 |
|
Order
"Underground- The Disinformation Guide to Ancient Civlizations, Astonishing
Archeology and Hidden History" Edited by DrugWar.com editor Preston Peet-
On Book Store Shelves Now!
Contributors Graham Hancock, Colin Wilson, Robert Schoch, Archaya S., John Anthony
West, William Corliss, David Hatcher Childress, Michael Cremo, Frank Joseph,
and many more discuss a huge variety of theories about humanity's ancient, hoary
past and the enigmatic remains our ancestors left behind. Order your copies
today!
Order
"Under the Influence- the Disinformation Guide to Drugs" by DrugWar.com
editor Preston Peet- On Bookstore Shelves
Heroin
is "Good for Your Health": Occupation Forces support Afghan Narcotics Trade
(May 10, 2007)
"The occupation forces in Afghanistan are supporting the drug trade, which
brings between 120 and 194 billion dollars of revenues to organized crime, intelligence
agencies and Western financial institutions."
U.S.,
allies seen as losing drug war (May 7, 2007)
"The United States and its Latin American allies are losing a major battle
in the war on drugs, according to indicators that show cocaine prices dipped
for most of 2006 and U.S. users were getting more bang for their buck."
101-year-old
Zambian man nabbed over cannabis cultivation, trafficking (May 3, 2007)
"DEC spokesperson Rosten Chulu confirmed the arrest of Timothy Chilekwa,
a peasant farmer of Namembo village in Southern province who was born in 1906.
Chulu said the old man was nabbed for alleged unlawful cultivation of cannabis
weighing 1.2 tons. He was also found trafficking two sacks of cannabis weighing
6. 95 kg, Chulu said. The spokesperson said the 101-year-old would appear in
court soon."
Was
Timothy Leary Right? (May 3, 2007)
"Are psychedelics good for you? It's such a hippie relic of a question
that it's almost embarrassing to ask. But a quiet psychedelic renaissance is
beginning at the highest levels of American science, including the National
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Harvard, which is conducting what is thought
to be its first research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics (in this case,
Ecstasy) since the university fired Timothy Leary in 1963. But should we be
prying open the doors of perception again? Wasn't the whole thing a disaster
the first time? The answer to both questions is yes."
The
Farce of the War on Drugs (May 1, 2007)
"My brother Howard Wooldridge served as a decorated police officer and
detective in Lansing, Michigan for 18 years. During that time, he collared killers,
drunk drivers, child molesters, rapists, wife beaters and drug dealers. What
he learned launched him on a crusade to stop the federal government’s useless
35 year 'War on Drugs.'"
Coca
Growers Shake the Andes Once Again (April 27, 2007)
"During the last few days, coca growers, especially in Peru and Colombia,
have been in the news again, as their actions have given the media something
to talk about."
LSD as Therapy?
Write about It, Get Barred from US (April 27, 2007)
"BC psychotherapist denied entry after border guard googled his work."
No
Jail for Willie Nelson on Drug Charge (April 25, 2007)
While the editor of DrugWar.com applauds this decision by the judge, I can't
help but wonder how hard the judge would have thrown the book at me for the
exact same offense.
The
War on Salvia Divinorum Heats Up (April 14, 2007)
"Middlebury, Vermont, this week declared a public health emergency to prevent
a local business from selling it. It's already illegal in five states -- Louisiana,
Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Delaware -- and a number of towns and cities
across the country, and now politicians in at least seven other states have
filed bills to make it illegal there. For the DEA, it is a 'drug of concern.'"
Book
Offer: Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics (April 14, 2007)
"Normally when we publish a book review in our Drug War Chronicle newsletter,
it gets readers but is not among the top stories visited on the site. Recently
we saw a big exception to that rule when more than 2,700 of you read our review
of the new book Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis
of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy."
Plant
growers served search warrant (April 11, 2007)
"Three WSU students were surprised when a plant they were growing in their
closet was mistaken for marijuana."
California
in bid to impose 7.25% sales tax on cannabis (April 10, 2007)
"For decades, smoking marijuana has been an illicit affair, a key anti-establishment
ritual for America's counter-culture underground. But the legalisation of the
drug for medicinal purposes in California has presented its advocates with a
dilemma: to remain firmly on the wrong side of the law or accept a demand to
pay taxes on its sale."
The
Other War: Democratic Candidates are Deafeningly Silent on the Drug War
(April 9, 2007)
"There is a major disconnect in the 2008 Democratic race for the White
House. While all the top candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote,
they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting those
constituencies: the failed War on Drugs, a war that has morphed into a war on
people of color."
Ex-officer
likens drug war to Prohibition (April 8, 2007)
"Retired police officer Peter Christ on Tuesday compared the contemporary
war on drugs to National Prohibition of the 1920s."
