Plant Spirit Shamanism

Of all the senses, none surely is so mysterious as that of smell . . . its effects upon the psyche are both wide and deep, at once obvious and subtle.

Beautiful aromas derived from flowers and herbs have always been used for healing, as far back through history as we can trace. Even the word perfume comes from the Latin per fumer, “through smoke,” a reference to its ritual use in ceremonies to meet the gods of health and prophecy.

Smell is the most powerful of human senses. Many people can remember smells from their childhood, fifty or sixty or more years ago, and scientists have shown that even a year after people encounter a new aroma, 65 percent of us can still recall it accurately. By contrast, visual memory drops to 50 percent after just three months.

Because olfaction is handled by the limbic system, which also controls our emotions, smells evoke feelings as well as memories, so we experience not just an odor but a mood associated with it. Even if we do not recognize a perfume and could not name it, we can respond emotionally to it.

And yet fragrances, despite their qualities and evocations, are invisible, ephemeral, part of the unseen world. For these reasons, shamans regard them as spirit beings, able to create feelings, change moods, alter an outlook on life, deliver healing, and change a person’s luck, as well as bringing tangible and practical benefits. There are scents to bring back lovers, for example, or make you rich, to win court cases, or turn you into a more successful and potent lover. All of these formulas and effects are within the skill set of perfumeros (shamans who work with fragrance), who have made allies among the healing and aromatic plants.

Our fascination with perfume began many thousands of years ago, with the burning of scented plants mixed with gums and resins to create incense that was used for practical as well as for ritual purposes—for merging with the natural world to increase the effectiveness of hunting, for example, while also for calling “the owner of the animals” to ensure plentiful game and protection on the hunt.

Anthropological evidence shows that from around 7000–4000 B.C.E., our ancestors were combining olive and sesame oils with plants and flowers to make the first ointments. Some anthropologists speculate that early hunters, having covered their bodies with the scent of fragrant plants to mask their smell and attract game, noticed the healing properties of the plants they used and their curative effects on wounds sustained in hunting, and this is what led to the formulation of ointments and balms. Others believe it was the women who first began to explore the effects of different fragrances as they met them in the plants they gathered and worked with. Which of these came “first” is immaterial, since both these paths of learning informed our progress in the use of fragrance.

We know from historical sources, that by the year 2697 B.C.E., a body of knowledge on plant medicine was certainly well established in the East, and we read in The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine,¹ for example, of many uses for scented herbs.^a

As for the West, David Hoffmann, in Welsh Herbal Medicine, discusses the preparation and folk use of meddyginiaeth, “natural medicines” in Wales, by the Gwyddoniaid—men of knowledge who were ancestors of the druids. This evidence stems from at least 1000 B.C.E. By 430 B.C.E. in Wales, the Druidic text, the laws of Dynwal Moelmud show that plant medicine had come to be highly regarded and was protected and encouraged by the state, with commerce, healing, and navigation known as the “three civil arts.” ²

One of the interesting folk uses for fragrant herbs within these Welsh traditions was the practice of “burying illnesses” beneath aromatic plants. The sin eater, Adam, for example, would lay out wooden stakes in his garden, beneath which he would bury an animal bone with the name of a patient scratched on it. He would then plant certain flowers or herbs on top of these “graves,” according to the nature of his patient’s illness: thyme for colds and fevers, for example; rosemary for lethargy; parsley to purify the blood; and marigolds, among their other more spiritual virtues, to ease skin complaints and inflammations.

All of these plants might today be used by an herbalist to cure the same ailments, either in a tea or a salve, but in this folk practice, it was the energetic or sympathetic connection between plant and patient (represented by the name on the bone) that mattered. Each morning, Adam would walk his garden, whispering to the plants and crushing a few of their leaves between his fingers. As they released their aroma, every day this emanation carried away a little more of the illness, until the patient was cured. As in all shamanic practice, these plants were regarded not as medicinal substances but rather as spirit allies who brought healing to the body.

Chinese Taoists believed that a plant’s fragrance was its soul, a belief later endorsed by the Gnostic Christians of 100–400 C.E., for whom fragrance was the spirit of the plant and a gateway to the greater soul of the world. In their ceremonies surrounding death, the corpse was washed in perfume and incense was burned around it so the soul of the deceased would mingle with these fragrances and, through them, find its way to God.

It is, however, the Egyptians that are most associated with perfume and who left the most evidence of their fascination with the mystical attributes of scents. Manuscripts such as the Papyrus Ebers (1550 B.C.E.) describe the use of plants such as elder, aloe, cannabis, and wormwood. Others, from even earlier, record the use of herbs in temple incense, oils, and salves. The Egyptians used cinnamon to anoint the bodies of the living, for example, and myrrh—considered more precious than gold—to embalm the dead.

Wall paintings such as those in the temple at Edfu show the distillation of perfume from white lilies. Others depict the use of aromatic cones called bitcones as adornments for the heads of temple dancers. These cones would melt into the hair and release their fragrance as the maidens danced for the pharaohs and gods. The Egyptians consecrated their temples with incense cubes made from scented plants, gums, and honey. The earliest known use of perfume bottles is also Egyptian and dates from around 1000 B.C.E.

