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PLANTS OF VISION: SACRED HALLUCINOGENS
Ayahuasca is a shortcut. It’s as if we had been traveling down the same highway as the rest of humanity, but, in order to arrive at our destination more quickly, we took a side road … a shortcut that leads us to truth.
PADRINO ALEX POLARI DE ALVERGA
The reverence that indigenous people have for the natural world stems from their understanding that nature is not just physical but embodies spiritual realities. We in the Western culture have lost some of this fascination with nature, but it was not so long ago that we shared the awe of native people for this great and mysterious world of which we are a part. When Walt Whitman wrote the following words in “Song of Sunset,” published in 1900, he was expressing the joy felt by any shaman (or anybody) who knows he is walking with spirit as he moves within the forest. How much we have lost in a hundred years.
How the clouds pass silently overhead!
How the earth darts on and on! And how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on!
How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!)
How the trees rise and stand up—with strong trunks—with branches and leaves!
(Surely there is something more in each of the trees—some living Soul)
O amazement of things! Even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!
All children know this feeling too.
One of the traditional ways for the plant shaman to reaffirm his connection to this living and inspirited world and to allow it to communicate with and through him has been by use of visionary teacher plants, each of which is a spirit maestro or master of awareness in its own right. This is the domain of the sacred hallucinogens.
To a Westerner, the term hallucinogenic may mean only that these plants “produce hallucinations.” This is a common, but rudimentary, view of their actual potential as well as of what hallucinations—and, by implication, what “reality”—might actually be.
For the shamans, we are all dreaming (or hallucinating) all of the time. Our modern cities and ways of life are the dreams of the West, embodying a myth of what the world is or should be. Fundamentally, the Western dream is one of separation and disconnection from the flow of things, where competition, conflict, and challenge are the norm. The fact that things do not have to be this way and we could create a different world based on richer, more inclusive, more liberating (or any other) principles—but we do not—suggests to the shamans a mass hallucinatory experience in its own right. We are so involved in the dream that we do not see an alternative to it.
Sacred hallucinogens are the means of breaking through this trance of the social dream into the expansive, freeing, information-rich universe full of infinite possibilities for other realities and futures. These plants do not lead us away from ourselves, into an unbalanced frame of mind, as our doctors and politicians warn, but deeper into ourselves and our potential; to a place where we can find greater balance through genuine self-awareness.
Sacred hallucinations are messages from spirit. They do not just deliver nonsense images of things that aren’t there, as we might conceive of a hallucination, but offer the experience of a “true hallucination,” to use a term from Terence McKenna, from which we see through the mists of socialization into our own possibilities and spirit.
The power of visionary plants requires that they always be taken in a ritual setting conducive to the appearance of the gods and with an intention or purpose in mind—for self-understanding and meaningful connection with a greater-than-human reality—and this setting and intention contribute to their effect as well.
The word hallucination might imply a primarily visual experience, but for the shaman it is more than that. Visions may come, of course, but teacher plants also bring with them an intense experience of ecstasy and oneness with the world, deep and profoundly meaningful insights, a searchlight on our hidden thoughts and feelings, through which our egos can let go and we can merge with a greater field of creative consciousness. It is the realizations, not the images, that are visionary. The hallucinogenic, as a total experience, offers a doorway into the hidden realms of human consciousness and the spiritual intelligence of a living planet.
SACRED EVOLUTION: HALLUCINOGENS IN HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS
The human brain shares an affinity with hallucinogens. Our neural chemistry contains some of the most powerful psychotropic compounds in the world, such as tryptamines and serotonin, which are identical to those found in many teacher plants. It is part of our design, our biological blueprint, to be able to move into expanded awareness or deep trance almost at will, and this may be no accident of evolution.
Some, like McKenna, argue that our capacity for expanded consciousness and deep thought arose directly from the ingestion of plants such as fly agaric and psilocybin mushrooms back in the very early days when human beings were nomadic hunter-gatherers, barely human at all, who would forage for food and eat whatever they found.1 Certainly it is true that a million and a half years ago, the human brain underwent what Rita Carter, in her book Mapping the Mind, describes as “an explosive enlargement.”
So sudden was it that the bones of the skull were pushed outward, creating the high, flat forehead and domed head that distinguish us from primates. The areas that expanded most are those concerned with thinking, planning, organising and communicating… .
The frontal lobes of the brain duly expanded by some 40 percent to create large areas of new gray matter: the neocortex. This spurt was most dramatic at the very front, in what are known as the prefrontal lobes. These jut out from the front of the brain, and their development pushed the forehead and frontal dome of the head forward, reforming it to the shape of a modern skull.2
Nobody knows what caused this dramatic and sudden expansion of the brain, which separated us from the other animals and created the prototype for modern man. But, a sudden expansion of consciousness might do it—because we would need new grey matter in order to process and store visionary information downloaded from the plants.
If this is so, then for at least the last million and a half years, we have been hardwired for the sacred, even though many of us are largely denied it today. Indeed, so hungry are we for numinous experience and the freedom to truly use our minds in our true-hallucination-deprived world, that people are turning in increasing numbers to alcohol and drugs as their only available means of entrance to an alternate sense of reality. Unfortunately, many of these alternatives are addictive and deadening, in contrast to sacred hallucinogens; thus, taking them defeats the object of the quest. We have fallen from grace with the planetary mind, and we futilely reach for reconnection.