Minnesota
drug laws: Are they too harsh? (April 8, 2007)
Momentum gathers for review of sentencing rules
Drug
Czar Blasted for Lack of Leadership (April 8, 2007)
"During the course of research for this series, it became apparent that
many prominent players in the war on drugs don't have many compliments for the
current drug czar, John Walters."
Is
the Drug War Nearing an End? (April 8, 2007)
"Little by little by little there is some hope that the "war" on drugs
is becoming a political issue - the first step in undoing a set of policies
that make little sense no matter how you look at them."
Law
Enforcement Group Visits Maine To Advocate For Legalization Of Drugs (April
8, 2007)
"LEAP, or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, says it has 5,000 members,
made up mostly of retired and active law enforcement professionals. The group
tours the country speaking to various civic groups about what they call a $60
billion failed war on drugs."
Afghans
pin hopes on a new economy (April 8, 2007)
"As a competitive economy awakens in one of the world's poorest countries,
the residents of Kabul are jockeying to get ahead in a city flush with cash
from US soldiers, foreign aid workers, new investors, parliamentarians, and
drug traffickers."
Salvadoran
Murders in Guatemala (April 8, 2007)
"If the trip to Guatemala was a fiasco, Colombia was no better, Bush's
arrival in Bogotá couldn't have happened at a worse time as every moment ticked
off another scandal, some of them leading in the direction ofo President Uribe's
office, and nothing that Bush or Uribe president could say concealed the fact
that the Colombia phase of the U.S. anti-drug war was more dead than alive,
which was even more certain when it came to extraditing Colombian suspected
felons to the U.S."
Analysis:
U.S. anti-drug war in Afghanistan (April 8, 2007)
"In a bluntly worded letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, the lawmakers said inter-agency rivalry and U.S.
policy failures in Afghanistan risked allowing it to slide back into chaos."
Law
Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories (April 7, 2007)
"A Georgia fire captain gets caught peddling coke, a pair of New Haven
narcs lose their jobs, a former Mississippi police chief cops a plea, and a
former Ohio cop goes back to prison. Let's get to it...."
Methamphetamine:
Feds Make First Cold Medicine Bust Under Combat Meth Act (April 7, 2007)
"An Ontario, New York, man last Friday won the dubious distinction of being
the first person arrested under the 2005 Combat Meth Epidemic Act. According
to a DEA press release, William Fousse was arrested for purchasing cold tablets
containing more than nine grams of pseudoephedrine within a one month period."
Harm
Reduction: New Mexico Governor Signs Overdose Death Reduction Measure (April
7, 2007)
"New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) Wednesday signed innovative legislation
that would protect friends or family members who seek medical attention for
drug overdose victims. The law is the first of its kind in the country."
Pot-Growing
Takes Root in the Suburbs (April 1, 2007)
"In Coldwater Creek, a middle-class housing development outside Atlanta,
the neighbors mind their own business and respect each other's privacy - ideal
conditions, it turns out, for growing marijuana in the suburbs."
Bob
Barr Flip-Flops on Pot (March 28, 2007)
"Bob Barr, who as a Georgia congressman authored a successful amendment
that blocked D.C. from implementing a medical marijuana initiative, has switched
sides and become a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project."
What
the heck is Sibel Edmonds' Case about? And why should I care? (March 28,
2007)
"Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive
one... But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking
officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar
drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory
regimes, you name it... You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from
the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same
place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people."
Mexican
Envoy Highly Critical of U.S. Role in Anti-Drug Effort (March 23, 2007)
"The United States has contributed 'zilch' to Mexico's efforts to combat
the nations' joint problem with criminal narcotics gangs, Mexico's new ambassador
to Washington said yesterday."
Colorado
Has Song in Its Heart, and Not Drugs on Its Mind (March 14, 2007- Free NYTimes
registration required)
"The Colorado General Assembly wants to be quite clear on this point: When
the singer-songwriter John Denver praised the joys of Colorado and sang about
'friends around the campfire, and everybody’s high,' in 1972, he was not referring
to illicit drugs. Definitely not. Don’t even think it. The high in question,
lawmakers say, is really about nature and the great outdoors — the tingly feeling
you get after a nice hike, perhaps."
U.S.
faults friends, foes in drug war (March 5, 2007)
"The United States said top anti-terror allies Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Colombia had fallen short in the war on drugs despite enhanced counter-narcotics
efforts and it criticized perennial foes Iran, North Korea and Venezuela for
not cooperating."
Cuba’s
War on Drugs (March 5, 2007)
"A review of the main results of the Cuban efforts against illegal drug
trafficking as well as prevention during 2006, shows a marked reduction in the
presence of drugs on the island, with 1.7 tons of narcotics seized, the lowest
figure of the past 11 years and almost four times less than the amount detected
in 2003."
