“As we begin (once again) to naturalize ourselves – both nutritionally and medicinally – we may begin to discover that there is far more to a plant than just its chemical composition, more than just its list of constituent phyto-nutrients, vitamins and minerals. Rather, and more vital to our personal healing – as well as to the continuation of life as we know it – is our becoming acquainted with the organism producing the food or medicine itself. With the life-form, the being”

-Daniel Vitalis

~

Visionary Nutrition. This is a path of uniting stories. An open source invitation into deeper relation with the many things that fuel, heal, and energize us; that which is alive all around us, co-creates with us. This a path of dissolving separation. A path of connectivity.

It is the strengthened engagement with the harmony of humanity – the beautiful songs we’ve sung and are singing, our peak performance, the best of the best – that boils down to our collective necessities – food, medicine, life – from which can be drawn ever-expanding analogies, inter-elated metaphor, and metamorphosis.

It is here all around us; Eden, Heaven – find it in an apple. Got Demons? Join forces with a vine. Eat garbage conjured and sold by the darkest magicians – become “Stay Puft Marshmellow Man”; your ill-conceived nightmares. Invite the forces of nature, say an orange or a mushroom, and with the right kind of eyes – grow further infused with infinite ecologies of everlasting spirits.

“What ayahuasca teaches is that right now, at every moment, we already live in the magic forest”

-Steve Beyer

Dig around a bit, and you might observe the root of our crisis as being humankind’s long, drunken lust for separation – mind/body, human/nature, food/medicine, physical/spiritual. Simultaneously, it these elements which unite our species, and always have. We all participate, we all dance with these elements – and it is these elements that, by and large, make up our world. We create worlds, as worlds creates us.

But we are new here – sometimes awesome, but ultimately amateur, and we’ve been grasping. We simply cannot believe it. Timelapse the situation and it’s like we appeared only yesterday – instantaneously – in ever-changing form, on a particular planet. Growing in size, staring at our hands, finding our feet, rubbing our eyeballs, mind boggled – immersed, surrounded, and face to face with an overwhelming presence perceived, at times, as threatening.

We dash for the door, or some way out. We invoke separation, like children covering their ears – convinced it’s not happening. Running in circles, making mirages, chasing dragons, ouroborically awestruck, deaf, blind and dumbfounded by this life, the afterlife, reality and its alternatives, ghosts, dreams, philosophy, the powers that be, the secret life of plants – all this raging intricacy.

Yet we appear now to see eye to eye with the storm. This quiet, ripping whorl, where time is in question, and of its essence. Where the consensus amongst the conscious is that we are indeed all one, we are nature, there is no separation, and it’s all changing dramatically. Be it homo nexus, homo luminous, neo aboriginalis, or Sylvapolitans – it’s on, and it’s your choice. Merge with the Maelstrom, let Gaia absorb you. Produce solutions – dissolve.

“The fiction that supports the culture-nature separation is rapidly failing under the weight of its own inconsistencies. It is becoming obvious that what we do to nature we do to ourselves, what we do to ourselves we do to nature.”

-Morgan Brent

All plants are psychoactive. Everything has a spirit. You can learn a lot from Arugula – even more from Cacao, or from an elder like Maize. What we place inside ourselves, transforms us. Eating and drinking is intimate communication. Daily comm-union, even telepathy, most often one-way, where a plant invited into the human body as food or medicine can “see what you mean”. From it nothing is hidden and it knows what’s what – so it provides certain answers in the form of nourishment – literally; “bringing (you) up, raising, fostering, supporting, preserving”.

Be it food or information – we become what we consume, and we produce from the inside out. When we eat and drink – we practice relationship with different forces, with spirits and sentience. We are what we eat, and what we eat runs the show.

Plants, fungi and bacteria are significantly adept at piloting humans. Michael Pollan, for example, explores this extensively and convincingly in his work, posing the question: “What if we are all just pawns in corn’s clever strategy game to rule the Earth?”. Further, Pollan suggests, in his “Plants-eye view” Ted Talk, that “Looking at the world from other species’ points of view is a cure for the disease of human self-importance.”

If plants – specifically Teacher Plants – convey anything, it is that they have the upper hand, the higher branch. They can throw you down, clean you up, send you out to space, thrust you on a new paths, make you change your ways, whisper advice, keep you warm, dry, sheltered, alive, and in some cases, even kill you.

Essentially, plants can do whatever they want with humans, and with near- absolute impunity. Our species’ “ultimate verdict” is the concept of death. But to a plant, death is laughable. A sentiment reinforced in a recent New York Times Magazine article describing the plant take-over of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, where “For six and a half years, the neighborhood has undergone a reverse colonization — nature reclaiming civilization.”

Have you ever seen plants happen? Plants, and plant-time, are like crop circles (which of course are made of plants in most cases) – like magic, they appear, leave traces, clues, fruit, messages. In the New Orleans “Jungleland” – behind climates of chaos and the media newsfeed, burnt cars and dead bodies are consumed by tall grass.

Side with the plants, learn plants, eat plants, become plants – let food be your medicine, let medicine be your food – and begin to synthesize entirely different dimensions of time, technology, communication, and potential.

“In order to live a magical life, you have to eat magical food”

-David Wolfe

Several years ago, during dieta with Ayahuasca, the plants suggested to me that “ayahuasca would go best with raw food”. Plants, I’ve found, often speak in terms of one’s present perception – in shapeshifting symbols that change as you follow them, conversations to discern and decipher. With this in mind, I set forth exploring a raw food diet – with sharp eyes and a healthy aversion to dogma and definitions. However, the heart of this guidance was clear: Ayahuasca, once drank, prefers to live in, and works better with; clean bodies.

I eventually engaged and evolved my raw food/living diet path as a kind of inverted version of a Plant Dieta. Something I could practice daily as a way to learn from, and build relations with numerous “common” plants like Kale, Chard, Chia, Blueberries, Tomatoes, Pears, for example. As process of turning myself into some kind of garden. Into which, ayahuasca digs deep, purging junk, transforming thoughts, composting things, creating soil from soul, turning the stomach into a womb, encouraging conditions right, good, and fertile – so it can root, grow, and flower.

Raw, living diets take many forms. From my perspective it’s a kind of plant artistry. Plant-based edible living sculpture with vibrant living beings who in return sculpt you. Essentially though, it is process of healing and strengthening. Significantly, it’s a cleanse – of body, of mind – and by extension, environment.

From yet another direction, the “higher reflection” in a sense the Mother of  living diets, can be seen in the traditions and disciplines of Plant Dietas. Commonly referred to and often mistaken as “the ayahuasca diet” - Plant Dietas are, in very general terms; a discipline and process of cleansing, purging, healing, learning, and building right-relationship. During Plant Dietas, one is isolated, eats very little, and/or very simply, in order to remove distractions, sensitize one’s body/mind/spirit to the subtleties of the spirit world, to become transparent, lucid and focused in it. A student-teacher relationship emerges as one sits with a plant, drinking it exclusively over a period of time.

Working safely and respectfully with Ayahuasca and other Teacher Plants, alongside living food/garden-variety plants, the Teacher’s Assistants so to speak, leads, of course, to many physical and spiritual benefits. The plants led me out of concrete jungles, away from concrete ideologies and crumbling health to hold my gaze and engage my commitment to unfolding endeavours of evolutionary advantage – wild foods, living water, permaculture, forest gardening, medicinal mushrooms, herbalism, synaesthesia…

Yet perhaps most importantly, the process has opened, and continues to expand, a certain grand permeability – pathways and bridges between common ground and the sky – between day-to-day and ceremonial nights.

~

“I think that once a person is aware of the life in everything, they can begin to access the spirit of everything. And once they can do that they can interact with those spirits. I’m talking about the spirit of the creek, the bricks in your house, the hundreds of spirits roaming your kitchen.

This universe is full full full of life and life force. The roll of shamanic knowledge for us westerners introduced to those spirits is to spread that knowledge, make communication easier. And if we can do that–a big task, no doubt–then the way people interact with the world and the spirits of the world and universe will change, automatically, from one of dominance to one of cooperation. And when we, mankind, begin interacting with the world, rather than trying to dominate it, well, I think mankind will be better off. The world and its spirits don’t really care if we do, for the most part. Trees will be here long after we’re gone, and so will stones and bricks and clouds and the moon. So it’s really up to us to take an interest if we are to make the friendship of those spirits.

And thus far, for most of us throughout mankind’s short history on this planet, that effort has not been made. Which has left us losing out on so much we might have learned. Who knows what we have missed simply by not asking a plant what benefit it might have for mankind, rather than saying “tree, chop it and burn it for fire.”

I think the universe has all the secrets of the universe. And our arrogance in trying to continually conquer the universe rather than communicate with it, has kept us from being taught those secrets. And how delicious they might be!”

-Peter Gorman

Visionary Nutrition:
Enhancing Your Health in a Psychedelic World

Featuring: David Wolfe, Daniel Vitalis, Morgan Brent, Peter Gorman

Host: Morgan Maher

Join David Wolfe, Daniel Vitalis, Peter Gorman, Morgan Brent, and Morgan Maher to create and explore the connections between health, nutrition, sacred plants, food, diet, and herbalism, as we weave through these frenzied foothills; the wild weirdness of 2012.

Begins April 8, 2012

Register here

Course price: $85 - Early bird price through March 28: $75

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Physical and spiritual healing is advancing at a mycelial rate. Visionary plant medicines are being engaged all across the planet. Remarkable evolutions in nutrition and diet are revolutionizing lives, strengthening our species. We are transitioning into new ways of being. Energized, empowered, interconnected Lifeforms on newly vast, ever-growing landscapes.

Places of dreams, realms of the soul, gardens of your mind; melted, mixed, aligned – revived, with archaic techniques of ecstasy, across time, space and mystery, we are learning myriad ways to lead healthier, stronger, longer, deeper, and more delicious lives.

However, we’re going through some heavy stuff. Face it. In the cold shadows of Habit and History, our individual and collective well-being is experiencing an onslaught of novel stressors. Unprecedented ecological crisis, economic and political upheaval, ongoing nuclear fallout, war, invasive media, corporate take-over, numerous threats to our food’s quality and supply. Dis-ease of all descriptions.

Thankfully, and luckily – the energy, tools, materials, traditions, resources, research, test-runs, bio- assays, art, music, experiments, elements, food and medicine required to calm the crisis, cure the chaos, compost catastrophe, energize the body, vitalize community and heal the planet are available and waiting for you.

Immense potential exists now to exponentially enhance your individual health in mind, body and spirit; fortify and deepen your relationship with the natural world; unite with myriad mysteries, to birth, nourish and strengthen the most dynamic, diverse, vigorous, and thriving generations this planet has ever seen.

Join David Wolfe, Daniel Vitalis, Peter Gorman, Morgan Brent, and Morgan Maher to create and explore the connections between health, nutrition, sacred plants, food, diet, and herbalism – in context of our ecological crisis and planetary transition.

With this course you will receive:

• Forward-thinking, cutting edge information, research and strategies to completely upgrade, expand, heighten and maintain your personal health and well-being

• New perspectives for vibrant worlds; potential paths, opportunities, ways-of-being and life-ways towards practical, ground-level integration and creation of visionary ecosystems

• The wisdom of the plants. Shamanic teachings, sacred traditions and neoteric practices to deepen your relationship with plants, immerse in the natural, and communicate with the spiritual

• Detailed inspiration to invigorate, navigate and take control of your body, mind, soul – food, diet, and medicine choices.

Evolver Intensives are live, dynamic experiences in which you become part of a community sharing real time with some of the most inspiring visionaries of our era.

Each session is devoted to one-on-one conversations between Morgan and a featured guest, followed by a Q & A session. Participants from the audience will be able to ask questions and offer their own comments and insights via live video, chat, text, or email. If you can watch a YouTube video, you can take part in this course.

Participating in this course will provide you with unique and unprecedented opportunities to upgrade your personal health strategies, strengthen archaic techniques, and co-create new relationships with food, medicine, and the world around you.

Featured Guests

Daniel Vitalis

Sunday April 8, 3pm EST

Daniel Vitalis is a Leading Health, Nutrition, and Personal Development Strategist as well as a Nature Based Philosopher.

He teaches that our Invincible Health is a product of living in alignment with our biological design and our role in the ecosystem. Daniel incorporates the wisdom of indigenous peoples into our modern lives.

His entertaining, motivational and magnetic delivery style has made him an in-demand public speaker in North America and abroad.

Daniel is the creator of FindASpring – a resource helping the public find clean, fresh, wild water – free of man made pollutants, wherever they live. He is also a founding member of www.SurThrival.com, the suppliers of premier, biologically active and fully natural nutritional medicines for regeneration, immunity and healthy endocrine function.

Daniel Vitalis takes us deep into the wilds, with:

• ReWild Your Body, ReWild Your Mind, Ancestral Nutrition for Increased Inner-Vision

• Domesticated foods and domesticated people

• Poison/Medicine/Drug – dose is everything

• Our natural diet and the role of entheogenic organisms

• Nootropics, the missing arm of herbalism/nutrition

• Entheogenic deficiency, a world-wide epidemic

• Let Food Be Thy Medicine, a synthesis of nutrition and medicine

Peter Gorman

Saturday April 14, 3pm EST

Peter Gorman is a noted and award-winning journalist and adventurer. His feature writing has appeared in more than 100 major national and international magazines. He has also written a number of video pieces, including work for the United Nations and the Salvation Army, and has consulted for both National Geographic’s Explorer series and the BBC’s Natural World.

Gorman’s love affair with the Amazon jungle is well known to people in the field. Since 1984, he has spent a minimum of three months annually there–as well as all of 1998-2000–generally using Iquitos, Peru as his base of operations.

During that time he has studied ayahuasca, the legendary visionary and healing drink of the jungle, with his friend, the late curandero Julio Jerena, as well as the San Pedro, the sacred cactus of the highlands, with the healer Victor Estrada.

