Gaian Entelechy by Jake Kobrin

Do you love the Earth?

Over the millennia our species has developed a complex symbiosis with our environment. Earth is our home. Everyone you have ever loved, every experience you have ever cherished, and every possession you have ever coveted, is a product and aspect of the Earth. At this point and time we stand at the precipice of a new and important era. As our society rapidly develops, our planet is being devastated and our precious resources are being depleted. We all know and fear what could be on one side of this situation. We fear natural devastation, nuclear wars and genocide, endless impoverishment, starvation, war, disease, and death.

But a new vision is emerging. All throughout the globe, people are coming together to celebrate our precious planet and to envision new ways to live in harmony with the Earth. Communities and alliances are forming that respect the Gaian entelechy, and seek to follow the natural wisdom of the Earth, rather than nihilistically ravishing the very source of our being and destroying the prospects of our future generations.

This artwork GAIAN ENTELECHY is a tribute to this emerging visionary culture. It is a representation of the Earth spirit, of a noble consciousness that exists within the natural world. The Earth is alive. And we are a part of it.

We all have access to the Gaian entelechy, in so much as we are all an integral part of the Earth. The idea of us existing as separate entities upon the Earth is a falsehood. The truth is that we are only one Earth. The Earth is a living organism, in the same way that billions of individual cells comprise a human being. And so a person who lives in an urban setting is in no way less in touch with the Gaian entelechy, because cities and their inhabitants are products and aspects of the Earth as well.

Jake Kobrin

Terence McKenna held the belief that the Gaian entelechy was accessed through entheogenic trance, that when you take of the Earth in the form of Ayahuasca, cacti, or mushrooms, you are actually allowing yourself to be shown the wisdom of the Earth through direct experience. He believed that you experience a form of communication that exists within the plant kingdom at a molecular level and that the plants (and nature in general, as a whole) are teaching human beings how to live with insights wrought from the entheogenic trance. Whether or not this is the case, I believe the Gaian entelechy is, essentially, intuition.

The Earth knows what it’s doing, and as manifestations of the Earth we need only to look within and trust in our intuition to act in accordance with the natural world. The problem is that most people haves strayed so far from listening to their own hearts and intuitive senses that the human race has strayed away from the Gaian entelechy and began to ravish the natural world. I believe the solution to this is to strip away the mental noise that clouds intuition, whether it be through meditation, entheogens, or whatever have you.

- Jake Kobrin, April 2013

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Beatriz Caiuby Labate and José Carlos Bouso (eds.)

Los Libros de La Liebre de Marzo, 2013

Purchase the book

Summary: This collection is composed of 22 articles, an introduction and a foreword. It

brings together perspectives from the social and biomedical sciences as well as personal

accounts of ayahuasca shamans and practitioners in order to address diverse indigenous,

mestizo and Western concepts of health, illness and curing related to the use of

ayahuasca. Through a comparative analysis of the different contexts in which this

psychoactive substance is consumed, this work investigates the boundaries between

shamanism, religion and medicine, while examining hybridization across the diverse

knowledge-bases of ayahuasca practices. The diversity of cultural and regional situations is

reflected in, for example, different traditions of governmental regulation of ayahuasca

consumption: While Brazil permits religious (but not medicinal use) of ayahuasca, Peru has

recently enshrined indigenous medical traditions surrounding ayahuasca as part of its

national heritage. This work also presents some of the latest biomedical findings

concerning the medical and therapeutic possibilities of ayahuasca. Numerous contributions

highlight both agreements and disagreements between the “traditional” and the biomedical

approach to health and health risks.

Co-editors Biographies:

Beatriz Caiuby Labate has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the State University of

Campinas (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, UNICAMP), Brazil. Her main areas of

interest are the study of psychoactive substances, drug policies, shamanism, ritual, and

religion. She is Visiting Professor at the Drug Policy Program of the Center for Economic

Research and Education (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, CIDE – Región

Centro) in Aguascalientes, Mexico. She is also Research Associate at the Institute of

Medical Psychology, Heidelberg University, co-founder of the Nucleus for

Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP), and editor of its site

(http://www.neip.info). She is author, co-author, and co-editor of eight books, two with

English translations, one journal special edition, and several peer-reviewed articles. For

more information, see: http://bialabate.net/

José Carlos Bouso is clinical psychologist and has a PhD in pharmacology from the

Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. His studies address preliminary data on the safety of

MDMA in the treatment of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of a

sexual assault. He also has been conducting neuropsychological research into the long-term

effects of drugs such as cocaine and cannabis. He has done transcultural research,

extensively studying the long-term effects of ayahuasca use in different cultures and

ecosystems, both in Spanish and in Brazilian communities. José Carlos Bouso is co-author

of several scientific papers and book chapters. He currently combines his activity as a

clinical researcher at the IMIM (Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mèdiques) with

his work as Scientific Projects Manager at ICEERS (International Center for

Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service: www.iceers.org).

Table of contents

Foreword: “Ayahuasca at the crossroad of different forms of knowledge” – by Renato

Sztutman (Anthropology Universidade de São Paulo)

Cura, cura cuerpecito (‘heal heal little body’): reflections on the therapeutic possibilities of

ayahuasca, by Beatriz Caiuby Labate (Drug Policy Program, Center for Economic Research

and Education – CIDE Región Centro, Aguascalientes) and José Carlos Bouso (Human

Pharmacology, Neurosciences Research Program, Hospital del Mar Medical Research

Institute, Barcelona)

First part: Shamanism and Religion

1. Luisa Elvira Belaunde (Anthropology Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos) –

“Interview with Herlinda Agustin, a woman Onaya from the Shipibo-Konibo indigenous

nation”

This interview with Herlinda Agustín (in memoriam) presents the personal narrative of a

woman who is an onaya or ayahuasca shaman of the Shipibo-Konibo indigenous nation of

the Peruvian Amazon. It allows us to follow, through her words, the paths that led her to

consecrate herself as a healer, combining her role as a mother and married woman with the

difficult and hazardous apprenticeship of the rao or “plant teachers”. Her experiences

represent a novel and much needed approach to the study of gender in Amazonian

shamanism and, in a singular and human manner. The article shedss light on critical

aspects of the cosmovision of the Shipibo-Konibo, for example, the transmission of

ancestral powers, the search for spiritual protection, the practice of plant “diets” and the

relationship with foreigners who attend shamanic sessions.

2. Peter Gow (Anthropology University of Saint Andrews) – “Asleep, Drunk, Hallucinating

– Altering Bodily States through Consumption in Eastern Peru”

The text adopts a phenomenological approach in order to deal with different aspects of the

life of the native inhabitants of the Lower Urubamba River, in East Peru, within the

interpretative framework of symbolic anthropology. In these tribes, the mastery of the lived

experience plays a fundamental role. Four body sates that are defined as “modified” are

dealt with: sleeping, drunkenness, sickness and the hallucinogenic experience. The author

claims that these states function as icons of specific acts of sequences of acts, and are

related to the consumption of substances and the field of social relations. By defining

sickness and the hallucinogenic experience as two different states of intense bodily

transformation, the “corporal dimension” is said to constitute a central part of the natives’

experience. An emphasis is laid on the importance of the lived experience in everyday life,

in an effort to demonstrate that the central cultural values of these natives rest on the

importance of immediate experience and not only what lies in their minds or overriding

abstract models.

3. Esther Jean Langdon (Anthropology Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina) – “The

Symbolic Efficacy of Rituals: From Ritual to Performance”

The paper explores the concept of “healing” among Amazonian shamanic rituals,

examining the meaning of healing from a broader perspective than that of biomedicine. It

focuses on rituals in which psychotropic tea-like substances commonly referred to as

ayahuasca or yagé, have a central role in the ritual’s efficacy. These substances are made

from made from Banisteriopsis sp. and admixtures and can produce strong conscious

altering effects. However, it is important to point out that the patient does not always drink

the mixture, which may be ingested by only the shaman or by participants other than the

patient. For Amazonian peoples, illness is not limited to purely biological processes and

spiritual and social factors are important causes of illness in a universe that is endowed with

intention, that is, a universe populated by diverse predatory beings that are capable of

causing illness. The article examines the concept of “heal”, as well as reviews the current

theories that attempt to account for the ritual efficacy. Differing from the those who

emphasize the instrumental results of substances ingested or who affirm that faith is the

necessary factor for “miracle” cures, this work shall demonstrate that healing efficacy must

largely be attributed to the performative aspects of ritual.

4. Els Lagrou (Anthropology Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) – “To control

fluidity of form: prophylactic cosmopolitics in the use of Nixi pae among the Cashinahua

(Kaxinawá)”

The Cashinahua (Kaxinawá) do not, usually, use ayahuasca (Nixi pae) in the context of

healing rituals, nor do they restrict its use to the specialty of the shaman, notwithstanding

the fact that its use is closely related to the maintenance of the health and wellbeing of the

people (usually men) who consume it and of the community as a whole. Small children do

not drink ayahuasca and women exceptionally do so. The visionary experiences produced

by ayahuasca intends to promote a differentiated interaction with the yuxin beings, invisible

in daily light: the doubles of animals, the owners of the rivers, foreigners, and spirits living

far away. The intention of the experience is to gain knowledge and control over the

agentive constellation surrounding present and future events, events which do influence a

person’s health. A healing specialist can look for the cause of an illness and the right herb

to treat it with, and people involved in conflicts can try to have access to the hidden

intentions of their adversaries. The use of ayahuasca constitutes, in this way, a prophylactic

weapon and instrument of negotiation in a sociocosmological world where predation is

understood to be inherent to the construction of life itself. This predation, however, is

situated in a subjective environment: the beings in interaction, being intentional subjects,

can take revenge or offer their collaboration in the human battle for the control of fluidity

of form. In this quest, the intention of humans is to conquer thinking solid and healthy

bodies, with strong hearts (huinti kuxi), not easily afraid nor easily weakened by illness.

5. Rama Federica Leclerc (PhD in Anthropology Nanterre-Paris 10) – “Shipibo traditional

medicine and French therapies“

This article offers an analysis of the interaction between the traditional healing practices of

the Shipibo indigenous group and some modern alternative therapies practiced by French

therapists. Recent investigations reveal that the modes of representation found in Shipibo

practices appropriate the discourse of their Western counterparts. On the one hand, the

Shipibos, to harmonize the two cultures, adapt their discourse to that of the Westerners.

Nowadays, with the idea of setting themselves forth as the representatives and guardians of

nature and the spirits of the plants, their healers have radicalized their discourse and

practices with regard to the use of medicinal plants. On the other hand, the French healers

include these practices in their forms of therapy. It was evident that some of them regard

the spirit of ayahuasca as a kind of therapist with whom the patient establishes a personal

link. The therapeutic use of ayahuasca thus becomes a self-therapy guided by a healer. This

study also investigates new ideas about the relation between body and spirit, the role of

mental imaginings (visions and dream experience), and verbalization, among others.

6. Isabel Santana de Rose (Anthropology Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) –

“Spiritual healing, biomedicine and intermedicality in Santo Daime”

This article deals with the therapeutic use of ayahuasca in Santo Daime. The first part

introduces Santo Daime and the implications of the expansion of the Brazilian ayahuasca

religions. This is followed by a discussion of the case of the Santo Daime community Céu

da Mantiqueira, which defines itself as a healing center, explaining its health care system

and the native conceptions of health, illness and disease. The text reflects specially about

the presence of an expressive number of health care professionals and the introduction of

biomedical practices in Céu da Mantiqueira. Based on the concept of intermedicality, this

study seeks to show how in this context the spiritual paradigm characteristic of the Daime

doctrine and the scientific one which usually characterizes biomedicine coexist in an active

and dynamic way and give rise to new syntheses.