Drug
War Corrupting Cops In Hawaii and Elsewhere (March 5, 2007)
"Claiming to be the 'world’s leading drug policy newsletter,' the Drug
War Chronicle publishes a regular online feature called, 'This Week’s Corrupt
Cops Stories.' The typical Hawaii newspaper reader probably comes across these
cops-gone-bad stories pretty rarely. But, when hundreds of reports compiled
over the past year from around the nation are read at one sitting, they add
up to a hidden cost of America’s ill-fated drug war -- widespread corruption
inside local police departments, prisons and jails."
Drug
war rips apart Mexico (March 5, 2007)
"More than 250 people were executed last year in Acapulco as the sweltering
Pacific resort became the latest battleground between rival cartels battling
for supremacy of the multibillion-dollar drug trade."
In
Guatemala, officers' killings echo dirty war (March 5, 2007)
"The two sets of brazen killings set off a vicious diplomatic conflict
between Guatemala and El Salvador — heightened by news reports suggesting that
the congressmen were indeed drug dealers — and ignited a political scandal here.
It shed light on how corrupt the National Police has become, and raised questions
about links between drug dealers and high-level police officials, as well as
whether the government can contain drug trafficking without international help."
Collision
Course: Bolivia's "Coca, Si; Cocaine, No" Policy Runs Afoul of the International
Drug Control Board and, Probably, the United States (March 1, 2007)
"A confrontation is brewing over Bolivian President Evo Morales' effort
to rationalize coca production in his country and expand markets for coca-based
products....Now, the Morales government is also pushing for expanded legal markets
for coca products and, in a joint venture with the Venezuelan government, is
preparing to begin coca product exports to that country."
Ga.
Reconsiders No - Knock Warrant Rules (March 1, 2007)
"A group of lawmakers wants to make it harder for police to use ''no-knock''
warrants in the wake of a shootout that left an elderly woman dead after plainclothes
officers stormed her home unannounced in a search for drugs."
Here
we go again (Feb. 22, 2007)
"We're happy we could help with that, Mr. Vice President, but Colombian
cocaine is still readily available in U.S. cities, so we have a difficult time
thinking we got a good deal for our $4 billion. In fact, we don't believe Americans
are getting their money's worth for any of the cash the government has thrown
into the bottomless pit of the drug war. Court dockets are packed and prisons
are overcrowded, yet illicit drugs are still readily available to anyone who
wants them."
Latin
America: Mexico Moves to Decriminalize Drug Possession -- So It Can Concentrate
on Drug Traffickers (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Legislators from Mexican President Felipe's Calderon's National Action
Party (PAN -- Partido de Accion Nacional) have introduced a bill in the Mexican
Senate that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs for
'addicts.'"
DPS
officials were told of lax lab security (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Texas Department of Public Safety officials were aware of security breaches
in the handling of their drug evidence as recently as 2006 and as far back as
at least 2003 — problems such as failure to log evidence out of storage, containers
of marijuana left open and the lack of a monitoring system for a high-security
drug vault — according to the agency's internal audits."
'Safest
city' now has drug war (Feb. 22, 2007)
"From the shopping malls and the fashionable clothes of its residents,
this could be any affluent U.S. suburb. Residents pride themselves on their
prosperity. But in recent weeks, drug-related violence has shattered the tranquillity."
Mexican
president gives soldiers pay hike as drug war intensifies (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Soldiers waging a nationwide offensive against drug traffickers will get
a pay hike of nearly 50 percent this year in a bid to insulate them from corruption,
Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced Monday."
New Federal
Study Shows Methamphetamine Use Decreased Between 2002 and 2005 (Jan. 31,
2007)
"A new analysis of data from The National Survey on Drug Use and Health
(NSDUH) shows that past-year use of methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant,
declined between 2002 and 2005 among persons age 12 or older....The study also
shows that the number of persons who used methamphetamine for the first time
in the 12 months before the survey remained stable between 2002 and 2004 but
decreased between 2004 and 2005."
Tell
Governor Spitzer to Support Rockefeller Drug Law Reform (Jan. 31, 2007)
"The Rockefeller Drug Laws require extremely harsh prison terms for the
possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs. Most of the people
incarcerated under these laws are convicted of low-level, nonviolent offenses,
and many of them have no prior criminal records. Today 14,139 people are locked
up for drug offenses in NY State prisons, comprising nearly 38% of the prison
population. This costs New Yorkers over half a billion dollars a year. Send
a message to Governor Spitzer now, urging him to support real reform."
Mexico
eyes Colombian experience in drug battle (Jan. 27, 2007)
"Mexico's top prosecutor on Thursday looked to Colombia's experience in
counter-narcotics and conflict for lessons to help his government battle drug
cartels whose violence has engulfed parts of the country."
