Ayahuasca, shamanism, and curanderismo
in the Andes
Dr. STEVEN MIZRACH
in the Andes
Dr. STEVEN MIZRACH
Adjunct Professor, Anthropology, FIU
Introduction
The term ayahuasca comes from the
Quechua, meaning literally "the vine of souls,"
although it is also called "the visionary vine" or
the "vine of death." The folk term refers to the
botanical species of liana known as Banisteriopsis Caapi ,
which is also known as Yage among the Indians of Brazil. For
simple ease of writing, I will generally refer to it as Yage
throughout the paper. Yage is used in conjunction with
several other psychoactive compounds in Andean ceremony,
including tobacco, epena or yopo snuff (made from psychotria
viridis), and coca. It contains several neurally active
alkaloids, of which perhaps the most significant are the
beta-carbolines (MAO inhibitors), and the most important of
those being harmine and harmaline. When the caapi vine is
used (as it often is) in conjunction with another subspecies
of banisteriopsis, whose active compound is
dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the synergistic effect creates a
powerful psychedelic experience in the user. (Villoldo
1990.)
Due to the activity of Western
ethnobotanists, chemists, and anthropologists in the late
20th century, the Western world has become quite interested
in yage. William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg were convinced
it might hold the cure "junky" addiction to
"hard drugs" like heroin. (Burroughs 1963.)
Research scientists were so impressed with the plant's
ability to heighten mental sensitivity that they were sure
it conferred extrasensory perceptions, and dubbed it
telepathine. The experience that the Yage plant confers on
Western users is so similar to accounts of the Near-Death
Experience (NDE) (as noted by would-be shamans such as
Alberto Villoldo, Michael Harner, and Terrence McKenna) that
some are sure it's practically a gateway to the spirit
world. Many psychotherapists (like Claudio Naranjo) still
working on the somewhat verboten practice of using
psychedelics in therapy still experiment with Yage, claiming
that it produces the catharsis necessary for some dramatic
cures of alcoholism and neurosis. (Naranjo 1974.)
Yage is used throughout the Amazon,
particularly in Brazil and Colombia, in addition to Peru. In
this paper, I am of course focusing primarily on its usage
among indigenous Andean tribes such as the Cashinahua , and
particularly on its use in healing and divination rituals.
Much has already been written about the use of Yage in
Peruvian curanderismo , especially the sort of pseudo-New
Age-spiritual tourist cults that seem to have grown around
its use in urban areas. In this paper, I am trying to argue
three significant points that have not been paid much
attention to in the study of Peruvian shamanism. One, that
ayahuasca trance is often accompanied by a critical acoustic
component involving the use of rattles and whistles. Two,
that the shamanic trance may make use of the peculiar lines
that line the Peruvian sierra (the ceques ) which link
together its many sacred places (huacas.) Third, that yage
use is part of an important cosmological culture-complex
involving a fascinating ethnoastronomy on the part of its
users. And also that the way in which Yage healing is
performed has been changing in urban areas.
Shamanism, one of the perennial
fascinations of anthropology, may represent one of the most
archaic forms of religious consciousness on the planet.
Mircea Eliade calls it an "archaic technique of
ecstasy" and suggests that in most cultures, the shaman
serves multiple roles, the most important perhaps being his
mediation between the temporal and spiritual realms. (Eliade
1964.) R. Gordon Wasson thinks that American shamanism, and
perhaps other forms, derives from a Siberian-Altaic
circumpolar culture-complex that developed around Amanita
muscaria (Fly Agaric/Soma) mushroom use some 100,000 years
ago, and which spread with Asiatic migrants across the
Bering strait. (Wasson 1986.) In almost every culture, the
shaman is thought to be able in his visionary state to climb
the 'world pillar' of the 'world navel' (omphalos ) which
links the underworld, middle world, and the heavenly realm
of the Polestar. To some, the shaman is merely a
schizophrenic, psychotic individual indulged by other
members of his tribe; to New Age romantics, he is the figure
of the "wounded healer," a mystical guru par
excellence.