7. Marlo Meyer (MA in Cultural Anthropology California State University) and Matthew

Meyer (PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology University of Virginia) – “Ayahuasca and

Pregnancy: A Preliminary Report”

In the United States, it is common knowledge that the use of illicit drugs during pregnancy

is detrimental to fetal development, and the women who use illicit drugs during their

pregnancies are seen as abusive mothers. This paper offers a preliminary discussion of an

urban church in the Brazilian Amazon that contradicts these expectations by valuing

positively the use of the hallucinogen ayahuasca during gestation and parturition. The use

of ayahuasca during pregnancy and shared cultural views by church adherents are examined

and the interface between pregnant church members and the biomedical establishment is

considered.

8. Denizar Missawa Camurça (Biologist University of Guarulhos), Beatriz Caiuby Labate

(CIDE Región Centro), Sérgio Brissac (PhD in Social Anthropology Museu Nacional-

UFRJ) and Jonathan Ott (Organic Chemist, HydroXochiatl/Mexico) – “Hoasqueira

Ethnomedicine: The traditional use of the Nove Vegetais in the União do Vegetal”

The article deals with a tradition of the Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal

(Beneficent Spirit Plant Union Center, or UDV), which occasionally used in the past

what became known as the Nove Vegetais brew (Nine Plants brew), that is, ayahuasca with

the addition of nine species of plants specifically aimed at healing. The use of these plants

distinguishes the UDV from the other Brazilian Ayahuasca religions and resembles the

traditional practices of Amazonian healers. There is a body of evidence about the properties

of these species and of another one that was occasionally used, the João Brandinho. These

species are compared with those used by mestizo or indigenous populations described in

the specialized literature: among the ten plants adopted by the founder of the UDV, Mestre

Gabriel, five are reported to have been used by traditional healers of the Amazon region.

The article explains that these plants do, in fact, possess medicinal properties, indicating

the need for further research into the therapeutic potential of the Nove Vegetais and of

the João Brandinho.

9. Alberto Groisman (Anthropology Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina) – “Health,

risks and religious use in disputes about the legal status of the use of ayahuasca:

implications of recent judicial developments in the United States”

Among others, the categories health and risk – and the eventual contents which they evoke

– have been referenced in criminal processes as negotiation and disputes objects. These

categories (which are never free of a particular semantic attribution), are simultaneously

receivers and providers of meaning. According to circumstances and

contexts, these words, and the eventual significance they refer when inserted in contexts of

negotiation and dispute, constitute themselves as meaning aggregating, or meaning

disaggregating particles. They are furthermore political aggregators, here when they

articulate social and institutional forces in these disputes. My intention from this

article is to approach implications of the use of these categories – and the associated

meanings – in a particular context: that of the production of relevant texts in the disputes

concerning the status of the “religious use” of psychoactive substances, particularly of

ayahuasca. My focus is the judicial field, in which “health risk” for eventual users, and the

presumed potential “thread” their use implies for the health of religious groups participants,

always constitute themes of a relevant debate.

10. André Viana (Journalist Trip Magazine) – “Dream and Fear on a Summer Night”

This text is a report of a journalist’s experience in the night of Marc 3rd, 2002, when he and

four anthropologists took part in an ayahuasca ritual performed by members of the

Kaxinawa tribe in a ranch in the outskirts of Rio Branco, Acre, Brazil. An experience that –

however difficult to duplicate – is far from forgotten.

Second Part: Science and Therapeutics

11. José Carlos Bouso (Hospital del Mar Research Medical Institute), Josep María Fábregas

(Centro de Investigación y Tratamiento de las Adicciones – CITA, and Instituto de

Etnopsicología Amazónica – IDEAA), Sabela Fondevila (Universidad Complutense de

Madrid), Débora González (Hospital del Mar Research Medical Institute), Marta Cutchet

(CITA and IDEAA), Xavier Fernández (in memoriam, IDEAA), Miguel Ángel Alcázar

(Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Gregorio Gómez-Jarabo (Universidad Autónoma de

Madrid) – “Long-term effects of the ritual use of ayahuasca on mental health”

Scientific research about long term effects of hallucinogens is, in general terms, poor. Until

now, only 3 studies exist in which this issue was investigated in depth. In 2004, our

research team stayed in Mapiá and Rio Branco developing longitudinal studies in order to

assess the long term ayahuasca effects on mental health. In the first study we administered

personality, neuropsychological, general health, psychosocial wellbeing and spirituality

tests to 60 daimistas versus 60 non ayahuasca users from Boca do Acre. Those same tests

were administered 8 months later in order to see if the scores were stable across time. In

this chapter we present the preliminary findings.

12. Beatriz Caiuby Labate (CIDE Región Centro), Rafael Guimarães dos Santos (PhD in

Pharmacology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Rick Strassman (Psychiatry,

University of New Mexico, School of Medicine and Cottonowood Research Foundation),

Brian Anderson (MD Candidate, Stanford University) and Suely Mizumoto (MA in Social

Psychology Universidade de São Paulo) –- “Effect of Santo Daime Membership on

Substance Dependence”

Previous clinical research on hallucinogen-assisted psychotherapy reported efficacy in

treating substance abuse disorders, similar to what has been report in naturalistic studies of

peyote use among Native American Church members. Urban use of the Amazonian

hallucinogenic brew, ayahuasca, is increasingly common in syncretic Brazilian ayahuasca

religions, and anecdotal reports suggest recovery from substance dependence among those

who participate in their rituals. We sought to assess more quantitatively effects of Brazilian

ayahuasca-using church membership on substance dependence. We employed a modified

questionnaire using DSM-IV criteria to determine the presence of substance dependence

within a sample of members of a branch of the Santo Daime Brazilian ayahuasca religion.

Nearly half of church members reported substance dependence before joining the religious

organization; of these, 90% reported cessation of use of at least one substance upon which,

before church membership, they reported dependency. While these preliminary data

require confirmation using more rigorous criteria, they suggest a potential role of

ayahuasca, within a particular context, in the treatment of substance dependence.

13. Interview with the psychiatrist Evelyn Xavier – Beatriz Caiuby Labate (CIDE Región

Centro), Rafael Guimarães dos Santos (PhD in Pharmacology, Universitat Autònoma de

Barcelona), José Carlos Bouso (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) and Isabel

Santana de Rose (Anthropology Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)

14. Jordi Riba (Human Experimental Neuropharmacology, Medicine Research Center and

Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona) and Manel J. Barbanoj (in memoriam, Medicine

Research Center and Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona) – “Clinical pharmacology of

ayahuasca: research with Spanish volunteers”

Throughout the past decade, the authors have carried out a series of clinical trials in healthy

volunteers, with the objective of investigating the human pharmacology of ayahuasca. The

studies demonstrate that it is feasible to safely administer ayahuasca to people who have

prior experience in the use of visionary substances with the purpose of evaluating its effects

in a research setting. In this way, research has spanned from the pharmacokinetics of the

alkaloids found in ayahuasca to effects on brain activation observed through neuroimaging,

including the measurement of cardiovascular, neuroendocrinological and

neurophysiological variables. These studies intend to achieve a better understanding of the

effects of ayahuasca on the body, as well as to delve into the mechanisms of visionary

substance activity in the human brain. This chapter presents the studies and results that

have been obtained.

15. Rafael Guimarães dos Santos (PhD in Pharmacology Universidad Autonoma de

Barcelona) – “Possible risks associated to the use of ayahuasca”

In the last decades, the use of ayahuasca has been increasing in Brazil, the United States

and Europe. Little is known about the eventual risks associated with this consumption . The

objective of this study is to provide information about the possible risks associated with the

consumption of this drug when it is combined with medication, foods and other chemical

substances. Ayahuasca has serotoninergic agonist components – inhibitors of the

monoamine oxidase enzyme and the tryptamine N, N-dimetiltriptamina (DMT) – and other

chemical substances. The risks associated with the ingestion of these substances are mainly

related to the serotoninergic syndrome, tyramine intoxication and the manifestation of

psychopathologies. A review of the specialized literature shows that the risks of ayahuasca

consumption are mainly associated with its pharmacological composition. These

pharmacological characteristics must be considered in order to reduce eventual risks with

ayahuasca preparations.

16. Ede Frecska (National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, Budapest) – “Ayahuasca

sessions in case of a recidivist murderer”

We have limited resources available for the treatment and prevention of violent behavior.

The usefulness of the most commonly used medications, namely the selective serotoninreuptake

inhibitor [SSRI] agents for the above purpose is a debated issue in the psychiatric

literature. The aim of this case report is to add an ethnopharmacological perspective to the

management of human aggression. Particularly, attention is called to the potential cohesive,

prosocial effect of the Amazonian beverage, ayahuasca — a decoctum, which has been

used traditionally for multiple medico-religious purposes by numerous indigenous groups

of the Upper Amazon — and has been found to be useful in crisis intervention, achieving

redemption, as well as eliciting cathartic feelings with moral content

17. Benny Shanon (Psychology Hebrew University of Jerusalem) – “Moments of insight,

healing and transformation – a cognitive phenomenological analysis”

In this chapter I examine moments of special significance in people’s experience with

Ayahuasca. Specifically, I consider moments in which psychological insights are gained,

and personal transformation and/or healing take place. The analysis consists in a structural

typology of these facets of the Ayahuasca experience and is based on empirical data

gathered in the framework of a broader study that sets itself to present a systematic charting

of the phenomenology of the special state of mind induced by this brew. The analysis and

discussion are taken from a phenomenological cognitive-psychological, not clinicalpsychological

or medical, perspective.

18. Walter Moure (PhD in Social Psychology Universidade de São Paulo) – “The

accompaniment (care) given in the Peruvian Amazon Indigenous tradition”

Based on his experience of living regularly with maestros de plantas (shamans) of the

Peruvian Amazon, the author tries to understand the nature of accompaniment (care)

given in the therapeutics of that tradition. He offers a vision derived from his reflections on

Amazonian indigenous and mestizo knowledge, his own experience as a patient and his

contact with Western patients that underwent shamanic treatments, using for that purpose

the deconstruction of certainty – tool of ethnopsychoanalysis -, the Winnicottean

psychoanalysis and other Western authors who were meaningful in his life. The result aims

to clarify themes relating to human suffering and possible approaches to it.

19. Xavier Fernández (in memoriam, IDEAA) and José María Fábregas (IDEAA and

CITA) – “Using ayahausca for treatment of drug dependency in the Brazilian Amazon“

The article presents the experience of the Institute of Applied Amazonic Ethnopsycology

(IDEAA), created by a spanish group in the Amazon with the goal of studying and applying

the use of ayahuasca in aiding processes of personal growth and the treatment of drug

addictions. It starts whit a short description of its basic concepts, as well the theoretical

perspectives underpinning its ayahuasca´s applications, which include transpersonal

psychology, the Santo Daime religion, chamanism, and various eastern disciplines. The

next section shows the practical activities, paying special attention to rituals, looking

indepth into the healing process through a model of help based on minimally interventionist

guidance. With a content analysis the main thems of ayahuasca sessions for addicts were

revealed, and then discussed and related with dinamics of transformation. The final part of

the text concludes with the clinical observations emerging from the years of practice.

