are the consequences of breaking the rules?

Knowingly or ignorantly breaking the rules of dieta without properly ending your diet first (using a ritual which I will describe later) is a serious act of disrespect to Ayahuasca, and the master plant you are working with.

In the case of Ayahuasca, she may respond to this in a variety of ways, inside and out of the ceremonies, and this will depend on your existing relationship with the plants, and the nature and intent of how you broke the rule.

One thing that has been known to happen is a string of intense difficulties coming up in forthcoming ceremonies. Energy blockages and related issues could gather in your system. The medicine could withhold some of her healing benefits or powers. The possibilities are vast.

It would be logical to assume that this would be like a kind of punishment, but I think that is too simplistic of an explanation. Imagine cheating on your spouse during your honeymoon, in their plain view. The problems that could create between you in your ongoing relationship are complex and deeply regretful.

When it comes to the master plants, the consequences may vary from plant to plant. Each one is so unique in its own way and may respond differently. One thing that could happen is that the plant spirit may leave your presence and never return. Additionally, they could withhold their healing assistance, their teachings or their protection.

Other problems are also possible, but it’s very hard to predict ahead of time. The bottom line is, if you’re going to do dieta, do it right. And if you really can’t control yourself, it’s better to end the dieta early than to break the rules, especially those regarding sex and food.

How do I choose which plant to diet with?

There are so many wonderful healing plants in the Amazon and throughout the world, that it would seem easy to choose a powerful master plant for a dieta, and yet, the process is not as simple and obvious as it may look.

Dieta is an ancient tradition that originates not from shamans, but from Ayahuasca. She is the master of dieta, and it’s important to acknowledge that by only dieting with plants which she has specifically instructed you to work with, or which have become traditional dieta plants through her instructions to generations of ayahuasqueros.

For hundreds of years, Ayahuasca has been giving curanderos specific instructions on which plants to use under what circumstances and how to prepare them for dieta. Any good vegitalista should be always in the process of gathering this ancestral knowledge and learning from new experiences, so that they can properly help new dieters to choose their plants.

For this reason, it is best to ask the medicine which plants to work with, and failing any specific answers in your ceremonies, or if you are unsure if the authenticity of what you are getting in your journey (perhaps it’s fuzzy, unclear, or feels you may be imagining it), seek facilitation or advice from a skilled curandero.

The plants have asked me not to mention their names publically on the Internet, even for educational purposes but especially for buying or selling online, as this is a dangerous time for Amazonian plant medicine. Therefore, I cannot give you any more information here.

For how long, and when should I diet?

As mentioned earlier, dietas usually range between one week and 4 months. I know of some who do extremely long ones of a year in length, but that to me seems very extreme and unnecessary, and must require some major rule bending. I will need to research it more.

It’s best to do dietas of one week, two weeks, but not three weeks, a month, two months, three months, or four months. So for example, you would not do 2 and a half months – it would be either 2 or 3. A dieta is like a cycle, so as they get longer, the cycle that you’re following gets bigger.

If at all possible, it’s better to follow the moon cycles to represent your cycle for 2 week diets or longer. Try to start either on a new moon or a full moon, and then of course finish on the same moon.

For some reason, Bolivian shamans tend to follow calendar months, while Peruvians follow the moon, in perfect weeks of 7 days. I encourage moon awareness, but depending on your flow you may find that the calendar month works better. Many people use the calendar so it tunes you in with a collective consciousness. Sometimes you can use both!

If at some point during your dieta you have an accident or become quite sick, or if there is some emergency or you are for some reason required to go to the doctor, break your diet immediately! Do not go to the doctor while dieting, and don’t try to fight off a sickness either – your body will not do well. In that case, timing goes out the window.

For your first dieta, I do recommend a week. It can be harder than you expect, and it’s good to ease gently into the process. Then, slowly graduate to longer and longer ones from there. Another option is to start with a week, and when it’s done you may continue on to a second week if you still feel you can.

A week long diet is a beneficial encounter with the master plant, but if you do two weeks with your Ayahuasca ceremonies only at the beginning and ending (not during the two weeks) the spirit of that plant will be with you for the rest of your life, helping you along the way. This is an enormous gift of healing, protection and assistance.