Another use for aromatics was in fragrant sweetmeats called kyphi, which means “welcome to the gods.” This mystical substance was eaten in the temples of Ra to induce states of trance. Through the audience with the gods this brought, healing dreams would result, which were said to be the most potent cure for grief and a comfort to the soul.

We still have the recipe for kyphi, thanks to Dioscorides (40–90 C.E.), a Greek physician who studied medicine in Egypt and produced a five-volume work, De Materia Medica, on the “preparation, properties, and testing of drugs.” The ingredients, mixed more-or-less to taste, are chopped raisins, honey, sweet flag, rose, lemongrass, cyperus tuber, myrrh, amber, and wine. These were added one at a time (starting with the raisins) and allowed to steep before the mixture was boiled to a paste, rolled into balls, and ritually eaten.

The knowledge and understanding of plants and herbs, and not just of fragrances, was extremely well developed in Egypt. This is little recognized by modern medical science, even though some of its “own” techniques rely on it. One example is the pregnancy test. Egyptian herbalists were able to determine pregnancy as well as fetal gender by soaking small bags of wheat and barley in a sample of the woman’s urine. The growth of both plants was accelerated if the urine contained pregnancy hormones. Further, if the barley sprouted, it meant a female baby; if the wheat sprouted it signified a male. By contrast, modern scientists did not “discover” the urine pregnancy test until 1926, and they did not “develop” the wheat/barley test until 1933.

But the use of fragrance to engage the gods was not restricted to China and Egypt. Through experience, quite independently of one another, a number of cultures evolved the conviction that beautiful smells provide a doorway to another world.

The Hebrews used fragrance in their religious ceremonies and to initiate priests, their anointing oil consisting of cinnamon, myrrh, and calamus, mixed with olive oil. The ancient Greeks believed that perfume was god-given and that sweet aromas were how the deities made their presence known. They used the word arómata to describe the use of fragrance, making no distinction between medicinal and mystical perfumes, between incense and medicine, or between spiritual and pragmatic uses. Every plant contained magic. Bay, for example, was a staple of Greek cooking, but was also used by the oracle priestesses of Delphi, who would sit within its smoke, heads covered, to enter the otherworld and allow the spirits to speak through them during their divinations. In India, too, in ceremonies of prophecy, seers called dainyals would cover their heads with cloth and surround themselves with cedarwood smoke, the aroma of which would send them into trance and chanting.

And fragrant plants were being used extensively throughout Europe. In the Middle Ages, Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was an ambassador for the connection between religion and the healing spirit of the plants. As well as an Abbess, Hildegard was an herbalist and is credited with the invention of sweet-smelling lavender water, which she saw as truly divine.

“Carmelite water,” also developed at this time, offered a “miracle cure” for spiritual diseases such as melancholy (regarded as a form of soul loss) and for improving the powers of mind and vision. The monks who produced Carmelite water guarded its spiritual formula, but we now know it was based on melissa (a plant regarded as a “spiritual communicator”) and angelica (which was equally effective against evil spirits and infectious diseases, both of them forms of spirit intrusion—see chapter 4).

Another plant with a spiritually protective purpose during the Middle Ages was rue, which also bestowed “second sight.” Indeed, rue was believed to be so powerful against conditions such as soul loss and melancholia that it was named from the Greek word, reuo (“to set free”) and was used in many spells and formulas devised by the Welsh sin eaters, who knew it as gwenwynllys and used it as an antidote in cases of spiritual as well as physical poisoning.

It was France, however, which emerged as Europe’s leader in the therapeutic use of fragrance. The term aromatherapy, in fact, was invented in 1928 by Rene Maurice Gattefoss, a French chemist whose interest in essential oils was stimulated when he burned his hand in a laboratory accident and plunged it into a pot of lavender oil to cool the burn. It healed within days, faster than it would have with any other treatment available at the time. Gattefoss was inspired and began to experiment with essential oils and fragrances from that day.

Gattefoss also inspired others, including Jean Valnet, a French doctor who worked as an army surgeon in World War II and found essential oils such as thyme, clove, and lemon to be just as effective in treating wounds and burns. He later extended his work with fragrances, using them with equal effectiveness to treat psychiatric problems. Valnet went on to write a book of his discoveries, which was called Aromatherapie in France and The Practice of Aromatherapy: A Classic Compendium of Plant Medicines and Their Healing Properties when it was translated into English.³

Today there are over 20,000 commercial fragrances on the market, and the number of new releases each year has increased by more than 400 percent since 1973. The age-old associations between pleasant smells, a healthy soul, and the visionary call of perfumes to and from the gods has not been forgotten, however, even in these times. International Flavors & Fragrances, Inc., is a leading manufacturer of perfumes, with an income of around $300 million a year. And yet Sophia Grojsman, the perfumer for this company, still says that her inspirations for new perfumes come from dreams, images, ancient cultures and practices, and the world of nature. When creating a perfume, she says, “you must always have an image in your head.” Her intention, as with all shamanic healing, is to produce balance: “Perfumery is closely related to music. . . . A fragrance that is not well balanced is not well accepted.”

. . . a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where . . . I love you because I know no other way.