20. Jonathan Ott (Organic Chemist, HydroXochiatl/Mexico) – “Shamanic Yajé: Neither

religious sacrament nor remedy for “chemical dependence“

This article will discuss the diferences between use of yajé in indigenous shamanism and

western medicine. Both systems seek to “cure” via medicaments, although in the case of

shamanism the “doctors” typically consume some drug, which is effectively prohibited in

academic medicine. By way of example, it will examine the peculiar attempt of the medical

establishment to endeavour to deal with habituations to the ingestion of drugs as “diseases,”

commonly treated with other, different drugs. Some physicians employ yajé itself as one

such drug to combat habituation to other drugs, at times in collaboration with Amazonian

shamans. This has its parallels in modern syncretic religions such as União do Vegetal,

which involves the ingestion of yajé as a sacrament to combat alcoholism, tobaccoism,

cocainism, etc. For believers in these religions, just as for physicians who employ yajé as a

drug to combat the use of other drugs, yajé is a “medicine” [holy] to fight “abuse” [sic] of a

“drug” [evil], for instance cocaine. This is pharmacological chauvinism and is parallel to

the situation with Cannabis: for certain religious believers (Rastafarians) and some ludible

users, marijuana is a “herb” [holy]; while cocaine (indeed for some, yajé itself) is a “drug”

[evil]. Of course, for criminal law effectively in the entire world, any non-medical use of

many “drugs” [evil]—heroine, LSD, psilocybine, etc.—is a crime, if not a “mental illness”

[sic]. There is a discussion of the semiotic confusion implicit in deforming the word

addiction into meanings quite distinct from those of its synonym, devotion, to the point, in

English and Castillian, of creating a substantive form, addict, to stigmatize the users of

certain drugs. It will include some reflexions on shamanism as an empirical system of

natural philosophy or science, the while modern science transmogrifies itself ever more into

a dogmatic religion.

21. Josep Maria Fericgla (Societat d’Etnopsicologia Aplicada i Estudis Cognitius

Barcelona) – “Changes in the value profile after an experience with ayahuasca: Comparison

of results of the Hartman test administered before and after a session of ayahuasca in a

group of volunteers”

This research was done in 1999 and has remained unpublished until now. It consisted of

applying the Hartman Test to twenty five individuals before taking ayahuasca, and 24 hours

after it. This axiological test measures changes induced by the experience of ayahuasca

drinking. The article discusses the advantages of this test in relation to other psychological

and clinical tests. It is argued that the Hartman test is more appropriate to analyze the

experience of people who seek ayahuasca and do not have mental conditions and are not

especially ill. Further, the author affirms that the test is more efficient in measuring “world

views” and the personality and structural aspects of the subjects. The results of the test are

presented and discussed. The article also points out to the difference between “illness” and

“disease” and “healing” and “cure.”

22. Stelio Marras (Anthropology Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, Universidade de São

Paulo) – “Some thoughts from an anthropology of science point of view”

The book´s essays will be analyzed from the point of view of the problem of dualisms, that

is, of a world divided in two (by a binocular view). The article proposes, as an alternative,

the opposite approach, that is, a multi-ocular or multi-focal view which seeks to examine

the design of networks formed by the diverse agencies (human and non-human, natural and

supernatural) which motivate action. This opens up the possibility of questioning

the convention which interprets the world and action on the world in terms of reified

agents, that is, as if they have always been that way. Instead, taking a step back, the article

focuses on how the agents come to be what they are (and thus before considering what they

are). In other words, ontogenesis before ontology. This approach dares to ask whether the

world, seen in this way, may reemerge re-enchanted, proposing, among other challenges,

to sharply question the notion of cause, considering that the agents, influenced by the

mutual causation of a network, act upon each other.

Further info: http://www.bialabate.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Ayahuasca_Salud_English1.pdf

Thank you for your patience.

by Gayle Highpine¹

ABSTRACT

For decades, researchers have puzzled over the mystery of the origin of Ayahuasca,² especially the question of how the synergy was discovered between the the two components of the brew: the vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) with a monoamine oxidase inhibiting (MAOI) action and the leaf (Psychotria viridis or Diplopterys cabrerana), which requires that MAOI action to make their dimethyltryptamine (DMT) orally active. Drawing from two years of fieldwork among Napo Runa Indian shamans, cross-dialect studies of Quechua, and the record of anthropological data, I contend that the botanical origin of B. caapi was on the Napo River; that the original form of Ayahuasca shamanism employed the vine Banisteriopsis caapi alone; that the shamanic use of Banisteriopsis caapi alone spread and diffused before the DMT-containing admixtures were discovered; that the synergy between B. caapi and Psychotria viridis was discovered in the region of present-day Iquitos, the synergy between B. caapi and Diplopterys cabrerana was discovered around the upper Putumayo River, and that each combination diffused from there; and that the discoveries of these synergies came about because of the traditional practice of mixing other medicinal plants with Ayahuasca brew. Among the Napo Runa, the Ayahuasca vine is considered “the mother of all plants” and a mediator and translator between the human and plant worlds, helping humans and plants to communicate with each other.

Introduction

When I began to drink Ayahuasca with Napo Runa and Pastaza Runa in Ecuador, I knew little about it. All I knew was that it was very important to them and that they insisted that no one could understand their culture without drinking Ayahuasca.

Originally, I became involved in support of their struggles against the oil companies, but when Napo Runa friends learned that I was a writer and editor and linguist, they asked me to help them document their culture, which they feared was being lost by the younger generations. They wanted someone to transcribe oral history and traditions to help develop bilingual, culturally relevant materials for schools. I have a degree in linguistics with a special focus on Quechua dialectology, so, as I learned their language, I did linguistic analyses comparing their dialect of Amazonian Quechua (or Kichwa) with highland Quechua dialects of southern Peru and Bolivia, which I studied while living in those regions in the 1970s. At the same time, I did research for a master’s thesis on Amazonian permaculture, which examined how Amazonian Indians cultivate the forest in a way that increases rather than decreases biodiversity.

I lived in Ecuador for nearly two years, most of that time with a Napo Runa shaman’s family. Once or twice a month, someone would come for a healing and there would be an Ayahuasca ceremony. Then there would usually be another ceremony the following night to use up the leftover brew. I had an open invitation to drink at the ceremonies, so I drank Ayahuasca on average two to four times a month.

“Vine With a Soul”

Ayahuasca is the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, and the brew prepared from that vine. Unequivocally, this is the meaning of “Ayahuasca” to the Napo Runa people from whose language the namecomes.³ Until recently, this was the definition of Ayahuasca for all ethnographers and ethnobotanists who recorded Ayahuasca use among indigenous and mestizo peoples of the Upper Amazon.

From the first written observations of Ayahuasca use by Jesuit priests in the 1700s, it was the vine, or liana, whose use was recorded. Ethnobotanist Richard Spruce, the first scientist to study Ayahuasca, observed that widely separated peoples in the Upper Amazon used the same vine, and he collected samples. “In the century that followed Spruce’s remarkable work,” wrote ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, “many explorers, travelers, anthropologists and botanists referred to ayahuasca, caapi, or yagé… prepared from a forest liana.” (Schultes, n.d.)

Until the mid-1980s, all anthropologists who wrote about Ayahuasca use, without exception, defined Ayahuasca as Banisteriopsis caapi, or as vines of the Banisteriopsis genus. In books, the index entry for “ayahuasca” or “yagé” would say, “see Banisteriopsis caapi”—or vice versa. Some anthropologists mention other plants added to the brew, but treat them as being of secondary importance. Others don’t mention admixtures at all. By 1972, Marlene Dobkin de Rios, having read all the available literature mentioning Ayahuasca in English, Spanish, and French in preparation for her book Visionary Vine, summarized the unanimous definition of Ayahuasca at the time:

[A]nthropologists have commented on the use of ayahuasca as an hallucinogenic drink used by primitive horticultural societies. The drink bears the same name as the vine, although various names such as natema, yajé, yagé, nepe and kaji have been used throughout the basin area. Ayahuasca is the general term that has been applied to several different species of Banisteriopsis, to which additional psychedelics may occasionally be added.

Richard Evans Schultes, “the father of modern ethnobotany,” who spent twelve years in the Amazon in the 1940s and 1950s, wrote in 1976:

Ayahuasca and Caapi are two of many local names for either of two species of a South American vine: Banisteriopsis caapi or B. inebrians…. Some tribes add other plants to alter or to increase the potency of the drink…. 

Plants added to ayahuasca by some Indians in the preparation of the hallucinogenic drink are amazingly diverse and include even ferns. Several are now known to be active themselves and to alter effectively the properties of the basic drink…. Two additives, employed over a wide area by many tribes, are especially significant. The leaves (but not the bark) of a third species of Banisteriopsi —B. rusbyana [now reclassified as Diploptrerys cabrerana]—are often added to the preparation “to lengthen and brighten the visions.” …Over a much wider area, including Amazonian Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, the leaves of several species of Psychotria—especially P. viridis—are added. This 20-foot forest treelet belongs to the coffee family, Rubioceae. Like B. rusbyana, it has been found recently to contain the strongly hallucinogenic N. N-dimethyltryptamine.

Plants were “added to ayahuasca by some Indians”; two additives were “employed over a wide area by many tribes.” Significantly, Schultes (who experienced Ayahuasca with more different Indian groups than anyone else ever has or will, and who carefully recorded admixture use and the effect caused by the addition of admixtures) does not say “usually” or that “most” tribes used admixtures. In fact, in his 1992 book Vine of the Soul, Schultes reduces the use of admixtures to “occasionally” (Schultes 1992:22).

Names and Classes of Ayahuasca Vine

It is not only in Quechua-speaking groups that the brew is named for the vine. This is consistent in nearly all indigenous groups: caapi, or similar words among Tupi speakers, yajé, kaji, or similar words among Tucanoan speakers, natem, or similar words, among Jivaroan speakers, shuri, or similar words, among Panoan speakers, kamalampi, or similar words, among Arawakan speakers: All are names used for both vine and brew.

The importance of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine in Amazonian Ayahuasca cultures is shown in traditional mythologies, in customs such as the use of the vine as an amulet and a motif for decorating ritual space and garments (Weiskopf 2005:125), and in the fine distinctions made among B. caapi varieties. The Tukano have at least six varieties, with names like Suana-kahi-ma (Kahi of the red jaguar) and Kahi-vai Bucura-rijoma(Kahi of the monkey head) (Schultes 1986). Junquera (1989) recorded 22 classes of B. caapi differentiated by the Harakmbet (Mashco) Indians, such as Boyanhe (green, unripe) which “produces visions of hunting, fishing, searching for property, migrations, visions, etc.”; Sisi (flesh of ancestors) which produces “visions of heaven, here understood as the universe of the past to the present”; Kemeti (flesh of the tapir) which produces “signs which aim at recreating the mythical universe”; Wakeregn (white) which produces “white images which show the journey to Seronhai, a place where the dead stay”; and eighteen other classes. Reichel-Dolmatoff (1975:155) describes a Barasana shaman who identified pieces of vine as “guamo yagé,” “mammal yagé” and “head yagé” by chewing them. The Kaxinawa of Brazil distinguish red, blue, white, and black varieties (Lagrou 2000). Mestizo ayahuasqueros in Iquitos recognize white, black, red, yellow, cielo (heaven), trueno (thunder), and boa caapi. Langdon (1985) recorded the following classifications of B. caapi vine among the Sionas: yai-yajé, nea-yajé, horo-yajé, weki-yajé, wai-yajé or wahi-yaj,; wati-yajé, weko-yajé, hamo-weko-yajé, beji-yajé, kwi-ku-yajé, kwaku-yajé, aso-yajé, kido-yajé, usebo-yajé, ga-tokama-yai-yajé, zi-simi-yajé, bi’-ã-yajé, sia-sewi-yajé, sese-yajé or sise-yajé (“wild pig yajé,” used for hunting), and so’-om-wa-wa’i-yajé (“long-vine yajé”).

Langdon writes that among the Siona, shamans often trade varieties of caapi, and that “if a shaman finds a wild liana in the forest, he will prepare a drink to ascertain its worth for inclusion in his own repertoire, especially in regard to what visions it can induce.” Wade Davis quotes Jorge Fuerbringer, an old German colonist long settled in the Putumayo (quoted in Weiskopf 2005:125): “When a [yagé] plant is passed on in trade, so is its specific vision. A Siona cannot classify a plant without knowing its trading history. Every plant thus has a lineage that links it through all time to every other.”