THE COSMIC SERPENT AND THE VINE OF SOULS
One of the most potent and best-known of sacred hallucinogens is ayahuasca, the use of which underlines the sanctity of nature for the shamans who prepare and imbibe it. In his book The Cosmic Serpent, Jeremy Narby writes of his experiences with the Ashaninca people of the Upper Amazon, concluding that the ayahuasca shamans there work their magic through direct communication with the DNA that is the building block of all planetary life. Through ayahuasca, they go beyond their connection to the spirit of nature to arrive at the stuff from which nature and all things are made, merging with “the global network of DNA-based life.”3
When he took part in ayahuasca ceremonies, Narby experienced visions of two gigantic boas that spoke to him without words. This fired his interest and he began to explore the consistency of such shamanic imagery. The first similarity he noticed was the common image of reptiles and snakes, often a “celestial serpent,” that occurs in shamanic traditions the world over.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell also noted this, and wrote that, “Wherever nature is revered as self-moving, and so inherently divine, the serpent is revered as symbolic of its divine life.”4
The similarities between DNA, the ayahuasca vine itself, and the snake imagery of the shamanic experience led Narby to suggest that shamans, through their ceremonies and journeys, are able to communicate directly with the information stored in DNA. He then began to study the characteristics of DNA and found that it emits electromagnetic waves corresponding to the narrow band of visible light. This weak light is equivalent to the intensity of a candle at a distance of 10 kilometers, but with a surprisingly high degree of coherence—comparable to a laser. It is fascinating to speculate that this may be the waveform of consciousness itself and that plants such as ayahuasca are the means of making it visible.
THE ROPE FROM THE MOON
Ayahuasca is the jungle medicine of the Upper Amazon. Made from the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and the leaf of the chacruna plant (Psychotria viridis), the two create a potent mixture that opens the person who drinks it to the experience of an energetic world underlying our own. Its very name suggests these properties, derived as it is from two Quechua words: aya meaning “spirit,” “ancestor,” or “dead person,” and huasca meaning “vine” or “rope.” Hence, the word ayahuasca translates as “the vine of the dead” or “the vine of souls,” implying a means for communion with the spirit of the universe itself.
Both plants are collected from the rainforest in a ritual way that involves dieting and spiritual preparation, and it is said that the shaman can find plentiful sources of the vine by listening for the “drumbeat” or vibration that emanates from it. The mixture is prepared by cutting the vines to cookable lengths, scraping and cleaning them, pounding them to a pulp, and adding the chacruna leaves. The mixture is then boiled and reduced for about twelve hours until it becomes a thick, brown liquid. When drunk, this brew will produce a visionary experience lasting up to four hours.
There are mysteries surrounding how the shamans learned to combine these two plants to make up the brew, for without their combination each plant is more or less inert. In scientific terms, chacruna contains vision-inducing alkaloids and the vine is an inhibitor. It is the mixture of these that gives ayahuasca its unique properties. The main psychotropic ingredients in chacruna are tryptamines, which, if taken orally by themselves, would be immediately rendered inactive by the body’s enzymes. The ayahuasca vine, however, contains monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors in the form of harmine compounds, so when the two plants come together they complement each other. The resulting psychoactive compound has an identical chemical makeup to the organic tryptamines in our bodies. The mixture is therefore able to make its way easily into our brains where it bonds smoothly to our synaptic receptor sites, allowing a slow release of tryptamines into our bodies and a powerful visionary experience.
And yet the vine and the chacruna plant do not grow anywhere near each other. So how did the shamans know that they should combine them or where they would even find each one?
Simple. According to the Shipibo people, the plants themselves provided the answers. The following legend explains how.
There was once a woman who was interested in plants and liked to pick their leaves. She would crush them in a pot and soak them in water overnight. Then she would bathe in them each morning before sunrise, knowing that the way to find out about plants and their effects is to be with them.
One night she had a dream during which an old woman came to her and asked, “Why are you bathing in these leaves each day?” The younger woman recognized her visitor as the spirit of the leaves. “I am doing this because I want you to teach me,” she answered. The old woman then said, “You must seek out my uncle. His name is Kamarampi. I will show you where to find him.”a
The young woman went to the uncle and he showed her how to pick the leaves of the chacruna, which was the bush she had taken leaves from to bathe in. He showed her where to find ayahuasca, which is the lover of chacruna, and how to prepare a marriage of them both. He told her to tell the people how to celebrate this marriage and how to use the brew.
Another legend, related by Amazonian shaman Javier Arevalo, is that the first shamans drank their ayahuasca without chacruna but the ayahuasca showed them that its lover, the leaves, was missing.
The ayahuasca said that chacruna was the doctor that gives the vision and it needed to be added. My great-grandfather was among these first shamans and he responded, “But how shall we find this plant?” The ayahuasca answered, “You can find it by turning two corners.” So they went into the jungle and turned two corners and there was a woman who called to them. She led them to a bush which was chacruna.
Part of the mystery of these jungle legends is why the ayahuasca would be so keen for the shamans to find the chacruna and add its leaves to the mix. The answer to that is provided by another Shipibo tale, about the “Moon Man”:
Many generations ago our ancestors could climb the great rope into the realm where the spirits of the animals and the forest lived. Our ancestors and the spirits lived in both worlds at the same time. There was no separation.