Fragrance, of course, has also been long associated with the art of love. In Japan, geisha girls priced their services according to the number of incense sticks consumed during lovemaking, while in Indian tantric rituals, men were anointed with sandalwood, and women with jasmine, patchouli, amber, and musk. Saffron was also crushed and smeared beneath the feet. In Europe in the 1700s and 1800s, the use of eau de cologne became a widespread and fashionable trend; the morning ritual in many homes began with its application before a suitor of either sex would call upon a lover. This blend of rosemary, neroli, bergamot, and lemon was also used internally, mixed with wine, eaten on sugar lumps, even taken as an enema, to refresh the “inner self” and cleanse the spirit so that lovers could meet each other with a “pure heart.”

But it is, perhaps, in Peru, that the magic of perfumed love has reached its highest skill, in the formulation of pusanga, which is often referred to as the “love medicine of the Amazon,” although it is far more than that. Specialists in the use of fragrance to change luck and attract good fortune are known as perfumeros. One such specialist is Artidoro Aro Cardenas. Another is Javier Arevalo, an ayahuasca shaman we have met in this book before, and who also works with fragrance.

Artidoro, how did your involvement with perfumes begin?

AAC: The story of my path of medicine began when I watched my brother-in-law, who healed and chanted. I didn’t have any profession because my parents were poor. I only had studies up to fifth year primary and I wanted to get out of the place we lived, Parimarques on the River Ucayali, a day downstream from Pucullpa.

I felt trapped in that pueblo with all my brothers, poor, drinking too much, earning next to nothing. So I fled from there to the Montana Tamaya, Alto Ucayali [Upper Amazon jungle]. I was just seventeen years old.

I used to watch how the curanderos there worked. I loved listening to what they talked about, how they prepared their remedies, their canticos.^b Then I went off on my own deep into the jungle, to know the plants little by little, to smell the leaves and roots of all the different medicines. I had no maestro to learn from so I dieted plants for a year and a half alone, and then I returned to the city. I used agua florida, timalina, camalonga,^c and dedicated myself to studying all about smells.

How do you use perfumes to help people now?

AAC: I get people coming for help with family problems where the woman has gone away from the man or the man has gone away from his children.

Supposing the woman has gone off, I use pusanga to bring her back so that the family can consolidate again. I call the plant spirits which work for that—pusanga plants such as renaco, huayanche, lamarosa, sangapilla—and I call her spirit back to her home.

Or let’s say the mama is here with me and the father is far away. I pull him back so he returns to his home. In a short time he will be thinking of his children and his wife, and he comes back.

I don’t need to have the actual plants in front of me, I call their spirits. I make my own perfumes from plants, no chemicals. They have wonderful smells. And I chant at the same time as I rub them on the children and the woman. Then the man starts thinking or dreaming of them.

How does perfume magic like this work?

AAC: A smell has the power to attract. I can make smells to attract business, people who buy. You just rub it on your face and it brings in the people to your business. I also make perfumes for love, and others for flourishing.^d

These plants are forces of nature; they contain spirit. I watch for what that spirit attracts: maybe bright birds or butterflies, maybe many different animals come to feed from it. A plant that draws bright birds will also draw beautiful women; a plant that is popular and has many “customers” will also be good for business. So these are the plants that I use to help my patients.

Javier Arevalo tells a similar story of humble beginnings. Several generations of his family have been shamans, and at the age of seventeen, Javier knew this would be his future too; but it was not until he was twenty, when his father died from a virote (a poisoned dart from the spirit world) sent by an hechicero (sorcerer) who was jealous of his father’s powers that Javier felt compelled to become a shaman.

His first instinct was to learn the shamanic arts so he could avenge his father. But his grandfather convinced him that this was not the solution, that the only way to defeat evil was to spread more goodness in the world. Javier took the message to heart and found solace in the plants instead.

Javier, how did your involvement with healing begin?

JA: My grandfather saw that I was bitter and told me that it would not get me anywhere. My heart was still hard and I wanted to kill! Bit by bit, though, through taking the very plants that I had intended to use for revenge, I learned from the spirits that it was wrong to kill, and my heart softened.

A shaman learns everything about the rainforest and uses that knowledge to heal his people, since they do not have money for Western doctors. The spirits or plant doctors come to me and say that they will cure a person if he takes a particular plant. Then I go out to look for the plant. It is said that every environment has the plants to heal the people.

As part of his apprenticeship the shaman spends years taking plants and roots, each time remembering which ailment is cured by what. The maestro goes with the apprentice into the wilderness and gives him the different plants and it is like a test or trial to overcome. One plant may cure lots of ailments.

You are respected as an ayahuascero, but you are also a perfumero. How do you use perfume magic?

JA: Through my work with the plants, I have learned how to make pusanga, the Amazonian love potion. Pusanga has the power to attract anyone you wish, for the purposes of love, sex, or marriage.

Take the case of a woman who refuses when you offer her a Coca-Cola because she thinks you are lower class and that she is better than you. That makes you feel like rubbish so you go to a shaman and tell him the name of the girl. He prepares the pusanga. Three days go by without seeing her and she begins to think about you, dreaming about you, and begins looking for you . . .