These classifications are based not on physical or botanical characteristics but on shamanic criteria—the effects and the types of visions produced. Richard Evans Schultes wrote (1986):

There is no doubt that Indians in the northwest Amazon can “identify” different “kinds” of caapi or ayahuasca at a distance without feeling, tasting or smelling the liana… The natives maintain that they are able to use these kinds of caapi or yajé or ayahuasca to prepare drinks of different strengths, for different purposes or in connection with different ceremonies or dances or magico-religious needs, or what the partaker wishes to kill in the hunt.

On the other hand, no such fine distinctions are made of varieties and effects and lineages of the admixture plants. It is the vine, not the leaf, that is classified according to the type of vision induced and the shamanic purpose it is used for.

The New Definition of Ayahuasca

Richard Evans Schultes paid keen attention to admixture plants, and, based on his own experience drinking brews with and without admixtures, Schultes hypothesized that MAOIs in the vine might make the DMT in some admixtures orally active.

In 1984, this hypothesis was experimentally confirmed by Terence McKenna, G.H.N Towers, and F.S. Abbott. It was subsequently popularized by Terence McKenna. However, unlike Schultes, who had speculated that DMT was responsible for much of the activity of the brew, McKenna made the DMT responsible for all of it. Although he conceded that the beta-carbolines in the vine “can be hallucinogenic at close to toxic doses,”⁴ (1992:33) McKenna popularized the idea that Banisteriopsis caapi had no other role in an Ayahuasca brew except to make the DMT orally active. “They are important for visionary shamanism because they can inhibit enzyme systems in the body that would otherwise depotentiate hallucinogens of the DMT type” (McKenna 1992:33). “[T]he action of the Banisteriopsis, as far as the visions are concerned, is to prevent the Psychotria from being neutralized by gastric enzymes” (Calavia 2011:131).

In the western world, Ayahuasca acquired a new definition: It was now, by definition, the combination of Banisteriopsis caapi and a DMT-containing plant.⁵ Ayahuasca became, by definition, “orally active DMT.” The first anthropologist to adopt the new definition seems to have been Luis Eduardo Luna in 1984. Luna spent time with Terence McKenna, absorbing his perspective, before beginning his fieldwork. Since then, anthropologists have increasingly adopted this definition and filtered their observations through it. The preeminence of the Ayahuasca vine in the indigenous Amazonian world became the elephant in the living room of Ayahuasca studies, with a tacit agreement to pretend it doesn’t exist.

In this view, the only important psychoactive agent in the Ayahuasca brew is DMT; and because B. caapi has no DMT, B. caapi is not psychoactive; and because P. viridis used alone has no DMT effects, P. viridis alone is not psychoactive. And thus a new “mystery” was born: How did the indigenous people figure out how to create a psychoactive beverage from two plants that, separately, have no psychoactive effects?

The Vine and the Leaf

I came to Ayahuasca without preconceptions. I had been drinking Ayahuasca for about half a year before I started doing outside research about it. When I did, I was struck to learn something that explained what I had discovered through experience.

I had discovered that there was no correlation between how deep a journey was and how visual it was. Sometimes an experience was very deep and also intensely visual; sometimes it was very deep but had little or no visual effects; sometimes it was full of colorful visuals but not very deep; and sometimes it was subtle in both respects. The depth and the visual effects were two independent variables.

Then I read that there were two necessary components to an Ayahuasca brew: the vine and the leaf. I began to take an interest in the leaves I saw being added to the brew. Sometimes a lot of leaves were added, sometimes a few, sometimes none, depending on what was available.

The leaves were called chakruna, which usually meant not Psychotria viridis, the plant commonly known as Chakruna, but more often Diplopterys cabrerana, the plant better known as Chaliponga or Chagroponga.⁶ The Napo Runa sometimes use P. viridis, but prefer D. cabrerana, as well as another Psychotria species they called Amiruka.⁷ When none of these were available, sometimes Ilex guayusa would be added to the brew.

The leaves were Ayahuasca’s “helpers,” I was told, and their purpose was to “brighten and clarify” the visions. The vine is like a cave, and the leaf is like a torch you use to see what is inside the cave. The vine is like a book, and the leaf is like the candle you use to read the book.⁸ The vine is like a snowy television set, and the leaf helps to tune in the picture. There was a subtle attitude that the need for strong leaf was the sign of a beginner: An experienced ayahuasquero could see the visions even in low light.

Ayahuasca vine is notvisionary in the same way as DMT. Visions from vine-only brews are shadowy, monochromatic, like silhouettes, or curling smoke, or clouds moving across the night sky. It is because their visions are usually monochromatic that vines are classified by the color of vision they produce: white, black, blue, red (in my experience, dark maroon). Snakes, the most common vision on Ayahuasca, are considered the manifest spirit of the vine.⁹ Vine visions can be hard to see; in fact, the “visions” may not be visual at all, but auditory or somatic or intuitive. But the vine carries the content of the message, the teaching, and the insight. The leaf helps illuminate the content, but the teachings are credited to the vine. Vine visions are “frequently associated with writing, to a code that is present in visions…or in the ‘books’ where the spirits keep the secrets of the forest.” (Calavia Saez 2011:135). The vine is The Teacher, The Healer, The Guide. The purpose of drinking Ayahuasca is to receive the message the vine imparts. This is why it is the vine, not the leaf, that is classified by the type of vision it gives. “For them the vine is, in truth, a living guide, a friend, a paternal authority” (Weiskopf 2005:104).

Listening to the Vine

While I was living in the village, someone began the process of shamanic apprenticeship. There was a series of ceremonies with brews of special strength for that purpose; brews with enormous quantities of vine. About two to three pounds of fresh vine per person was used (about 25 to 35 times the amount needed for MAOI inhibition). Those were powerful experiences indeed.

Although the apprenticeship began with crushingly vine-heavy brews, the more the apprentice progressed, the weaker the brew he would need. He would learn to see the dimmest of visions. If he spent a full two years “fasting,” then eventually even smelling or tasting the brew, even touching an Ayahuasca plant, would be enough to visit her realms. On the other hand, he would learn to navigate the strongest of brews with clear focus, and be undistracted by any amount of DMT fireworks.

The most important way to become sensitized to Ayahuasca is through sasina, which the Napo Runa and Pastaza Runa translateas “ayuno,” or fast. This is essentially the same as what as known as the dieta among the mestizo shamans of Peru. It involves flavorless foods, no sexual stimulation, and avoidance of noise and unnecessary social interaction. Much has been written about the dieta, so I won’t go into details here.

For a shamanic apprentice, the “fast” allows them to dwell in the spirit world; flavorful foods and sexual stimulation would pull them back down into their body. For non-shamans, the “fast” makes them more sensitive and transparent to the plant spirits. (When I quoted the reason for sexual abstinence given by the soap opera-loving mestizos—that the plants were “jealous”—Napo Runa friends laughed). Ayahuasca taught the people this technique to help them to develop deeper relationships with plant spirits.

Ayahuasca has three interrelated roles among the Napo Runa. The best known role is her function in healing ceremonies. She is also well known for her role in divination, especially remote viewing. In the oral histories I recorded, incidents were sometimes mentioned when family members at home, concerned about someone long absent, would drink Ayahuasca to find out what was happening with that person. Some literature mentions the use by some groups of Ayahuasca to locate game animals and to know what enemies were doing; also forms of divination.

Her third role, however, has barely begun to be recognized by the outside world. That is her role as mediator and translator between the human world and the plant world. Among the Napo Runa, one of Ayahuasca’s vital roles is teaching humans about other plants besides herself.¹⁰ Among entheogens, this seems to be unique. Other entheogenic cultures revere their entheogenic plants, but Ayahuasca teaches people to revere other plants. She taught people the practice of sasina so that they could use it learn to communicate with other plants, not only herself. If you learn enough from Ayahuasca, I was told, all plants are entheogenic and visionary, not just the few with chemical battering rams powerful enough to break through the stubborn barriers in human consciousness. In the Ayahuasca world, spirit allies are mainly plants.

The Quechua Language and the History of Ayahuasca

The history of Ayahuasca is intertwined with the Quechua language. The very word aya-waska is Quechua, and the language is closely associated with Ayahuasca shamanism, even in areas where Quechua is not spoken. “Besides their ‘emic’ terms, all ayahuasca-using groups also use the Quechua word ‘ayahuasca,’ even in mother tongue discourse and songs” (Brabec de Mori 2011: 4).

The mestizo shamans of Iquitos, where the Napo River joins the Amazon, do not speak Quechua, and yet their practice is filled with Quechua words, such as arkana (fortress), kutipa (revenge), manchari (fright sickness), pusanga (love charm) and even the forest spirit Chullachaki. Quechua words heard in mestizo icaros include shamuy or shamuriy (come), shayay or shayariy (stand or stay), muyuy or muyuriy (to go in a circle), kapariy (to shout or call), kayariy (to call or invite), llukshiy (to emerge), sinchi or shinzhi (strong), sumay (beauty), samay (breath or spiritual energy), kawsay (life or life energy), shungu (heart), ñawi (eye), yawar (blood), wayra (wind), nina (fire), illapa (lightning), indi (sun), killa (moon), allpa (ground, soil, earth), urku (hill or mountain), sacha (forest), ambi or hambi (medicine or poison),puma (jaguar), amarun (boa or anaconda), kindi (hummingbird), kuraka (chief), pacha (world, time, space), hanan (high, elevated), wasi (house, dwelling place), pungu (door), warmi (female human or spirit), kari (male human or spirit), runa (person, man, entity, spirit), maymanda (from where), and chaymanda (from there).

The Incas

Quechua is best known as the “language of the Incas,” so the association of Quechua with Ayahuasca has, not surprisingly, given rise to speculation that Ayahuasca may have originated with the Incas or been spread by the Incas. There is no direct evidence that the Incas ever used Ayahuasca. But—despite the fact that they reached present-day Ecuador very late in their history, and despite the fact that their empire barely touched the fringe of Ayahuasca territory—it is unlikely that the Incas missed learning about Ayahuasca when they reached Ayahuasca-using regions. The Incas had an intense interest in the local plant life everywhere they went, although their interest was less in medicinal plants than in local varieties of edible crops.

If the Incas used Ayahuasca, though, it was restricted to the elite ruling classes (which is what the word “Inca” properly refers to) and the common people didn’t participate. That would have been business as usual for the Incas; the elite class had many private ceremonial practices closed to the common people, though few details are recorded. It is possible that they didn’t like Ayahuasca, though; the Incas had a distaste for anything too wild, chaotic or uncontrollable. Regardless, there is no sign of Ayahuasca use or the memory of it among the highland Indians (although people around Cuzco have recently started cashing in on Ayahuasca tourism).

If the Incas were the vector for spreading Ayahuasca to the Amazonian peoples,¹¹ that would make the use of Ayahuasca outside of its original homeland,very recent indeed: The Incas did not reach Ecuador until the mid-1400s. Then, even though they did not introduce Ayahuasca to their own people in the highlands, they would have then brought it not only to the few Amazonian tribes whose fringe abutted their empire, but to many more tribes outside their empire, and much farther to the east, all the way to Brazil; places where there is no evidence they ever set foot. The confusion about Ayahuasca and the Incas comes from a lack of knowledge of the history of the Quechua language.

Branches of Quechua

Quechua is more accurately called a language family than a language. It has two main branches: the southern branch and the northern branch, and several smaller, isolated branches. The southern branch encompasses the highlands of southern Peru, Bolivia, and northern Argentina; the northern branch, northern Peru, Ecuador and southern Colombia.¹² Each branch has sub-branches divided into numerous varied dialects.

When the Incas adopted Quechua as the lingua franca of Tawantinsuyu, they were taking advantage of an existing lingua franca already in widespread use. Historical linguists trace the original Quechua proto-language to central Peru, from whence the main branches diverged between twelve hundred and two thousand years ago. So by even the most conservative estimate, Quechua was used in northern Peru and Ecuador many centuries before the arrival of the Incas, whose empire began around 1200 and reached Ecuador in the late 1400s.