In Peru, I would argue, shamanism
primarily revolves around healing (curanderismo ) and that
today, it has Indian and mestizo practicioners (one of the
most famous in the lattery catgeory being Eduardo Calderon.)
Much, though not all, of the ceremony involves the use of
Yage, and today such rituals can be found in urban, montane,
and jungle areas. Not surprisingly, the content of Yage
visions in the Andean context is strongly influenced by the
cultural set and setting. Users of Yage frequently report
hallucinations of jaguars, the souls of the ancestors, and
out-of-body type experiences. It is important to realize
that the particular kind of Altered State of Consciousness
(ASC) created by Yage use is affected by other concomittants,
and thus researchers may not fully understand the Peruvian
shamanic experience without taking those into account.
However, we also need to look, to some degree, at what is
happening with Yage at a basic neurological level..
Background: preparation, physiology, context, cross-cultural effects
While many Andeans are familiar
with the preparation of Yage, it is commonly utilized in
ritual settings by vegetalistas , shamans who are known for
their specialization in ethnobotanical knowledge. (Luna
1986.) The typical procedure is to scrape the bark from the
woody vine and boil it in water, creating an intoxicating
tea. Other plant materials will then be added, resulting in
a unusually bitter concoction. Users drinking this tea
typically have extreme feelings of nausea and intestinal
discomfort, resulting in diahrrea and vomiting. For this
reason, yage is frequently known as the purgate (purge), and
users are strongly counselled to undergo a period of severe
fasting and abstinence prior to using the substance. The
plant contains a number of physiologically active chemicals
in addition to harmine, harmaline, and DMT, and these can
create other symptoms of physical discomfort, which makes
some people feel like they are dying - slowing of the pulse,
chills, numbness, and the blurring or fading of sensory
stimuli from the external world. (Lamb 1985.)
I emphasize this fact, because in
many of the cross-cultural studies of "Yage,"
harmine extract has been used without many of the allied
compounds found in the plant. Naranjo and other therapists
claim they do this for the benefit of patients, and
rightfully so, but it should be emphasized that for shamans
who take the "heroic dose" of Yage for their
initiations, this deathlike crisis is part and parcel of the
experience. The purgate is thought to remove toxic
substances from the body, and the crisis is thought to
liberate the shaman's soul to allow for "spirit
flight," and to be an important trial preparing him for
his work with the spiritual world. "Bad trips"
with Yage do occur, where the shaman is tormented by demonic
beings, attacked by serpents, or imprisoned underground, but
these are culturally rationalized and understood as part of
the experience. It is the shaman confronting what is thought
to be sorcery and freeing himself from attachments to his
previous life. Thus, when harmine is used in a Western
context, not only is the cultural rationale not present, but
the "total package" physiological experience is
not there either.
In the native context, Yage is
commonly used to divine the causes of illness and effect
cures. Anthropologists believe it is most commonly used in
the case of culture-bound syndromes (CBSes) (what are
sometimes clumsily called "psychosomatic illnesses"
by Western medicine), such as the condition of susto or soul
loss. However, sorcerers are also known to employ it in
witchcraft for the causing of illness as well, by summoning
"spirit darts" that will attack their enemies. It
is also used for divining the future and the whereabouts of
missing persons and things; for contacting and controlling
spirit beings; for the "spirit flight" of the
shaman; and for facilitating intergroup harmony and
sociability. Ethnographers report that the most common
elements of Yage visions are: 1) the feeling of separation
of the soul from the body, and taking flight 2) visions of
jaguars (interpreted as positive), and snakes and other
predatory animals (usually thought to be negative) 3) a
sense of contact with supernatural agencies (Andean demons
and divinities) 4) visions of distant cities and landscapes
(thought to be clairvoyance) and 5) detailed reenactments of
previous events (thought to be retrocognition.) (Villoldo
1990.)