He has also collected botanical specimens for Shaman Pharmaceuticals and herpetological specimens for the FIDIA Research Institute of the University of Rome. He was the first person to ever work with the medicinal knowledge of the remote Matses Indians of the Peruvian-Brazilian border, and his description of their use of the secretions of the phyllomedusa bicolor frog has opened an entire field devoted to the use of amphibian peptides as potential medicines in Western medicine. His initial writing on the effects of the secretions is the first description of a human taking an animal substance directly into the bloodstream ever recorded.

He is the author of Ayahuasca in My Blood – 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming.

Peter Gorman goes beyond the veil, with:

• The spirit world – alive all around us

• The ayahuasca diet, perspectives on food and culture

• Egg healers and frog venom, a trip through remote Amazonia

• The coca leaf, the drug war, the way forward

• Tribes, family, work and play. Holding it all together

• High Times & Low Roads, lessons and stories from three decades of visionary medicine

Morgan Brent

Sunday April 22, 3pm EST

According to Brent, knowing ourselves via identities that are reactive to the mainstream agenda, such as alternative and counterculture, and anti-this or that, negates the generative capacity we have as a people aligned with the rebalancing forces, now going full tilt, of the natural world. In contrast to the rather anemic, and unsustainable, model of human development presented as the high income, city dwelling, university educated cosmopolitan, a more full-spectrum model of self-acculturation is offered when one tunes into the Gaian ‘innernet’ we all carry in the evolutionary heritage of our biological form, and follows the ‘original instructions’ accessed there. One so integrated into the sylvan cosmos, the society of Nature, is known as a sylvapolitan. The sylvapolitan, thru feeding on the rapidly composting cosmopolitan world, is synergizing into the matured human capable of emerging out of this 6th, and greatest, planetary ‘age of extinction’, we are currently in.

Originally from Ohio, Brent received an MA in anthropology (1993) from SFSU with research in Taiwan on traditional Chinese vitality concepts and practices. In the early 1990s he made his way through the San Francisco dance underground in various capacities, among them a teacher of tai chi chuan and ceremonial energetix. In 1995 he took a growing interest in medicinal plants to a doctoral program in ethnopharmacology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Simultaneously, he began working with ayahuasca. This resulted in a dual education, which eventually focused on the great herbalist traditions of the world, their role in spiritual revitalization movements, and their common message to humanity.

He left academia after the vast Gaian intelligence with which he had been engaging recruited him to its purposes full time. He now works to further the prescriptive teachings of medicinal plants, aka ‘Nature’s plan to save the humans’. In service to this guidance, he founded ‘Tribes of Creation‘, an organization that umbrellas workshops and events thru out, and beyond, the Pacific NW. These include ‘Singing Alive‘ sacred song circle gatherings, now in their 6th year, and Human Flowering Creation-song circles, communally sung narratives of mythic renewal. He considers his work to be gestures of subtle activism, food for a spiritually hungry world.

Morgan Brent illuminates:

• How we learn from plants

• Lessons from plant dietas, including imaginal hygiene

• Pro-active health and spiritual evolution

• Pro-active identity and the sylvapolitan

• The human flowering response

• The healing voice and sacred songs

David Wolfe

Sunday April 29, 3pm EST

David Wolfe is considered one of the world’s top authorities on natural health, beauty nutrition, herbalism, chocolate, and organic superfoods.

With over 16 years of dedicated experience and understanding of the inner workings of the human body, David is a true living master of what it means to “walk the talk” on the road to higher and higher levels of natural beauty, vibrant health, and peak-performance.

Through his down-to-earth and simple approach, David shows us that no problem is created without a solution and that we DO have the opportunity, right at our fingertips, to make new choices about our lifestyle and take our health back into the power of our own hands.

As the author of many best-selling books including Eating for Beauty, The Sunfood Diet Success System, Naked Chocolate, Amazing Grace, Superfoods: The Food and Medicine of the Future, and The LongevityNOW Program, David empowers and inspires people to take charge of their health even up against all the modern-day demands of bills, technology, environmental pollution.

David Wolfe’s leadership has been inspired by principles of sustainable agriculture, living in harmony with nature, and ethical global cooperation. He is co-founder of TheBestDayEver.com online health magazine and is President of The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation with a mission to plant 18 billion fruit trees on planet Earth.

David Wolfe explores & expands:

• The Plant Path. The Poison Path.

• Entheogen Update: Where Are We Now.

• Psychedelic Foods. Visionary Nutrition.

• The Importance of Growing Your Own Medicine.

• Be Your Own Shaman (Grow It, Prepare It, Apply It, Ingest It)

• Cacao Shamanism.

• Nature-Based Spirituality and Wild Food.

Course price: $85

Early bird price through March 28: $75

Register here

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About the host:

Morgan Maher is an artist, writer, designer, and researcher. Morgan met eight years ago with Ayahuasca to address a longstanding mystery illness. During the ceremony, he experienced complete and total healing and what it felt like to live in a supercharged, and ultra-updated physical form. It was, however, only a glimpse. It was also a lesson and an invitation. Thrust on the path of learning to maintain the level of wholeness, vigour and clarity he experienced with Ayahuasca – Morgan is exploring ways to achieve, sustain and regenerate this sensibility, effectively building bridges between physical worlds and spirit worlds – via diet, food, medicine, herbalism, sacred plants, art and music.

Morgan has written for Reality Sandwich, works with Evolver Intensives, and is a Contributing Editor for Ayahuasca.com. He illustrated Peter Gorman’s Ayahuasca in My Blood – 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming, and published Espiritu, “a book of plants, leaves, trees, jungles, forests, wild places and magical spaces” which collects over 100 images from the Aucayacu, Lobo, and Galvez rivers in Peru, and gardens and wild places in Alberta and Ontario, Canada.

Morgan teaches classes and workshops exploring art and plants. He runs media and visuals for The Light Cellar, a superfood, superherb, raw chocolate shop and teaching kitchen in Calgary, Canada.

Join me on Twitter and Facebook – leading up and throughout the course, I’ll be posting related material, bits and pieces of the puzzle, as well as curated highlights from the deep wisdom and work of these amazing teachers.

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By participating in this online course, you will receive:

Four 90-minute live video seminars with Morgan and his featured guests 30 minutes of question and answer time in each seminar

Participation in a private online community with other students

Unlimited online access to videos of all seminar

PDF articles about course topics from Morgan and each of the guests

See this link for details:http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs025/1101625843830/archive/1109215742644.html

Here is another link to the Willka T’ika main web site:http://www.willkatika.com/

Please join us if you can!  This year is the 100th anniversary of the ‘discovery’ of Machu PIcchu by Hiram Bingham.  Rumor has it that the site may be close indefinitely while they figure out how to keep it from being destroyed by too many tourists. So this year may be the last chance to see this amazing site for a while.

Please pass this along to friends who may be interested, and respond directly to info@willkatika.com

See you in June, perhaps!

Dennis McKenna

Jan Irvin is an independent researcher, author, and lecturer. He is the author of several books, including The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity, and co-author of Astrotheology & Shamanism: Christianity’s Pagan Roots. He is the curator of the official website for John Marco Allegro, the controversial Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, and in 2009 he republished Allegro’s famous 1970 classic, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, in a fortieth anniversary edition. Jan is the editor of the forthcoming Entheogens & Consciousness: A Comprehensive Overview of the Psychedelic Sciences, a two-volume set of interviews done with about fifty of the world’s leading independent and academic researchers in psychedelic studies, from which this interview is drawn. The original audio interview is available on Jan’s popular Gnostic Media podcast site.

Jan Irvin: Steve, welcome to Gnostic Media’s podcast. How are you today?

Stephan Beyer: I’m just fine. I’m very happy to be here talking with you.

JI: And I’m very excited to have you on the show. I finished reading your new book, Singing to the Plants, last week. I would say that it definitely has raised the bar, as far as research into ayahuasca and South American shamanism. I would put it up there with Benny Shanon’s book, Antipodes of the Mind — I think you’ve done an equivalent job in bringing your data together and the thoroughness of your research.

SB: Well, thank you for your very kind words. I really appreciate that. I’m happy to talk about the book with you.

JI: Why don’t you start out by telling us a little bit about who is Stephan Beyer and your background?

SB: I’m a retired university professor. I’m a retired lawyer.

JI: Where did you used to teach?

SB: I taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I taught at Berkeley. I taught at Graduate Theological Union, back in the ‘70s.

JI: So it’s been a little while?

SB: Oh, it’s been a long time, yes. I’m also a retired wilderness guide. Right now I am a peacemaker and a community builder. And that’s really about it. It’s been a great ride.

JI: Would you define yourself as a practicing shaman?

SB: No. And I’ll tell you the reason for that. I have studied with people I consider to be real shamans. And when I look at the depth of their knowledge and experience, when I look at their ability to suck illness out of the bodies of suffering patients, when I see that they know intimately hundreds of plants and hundreds of sacred songs, I’m barely even a beginner on that path.

JI: Would you say that they’re sucking sickness out of a patient? Is that something real that you’ve seen actually work?

SB: It raises a whole bunch of questions. I’m still trying to sort through those questions myself. Can I tell you a story?

JI: Sure.

SB: Alright. Here’s a story. I was sitting with my teacher, my maestro ayahuasquero, don Roberto, late at night. A canoe pulls up at the landing down by the river near his hut. And two men come up the walk, one holding the other. They tell don Roberto that the sick person has terrible stomach pains. The guy carrying him is his cousin and he’s brought him to don Roberto. So don Roberto does his healing work — what I came to think of as his ten-minute healing. And he did all of the things that an Upper Amazonian shaman does. He blew tobacco smoke into the crown of the sick person’s head. He blew tobacco smoke where the pain was. He shook his leaf bundle rattle, his shacapa, and sang his icaros, his magical songs. And he sucked at the place where the pain was. And he spit the illness, the flemosidad, the darts, onto the ground. And all the time I’m sitting there thinking to myself: ‘Oh my god, what if this guy has acute appendicitis?’ So when don Roberto is finished with his healing, I ask permission from everybody to touch the person he has just been healing. And I check for all of the signs of appendicitis: fever, rebound tenderness, guarding, pain on the right side when pressing on the left — all of those things. And I say to myself, phew, no appendicitis. But that left me with an unanswered question, which is this: Here is don Roberto — my teacher, a man I respect and admire and love — and I have to ask myself: Do I or do I not believe that he is capable of healing acute appendicitis?

JI: Very interesting. Are you familiar with professor Tom Roberts?

SB: Oh yeah.

JI: And you’re familiar with his work on placebo ability, right?

SB: Yeah.

JI: So obviously you’ve considered that as a possibility as well — just placebo ability. Or do you think that it’s deeper than that?

SB: This is a difficult question. Let’s look at the course of most illnesses. Most sicknesses that people suffer are self-limiting. Many other diseases — such as arthritis or multiple sclerosis — are cyclical. They seem to be getting better and then they get worse and then they seem to be getting better. Lots of diseases seem to respond to placebo in most drug trials, as you know. Something like thirty percent of the placebo group get better. But I don’t know whether the placebo effect can heal acute appendicitis.

JI: What gives you the idea that he had acute appendicitis?

SB: Oh, I think he did not.

JI: OK.

SB: And surely whatever he had, it responded to what don Roberto did. My dilemma was a little different. My dilemma was: if he had appendicitis, did I think that don Roberto was in fact healing it? And if I didn’t think so, if I thought this guy was going to die, what should I do? So that raises the question: What is a shaman really doing? To what extent do we think that shamans cure in the same way we think that biomedical doctors cure? Or are they doing something else? Certainly when you talk to shamans, they will say that they are just as interested in healing physical disease as any biomedical specialist is. And I think we have to be very careful about how we use words — like curing and healing — to try to understand, in their own terms, exactly what it is that shamans do when they’re shamanizing. I think one of the advantages of really trying to understand shamanism is that it allows us to look at sickness and at the process of healing, as we experience it in our own culture, from a very different perspective. In the Upper Amazon, I think shamans see disease, see sickness, as having a profoundly social dimension that we don’t think about in biomedicine. We see patients as being discrete, monadic units, somehow isolated from their social setting. In the Upper Amazon, a shaman looks at sickness as indicating a failure of right relationship. Disease, sickness, is always the result of a broken trust, is always the result of envy, resentment, or malice on the part of another human being. And so, there is a social dimension —

JI: That’s such a hard concept for many people to grasp. They don’t understand that these indigenous people — and it’s not just in South America, but throughout the world — don’t believe that a germ comes and gets you sick. Traditionally they believe that sickness was caused by sorcery and things like that. And, as you’re familiar with, I had Neil Whitehead on my show last year. He was a pioneer in that area of research. So many people get this New Age concept of neo-shamanism that is so far removed from what shamanism is really about. To even try and explain it to people causes them to start making all sorts of bizarre ad hominem attacks and things like that instead of trying to realize that Terence McKenna’s definition of shamanism is not really all there is to shamanism.

SB: I agree with what you’re saying. There is, especially in the Upper Amazon, what I have called a tragic cosmovision, which is very different from the view of shamanism which you see in a lot of the popular media. For example, the relationship between hunter and prey in North American indigenous culture is often based on a gift model. In other words, indigenous people in North America frequently express their relationship to animals in the hunt as the animals giving themselves up as a gift to the humans who hunt and eat them, which requires in turn a gift from the people who hunt them — a song, a ritual, tobacco. And so, the hunt is perceived as a gift relationship. And many people take this as normative for indigenous culture generally. But in the Upper Amazon, human and animal relationships, the relationships between people, are not based on a gift model so much as they are based on a predator-prey model. And just as jaguars hunt people, people hunt wild pigs. And the relationships between people in causing disease, in hunting animals, in warfare, are all made part of this same tragic cosmovision. In many Upper Amazonian cultures it’s very clear you can’t cure one person of the disease without causing that disease to go to a different person. And it seems to me that this kind of tragic cosmovision, this sense of the innateness of human aggression and the necessity of tremendous self-control on the part of the shaman to keep from becoming an aggressor him- or herself is something that is very difficult for people in our culture to understand or accept. And that’s why work by people like Whitehead and Brown is so very important.