These ancestors could visit and talk with the plants and animals and they would share their knowledge of which plants to use for healing, which songs to sing to the animals we hunted. And we learned that we were at one with all life.
Our ancestors lived in harmony and peace this way until one day, the Moon Man came to our people and severed the great rope to the spirit world and we lost our way into that place. It was a terrible loss to our people and there was much sadness.
But then our ancestors remembered a way back to that world: the ayahuasca vine, which became the rope that we climb into the spirit realm.
In the Shipibo tradition, the Moon Man is associated with the analytical mind, and it is “rational thinking,” therefore, that has severed our sacred connection to the cosmic mind of the spirit realm. This legend therefore speaks of humanity’s need to reunite with the consciousness of the universe, using the rope (ayahuasca) to climb our way back to the oneness we once knew. Only then can we re-enchant the world through imagination and inspiration.
THE AYAHUASCA EXPERIENCE
Western science discovered the mechanism of MAO inhibitors (MAOI) in the 1950s. But by listening to the plants, the shamans knew of them centuries ago and, to quote Terence McKenna, “have brilliantly exploited these facts in their search for techniques to access the magical dimensions.”5 These shamans did not describe the MAOI process in terms of chemicals and synapses, of course, but in terms of spirit; and their knowledge was expressed in myth, not science. By hearing the wisdom of the plants and acting on the call of their spirits, however, the shamans knew the answers to some of the greatest mysteries of brain and universe hundreds or perhaps thousands of years before science even knew what questions to ask.
Harvard professor Richard Evans Schultes, widely regarded as the father of modern ethnobotany, remarked on the antiquity of the ayahuasca experience:
There is a magic intoxicant in northwesternmost South America which … can free the soul from corporeal confinement, allowing it to wander free and return to the body at will.
The soul, thus untrammeled, liberates its owner from the everyday life and introduces him to wondrous realms of what he considers reality and permits him to communicate with his ancestors… .
The plants involved are truly plants of the gods, for their powers are laid to supernatural forces residing in their tissues, and they were the divine gifts to the earliest Indians on earth. The drink employed for prophecy, divination, sorcery, and medical purposes, is so deeply rooted in native mythology and philosophy that there can be no doubt of its great age as part of aboriginal life.6
One of the common experiences with ayahuasca, as Narby found, is the onset of visions with an initial series of fast-moving kaleidoscopic or geometric images, bright-colored masks, serpents, shape-shifting faces, and even cartoon characters. Although these can be entertaining and absorbing and information-rich in themselves, they are just the start of the process, the prologue to the real visionary encounter.
Our experience suggests that during this image-loaded stage, ayahuasca works to repattern the brain and alter consciousness so that those who drink it can enter into dialogue with its deeper spiritual intelligence. Once beyond the images, direct communication is possible with the ayahuasca spirit, and it is at this point that the real information is revealed. It is now, for example, that the ayahuasca will tell a shaman-healer what is wrong with his patient, what medicines to prescribe, or which spirit has caused the illness or malaise. It is now that the voice of ayahuasca also sings of the deeper intelligence that permeates the universe, and from which gifts of insight and self-awareness spill.
“Ayahuasca wants you to understand,” says Javier, “and so it opens doors to different dimensions. Often the mind can be obstructed from accessing inner knowledge, but ayahuasca opens the mind to abstract things that can’t be seen in the material world. If I hadn’t had the [ayahuasca] experience, for example, I would not be able to believe that a tree can have its own world and spirit. But when you see these dimensions for yourself, little by little you begin to accept the mystery of it all.”
These points are echoed by master shaman Guillermo Arevalo, one of the most powerful and respected elders of the ayahuasca tradition, who explains how the mixture can help and heal.
Ayahuasca organizes the emotions and calms the nerves. Using it, many people who are depressed can discover their own solutions and recover their self-esteem. They discover their spiritual sides.
People are out of balance from not knowing this side of themselves. Many think that being human entitles them to live as they like, but they are in fact not fully human if they believe that, because they have recognized only their physical side and ignored their spirit completely. It is very difficult for them to shake off the rational mentality that only believes in a physical world because our culture and education separates us from reality and tells us that progress is all about science and reason. This is even true of our religions, which are supposed to teach about God, but in fact they lead us away from Him.
For example, I first discovered ayahuasca when I went to Brazil to study nursing for seven years. I found that in Brazil, peasant people use plants more than drugs from the pharmacy and there were women who healed using prayers and yaje [another name for ayahuasca]. I was excited by this and when I returned to Peru I wanted to teach this to my people, but I found that certain religions were against the use of natural medicine and shamanism. I thought, ‘This can’t be! These plants are healers! Does God not want our people to be well?’ And so I became determined to show my people the value of the old ways.
When we drink ayahuasca we evolve and gain power and lucidity. Then we can create actions that take form in the world, and change the future and the past too. If there is some trauma in the past, for example, it can come up through ayahuasca, but then it can be healed. That’s what ayahuasca is for.
MAKING THE MEDICINE
In the shaman’s world, all plants have a spirit that is, in essence, angelic. But they can also have human emotions like jealousy, vengefulness, and wrath. It is said that the spirit of ayahuasca is very jealous and that if the rules of its preparation are not respected its spirit may become resentful.