The northern and southern branches of Quechua are mutually unintelligible; they have major differences in pronunciation, lexicon, semantics, and grammar. For example, “What is your name? My name is Ana” would be “Ima sutiyki? Sutiyqa Anam” in Cuzco; in Napo, it would be “Ima shuti kangui? Ana shuti kani.” “I love you” is “munayki” in Cuzco, “kanda munani” in Napo. “My father has a house” would be “taitay wasiyuqmi” in Cuzco, and “ñuka yaya wasira charin” in Napo.

The Quechua that is associated with Ayahuasca clearly belongs to the northern branch. Pronunciation follows the northern pattern (shungu vs. sonqo for heart, arkana vs hark’ana for fortress, kindi vs. q’enti for hummingbird, shamuy vs hamuy for come, etc.) So do the semantics; even within the limited range of Quechua words used by mestizos, it is easy to find examples showing they follow northern vocabulary and semantics. For example, sacha means “forest” or “wild” in Amazonian Quechua; in Cuzco sach’a means tree. The Amazonian Quechua word for “leaf,” found in many medicinal plant names, is panga; in southern Peru, “leaf” is laqi, laphi, or raphe. The root word for pusanga (love charm)—the verb pusa- (to lead)—does not exist in Cuzco Quechua. Many other examples could be cited. The Quechua associated with Ayahuasca is clearly not the Inca dialect.

The Heartland of Amazonian Quechua

The Napo River basin is the heartland of Amazonian Quechua. It is the most accessible part of the entire Amazon basin. It lies below the Papallacta pass, a gateway where highland Indians and lowland Indians met to trade. (Papallacta is Quechua for “potato town,” because potatoes were the main trade item brought by highland Indians.) The Napo River joins the Amazon River near present-day Iquitos. Thus, the Napo directly connects the Andean highlands to the Amazon River. It was a major trading route and corridor of intercultural exchange. Dozens of different ethnic groups traded with each other up and down the river, using Amazonian Quechua as their common language. The gentle, pacific character of their descendants suggests a society of peaceful commerce.

The contact between highlands and lowlands shows in the highland influence on upper Napo Runa music and traditional clothing, and in the way highland Indian curanderos in Ecuador, though they do not use Ayahuasca, employ the soplar and the shakapa in the same way as is done all along the Napo River to Iquitos. ¹³

As the most accessible area of the entire Amazon Basin, the Napo region was the first part of the Amazon to be penetrated by Europeans, Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana, in 1541. It was the first area hit by epidemics, which preceded the Europeans themselves. The banks of the Napo River were already depopulated by the time Orellana saw it. The epidemics quickly swept up and down the major rivers, where populations were most concentrated; the Amazon River itself, once the most densely populated zone of the Amazon Basin, had 100% population loss. Since then, tribes and communities have continued to be shattered by various destructive forces, from epidemics to missionary disruption to virtual enslavement on encomiendas (land grants) to the Rubber Boom, and, in recent decades, massive colonization, deforestation, land losses, and the poisoning of rivers, which are the main source of protein in their diet, by petroleum companies.¹⁴

Unlike highland Quechua, which became peoples’ first language as a result of the intentional eradication of local languages by Spanish missionaries, Amazonian Quechua, or Kichwa, developed as survivors of decimated groups married each other and regrouped into new families and villages. They spoke the language that they had in common with each other, Kichwa; their children, in turn, grew up speaking Kichwa as their first language. The Yumbos of Papallacta were absorbed into the upper Napo Runa, the shards of the once-powerful Omaguas were mostly absorbed into the lower Napo Runa, and the Zaparo were mostly absorbed into the Pastaza Runa, who also absorbed many displaced Shuar and Achuar people. Many Pastaza Runa speak Shuar or Achuar as well as Kichwa and Spanish. Many smaller peoples were also absorbed into the Runa. Thus, the Napo Runa and other Amazonian Quechua of today are a melting pot of different cultures.¹⁵

The total number of Amazonian Quechua speakers, variously estimated to be between 40,000 and 100,000, comprise only a tiny percentage of the total Quechua-speaking population, who number in the millions. Speakers of Amazonian Quechua (or Kichwa) comprise between 5% and 10% of total speakers of indigenous Amazonian languages, making Quechua (in widely varying dialects) by far the most spoken of the nearly 200 indigenous languages used in the Amazon Basin. Collectively, the Amazonian Kichwa groups comprise well over half of the Indian population of the Ecuadorean Amazon.¹⁶ Quechua can therefore rightly be called an Amazonian, as well as an Andean, language.

Ayahuasca and Survival in Napo

The present-day Napo Runa are renowned in Ecuador among scholars and other Indian groups alike for the number of different plant medicines they know. Some scholars estimate that a total of 1200 different plant medicines are known and used among the upper and lower Napo Runa. Richard Evans Schultes estimated 1600 plants known in the greater region enclosing eastern Ecuador and adjacent areas of Colombia and Peru. Part of the reason for this may be that the Napo Runa originated as an amalgamation of different peoples, each with its own traditions. Another part of the reason is the fact that their territory contains significantly varied ecosystems due to the varying altitudes where the rainforest meets the foothills of the Andes. But both anthropologists and the Napo Runa themselves attribute the fact that the Napo Runa know so many plants to the fact that the ancestors of the Napo Runa were the first Amazonian Indians to encounter Europeans, and they were the first to be hit by European diseases.

In contrast, their neighbors (and traditional enemies) to the southeast, the Waorani, were able, because of their extreme fierceness, to maintain their isolation until the 1950s, and many still live free in the forest. In 1980, a few decades after the Waorani were “pacified,” making it safe for outsiders to visit them, researchers visited the Waorani to learn about their traditional plant medicines. Since they had been isolated for so long, their traditional culture kept intact for so long, surely, it was thought, they would be a treasure trove of ethnobotanical knowledge. But the researchers turned up a meager thirty-five medicinal plants among the Waorani, and realized that, in their isolated state, the Waorani had not needed many medicines:

They had never been exposed to polio or pneumonia, nor was there any evidence that smallpox, chicken pox, typhus or typhoid fever affected the tribe. There was no syphilis, tuberculosis, malaria, or serum hepatitis…. Of the thirty-five medicinal plants, thirty were used to treat one of six conditions: fungal infections, snake bite, dental problems, fevers, insect stings, pains and traumatic injuries such as animal bites, spear wounds, and broken bones. The remainder were valued for treating some idiosyncratic ailment(Davis 1996: 291-2).

Those medicines, until recently, were the only ones needed. Before the European invasion, the ancestors of the Napo Runa likely had a similar number and range of medicines, but in a short time they discovered many new medicinal plants to help them deal with new healing challenges.

Those who suggest that the synergy between Ayahuasca vine and admixture leaf was discovered by trial and error have no idea of the biodiversity of the Amazon.¹⁷ About 80,000

plant species are catalogued in the region where Ayahuasca is used, but it is estimated that there may be about a million uncatalogued plant species.

The Napo Runa have discovered upwards of a thousand plant medicines, some in complex combinations, and discovered most of them in a very short time, within only a century or so of the introduction of European diseases. In fact, although the world had known malaria for thousands of years (it was described in China in 2700 BCE), and had no medicine for it, within 25 years of the introduction of malaria to the Amazon, the first plant medicine for malaria, quinine, was discovered by indigenous people in Ecuador.

Trial and error—giving sick people random plants to see what helps them—is not an effective way to discover plant medicines The Napo Runa credit Ayahuasca with their discovery of so many medicines. When the new diseases struck—not only infectious diseases but diseases of stress from oppression and slavery—people of the Napo would drink Ayahuasca in the context of a strict “fast,” and Ayahuasca would send visions of specific plants and their locations. Once a new plant was found, it usually would be cooked together with the Ayahuasca vine to solicit visions to help to understand the plant’s effects, to communicate with the plant, and to learn to work in partnership with the plant as a spirit ally. Herbal healers also use Ayahuasca to help prescribe remedies for a patient, although plant spirit allies can help with healing even without a patient necessarily consuming them in physical form.

Even if one does not accept the possibility of plant communication (which I do), there could be other reasons why Ayahuasca is considered to be the teacher of other plant medicines. MAOIs can potentiate many kinds of pharmaceutical action, and the MAOIs in Ayahuasca may contribute to sensitizing people to plants, especially if one spends months in solitude in the forest on a strict diet continually drinking Ayahuasca. Humans have the same instinctive ability to sense medicinal plants as other animals do, even if most have never developed it. Whatever the reason, the Ayahuasca vine is considered the great teacher of plant medicines and “the Mother of all plants.”

Places of Origin

Evidence strongly suggests that the Napo is the place of origin both of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and of the cultural complex that is now known as “Ayahuasca shamanism.” From the north, indigenous shamans and researchers alike point to the Napo as the place of origin. Brabec de Mori (2011:24) says, “Among most researchers, there is a consensus that an ‘origin’ of ayahuasca, however remote it may be, should be located in the western Amazonian lowlands around the Rio Napo.”A document, published by UMIYAC (Union of Yagé Healers of Colombia) from the point of view of Colombian indigenous shamans, mentioned the origin of the vine in the Napo. Writing from Colombia, Weiskopf (2005:115) mentions the origin of Yagé as being on the Napo River. Colombian anthropologist German Zuluaga locates the origin of Ayahuasca or Yagé in the “refugio” of Napo, which includes the region from the Napo River to the Putumayo (Zuluaya 2005:175).

Peoples from north of the Napo point south to the origin of Ayahuasca, and on the other hand, peoples to the south point northward (Gow 1990; Brabec de Mori 2011; Calavia Saez 2011). If Ayahuasca had originally diffused together with either one of the admixture plants, then that admixture—either P. viridis or D. cabrerana—would likely be used everywhere in Ayahuasca brews. The evidence is consistent that the Banisteriopsis caapi vine originated in Napo and diffused from there. It is also evident that Ayahuasca shamanism was fully developed in the Napo before the DMT admixtures were ever introduced, and eventually evolved into practices with DMT admixtures as it spread.

There is no mystery to how the synergy between B. caapi and the DMT-containing admixtures was discovered. Contrary to popular belief, D. cabrerana and P. viridisare psychoactive alone—they have psychoactive effects apart from their DMT effects—and both are documented to have been used alone. The practice of mixing other plants with B. caapi is well established. Over a hundred “admixtures” have been documented, but the number of plants that have been mixed with Ayahuasca at some point is beyond counting. Most of these “admixtures” are not added to enhance the psychoactive effect of Ayahuasca; rather, they are mixed with Ayahuasca in order to understand and communicate with those plants.¹⁸ Ayahuasca has a traditional supportive role for other plant medicines.

Sooner or later the vine spread to the places where D. cabrerana and P. viridis were used. Like other medicines, each of them was mixed with Ayahuasca, and thus the DMT-containing Ayahuasca brews were born. In turn, each of the DMT-containing brews spread out from its own point of origin. If one maps out the cultures that use Chaliponga and those that use Chakruna as an admixture, the pattern of diffusion is quite apparent.

Another DMT-containing “admixture” is Anadenanthera peregrine, or Yopo. Yopo, as a snuff, has long been used alone (sometimes with admixtures) in Venezuela. The Piaroa have adopted the combined use of Yopo and B. caapi (Rodd 2002), an example of a psychoactive already in use being enhanced by B. caapi.

Chaliponga

The synergy of D. cabrerana (Chaliponga / Chagropanga) with B. caapi was probably discovered earlier than the synergy of Psychotria viridis with B. caapi. The Napo Runa seem much more comfortable and familiar with it than with P. viridis, so it was likely to have come to them earlier.