JI: What got you into studying psychedelics and Amazonian shamanism?

SB: I was interested in wilderness survival, of all things. And I was filled with machismo — you know, drop me naked in the desert and I’ll eat lizards and survive.

JI: Like these guys on Discovery Channel or whatever —

SB: Yes, exactly like that. And I had the benefit of many really good wilderness survival instructors. I first went down to the Amazon to study jungle survival. I had a lot of very interesting adventures doing that.

JI: But you were a professor before you did that, correct?

SB: I was a professor of Buddhist Studies and I did that for twelve years.

JI: I see clearly the direct relation.

SB: I went off after that to become a lawyer. And I was a litigator and a trial lawyer for twenty-five years. And then toward the end of that, I was becoming interested in wilderness survival.

JI: So what happened? You did some mushrooms or some ayahuasca, and something happened?

SB: It went the other way, actually.

That’s the usual trajectory, no question about it. But, as I studied wilderness survival, it became clearer and clearer to me that survival in the wilderness had a spiritual dimension — that if you look at the spirituality of indigenous peoples, it is almost universally based on the need to maintain right relationships, both with the group that you’re part of and with the spirits of the wilderness. They’re also part of your group. And the spirits of the cosmos are also part of your group. So, when I started thinking about that, I became very curious. I wanted to find out more about it. So it was at that point that I started drinking ayahuasca. I did — how many — seven four-day and four-night wilderness vision fasts in the desert — in Death Valley and the Gila Wilderness and in other areas of the Southwest. I participated in ceremonies of the Native American Church, and slowly became drawn into the ayahuasca shamanism of the Upper Amazon and just felt I needed to learn more and more about it. So there was no great revelation. It was a matter of just increasing curiosity, and then, as my curiosity began to be satisfied, my need to understand what was going on in some kind of cultural context. And that’s what led to the book.

JI: Would you like to define shamanism?

SB: Umm, no. People who are a lot smarter than I am have gotten into trouble trying to define shamanism. I’m not at all sure that there is one shamanism. I guess I prefer to talk about shamanisms. And it’s like a Wittgensteinian family resemblance more than anything else. This shamanism resembles that shamanism. That shamanism resembles a third shamanism. And by the time you get to the other end of that chain, the shamanism at the end has very little similarity with the shamanism you started with. Let me put it this way: when lawyers talk about property rights they often use the metaphor of a bundle of sticks. To own a piece of property means that you have the right to sell, lease, share, bequeath, donate, alter, repair, or destroy it. Owning different things, or owning the same thing under different circumstances, may alter the number or type of sticks included in the bundle. And the notion of owning a piece of property is defined by these sticks in a bundle. I like to think about shamanism the same way as a kind of bundle of sticks. One stick is that the shaman has a particularly close relationship with spirits that other people don’t have. Another stick is that shamans know things that other people don’t know. They know what caused a sickness, or they know where game animals are. They know where a lost soul has gone. Another one is that they are performers. Shamans practice, at least some of the time, in public where people can see what they’re doing. The shaman’s power may be encapsulated as a physical object inside the body And you can come up with a list of maybe a dozen of these sticks. And you can say that a shaman in this culture has these six sticks, and a shaman in another culture has these six sticks, of which three are the same as the first one. And you can come up with some kind of a way of thinking about shamans that doesn’t seek for some kind of essence that they all have in common. If I were asked to define shamanism, I would define it in terms of a bundle of sticks.

JI: What are shamanic darts?

SB: Let’s see. In the Upper Amazon, a shaman’s power is conceptualized as being kept inside the shaman’s body, usually in the form of some kind of slimy, sticky substance. And among the mestizo shamans, they use the common Spanish word flemavirot, for phlegm. And in this matrix, there are kept pathogenic projectiles, or the substance may itself be projected outside the body. Among the mestizo shamans, usually these are called virotes, darts. The word virote means a crossbow dart. And when the Spanish invaded, that term was used for the darts that the indigenous people of the Amazon used in their blowguns. Although these pathogenic projectiles are called darts, if you see them having drunk ayahuasca, they can be teeth, scorpions, spiders, the beaks of birds, razor blades. And the sorcerer causes sickness by projecting these darts into the body of the victim. This concept of disease being caused by some pathogenic projectile being inserted into the body of the patient is virtually universal in the Upper Amazon. Just as the cure for this is virtually universal: the healing shaman sucks the dart out. And that’s how the patient is healed.

JI: And we’ll get back to the concept of the phlegm in a moment. I want to come back to your discussion of shamans appearing to suck the disease out of someone. But first I wanted to talk about your research into Gordon Wasson and his interactions with María Sabina.

SB: Well, I wouldn’t even really call it research. It’s a story that has been well told before and I told it again to make a point, which is that people have mistakenly thought of shamans as something like spiritual gurus — as being like Zen monks, or Hindu ascetics, or people who dwell in the bright light and on the mountaintop of enlightenment. And shamans are really nothing like that. Shamans dwell in what James Hillman has called the valley of soul.

JI: I know somebody who has been living in Jimenez since the early 90s. They say that Wasson’s picture of María Sabina and the whole situation was highly distorted.

SB: I think that’s right. He saw her as this perfect spiritual person, the embodiment of spirituality. She was a shaman who lived her own messy life, who dealt with disease and resentment and envy and love affairs gone bad and farms that stopped producing crops and all of the mess of human life. And she healed people by vomiting for them. If the mushrooms didn’t make people vomit, then she would vomit for them and try to heal them that way. She was a person who lived our ordinary, human, messy life and was a healer in this context of, not the mountaintop, but the valley of soul. But Wasson idealized her and made her into this spiritual person. And as you know so well, María Sabina just didn’t understand any of this.

JI: You know that Wasson had actually met several other shamans and had seen them doing the mushroom ritual before he selected María Sabina to be the proper one to show, whom he then presented to the world in Time-Life Magazine. And I’m not sure if you were aware, but he was the head of PR, or public relations — which is spin — for J.P. Morgan Bank. In fact, he was the pioneer of banking spin. And so it’s not surprising that he would look for the most opportune way to spin his story, which just happened, unfortunately, to be María Sabina and the Mazatec.

SB: I’m sure you know that he probably, at least based on what I have read, was less than honest in explaining to any of these people he met, including María Sabina, why he wanted to take the mushrooms.

JI: Oh yeah. He made $40,000 off of the serialization rights of the article. I think he paid María Sabina like a pack of cigarettes and some little trivial items. He was a banker through and through. He certainly had ulterior motives. I’m actually working on another book. In 2008, I published a book called The Holy Mushroom, that revealed a lot of Wasson’s tactics against John Allegro, who is the author of The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Since writing that book I have come across a lot of new and startling information that merits a whole other book.

SB: I hadn’t heard about the disparity in what he made and what he gave María Sabina. But as you know, that’s an old story. People, gringos, have been doing that to indigenous healers for an awfully long time, and I’m sure you know the story of this guy who tried to patent ayahuasca, leading to a very bitter fight. And that kind of thing has been going on for a very long time. Fortunately, things, I think, are getting better as people become more and more aware. But the exploitation of indigenous healers is a really old and very troubling story.

JI: Are shamans trusted or distrusted?

SB: Shamans are generally mistrusted. In the Upper Amazon — and in many, if not most, shamanic cultures — it’s generally accepted that the power to heal is also the power to harm – they are the same thing. This is especially clear, I think, in the Upper Amazon, where the sorcerer and the shaman use exactly the same means. They use the same plant spirits. They use the same protective plants and animals both to attack and to defend. The means of causing disease overlap with the means of extracting disease. The phlegm which contains the darts of the sorcerer is what the healing shaman uses to protect himself from the darts that have been projected into the patient. So the shaman in the Upper Amazon inhabits this area of ambiguous marginality. People don’t trust shamans. Shamans are killed. If a patient dies, people wonder: Was he really trying hard enough? Was this sorcery under the guise of healing? A French anthropologist, Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, did a study of Yagua shamans in eastern Peru. He tracked the death of shamans over a period of several years. Every shaman who had died did so in one of two ways. Either he had been killed, people said, by a sorcerer, or he had been killed by people who said he was a sorcerer. So, people need shamans, but they distrust them.

JI: They need them but they distrust them. Interesting paradox.

SB: In the Upper Amazon, they say the difference between a sorcerer and a shaman comes down to a matter of self-control.

JI: Well that leads me to my next question. Are shamans that are capable of healing also capable of killing? And what is the separation there?

SB: It’s not a bright line. For example, a shaman sucks pathogenic projectiles — darts, scorpions, snakes, razor blades, piranha teeth. When don Roberto heals, part of the performative aspect is that he makes it very clear that what he is sucking out of the patient is vile and disgusting — he gags, he chokes. It is clear from what he does that he is taking grave risks on behalf of his patient by ingesting into his own body these vile, foul substances that were projected into the body by a sorcerer.

JI: You don’t think it’s just a show though? You think there’s merit to this display?

SB: I have come to think that we make a mistake by simply dividing the world into two boxes. And in one box we put things that are real, and in the other box we put things that are fake. And I think that drinking ayahuasca — participating in the healing culture of the Upper Amazon — makes you question whether there is in fact a bright line difference between things that are real and things that are unreal. When you read accounts of shamans, when you talk to shamans, they will talk about physical things coming into their mouth that need to be spit out. But when the shaman sucks a dart from the body of a patient, what does the healing shaman do with that dart? Sometimes, in some traditions, that dart is put into a rock or thrown toward the sun over the horizon. But that’s a problem because it is still pathogenic. Somebody could stumble on it and become sick. Another possibility is for the shaman to take it into his own phlegm and add it to his store of darts that protect him from attack by sorcerers. A third possibility, which is probably the most common, is that the shaman takes that dart that he has sucked out and projects it back into the one who sent it. Is that healing or is that sorcery? Here’s another example. The darts that are in the shaman’s body are in some sense alive and autonomous. When you have darts in your chest, embedded in the phlegm that’s in your chest, those darts, in many traditions in the Upper Amazon, want to hurt people. They are eager for you to project them out of your body into the body of somebody else. They are in some sense alive and autonomous and you have to feed them tobacco juice. They tempt the shaman to use them in order to harm. And only the most self-controlled shaman can keep those darts under control and be a healer. And my teachers, don Roberto and doña María, prided themselves on following the path they called pura blancura, pure white. They only healed, they said. On the other hand, doña María once said to me, she said: You know, we are gentle people, but sometimes we show our claws. That’s typical doña María.

JI: One point that came to me via David Hillman’s work in The Chemical Muse, and it’s come up in other areas as well, is that practically all plants, depending on the dosage, have the ability to both heal and kill. Are you familiar with that idea?

SB: Oh yes. It goes back to Paracelsus, who said that the dose makes the poison.

JI: And things like hemlock were actually used as inebriants back then — you increase the dosage a little bit and suddenly the user dies. But at very minute doses, they were having a good old time with the stuff.

SB: In the Upper Amazon it goes even beyond dose. You can use the plants for selfish, vengeful purposes, or for protective and healing purposes. And the same plant can harm or heal, depending on the intention of the shaman, who calls the spirit of the plant using the song that the plant taught the shaman.

JI: What is the importance of the shaman’s diet, or dieta?

SB: I think it’s important. People spend a lot of time talking about ayahuasca. And there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. Ayahuasca is fascinating. But I think you have to remember that — especially among the mestizos — ayahuasca is embedded in a whole pharmacopoeia of healing plants. And part of the training of the shaman is to learn not only ayahuasca, but to learn all of the healing and protective plants that the shaman may use and prescribe to patients. And the way in which you learn the plants is by establishing a close, personal relationship with the plant, so that the plant will teach you how to use it, what song to sing to call it, what sicknesses you should prescribe it for. The way the shaman learns that is to go into the jungle and live in solitude over a period of time — maybe with periodic visits by the apprentice’s teacher — and to ingest the plant. Then, in a dream, in a spontaneous vision, in a vision when the apprentice is drinking ayahuasca, in all sorts of subtle ways, the knowledge appears. It may appear in the form of a plant spirit speaking to you. It may appear in the form of a song that you hear in a dream. It may appear in the form of knowledge that forms in your mind. The song may be something that you just spontaneously find yourself singing. But the idea is that the plant is not just a collocation of molecules that you use to treat a specific disease. The plant spirit is a person, an other-than-human person, who may appear in different forms under different circumstances. But the shaman or the apprentice has to form a deep personal bond with the plant, and does that by actually taking it into the body and letting it teach from within. This is learning with the body. So it’s very important that when you go into the jungle and you are learning the plants, you have to keep to a very strict regimen of solitude, of dietary restrictions, and of sexual abstinence. So that you’re in the jungle alone. No salt, no sugar, no sex — this last because the plant spirits can be very jealous. In this solitude, you let the plant teach you in the plant’s own time. And that’s pretty much la dieta. The details vary from teacher to teacher and from tradition to tradition. But that’s basically the idea.

JI: What is the importance of the icaros, or the shaman’s songs?

SB: The songs you learn in a number of different ways. The apprentice begins by learning the songs of his or her master, the maestro ayahuasquero. It’s the songs that allow the shaman to call the spirits of the plants, to call the protective spirits, to do all kinds of things: call the lightning, summon the souls of deceased shamans, protect against rain. There are a thousand uses for these icaros. Once you’ve started to learn the songs of your own master, then the songs come to you while you’re in solitude in the jungle. And you may dream the songs. You may hear them with your ears. Sometimes people will travel long distances to hear the songs of other shamans. A shaman is known in the Upper Amazon for the number and quality of these icaros, these magic songs. They are the basic tool of shamanizing in the Upper Amazon.

JI: Let’s get back to phlegm, or tsentsak I believe is another word that you used. In your book you discuss that this was given to you both through your corona and orally. What is its purpose? Have you noticed a real effect on you from it?