In a dieta of 1-3 months, I recommend leaving those first two weeks without ceremonies, and beginning your them after that special period of total intimacy with the master plant, as often as you wish.

Once three months has passed, it is said that you will need to begin with a new master plant, as the cycle has completely worked itself out by that point. A four month diet really is very unhealthy, so it’s recommended that you only do this perhaps once, or maybe twice in a lifetime.

Ayahuasca really appreciates slow but steady, consistent and dilligent effort. So if you are on a path with dieta and Ayahuasca, it is recommended that you always do one diet per year. You do not need to do more than that – in fact, it’s possible that it could have a harmful effect on your psyche, as one is a lot to integrate in a year, especially a longer one.

How about dieting with others?

It is fine to do dieta with other dieters, and in some ways, this can strengthen the process for all involved. It’s a little less important to avoid talking with other dieters too. However, it’s advisable to make sure you have a lot of privacy and time alone, as intense emotions can erupt and you do not want to pass these energies between you.

Can I diet outside of South America?

Of course, the tradition of Ayahuasca dieta did originate in South America, making it a very integrated and practically effortless place to arrange a dieta. The foods, conditions and lifestyle are native to this place, so dieta feels very natural here. The heat and the jungle are relaxing and purifying, you can easily access all the plants, and you can recieve quite an intuitive download from the land.

However, if you are not native to South America, it would be wise to consider the ecological footprint of your plane ride and the immense amount of unsustainable fossil fuels this requires. I have heard that one plane trip across the states makes the same amount of emissions as a lifetime of a family car in regular use.

The plantain would have to be imported by plane to arrive in your country, but I would consider this footprint to be less harmful than a two-way trip for yourself.

If you are not from South America but would like to diet once a year, I would say work in your native country until you’re ready for a really long, super special dieta in South America that will foster memories and learning to fuel you for many more years without returning.

Make contacts, have things mailed to you, and set yourself up from where you are as best as you can. If you’re lucky, the medicine may even direct you to work with a master plant native to your region – an innovation that is starting to crop up as Ayahuasca now travels the world.

If Ayahuasca is illegal in your country, you may choose to work without it while there.

Are there any special rituals involved?

There are many special rituals associated with dieta, although most of them are unique to the various shamanic groups and lineages. There are special songs and blessings for the beginning and end of the diet and these vary from group to group. There is only one ritual that I have encountered which seems to be universal.

This one is very important, as it’s the way to properly break your diet. The morning after your last night of dieta, wake up bright and early and fix yourself a plate with a nickel’s sized bit of salt and of sugar, as well as a lime cut in half and a red hot pepper. Eat them all up and then have a little bath in a natural body of water.

This ritual is the perfect way to tell the plants that you are finished, and it also ritually reintroduces you to the four corners of taste. This natural bath could be thought of as a baptism in the waters of the Earth, celebrating this succesful work, as a kind of rebirth.

It’s also common to have a special feast following the breaking of the diet, although speaking from experience, it is very wise to exercise moderation and slowly reintroduce yourself to your normal lifestyle.

What if I want to improve on aspects of the tradition which seem locational or outdated?

Of course, the purpose of tradition is not to become stale or stagnated throughout time, due to the problem of following the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of it. Keep in mind, however, that the plant traditions of south america do have a special ability to stay fresh and alive, as the plants themselves are always still living and actively engaged with the work.

A tradition based on words spoken by a master, and written down, thousands of years ago, has more potential to be misunderstood today than one based on an active and current relationship with plants who have essentially not changed in all this time and are still thriving in their work with humans.

Still, most curanderos have a knowledge base which is a combination and synergy between fresh new understandings based on plant interactions, and information which has been passed down by generations upon generations of humans, based on human-plant relationships of the past. So while the traditions stays fresh, one must always maintain awareness of possible human error.

I do however issue a very strong warning to anyone considering changing or altering the tradition of dieta in some way. I have been blown away by the arrogance of some of the most well meaning and conscious individuals whom I have spoken to on this subject. People somehow seem to believe themselves to know far better than some master shamans, how dieta should be conducted, without much experience, knowledge, or lets face it, wisdom on the matter.