Visual elements of the Yage trance
in the native context inevitably involve: brightly colored,
large snakes; jaguars, ocelots, and other jungle cats;
spirits of ancestors and others; large, falling trees; lakes,
often filled with alligators or other predators; and
villages and gardens of other Indians. These visions are
usually preceded initially by swirling, moving geometric
patterns, bright visual flashes (phosphenes), sensations and
sounds of rushing water, and sudden, descending darkness
that seems to swallow the individual. (Harner 1980.) These
share some commonalities with the hallucinogenic experiences
of shamans using psychedelics in other Native American
cultures. But in order to understand the "bottom
line" neurological effect of Yage, it's worthwhile to
look at the effects it causes in Westerners. Naranjo reports
that urban, elite Chileans using harmaline in a clinical,
experimental setting reported the following experiences:
feelings of being transformed into a "ball of energy"
and rushing rapidly through the sky; becoming a winged being
and flying; visions of Negroes or black people; religious (Catholic)
imagery; sensations of turning or swirling violently; and
malicious dwarves. (Naranjo 1974.)
Like the Indians, his Chilean
subjects reported seeing ferocious cats (usually tigers or
panthers), reptiles (not always snakes; usually, lizards or
dragons), predatory animals, deep lakes and abysses, and
previous events which had happened either to themselves or
close personal friends. Naranjo insists that any possible
"contamination" from suggestions or guidance on
the part of he and his aides was carefully controlled, so
perhaps we do have with Yage a certain cross-cultural
"rock bottom" experience involving disembodiment/soul
flight and visionary patterns. It's hard to tell; the
Chileans may have been familiar with Indian legends and
stories. Various researchers suggest the effects of
harmaline may be due to the presence of an indole ring which
is chemically very similar to serotonin, a naturally
produced neurotransmitter in the brain. The alkaloids in
Yage are isotropically close to those found in mescaline,
psilocybin, and lysergic acid diethlamide (LSD), and may
interact with the neurotransmitter inhibition system in the
brain. There is much evidence to believe that the "locks"
for psychedelic "keys" such as harmaline are
"built" into the brain, by close coevolution... as
Wasson suggests, mushroom use may be millennia old. (McKenna
1993.)
I consider it somewhat significant
that cross-culturally, Yage appears to cause the sensations
of near-death experience and 'soul flight.' There are
researchers who feel this is a particularly powerful
hallucination common to the use of many psychedelic
compounds, and it may be the basis for many cross-cultural
ideas and complexes in humanity's religious imagination,
such as the belief in a transcendent soul. This may be the
case; however, those who use the drug do not always report
heavenly palaces or hellish abysses. Many claim their
"soul flight" takes them to familiar locations
which are close-by, and that they navigate among landscapes
using recognizable landmarks. I am not here suggesting that
this constitutes a "real" or "objective"
Out-of-Body-Experience (OOBE), in any scientific, verifiable
sense. But the Indians certainly do believe that during this
"soul flight" they can view distant places and
find missing objects. Further, I will argue that even if
this is purely a symbolic, imaginal journey, shamans at
least use imagined elements of the Andean landscape and
cosmos to navigate on their "journeys." And that
it is thought to allow for interactions with the dead and
the spiritual realm that coexist with us. (For the Jivaro
Indians, indeed, these interactions are more real than our
earthly ones.).
Curanderismo: Urban ayahuasquero healing
In her work with urban healers in
Iquitos, Dobkin de Rios discovered that the majority of them
were cholos or mestizos who used Yage in their curing
sessions, usually with patients who were mestizos that
dwelled in urban slums. (De Rios 1972.) Usually, the healer
would take a circle of clients into the forests outside
Iquitos, and there administer the Yage to both himself and
the patient (he would work with each one individually.) A
careful pre-screening process would select out people the
healer thought were suffering from severe organic illness (they
would unashamedly refer such patients to biomedical
physicians in Iquitos) or psychosis. Usually, the healer
would choose to work with patients believed to be suffering
from what might be called Culture-Bound Syndromes -
illnesses understandable and 'treatable' within an Andean
cultural context. These included:
Susto: The condition of "soul
loss," whose symptoms often include alteration of
metabolism, nervous disorders, feelings of fear, and a loss
of appetite and energy. Yage is thought to help the healer
discover the whereabouts of the missing soul.