SB: Let me tell you a story. Back when I was doing vision fasts in the desert, I apprenticed to somebody who knew what he was doing, as opposed to me, and I helped put people up on the hill, helped people do their four-day and four-night vision fast. People would go into the desert. They’d have water, but there would be no food, no tent, no fire. We encouraged people not to have a fire unless it was part of a ceremony, and basically to spend these four days really focused on whatever issue in that person’s life had made them want to go out and do a vision fast. And many people went out there because of the stories they had heard and the legends that they had heard, looking for what I came to call the pink neon buffalo. They wanted a big vision — an epiphany, a revelation, a transformative experience. And some of them got it, and many did not. There was this one guy, who after four days of great discomfort in the desert, came back and was distraught. He cried. He had not had a vision. And so I started to talk with him. And I said, Well, tell me, the first day you were there, what did you see? And he said he had gone back into the Eureka Mountains and walked up this wash and found this cave where he stayed. Once there had been bats in the cave and he saw the guano on the floor. He saw a lizard squatting in the shade of a creosote bush. He had seen ravens circling in the sky. And it became clear to me, and eventually became clear to him, that in fact the spirits had been speaking to him the whole time, and he just really hadn’t been listening.

And I think that that’s true of a lot of spiritual events: drinking ayahuasca, getting the phlegm of your master, going out on a vision fast in the desert. People have been conditioned to expect the pink neon buffalo. But I think many things, especially the sacred plants, I think that often, they work very slowly and subtly. And there are no big transformative visions. There are no epiphanies. What happens is that things work very slowly over time. And after six months, or a year, you realize that you have changed and that the sacred plant — the peyote, the ayahuasca, the teonanácatl — has worked in you in ways that you didn’t even expect.

And I think that the same thing is true for getting the phlegm of my maestro ayahuasquero. Don Roberto was always pretty taciturn. It was often doña María who took me under her wing and explained things. Don Roberto said I had to nurture the phlegm that he gave me by smoking mapacho and by drinking ayahuasca — although he realized that doing that was very difficult in North America. Doña María said that now that I had the phlegm of my master, I had a corazon de acero, I had a heart of steel, and I no longer needed to fear any person because this phlegm would protect me. I took that with a grain of salt. Yet over time, I have discovered that I have changed in ways I never expected. I don’t know whether it was the ayahuasca. I don’t know whether it was the phlegm of my master. I don’t know whether it’s just getting older. I don’t know whether it was my family and my friends. But I am different from when I first started studying jungle survival. I’m not a healer in the sense that I’m a curandero: I don’t give plant medicines to people, I don’t suck darts out of people. But as a peacemaker, I have become a healer in a very different way than I would have expected. And my own arrogance and rage, that was part of my love of wilderness survival, has evaporated. And again, I don’t know why. I kind of suspect it has something to do with the phlegm that don Roberto gave me. I have a suspicion that it has something to do with the way that has worked on me and made me feel safe enough so that I don’t have to be angry any more. But I don’t know. And that’s the answer: I don’t know.

JI: What is the importance of mapacho, or tobacco, in South American shamanism?

SB: Mapacho is, in many ways, the most sacred plant in South America. As it is in North America.

JI: And probably the least discussed in that regard as well.

SB: Yes. Tobacco is the most important of the strong, sweet smells — like camphor and cologne — that are considered to be protective in the Upper Amazon. So tobacco smoke is protective. It keeps away the spirits of the dead. It helps protect you from darts that are projected at you. It nurtures your own phlegm and that protects you. In a healing ceremony, the shaman blows smoke into and over the body of the participants. Tobacco is one of the three primary hallucinogens that are used by mestizo shamans. The three primary hallucinogens are tobacco, ayahuasca and toé — which is a variety of species of the genus Brugmansia, the Angel’s Trumpet, a plant very rich in scopolamine, just as ayahuasca is very rich in dimethyltryptamine.

JI: Which is the Datura family, isn’t it?

SB: Yes. Sometimes it’s called tree datura. So it’s related to Jimson Weed and other scopalamine-rich plants. And tobacco is used as a hallucinogen. Now, we generally don’t think of tobacco as a hallucinogen. And I think there are two reasons for that. One is that the tobacco that people smoke in North America has very little nicotine in it.

JI: Which is Nicotiana tabacum, as opposed to Nicotiana rustica which is the more traditional type that’s found everywhere from San Diego all the way through South America.

SB: Yes, absolutely right. South American varieties may have eight times as much nicotine as the kind that’s cultivated for smoking in North America. The second reason is that most Americans smoke for mood stabilization. They smoke because the effect of the nicotine is to calm them down if they’re nervous or excited, or to elevate their mood if they’re feeling sad or depressed. And they stop smoking when that mood stabilization has been achieved. But if you drink a lot of tobacco — for example, you soak green tobacco leaves in water over a period of time and drink the juice — nicotine is a hallucinogen. I don’t recommend trying it without proper supervision because for nicotine, the effective dose for hallucinations is very, very close to the lethal dose. So I wouldn’t recommend it if you don’t have an expert to teach you how to do it. But nicotine is one of the three major hallucinogens in the Upper Amazon. Ayahuasca is a teacher. Tobacco is a protector. And toé, tree datura, Brugmansia, teaches you courage, protects you from sorcery in particular, gives you a closed body that resists the intrusion of pathogenic projectiles.

JI: And that’s one that I’ve never gone out of my way to try. And I can find Datura growing a hundred yards from here.

SB: Scopolamine, Datura, again is not something I would recommend people experimenting with, without a very experienced guide. There is no question that Datura or toé can make people do crazy, stupid, and self-destructive things. The visions that it produces can be terrifying, paranoid, and people can easily get out of control. So that’s another one I would not recommend without appropriate guidance.

JI: I appreciate that you’re not just saying: that’s not one I would recommend. You are saying: without proper guidance. And I appreciate the proper caveat there.

SB: One of the problems I have in communicating my understanding of the shamanism of the Upper Amazon is that there’s a lot of it that people find strange and disturbing. And from our point of view a lot of it is strange and disturbing. It has a tragic view of life. It has a view of human aggressiveness which is very different from the one we find, or we profess, in North America. It has concepts that are very foreign to people. And so I don’t want to be off-putting. On the one hand, I think it is a beautiful, and rich, and very profound tradition. I think people who go down there to drink ayahuasca ought to know something about its depth and its beauty and also something about what it really, really says as opposed to huggy-bunny concepts of what shamans are and what shamans do.

JI: Good analogy. Would you like to discuss Pablo Amaringo?

SB: Sure. I never had the honor of meeting him. I know people who have known him and speak with great respect, not only of his artistic ability and his devotion to his work and to his people and to the jungle environment, but also of his personal qualities. Clearly he has become emblematic. And his art has created an entire school of Amazonian ayahuasca-derived art. I think when he passed away a month or so ago, it was a great loss. And I think he will be missed.

JI: Talk about don Roberto, your maestro.

SB: Don Roberto is my maestro ayahuasquero. I don’t want to say he is very traditional, because Upper Amazonian shamanism is traditionally eclectic, but the kind of shamanism he does, I think, is noticeably similar to the kind of shamanic practice you find in many cultures in the Upper Amazon. He is an ayahuasquero, as opposed to a tabaquero or a toéro, and is a man for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration and love. The man is a true healer. He doesn’t talk much about his life. In the book I give a brief biography. I have watched him heal. I have watched his healing performance on many occasions. He is a man of his community. He is devoted to the people of his community. One of the things I like about how the book took shape is the fact that I was able to work, particularly, with two very different people. Doña María was this wonderful grandmotherly, fussy, generous, scolding, outspoken woman. Walking with her through the jungle was like walking with an encyclopedia. She knew every plant personally. She would walk through the jungle and say, here is this plant, you use it for this, and you prepare it in that way, and it’s used for these diseases. And this one is good for children, and that one is good for adults. I couldn’t keep up with her. And so she’d scold me and tell me I’d better pay attention because she was teaching me all these valuable things. She began, not as an ayahuasquera, but as an oracionista, as a prayer healer. From the time she was seven years old, she had had visions of angels and the Virgin Mary. And the Virgin Mary would teach her how to use the plants for healing. The angels would tell her when there was a sick child in a nearby village and she would go and use the plants the Virgin Mary had taught her to go heal sick children. She was doing this from the time she was seven years old. She had dreams and visions constantly. She didn’t become an ayahuasquera until much later. She began to study under don Roberto when she was, I forget the actual date, twenty-five maybe.

JI: She cured someone of something that came out of the woman’s vagina, didn’t she?

SB: I wasn’t myself a witness, but this was the story she told me. Apparently the woman’s husband had run off with another woman — this is a very common story among mestizos in the Upper Amazon. Her husband had abandoned her and run off with another woman. But this other woman still considered her to be a rival. So she or her husband had hired a sorcerer to do harm to her. And this took the form of an animal in her womb. Now when I first heard about this it struck me as odd. But from subsequent reading and research, it becomes clear that having an animal in your womb, as a result of human or animal malevolence, is not an uncommon condition among Amazonian mestizo women. Doña María used a sweat bath and put sorcery herbs in the sweat bath — emetic and other herbs in the sweat bath. The woman squatted over it and this animal in her womb was driven out with considerable force from the woman’s vagina, as doña María told the story. And she said that this flash of white, like rabbit fur, came out of her vagina like a rocket — whoosh, she said, like that. And the woman started bleeding. And they both started praying to the Virgin Mary. And the woman was healed. This pathogenic intrusion, in this case taking the form of an animal in her womb, had been driven out by the combination of the steam and the herbs and doña María’s prayers and icaros. And the woman was healed.

JI: Why an interest in snakes?

SB: Let me take a step back. People go down to the Amazon to drink ayahuasca. There are two things about many, perhaps most, of these people that troubled me, and were among the reasons I wanted to write the book. One is that people go down there with no commitment to understanding the struggles of the indigenous people from whom they are taking this medicine. They really do not have an idea of the culture that has produced this healing practice that they are trying to tap into. Now, I can hardly blame them because there has, until now, been no single, accessible source that would let them learn something about the healing culture that they’re trying to be part of. One of the reasons I wrote the book, in addition to trying to understand my own experiences, was to try to provide people who may be going down to the Amazon to try ayahuasca with an understanding of the cultural context, the conceptual, the metaphysical context, as well as the struggles of indigenous communities in the Upper Amazon, so that they can understand this and maybe get rid of some of their preconceptions and have a better understanding of the beauty and depth of this tradition.

The other reason is that many of the people who go down to the Amazon don’t like the jungle. They’re afraid of the jungle. They have heard stories about the jungle. Now, I love the jungle. And one of the things I wanted to do was to introduce them to what the jungle is really like. And so I have all of these sidebars in the book. People go down, and they go to a tourist lodge where they’re going to drink ayahuasca. And people put food on their table. They put fish. They put fruit in front of them. And these people who have gone down there to drink ayahuasca have no idea where this food came from — of the hunting and fishing skills that are necessary, of the highly astute and sophisticated forest management skills that produce the fruit that’s on their plate, that produce the plantains that they’re eating. So, a lot of these sidebars are intended just to give some of the information that I have learned about life in the jungle through my study of wilderness survival in indigenous cultures in the Amazon. How do they build a house? How do they hunt? How do they cook? Where does their food come from? How do they fish? What do they use? I had a section on snakes for two reasons. One, because people are scared of snakes. So it makes sense to have some kind of a clear, objective description of exactly what the risks of snakebite are. And the answer is, just like in North America, even where you’re in rattlesnake country, the risks of being bitten are relatively low if you just use your head. And the other reason was because there are indigenous and mestizo snakebite remedies, and I wanted to talk about those a little bit because it may be that they have immunomodulatory effects that might be of interest to people. So I talk a little bit in that section about the traditional snakebite remedies that are used in the Amazon.

JI: Let’s talk briefly about love potions.

SB: Doña María was an expert in love magic, in pusanguería. Pusangas are very widely used in the whole area. In the book, I find the word pusanga, or very similar words, in a wide range of indigenous languages in the Upper Amazon. There are folk pusangas, there are pusangas that are made of various kinds of plants. You can buy pusangas on the Internet. If there is a woman you particularly desire and she has been ignoring you, you can go on the Internet and buy pre-made pusangas. Doña María was famous for her pusangas. She tried very hard to make her use of love potions consistent with her vision, her practices, being the pure white path. She would not use love potions if she figured the effect would be to break up a marriage, for example. There’s an anthropologist named Marie Perruchon who studied the Shuar, and in fact married a Shuar and became an initiated Shuar shaman. It turns out that at one point in their courtship, she and her husband had both, without the other one knowing it, given each other love potions.

So there are folk love potions. There are professional love potions. Doña María makes a love potion that combines ten plants. It’s in a powdered form. If I just mix a little bit of it with, say, aguardiente or with some cologne, and apply it to my face, I, not only become irresistible to women but, doña María said, I would be successful in all of my lawsuits as a lawyer. I would, in effect, seduce juries with this pusanga. And I always wanted to try it and yet I resisted because I figured maybe it wasn’t quite fair to use a pusanga in order to win one of my cases.

JI: Oh, why not. Isn’t being a lawyer based on argumentation and rhetoric anyway, and using all of that?

SB: Well that’s true. There was something about it. You know, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. So here I had this very powerful, doña María’s best pusanga, and, you know, I have never used it. I don’t know what would happen.

JI: What are some of the various names for South American-Peruvian shamanism?

SB: It’s interesting. One of the reasons I went into this in the book was because in indigenous North America, there has been great resistance among many North American Indians to the use of the term shaman for their healers, people that they often refer to as medicine men. There has been great cultural resistance to the use of the term shaman as being an imposition of a foreign term and concept by a dominant culture. Many defenders of indigenous culture in North America have been very outspoken, and often very bitter, about the attempt to consider their healers to be shamans — and especially the way the term shaman, as applied to North American indigenous healers, has been incorporated into the whole New Age movement.

JI: For sure on that one.

SB: It was interesting to me that in South America, many of the people I knew, including don Roberto and doña María, who had had contact with gringos and gringo tourists, were perfectly happy to be called chamanes, were perfectly happy to be considered shamans. It was of interest to me to see how these various terms that were used were distributed. And apparently there is no consistency to it.