In the West, people often look down upon such magic as manipulative—they may even see it as evil because it takes away a person’s choice and free will, so he or she has no option but to love you. In the Amazon, however, it is considered normal practice to use pusanga in this way. And, in fact, despite Western morals around the issue, when it comes right down to it, in the United States and Europe, people are often willing to use love magic to find or return a lover as well. Once we get past the “ethical” considerations, we can be just as “manipulative” as the people of Peru.

Ross relates, for example, how he is approached for pusanga by people who even provide a detailed “shopping list” of the qualities their man or woman should have when the fragrance draws this lover to them, like this one from Judy, in 2005: “I would like to bring in someone who is very kind, generous, loving, loyal, near my age, likes travel, country walking, and has a nice speaking voice. He should have lovely qualities and be successful and professional at work, a good sense of humor, make me laugh, and treat me like a queen or princess. He should enjoy travel and discovering new adventures. He should be my best friend and someone that I adore too.” It seems that no matter what our stated morality on this matter, we have very clear ideas where love is involved.

Perhaps, like Judy, the people of the Amazon are in general more honest and upfront about their needs? Or perhaps they carry a less Christianized concept of “right” and “wrong” so are less afraid to ask for what they want? We asked Javier to comment on the moral question:

JA: Yes, we shamans understand there is an ethical concern, but put it this way: what if it happened to me? Let’s say I found a woman ugly and she did pusanga magic to make me marry her. Of course, if I found out I’d be outraged and it would be awful if I only discovered it after having children and making a home with her!

But the truth is, I would never know! I would be hopelessly in love with her, and because I had seen beneath her physical appearance, into her soul or her personality, my love for her would be genuine and deep! She would be the mother of my children! My wife! So the pusanga has not taken away my freedom, it has given me more: it has freed me from my prejudice and let me find real happiness.

That is also why pusanga is a secret. You should never tell someone you have used it on them, otherwise its work is undone.

But [we persisted] does anyone have real freedom if everyone is using pusanga?

JA: Does anyone have freedom anyway? We are all taught what to believe, what is right and wrong, from when we are little. Are our minds really free? Pusanga is just a different freedom.

But we all like to think we are free. If people are using pusanga on us, though, surely we become slaves to their will and victims of magic?

JA: [Laughing] You think you are not subject to magic every time you are with a woman or, if you are a woman, with a man? You think the woman you met tonight at the dance wears the same pretty dress every day, the same makeup, the same scent, when she is scrubbing the kitchen or at her factory job? You think that man dresses in a smart suit or wears that expensive aftershave when he is working in the fields? No!

They are doing those things to present themselves in a certain way, a way which is more attractive, but obviously not always true! We all use magic every day in order to make people like us and get what we want. Pusanga is just another way. Underneath everything we are all just looking for love.

As if to prove his point, a few days later Javier asked the group of Westerners we had taken with us to the jungle what they wanted from their lives. Many of them at first gave “cosmic” and “spiritual” answers to do with putting the world to rights, resolving planetary issues, saving endangered species, speaking with the flowers, and so on, and were quite mute when Javier spoke about pusanga and its ability to meet their personal (rather than planetary) needs.

After time for reflection, Javier asked again what our participants really wanted, and this time they admitted that what they wanted, behind their desire to save the world, was love. A personal love in their own lives.

So why had they not said so in the first place? Many replied that it had not felt okay for them to ask for love. This was the message they had heard from their mothers and fathers (“Who do you think you are to ask for such things?” “You’ve had more than enough!”), from teachers, and from the church (“Do unto others [but not unto yourself] as you would have others do unto you”); and through this conditioning they now felt their own needs to be secondary. The contradiction, or paradox, was that they believed themselves able to save a planet without first saving themselves—to give cosmic love when they had never received the personal love they needed in their own lives. So how would they even know what this love looked or felt like?

JA: If we all had more of the love we need we wouldn’t be worried so much about saving the planet! It’s because people don’t have love that they create the problems of the world in the first place, and why it has to be saved at all!

It would be better if people got what they wanted because then they wouldn’t be so destructive. Thoughts tangle up their lives but love solves problems instantly.

Javier tells a story about one of his own experiences with pusanga, which further illustrates the Amazonian view of the ethics involved in its use:

JA: When I was apprenticed to my grandfather, I was told to practice with the pusanga to gain experience. I began by preparing the medicine without any particular intention, but one day a senorita came to me in my vision and said that to use pusanga effectively I must also learn what love is.

Who was this senorita? She was a mermaid. That’s how I can tell you that mermaids exist. She taught me about love and showed me how to prepare pusanga with proper intention and she sang to me, a very sad song. “That is how your lover will come to you, very sad,” she said.

Then there was a fiesta one night in the pueblo because it was someone’s birthday. I was invited and I took a little bottle of pusanga in my pocket. I was dancing with all the girls and I saw a girl who was pretty but she was arrogant and wouldn’t let me get near her. She had long fingernails.^e She said she wouldn’t dance with me because I was unattractive. “Go and find a chola!” [a lower-class Indian], she said, insulting me and hurting my heart.

“If you don’t dance with me tonight, tomorrow you’ll sleep with me,” I said, and I went to the toilet and rubbed myself with pusanga. Then I went back to dance with her and she said “What’s the matter with you, damn it? You know you can’t touch me!” She got nasty and wanted to hit me so I left the fiesta and went home.