Dan~o: Dano is thought to occur
when someone harbors feelings of envy or vengeance toward a
person. The symptoms of Dano include hemorrhaging, muscular
pain, fatigue, suffocation, tumors, and consistent bad luck
(known as saladera. ) It is a magical illness, which may
have been caused by a Yage-using sorceror who has slipped
the person a noxious potion, or has thrown a chonta or evil
magic thorn. Thus it requires magical treatment.
Pulsario: Pulsario is sometimes
described as a ball at the top of the stomach which blocks
ordinary digestion. Mainly diagnosed in women, pulsario's
symptoms include restlessness, hyperactivity, anxiety, and
irritability. The healer often proclaims this ball to be
crystallized (repressed) pain, sorrow, or anger, thus
requiring Yage divination to find the proximate emotional
cause.
Mal de Ojo: The symptoms of the
"evil eye" were varied, but included such
manifestations as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, weight
loss, insomnia, and depression. It can result from an
improper glance from a person, which is not always
maliciously intended. Mothers often seek to protect their
children from the evil eye through amulets or tobacco smoke.
A healer is thought to be able to discover who cast the
glance.
As a form of magical healing, the
action of a ayahuasquero is thought traditionally not only
to discover the sorceror, spirit, or other being of ill will
who caused the illness, but also to expel the bad sorcery
and return it to that person. The shaman attempts to locate
the sorceror's tsentsak or spirit darts within the body of
the victim (these are then removed in the form of needles or
other objects "sucked" out of the patient) and
return them to their conjuror. What has happened is that in
the urban setting these beliefs have been moralized (Christianized)
and naturalized. (Chaumeil 1992.) The mestizo healer usually
tries to locate the source of the suffering of the patient
in some kind of moral or interpersonal transgression on the
part of the urban dweller, and thus in divination discloses
to the client what acts of prayer, penitence, restitution,
and apology are necessary for a complete cure. This will
often also be accompanied by some type of physical regimen,
including recommended changes in diet; hydrotherapy,
herbalism, or similar naturopathic 'treatments'; and even
recourse to Western biomedicine. (Joralemon 1993.)
The curandero's clients often
consult him because they either do not trust, cannot afford,
or have had no successes with Western medicine. This may be
due to the presence of such culture-bound illnesses. Thus,
it can be seen that the urban healer works as a sort of
psychotherapist and social worker as well. Urban dwellers in
Iquitos often face severe stresses in their lives (prominently,
annual flooding of their homes, nonexistent sanitation, and
lack of steady employment) which often leads to sharp
intra-familial conflict. In locating the sources of their
illnesses in conflicts that they must resolve, de Rios
suggests the healer is not all that different from a
psychoanalyst 'uncovering' repressed memories and trauma.
However, unlike Western psychoanalysis, transference occurs
from the healer to the client, as the client must recover
through internalizing the healer's vision of what steps are
necessary for recovering spiritual 'balance' and health.
This may be a novel use of Yage, different from its original
usages in aboriginal Andean shamanism; but it is not
altogether dissimilar from the way Western therapists are
using harmaline and other psychoactive substances in
treating their patients today..
The acoustic component: the "Whistling Bottles"
In a short article published in
1971, "Hallucinogenic Music," Marlene Dobkin de
Rios and Fred Katz attempt to argue that there is an
important acoustical component to the Yage ceremony. (Katz
and de Rios 1971.) Certainly, others had noted the shaman's
use of a schacapa or rattle to mark important points in the
ceremony. And other ethnographers have noted that in other
cultures, the use of drums or other percussive instruments
is part and parcel of the ceremony, creating conditions of
"sonic driving" which may help entrain brainwaves.
But de Rios points out that one of the most important parts
of the Yage folk music performed by the shaman was whistling
- the use of certain precise tones at different parts of the
ceremony. What significance did this have? She mentions the
ancient Pythagorean belief of musical effects on
consciousness, with musical progressions linked to states of
mind, and the synaesthetic experience that some hallucinogen
users report between musical tones and color perceptions or
emotional experiences. And admits that even today, knowledge
of psychoacoustics (the neurological effects of music on the
brain) is in its infancy.