Rio
gang kills seven as drug war spreads (Jan. 27, 2007)
"The mutilated bodies of seven youths, some with their heads and legs chopped
off, have been found in an abandoned car in a notorious Rio de Janeiro slum.
They appeared to be the latest victims of a long-running drug war that has made
Rio, which depends heavily on tourism, one of the most violent cities in the
world."
Drug
Policy Reform Group to Partner with State of New Mexico in Federally-Funded
Meth Prevention Education Program (Jan. 27, 2007)
"In a first for drug reform organizations, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA)
New Mexico office has been designated to create a statewide methamphetamine
education and prevention program directed at high school students, thanks to
a $500,000 grant obtained by US Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) as part of a Justice
Department appropriations bill. The grant is the result of years of close collaboration
between DPA and New Mexico state and local officials dating back to the administration
of former Gov. Gary Johnson (R), a prominent voice for drug law reform."
Spot
in brain may control smoking urge (Jan. 27, 2007)
"Damage to a silver dollar-sized spot deep in the brain seems to wipe out
the urge to smoke, a surprising discovery that may shed important new light
on addiction. The research was inspired by a stroke survivor who claimed he
simply forgot his two-pack-a-day addiction - no cravings, no nicotine patches,
not even a conscious desire to quit."
Case
highlights medical-pot dilemma (Jan. 23, 2007)
"'If they didn't arrest me with 1,500, it's not likely they're going to
come back and arrest me for 50,' said Sarich, whose advocacy group, CannaCare,
says it has provided marijuana plants for 1,200 patients all over the state.
Some of his new plants, delivered by patients in Longview, Federal Way and Vancouver,
Wash., are descendants of the plants he lost."
Alleged
cartel members extradited to Texas (Jan. 23, 2007)
"A suspected Mexican drug lord whose cartel allegedly smuggled more than
4 tons of cocaine a month over the U.S. border will stand trial in Texas. Osiel
Cardenas-Guillen, the alleged kingpin of the Gulf Cartel, and three other alleged
drug lords appeared in a Houston court Monday. Mexican authorities delivered
Cardenas-Guillen and 14 other alleged Mexican drug dealers and criminals to
Houston late Friday and early Saturday, the Drug Enforcement Administration
said."
Burdened
U.S. military cuts role in drug war (Jan. 22, 2007)
"Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military
has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, leaving significant gaps in
the nation's narcotics interdiction efforts."
S.F.
area is No. 1 for regular drug use, study says (Jan. 21, 2007)
"The San Francisco metropolitan area has a higher percentage of people
who are regular drug users than any other major metropolitan area in the USA,
a study from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found."
Executive Order 13420
-- Dismantling the DEA (Jan. 21, 2007)
"This is the order I will sign after delivering my inaugural address,"
says Steve Kubby, who is again running for office this time seeking the nomination
from the Libertarian Party as their Presidential candidate.
Cocaine
found on 99.9% of UK banknotes (Jan. 21, 2007)
"Pretty well every banknote in the UK shows traces of cocaine, forensic
scientists have claimed. According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, 99.9
per cent of the two billion notes currently in circulation have come into contact
with Bolivian marching powder."
A Legacy
of Torture: From Cointelpro to the Patriot Act (Jan. 21, 2007)
"In today's world, the US government's use of torture and complicity in
its clients' use of it is part of the headlines on a regular basis. Yet very
few US citizens believe that methods like waterboarding, beating, and electrical
shocks could be -- and have been -- used on US citizens." But the fact
that torture is used profusely in US jails and prisons is unsurprising to those
who've been inside the US "justice" system.
Reefer
Madness (Jan. 21, 2007)
"I was never an activist until I got busted [noted Tommy Chong]. But it
’s not so much my efforts as the substance itself. Pot lives and dies on its
own reputation....Years ago, people would do booze jokes. Then they start dying
of cirrhosis of the liver and all these alcohol-related car accidents. Alcohol
started out as a fun thing and ended up as this evil thing that kills people.
Pot is the opposite...."
In the
Costly War on Drugs, Who's To Say What Is Right? (Jan. 21, 2007)
"It seems like you lack a certain enthusiasm for the war on drugs, I said.
I do lack enthusiasm for the war on drugs, he said. I asked about legalization.
He shrugged. 'Monday, Wednesday and Friday I think they should be legalized.
Tuesdays and Thursdays I think they should be illegal. I don't like drugs. I
strongly disapprove of them. The costs are great. But it's expensive to incarcerate
somebody. The costs are enormous either way. I don't know what's right.'"