B. caapi probably met D. cabrerana around the upper Putumayo River, the border of present day Ecuador and Colombia, through the Siona people. That is approximately the southern edge of the older practice with D. cabrerana alone, which influenced a culture of “Yagé” distinct in some ways from the culture of “Ayahuasca.”¹⁹ As the use of D. cabrerana as an admixture spread southward, it was adopted by the Napo Runa, by the Pastaza Runa farther south, and by the Jivaroan tribes to their south: Shuar, Achuar, Shiwiar, Awajun, and Huambisa. The Pastaza Runa and Shuar adopted the name Yaji for D. cabrerana, because that was the novel element in the brew they received under the name Yagé. The only groups in Peru who use D. cabrerana as an admixture appear to be the Jivaroan peoples; in Iquitos, D. cabrerana is known as Huambisa after the tribe identified with its use.

Chakruna

B. caapi met P. viridis somewhere around the confluence of the Napo and Amazon Rivers. From there this combination spread southward, especially up the Ucayali River. P. viridis, like D. cabrerana, has been used alone for its psychoactive effects. The use of P. viridis alone has been documented by Yves Duc, a Swiss student of an Asháninka curandero, who says the Ashaninka “diet”²⁰ Chakruna, sometimes with Tobacco added as a mild MAOI. “Chacruna alone does not give visions, but if one takes a concentrated decoction, the plant is, in my opinion, deeply and subtly psychoactive” (personal communication).

This practice with Chakruna likely predated the arrival of Ayahuasca vine to the region. Or, Ayahuasca could have led people to this “helper,” as she led them to many other medicines. However and whenever the meeting of Chakruna with Caapi took place, it seems to have happened near present-day Iquitos.

Gow (1996), Brabec de Mori (2011), and Calavia Saez (2011) make a compelling case, citing the indigenous people of the upper Ucayali themselves, that the diffusion of Caapi/Chakruna combination brews southward from Iquitos may be historically recent. They also make a thought-provoking case that the social disruptions of colonialism and the Rubber Boom contributed to making the Napo form of shamanism the dominant form of Ayahuasca practice in the Upper Amazon.

The Roots of Modern Ayahuasca Shamanism

As I came to know the pre-European history of the Napo region, I started to understand something that had at first been strange and disturbing to me, as a North American Indian: the approach to shamanism as a business for which fees are charged, and the competitiveness and self-aggrandizement of the shamans. In North American Indian culture, medicine people are deeply humble people who would not consider charging money, but who would be, in the old days, taken care of by the whole community. But pre-conquest Napo was a society with much interchange between unrelated groups. Unlike a true tribal community, which is governed by kinship obligations and in which relatives are obliged to take care of each other, in the multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan society of the Napo River basin, people routinely interacted with strangers to whom they had no kinship obligations, so remuneration was called for. Up and down the river, healers were called to do ceremonies for strangers who were not their own relatives.. In fact, there is an opinion among the Napo Runa that a shaman cannot do a good job of treating his own relatives, so even a shaman will seek another shaman, preferably a non-relative, if his own family gets sick.²¹

This style of shamanism has become the “classic” style of Ayahuasca shamanism. It is not rooted in any specific tribal culture, and it can be transferred across cultures from one individual to another. In my view, this is why this form of Ayahuasca shamanism has survived, and perhaps even spread and flourished, while families and communities of traditional cultures were being ripped apart. This style of shamanism—which focuses on the individual practitioner independent of community or kinship ties, and can be practiced with unrelated strangers—was easily assimilated into the atomized society of the mestizos, and it easily adapts to western consumer culture. In fact, contact with western consumerist society is causing this style of shamanism to flourish.

Mestizo Ayahuasca shamanism of Iquitos is primarily derived from Napo.It draws from other indigenous cultural roots, such as the Kukama, but even those were already influenced by the style of Napo. However, this influence has been in one direction only. Mestizo influence on Napo shamanism is nearly non-existent. In fact, in Ecuador, mestizo shamanism is literally unheard of. The unique historical circumstances that created mestizo Ayahuasca shamanism in Peru did not exist in Ecuador or Colombia. In Colombia, because many Indians have fled to cities due to the civil war, whites and mestizos may outnumber indigenous participants in Yagé ceremonies ,but leading the ceremonies is entirely the work of Indians. In Ecuador, the mestizos are uninterested in Ayahuasca. The mestizos in the Ecuadorean Amazon are recently arrived colonists; since the 1960s, most of them arrived on roads built for the oil companies, encouraged by government promises of the “empty lands” of the Amazon to anyone who would clear it and raise cattle or sugar cane. Unlike the mestizo rubber tappers in Peru a hundred years ago, the mestizo colonists in the Ecuadorean Amazon do not need to turn to Indian healers with their health crises. They have no interest in Indian culture or in Indian rights.

Missionaries and Resistance

Gow (1996) suggests that Ayahuasca shamanism originated in missionary reducciones, but the evidence offered for this is extremely weak, mostly based on the fact that the Spaniards used Quechua to administer the reducciones, and on the Catholic influence on Ayahuasca shamanism in Peru, both mestizo and indigenous. There is no discernible Catholic influence on Ayahuasca shamanism in Ecuador. I believe that in Peru, indigenous ayahuasqueros absorbed Catholic influence not because of the missionaries, but because they witnessed mestizo shamans blending Catholicism with shamanism in a friendly way. The mestizo shamans demonstrated that Catholicism could add to a shamanic practice, indeed, could strengthen that practice, with powerful new spiritual entities, without giving up native ways.

In Ecuador, where there is no mestizo shamanism, there is no blending of indigenous Ayahuasca shamanism and Catholicism. In Ecuador, the missionaries and the shamans are historic enemies. Recording Napo Runa oral history, I heard many stories depicting the shamans as the subversive leaders of covert resistance to the Spanish missionaries. The missionaries could enforce the wearing of clothes by whipping anyone they found going naked, and they could enforce attendance at mass by whipping anyone who was absent from mass, but they could not monitor what people were doing deep in the jungle at night. (I heard hints that, once upon a time, not all Ayahuasca ceremonies were done in complete darkness as they are today.)

Inconspicuousness is a traditional virtue to the Napo Runa, because being unnoticed means that one is not molesting one’s neighbor. The tree sloth represents the ideal human character, in part because he lives unnoticed. But the ability to hide is also an asset of the Trickster, who for the Napo Runa is Rabbit. The Napo Runa are stereotyped in Ecuador as meek and docile, in contrast to the fierce Shuar and Waorani, but their own self-image stresses their resistance and survival, and Ayahuasca is credited with a role in that. Chief Jumandi allegedly used Ayahuasca before leading the rebellion of 1578-9, and the Napo Runa credit their own shaman-led resistance for the expulsion of the Jesuit missionaries from Ecuador in 1767, although history books give a different account.

Forms of Ayahuasca Practice

What is known as “Ayahuasca shamanism” is only one orientation toward Ayahuasca practice. This is the orientation that focuses on the shaman as an individual, as a kind of professional. Usually the shaman will be the only person in the ceremony who drinks. When local people came for healing ceremonies, the shaman would encourage them to drink, but usually they would not. Most people consider the experience unpleasant. Healing is basically a form of divination: Ayahuasca allows the shaman to see and work with the problem. Ayahuasca is a divinatory tool used by skilled individuals.

When I asked people who were not members of a shaman’s family about their experience and use of Ayahuasca, most people said they had experienced it at least once. Anyone curious about Ayahuasca will have the opportunity to satisfy their curiosity sooner or later, when someone in their family, or even a neighbor, develops an illness for which a curandero will be summoned. Or their family may attempt their own Ayahuasca curing session, much in the way that city people may attempt self-treatment for an illness with home remedies before going to a doctor. Anyone present at a ceremony is encouraged to partake of the brew, but most people told me that, once having satisfied their curiosity about Ayahuasca, they did not care to repeat the experience. Some people had never experienced Ayahuasca, because they had heard it was so unpleasant. Ayahuasca is a felt presence, but most people seemed content to leave the unpleasant duty of drinking it to the shaman specialists.

There is another kind of healing ceremony, of which I had very brief and limited experience near Tarapoto, Peru. In this ceremony, everyone drinks, and purging through vomiting is the intent. In fact, the medicine is even referred to as La Purga, as was the ceremony. In Napo, purging is not emphasized, because it is the shaman’s drinking that is important, and he presumably did all his purging during his apprenticeship. So there is usually not much purging in Napo Runa ceremonies. (I didn’t have my first purge until I had been drinking for over a year.) Most who came for ceremonies in Napo declined the invitation to drink because they considered Ayahuasca unpleasant. The participants in the purga ceremony, on the contrary, considered it highly pleasurable. People wanted to drink, expected to drink, and expected to purge. Purging is far from automatic with Ayahuasca, but the body can be trained to reliably respond to Ayahuasca with a purge. An Ayahuasca purge can be powerful and ecstatic, cleansing and healing, so it was not surprising to learn that some people looked forward to a weekly purga. I believe that this style of ceremony, as well as the Napo style, influences the mestizo Ayahuasca culture of Iquitos.

There are also ceremonies of group bonding. Siskind (1973) describes the communal drinking of Ayahuasca among the Sharanahua (usually in all-male groups, but they did not discourage her from participating) and individualistic Ayahuasca shamanism as well. The Tukanoans in Colombia have ceremonial dances with Yajé. The use of the Ayahuasca for hunting skills and visions of game is widespread and apparently ancient. Miller-Weisberger (2000) describes a unique practice among the Waorani of enhancing hunting skills with Banisteriopsis and a two-year “fast.”

These varied forms of Ayahuasca practice, and more, are vine-centered. The Napo Runa consider the vine the source of all wisdom. At the purga ceremony, if the brew contained any leaf at all, it was barely discernible. For the Sharanahua, the admixture is of secondary importance.²² The Tukano use the vine alone; so do the Waorani.²³ A Waorani elder, Mengahue, says of the power of the vine:

Miiyabu is an attractor plant and its spirit is very strong. Many people are not strong enough or wise enough to use it in benefit of the people…This is why whenever you touch this plant you must be aware of what you are thinking, because whatever you are thinking is what you will attract to your life when you touch this plant. (Miller-Weisberger 2000:44)

Antiquity of Ayahuasca

“During Ancient Times, full knowledge of the spirits of huanduj²⁴ and ayahuasca existed”(Whitten 1972:47).

“We affirm that ayahuasca is our sacred plant… It has always been guarded by our grandparents and ancestors” (Declaración de Yachac, Puyo, Ecuador, 2002).

“Yajé is grown from cuttings and is thus thought to be one continuous vine which stretches back to the beginning of time… yajé itself is compared to an umbilical cord that links human beings… to the mythical past” (Hugh-Jones, quoted in Schultes & Raffauf 1992:24).

The Runa in Ecuador say their relationship with Ayahuasca goes to the beginning of time. The ancient presence of Banisteriopsis caapi, aka Ayahuasca, throughout upper Amazonia is attested to by the widespread and varied practices around it and the fine classifications of subvarieties of vine. I believe that genetic studies could help confirm the antiquity of its use. If, as with practically every plant of widespread human use in the Amazon, B. caapi was spread by humans from a single place of origin, then the degree of genetic difference between the plants in one location and another would give clues as to how long ago they were separated. Although Banisteriopsis caapi is propagated by cloning, even cloned plants show genetic change over time. Genetics might also give insights into the varietiesrecognized by indigenous peoples.

Conclusions

“Banisteriopsis may well be ancient… [but] it appears that ayahuasca as we know it is not as old”(Brabec de Mori 2011:26). Historians of Ayahuasca would do well to look beyond “ayahuasca as we know it” and reexamine the psychoactive role of B. caapi as it has been well documented throughout the literature.