So while it could purely be a
cultural component - i.e. the melody creates certain folk
associations on the part of the listener, providing content
for the visionary experience - she questions whether a more
direct effect might not be involved. The shaman would
whistle, she noted, to help bring a 'client' out of a 'bad
trip' or negative experience, or to assist the person with
some transitional point in the psychedelic visions. Certain
tonic progressions would coincide precisely with these
transitions. She suggests, "...the preponderance of the
tone G could be viewed as the dominant tone away from the
tonic C. Perhaps this contrastive situation potentiates the
activation of the ayahuasca alkaloids..." De Rios seems
to suggest that mostly oral (i.e. non-instrumentally
augmented) whistling was involved in the ceremonies she saw,
but this may not be universally the case. And this musical
component of the ceremony (the need to generate specific
whistling tones) may provide the clue to some mysterious
Moche artefacts - the so-called "whistling bottles."
-Columbian peoples living along the coast of Peru between
500 BCE and up until the Spanish Conquest. They were made
primarily by the Moche craftsmen, but can also be found in
Chimu and other cultures. The vessels are generally
dual-chambered: one chamber is the "inside" of
some type of effigy figure, and the other chamber contains a
spout. The two chambers are linked on the exterior by a
bridge handle which contains a whistling cavity, and an
inner cavity. Most archaeologists assume they are drinking
vessels, with their whistle being used as "an amusing
vent to facilitate the passage of air when pouring and
filling with liquid." However, there is some reason to
believe that these curious artefacts were used for more than
just imbibing beverages. Daniel Statnekov, an amateur
collector, reported that when he blew into one of these
whistling vessels, it generated an eerie, high-pitched tone,
and he had a sudden feeling of perceiving himself as a
moving luminescence rushing rapidly through space, before he
confronted an inky black cloud that chilled him "like
death" and suddenly forced him to snap out of his
vision. He had not used any drug prior to this experience -
but it was extraordinarily similar to that reported by yage
users! (Statnekov 1987.)
Statnekov set out to prove
scientifically that these "whistling bottles" were
not used primarily for drinking. He and acoustic physicist
Steven Garrett tested about seventy of the bottles, from
different cultures and time periods, using the following
analysis: pressurized air was sent through the bottles in an
anechoic chamber, and the resulting sound passed through a
spectrum analyzer. Often as many as seven partials,
harmonics of the fundamental frequency, could be detected.
They found that the average frequency of the Moche/Huari
bottles was around 1320 Hz, whereas the Chimu/Chancay
bottles averaged a tone of about 2670 Hz. The earlier
cultures tended to produce "enclosed-type,"
dual-tone low-frequency whistles, where the second tone
could be achieved by halving the blowing pressure, creating
a tone about 0.65 of the original frequency. They concluded,
"The frequencies of a bottle produced by a specific set
of cultures tend on average to be within +/- 14% of the
average frequency. On the basis of the small octave range...
we are reasonably sure they were not used as musical
instruments... however, the clustering of frequencies... in
the range of the ear's greatest sensitivity... and the high
sound levels produced by the whistles when blown orally...
suggest they were produced as whistles..." (Garrett and
Statnekov 1987.)
So, they're not used as musical
instruments, and people very likely didn't hear very much
when drinking from them, so they probably weren't useful as
ritual beverage containers either. What were they? I suspect
Statnekov's experience holds the key. The whistling bottles
may have peculiar psychoacoustic effects on their own when
blown orally. But more likely, as Dobkin de Rios suggested,
such whistles may have been used to potentiate and
synergistically amplify the Yage experience. They may have
been used by Moche shamans to generate the specific tonal
sequences thought to be necessary for guiding the Yage
'trip.' After the conquest, shamans may have resorted to
purely oral, non-amplified or instrumentalized whistling as
an alternative, which is why de Rios didn't find such things
in use among her subjects. However, the manufacture of such
vessels may not have stopped with the Spanish Conquest; I
suspect careful examination by ethnographers may turn up
their continued use in Yage ceremonies in the Andes today.