When it is being prepared, therefore, the shaman must watch over it constantly to prevent bad spirits from entering. The fire also needs tending regularly throughout the twelve hours of its preparation, and the shaman should follow a special diet during this time (see chapter 2). Sexual abstinence is also emphasized. But the most important thing, as with all magical work, is the focus and intention of the shaman, and at all times he must direct his healing energy into the brew.
This also means that not just anyone can be there to watch the brewing process, since the moral or spiritual quality of all present, as well as their adherence (or otherwise) to the diet, can all have an influence. The shaman’s patient should not watch the preparation process either, nor should any woman who is menstruating, as this could leave misplaced energy in the medicine.
The question of menstruation is one that occurs in many different spiritual traditions, including Christian ones. Anthropologists find it hard to explain this taboo. One possible explanation is that the invisible messengers of the body, pheromones, can influence the visionary state. In many traditions it is said that a woman on her “moon time” takes away the vision of the shaman, and this is said to be true during ayahuasca ceremonies, where the changed hormonal balance and the subtle effects of aroma of a woman during her period can also alter the trance of those around her. In our experience, a woman who is menstruating is also more restless during ceremonies and sometimes this can disturb others.
Perhaps this is what our ancestors were prescribing against? Certainly there seems nothing to this taboo in terms of “sexual politics” and the Amazonian women self-regulate in this regard. They would never dream of entering a ceremonial space during their periods, for example, nor will female shamans prepare the brew at this time.
THE SONG OF THE SHAMAN
During the ritual preparation of ayahuasca (and certainly during its ceremonial ingestion), shamans often sing sacred songs, known as icaros. These may be magical chants or melodies that they whistle, sing, or whisper into the brew. They may also sing these directly into the energy field of a person who is to be healed during a ceremony.
An icaro can be regarded as an energetic force charged with positive or healing intent that the shaman stores inside his body and is able to transmit to another person or to the brew itself so that this positive energy is ingested when the mixture is drunk.
The songs are transmitted to the shaman by the spirit of the plant allies he has an affinity with, and the longer the relationship between shaman and plant, the more icaros he may learn and the more potent they will be. The power and knowledge of an ayahuascero (ayahuasca shaman) is therefore measured in part by the number of icaros he possesses. Javier, for example, has worked with many different plants for fifteen years and now knows the spirit songs of some 1,500 “jungle doctors,” including the icaro del tabaco (the song of tobacco—one of the most sacred of Amazonian plants), the icaro del ajo sacha, and the icaro del chiric sanango, among the many others.
There are precise and specific icaros for many different purposes—to cure snakebites, for example, or to clarify the vision during ayahuasca ceremonies, to communicate with the spirit world, or even to win the love of a woman. Huarmi icaros—from the Quechua word huarmi (which loosely translates as “woman”) are of this latter category. There are icaros called icaros de la piedra, which are taught to the shaman by encantos (special healing stones that offer spiritual protection), and icaros to the spirits of the elements, such as icaro del viento, which calls upon the spirit of the wind.
Other icaros, such as the ayaruna—from the Quechua words aya (“spirit” or “dead”) and runa (“people”) are sung to invoke the “spirit people”—the souls of dead shamans who live in the underwater world—so they may help during a healing or an ayahuasca ceremony.
Icaros can also be transmitted from a master shaman to his disciple but, as always, it is nature that is regarded as the greatest teacher; the most powerful songs are those learned directly from the plants themselves. To learn these songs, the shaman must fast or follow the diet for many weeks as she treks deep into the rainforest to find the appropriate plants and places of power where the magical music of nature can be heard.
A few verses from the icaro madre naturaleza (song of mother nature), which is chanted by Javier Arevalo, demonstrate this deep bond between the shaman and the natural world.
| No me dejes no me dejes | Don’t leave me, don’t leave me |
| Madre mia naturaleza | My mother nature |
| No me dejes no me dejes | Don’t leave me, don’t leave me |
| Madre mia naturaleza | My mother nature |
| Por que vas i ti me dejares | For if you will leave me |
| Moriria o de las penas | I would die of the pain |
| Llantos y desesperaciones | Tears of desperation |
| Madre mia naturaleza | Mother nature |
| Si tu tienes el don de | Yes, you have the gift of |
| la Santa purificacion en ti manos | Sacred purification in you hands |
| Benditas madre naturaleza | Blessed mother nature |
| No me dejes no me dejes | Don’t leave me, don’t leave me |
| Madre mia naturaleza | Mother nature |
| No me dejes no me dejes | Don’t leave me, don’t leave me |
| Madre mia naturaleza | Mother nature |
| Por que vas i ti me dejares | For if you will leave me |
| Moriria o de las penas | I would die of the pain |
| Llantos y desesperaciones | Tears of desperation |
| El velo blanco que tu tienes | The white veil you have |
| Como cubre a esta criatura | As it covers this child |
| Limpia mi cuerpo y espirutu | Clean my body and spirit |
| Con el soplo o de tus labios | With the breath of your lips |
| Madre cita milagrosa | Dearest, miraculous, mother |
THE CACTUS OF VISION
In the shamanic traditions of Northern Peru, meanwhile, it is not ayahuasca but the San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi), or cactus of vision, that opens the doorway to expanded awareness and acts as mediator between man and the gods. San Pedro grows on the dry eastern slopes of the Andes, at altitudes between 2,000 and 3,000 meters above sea level, and commonly reaches six meters or more in height. It is also grown by local shamans in their herb gardens and has been used since ancient times, with a tradition in Peru that has been unbroken for at least three thousand years.