My conclusions are: The mainstream form of Ayahuasca shamanism originated on the Napo River, it originated as a vine-only practice; the admixtures were discovered because of the practice of mixing other plant medicines with B. caapi; and Ayahuasca’s history of use by humans is much older than the DMT-containing brew.

REFERENCES

Brabec de Mori, B. (2011). Tracing hallucinations: Contributing to a critical ethnohistory of ayahuasca usage in the Peruvian Amazon. In B. C. Labate & H. Jungaberle (Eds.): The internationalization of ayahuasca (pp. 23-47). Zürich: Lit Verlag.

Calavia Saez, O. (2011). A vine network. In B. C. Labate & H. Jungaberle (Eds.): The internationalization of ayahuasca (pp. 131-144). Zürich: Lit Verlag.

Declaración de Yachac (2002). Puyo, Ecuador. Retrieved from http://www.bialabate.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/declaracion_de_yachac_2002.pdf

Dobkin de Rios, M. (1972). Visionary vine: Hallucinogenic healing in the Peruvian Amazon. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co.

Gow, P. (1996). River people: Shamanism and history in western Amazonia. In N. Thomas & C. Humphrey (Eds.) Shamanism, history, and the state (pp. 90–113). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Junquera, C. (1989). Alucinógenos y chamanismo en la tribu harakmbet. Revista española de la antropología Americana, 19, 207-227.

Lagrou. E. (2000). Two Ayahuasca myths from the Cashinahua of northwestern Brazil. In L. E. Luna, & S. White (Eds.), Ayahuasca reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s sacred vine. Santa Fe: Synergetic Press.

Langdon, J. (1985). Siona classification of yagé. Bogotá: Congreso Internacional Americanistas.

Luna, L. E. (1984). The concept of plants as teachers among four mestizo shamans of Iquitos, northeastern Peru. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 11, 135-156.

McKenna, D., Towers, G. H. N., and Abbott, F. S. (1984). Monamine oxidase inhibitors in South American hallucinogenic plants: Tryptamine and beta-carboline constituents of ayahuasca. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 10, 195-223.

McKenna, T. (1992). Food of the gods. NY: Bantam.

Miller-Weisberger, J, S, (2000). A Huaorani myth of the first Miiyabu. In L. E. Luna, & S. White (Eds.), Ayahuasca reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s sacred vine. Santa Fe: Synergetic Press.

Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. (1975). The shaman and the jaguar. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Rodd, R. (2002). Snuff synergy: Preparation, use and pharmacology of yopo and Banisteriopsis caapi among the Piaroa of Southern Venezuela. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 34, 273-279.

Schultes, R. E. (1976). Hallucinogenic Plants. Racine, WI: Golden Press.

Schultes, R. E. (1986). Recognition of variability in wild plants by Indians of the northwest Amazon: An enigma. Journal of Ethnobiology 6(2), 229-238.

Schultes, R. E. (n.d.) An ethnobotanical perspective on ayahuasca. Retrieved from

http://www.biopark.org/peru/schultes-ayahuasca.html.

Schultes, R. E. & Raffauf, R. F. (1992).Vine of the Soul. Santa Fe: Synergetic Press.

Siskind, J. (1973). To Hunt in the morning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Weiskopf, J. (2005). Yajé: The new purgatory. Bogota: Villegas Editores S.A.

Whitten, N. (1972). Sacha Runa: Ethnicity and adaptation of Ecuadorian jungle Quichua.Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Zuluaga, G. (2005). Conservación de la diversidad biológico y cultural en el piedemonte amazónico colombiano: La herencia del Dr. Schultes. Retrieved from www.ethnobotanyjournal.org/vol3/i1547-3465-03-187.pdf

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Bia Labate, Jeremy Narby, Stephan Beyer and Clancy Cavnar for review, comments and encouragement.  

Unraveling the Mystery of the Origin of Ayahuasca, by Gayle Highpine - Originally published by NEIP. This article is also available for download here.

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“Visionary art seeks to return us, in our visions, to the primordial world that preceded history: like hieroglyphs etched on the walls of a long-lost civilization, leading us to a paradise of lost imagery or forgotten dream-symbols.”
Laurence Caruana, A Manifesto of Visionary Art

Maura Holden, born in Pennsylvania in 1967, is emerging as one of the most powerful and interesting visionary or sacred artists of the present time. Combining both excellent draftsmanship with a lucid sense of colour, Maura depicts the secret vistas of the collective psyche, the sunken, honeycombed ruins of mysterious ancient civilisations (see Travellers Moon), the paradisiacal and primordial bliss of our ancestors living within a shamanic dreamtime (see work in development), and, in one of her paintings, Thanatos Wave, (below) what looks like the sudden, mass-onset of transpersonal awareness or surfacing of deep unconscious material (represented by deep sea fish and ocean) overthrowing old and stagnant orders of being.

As I have familiarized myself with Maura Holden’s oeuvre, my sense of awe and wonder has deepened. What I observed on-screen could not prepare me for the impact of seeing her work full-size. Like a fractal, entire new levels of detail and intricacy are evident, invisible online. Each painting is a holographic gestalt, representing with minute detail the macro-microcosm of various archetypal realms and aspects of Consciousness.

The overall compositional and color harmonics, combined with this obsessive and miraculous level of detail, directed by a sincere, experiential, phenomenological spirituality, has convinced me that Maura Holden’s work can be considered equal to the finest sacred art of any world age.

- Daniel Mirante

Thanatos Wave by Maura Holden
1999-2000 / 38″X38″ / oil on panel / collection of the artist

Daniel :
Maura, since encountering your work I am revived and refreshed in my enthusiasm for the art of painting. I want to express my gratitude for the images you are evoking through this discipline. Your work carries a profundity that comes from direct experience, and resonates with the shamanic, mystical spirit in humanity.

Maura :
Thank you, Daniel. I am very happy to hear that your enthusiasm for painting is refreshed. (Too often this art – along with “god” — has been wrongly pronounced dead!) I find painting to be an ideal devotional art, as endlessly versatile as the mind, and as good a bridge between matter and spirit as I can conceive.

Daniel :
These paintings appear like representations of first-hand journeys into spiritual realms. Does your artistic practice integrate with some kind of shamanic practice ?

Maura :
Yes, the paintings are often representations of journeys, and I have various methods of unlocking gates, and of drawing aside worldly veils. Most of the practice is just concentration and meditation while painting, but I have used prolonged retreat in the forest, as well as plants which shamans use to take journeys. In conjunction with good planning, and a day of meditation and preparation beforehand, I have found the plants extremely helpful in translating multidimensional spiritual experiences into fixed visions.

Daniel :
It is very exciting that there is a new wave of artists who seem to be creating from a different frequency band. It makes me recall what the psychologist Charles Tart called state-specific knowledge, that fully coherent forms of vision, knowledge and wisdom can originate from multiple assemblage points of consciousness, not just the quotidian or everyday state of being.

Maura :
This state-specific knowledge you refer to is one of my pet preoccupations. I am particularly fascinated by the aspect of knowledge called “being at one with the whole” in which, in a transcendent state of meditation, I am vividly aware of the interconnectedness of all creation – something most humans dont consider while cooking an egg or tying a shoe. Reconciling the fact that “I am at one with the whole” with the more generally accepted fact, “I am an individual”, is a little bit like reconciling the square and the circle. It is tricky, and there is a secret to it — but geometrically, mathematically, the circle and the square can be reconciled, and so can the individual and the whole. One of the many things I love about imaginative art is that it reconciles another dichotomy: the rift between reality and dreams. In imaginative art the two worlds are harmoniously married in one form, and this is very exciting for those of us who love both worlds and experience them together. I am extremely encouraged by the new wave of talented artists who understand this.

Daniel :
How did your amazing painting technique come about and are your paintings recieved in a complete gestalt or built up through spontaneity and exploration ?

Maura :
That is a good question. My painting technique is always changing. I started out drawing visions in pencil, but a desire for color, transparency and luminosity led me to try oils. At first I used oil paint with turpentine only. After I had done a few paintings that way, I tried other mixtures: alkyd medium, stand-oil based medium, egg tempera, egg and oil mixtures and so on.

Since I was my own teacher, I experimented freely, by intuition, but I also read books about pigments and media, and began to formulate my own theories and methods. I wanted to make paintings that were lightfast and durable, and I also wanted otherworldly effects. Striking a balance between effects and eternity remains my fixed goal, but all other variables in my technique are subject to change. Generally, I let a painting grow like a plant, training it and pruning it as needed. I begin with a multiplex chaotic vision — the proverbial mustard seed.

Next I devise a structural framework, such as a geometric form, intended to serve as a support, or trellis, for the vision to grow around. The rest is just training the figurative elements of the vision around the structure. Key points in the structural skeleton correspond to important junctures in the pictorial composition. In the past, my compositional structures were more loose and intuitive. In recent years, though, numbers, proportions and geometry have become increasingly important to me.

Daniel :
Your attention to detail, luminosity and way with colour is beautiful, and it is all the more wondrous that it is mainly self-taught. The Vienna school of Fantastic Realism seems to be emerging as quite a strong technical and philosophical catalyst upon contemporary visionary painters. What artists do you consider important today ? And do you believe the traditional gallery context provides an adequate vessel for visionary paintings ?

Maura :
The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, and specifically Ernst Fuchs, was one of my personal icons of artistic excellence. When I was first learning, I spent countless hours studying a book of Fuchs? paintings and drawings. My other main icon, Oliver Benson, is an extraordinarily gifted artist of my own age, who at present keeps a low profile by choice. When you compare the very famous Fuchs with the more obscure Benson, it is obvious who most people today will consider important. Yet, Benson has the greater influence on my own art and train of thought, because, not only is he as talented as Fuchs, but we are friends and we paint together. These private connections are as important to the intricate web of art as the public ones…

Enlightenment of the Dominators by Maura Holden
Oil on panel / collection of the artist

Today there are more talented fantastic and visionary artists than I ever thought I would see. It is a truly fabulous time to be here. For one thing, the movement is global, largely thanks to the internet. Artists with e-mail can communicate and send pictures around the world easily and instantly. Now, regardless of country and connections, we are all on a more level playing ground, and art lovers have a better chance of seeing the work of great artists who are unrecognized and/or of modest means. Of course, some of us are very enthusiastic about using the web tool, and some of us would rather just paint. Just painting was always my preference? Only in the past six months have I learned to use a computer and cobble together a simple website — and from most accounts people believe I have suddenly fallen from the sky! Out of the blue, my work is accessible to many more people; instantly I am able to communicate with other artists, art lovers and people in the industry; the results have exceeded my every expectation.

I am excited about the future of an art world free of dictations from on high, where no authority need intercede between artists and art lover. That said, however, I still see a place for traditional galleries and museums. While I understand and feel the limitations of galleries and museums, there really is no better way to experience the mind-blowing presence of some of this artwork without planting your feet solidly in front of it, and gazing at its physical substance – millions of times more powerful than what we glean from a digital image on a screen. And the professional expertise involved in respectfully preserving and displaying artworks to their best advantage is a gift to the artist from the better galleries and museums. I think the key to showing art today is diversity. Galleries are good; museums are good; showing art in your truck is good; festivals; open studios; coffee shops; artist-run collectives; the internet; books, magazines, cards, prints and posters; and whatever else people think up next.

My personal dream is quite “outsider” : to own my own home, and to craft it into a fantastic-sculptural-environment/little-museum-of-visionary-art – a place that is out-of-this-world, but makes people feel relaxed enough to spend lots of time looking, and enjoying themselves.

Speak to your doctor

An unaccustomed environment

If you are not used to being in the jungle, your body is about to be stressed in new ways — novel food, unaccustomed heat and humidity, unfamiliar pathogens. There is nothing in the jungle, of course, that you can’t handle; people do it all the time. But, unlike other travelers, you will be adding the extra stress of ingesting a powerful emetic, purgative, and hallucinogen. You should be in good physical condition to handle these stressors, and you should pay a visit to your doctor to make sure that you are.