The next day I went into the forest to work for three days. On the fourth day I came out and people told me, “Senorita Suzana is looking for you.”

“Why is she looking for me if she hates me and threw me out of the fiesta?” I asked. They replied, “No, she has been round every half an hour asking after you.”

When she finally caught up with me she said, “Javier, forgive me for insulting you in the fiesta.” I said “No. You are very arrogant and I don’t want to talk to you.” I went home and wouldn’t open the door. She waited outside my house all the while I slept, and she was crying.

I knew it was the pusanga that was working so the next night I said to her, “You want to be with me?” “Yes, from the depths of my heart,” she replied. “But you are pretty and I am ugly,” I said. “No, I want to be with you,” she said again.

That night we made love and she didn’t want to go back to her home anymore. I went again into the forest and she followed me. I went to bathe in the river and she jumped in too to play with me. She became my girlfriend for six months.

Later, when the love had passed and the pusanga weakened, she went back [to her home] as though the whole thing had been a dream. I asked myself, “How did I actually live with this girl?” but of course I knew the truth: it had been the pusanga working. And the woman had come to me in sorrow, just as the mermaid said.

The pusanga drew her to me but I made her happy and cured her sadness for that time, and she also learned a lesson: that love has nothing to do with status and it is in the power of any of us to love anyone, regardless of their class or even their looks. It is their heart and their soul that matters.

The message of pusanga is that you can have anything you want and, indeed, to get what you want is not only healing and empowering for you, but adds to the positivity of the planet as a whole, because if we were all happy and in our power, there would be no conflict or negativity. The world would be healed one person at a time, and even those “manipulated” by pusanga would learn valuable lessons and become happier in themselves. Furthermore, since they would never even know they had been enchanted, no harm would be done. The person would simply be happy and in love.

This message is often lost on a Western audience. In plant spirit workshops in Europe, we can spend an entire weekend debating the issue with participants. Their words may vary, but the resistance to the idea of having what they want is consistent.

One woman dismissed the very idea of pusanga out of fear that if she used it she would attract rapists and men who would abuse her. This, of course, says more about her healing needs and the patterns of attraction in her life than it does about pusanga; for if she could truly have anyone or anything she wanted, why would she choose an abusive man? That is another of pusanga’s gifts: just the idea of it forces us to consider the questions, “Why do I believe I can’t have what I want, or that by getting it, I will make problems for myself?” and, more fundamentally, “What self-limitation prevents me from having my heart’s desire?”

The answers often go deep and have to do with early socialization, childhood memories, the shaming we receive from our parents, and even our experiences in the womb. When people are finally able to answer this question for themselves, however, the conclusion is usually simple (though seemingly strange). As one participant put it, “Why can’t I have what I want? Because . . . I’m afraid I’d be happy.” In the West, it seems, we are so used to having our needs go unmet and living our lives in sadness that we fear we just wouldn’t know how to cope with happiness.^f

There is another point here as well—one made by Javier—that in the West we are used to control, to being told what to do, what we can and cannot have, in a way that people from the Amazon are not.

JA: City people [i.e., Westerners and those in Peruvian cities such as Lima that have become Westernized] can’t dominate [control] themselves. Even in Iquitos [the jungle town], the poorest people have TV and see the advertisements. It saps their spirit and teaches them that they don’t have to look after themselves because Coca-Cola or the government will do it if they just buy the bottle or vote for a politician.

To control oneself is fundamental to having the strength to work with the spirits, but city people do not take responsibility for themselves and their power wastes away. Now they don’t even know what they want or what is good for them or how to get it.

Taking responsibility for, and control of, our lives—bursting through the boundaries of our self-taught or socially learned limitations—is what allows us to find our personal truths and to realize that we can, indeed, have anything we want because that is our birthright. To believe otherwise is to subscribe to a social or individual myth of a little self and the little we deserve.

Once people see this, their perception of themselves and their entitlements often changes radically. One female participant on a plant spirit course in Ireland began the pusanga exercise by saying she had no intention of preparing such a mix. She seemed offended by the very notion of “such manipulative magic.” As she walked among the flowers and trees in the garden, though, nature itself spoke to her and told her it was fine to have what she wanted and the plants were only too willing to help her in this.

When she heard this message from nature itself, her opinion changed. She made the pusanga and used it—and she did get what she wanted. Her satisfaction from this was much more important, she later said, in creating a better world than all the resistance she had put up to happiness before, which merely spread frustration and negative energy. Her needs had gone unmet, she now recognized, because she wouldn’t allow herself to meet them. As soon as she took responsibility for herself, however, she—and the world itself—became friendlier and she could act more authentically in it.

“Yes,” said Javier when we told him this story. “Plants like people. They feel for a person whose spirit is ill in this way and will say to them, ‘I can cure you. Look for me.’ Then if that person goes into the forest and looks for the plant, it will cure them.”

Pusanga is a mixture of plants and roots, each with a particular personality or spirit and each with its own purpose or healing intent. These plants are contained in magical water (agua de colpas) collected from clay pools deep in the rainforest where thousands of the most beautifully colored animals gather to drink the healing water, which is rich in mineral content. Many of these animals are natural enemies and would normally prey on each other, but at the clay pools a sense of harmony and peace prevails, as rivals come together to meet a shared need, and there is never any violence as the animals drink. The water itself, then, is a powerful attractant and creates a spirit of balance and cooperation.

