FOOTNOTES

Foreword

a Pablo Amaringo was born in 1943 in Puerto Libertad, in the Peruvian Amazon. He was ten years old when he first took ayahuasca—a visionary brew used in shamanism—to help him overcome a severe heart disease. The magical cure of this ailment via the healing plants led Pablo toward the life of a shaman.

b A vegetalismo is a shamanic healer who works primarily with plants.

c La purga is another name for ayahuasca. It is given this name because of its powerful purging qualities, which are seen as a beneficial means of physical and spiritual cleansing.

Preface

a In this tradition, guilt is regarded as a message from the soul that the patient has done something out of keeping with his or her own soul mission. Shame, meanwhile, is the imposition from others of their own guilt onto the patient.

Introduction

a Of passing interest here is that the word paradise actually stems from the Indo-European, pairidaçza, meaning “a wall enclosing a garden or orchard.” Xenophon, a Greek mercenary who spent time in the Persian army and later wrote histories and memoirs, uses the word paradeisos, but in his descriptions it denotes, not a wall, but the huge parks that Persian nobles loved to build and hunt in. It is Xenophon’s word that is used in the Septuagint translation of Genesis to refer to the Garden of Eden, and from where Old English eventually borrowed it around 1200 C.E. And that is how a wall became a garden!

b For a novelist’s interpretation of this anthropological evidence, see Daniel Quin, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (Bantam, 1995).

c As to whether plants can speak or not, see chapter 1 and make up your own mind.

Chapter 1. Nothing Is Hidden: How Plants Heal

a “Attractive”—that is, has the power to attract.

b NOTE: Do not, however, use sage to reduce sweating in fevers.

c These figures refer to prescriptions in the West.

d Lliptia is a strong-tasting “gum” made by burning the roots of the quinoa plant to produce a substance that is extremely alkaline. When chewed with coca it helps to break down the leaves and activate their alkaloids. A similar substance, called kale (or “lime” in Spanish), is produced by heating limestone.

e In Peru, the mother spirit of a plant is the soul of its species. Each plant, each leaf of coca, for example, contains its own soul, but it is the combined energy or essence of these leaves that forms the mother.

f The ñawi or naira are the Andean equivalent of chakras.

g A curandera is an Andean healer. Curandero = male; curandera = female.

h A brujo is a sorcerer who harms through negative energy, often on behalf of a client.

p An Andean form of cursing.

i A floripondio is a shaman who works with flowers.

j That is, there is nothing to say; the plants dictate what to do, or do the work for the healer.

k Meaning, people have rejected religion and lost touch with spirituality in the process.

l Santeria is a form of Vodou arising from African slave beliefs, mixed with the beliefs of the Catholic slaveholders and the Cardec spiritualist movement that became popular in America in the 1800s. It is most associated with Cuba and, nowadays, with areas of mainland America, such as Florida, that have a sizeable Hispanic population.

m For more information on Ifá divination, see Ross Heaven, Spirit in the City (Transworld/ Bantam Books, 2002). See also Ócha’ni Lele’s books on Afro-Cuban divination, The Diloggún, The Secrets of Afro-Cuban Divination, and Obi: Oracle of Cuban Santería, all published by Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont.

n Mojo bags are also known by other names, including “lucky hand,” “trick” (or “root”) bag, and gris-gris—from the African word gree-gree, meaning “charm” or “fetish.”

o Kleren is single-distilled cane sugar rum.

Chapter 2. The Shaman’s Diet: Listening to the Plants

a Jung himself, however—ironically, the pioneer of the concept of archetypes and the collective unconscious—thought differently than the psychologists who interpret his work. In his Mysterium Conjunctionis he writes, for example, “It may well be a prejudice to restrict the psyche to being ‘inside the body’. In so far as the psyche has a nonspatial aspect, there may be a psyche outside the body region so utterly different from ‘my’ psychic sphere that one has to get out of oneself … to get there.”

b The length of time for this maceration will depend on factors such as ambient heat and exposure to sunlight, and so forth. In a sunny climate 8–10 days should be fine; in a cooler climate, three weeks or more is recommended.

Chapter 3. Plants of Vision: Sacred Hallucinogens

a The Shipibo word kamarampi actually means “purging medicine.”

b Dominio is the linking of intent to the power of the plants.

c Seguros are amulet bottles filled with perfume, plants, and seeds gathered from Las Huaringas.

d To purge is, literally, to vomit. However, it also implies the removal from the body of spiritual and physical toxins, and is regarded in Peru as a highly beneficial form of healing.

e Enchantment in this context means protection and positive energy.

f Chontas are bamboo staffs used as healing tools to lightly beat or stroke a patient in order to scrape negativity off him.

g Agua florida, known as flourishing water in Peru, is a form of perfume containing healing spirits. In Haiti and some parts of the United States it is known as Florida Water.

h To read is to psychically diagnose a patient’s problems by seeing her past, present, or future.

i There is more information on Gran Bwa and Haitian healing in Vodou Shaman by Ross Heaven (Destiny Books, 2003).