This is especially important if you have any physical or psychological condition — definitely including pregnancy — for which you are currently under the care of a health professional. Tell your doctor that you are going to be drinking ayahuasca, even if you fear the doctor will be disapproving. Provide your doctor with information about ayahuasca — that it is a combination of dimethyltryptamine and beta-carboline MAO inhibitors. Such information is very important, especially if you are taking psychotropic medication, such as an SSRI or an MAOI antidepressant. Don’t forget to add that ayahuasca is a physically stressful emetic and purgative, and that you will be in a jungle environment, perhaps far from definitive care, since these facts may also impact your current health situation.

You and your doctor should be aware that there have been sporadic reports of transient psychotic episodes following the drinking of ayahuasca. One such case was reported in the December 2008 issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry — the full text is here, but you have to scroll down — by well-known researchers Rafael dos Santos and Rick Strassman, and ends with this caution: Given the low incidence of, but potentially high morbidity associated with, transient drug-induced psychosis, both research and religious use of ayahuasca should be contraindicated in people with a history of psychosis. If this is a concern for you, you should definitely discuss it with your doctor.

Your health care provider may offer you persuasive reasons why drinking ayahuasca would be a bad idea at this time, and you may then decide to wait until your current condition has improved or resolved. It may also be that your doctor will see no significant problem in your drinking ayahuasca, or may recommend some conditions that would increase your safety, or may be willing to modify your medication regimen temporarily to accommodate your intention.

Seeing your doctor and having a straightforward conversation will allow you to make informed decisions about the best way to make your journey as safe as possible.

Get inoculated

Many university health centers maintain travel immunization clinics that provide information, inoculations, and prescription medication for travelers, and are knowledgeable about current health conditions in the area where you will be going. These clinics are extremely valuable resources. If one is not near enough for you to visit, I suggest that you ask your doctor to contact one for a consultation.

Tetanus—one hundred percent preventable

You absolutely should have your tetanus inoculation up to date. Tetanus is an extraordinarily unpleasant way to die. It is 100 percent fatal, and 100 percent preventable by immunization. In the jungle, inoculation against the food- and water-borne hepatitis A virus — usually spread by the fecal-oral route — is also a very good idea. Inoculation against the hepatitis B virus may be indicated if you expect to be in contact with contaminated body fluids — doing volunteer medical work, for example. Other inoculations may include typhoid, polio, diphtheria-tetanus, and measles-mumps-rubella, depending on your medical history and the current health conditions in the area where you are going. The clinics also have lists of inoculations that may be required for return to your own country.

Another advantage of visiting a knowledgeable travel clinic is that you can get a prescription for an appropriate antimalaria drug to take while you are in the jungle. Note that some animalarial medications, such as Lariam, have been associated with neuropsychiatric effects — including anxiety, hallucinations, depression, unusual behavior, and suicidal ideation — that might be particularly problematic if you are going to drink ayahuasca. This again is a subject to be discussed with the travel clinic and with your doctor.

A travel clinic can also give you a prescription for an antibiotic, such as Ciprofloxacin, for the relief, if necessary, of urinary tract infections, skin infections, intractable diarrhea, and other bacterial conditions that might otherwise spoil your trip. Note that in many third-world countries, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals that require prescriptions in the US or EU may be available over the counter, but quality is not guaranteed.

Learn first aid

Realistic simulation in a wilderness first aid course

Do not assume that emergency medical care will be available if youcut yourself with a machete, get burned by a kerosene lamp, sufferheat stroke, or lose a tooth filling. A good first aid course will give you the basic skills and confidence to handle these sorts of medical emergencies and — this is important — teach you how to pack a medical kit appropriate both for your destination and your level of skill.

I particularly recommend that you invest a weekend in a good wilderness first aid course. A WFA course is designed to teach improvisation and adaptation where medical supplies are unavailable and you are far from definitive medical care — precisely the situation in which you may find yourself. Such courses typically provide hands-on training in realistic simulations that will give you the skills and confidence to deal with a jungle emergency.

Maintain sanitation

This Seychelle water purifier fits inside a 38-ounce canteen

In the jungle, scrupulous cleanliness is the key to a healthy trip. You should bring lots of alcohol-gel hand sanitizer and some means to purify your drinking water. Even when you get water through a pipe, the quality of the water depends on where the water comes from and whether the pipe has any cracks or leaks. While bottled water is increasingly available, sometimes it is not, and sometimes the bottles, if not brought to you sealed, have just been filled with tap water. And don’t forget that ice is simply unpurified water that has been frozen.

If you cut yourself, keep the wound covered and scrupulously clean. If you get a blister, do not break it; cover it with a blister pad and let it heal. Use your alcohol-gel hand sanitizer before you eat. Do not brush your teeth or rinse your toothbrush with tap water, but rather with water that you have purified.

Learn about where you’re going

Learning about how people live

The more you know, the safer you are, and the more you will benefit from your experience. I recommend reading at least one book on neotropical rainforest wildlife, so that you are aware of what plants and animals are generally safe — most of them — and which are really dangerous — very few, but important to know about. I recommend too that you read about the culture of the area where you are going. This means its material culture — how people live, what food they eat and how they gather it, the sorts of houses they live in and how they build them, what they do for recreation.

And, most important, this means learning about their shamanic and healing culture. Do not naively assume that mestizo and indigenous ideas about the nature of disease and the way to cure it are the same as yours. They are not. Being educated can help prevent misunderstandings, and increase your appreciation for the unique healing culture of the Upper Amazon.

Secure your belongings

A super-secure Pacsafe money belt

In most parts of South America you are fabulously rich. You have a camera, a cell phone, a quality backpack, really good shoes, and, seemingly, a lot of cash. There are, unfortunately, people who will try to steal these things from you, even in the jungle, and some may even be willing to harm you in the process.

As always, thoughtful preparation is key. Buy and use a money belt. Secure your bags with quality locks. Consider getting anti-theft gear such as a Pacsafe bag protector for your backpack. Get waterproof zip-lock bags for your passport and other irreplaceable papers. A small rubber doorstop can help you get a good night’s sleep in a strange hotel. Keep copies of your passport and credit cards in a separate and secure location. Leave your itinerary behind with family and friends, and send regular emails so that people at home know where you are, and will be aware when you are late or missing.

Make sure you have the telephone number of your home country’s embassy and its nearest consulate. US citizens can also register their trip online with the Department of State so that the embassy knows of your presence, which can be especially helpful when traveling in dangerous areas or in the event of a natural disaster.

A low-tech hotel room entry-prevention security device

The rest is just ordinary common sense. Leave your jewelry and expensive watches at home. Be careful where you go, especially in large cities at night. Avoid making phone calls or texting as you walk, so that you do not look distracted and therefore vulnerable. Don’t keep all your cash in one place. If you are going shopping, keep just enough cash for your immediate purchases in your pocket and the rest hidden in your money belt, and never remove money from your money belt in view of anyone. Do not use gypsy taxicabs. Travel with a friend. Do not accept drinks from strangers. Make sure no one is standing right behind you when you use an ATM.

Use only government-authorized money changers, and do not hand over your dollars until you have the local currency in your hand. Do not follow strangers into dark alleys — or along remote jungle paths — no matter what delights you are promised. Be at least as cautious as you would be in a rough neighborhood in any major city.

Watch what you eat

Suri-on-a-stick, roasted palm beetle grubs

As you travel, you will find many wonderful things to eat and new foods to try. Reputable retreat centers will have clean kitchen conditions and bottled or purified water available for their guests, and will provide the type of food suitable when drinking ayahuasca.

On the road, however, a little discernment can help prevent gastrointestinal infections transmitted by the fecal-oral route. You can safely eat raw fruits that you can peel and food that has been thoroughly cooked and served hot. Even in fancy restaurants, ask for bottled water without ice. Along the coast, ceviche — spiced raw fish marinated in citrus juices — is a special treat, as long as everyone who has handled it has washed their hands after using the toilet.

No, thank you

Tyramine is an amino acid that occurs naturally in the body and is found in some foods — aged cheese, sausage, wine and beer, soy sauce, improperly stored or spoiled food. Tyramine helps regulate blood pressure, and excess amounts are normally broken down by the enzyme MAO. But when you take an MAO inhibitor, such as those found in the ayahuasca drink, your body may be unable to break down the tyramine quickly enough, leading to a spike in blood pressure, which in turn can cause nausea, vomiting, sweating, rapid heartbeat, dilated pupils, and — very rarely — brain hemorrhage and death.

This is a concern primarily for people who are on a regimen of prescription MAO-inhibiting antidepressants, but it is probably a good idea to lay off the pepperoni-and-cheese pizzas while you are drinking ayahuasca. This is something you should discuss with your doctor.

Be with people you know and trust

Now that ayahuasca tourism is big business, there are a lot of frauds out there — former tour guides who buy premixed ayahuasca from the Belén market and have learned enough songs to get through a ceremony, or may even hand out ayahuasca to everyone and then disappear. Even shamans who have apprenticed and undergone the restricted diet with a number of plants may seek to exploit the tourist market, and there have been reports, often credible, of both financial and sexual abuse of participants in ayahuasca rituals.

Again, preparation is the key to a safe trip. It is a good idea to make arrangements for your ayahuasca retreat before you leave home, rather than arriving in Iquitos or Pucallpa or Puerto Moldanado and waiting for a twelve-year-old kid to tell you his cousin is a genuine shaman. Use all the resources of the Internet to research possible retreat centers, and use social media to ask for recommendations.

Find out what you will be drinking. Shamans may add a variety of additional substances to their ayahuasca drink, including tobacco and datura-like plants that are rich in scopolamine. There is nothing wrong with this, but you deserve to know what you will be ingesting, and this may be information your health care provider will want to know. Remember that when you drink ayahuasca you will be effectively immobilized, and you may be having powerful experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant. You will want to be where you feel safe, and you should expect a reputable retreat center to be forthright and responsive to your questions and needs.

Have an expeditionary attitude

Meeting an unanticipated detour with an expeditionary attitude

You are traveling in a third-world country. Things will go wrong. It will rain, transportation will be delayed, the side-release buckles on your backpack will break, you will be bitten by insects, and people you are counting on will not show up when you expect them to.

An expeditionary attitude means being as prepared as possible for foreseeable emergencies, and being willing to improvise and adapt for everything else. Carry a few spare straps and buckles for your backpack. Bring sunscreen, insect repellant, and anti-itch cream so you don’t scratch your insect bites. Put together a good first-aid kit. Have travel insurance that provides coverage for emergency wilderness rescue and evacuation.

Most important, an expeditionary attitude means having a good sense of humor. Learn to enjoy waiting for a boat in the rain, to sit quietly and observe the life around you. When things go wrong, pitch in and help. Everything will work out. You may not wind up where you thought you were going, but you will wind up someplace interesting anyway. Think of the stories you will be able to tell your friends back home. Have fun.

Above all, go with an open heart. Make no demands on the spirits, but let them open whatever doors they wish for you.

Click here to read this thread on the forum.

Related: What is a dieta? by Morgan Brent

Cease Wyss, our “Indigenous Plant Diva”, is a hip, urban Aboriginal single mother, video artist and community leader. She shares her traditional knowledge of plants that can be found throughout the streets and everyday spaces of Vancouver, reminding us that the medicines are all around us in our urbanized environments.

Whether it’s the secret curl of a fiddlehead, the gentleness of comfrey, or the blood-red streaks of frog leaf, plants carry with them millennia of wisdom, communicated through color, texture and form. Cease Wyss has been listening to this unspoken language, and is now passing this ancient and intimate sense of connection to her own daughter, Senaqwila.

The plant spirits are the Grandmothers, and they have good things to share with us to help us (re)connect to the land, if we listen.