Anyone I have spoken to who has, to me, seemed obviously misguided in their assertions that dieta should be altered in one way or another, have been very well intentioned, good people, who in many ways I have great respect for. So, please, take the time to deeply humble yourself before acting on your careful considerations about some possible slight modifications to the dieta.

Even if it is a very small modification that you would propose, I would say wait until you have completed at least 4 successful diets in the traditional way, of at least 4 weeks in length before putting this into practice. The most common mistake is believing yourself to have reverse engineered the tradition without having the experience practicing it to back that up.

Handy Tips?

If you are in a place where there are lots of mosquitoes, I highly recommend using medicinal alcohol as a way of disinfecting and numbing the itch from their horrible bites. This is allowable during dieta and is highly recommended, as the alcohol evaporates quickly right off the skin.

I find that plantain tastes really good when cut up into chips and fried (without oil of course) on the frying pan. With some lemon grass tea, this is something I would enjoy outside of dieta as a really nice light snack.

If you can get a whole, or partial plant with the leaves, of your master plant that you are dieting with, it is wonderful to have it there with you during your time in solitude, to connect with how the plant looks, feels and smells, and use it to help you enhance the relationship with its more subtle spirit form.

If you are in the native land where your master plant ally is from, you could also purchase one at the market to plant yourself in a special ritual, as a demonstration of your love.

If you have lemon grass, chujuhuasca, or other of the allowable teas, it can be very nice to boil your rice in them for some additional flavour. Sometimes, anything to make the rice taste a little more interesting can make a world of difference.

Addendum

This article is a work in progress, and I hope to improve on it greatly in the coming years. I welcome constructive contributions of all kinds and give thanks that there is still such an untapped resource of information out there for me to keep exploring, even just within my closest medicine allies.

“Kambô circulates in the heart. Our shaman said that when we take Kambô it makes the heart move accurately, so that things flow, bringing good things to the person. It is as if there was a cloud on the person, preventing the good things to come, then, when it takes the Kambô; it comes a ‘green light’ which opens its ways, making things easier”

There is a Kaxinawá legend that tells that the indians of the village were very ill and the Shaman Kampu had done everything that was possible to cure them. All medicinal herbs known were used, but none helped his people’s agony. Kampu then entered the forest and under the effect of Ayahuasca, received the visit of the great God. He brought in His hands a frog, from which He took a white secretion, and taught how to apply. Returning to the tribe and following the guidelines that he had received the Shaman Kampu was able to cure his brothers Indians. After his death, the spirit of Kampu has started living in the frog and the Indians began to use its secretion to stay active and healthy.

The green frog – Phyllomedusa bicolor, called a Kambô frog, is the largest species of the genus of the family Hylidae, found in southern Amazon and throughout the territory of Acre, also being found in almost all the Amazon countries, as the Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. By extension, Kambô is also the name of this frog resin Kambô frog and its medical application: “We will take Kambô.”

This resin contains peptides substances (dermorfine and deltorfine ) that are analgesic and that strengthens the immune system provoking the destruction of pathogenic microorganisms. The substances in the frog secretion also have antibiotic properties, and strengthen the immune system through the body’s production of antibodies against the poison, also showing great power in the treatment of Parkinson, AIDS, cancer, depression and other diseases. The Deltorfine and Dermorfine today are synthetically produced by pharmaceutical laboratories .

There is also, due to its purgative effect, an obvious process of detoxification of the liver (usually one vomits up bitter bile) of intestine (through evacuations) and of the entire digestive system. The katukina also use it as the antidote in case of snake bite, medicine for many illness, and as a tonic.

But to the native, the main cause for taking Kambô is to fight ‘panema’. ‘panema’ means sadness, lack of luck, irritation: ‘bad aura’ – as someone once well translated. The person is with “panema” when nothing goes right and nothing is good. The basic purpose of Kambô is ‘taking off the panema’ in order to go hunting and to attract women.

And that, however difficult it is to the Western thought to accept, is the main purpose of Kambô: it establishes a spiritual ‘management chock’ in the life of people, a ‘chakra realignment’, a mark for organic and psychological reorganization, from which the person changes attitude and change their future patterns of health.