Added to this magical water are the barks, roots, and leaves that also have the quality of attraction due to their colors, names, the ways in which they grow, the places they are found, or the sense of power surrounding them. Here again, we see very clearly the doctrine of signatures at work.

Thus, the shaman might make pusangas for good fortune in legal affairs, using plants such as alacrancito, a small “pod” root that resembles a tail and is named after the alacran, an insect that has a nasty sting in its tail. Or the shaman may use the roots of congonita, a plant with little round leaves and very long stalks that easily become entangled. The magical quality of this plant, reflected in its appearance, is to entangle the opposition in their own words, so their tongues become tied and they are confused and lost in their now-convoluted case, with no possibility of winning.

Then there are the pusangas for commercial success, based on the root of a plant called mashoshillo, which looks a little like a string of sausages. “Just look at the form of the plant,” said Javier, “like carriages on a train, pulling in the people you need for your business to grow. This plant comes from under the earth, which is clean and pure, so your business will flourish and your affairs will be protected, smooth, and clean.”

And, of course, there are the pusanga plants for love, which, depending on the patient’s needs, might include polvo de la buseta, a powder obtained by grinding up leaves that resemble female genitalia (the male plant looks like the male sex organ). These are used for sexual attraction. The congonita plant, which is used to entangle and confuse a legal situation, is also used for sexual attraction, the principal being the same, but the application different. (Very different chants and intentions will be used to “charge” the congonita, depending on whether it is used for love or legal success.) “This is how couples become involved with each other,” said Javier. “With this pusanga, your partner will never leave you.”

After immersing the plant mixture in the agua de colpas, the shaman may also add agua florida to the bottle.^g The shaman then blesses the entire mix to empower it according to the patient’s requirements. She does this by blowing or singing into the pusanga, sometimes with the breath, sometimes with sacred tobacco smoke. The traditional blessing or intention blown into the pusanga, which may also be spoken aloud, is salud, dinero, y amor—health, money, and love. “This is the way love comes, like a little puff of wind,” said Javier, “and that’s what goes into the bottle—the breath is the intention for love.” Blowing on the pusanga in this way (especially with tobacco) is also said to wake up the spirit of the plants, which will then work for the patient to draw in whatever he most desires.

Once it is made, pusanga can be used like a perfume, with a few drops rubbed on the pulse points of the wrists and neck; or a capful or two can be added to bath water. It can also be used in more magical work. For example, if the patient has a photograph, image, or other representation of something he badly wants, he can set up a small altar and anoint the photograph or other item with the pusanga, then place it on the altar next to a candle he has also anointed. He might also leave an offering to the spirit of the pusanga in return for working with him. When the candle has burned down fully, the spirits will have heard his prayers and accepted his offering, and the pusanga will start to work for him to draw in this thing that he wants.

One other factor is as important with pusanga as with other jungle medicines: the power of faith. You must believe absolutely in the effectiveness of the pusanga and its ability to work for you. In the words of don Eduardo of Cusco, “You must believe without an atom of doubt [because] lack of faith robs your spirit of power”—the very thing which, in one way or another, you are trying to increase or enhance.

Normally a shaman prepares pusanga away from his patients, having first purified his hands with lime or lemon (or occasionally with grapefruit) juice. This serves the dual purpose of cleaning the hands of sweat and salt, which would interfere with the mix, and cutting through magical attachments, since lime and lemon also give a spiritual cleansing. The important thing is to ensure that the pusanga is not contaminated in any way, material or spiritual.

As you will no doubt have realized by now, working with pusangas, as with other plants, is not just a question of brewing up a mixture of roots and perfumes as if from a cookbook. The maestro also needs to be in communion both with the plant spirit and the spirit of his patient in order to charge the energy of the pusanga effectively and achieve the desired results.

AAC: When I prepare pusanga, I pray and chant the names of all the plants one by one, and I soplada them to increase their strength.^h I also speak out the name of the person for whom the pusanga is intended. The client should then use the pusanga as described, and also present themselves to the one they want to attract on three separate occasions. Then they should disappear for two days and after that the person will come to look them out.

The perfume is important, but the pull comes from the spirit of the plant, which is charged and given strength when I prepare it this way. The client doesn’t need to understand the process but she must trust the shaman. Also, she should not allow anyone else to use her preparation; nor should she eat pork or spicy food [while she is using the pusanga].ⁱ

The shaman also needs to have skill and he must have dieted the plants to know them because there are many plants and many different pusangas, some with only subtle differences between them. An example of this is amares, which literally ties two people together. Although congonita would entangle the two so they become intertwined, inseparable, this is not the same as tying a person to you, so here I would use renaco instead.^j Then I call the couple up in my vision and blow on the plants to unite them. The person who asks for this work to be done would also need to be present.

The job, properly done, requires eight days and nightly ceremonies accompanied by healing, relaxing, and cleansing of negative influences. Some people want the tie to last forever, others ask for it to work just for a certain period, or even a very short time in order to make a mockery of a man or woman, get them to come back after they have left, and then make them cry, or reject them. But this is vengeance and I don’t agree to doing that.