Their effects on consciousness require some more
psychophysical study..
The Mystery Lines: shamanism and ceques
For a long time, anthropologists
have pondered the mysteries of the ceques or lines which
cross the Andean sierra. Many originally thought them to be
paths or roads for trade and travel. This seems unlikely,
however, as many of them are extremely narrow (about 2 cm in
width), and they tend to terminate in rather undesirable
destinations, such as cliffs and chasms, rather than other
villages. The ceques which surround Cuzco are thought to
radiate out from the capital, symbolizing the extent of the
Inca "Sun King's" power. Ethnographers have found
that other ceques are used to demarcate the boundaries of
different ayllus ' territory, representing the extent of
their authority as well. It is quite apparent that the
ceques definitely link the many huacas (sacred spots) of the
countryside, where pilgrims will often leave stones and
other offerings for the resident divinities. And that some
ceques have an ethnoastronomical significance, terminating
at a point on the horizon where the setting or rising of a
particular celestial body can be observed on a specific day
of the year. (Hadingham 1988.)
But what about that other mystery
of the Andes, the Nazca markings? While much ink has been
spilt over discussion of the enormous landscape figures
found on the Nazca plain, representing flora and fauna that
are visible only from high above the ground, few have
mentioned the network of lines that cross the figures. These
lines cross them somewhat haphazardly, almost as if to
suggest they preceded the figures. In any case, they are
definitely too narrow to be spaceship runways, so what are
they? Maria Reiche and Paul Kosok provided an initial
suggestion when they claimed to have found significant lunar,
solar, and stellar alignments. However, when Gerald S.
Hawkins rechecked their work, he found little of verifiable
significance. (Hawkins 1973.) I suspect that Anthony Aveni
may provide a better idea when he suggests that the lines
may be "a ritual writ large." Many of the lines
originated from Cahuachi, a prominent Nazca ceremonial
centre. (Aveni and Silverman, 1991.)
Aveni found that many of the Nazca
lines paralleled water concourses, and that they terminated
on the promontories of mountaintops from which water would
flow following seasonal downpours. However, they are not
irrigation channels. Rather, they serve a ceremonial and
symbolic function. Aveni found that even today many people
perform ceremonies at endpoints of the lines for the
purposes of summoning water. And he found a link with the
ceques; Aveni also observed that many ayllus would place
sacred offerings in streams that bent alongside ceques in
order to maintain the flow of the water. Aveni points out,
"...the ceques were more than mundane property
boundaries, since water was a gift of ancestors residing in
the underworld... the geometric connection we found between
the lines and water, together with the analogy of the ceques,
suggests the lines may have played some part in ceremonies
designed to summon water from its sources underground or
high in the mountains." But Aveni doesn't suggest what
kind of ceremonies these were. And what does this all have
to do with Yage and shamanism?
Two authors, Paul Devereux and Tony
Morrison, may hold the key. Devereux originally studied a
similar system of lines (he called them leys ) crisscrossing
the British countryside. He found the leys would often
connect sacred spots such as stone crosses, megaliths,
churches built atop earlier Celtic holy places, holy wells,
and landscape figures. Further, the leys (called the "old
straight track" by Alfred Watkins) would often parallel
underground streams and end at points where one could find
blind springs. Devereux was fascinating by myths which told
of Druids who would fly following the leys in stone
chariots. British legends tell of spirits that walk the
lines on saints' days, and how dowsers use them to find
underground water. He became convinced that these stories of
aerial travel were not literally true, but might have been
describing the use of the ley lines for the sort of 'spirit
flight' found in indigenous American shamanism. Devereux
travelled to South America, and discovered that there were
stories there also of how shamans would use the ceques to
navigate using their 'spirit body.' (Devereux 1994.)