Out of the 53 Brazilian indigenous groups that used to take the vaccine, today there are only 13. Three of them are big, with reserves in the region of Alto Jurua: The Kaxinawás, the Ashaninkas and Katukinas. There are variations in the rituals and names given to the green frog. The Katukina, however, has more affinity with the Kambô, taking his poison more often than other ethnic groups and have their identity bonded directly by the practice.

The floral therapist and acupuncturist, Sonia Maria Valencia Menezes is a great deal responsible for the dissemination of the Katukina procedures with Kambô, maintaining an office in Sao Paulo together with the tribe – to administer applications – and promoting treatment travels to the Indian reserve in Alto Juruá.

A few years ago, a caboclo use of Kambô arrived, rubber latex extractors from Acre learned this science with the Indians and began to implement Kambô in white people, in the cities of Cruzeiro do Sul and Rio Branco. Their headman was Francisco Gomes (or Shiban) from Cruzeiro do Sul, which lived together with the Indians for years and learned the art of Kambô. Genildo Gomes, son of Francisco Gomes, continued his work of distributing Kambô and created, in 2002, the Juruá´s Association for Extractivist Resources and Alternative Medicine, AJUREMA, main irradiation center for Kambô.

Although it is difficult to find (they get mixed with the leaves), the Kambô frogs can eventually be found near the igarapés, when they sing announcing the rain. The Indians generally do the ‘harvest’ at dawn, also singing. In some traditions, only the shaman ‘crops’ the frog and in others they all hear its call at night. The frogs are extremely poisonous and do not react when captured. Not even move, as if not having predators. Apparently, they are hard to swallow – the snakes, specimens almost always blind, oriented by the heat of prey, spit them out, desperately, when they bite them. The technique for extracting the poison is as old as it is simple. They tie the animal on its feet, shaping an “X” and spit him up three to four times, to irritate it. Secretion released, you need only to scratch it with a piece of wood. The secretion (seems foam) crystallizes up quickly and can be used at any time.

There is no secret in Kambô application: with a piece of ember vine, one burns the arm several times, opening small holes in the skin (called points). The application of the resin diluted in water is carried over the skin and moves quickly to the entire body by the lymphatic vessels.

The amount of points (usually in odd number) through which the poison will be introduced (with a wood spatula), depends on physical stature, the number of times that has already used Kambô, the reason for the application and assessment of the applicator, based on their knowledge.

There are different philosophies between applicators, particularly among katukina and caboclo´s that use it in cities. For caboclos, there are counter-indications for pregnant women, nursing mothers or menstruating ladies, once it can cause hemorrhage due to dilation of blood vessels, as well as children less than ten years and older people with heart problems and high pressure. For Katukina, there is no such restriction and children begin to take Kambô from the age two, just after the period of breastfeeding. The Katukina take up to 100 points in a single application and apply at different times of the year, Throughout their whole life.

In the caboclo use, the basic treatment is three doses, at intervals of time that depend on the development level of the person with Kambô. The first treatment is three months, are three increasing doses (e.g. 5, 7 and 9 points), within 28 days, preferably of the new moons and last quarter.

Then, after at least six months from the last application of the first treatment, you can make one second, now every 15 days, with minor increasing doses(for example: 3, 5 and 7). They also make treatments for 7 days (at any moon other than the full moon) and for 3 days, combined with dietary changes (no solids or salt) and the use of Ayahuasca. The important thing is that the maximum interval between the two applications is a moon, 28 days. “If it takes more time than that between a dose and another, the Kambô will have to work all it had worked before again.”

According to David de Paula Nunes, son of a rubber latex extractor and one the main Amazon therapists, there is no obligation in taking it for three consecutive times and warns: “The Kambô is a vaccine and as such should not be used regularly in low dosages so that the body does not get used to the substances and lose their effect”.

Men generally apply in the arms or the chest. Women implement the points on the leg. In the case of Katukina, in the front of the leg. The caboclos usually, for aesthetic reasons, apply in the side of leg. For the Indians, the mark of the points on the skin is a reason of pride and should not be hidden or put on the back of the body.

Another interesting difference: both Katukina and caboclos require being on diet without solids or salt for at least 12 hours. But while the Indians ingest a large quantity (3 to 5 liters) of corn caiçuma during the night, before taking Kambô, the caboclos prescribe only 2 liters of pure water a few minutes before application.