It is an involved process to tie two people together. For the shaman it requires a high level of commitment because he has to concentrate and incorporate himself spiritually in both of them. Let’s say the client is a man who wants his woman tied to him. Then I must call the woman’s spirit in the night and blow her onto the man while she is dreaming. When she wakes up she will be thinking about him.

Each night I divine the progress by lighting two mapachos [cigars made from rolled jungle tobacco] together and calling the names of the couple. I puff at the mapachos without inhaling, and as they burn down, I look at how the ashes form. If they merge, the magic is working; if they incline away from each other, there is more work to do. Or the ash might part at first and later join as the couple’s spirits meet. When this is happening, the couple won’t be able to sleep, but on the eighth night the ashes should merge.

We find a parallel to the pusanga tradition in Hoodoo, the American folk medicine practice, where aromas are similarly used to create positive change. Hoodoo oils work on the principle that people are highly sensitive to smells and susceptible to the unconscious and emotive effects they produce. They are therefore open to purposeful influence from an aroma if the person using it knows how this scent will affect a mood. With the aroma to work with and the spirit of the perfume on his or her side, the Hoodoo magician can ensure that the needs of his or her client are met.

Over the years, Hoodoo practitioners have developed a detailed understanding of various aromas and have prepared these as formulations to achieve particular outcomes. The examples that follow are fairly standard Hoodoo recipes, but of course, you can modify or strengthen them according to your own needs, by journeying to the spirit of the fragrance or to your plant ally, and asking what else should be added in order to achieve your purpose.

In all cases below, the fragrances (aromatherapy oils are fine) are added to a base oil, such as olive oil, and the resulting scent can be used in the same way as pusanga, by applying it to the pulse points or adding it to a bath. Since they are oils, they can be used in a spray or a burner to freshen a room as well.

The following preparations are used as charms of love attraction and will draw new partners to you or help strengthen existing relationships. In appendix 3 you will find others for legal and financial success and for luck and protection.

To attract a new lover, add equal amounts of rose, jasmine, bergamot, and damiana (a drop or two of each) to your base oil, and use it as a perfume whenever you are near the person you desire.

Whereas the oil above is a “general purpose” love attractant, this one is used to pull in your “ideal mate.” To your base oil add five drops of patchouli and one of cinnamon. Smear this on a white candle, and if you have one, place a photograph of your ideal man or woman next to it. As the candle burns down, visualize and intend that this perfect mate will walk effortlessly into your life.

For this oil, use almond as the base, and to this add seven drops of rose water, seven drops of vanilla (or one vanilla bean), three drops of lemon, and a sprinkling of gold glitter. Use this on the pulse points before going out on a date or add to bath water and wear in the presence of your lover for deepening your romance.

Now that you have your mate, this oil will give you greater confidence and power in lovemaking. It can also be worn to attract new sexual partners. It requires two drops of ginger, two of patchouli, and one drop each of cardamom and sandalwood.

To your base oil, add four drops of black pepper, three of vertivert and sandalwood, and one of clove. This is a dual-purpose oil. It can be used to cause the parting of two lovers by introducing the aroma to a room where the couple is together, so that they argue and separate. It can also be used to ease the pain of separation if your own relationship has ended.

When you pour it onto your skin, the fragrance begins to penetrate your spirit, and the spirit is what gives you the force to pull the people. The spirit is what pulls.

The truth about pusanga and Hoodoo attraction oils is, of course, more complicated than a simplistic moral definition of right and wrong allows. Although some might regard these formulas as manipulative, what really gives them their power is not the magic you use on others, but the magic within yourself. Self-belief—“without an atom of doubt”—empowers the fragrance to work for you. It is the spirit—your spirit—that “gives you the force to pull the people.”

What takes place when we use pusanga is not a direct change in other people, but a change in ourselves. We are not so much interfering with the freedom of others or putting a number on them as giving freedom to something within ourselves. It is our own power, charisma, confidence, and self-belief that is enhanced and brought out by the sympathetic magic of the plants; our charm, not the charm that does the work.

The women of Iquitos, for example, are feared throughout Peru for the power of their pusangas, which mean they could steal any man they wanted from another woman. Watching these women of Iquitos walk down the street, they have a radiant, self-assured quality to them. They know they are powerful and attractive, and this translates into skills of love, the end result being that they can, indeed, have any man.

Where the real power lies, though, is with—or, rather, within—themselves. Because of their belief in the pusanga, their own powers of attraction are increased. The manipulation of others, if it occurs at all, is through their self-confidence, their love of (rather than shame at) their own bodies, and their relaxed sexuality. They are happy and comfortable in their skins in a way many Westerners are not. With the spirit of the plants on their side, the women of Iquitos are able to be all that they naturally are, and their inner beauty can shine.

Pusanga, then, along with the oils of attraction, are completely natural forces that allow us to free our minds from the conditioning that says We cannot have, We are not worthy, We should feel guilt at having this, so we can find our spirit and achieve balance once again. The mystery of pusanga is the mystery of ourselves, and the magic it amplifies is our own.

This is a simple exercise, though you might find it revealing. Close your eyes and relax . . . and now, silently or out loud, ask yourself, Why can’t I have what I want?