JI: Alice Beck Kehoe, in her book Shamans and Religion, made the point that these other cultures aren’t really practicing the Siberian shamanism where we get the word shamanism from. But at the same time, I see it as a language issue. The English lexicon does not provide us enough terms. It’s like in Sanskrit or in Hindi, there is like ten different words for love and they all have specific meanings. Whereas we have the word love. We don’t really have any longer in our culture terms for these things. Unfortunately, in Alice Beck Kehoe’s book, she doesn’t provide us something that we should use. You can’t without providing a definition of shamanism in each and every instance. Or if you’re going to use curandero or ayahuasquero or brujo or all of these other various terms, you can’t use that word without specifically defining it because most people in our culture aren’t going to know what all of those words mean. The word shamanism is generic, which is why I know that you tip-toed around this issue at the beginning of the interview. It’s become such a generic word in our language that it really has no meaning, except to maybe the New Age crowd who completely misuse and misunderstand it.

SB: I think this is a problem which applies to a lot of terms that come from anthropology. Here’s an example: tattoo. People get tattoos in this country and nobody has challenged them by saying: Wow, you’re using the word wrong. Yet, technically, tatu is a Polynesian word and refers to very specific kinds of facial designs that have profound social meanings. And so, does it make sense to say: Well, no you can’t use the word tattoo because you’re borrowing it from indigenous Polynesian culture and you’re using it in an entirely different social context? And if you look at other anthropological terms that have been broadened from their original context — words like totem, words like taboo — they are words borrowed from very specific cultures. And yet, when people have studied other cultures they have seen practices and ideas that are more or less similar, just as my tattoos are more or less similar to Polynesian tattoos. It becomes a line-drawing exercise.

And I can understand why indigenous North American people do not like their culture being co-opted by New Age movements. And if they want to object to the use of the term shaman in that context, then fine. I can absolutely understand what they are trying to do. On the other hand, there are similarities between what a Siberian healer does and what a Korean healer does. The question then is, are those similarities enough that it becomes convenient to use the term shaman for both? And where do you draw the line? Is Siberian shamanism different from Inuit shamanism? So that we can’t use the word shaman for Inuits, but we can use it for some kinds of Siberians, but not others? That’s why I like my bundle of sticks approach.

JI: Right, and I think that Kehoe’s book actually raised more problems than solutions, unfortunately. And she had a lot of valid points but she doesn’t tell us any solutions to rectify the problem.

SB: In my personal opinion, it is a very ill-tempered book. One of the things that struck me about that book is that she said that the people I have worked with, that I have called shamans, aren’t shamans at all because they take drugs.

JI: And she tries to separate out many of the Siberian shamans, saying that they don’t use Amanita muscaria, when in fact there are many who do use it on a regular basis. But at the time, she didn’t find any that did. Even the BBC, last year, did a video on this tribe that are reindeer herders and their whole culture is based around the use of the mushrooms. But she would point to another culture and she would say, well, this culture thinks that those people over there who use the Amanita, they’re a degraded form. But it’s hard to say how much of that came from Russian-Soviet propaganda trying to get them all on vodka and alcohol and things like that and their own systematic method of destroying those ancient cultures’ heritage. And so that has to be studied and looked at as well.

SB: I think it’s an exercise in line-drawing and in cultural sensitivity. If people I am trying to understand don’t want me to use a particular word for their healing practitioner, then it seems to me only basic courtesy not to use that word. I don’t see any reason to get into a fuss over it. But I think it still makes sense to point out that there are healing practices in indigenous North American cultures that are very similar to healing practices you find in other cultures. For example, the sucking shaman is common to both South American shamanism, at least in the Upper Amazon as I’ve described it, and to indigenous cultures in North America. First nations in North America have had sucking shamans for as long as there have been written records of what their practices are. I don’t think it’s disrespectful to point that out.

JI: What does it mean for a shaman to live under water?

SB: In the Upper Amazon, there are common conceptions — by common I mean common to a number of cultures in the Upper Amazon — about people who live under water. There is a whole mythology built up about dolphins and about the yacuruna, the water people, and how they live in these beautiful cities under water, how they lie on hammocks made of boas and their seats are gigantic tortoises. Under the water, there are dolphins, there are yacuruna, the water people, there are mermaids, sirenas, which sometimes sort of overlap in their characteristics. But they are all sexually seductive. It is a common belief throughout the Upper Amazon, all the way to Brazil, that male dolphins desire to have sex with human women, that female dolphins are sexually voracious and provide a sexual experience for human males that is far beyond the capacity of any human woman to provide, and that the yacuruna, the water people, and the mermaids will seduce men and force them to live under the water. There is an entire underwater mythology that is very important, especially among the mestizos though also elsewhere — for example, the idea among the Shuar that the first shaman, named Tsunki, lives under the water with his entourage and cities of underwater people. It’s very important for shamans to be able to interact with all of these different kinds of underwater people, especially mermaids and yacuruna. Mermaids, for example, are possessors of powerful songs, icaros. A shaman may learn powerful songs from visiting with the mermaids. The yacuruna are held to be great and powerful healers, doctors. And so, many times shamans will learn healing from the underwater people. Because underwater people are sexually voracious, because they capture human beings for sexual and other purposes, it can be very important for a shaman to be able to command the mermaids and the water people to give up their human captives, or to be able to channel the voices of people being held captive under the water so that their relatives know that they are alive and well. There is also a group of shamans, most often I would say called sumi or sumiruna, who have the capacity to actually go visit these underwater kingdoms and dwell underwater at least part of the time. Again, there is a whole mythology built up — and I spend a chapter in the book talking about this mythology of underwater people and how important it is for shamans, as part of their practice, to have access to these underwater realms. And some are specialists in this area more than others.

JI: Can you give a rundown of a few, or some, of the various names used for ayahuasca in the different South American regions?

SB: If you can get hold of it, in Luis Eduardo Luna’s dissertation, there is a list of — I forget how many — forty-odd words for ayahuasca among different indigenous people. Ayahuasca is the term that is usually used in Peru. If you go up to Colombia, the term is usually yagé. Among the Shuar the term is natèm. But there are lots of different words for it. I think the best compendium of those terms is in Luis Eduardo Luna’s original book Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon, which was his dissertation at the University of Stockholm.

If you can get hold of that book, it is worth tracking down through used bookstores or wherever you have to go. Along with the work of Marlene Dobkin de Ríos, that is the pioneering work in this area.

JI: In your opinion, how was ayahuasca discovered?

SB: There has been a lot of discussion. As you know, there are ways of ingesting DMT — and more importantly, plants and plant substances that are rich in DMT — parenterally, that is, bypassing the gastrointestinal tract, usually, in the Orinoco and other areas in the Northern Upper Amazon, by snuff of one sort or another.

JI: Like epená.

SB: Yes, exactly, or like yopo. The problem with ingesting sacred plants that contain dymethyltryptamine orally, is that there is an enzyme in the gastrointestinal tract, MAO, which is designed to inactivate molecules exactly like the class of molecules that DMT belongs to. In the ayahuasca vine are a number of beta-carbolines that act as MAO inhibitors. So when you mix the ayahuasca vine with any of a number of plants that contain, among other things, DMT and drink them together, that allows the DMT to be orally active because the MAO inhibitor inhibits the MAO that inactivates the DMT.

JI: And not only that, but so many different analogues of ayahuasca. I think it’s fascinating. Some argue that it was probably a salad-like mixture or something like that. What do you think about that theory?

SB: I have heard a lot of theories. One theory is that indigenous people have some mystical connection to the plants.

JI: Do they talk to the plants or maybe they were taking some other plant, other hallucinogen, whether it be scopolamine or maybe mushrooms? Certainly a lot of mushrooms grow in the rainforest. Could it have been some other hallucinogen? I’ve had some pretty interesting experiences myself on rare occasions of having the feeling that I was talking to a plant. So I don’t totally dismiss the idea.

SB: And also the people themselves will say: Well, the plants told us. The plants are the ones who teach all their medicinal uses. One theory I came up with, that I give in a little sidebar in the book, is that I think that if you look at the way ayahuasca is used in the context of the Upper Amazon, often it’s used simply as a purgative and an emetic. And that people who take ayahuasca for a purge, la purga, in order to cleanse themselves physically, find the hallucination, the visionary effects to be side effects. Whereas in other uses, other occasions, other people, the purpose of drinking it is for the hallucinations, the visionary effect, and the purgative and emetic effects are the side effects. I think they came up with this because they were looking for a better emetic. Some Psychotria species by themselves may have an emetic effect. I think they were looking for plants to mix in that might have had some kind of an emetic effect themselves. They mixed them together in order to see if, in some way, they could modulate the emetic effects of the ayahuasca vine. They came up with this combination that had, as an effect, vivid, life-like, three-dimensional hallucinations. I have no idea when this happened. I believe the mestizos got the use of ayahuasca from the indigenous people of the Upper Amazon. Peter Gow, an anthropologist for whom I have tremendous respect, who has worked in that area, believes that in fact it went the other way, that it was mestizos who came up with it first and it passed from them into the indigenous people. It’s an opinion that I have to give some deference to. But I think whoever came up with it, and whenever they came up with it, one plausible explanation is that they were mixing plants together to see if they could make a better emetic, either more gentle or more powerful.

JI: I would think that the fact that there are so many different types of ayahuasca used throughout the Amazonian region would negate the idea that it came from the mestizo population into the indigenous. Isn’t it that these people, the indigenous people that have the connection to the jungle, that know and understand all of these plants and their uses and things like that to begin with?

SB: I think that’s right and it’s certainly the way mestizos view jungle Indians.

JI: Right. They don’t say: oh no, we gave our information to the jungle Indians. They say: no, we got our information from them. I don’t want to dwell on this, but I just don’t see a whole lot of basis in flipping that.

SB: I can say that Gow’s hypothesis has not been widely accepted, but I think it’s an alternative you have to consider, especially given that Gow is a very important investigator of this whole region and has done some important work.

JI: Fascinating. I haven’t studied him. I’ll have to look into that.

SB: Peter Gow.

JI: What does ayahuasca taste like and what are the immediate effects?

SB: It tastes more awful than you can imagine. It has been described as being like a toad in a blender. My favorite description.

JI: Personally, I think it’s a little bit worse than that. I could probably handle a toad in a blender all right.

SB: It is difficult to convey to people just how awful it is. It is hard to swallow. It sticks to your teeth.

JI: The tannins. The only thing worse than San Pedro cactus I think is ayahuasca.

SB: It’s worse than anything I can imagine. It has this hint of sweetness that makes you gag. It sticks to your teeth. It’s hard to keep down, but you have to keep it down for as long as you can. Every molecule in your body rebels against taking this stuff inside you. Especially if you’ve drunk it once and you say: Alright, I can handle this. And then after an hour or so, the shaman calls you up and gives you another cup full. And you want to say: No, no more! It really is terrible and it makes you really nauseous.

JI: Not always, but it can.

SB: You can get used to it. But even experienced people, even shamans, will vomit every once in a while.

JI: I’ve had it a few times where I didn’t get any nausea at all, and other times where in fact, one of the best experiences I had, I had one very short, small and, excuse the term, sweet vomit that just went real quick and I was done. I got up and I felt a hundred percent and within five or ten minutes I was feeling very well on many different levels.

SB: In the Upper Amazon, if you drink it and you don’t vomit, something’s wrong with you. Doña María had a special flower bath that she used for people who weren’t vomiting, to open them up and let this out. We gringos, we don’t like to vomit. We consider vomiting to be something shameful, that you go and hide in the bathroom when you throw up. Vomiting in the Upper Amazon is very natural. The Achuar have group vomiting every morning. When you sit in ceremony with mestizo or indigenous people, you hear them vomit, but it’s not a big deal.

JI: It’s not a negative thing. It’s like a cleansing, a purification. You’re getting out the negative stuff, the blockage, whatever. It’s like you’re freeing up your chakra points or something like that. I don’t know quite how to explain it but I know what they’re getting at. And it’s a bizarre feeling when you go through it.

SB: I make horrible, wretched, awful sounds when I vomit because it is so hard for me not to be embarrassed and ashamed. And yet, I think the first thing that the medicine tries to teach you is to give that up, to give up control, to take the plants into your body and let them do their work. And yet, it has always been hard for me. Maybe it has to do with upbringing and the ways people in my generation or in my sub-culture were taught about retention and how retention is good. It may very well be that other people don’t have that kind of experience. As I say in the book, vomiting has become kind of a literary trope among people who write about ayahuasca. Literary artists compete to come up with the most compelling description of how ayahuasca makes them vomit. I mean all the way from William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg to the present, people have been describing the vomiting of ayahuasca in compelling and poetic terms.

JI: Telepathine and telepathy with ayahuasca. Is that something that you’ve experienced at all?

SB: No. I haven’t. Ayahuasca is a teaching plant. In fact, in most traditions, and to a large extent, ayahuasca is not a healing plant at all. What it does is give you the information you need to find out what caused the sickness and, in many cases, what you need to do to get rid of it.

JI: Speaking of that real quick, I remember one time being on ayahuasca and I looked over at a friend and I could see that he was sick and suddenly I could see the problem and I just started telling him: Hey, you need to do this, this and that. And it was nothing I had ever recalled having an ability to do before, but suddenly I could just see all of this person’s ills and exactly what was going on.

SB: I think that that’s exactly right. Ayahuasca is primarily a teaching plant. It is an information-gathering spirit. People who drink ayahuasca, especially shamans, will go on long journeys and see things that are far away. They can detect where game is plentiful. They are shown by ayahuasca where lost objects may be found. If a relative has been gone for a long time, ayahuasca will show the shaman whether that relative is alive or dead, or healthy or not. Ayahuasca will let you see what happened to somebody in the past. If somebody was killed, a shaman can use ayahuasca and can see what the circumstances were. Ayahuasca is an information-giving plant. This includes, in some cases, seeing things that are far away, or distant in time. In that sense, I think that there is some truth in the meme that ayahuasca is telepathic.