The earliest depiction of the San Pedro cactus is a carving dating from about 1300 B.C.E., showing a mythological being holding a San Pedro. It comes from the Chavín culture (c. 1400–400 B.C.E.) and was found in a temple at Chavín de Huantar, in the northern highlands of Peru. The later Mochica culture (c. 500 c.e.) also depicted the cactus in its iconography, suggesting a continued use throughout this period.
Even in the present Christianized mythology of this area, there is a legend told that God hid the keys to Heaven in a secret place and that San Pedro (Saint Peter) used the magical powers of a cactus to find this place so the people of the world could share in paradise. The cactus was named after him out of respect for his Promethean intervention on behalf of mortal men.
As can be imagined, early European missionaries held native practices in considerable contempt and were very negative when reporting the use of San Pedro. One sixteenth-century conquistador described it as a plant by which the natives are able to “speak with the devil, who answers them in certain stones and in other things they venerate.”7
As you might also imagine, a shaman’s account of the cactus is in radical contrast to this. Juan Navarro, a maestro within the San Pedro tradition, explains its effects as follows:
It first produces a dreamy state and then a great vision, a clearing of all the faculties, and a sense of tranquility. Then comes detachment, a sort of visual force inclusive of all the senses, including the sixth sense, the telepathic sense of transmitting oneself across time and matter … like a kind of removal of one’s thought to a distant dimension.
Considered the “maestro of maestros,” San Pedro enables the shaman to open a portal between the visible and the invisible world for his or her people. In fact, its Quechua name is punku, which means “doorway.”
AN INTERVIEW WITH A SAN PEDRO MAESTRO
Juan Navarro was born in the highland Andean village of Somate, department of Piura. He is the descendant of a long line of healers working not only with San Pedro but with the magical powers of the sacred lakes known as Las Huaringas, which have been revered for their healing properties since the earliest Peruvian civilization.
At the age of eight, Juan made a pilgrimage to Las Huaringas and drank San Pedro for the first time. Now in his fifties, every month or so it is still necessary for him to return there to accumulate the energy he needs to protect and heal his people.
Healing sessions with San Pedro involve an intricate sequence of processes, including invocation, diagnosis, divination, and healing with natural power objects, called artes, which are kept, during the ceremony, in a complicated and precise array on the maestro’s altar or mesa. (See a photograph of Juan Navarro’s mesa in the color insert.) Artes may include shells, swords, magnets, quartz crystals, objects resembling sexual organs, rocks that spark when struck together, and stones retrieved from animals’ stomachs that they had swallowed to aid digestion. The artes bring magical qualities to the ceremony where, under the visionary influence of San Pedro, their invisible powers may be seen and experienced.
The maestro’s mesa, on which these artes sit, is a representation of the forces of nature and the cosmos. Through the mesa the shaman is able to work with and influence these forces to diagnose and heal disease.
What happens during a San Pedro ceremony?
JN: The power of San Pedro works in combination with tobacco [see below]. Also the sacred lakes of Las Huaringas are very important. This is where we go to find the most powerful healing herbs, which we use to energize our people.
We also use dominiob to give strength and protection from supernatural forces such as sorcery and negative thoughts. This dominio is also put into the segurosc we make for our patients. Dominio is introduced to the bottle through the breath. You keep these seguros in your home and your life will go well.
How does San Pedro help in the healings you do?
JN: San Pedro helps the maestro to see what the problem is with his patient before any of this healing begins. The cactus is a powerful teacher plant. It has a certain mystery to it and the healer must also be compatible with it. It won’t work for everybody, but the maestro has a special relationship with its spirit.
When it is taken by a patient it circulates in his body and where it finds abnormality it enables the shaman to detect it. It lets him know the pain the patient feels and where in his body it is. So it is the link between patient and maestro.
It also purifies the blood of the person who drinks it and balances the nervous system so people lose their fears and are charged with positive energy.
In the ceremonies we’ve attended, a lot seems to happen. Can you explain the process to us?
JN: Patients first take a contrachisa. This is a plant [actually, the outer skin of the San Pedro cactus] that causes them to purged so they get rid of the spiritual toxins that are within their systems. This is a healing. It also cleans out the gut to make room for San Pedro so the visions will come.
They also take a singado. This is a liquid containing [aguardiente and macerated] tobacco which they snort through their nostrils. The tobacco leaf is left for two to three months in contact with honey, and when required for the singado it is macerated with aguardiente.
How it functions depends on which nostril is used. When taken in the left nostril it will liberate the patient from negative energy, including psychosomatic ills, pains in the body, or the bad influences of other people. As he takes it in he must concentrate on the situation that is going badly or the person who is doing him harm. When taken through the right nostril it is for rehabilitating and energizing, so that all of that patient’s projects will go well.
Afterwards he can spit the tobacco out or swallow it, it doesn’t matter. The singado also has a relationship with the San Pedro in the body, and intensifies the visionary effects.
During the ceremony I also use a chungana [rattle] to invoke the spirits of the dead, whether of family or of great shamans, so they can help to heal the patient. The chunganas give me enchantmente and have a relaxing effect when the patient takes San Pedro.
What is the significance of the artes and of Las Huaringas?