Morrison observes that in the
Andes, the dead are also thought to walk on the ceques
during certain days. (Morrison 1978.) It hit me like a
thunderbolt. Two of the functions that the Andean shaman
uses Yage, "the vine of souls," for are to contact
the dead and to divine the location of water. The ancestors'
spirits residing within the huacas are thought to guard
underground water. Perhaps one of the "ceremonial"
uses of the lines are for the shaman to travel during his
"spirit journey," guiding him like a magnet to the
places of the dead where he can bargain for water. Indeed,
during their "soul flights," shamans typically
report that they are "guided" on their journey by
"spirit paths" that lead them to the appropriate
destination. One of the ayllus' main responsibilities are
water rights, and they maintain this role through their link
to the ancestors who guard the water for their descendants.
(Lamadrid 1993.) This may not be a (meta)physical journey,
per se, but the shaman at least uses the lines as a symbolic,
imaginal path for the journey to the places of the dead.
Certainly this does not solve all
the riddles of the ceques. On the Nazca pampa, the Indians
still quite physically travel the lines from huaca to huaca,
leaving offerings on a "round" or circuit of
visits which seems to be timed coincidentally with important
seasonal periods (esp. climactic changes, such as the onset
of heavy rainfall.) While Morrison at first argues that
Reiche and Kosok were wrong about their
"Stonehenge-type clock/computer" hypothesis for
the Nazca markings, he later admits weakly that the Great
Rectangle's eastern extremity apparently did align with the
setting of the Pleiades around 525 AD, during the Nazca
period, and that some other lunar alignments may be present.
(Ibid., 1978.) He leaves the possibility open that the
timing of the visits to places along the ceques may have
been based on important points during the year marked by the
setting or rising of the sun, moon, or other stellar bodies,
now culturally remembered as saints' days or the mortuary
dates of key ancestors. Which of course leads us on our next
'journey,' if you will, into ethnoastronomy..
The cosmological component: the Milky Way as road of souls
Morrison admits that Aymara
star-lore was "extensive," and that they
worshipped the moon, noting its complex 18-year cycle. The
quipus , he notes, might have been used to record
astronomical data. The Indians' words for "east"
and "west" were derived from positions of the sun,
they were able to fix the solstices through watching the sun
over key geographic points, and east was a key ceremonial
direction toward which many monuments were faced. The
evening star (Venus, Ururi in Aymara and Quechua) was
thought to be particularly important. While Andean
ethnoastronomy might not have been sophisticated as that of
the Maya, they still had made significant calendrical and
other achievements. He suggests that Aymara and Quechua
people had similar beliefs concerning constellations and
asterisms such as the Pleiades and the Magellanic Clouds.
Perhaps most importantly, they both referred to the Milky
Way as the "way of Santiago" (St. James), a
Christianization which coverred up its earlier names - the
"river of stars," "the road of souls,"
or the "way to infinity..." (Ibid., 1978.)
As I suggested earlier, in many
cultures' shamanic traditions of tripartite cosmology, one
place the shaman journeys during 'spirit flight' is into the
underworld (the nagual in the Andes) to commune with spirits,
find water, and locate lost souls. However, he is also
thought to be able to climb the "world tree" into
the sky. In many societies in the northern hemisphere, the
"world tree" (also often thought to be a mountain
or mill) is believed to stretch from the "world
navel" to the Pole Star, the one body in the heavens
around which all the others spin in deference. Santillana
feels that many ancient peoples were aware of the precession
of the equinoxes, which causes the Earth's axis to point
toward a different pole star every two millennia or so. They
would represent the "falling" of the pole star
below the horizon (and its eventual replacement by another
star - even faithful Polaris will give up his throne
eventually) as a cosmic flood or cataclysm. Their shamans
would need to find new routes to climb up into the heavens.
(Santillana 1969.)
However, in the southern hemisphere,
the Pole Star is hardly that prominent, and hangs in a
somewhat low position on the horizon - hardly as spectacular
as it might be for someone living in, say, the Arctic.