Chapter 4. Healing the Soul

a Sin-eating philosophy, again, is in many ways consistent with the Haitian experience. Maya Deren writes, for example, that therapeutic actions may be “executed by the priest but must be carried out, in major portion, by the patient himself under guidance of the priest. The patient must himself straighten out his difficulties with the loa. [Loa is another spelling of the Haitian word Lwa: spirits]… In other words, the patient treats himself, and this is another boost to his morale. Almost inevitably, no matter how ill the person is, he must take part in the rituals relating to his treatment.”8

b We have a vague memory in the West of the connection between spirit and flowers in our practice of laying bouquets and wreaths on graves or at the scene of accidents where someone has died. On a symbolic level, we are also negotiating for the release of the soul and making our offering in lieu to the spirit of the place.

c This may also be the origin of the practice of swaddling babies, traditional people recognizing that the soul of a baby is less attached to its physical body and needs to be held in place until the child has “grown into itself” and become established in its body.

d An interesting connection of this belief to recent research is in the fact that about 65 percent of the cells in the heart are neural cells. According to Stephen Harrod Buhner in The Secret Teaching of Plants, “They are the same kind as those in the brain and they function in exactly the same way… they also have direct connections to a number of areas of the brain, and produce an unmediated exchange of information with the brain.” In other words, we sense and understand the world with our hearts and emotions as well as (and, in fact, before) rationalizing it with our minds.

Chapter 5. Pusangas and Perfumes: Aromas for Love and Wholeness

a This ancient classic, translated by Ilza Veith, is available in a new (2002) edition from the University of California Press.

b Canticos are chants, similar to icaros.

c Amazonian plants used in perfumes.

d Flourishing is a term often used in Amazonian and Andean plant medicine. Translated, it means something like ‘growing in luck and success’ through the attraction of good fortune; as a plant will flourish in good soil and sunlight.

e In the Amazon, this is the sign of an upper-class woman who can afford to grow her nails because she doesn’t need to work.

f See The Spiritual Practices of the Ninja: Four Gates To Freedom by Ross Heaven (Inner Traditions, 2006) for a discussion of prebirth experiences and how they contribute to our self-limitations, based on a model developed by Ross and Howard. Also see Darkness Visible by Ross Heaven (Inner Traditions, 2005) for a study of mystical states that presents a somewhat similar conclusion.

g Agua florida is a “general purpose” perfume suitable for men and women to use. For pusangas made specifically for a woman, however, and especially for “matters of the heart,” the fragrance Tabu is often used instead.

h To soplada is to blow intention into a plant, person, or object. This may be done with the breath or, more often, with tobacco smoke.

i Also see chapter 2, on the shaman’s diet.

j Renaco is a fig tree that produces masses of complex intertwined branches and roots and various root cuttings might be used in a renaco pusanga to inextricably entangle the lovers. This, again, is an example of the doctrine of signatures: that which naturally intertwines and entangles can transfer this power to others. Another quality of the renaco is that animals from many different species live in its complex root system, all drawn to it because of the protection it offers. No matter what their usual relationships, one to another, all of these animals call the renaco “home” and live in peace there with each other. This is also a “pusanga” connection.

Chapter 6. Floral Baths: Bathing in Nature’s Riches

a In this bath, for removing the spirit of nightmare, the key ingredients are rose petals, hollyhock, rosemary, and marigold.

b For a discussion of how this relates to shamanism, see Ross Heaven, The Journey to You (Bantam Press, 2001), and Vodou Shaman (Inner Traditions, 2003).

c There is also a correspondence to the “phantom limb” sensation reported by people who have lost arms or legs in accidents but still experience the limb as present, when, clearly, there should be no sensation at all unless they are experiencing something beyond the physical. For more on this, see Shelia Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, Prentice Hall, 1984.

d See Ross Heaven, Spirit in the City, for further discussion of this.

k A houngan is a shaman priest and healer in the Vodou tradition.

e Even these four dimensions may be questionable as they stand. Time, for example, is a human construct, because all we really observe in nature is change. Time, like aging, is a relative term that we apply to this change.

f That is, be taken away completely.

g Literally, “breaking leaves.”

h Several of these songs again make a connection between plants and serpents, a relationship that also exists in the Amazon, where ayahuasca is believed to be born from a snake. This is true even though ayahuasca is unknown and unused in Haiti. One medicine song, for example, has the following words: “Fey, koulev o, fey! Fey o, koulev, fey! M pral benyen ti moun yo!” This translates as: “Leaves, serpent, oh, leaves! Leaves, oh serpent, leaves! I am going to bathe the children!”

i Literally, a werewolf.

j This is a form of “rebirthing,” in fact; an ultimate healing or blessing, where the bather “disappears” in the mud and is then reborn as spiritually and physically clean when the mud is washed off.

Chapter 7. The Scream of the Mandrake

a Encouragingly, though—perhaps even ironically—the increasing interest in traditional plant medicines by Westerners, such as those we take on our Amazonian retreats (see the About the Authors page), is now helping to revive the interest of younger Peruvians in their own traditions. Our friend the shaman Artidoro remarks, for example, that “When our children see Westerners coming here and wanting to learn about our plants and medicines, they think, ‘Maybe there is something in this after all,’ and they ask their elders to teach them about the plants.”

b That is, not including Scotland, Wales, or Ireland.

c Altered, in this sense, means free of the everyday trance we are all socialized into and which has become our habit.

d It is, of course, advisable that you double-check all herbal prescriptions in an encyclopedia and especially that you discuss any contraindications with your patient, who should also take advice from a doctor before any new treatment is started.