JN: The artes that I use come from Las Huaringas, where a special energy is bestowed on everything, including the healing herbs that grow there and nowhere else.
If you bathe in the lakes it takes away your ills. You bathe with the intention of leaving everything negative behind. People also go there to leave the spirit of their enemies behind so they can’t do any more harm.
After bathing, the maestro cleanses you with the artes, swords, bars, chontas,f and even huacos [the energetic power of the ancient sites themselves]. They flourish you—spraying you with agua floridag and herb macerations, and giving you things like honey, so your life will be sweet and flourish.
Not far from Las Huaringas is a place called Sondor, which has its own lakes. This is where evil magic is practiced by brujos [sorcerers] and where they do harm in a variety of ways. I know this because I am a healer and I must know how sorcery is done so I can defend myself and my patients.
As we said, a lot goes on in a healing! So, with all of this, just how important is San Pedro?
JN: What allows me to read a patienth is the power of San Pedro and tobacco. Perceptions come to me through any one of my senses or through an awareness of what the patient is feeling; a weakness, a pain or whatever. Sometimes, for instance, a bad taste in my mouth may indicate that the patient has a bad liver.
Of course, I must also take the San Pedro and tobacco, to protect myself from the patient’s negativity and illness, and because it brings vision.
HALLUCINOGENS IN THE WEST
The accounts of both ayahuasceros and San Pedro shamans and their descriptions of working with the plant doctors and allies that are their spiritual and healing partners reveal a very gentle, lyrical, and ensouled approach to the world. A very different picture begins to emerge from these accounts than the images we get from newspaper reports and television documentaries, which lead us to believe that hallucinogens of any description are bad and need to be banned.
The stories of the shamans tell of gifting their patients with power, of opening their minds to new possibilities and freedoms, to a life of connection and a sense of the divine. By contrast, our modern view seems based in fear and distaste for the very possibilities of such a connection. What can account for the discrepancy between the two?
We are not the first writers to remark on the political dimension to all of this. For example, the comedian Bill Hicks writes: “Drugs that grow naturally upon this planet, drugs that open your eyes up, to make you realize how you’re being fucked every day of your life. Those are against the law. Wow! Coincidence? I don’t think so…. It’s not a war on drugs, it’s a war on personal freedom.”8 The governments of the Western world want to ban hallucinogens (and, indeed, have already done so) and prosecute those who use them. But what is really being controlled? Not the drugs, but our freedoms and our minds. The hidden message behind such prohibitions is, “We will not allow you to expand your consciousness beyond the norm of socially prescribed reality or to see possibilities in the world that do not come from us.”
This is an insidious message. Digging further, what it really says is: “We will not allow you to be fully human, to use your mind, to experience reality for what it is. We withhold the sacred from you.” But our minds are our own! Surely we have every right to explore them as we wish?
Sacred hallucinogens, furthermore, are not “drugs” but plants, and surely there is a fault in the logic that says that plants can be illegal substances, when they grow naturally, broadly, and bountifully from the Earth and in every country of the world. Bill Hicks again: “Making cannabis illegal is like saying God made a mistake.” The land gives freely to all. Where is the logic in saying it should be owned and controlled by the few?
Argue or reason as we might, we in the West are facing a situation of increasing repression of our freedom to experience the sacred, as plants like ayahuasca and San Pedro help us to do. We are losing our connection to the spirit of the world because of the power of government to control our access to it. This repression is not for our safety—to stop us from “getting high” and jumping off buildings—but to keep us locked in a materialistic mindset. Any transformational experience that shows us the interconnectedness of all things, and our part in the planetary consciousness, runs contrary to this objective. But it is obvious how self-defeating this objective ultimately is when we look around at where such materialism has got us.
Everything we do to our planet in the name of “progress,” we also do to ourselves. As we lose the power to dream, so our dreams die and we create a world based in fear and conflict—the very things for which the West has become known, and a far cry from the gentle world of the shaman.
EXPERIENCING THE SACRED
It may be impossible for you to experience sacred hallucinogens and they may already be illegal in your country, as ayahuasca now is in the United States. So we need to look at other creative ways to enhance our neurochemistry if we wish to experience the sacred through an expansion of consciousness.
The key here is that many of the compounds and neurotransmitters that are present in sacred plants also occur naturally within the human brain and can be enhanced through specific practices. Dr. John Lilly found, for example, during his work with flotation tanks and altered states of consciousness, that when the mind is deprived of external stimuli, it opens to a number of unusual sensations and spiritual effects. These include waking visions, lucid dreams, and even a kind of out-of-body travel.9
Reducing outside stimulation is therefore one key to the ecstatic experience. And so, for the first exercise below, it is useful to lie down and relax in a quiet, darkened room, having set aside time (about an hour) in which you will not be disturbed. Cover your eyes and ears so that you fully block out the world.
Dreaming the Great Spirit
The shaman’s intention is a calling, a powerful summons to the universal field of energy or consciousness of which we are an intrinsic part, and which generates a movement of the spirit toward the expanded mind. Begin, then, by setting your intention to meet with the spirit of nature.
In both the Amazon and Haiti, this spirit is believed to be the forest itself. The trees and the leaves—the entire ecosystem, in fact—are the visible faces of this spirit.