JI: I’ve had extreme cases of telepathy with it on one or two, actually two, occasions that were with a couple of other friends, with several sitters in the room and several people witnessing what was going on; us also verbalizing the telepathic thoughts that were happening. But it started out while we were all in different rooms and suddenly we basically mind-locked, like the Vulcan mind meld or something. It was just a pure connection between me and the other partakers of the ayahuasca. None of the sitters were a part of that. Would you talk briefly about Alan Shoemaker?

SB: I devote several pages to Alan and his experience in the context of a discussion of the legality of ayahuasca. I compare his experience with the experience of the Brazilian new religious movements and their more church-like use of ayahuasca. I use Alan’s story just as a way of trying to show how the legal system works in this area and to compare the experience of one person, without a lot of resources, facing the same kind of drug enforcement system that was successfully challenged by, and is still being successfully challenged by, the Brazilian new religious movements. In some ways it’s a cautionary tale, especially because there is still a myth that plant material, chacruna, sameruca, chagraponga, the leaves of DMT-containing plants, are legal. I think that’s just wrong, and I think people can get in trouble because they believe that. The story of Alan is instructive in that regard too because what he was arrested for was chacruna leaves. He wound up having a nightmare experience before he was able to get out and get back to Peru, at the cost of still being a fugitive from American justice. I think it’s an important story for all kinds of reasons. I think Alan, fortunately, is back in Peru and with his family. I think that there is something to be learned from this story in a lot of ways.

JI: One thing that I found interesting in your work that I wanted to touch on here is that — unlike other entheogens: psilocybin, mescaline, LSD — why did you classify ayahuasca as a hallucinogen?

SB: Because I think it is. I think that the primary effect of ayahuasca is to show you things that have been there all along that you haven’t seen. It does this by showing you things, showing you people, showing you objects, that are three-dimensional, solid, present, interactive, and often coordinated with sounds in a space that is three-dimensional and explorable. I think that that is different in significant ways from the depth- or insight-producing effects of LSD or psilocybin.

JI: In your book you say these dimensions or whatever, they’re not other dimensions, there’s only one dimension and that ayahuasca and these substances just open us up and allow us to see that dimension. Is it possible that they’re not really hallucinogens, that these objects and things are just in this, hidden to us in our normal state?

SB: I think that’s absolutely right. As I am sitting in this room right now the walls are covered with tiles — there are a lot of tessellations in the ayahuasca world — brilliant, glowing tiles with minutely detailed fine designs. I just can’t quite see it. I once asked don Rómulo Magin if he could see the spirits all the time. Very experienced ayahuasquero. I asked him if he could see the spirits all the time and he said he can vaguely. But drinking ayahuasca, he told me, is like putting on glasses. I was really struck by that analogy. Right now, there is a window in my wall through which I can look and see a crystal staircase by a blue pool with an escalator going up and down carrying Peruvian schoolgirls in blue and white school uniforms. I just can’t see it right now. That doesn’t mean it’s not there.

JI: Discuss the issue with patents and indigenous shamanism.

SB: That gets kind of technical. I would refer people to the book for that. There’s a whole chapter on the attempt to patent ayahuasca.

JI: It’s such a fascinating story and just so disturbing at the same time. Right now you’ve got these companies, like Monsanto, just running around patenting every living thing they can get their hands on. I personally see it as one of the largest threats that humanity faces today.

SB: I don’t disagree. I think people are becoming more aware of the fact that companies, often foreign companies, come in and attempt to patent indigenous plants and techniques. The Peruvian government has been very active in opposing such patents. I think that’s good. I think that the idea of a law that allows you to patent living things is not a bad idea in itself. I think it’s certainly possible, for example, if I invented a microbe that could clean up oil spills, then I think that I should be encouraged to do so by being allowed to patent my creation. On the other hand, I should not be in a position where I can take a healing plant that’s been used for generations by an indigenous people and patent it so that I get the benefit of their wisdom and they don’t. I think that, again, the story of the ayahuasca patent is instructive as standing for a whole class of cases where I think people need to be more aware of this potential for misuse of what I think is generally a pretty good idea.

JI: What is the future of shamanism?

SB: In the Upper Amazon I think the future is bleak. I think a lot of people are interested in it. I think a lot of those people are interested in it just because they see it as a source of another psychoactive substance they can use, more or less, recreationally, or as a source of a psychoactive substance that they can use in their own personal quest for healing and transformation. I think that there is very little interest on the part of people who generally drink ayahuasca in the struggles and problems of the indigenous communities in the Upper Amazon. And I think that the one thing that is missing is apprentices. There are very few shamans in the Upper Amazon now who are training apprentices. Young people do not want to go through the sufferings, the deprivations, the self-control, the avoidance of sex for months at a time, that can be required in training to be a shaman. So while Amazonian shamanism has always been voraciously absorptive and very adaptive, I am just not sure that it’s going to last without the younger generation taking it up and actually practicing it. I hope I’m wrong.

JI: Well, hopefully books like yours that bring a more realistic approach to the situation — There’s such a movement in European and North American countries into shamanism and neo-shamanism and all of this stuff that hopefully that goes back down into South America and influences the people who are there to focus on what has always been right there for them to begin with and start to pick it up in a serious manner before they get themselves in a position that they can’t recover from.

SB: I hope you’re right. I am not hopeful, but I hope you’re right. I am just not sure the extent to which the interest of foreigners is going to have much influence on young people in the Upper Amazon, except, unfortunately, to the extent that they perceive these foreigners as being useful sources for dollars and may, in fact, have the opposite effect. It will lead people to pretend to be shamans, to learn a few icaros, to learn how to brew up some ayahuasca, and to put themselves forward as healers and shamans for ayahuasca tourists without actually going through the struggle and deprivation that becoming a shaman really requires. I hope I’m wrong.

JI: Have you gone through that deprivation yourself?

SB: Certainly not to the extent that I would ever consider calling myself a shaman.

JI: What is the single most important idea that you would like people to take away from this interview?

SB: The world is magical. The world is full of wonders. There are spirits everywhere. Ayahuasca, if it has any purpose at all, I think, ultimately is to open our eyes to the miraculous nature of the world around us — to teach us that everything in this world is meaningful in a very deep and important way, that we are surrounded by the plants that are singing to us all the time, and that if we can only open ourselves, we can see that the world is filled with wonders and magic and the spirits.

JI: Would you like to give out any website or contact information? And obviously, your book is titled Singing to the Plants. Do you have any other books?

SB: I have three other books.

JI: What are those books’ titles? And also give out any information you’d like to give out about yourself, etc…

SB: The website for the book is www.singingtotheplants.com. That website also has my blog that I have been keeping for several years where I talk about shamanism generally. I talk about the Upper Amazon. I talk about indigenous spirituality generally. The book is Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. It’s published by the University of New Mexico Press. It’s available on the website. It’s available at amazon.com. It’s available at barnesandnoble.com. The website talks about my other books, which are: The Cult of Tara: Magic and Ritual in Tibet; The Buddhist Experience; and The Classical Tibetan Language, which is a grammar of classical Tibetan.

JI: Well, thank you Steve for coming on and for being a part of the show. And I thank you for your work. Your book is absolutely wonderful and I highly recommend everybody get out there and read it that has an interest in ayahuasca and this whole field, for that matter — whether it be just psychedelics or shamanism or whatever label they want to put it under. I think your book is extremely important for people to read. Thank you for coming on and for participating in the show.

SB: Well thank you for the conversation. I had a really good time. It was really interesting. I appreciate the invitation.

AYAHUASCA HEALING:
MEDICAL, LEGAL, & CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS

with Beatriz Caiuby Labate PhD, Charles Grob MD, Susana Bustos PhD, Roy Haber,
Philippe Lucas MA, Ralph Metzner PhD, Sidarta Ribeiro PhD,
Eduardo Ekman Schenberg PhD, & Stephen Trichter PhD

MONDAY, DECEMBER 12
9:00 AM-5:00 PM

Location TBA, Oakland Marriott City Center

Song of Vajra by Daniel Mirante

Beauty, Plato suggested, is of the Good and True. But beauty exists not only in beautiful pure lands and lovely and noble creatures. Beauty is found not only in fresh and perfect creation (Brahma), and in balance and preservation (Vishnu), but in destruction (Shiva). The entire cycle is beautiful because it is true.

The inner life contains all phases, as we flow through processes of decay, destruction, darkness, and the dawn of recreation. The buzzing process of cellular death and generation occurs every moment imperceptibly. And our psyche’s too are recreated through interaction with our environment. We never step into the same river twice. Moreover, we are only a current in that greater river of time. All change!

Great art depicts these irrefutable truths of change through the cycles of existence. Such art provides a contemplative mirror and sometimes moreover a guide to accepting reality as it is. By intuitively understanding the movement through these cycles we live more fully, because we can flow with the stream of change rather than multiply suffering through grasping hold of our stories in obstinate resistance and denial. This is one of the meanings of Dharma.

But back to visions and art. In visions and visionary art we often witness a sensibility that is not really a conventional beauty. It may be elegant, enchanting, intricate, but it challenges rather than succours us, it does not key into sentimentalised or strictly culture bound notions of beauty, but touches upon the ‘full cycle’.

We could describe such as beauty as grotesque. This word, ‘grotesque’, derives from ‘grotto’, caves, hollows and orifices of the earth, long suspected to be the birth-centres of the 10,000 creatures. Grotto’s are places of mystery, of both threat and security. They are ambivalent. Their darkness is the Unknown.

During the ice-age, within caves, the ancestors of the civilisations likely developed the intricate cultures and forms of interaction that set the foundation for the modern human. In icy lands, resource scarcity and the necessity to encircle the fire in the shelter of caves, begot stories, myths and cave art.

Caves are also the places of outlanders, wildlings, yogis, sages and spiritual explorers. In the Songs of Milarepa, the yogi describes varieties of beings, from dis-incarnate spirits and demons, to the grace of visitation by tantric dakini’s. In these liminal zones of the unknown, the veil is thin.

Grottos epitomise a kind of beauty which is primordial and ancient. It is a beauty which is pre-human, pre-organic. Grottos of purest water and crystals, containing chasms that fall into the blackness of non-being. Caves are not sentimental places, their stalagmites and stalactites evoke both temples and the maws of giant beings. Caves are the origin of grotesque aesthetics, a beauty beyond opposites.

The richness of these deep crevices, and the richness of their mysteries, help us to comprehend the beauty in the dark and grotesque. In the darkness shimmer crystals and hot springs, precious metals and minerals. We are presented with an unfamiliar world of wonder which shines with its own order of complexity, completely different to that of the surface world. The deeps of the earth reveal in occulted gloom the mysteries of origin, the pre-biomechanical, the pre-biogenic, mineralogical evolution.

In this absence, this deep space, the implicate order, the world implied by imagination, delineates itself. The Dakini’s reveal themselves and teach their wisdom to the brave and firm. The spirits emerge to be heard and so healed. And deep dark ancient things sing and howl as the wind blows through the million hollows, tubes and pipes of the honeycomb mountains like so many flutes and horns, singing the bitter sweet, hauntingly deep, and sometimes unfathomably bizarre and alien song of the earth.

Vision questing, and creating art from this place, reflects a process of revealing. The scientific process, too, has revealed extraordinary domains, which are in a sense objects of faith, since we do not directly perceive them. Such as the nano technological cities of the cell, the Gothic structures of the nucleus and DNA, and similarly the macrocosm of solar systems and galaxies. In some of these images there involves a sense of unease. Who does not feel on some level confronted, by an image of a skull, its absent eyes like caves?

In the same sense, the imperative of the visionary is to understand and reveal. The energies & transformation of perspective embodied in vision quests and in the great art of vision can stir the same unease, as our fragile ego’s are connected to the greater cycles within which they are vulnerably nested, interdependent, and co-originating with all that is… This is the tough love of the ‘Good’… the grotesque beauty of the ‘True’.

There are two kinds of light. The glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. As we exit the cave of mystery we are dazzled by the colours and vibrancy of the world. And we risk to forget the more subtle, silent world of the crystal, transparent, absent inner night.

If one travailed into the dark, would one find a hidden world? A hollow earth of ancient oceans, and mushroom forests? Or perhaps a sign, a ruin, a secret revealed, that would overthrow everything we think we know?

- Daniel Mirante, Dec 2011, Affalon.
www.lila.info

The jungle Prescription – Film Trailer from The Ayahuasca Project on Vimeo.

Premiering tonight in Canada on CBC’s The Nature of Things, (8pm EST, November 10, 2011) The Jungle Prescription tells of ayahuasca, the visionary Amazonian brew of indigenous origin and its encounter with the West, as played out through the story of two doctors. The first, Dr. J. Mabit, runs a legendary detox centre deep in the Peruvian jungle, in partnership with indigenous healers. The second, Dr. Gabor Maté, is risking his reputation trying to establish a similar program in Canada. Through the intimate stories of these doctors and their patients, we see how an ancient medicine causes cathartic, life-changing insight, and we witness the commitment of people who have devoted their whole lives to applying this medicinal knowledge.

As anticipation for the documentary grows, so has media attention. In particular, Dr. Gabor Maté has recently appeared in major Canadian media, such as CBC News, The Globe and Mail, The Star, and the popular CBC Radio program “The Current”, speaking eloquently, with calm, poignant passion about his work and experience with ayahuasca and addiction. Subsequent to media attention, Dr. Gabor Maté has since garnered the attention of  Health Canada, who have ordered Maté to stop treating addicts with ayahuasca.

When ayahuasca appears on mainstream television, especially a program as storied and respected as The Nature of Things, which debuted on CBC on November 6, 1960, and has been hosted by David Suzuki since 1979, there is often required a double-take, a closer look, perhaps a strange and uncomfortable fascination. Something akin to seeing your grandparents on Facebook.

However, in this case, The Ayahuasca Project; the documentary film; the entire situation – from the sweeping support and excitement of those familiar with ayahuasca, to the healthy intrigue and questions of those who may not be familiar, to significant mainstream media attention, and government involvement – has gently, with calm purpose opened and advanced the discussion and awareness of ayahuasca – in a broad context, to wide and diverse groups of people – with, importantly – utmost respect to the plant, the traditions surrounding it, and significantly, with great respect and care for the people who come, or may come, to drink ayahuasca.