Democracy
and Plan Colombia (Jan. 21, 2007)
Just what effects are the massive spraying in anti-cocaine and poppy efforts
that are one of the main tenents of Plan Colombia, not to mention all the arms
and training given to the Colombian military and governments to combat Colombian
peasents...errr, I mean, dastardly narco-terrorists? No major advancement of
democracy it appears.
Drug
mafia, CIA blamed for sacking of Afghan governor (Jan. 21, 2007)
"As The Washington Post has plainly summarized, 'corruption and alliances
formed by Washington and the Afghan government with anti-Taliban tribal chieftains,
some of whom are believed to be deeply involved in the trade, [have] undercut
the [counter-narcotics] effort.'"
PAST NEWS ARCHIVE
|
|
 |
Yajé
- El Nuevo Purgatorio
Buy
It On Amazon Here
Cómprelo en Español
MARCELA - A TALE OF THE URBAN CULT
OF YAJÉ
BY: JIMMY WEISKOPF
( dedicated to Mauricio and Stephanie)
originally published in the magazine Ecstacy, issue no. 2
Introduction
Yajé (or ayahuasca)
is the liquid essence of a psychoactive jungle vine, which, prepared
with other plants, is used by the native peoples of the Amazon
basin in shamanic healing ceremonies. Guided by the visions it
produces, the Indian shamans are able to discover and work on
the hidden causes of illness, which (with the exception of simple
injuries, common colds and the like) are thought to come from
negative influences in the spirit world. Among others, these include
the patient's contact with troubled or malignant spirits of plants,
animals or dead people; intentional black magic; troublesome human
sentiments, such as envy or inter-family rancours; and a sort
of karma in which the patient is paying for past misdeeds.
One evidence of yajé's
power are the many apparently "miraculous" cures effected
by its curanderos, for which there exist hundreds of reliable
testimonies. Once we accept that yajé can solve problems of health
which orthodox medicine cannot touch and that it does this through
the manipulation of ethereal forces which science still does not
recognize, then we may grant that it may work other kinds of magic.
Traditionally, it was also employed in indigenous societies to,
for example, locate sources of game, find lost objects, bring
rain and see into the future.
Yajé is, above all,
a purgative. It provokes attacks of vomiting, diarrhea and dizziness.
At times the effects are so strong that the person who drinks
yajé may feel the close presence of death. But generally it does
not hit those who are in good physical/mental health so violently
and in any case, it has a therapuetic purpose. It would seem that
yajé possesses the mysterious capacity to reduce the impurities
of our organism to shit and vomit, which, upon being expulsed,
help us to recover our health and optimism. These disequilibriums,
in turn, are what block our inner vision. When one is drunk
with yajé, one enters into a realm where the spirits are very
real. In the visionary stage, these spirits are clearly seen,
by means of what the indigenous peoples call the pinta
- vivid and concrete images that may range from the tigers and
boas of the jungle to mythical beings, Buddhas and Christs and
scenes from past lives or encounters with extra-terrestrials.
With yajé one enters
into a state where intuition is much more acute than in normal
life. The capacity to see visions (not hallucinations, which
imply a diseased mind) is, say the great masters, innate: it is
not the yajé itself which gives the visions. Rather it removes
the continual screen of thought that dulls our consciousness.
When the body is completely clean, the mind becomes still and
one is able, in the mystical sense, to see.
The person who does
yajé may suffer for a few hours but he is not alone during the
yajé session. The job of the shaman or taita is precisely
to look out for the welfare of the participants, through his communion
with the world of the spirits. Among other techniques, he calls
upon the aid of benevolent spirits through his icaros (sacred
chants) or by driving away the focal points of evil/illness with
shakes of his leaf-fan..
The taitas
emphasize that yajé is not a drug but a sacred plant which uses
chastisement to teach those who take it to become better persons.
As well as helping the shaman to literally see the hidden causes
of the disease, the pinta or vision reveals, to the patient,
the true nature of his personality, making him see, for example,
traumatic incidents from his childhood or the consequences of
his bad conduct.
Yajé fascinates many
white intellectuals, artists, questers after spiritual truths,
etc who have lost contact the spiritual roots of their own western
culture. In recent decades there has been a virtual renaiisance
in its use, characterized by the visits of such people to remote
jungle regions in search of a shamanistic medical tradition that
is otherwise dying out. Parallel to this, through such contacts,
some of the traditional shamans are coming to the cities, where
they offer yajé cures to a wide variety of urban patients. In
Brazil there are two well-organized urban cults of yajé, with
thousands of followers. In Colombia, the situation is more informal
but it is based on this same alliance between white enthusiasts
and native shamans.
The following story,
which is a true account of a yajé session, is an attempt to portray
something of the urban cult in Colombia and show that yajé is
no longer just an exotic jungle ceremony but a ritual of curation
that is adapting itself to our contemporary world.