In Haiti, this spirit has a personality and is an aspect of God (known as a Lwa) that can physically possess people during Vodou ceremonies and, through them, heal the others who are present. His name is Gran Bwa (which translates from the Kreyol language as “Big Wood”)—he is lord of the great forest and presides over the deepest mysteries of healing and of initiation into the spirit world.
Each of the Lwa has a particular symbol or pictorial representation of his or herself, known as a vever, which is drawn on the earth in cornmeal during a ritual to call this spirit. Gran Bwa’s is a drawing of a leaf that also has human features to it—a face, arms, and legs—further signifying his (and, indeed, humanity’s) connection to nature.i
One way to conceive of the spirit of nature, then, is to imagine yourself on a vision quest through a vast forest, which is alive and breathing and holding you as you move through the trees. Without veto, allow any images, thoughts, or feelings to simply drift through your mind as you make this quest. These are the whispers of spirit from beyond the rational world.
Eventually you will arrive at one special tree that holds a particular fascination for you. This is Gran Bwa, the cosmic doorway to the whole of nature. The classic four questions of the vision quest are: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? And who will help me in this? Ask these questions of this spirit, and be open to the answers you receive.
When you have the information you need, bring yourself back to ordinary awareness. Then physically go outside into nature and see how it looks to you now. Repeat this exercise once a week when you diet and see what else you can learn.
A journalist from the London Observer newspaper attended a retreat run by Ross in 2005, where she undertook an exercise similar to this and was amazed at what she saw in nature once she looked at it for the first time in a quiet and nonjudgmental way and understood it as a living force. “The sight of nature in all its majesty was overwhelming,” she wrote in her newspaper. “I could see everything. From the tiniest hair on the outside of a leaf to the iridescent sequins on the inside of a petal and the minuscule contours on the body of a dragonfly.
“But more than that, I felt all of this too. It was like I had developed another layer of perception. Beyond what I saw, I could sense. Even now, a week on, I can bring this feeling back …”10
THE ICARO: A SONG OF YOUR SOUL
Just as there is a vever for each Lwa in Haiti, there is at least one song (and usually several) for every spirit. These songs are not so much created as “discovered” by the shaman, who enters into trance communion and allows the spirit itself to sing its song through him. Here is one of the songs for Gran Bwa:
| Se nan bwa, fey nan bwa ye, | It’s in the woods, the leaves are, |
| Se nan bwa, fey nan bwa ye, | It’s in the woods, the leaves are, |
| Se mwen menm, Gran Bwa | It is I, Gran Bwa |
| M pap montre moun kay mwen, | [But] I won’t show people my house, |
| Si m pral montre moun kay mwen, | If I show people my house, |
| Yap di se nan bwa m rete | They will say I live in the woods |
The meaning of the last three lines, and especially the final one, is that while the deep woods are, indeed, the home of Gran Bwa, that is not the only place he can be found, for he is the spirit of nature itself and a part of everyone and all there is.
The spirit songs and chantes of Haiti are similar to the icaros of the ayahuasca shaman in that the spirits themselves have taught these songs of power. By singing them aloud (or allowing himself to be sung) the shaman brings the vibration of the healing universe and the powers of nature into his body, opening himself to a deeper level of awareness through this union of spirit and matter. When such songs are sung in Haiti, they are calls to the spirit, who may answer by possessing the shaman so he can heal the community. When such songs are sung in the Amazon, their vibration may be blown from the shaman into the body of his patient, healing him directly through the powers of nature.
Discovering Your Ally’s Song
Another way for you to more deeply experience the sacred, then, is to know the song of your plant ally. How we discover it is simplicity itself. We ask.
Lie down in the journeying posture you are familiar with, holding your plant ally against your heart, and then allow your consciousness to drift back to that great tree in the forest that called you in the last exercise. See yourself standing before this ancient teacher, your plant ally in hand, and ask the tree itself for the song.
When you feel in your body that there is a tune, a vibration, or words that are aching to be sung, simply allow them to flow from you. There is no need to search for words (indeed, some songs do not have words at all; they are wordless chants or even metalanguage, which sounds like “speaking in tongues”).
Bring yourself back to normal awareness when you have your song, singing it as you do so, and then spend some time with your plant ally, singing its song to it. Listen for any words that come back to you from the plant itself, which you will hear and understand in your heart and in your mind.
THE SEGURO: A FRIEND WHO WILL LISTEN
According to San Pedro maestro, Juan Navarro, a seguro is a friend or ally, someone you can turn to for advice and information, who will listen and share your problems. Less poetically, a seguro is a clear glass bottle that contains perfumes, sacred water, and of course a selection of plants chosen for their specific healing and spiritual qualities. These bottles are kept on an altar, in sacred space, and are regarded as objects of great power. Whenever the person who has a seguro requires help with any practical or spiritual problem, she will take it from the altar and sit with it against her heart, speaking with it as if to a friend. The seguro will absorb and transform the energy of the problem, but more importantly, if she listens carefully, the person who seeks its advice will hear the answers she needs from the spirit of the plants themselves.
A seguro can help you maintain and deepen your link to the sacred because, of course, it also contains your plant ally. If there are other plants you have journeyed to or would like to learn from, you can add these to the seguro as well and, now that you know the language of your ally, this plant spirit will communicate your desire to the other plants, which will also offer their healing and support. You therefore gain access to the natural world and its powers more widely.