Clearly there exists now the opportunity to build numerous bridges across old, deep and dark chasms, across worlds, perceptions and presumptions, beyond barriers both legal and cultural, even, perhaps, beyond belief  and beyond words to places, as Dr. Gabor Maté has described, that “enliven and invigorate our natural healing capacity”, as individuals, as communities, as nations, as a planet.

The very first Evolver Intensive was hosted by Jeremy Narby, and it set a serious precedent. Hundreds of people gathering together online, via webcams to discuss and explore Ayahuasca with some of the most well respected visionaries of our age.

Now it is time for another round, as there are endless avenues, paths and canopies to explore on the subject.

These sessions are intimate, interactive, exciting, engaging and, I dare say, uplifting. Ayahuasca.com is an enthusiastic sponsor of this event and we hope you will join us, along with Jeremy Narby, and guests Steve Beyer, Benny Shanon, Kenneth Tupper, Susana Bustos, and Martina Hoffmann to explore how Ayahuasca is transforming the lives of people around the world, challenging Western notions about healing, art, religion, and the intelligence of nature.

Registration for the course is $129

Not long ago, the vine of the soul, ayahuasca, was virtually unknown outside the Amazon region. Today it attracts the attention of legions of Western seekers drawn to the prospect of deep wisdom available through indigenous shamanic practices that involve the use of psychedelic plants. Ayahuasca is revered by ancient tribal societies as a potent teacher capable of healing the body, expanding the mind, and strengthening community.

• What can modern people can learn from indigenous cultures about the use of ayahuasca as part of a healing practice?
• What can be learned directly from the spirit vine — which can be a powerful and tricky teacher — and how can we incorporate these lessons into our daily lives?
• In what ways do indigenous people benefit from the Western interest in shamanism, and what new cultural bridges are being built through the spread of indigenous spiritual practices?

The renowned anthropologist Jeremy Narby has explored these questions for over two decades. In his much-admired books, including The Cosmic Serpent and Shamans Through Time, Jeremy has shared his wisdom and insights. Last winter, Jeremy hosted his first Evolver Intensives course, Awakening the Cosmic Serpent: Shamanism and Plant Teachers in this Transformative Time, which offered a rare opportunity to explore the nuances of plant medicine with some of the world’s leading visionary thinkers on the subject.

As participants in that course will attest, Jeremy is a remarkable teacher. If you missed that course, here is your chance to take part in a special online event, watching the live video stream and asking your questions directly to inspirational pioneers. If you were there, you won’t want to miss the continued exploration of topics charted in the first course, as Jeremy leads in-depth discussions with 5 exciting new guests: Steve Beyer, Benny Shanon, Kenneth Tupper, Susana Bustos, and Martina Hoffmann.

This course gives you the tools you need to integrate the shamanic knowledge offered by ayahuasca into your life, so you can fully embrace the change called for by this time of global transformation.

• Learn how plant teachers teach their own secrets, such as how to sing to them and how use them
• Explore how well shamans actually cure sickness
• Discuss the predatory and ambiguous nature of ayahuasca shamanism
• Learn the categories of visions that people have
• Discover whether drinkers of the brew gain access to specific factual information
• Review the influence of ayahuasca on contemporary visionary art
• Explore ayahuasca’s recent transnational expansion, and why it remained obscure for most Euroamericans until the last part of the 20th century?

This course takes place on 5 Sundays, between October 9 and November 6 and you can participate from your laptop anywhere in the world with a broadband connection. If you can watch a YouTube video, you can take part in this course.

Each seminar is devoted to one-on-one conversations between Jeremy and a featured guest, followed by a Q & A session in which you can take part. This will be a live, dynamic experience in which you become part of a community of students sharing real time with some of the most inspiring visionaries of our era.

Steve Beyer

Benny Shannon

Kenneth Tupper

Susana Bustos

Martina Hoffmann

ABOUT OUR HOST

Given the many research findings related to the use of ayahuasca, from finding no physical or psychological harm in chronic use (Callaway et al., 1999; Riba & Barbanoj, 2005), to its benefits in spiritual inquiry and psychological growth (Dobkin de Rios et al., 2005; Doering-Silveira et al., 2005; Grob et al., 1996; Hoffmann, Keppel-Hesselink, & da Silveira Barbosa 2001; Naranjo 1979; Shanon 2002; Trichter, 2006; Trichter et al., 2009), it is of no wonder that increased attention is being given to the brew by Western researchers and seekers alike. Despite these findings and extensive anecdotal reports of healing and transformation, there is concern about how this growing phenomenon could harm those Westerners who partake in the ayahuasca brew, unless guidelines are created to protect their physical, psychological and spiritual health.

The movement of ayahuasca rituals from an Amazonian cultural context to a Western one creates the potential for serious risks to participants as this movement gains popularity in the West. It is only within the Amazonian indigenous cultures and syncretic Brazilian churches in which power hierarchies and traditional family-community structure exist that the current models of ayahuasca ritual have thrived. Although there are many aspects of these rituals that would benefit Westerners, it is important to realize how differences in culture are likely to require an adaptation and evolution when applied to new settings.

In a detailed look into what is happening in “ayahuasca tourism,” Dobkin de Rios and Rumrrill (2008) pointed to the health of Western users who participate in an unregulated and economically challenged Amazon region where charlatans and malevolent practitioners use the hallucinogenic brew to take advantage of high paying Western ayahuasca tourists.

Although their work and similar findings contain important contributions to the literature, I take the position that a significant number of more subtle, yet equally harmful psychological risks are involved in integrating ayahuasca-based rituals into Western contexts, even if knowledgeable, trained and respected ceremony leaders are the ones sharing the brew. Ayahuasca rituals over the centuries have adapted to their indigenous cultural context to best serve those communities. With a rapidly growing diversity of people participating in these rituals, the slow refining process used to best suit the people and communities involved is not possible. With the import of the ayahuasca trade to North America, Europe and Australia, those participating in these ceremonies, even with well intentioned and trained ayahuasca ritual leaders, are at risk of harm.

Psychiatric and medical risks

Because of the increased consumption of ayahuasca in the West, there is a need to acknowledge the medical, psychiatric, and psychological, risks involved in mixing the psychoactive chemicals of the brew. Psychiatric risks include the risks of combining ayahuasca with prescription medications, particularly the SSRI anti-depressants (Callaway & Grob, 1998). In addition, individuals diagnosed with a mental health disorder or at high risk for one are taking a potent psychedelic and are putting themselves at risk for decompensation and the potential for mental and emotional stress. Experiences can bring up past traumas or can bring about new traumatic experiences that participants may not be able have the ego strength or emotional capabilities to work through without causing significant disturbances to themselves, their friends, and their families. Further research is needed in identifying the risks and benefits of different populations, including healthy populations, neurotic patients, and psychotic patients. This kind of experience is not for everyone, just as any psychospiritual practice may not be a good match for everyone. The hallucinogenic properties of the brew allow the ego’s defenses to lower, facilitating investigation into oneself; however, this scenario can induce a rush of fear and paranoia, and psychotic states can result. Therefore it is suggested that only healthy people would find the most value participating in an ayahuasca ceremony. Determining who can safely participate in these ayahuasca rituals will continually need to be re-addressed as further research is conducted.

Spiritual Risk

In a time of postmodern and New Age hodgepodge spirituality in which Westerners often reject their Judeo-Christian past, and end up picking and choosing from different religious and mystical traditions to create an idiosyncratic spirituality, it is of great importance that the implications of introducing such a powerful shamanic tool into the West are examined. Often spiritual seekers, in an effort to escape their own psychological challenges and traumas of their past, turn towards spirituality to find answers. Roberts (2001) explained that a “genuine encounter with the Ultimate does not guarantee a genuine spirituality. The experience may be authentic, but how authentic their spirituality wasdepends on what those who had the experience do with it” (p. xii). John Welwood (2000), in his examination of the Eastern religious movement into the West termed the phenomenon “spiritual bypass,” explored the idea that people often turn to and get absorbed into an unhealthy relationship with spirituality to avoid examining their psychological issues.

Welwood’s concern about spiritual bypass expresses the sentiment that we are only successful at finding psychological health if we truly unravel our unhealthy personality patterns and/or have a history of positive psychological development. Participating in an ayahuasca ceremony in and of itself creates a risk of falling into old patterns, newly masked. This idea flies in the face of many of those who blindly rush towards the potential spiritual and psychological benefits discussed earlier. As Welwood illuminated, much has been learned from the challenges of the movement of Eastern religions to the West that those seeking enlightenment in ashrams and on mountaintops may sometimes merely push their pain into the unconscious while donning a shiny new spiritual practice veneer. Immersing oneself in a community based on ayahuasca rituals can create many similar blind spots to self-growth and well-being.

Furthermore, one must acknowledge the possibility that spiritual seekers who pursue ayahuasca rituals may be looking for answers to some of their life’s challenges in the bottom of a glass of a hallucinogenic tea. While studies (MacRae, 1992; Sulla, 2005; Trichter, 2006; Villaescusa, 2002) have shown that profound insights are possible during ayahuasca ceremonies, there are no studies of Westerners to date that show that these insights can be integrated into the patient’s ongoing life in order to make the positive changes they are seeking. With no ongoing treatment or continuity of care, not only might patients find it difficult to integrate these insights into their life, but if the ceremony breaks down psychological defenses and results in opening up trauma that is left unresolved, these patients are at risk of developing new or exacerbating old psychological difficulties.

Through my clinical work, I have discovered that many Western participants in ayahuasca ceremonies seek out the weekend long spiritual retreats typical in the West, for similar reasons that Fotiou (2010) has found in shamanic tourism – for self transformation, healing, accessing the sacred, etc. They end up depending on the retreats for this type of environment and seek out ceremonies during which they may connect to the medicine, sometimes several dozen times per year. As discussed elsewhere in more detail (Trichter, 2009) and seen through my clinical work with patients, some of these individuals often find themselves coming back for more insights, connection with alleged spirits, and alleged spiritual healing in a compulsive way. This ceremony-craving behavior is the result of a co-dependence on the ayahuasca rituals and its components, which is a form of what could be called spiritual addiction. It is a way in which the person uses an external object as a soothing coping mechanism. This will likely fail repeatedly as the patient will become psychologically dependent on the ayahuasca to achieve these visions, feelings, and insights.

Despite the sense of connection that I previously reported in many ayahuasca ceremony participants (Trichter, 2006), I have observed in some patients in my clinical practice a sense of spiritual narcissism, a phenomenon similar to Welwood’s (2000) observations when eastern religions moved to the West. Individuals become so deeply involved in the spiritual path with the ceremonies that they become unaware of the impact of their spiritual pursuits. Through my clinical practice I have observed participants who do not have compassion for others who do not share the ideology of the community. Other people have pushed aside their life’s work and their loved ones in order to spend more time drinking ayahuasca in ceremony to connect with what they consider to be “the spirit world.”

Ethical and Legal Challenges

One of the greatest challenges of the movement of ayahuasca culture to the West is the movement of a tradition rooted in psychoactive substances and shamanic community leaders to ones with vastly different contemporary and historical cultural values. In a risk similar to the challenges of adopting Eastern guru-based practices in the West (Kornfield, 1993; Welwood, 2000), the ayahuasca ritual leader’s position of power in combination with the psychoactive brew can create many challenges. Ayahuasqueros are in the center of power, of psychoactive substances, and of wealthy and devoted participants who often see the brew as a means of connecting with the Divine. This often leads to participants who idealize the shamanic practitioner, sometimes falling in love and occasionally developing a sexual relationship with him or her.

The interpersonal dynamics and energy between the practitioner who is conducting an ayahuasca ritual and the participant can cause significant harm in the participant when not handled appropriately. Ayahuasca ceremony leaders often come from other Amazonian cultural traditions and are rarely trained in the knowledge of transference and countertransference issues — terms used in psychotherapy to describe the unconscious projections of energy between patient and therapist. This knowledge is necessary in order for ayahuasca ritual leaders to navigate these powerful energies within a culturally appropriate Western framework.

As discussed in more detail elsewhere (Trichter, 2009), it is not uncommon that well-established and seasoned ayahuasca ritual leaders demonstrate countertransference towards the participants in their circles. The ayahuasqueros may end up superimposing their own agenda on the client, claiming that the client needs to go through certain types of intense experiences, some of them sexual in nature. Some ritual leaders have been known to project erotic fantasies into their work with participants. Although often not consciously wielding their power over the participants in drug induced states, sexual relationships are quite common between healers and participants during rituals and sometimes continue on an ongoing basis.

Strong feelings of the ayahuasca ritual leader can emerge in other ways as well. Leaders can be supportive or punishing towards certain of the participants’ reactions to their action, the effects of the brew, or the ceremony in general. Ritual leaders may project their feelings of anger, disappointment, shame, or guilt onto participants if they do not act according to expectations. Clients can also idealize the leaders losing their original intention for participating in the rituals by focusing more attention and energy on the leader than on their own growth and development (Kornfield, 1993).

Regardless of the setting, ayahuasca leaders have been known to be attached to certain ideologies and dogmas that are entwined in their traditions. It is often in these cases that ceremony leaders with little understanding of how their own personal reactions can be psychologically harmful to the participants can do a great disservice to those they attempt to heal.

Within the Western framework of psychological healing, the therapist creates a safe container by examining his or her countertransference issues and keeping any idiosyncratic or impulsive feelings from entering the room or the group. A well-developed theory regarding how the ayahuasca ceremony leader relates to participants as part of the healing process would be useful in this exploration. Otherwise, without this relational agreement, negative results can occur, causing pain to the participant. For example, if the ceremony leader prefers hearing about one type of experience and not another, then the result becomes conditioned, and little, if any, growth can occur.

A final consideration involves the regulation of ayahuasca. In the countries of the Amazon (principally Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador), the use of ayahuasca, whether in the indigenous context or in the religious contexts described earlier, is legal. In the Western world, the situation is not clear. Although UDV’s right to use ayahuasca has been affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, Dimethyltryptamine, in itself, remains a Schedule I substance in the United States, which makes it illegal for administration and consumption (Bullis, 2008).