Watch for any images that come up and listen for any words that pop into your mind. Whose words are they, whose voice is speaking, and what is it saying to you? Examine any information you receive, with the object of getting very clear on what you are being told to believe. The messages you received in the past may have been true for the messenger, but may not be true for you. When you examine them in the light of your own day, you can choose which of these beliefs are useful to you, and which are cluttering up your life and keeping you from having what you want.

While doing this exercise, one workshop participant, James, recalled an event from his early life when he was taken to visit his grandfather. It was the first and only time he met this man, and he’d forgotten all about it, but now he saw it all clearly again: the room, the look of his grandfather, the clothes he wore; and he remembered sitting on the old man’s knee before an open fire.

Grandfather’s words of advice to his grandson were these: “Be careful. It’s a dangerous world and there are plenty of people out to get you, so don’t make waves, don’t raise your head too high, and don’t ask for too much. That way you stay out of trouble.”

Consciously, James had forgotten all about this—but somewhere within him he had stored this advice and, unconsciously, he had been acting on it for most of his life. The fact that his grandfather had died soon afterward added force to the words: perhaps the old man was right and “they” had “got him” because he had asked for too much or revealed a great secret to his grandson.

James’s grandfather had raised thirteen children. He was born and died working class; his job was in a factory, working with asbestos, and asbestos poisoning finally killed him. Given his circumstances, everything he had told James probably had some basis in truth: it was a dangerous world. But that was also his truth, not James’s.

When James realized this and heard his grandfather’s voice again, he made his conditioning conscious and could then let it go.

Making pusanga begins with a plant walk. This is like the walks of attention you have taken earlier, in the sense that you relax and center yourself so that your walk is partly conducted in dream space, allowing you to slow down to the pace of nature. On this walk, however, you are not intending to hear the call of a particular plant. Your intention is to actively stalk the plants you will use in your mixture.

The doctrine of signatures is your guide. Pusanga plants all have signature characteristics. Those for love may have names that are meaningful, such as passionflower or honeysuckle. Their colors will be bright and attractive. The way they grow may be significant (ivy, for example, winds itself around other plants so the two intertwine and are drawn close together). Their archetypal qualities may also call to you. (Rose, for example, is nowadays practically synonymous with love, but other plants may have qualities you’d also like in your relationship or from your partner—fern is one of the oldest plants on the planet and signifies endurance and timelessness; oak is a symbol of wisdom; and so on.) Where the plants grow might also have meaning (two plants standing together in sunlight within an otherwise darkened forest may signify a bright future, for example), and so on. Look for plants that mean something to you and for the situation or desire you bring to your walk.

When you locate each plant, spend a little time with it, explaining your need and asking if the plant will offer a little of itself to you. (You don’t need to take the whole plant; a single leaf, a flower, or a piece of bark will do, as this contains the energy of the whole. Try to avoid taking roots if you can.)

If the answer you get is Yes, take a piece, and offer your thanks to the plant, and perhaps a gift of your own. In Haiti, coins are often left at the base of a tree whose leaves are picked; in North America, corn or tobacco may be a suitable gift. Be guided by your intuition.

What if the answer is No? Simply move on to the next plant. But also be aware that a No can be useful information too. Remember that nature has an affinity for human beings and wants to help you, as we saw in chapter 1; it will not deny you what is in your best interests. Remember also that pusanga is about you. If you receive a No from nature, therefore, it may serve to ask what, within you, wants to deny yourself this plant and the qualities it offers. Plants are capable of ESP, as we have seen, and it may be that nature is giving you the very thing you are really asking for: a No. If you feel this is the case, it will be useful to return to the preceding exercise before you continue your walk.

When you have the plants you want, take them home and put them in a clear bottle. If you intend to use the pusanga over a matter of days, you can fill the bottle with water. Water from “power places” is best—holy water from churches or water from a place of spiritual power, such as the Chalice Well at Glastonbury—but you can also use pure spring or mineral water. If you want to keep the pusanga for a while, it is better to use alcohol instead of water as this will preserve the plants. You can also add agua florida or perfumes to the mix, and again, consider the name of the perfume you choose. Names like Cachet suggest wealth and status, for example, while White Satin suggests romance, and Chanel is associated with love and luxury. In some Vodou mixes for love, Reve D’Or (golden dream) is specified for obvious reasons. Choose your perfume according to what you want to attract.

When you have done all this, sing your plant song into the bottle to create a deeper connection between you and the plants, then add your intention by blowing three blasts of tobacco smoke into the pusanga bottle. Salud (health), dinero (wealth), y amor (love) are the traditional prayer words used to empower a pusanga, but you can, of course, ask for anything you want.

As the final ritual before you use the pusanga, go out into a forest or park and find a tree that you feel drawn to in some way. Tip three drops of your pusanga at the foot of this tree, and with each drop say out loud the things you want to attract. When this is done you can use the pusanga on yourself and in ritual magic.

Pusanga is best stored in a fridge and will last longer that way. The plant material it contains will degrade over time, of course, but this is irrelevant to its magical effects and the mixture can still be used.

There is one other thing that is important when you use the pusanga: you must believe in its ability to work for you “without an atom of doubt.” You have a right to the things you have asked for and you can have anything you want. Nature is your ally in this.