MARCELA
I went by taxi around nine to Mauricios
place, just as don Antonio and his wife dona Mercedes, arrived
with their son, Isidoro, who was lugging a square canvas shopping
bag which held the big plastic container of yajé . The Taita,
wearing glasses and his sayo - a long red and white striped poncho
- over a citified suit , sat down in an expansive mood. He
is a big man, with strong Inca features and so rooted in what
he is that he fills the room. The newcomers gathered round, impressed
by their first contact with a real shaman and the Taita told
stories and made them laugh. Fifteen sleeping bags with people
in or on them filled the room, giving the impression of a multitude
in that modest space: the Taitas sat at one end on a broken-
down sofa.
When it seemed that
the preliminaries would go on forever, the Taita gave a nod,
someone doused the lights and lit a candle and Dona Mercedes
got out the heavy necklaces and helped place them round his
neck, together with the longer one that fell over his chest with
the animal fangs and shells and seeds. Last, there was the elaborate
crown, with its stiff band holding upright and trailing feathers
in a long crescent. The yajé was poured out into the big bowl
and Mauricio went round the room blowing copal smoke on everyone,
to frighten away the evil spirits. It made me want to wretch
because it brought back a Proustian memory of my early agonies
with yajé, down in the jungle. The dense cloud dimmed the outlines
of the room, making the moving figure of the taita seem
phantasmal. The fear, the heightening of the senses, the
silence that inevitably fell, though the Taita never asked for
it, always gave the delivering of the toast a majestic solemnity,
despite the informal setting. Yajé es yajé, he joked,
meaning that it is just as awesome in the city as in the jungle.
Shaking the leaf fan over the bowl, he began singing.: KONA
GENTE , PINTA GENTE ,WATERAPINTA, SUMA GENTE . O n and on it went,
in Inca., as he did precise, quick little repeated shakes over
and across the bowl and then out through the room.
Mauricio, as host,
got the first cup, then Isidoro. When my turn followed most
of the nervousness had gone: the long wait had got me acclimatized
and in the excitement of the moment you just did what you had
to do without thinking too much about it.. After years of doing
yajé, the taste was no longer so awful, more sour than bitter
and even a bit sweet . But it was potent and with the first
rush of the vine, the heat and well-being of it, there was the
conviction that you were ingesting an explosive power that nourished
both your body and your soul.. Back in my corner, I shut myself
off from my surroundings, my only way of dealing with the unpleasant
part, the purgative stage which might go on for hours and bring
sensations ranging from the unpleasant and mildly painful to outright
torture. Everyone reacted in his own way, some were withdrawn
, others showed their nerves by being overly chatty.. Once everyone
had drunk the brew, the Taita started playing the harmonica.
After some 20 minutes,
there was the first run to the toilets, a chorus of bumps, exclamations
and deep liquid heaving, the sound of the surf on the sea. With
yajé, you follow your guts, at least in the early stage. I had
a quick shit, then a while later another, but still had no urge
to throw up. I kept my eyes open because all you saw with them
closed before you vomited was menacing rigid mocking stick figures
that sucked you into their eerie electric world. As the vine
hit me, I perceived a vague atmospheric density, a spirit static
in the air. Henry the dentist was showing off again, giving
a lecture on yajé to a group of young women who were doing it
for the first time. I tried to hold back my criticisms. If anyone
had messed peoples yajé journies up that way over the years,
it was I . But when the name of the Dalai Lama came up for the
third time, I told him to shut up. He got mock offended but we
were used to taking the piss out of one another. Around the crown
of Mauricios head flames of pinta leapt into the air.
The congregation
showed fragmented human energies. Some, well and lively, joined
in the music; a few even danced, but most were quiet.. The girls
Henry was talking to were little timid darlings at the
far end of the room. Women, I remembered, usually didnt
suffer so much: they weren t so egoistic or out of tune
with their bodies. Isidoro , dressed in his own feather crown
was rocking back and forth, accompanying his father on the harmonica.
The Taita began the first curing: an indistinct male figure whose
bare back faced me, sat on the stool before the altar and received
the flicking fan as the Taita sung his icaros. The music came
into the visions I was seeing with my open eyes, strange phantoms
weaving in and out of abstract oily layers of colours against
the neutral background of the wall. Around the head of Isidoro
there was a wide layer of the brighter geometrical pinta you got
in the deep stage.
The pressure in my
stomach got tighter and tighter:. The copal smoke, while thinner,
lingered and in the dark, with the cluster of people, gave the
appearance of a forest, tiers of vegetation with clearings and
knots of flowers and water that ran over the stones that collectively
were the different persons with their respective journies. The
wavy lines that ran over the forms I saw were hurting my vision.