Regardless of whether or not there is ambiguous legal status there are no standards (or protocol) of how ayahuasca ceremonies are to be safely and effectively conducted, nor any ethical guidelines for how ayahuasca ceremony leaders should work with their participants in any country. There are many disparate ceremony leaders from various cultural traditions, and different schools of thought, each with idiosyncratic variations on ceremonies that make standards and regulations of ayahuasca ceremonies and ceremony leaders’ conduct difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. Furthermore, because of the great variability within ayahuasca ceremonies and ceremony leaders right now, there is no current protocol on how ayahuasca ceremonies could be integrated as a beneficial part of psychotherapy, counseling, or spiritual development.

Conclusions

The growing evidence of the positive benefits of drinking ayahuasca has led to a surge in use from its original base in South America to ritual leaders traveling worldwide conducting ceremonies with the brew. However, these benefits do not come without serious risks involved. There are many precautions that should be taken on order to insure the protection of ayahuasca ritual participants as this indigenous shamanic tradition makes its way into the Western world. The following list is by no means exhaustive, as it is not meant to make recommendations beyond the author’s field of expertise.

Education

It is of increasing importance that the public needs to be educated about the traditional use of ayahuasca in both church and indigenous settings, so that they can be well-informed about making a decision whether or not to participate in these rituals. Too often participants blindly trust ayahuasca ritual leaders and place their medical and psychological well-being into the hands of strangers. The growing body of knowledge gathered by seasoned ayahuasca communities and academia needs to be utilized to educate naïve newcomers about the psychological and spiritual risks and benefits of working with ayahuasca. Creating a cross-cultural document about the medical risks involved in contraindicated medicines and foods and sharing the document with pertinent forums and centers could prevent unnecessary hospitalizations and deaths.

Additionally, by educating those interested in participating in ayahuasca rituals regarding the traditional uses of the brew, the cultures in which the rituals originated and the cosmology of the traditions, there would likely be an increase in seriousness, reverence, structure, and cohesive community support with contemporary rituals. Simultaneously, education of this sort would likely decrease the use of ayahuasca ritual as “spiritual recreation,” as well as the number of unskilled leaders who are not prepared to handle the challenges that manifest during ceremonies.

Psychotherapeutic Integration

By combining ayahuasca rituals with Western psychotherapeutic models, participation in these traditions could be brought towards a healthy Western psychospiritual healing practice. Takiwasi, a center that combines ayahuasca and other indigenous healing tools with psychotherapy, is one such model that has been treating patients suffering from severe drug addiction for the past 25 years in Tarapoto, Peru (Mabit, 2007). Through such integration, the psychological health of participants could be safeguarded so that during psychotherapy sessions they could explore potential spiritual bypass and investigate shame or guilt that may have come up in transference-countertransference issues within the ayahuasca ritual context. Standing alone, the ayahuasca ceremony has the potential of creating meaningful and significant mystical and spiritual states of being; however, combined with psychotherapy, specific qualities of such states can further promote the essential goals that have been proven to be effective in the Western psychotherapeutic modalities.

Another benefit of integrating psychotherapy and ayahuasca rituals is that it would allow licensed and experienced mental health professionals to help screen, prepare potential crisis intervention, and work with emerging traumas and post-ceremony integration. The work that can be done with an experienced licensed mental health professional begins with preparing the client with the potential of emotionally challenging material that may come up during the ceremonies. The clinician can also work with the client to prepare an intention as a focusing of the client’s psychospiritual needs at the time of the ceremony. Doing so may enable the client to guide the direction of the experience towards gaining insights into pertinent areas that are challenging the client’s presenting problem or development.

To achieve the greatest benefit from an ayahuasca ceremony, it would be valuable for the client to have participated in therapy for some time. One of the key benefits that could be found in integrating psychotherapy and an ayahuasca ritual would be that the previous therapeutic work could be brought into the ayahuasca ritual for further investigation, the experiences could be further explored, and the interpretation’s validity tested in the dream-like states of the ayahuasca experience.

The client could prepare for the ayahuasca ritual work by setting an intention to further explore themes that have come up during therapy and could examine any resistance recognized in the consultation room during the ceremony. The clients who might be working on several themes in their ongoing therapy could determine with appropriately trained clinicians which ones might be most effectively explored during an ayahuasca ritual.

During ayahuasca rituals it would be valuable to have a well-trained clinician available for participants who were overwhelmed, agitated, and/or unstable during the experience. It is possible for participants in ayahuasca ceremony to be in crisis due to fear and anxiety over the altered state of consciousness or the psychological material that comes up. One major psychological service that can be employed during these ceremonies is having people trained in crisis intervention available. Often in the Western context, ceremonies have “sitters” assisting participants who are confused or disoriented. Sitters could be trained in relaxation techniques, empathic listening, and simply being present to alleviate some of the stressors that occur during these crises.

Few sitters are trained in mental health procedures and many are inadequately able to assist the participants or work with the client to use the psychological material that is coming up for the client to their benefit. In the traditional ayahuasca context, the ritual leader, or ayahuasquero uses icaros (songs), native tobacco, and other shamanic tools to assist the struggling participant (Luna, 1986). However, this is part of a larger context of community support found in the traditional culture. Although these tools can and should be utilized in the ceremony, it is not unheard of that individuals sometime seek more Western-oriented tools to aid in the process during ceremony. A clinician trained in integrating spirituality and psychotherapy, is helpful to have on hand to help individuals work through their experience if needed in the moment.

Most contemporary psychotherapeutic frameworks state that a therapeutic relationship is necessary for the client to experience sincere relatedness to others and to develop a stronger sense of oneself. Therefore, the sense of interconnectedness that participants feel with this type of work could be supplemented with such psychotherapeutic techniques to create complementary benefits (Shanon 2002; Trichter, 2006). Although the sense of connection sometimes felt during experiences with ayahuasca can have healing benefits for participants, there is often no ongoing concrete relationship that is deliberately occurring during the group rituals. This causes questions of the sustainable impact of these feelings on contemporary Western psyche. By bringing the feelings of connection to a therapeutic relationship alongside participation in an ayahuasca ritual, they could be further explored and integrated.

The integration of ayahuasca ceremony into a framework of ongoing psychotherapy would create a greater sense of safety for the client when participating in an ayahuasca ritual. This would allow the participant to explore a situation that often brings up fear, feeling fully prepared. It would also allow the client to share his or her experiences with the therapist post-ceremony. Lastly, this rapport would create an opportunity for the therapist to make interpretations more freely while the ceremony experience is more temporally and affectively grounded within the client. After participating in the ceremony, the affective experiences and the insights that may have been obtained through the ayahuasca ritual could be interpreted, worked through, and integrated into the ongoing therapy.

In order to avoid the pitfalls of spiritual bypass, numbing distraction, and egocentric self involvement (Welwood, 2000), it is valuable for a trained clinician to work with the participants of the ayahuasca ceremony afterwards in order to help them use the material to interface with their intentions, spiritual growth, interpersonal connections, and psychological development. Welwood’s concern about spiritual bypass expresses sentiments similar to the psychotherapy model which states that we are only successful at finding health if we link affective expression and interpersonal connection with reality, not fantasy (Mitchell, 1993). When clients participate in an ayahuasca ceremony, psychotherapy creates an opportunity for the therapist and client to work through any of the breakthroughs that occurred during the ceremony to explore whether they are founded in fantasy or reality. As ayahuasca rituals are transferred into a Western culture that does not automatically support them, a means of integration is needed in order for clients to take the lessons from the ritual and incorporate them into their daily life. Because these rituals only happen sporadically in the West and the ritual leaders are often traveling between communities, there is often a feeling of longing for the next opportunity to connect with the experiences attached to earlier ayahuasca experiences. By exploring the insights, wisdom, and healing that have come out of ayahuasca ritual experiences regularly in psychotherapy, the feelings of connection, growth, strength, will, and purpose that are often reported can not only be integrated, but a tendency for dependence on the ayahuasca rituals for such states can be extinguished.

Ethical Guidelines

In addition to education and integration into Western psychotherapy, individuals would be protected from potential risks if ayahuasca ritual communities created ethical guidelines stating the proper use of the sacrament and conduct of participants and ceremony leaders. The educational movement and the collaboration with mental health professionals will only be possible through building communities and community networks to share knowledge and set standards of care during ayahuasca rituals. This is a departure from the rivalry that is commonplace between ayahuasqueros in the indigenous setting, where shamans speak badly of each other and are sometimes involved in combative sorcery (Dobkin de Rios & Rumrrill, 2008). The building of these collaborative relationships between Western communities and the ayahuasca ritual leaders with whom they work will allow proper dissemination of the educational materials, as well as medical and psychological screening standards.

Ayahuasca ritual leaders in the Western setting need to be held accountable for these outcomes because if they are not embedded in a community in which there is a continuum of feedback and accountability, they can take advantage of and abuse ritual participants and continue on to their next destination unchecked. In a similar vein to Dobkin de Rios and Rumrrill’s (2008) work, I am proposing that by setting up intra and intercommunity dialogue around ethics and monitoring the reputations of different ritual leaders the community can be protected from predators. Those ritual leaders who need to work on issues that come up with Westerners can receive the feedback they need in order to obtain further training or do personal work. Kornfield (1993) writes that Eastern religion teachers in the West had “to deal with the underlying roots of problems in themselves, whether old wounds, cultural and family history, isolation, addiction, or their own grandiosity. In some communities masters have ended up attending AA meetings or seeking counseling. In others, decision-making councils were formed to end the isolation of the teacher” (p. 264).

Setting up ethics for the communities and ayahuasca ritual leaders also would be beneficial so that the powerful temptations of power, sex, and money can be discussed transparently and leaders could be held accountable. Currently, there are no cross-cultural ethical standards by which ayahuasca ritual leaders must abide. They receive no coursework in ethics, nor are they required or advised to go through any type of personal psychotherapy, consultation, or supervision to examine any personal issues that may come up in the work they conduct.

Some groups have already begun to explore this idea such as the Montreal chapter of the Santo Daime (Ceu do Montreal Santo Daime Church of Canada, 2008) and the Indigenous Doctors Union Yageceros of the Colombian Amazon (Unión de Médicos Indigenas Yageceros de la Amazonia Colombiana, 1999). The UDV also has a 50 year tradition of monitoring the ethical conducts of their leaders (mestres) (Henman, 1986; Luís Fernando Tófoli, personal communication, February 6, 2011). More dialogue needs to be created not only within communities, but between communities so that those seeking guidance and healing from this plant medicine are adequately protected when entering such powerful and vulnerable states of consciousness.

Dobkin de Rios and Rumrrill (2008) make a strong case for the dangers involved in working with inexperienced or charlatan neo-shamans, those who have not studied the depths of the tradition and are solely seeking money, sex, and/or power. Although their investigation is extensive, there is an equally important need for the examination of well established and respected ayahuasqueros and other ayahuasca ritual leaders, whose practices and/or personal beliefs may be in conflict with participants from urban or international cultures, thus causing unintended harm to their patients. A well-developed theory regarding how the ayahuasca ceremony leader relates to participants as part of the healing process would be useful in the exploration of transference and counter-transference issues. If the participant knows that their emotions are accepted within the therapeutic relationship, the client can move from the fantasy that they have been holding onto – that affective expression yields pain and tension – to a realistic observation that connection with others through affective expression can exist.

In this global age it is no longer acceptable to claim naiveté or tradition when intentionally crossing cultural boundaries as a healer. Until we begin to look at all of these challenges in detail, the full range of potential benefits cannot be considered inside a vacuum. The community of those who participate in ayahuasca rituals must take it upon themselves to protect themselves as individuals and a community from potential harms so that they can explore the depth and beauty of the healing potential of the sacred brew.

References

Bullis, R.K. (2008). The “Vine of the Soul” vs. The Controlled Substances Act: Implications of the hoasca case. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 40, 193-199.

Callaway, J. C., & Grob, C. S. (1998). Ayahuasca preparations and serotonin uptake inhibitors: A potential combination for severe adverse interaction. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 30, 367-369.

Callaway, J. C., McKenna, D. J., Grob, C. S., Brito, G. S., Raymon, L. P., Poland, R. E., … Mash, D.C. (1999). Pharmacokinetics of hoasca alkaloids in healthy humans. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 65, 243-256.

Ceu do Montreal Santo Daime Church of Canada. (2008). Code of Ethics.Retrieved from http://www.bialabate.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/microsoft-word-code_of_ethics_canada_pdf.pdf, accessed 5 September 2009.

Dawson, A. (2007). New era – new religions: Religious transformation in contemporary Brazil. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Dobkin de Rios, M., Grob, C. S., Lopez, E., Da Silviera, D. X., Alonso, L. K. & Doering-Silveira, E. (2005). Ayahuasca in adolescence: Qualitative results. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 37, 135-139.

Dobkin de Rios, M., & Rumrrill, R. (2008). A hallucinogenic tea, laced with controversy: Ayahuasca in the Amazon and the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Doering-Silveira, E., Grob, C. S., Dobkin de Rios, M., Lopez, E., Alonso, L. K., Tacla, C., … Da Silveira, D.X. (2005). Report on psychoactive drug use among adolescents using ayahuasca within a religious context. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 37, 141-144.

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The Author

Stephen Trichter is a licensed psychologist in private practice, a candidate at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California in San Francisco, and an adjunct professor at Alliant University. In addition to working with his patients and teaching future psychologists, he is currently interested in how meditative dream states can be effectively integrated into the analytic relationship.

Parry is in Columbia visiting shamans and other people as part of a documentary film project he is involved in. ‘Pure ecstatic bliss at sense of oneness in animated moonlit nature. Simplicity, love of the earth and community are all that matter here now.’

He said: ‘I’m in Colombia meeting with shamans and wise people to possibly take part in my newest project. A feature film… it’s about humanity: where we’ve gone wrong and how to get back on track (just a little project).’