Indeed, in the native ethnoastronomy, it's hardly mentioned
at all. However, the Milky Way is quite visible, and it arcs
brilliantly across the vault of the southern sky. We might
expect the Milky Way to be an alternate route for the shaman
seeking to climb the sky. And indeed it is - to reach the
celestial spirits (as opposed to those that live in the
underworld), Jivaro and other South American shamans claim
that they climb the Milky Way. They are explicit about the
use of yage in doing so. In their visions, the "vine of
souls" stretches out to become a milky serpent,
becoming the Milky Way, "the road of souls" which
they use as a rope to climb into the heavens. But are such
beliefs found among the indigenous peoples of the Andes?<
Schultes reports that indigenous
shamans using Yage in the Andes claim to feel a
"rushing wind" pushing upwards which then they
realizes is the torrent of "water" forcing them up
the Milky Way. (Schultes 1992.) After ascending the Milky
Way, they are then able to talk with those ancestors who
were also able to ascend to the "celestial
Paradise." As a mortal, however, the shaman cannot
remain, but while in his 'spirit body' he may ask questions
of the heavenly beings, who may know antidotes for sorcery
he has not otherwise been able to counteract. There seems to
be the mythic belief that rainbows and the Milky Way are
diurnally related phenomena. A shaman trapped in the
underworld may not be able to return unless he can find the
"rope" of the Milky Way. So it seems somewhat
clear that this ethnoastronomical understanding is an
important component of the visionary experience of using
Yage in the Andes..
Conclusion
It is clear that Yage works
cross-culturally because it has evident biochemical effects
on the brain. It does effect healing for indigenous and
mestizo people in the Andes, and may be useful in this way
for Westerners as well. However, anthropologists wishing to
study Yage or even recommend it as a panacea for ills in
their own societies have perhaps once again been suffering
from one of their common delusional maladies: failure to
note complete context. Yage may work for people in the West,
and it may well lead to positive experiences. However,
Westerners using Yage not only fail to create the Andean
"set and setting" in which Yage is used; they also
lack the important concomitants for the experience of the
drug - consensual understandings of the nature of health and
illness; acoustic accompaniments; symbolic connections to
alignments in the natural landscape; and cultural
conceptions of the cosmos. Perhaps only the second variable
can easily be remedied; certainly the technology for
generating precise sonic tones exists today, and is even
used already in so-called "mind machines."
And, as I noted earlier, the
problem is further compounded by Western insistence on using
chemical extracts rather than natural plants. This may
reduce side-effects, but also results in different
physiological results. It is like the difference between
coca and cocaine. This is not to say that therapists like
Naranjo might not be able to obtain beneficial results. But
certainly administering one isolate compound, harmaline,
from the plant, in a clinical medical setting, is likely to
produce ones radically different from those seen in a
"native" Andean context. The fact that there are
similarities at all raises interesting questions, for which
we have no answers. Why should Westerners also see cats and
reptiles? It might be the Jungian archetypes, or the fact
that these were predators with which the early
hallucinogenic-discovering Cro-Magnons had to deal with. Who
knows? I would repeat that the facts that both "control
groups" make reference to sensations of dying and 'soul
flight' are significant.
The fact that harmaline and DMT
create such powerful religious feelings in people
cross-culturally is likely not to be coincidental. In
dealing with these substances, we may be on the verge of
obtaining fundamental insights about the biological-chemical
nature of consciousness. It is clear that they and other
hallucinogens do not merely cause temporary 'psychoses' in
people or 'mere hallucinations' (in the traditional
unreflective sense of "things that aren't there and
should be ignored") but instead work with existing,
adaptive, well-evolved mechanisms in the brain for
generating ASCs. The Andean shaman is not a maladjusted,
indulged individual, but instead one who uses Yage to allow
him to fulfill the multiple responsibilities to the
community that his role requires. We will not understand
fully how Yage is used in the Andes, or what human
potentialities it might unlock in other contexts, unless
researchers are allowed to experiment with the drug in their
own laboratories and cultural settings. Due to the abuse of
hallucinogens in most Western countries, mainly stemming
from the lack of a cultural/ritual tradition of controlled
use, overreaching legal structures prevent such
experimentation. But progress will not be made unless such
barriers to researchers are removed..
Thanks to Dr Steven Mizrach for his kindness to let me publish this article for my project on the N.D.E (near death experience) and Shamanism.
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The MindWarp
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