I felt like I was breathing a fine burning light out of my eyeballs,
but when I closed my eyes I saw the nauseating stick monsters
and for a moment I was in a real panic, not knowing what to do.
Then I understood
that it had to do with a deep heavy burning in my guts and I
sat up and headed for the toilet, knowing it was time to vomit.
I stood over the basin and wretched several times and could feel
this cement coming up but nothing happened. The toilet bowl came
alive : it was writhing with a grid of evil colours and the water
sang foully. I grabbed for support and tried to vomit but it wouldnt
come and the colours overwhelmed me until, faint and fearful I
was the phenomenon, I became the waves of strident, snakey
lines. I felt humiliated for losing control when I was supposed
to be so experienced. But that never counts with yajé. You can
do it a million times but if there is a notable imbalance, be
it physical, psychological or moral, it reaches out to punish
you like this all the same. Then ruefully, I figured it out.
I was being punished for a mocking reference I had made to a friend
a few days before about the way the Indians made such a mystery
of the vine at times, got so mean and contrary towards me because
I was a white man.. Yes, yes, I cried inwardly to the vine, I
acknowledge your sovereignty, forgive me, stop the torture!
Some grain of self awareness told
me to get more comfortable and breathe. I knelt down and put
my forehead on the ground. The cold tile was soothing . I filled
my chest with air, let it go, filled it up again and after a while,
I became calmer.
Then the inner lights flashed again
and there was a sharp jolt in my guts. I thought it was the vomit
coming but I quickly realized that the disturbance was a womans
voice, a shrill penetrating scream, indistinct, then making words.
GET me out of here. I want to go, Get me out of here. LET
me go, you bastards.
Suddenly, distracted
by curiosity, the nausea had gone and I went out into the passageway
to see what was happening . It was one of the women, Marcela
(I gathered from the voices around her) a fair girl of about
twenty with a wild mane of frizzy hair and the perverse look of
an angel gone wrong. Her mouth hung loose and her gaze was frighteningly
inward, as though in an epilectic fit but she was also like
a wild she-cat, as she grappled, spit and cursed at a group
of my friends who were trying, too gently I thought, to calm
her down. Every time that someone got near to her, she lashed
out in a frenzy, shouting that she was being murdered. So loud,
in fact, that lights began to come on in the windows of the neighbouring
apartments. At one point, they had to physically restrain her
as she tried to climb out of the (second-storey) window. In
the midst of all this, she held a weird dialogue with herself,
expressing, in a variety of childish voices, what were evidently
deep-rooted hurts and obsessions, with a strong religious flavour,
references to sin, death and hellfire.
I had seen people
freaking out on yajé before, but never as violently as this.
Yet, instead of being upset like the others, who were saddened
and at a loss over how to help, I was strangely thrilled. There
was something sublime about this fit, something orgasmic in
the way Marcela was confronting her inner devils, an expressiveness,
a letting go that touched a secret source of deep energy, as
only women do when they deliver themselves up to the act of love.
It was like a storm at sea, wild and cataclysmic but beautiful
for mocking the meanness of daily existence.
Still, she was messing
everyones trip up and before long, some neighbour might
even call the cops, so dramatic was her shouting. What would
they think of this scene if they arrived - a woman screaming
bloody murder, a score of spaced-out people vomiting all over
the place, an Indian shaman, dressed in feathers !! I considered
holding her down, drenching her in cold water, scourging her body
with stinging nettles ( the traditional indigenous way easing
a bad yajé experience ) but it was impossible. Its against
the tacit rules of the rite unless you have the persons
permission . But what about the Taita ?, I asked
Mauricio, why doesnt he help ? No,
he said, he says shes too far gone to be cured just
now, she just has to let it ride its course.
As the others stood
round, perplexed, I received a surprising message from the yajé:
I was the man to get her out of it. Yajé inspires you
to cure and I and some of the more enthusiastic followers of
don Antonio sometimes helped him out , joining in the chants
as we danced and poured energy over the afflicted person he was
curing or, in a more informal way, giving moral support to companions
when they were down. This was a different case, of course but
I felt the same overpowering rush to meddle. And I saw something
else, which I think no one else caught, namely, that this was
not a person we were dealing with, not bad trip in the usual
sense, but the trip of person converted into the animal self
we all have and which, in one way or another, we all experience
with yajé, sometimes in a desperate way and other times sublimely
as we get glimpses, in our visions, of the divine totems of the
jungle. Marcela, in this moment, was a tigress, a hurt, desperate,
frightened and very dangerous animal and the only way to get through
to her was to approach her with the same caution and sensitivity,
knowing that it was your vibe, body language and tone of voice
that counted, not rational, human elements like concern, reason,
reassurance.