The reaction of the vaccine lasts five minutes. In that time, the heart fires off, the blood flows accelerated through the veins, blood pressure rises or falls a lot, the person gets dizzy or nauseous. Some people see all white, as if the world were covered by a diffuse fog, or fall on the floor estrenghtlessly. There are also many reports of feeling an electrical current through the skin itching the body. Many users swell, appearing to be similar to a frog. Then, suddenly, the body reacts to the sickness and put everything out. Strong vomit and diarrhea are the most common responses. Only then, little by little, the senses are back to normal. The person feels light, clean, willing, in a good mood. After 30 minutes of application, the person is fit for their normal activities.

My personal experience indicates that water plays a key role in the whole process, not only its ingestion by the patient but also in the dilution of the poison. It seems that a higher number of points in very diluted solutions (homeopathic perspective) is more effective (and with less chance of overdosing) than applications with fewer points and more secretion.

Water is still prescribed for showering after the effects diminishes, not only to be clean from the excesses caused by the sickness (sweat, vomiting, feces) but also, in the symbolic sense, as a complement of Kambô process of cure.

The researchers Edilene Coffaci de Lima (UFPR) and Beatriz Caiuby Labate (UNICAMP) study the spread of Kambô in urban centre, examining, in particular, the discourse of these various applicators (Indians, rubber latex extractors, holistic therapists and doctors) have been preparing on the use of the frog’s secretion. To them, “words are commuting; sometimes lean to a spiritualist explanation, sometimes to a scientific or medical interpretation of the diseases”. It goes from the universal panacea (the cure for all illness) to placebo (a cure through psychological induction). And often these oscillations hide some simplifications. The word ‘panema’, for example, is re-interpreted as ‘depression’ by urban therapists. Or yet a negative energy capable of generating a broad spectrum of diseases.

Moreover, the researchers believe that the production and commercialization of substances take away from the Kambô´s application its most impressive effect. That medicine of science is inseparable from the medicine of the soul (LIMA & LABATE, 2007).

International scientific research, on the pharmaceutical and chemical areas, are being made on the properties of Kambô since the 80´s. Italian, French and Israelis researchers already entered with a request for the patent of dermorfine application. More recently, the University of Kentucky (USA) is searching (and patenting) deltorfine in collaboration with pharmaceutical company Zymogenetics. Several international laboratories are already interested in the venom of the Kambô to develop a drug that can lead to the cure of cancer.

In 2003, some katukina of Cruzeiro do Sul sought the Board of Genetic Heritage Management (CGEN) to denounce the misuse of Kambô. Asked for a solution against the use of Kambô by urban people; they were concerned, too, about their intellectual rights in the case of drugs derived from the substance. It is worth to remember that a patent can take many years until come to eventually turn into a remedy.

On April 29, 2004, the National Sanitary Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) prohibited any advertising of medicinal and therapeutic virtues of Kambô. The Minister Marina Silva decided to treat this as a model case. In order to do so, she appointed a working group of the Ministry of Environment for a joint action. The group, which has been gathering since 2004, brings together representatives of indigenous people, anthropologists, indigenists, herpetologists (biologists who study frogs), molecular biologists and physicians.

But the Kambô is, as we have seen, a complex a slippery object, irreducible to the various scientific discourses (clinical, alternative, pharmacy-chemical, anthropological and so on) and will hardly be regulated or reduced without first redefining the prospects in which it is described up to the moment. When one talks about Kambô and its definition, some are concerned about the forest management of the frog, other chemical patents, others with therapeutic possibilities of its application, but for the Indians, the explanation is much simpler: the Kambô is the spirit of Pajé Kampu accomplishing its mission to protect the health of forest defenders .

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

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

The resolution explicitly differentiates the traditional use and sacred character of indigenous ayahuasca rituals from “decontextualized, consumerist, and commercial western uses.”

The resolution is based on a May 29, 2008, report originally submitted by Rosa Giove Nakazawa, a physician at the Takiwasi Center in Tarapoto, to the Regional Bureau for Economic Development, a local governmental entity in the departamento of San Martin. The Takiwasi Center is a medical facility investigating the treatment of addictions using traditional Amazonian medicine, including ayahuasca.