Creating a Seguro
To create a seguro, you will need a glass bottle, approximately five inches high, that can be sealed. Fill this one-third full with perfume of your choice and top up with water. In Juan Navarro’s seguros, this is water from the sacred lakes of Las Huaringas, but you can use mineral water or rainwater (as pure as possible).
Once you have this base, meditate for a while on the qualities you would like in your life and which plants might bring you these things. Be informed in this by your work with the doctrine of signatures—heather for luck, honesty for truth, goldenrod for wealth, and so on.
Add these plants to your bottle, arranging them as attractively as possible. (Some seguros are so beautiful they are works of art in themselves.) Then place your main plant ally in the bottle so it can act as mediator for all the others. Before you seal the bottle, blow your dominio (intention) into it three times, and then put on the lid.
Place the bottle on your altar and reflect on its qualities often. Whenever you are in need of advice, sit with your seguro and speak with it. Then notice how things change for you.
Maintaining the Sacred Communion: Eating for a Healthy Neural Base
Shamans who work with sacred plants undertake a diet that enhances their connection to nature and their allies (see chapter 2). Diet—in its widest sense—is important for us, too, and we need to look at the plants, herbs, and amino acids that will increase the level of neurotransmitters in our brains, as these will help to develop our skills of shamanic dreaming.
Brain cells require a supply of vitamins, fatty acids, and minerals to function effectively and for us to be healthy. Low nutrient intake is a growing problem in the West as a result of our fast-food lifestyles and “quick and junky” eating habits. As a consequence, more and more people are suffering symptoms such as depression and anxiety.
When our brain cells die off through nutrient depletion, they may not be replaced, so our first step must be to protect our existing cells from degeneration. The plant medicine compounds that can help with this are known as adaptogens and antioxidants. You are probably familiar with the names of some of these adaptogens: panax ginseng, for example. These plants help the body to resist stress and prevent damage to the cells. Another compound that exists in the human body and needs to be strengthened is the enzyme Co-Q10. This is available in many supplements and in foods such as papaya, which is loaded with powerful antioxidants and vitamins.
The B vitamin group is important for improving cognitive performance and enhancing learning and memory. A number of studies have shown B6 and B12 deficiencies in elderly people, resulting in cognitive impairment such as memory loss. Vitamin B6 supports the synthesis of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine; it is found naturally in a wide range of cereals and foods such as beans, bananas, oatmeal, peanuts, and chicken. Vitamin B12 is essential to maintaining healthy nerve cells and is found mainly in foods such as oysters, clams, liver, trout, salmon, eggs, and dairy foods. Vegetarians and vegans can take this vitamin in supplement form.
Other plants raise serotonin levels in our brains to give us a more powerful capacity for dreaming, as well as feelings of well-being. Examples of serotonin-boosting plants include black cohosh and bananas. Serotonin interaction within the brain is one of the key factors in the hallucinogenic experience.
Omega-3 fatty acids are particularly important for the health of the brain, and these can be found in fish and flaxseed oil. The importance of these fatty acids can be seen in cases where they are deficient. In newborn children, for example, omega-3 deficiency is associated with delayed visual and cognitive abilities, and low levels have also been found in people with Alzheimer’s.
There are foods you should avoid as well—foods that work against our neural well-being and cognitive abilities. Key among these are processed sugars and carbohydrates; but any form of processed food should, as much as possible, be avoided.
As a Westerner wanting to develop your capacity for shamanic dreaming, your basic diet should therefore include lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, rice, fish, and chicken; and should exclude fried, fatty, over-spiced, or processed foods. This would be a diet, in fact, very similar to that of an Amazonian or Haitian shaman. Practice this diet to the best of your ability for the length of time that you are developing your relationship with your plant ally—and beyond.
Art and Action
In addition to eating properly, there are certain actions we can take to increase our dreaming abilities. Art and craft work is a good example. We don’t need to be trained artists to work with color and form. In fact, training may be counterproductive in this case, since training in art to some extent involves the use of the rational mind instead of the dreaming senses, so that we study form instead of responding to it—and this is exactly what we are aiming to avoid.
To use art shamanically, your intention instead is to play, to become a child once again and to experience a child’s sense of awe and wonder at the world. As Goethe said, “To know how cherries and strawberries taste, ask children and birds.”
Draw, paint, sculpt with clay, carve with wood or stone, weave, embroider, write poetry, garden … do whatever inspires you and gives reign to your creative expression. During the artistic process, notice, as a child would, the forms in front of you, but also the spaces and shapes between the forms. Working in this way gives the nonrational mind a wonderful workout.
Other practices to boost your dreaming abilities are meditation, walking in nature, and simply being still and remembering that we are on this Earth to enjoy ourselves!
Rejoice in your body. Dance, sing, drum, play your flute. Dance, movement, and music are all keys to personal freedom, and at the same time an intrinsic part of expanding our consciousness and reconnecting to our amazement at the “spirituality of all things,” as Walt Whitman described it.
AYAHUASCA ANALOGUES
In America and Europe, it is possible to create an analogue for ayahuasca by using plants that contain the same alkaloids, if such plants are not illegal. Seeds of syrian rue can be used as a substitute for the vine, for example, and mimosa or acacia, which are both rich in DMT (tryptamines), can be used instead of chacruna.
The Web site www.erowid.org is a good source of information for these plants as well as for other sacred hallucinogens.