As I took up the
challenge, I felt the thrill of a bullfighter , the edge that
comes when you come close to an animal danger. And so, pushing
my way through the knot of people gathered around her, all of
them so kind, so reasonable and yet so useless in the circumstances,
I started my show. Drawing near, ever so delicately, I told
her that I thought she was beautiful, that what she was doing
was beautiful, that it was expressive, which is a good way to
be with the yajé, that I often felt as she did, that I wasnt
angry with her, that I liked her, but would she please try to
cool it, because she was bothering everyone else. I did it with
a humour I genuinely felt, I laughed , I gently mocked. I
advanced a pace, then another and and then a slight false move
set her off again and she backed away and began cursing again.
When she screamed, I screamed back, harder and so, for a while,
we shouted ourselves hoarse, as the others stood by, astonished.
It seemed to be working but Mauricio, a normally gentle guy,
but now furious as I had never seen him before, pushed me out
of the way. What the fuck do you think youre doing,
get the hell out of here ! What I hadnt realized
was the strain he was feeling before the possibility of some awful
scandal - the cops, the neighbours - and there was no choice
but to give way to his anger, because, like Marcelas state,
it was a call from the other world. In the confusion, however,
I made one last attempt . Again with the ever so gentle approach,
I started towards Marcela but I hadnt taken one step when,
with the lithe grace of the tigress , she grabbed hold of a bucket
full of vomit that happened to lie near and hurled it at me.
Thanks to the yajé, I got out the way just in time.
I went back to
my place and rested under my blanket: the encounter had been
wearing. In the excitement of it all, my own nauseous bad trip
had gone and when, a while later, I had to vomit, it came easily.
Marcela stayed out in the passage, her madness undiminished,
the taita apparently indifferent, everyone else, by now, weary,
desperate and pissed off. But, obeying that unconscious order
that rules a yajé session, Isidoro got up just now and worked
his magic on her with the harmonica, making energy-passes around
her body with the leaf-fan. She didnt resist him, as she
had me, and in the end, she stopped shouting and returned to
the living room. Her face still showed an extreme distress, but
at least the racket had ended.
The rest of the night
is a blur now. I remember that, in a sort of chain reaction,
another girl had a bad time, but her friends eased her with embraces
and kindly words. I didnt see many visions that night,
because of the disturbance, nor, I think, did anyone else, but
we were happy and animated. We wildly talked of our yajé-inspirations,
danced and sang and let ourselves be cured by don Antonio. Towards
dawn, Marcela came out of herself. She leapt up and impulsively
embraced and kissed dona Mercedes, much to the latters embarrassment
and then the Taita got to her work on her. When the party broke
up in the early morn, I asked her how she was feeling: she just
snarled and turned away.
It wasnt till
the evening of the following Monday, when I paid a visit to
the Taita to rehash the evenings events, that I found
out what had really been going on. Marcela, he told me, had
stayed bad, but not so violent, the whole of Sunday and in the
evening, she came round to his place and ( without yajé but
elevated a bit by liquor) he gave her an additional cure and
they had a long talk.. I had suspected that the problem was
sexual in nature, a sort of acute frustration compounded, perhaps,
by a strict Catholic upbringing, with all of its repressions.
But, in fact, it was, as her strange stream of consciousness had
indicated, a matter of devils, though not in the literal sense.
It turned out that Marcela,
a sensitive, educated girl who wrote
poetry and did theatre, had a very unpleasant job, working , out
of social conviction, with street kids in downtown Bogota. This
involves a close and constant encounter with poverty, dirt,
drugs, degradation, violence, abandonment and treachery, which
is sordid enough, but to make things worse, one of her tasks was
to recover the corpses of the kids who had been bludgeoned, knifed
or shot to death, sometimes by their fellows and sometimes
by the cops: she took the bodies to the morgue and dealt with
the paperwork. She had been taking tranquillizers to deal with
it all, which only intensified the psychic waves she was absorbing.
All this shit had gone inside her, where it fermented over months,
without her realizing what was going on and the yajé had brought
it out. So, in a way I had been right, her break-down had been
beautiful, in the sense of being positive and therapeutic. The
Taita told me that if all the evil hadnt come out that
way, she would have become very very ill, either physically
or mentally.
I ran into Marcela
on the street about a month later.. She was smiley and content,
friendly towards me and not, as I had expected, completely put
off by yajé. She hardly remembered a thing about what had happened
to her that night. When I urged her to do yajé again, she said
she would think about it but when I mentioned this later to Mauricio
( whose apartment is where we usually do it, as its big
and has several toilets), he said, Forget it. I know
yajé is to cure and the sicker the person is the more reason
to help him, but after all the agro we had the last time theres
no way I am going to let that crazy woman through my door again
!
|
|
 |
|
 |