The Resolution states that ayahuasca is “a plant species with an extraordinary cultural history, by virtue of its psychotropic qualities and its use as a drink combined with the plant known as chacruna.” This plant, the Resolution says,

is known to the indigenous Amazonian world as a wise or teaching plant, which shows to initiates the very foundations of the world and its components. The effect of its consumption is to enter into the spiritual world and its secrets … The effects of ayahuasca, widely studied because of their complexity, differ from those usually produced by hallucinogens. Part of this difference consists in the ritual which accompanies its consumption, which leads to a variety of effects which are always within culturally defined limits, and with religious, therapeutic, and culturally affirmative intentions.

It is not clear to me what legal effect this resolution has, or what powers the National Institute of Culture has to enforce it, or whether this means that support is available for additional research and publication on ayahuasca rituals, or whether the resolution is intended to encourage or discourage ayahuasca tourism.

It is also not clear what impact — if any — the resolution might have on drug prosecutions in the United States; but, given the specific disclaimer language cited above, it might make it more difficult for North Americans to claim religious exemptions from US drug laws.

The complete text of the resolution is here.

In June 1-8th 1999, in Yurayaco, Caquetá in the Colombian Amazon, the heart of the territory of the Ingano people, we, their indigenous healers and traditional doctors, met in a Gathering of Shamans.Among our own peoples — the Ingano, the Kofán, the Siona, the Kamsá, the Coreguaje, the Tatuyo, and the Carijona — we are known as Taitas, Sinchis, Curacas, or Payés.After 500 years of conquest, pillage, and death inflicted on our communities and cultures, we, the Taitas of the yagé culture in Colombia, have at long last been able to meet, exchange our knowledge, establish friendships, and unite for the same cause and with a common thought. We consider yagé, along with our other medicinal plants and our wisdom and knowledge, to be a gift from God and a great benefit for the health of humanity. We have a duty to demonstrate to the world, with determination and solemnity, the importance of our values. At the conclusion of the Gathering, we committed ourselves to working for the unity and defense of our traditional medicine and to offering our services for the health of indigenous peoples and humanity. The Taitas present at the Gathering will form the Union of Traditional Yagé Healers of the Colombian Amazon (UMIYAC), and name leaders who will undertake our appointed tasks and represent us before the world at large, before governments and institutions.The most direct way to preserve both our healing practices and the Taitas identity is first, to define who may work legitimately as an authentic traditional healer; and second, to determine when and under what conditions an apprentice may begin the learning process, and when he may be authorized to perform a healing. Thus, to establish our legitimacy, the Union of Traditional Healers will conceive and institute a certification procedure for traditional healers, apprentices, and disciples. This undertaking will make it possible to distinguish between traditional healers and charlatans. From the start, all apprentices will know what expectations their teachers have set for them: dietary strictures, abstinence, use of plants, moderation in liquor, and the rules of dignified behavior in general for a disciple and apprentice of the wisdom of indigenous healing.As Taitas or Shamans, we know that all of us have unique ways of working. Each of us has received a different vision from his teacher and knows different ways to make remedies or to take yagé. The simple fact that a Union has been formed does not mean that everyone will work in the same way. But there is agreement on the importance of setting some basic rules of discipline, behavior, seriousness, and mutual respect for our communities, for ourselves, and for those who seek us out as healers. This is the basis for our proposed draft of a Code of Medical Ethics, although we prefer to call this simply “The Beliefs of the Elders.”After eight days, during which we have reflected on our medicine, participated in three yagé ceremonies and visited the ancestral rock of Yurayaco, we the Taitas declare:

1. Here in the foothills of Amazonia, indigenous groups still survive, and we have inherited from our ancestors great wisdom, our medicinal plants, with the knowledge of our forests and the use of the sacred vine: the yagé.
2. We consider yagé, our medicinal plants and our wisdom to be gifts from God and of great benefit for the health of humanity. This Gathering may be our last opportunity to unite and defend our rights. Our motivation is not economic or political. We are seriously determined to demonstrate to the world the importance of our values. As sons of the same Creator and brothers and sisters on Mother Earth, we wish to speak, to offer our contribution so that life, peace and health may be possible.
3. Non-indigenous people are finally acknowledging the importance of our wisdom and the value of our medicinal and sacred plants. Many of them profane our culture and our territories by commercializing yagé and other plants; dressing like Indians and acting like charlatans. We see with concern that a new type of tourism is being promoted which deceives the foreigners with so-called “services of Taitas or shamans” in a number of villages of the foothills. Indeed, even some of our own indigenous brothers do not respect the value or our medicine and go around misleading people, selling our symbols in towns and cities.
4. There are those who take our seeds to patent them, to own them. Others want to declare yagé a narcotic plant and prohibit its use for the good of humanity. We also denounce those anthropologists, botanists, business people, doctors and other scientists who are experimenting with yagé and other medicinal and sacred plants without taking into account our ancestral wisdom and our collective intellectual property rights.
5. We denounce the abuse committed against our Tatuyo brothers from the Yapú area of the Vaupes, who in transit to the Gathering were held by the authorities and dispossessed of the yagé they were bringing to ceremonially share at the Gathering.
6. We demand respect for our territories, our indigenous medicine and our traditional healers or Taitas. We ask the world to acknowledge that our medicine is also a science, although not in the same way Westerners understand it. We, the Taitas, are real healers and for many centuries we have effectively contributed to the health of our villages. Furthermore, our medicine looks beyond the physical and seeks the wellbeing of the mind, the heart and the spirit.
7. We demand the immediate suspension of the patent Loren Miller was awarded in the United States. For us, the patent represents an abuse and a defilement of our sacred plant. We declare that yagé and other medicinal plants we use are the patrimony and collective property of the indigenous people. It’s use in the name of mankind must be carried out with our participation and we should enjoy any other benefits that derive from its exploitation.
8. We ask for legal recognition of our autonomy in caring for the health of our peoples in accordance with our traditions and values.
9. We must regain possession of our territories and sacred sites. The forest is for us the fountain of our resources. If the forests disappear so will medicine and life.
10. We request support for our cause. Non-indigenous people can help us consolidate our unity and the defense of our traditional medicine, as it has been proven that they also benefit from the wisdom of the Taitas.
11. At the end of the Gathering, we agreed to work toward the unity and defense of our traditional medicine and offer our services for the health of indigenous people and of humanity.
12. The Taitas agree to initiate a process of certification of practicing healers and establish our own code of indigenous medical ethics. In this way it will be able to distinguish between real Taitas and charlatans.
13. We are also willing to travel in order to bring the benefits of our medicine to indigenous communities in Colombia and other parts of America upon request. Conscious of the fact that non-Indians also need our services as doctors, we propose the construction of Indigenous Medicine Clinics so they may have easier access and in conditions better suited to the way in which we work, always closely linked to nature.
14. The Taitas present at the Gathering have decided to formally create the Union of Traditional Yagé Healers of the Colombian Amazon (UMIYAC) and name our own representatives to carry out the various tasks to which we are committed and to represent us before the world, governments and other institutions.

To disseminate this Declaration and the results of the Gathering, we will make available a publication and a video to be distributed solely through our own representatives. The rights of the publication and video belong to UMIYAC and their use will not be permitted without our written approval. We wish to acknowledge those Taitas that for different reasons were not able to join us. The decisions made here tried to take into account their thoughts and we extend an invitation for them to join UMIYAC in the process we have initiated.To all indigenous people we wish to clarify that this Union does not seek to compete with or replace the important role of indigenous organizations that currently represent us, on the contrary, we offer our services and support to strengthen their goals.We are grateful to our brothers in other countries who are part of a Coalition to defend our traditional medicine, medicinal plants and yagé; we hope that our union will allow them to support our cause in a more effective manner.As the century comes to a close we are witnessing a dramatic period of violence, hatred, poverty, injustice and sickness. On the verge of the new millennium we see the opportunity to close and heal this sad phase for humanity.We wish to offer our participation in the construction of an age of hope, health and happiness. We are convinced that yagé and the medicinal plants of our territories and our cultures, as a gift that they are from the Creator, can help to heal the world.In Yurayaco, on June 7th of 1999, the undersigned Taitas: 42 signatures follow.

* We have tried to make a literal translation, adapting when necessary the meaning of some difficult words. The word Taita utilized in the text and shared by all the participants is of Quechua origin and is more an honorific title given to the shamans to recognize their widsom, age, experience, and power.