Yajé has been used shamanically by Native practitioners
to find lost objects, seek out game and fish, wage psychic warfare,
influence the weather, and foresee the future. Yajé has
also been used by Native shamans and curanderos (healers) to
identify the hidden spiritual causes of illnesses and to treat
the source of illness through direct intervention.
Western explorers and ethnologists have written about the ceremonial
use of yajé since early in the 19th century, and there
are hundreds of scholarly and popular accounts on the subject.
However, for several reasons, most literature on the shamanic
use of yajé is filled with exaggerations and inaccuracies.
First, traditional shamans--the only real experts on the use
of yajé--have often been reluctant to reveal its true
depths to outsiders. Second, even when shamans have been willing
and able to talk about their use of the vine, they have had
to communicate their esoteric knowledge to outsiders--mostly
non-users--across almost insurmountable language and cultural
barriers.
In recent decades, there has been a renaissance in the experiential
use of yajé among outsiders. On the one hand, an army of
anthropologists, ethnobotanists, intrepid intellectuals, and spiritual
explorers have been trotting off into remote jungles in search
of traditional healing knowledge. On the other hand, some traditional
shamans and healers have responded to the growing interest by
moving to the cities, where they now conduct regular yajé
sessions for the principal benefit of non-Natives. By now, thousands
of outsiders have participated in a few yajé ceremonies.
Many have written articles and books about their experiences,
but few accounts have offered any substantive insights into how
yajé works. Most outsiders have assumed their yajé
visions were due solely to psychedelic alkaloids in the plants,
and they have looked no further. I believe the lack of understanding
is due to the fact that anthropologists are bound by scientific
ethics to discard supernatural explanations, and most other aficionados,
like myself, are too deeply conditioned by their materialistic
Occidental upbringing to believe in spiritual realms. Also, relatively
few of the non-professionals who experienced yajé have
undergone long-term yajé apprenticeships, a process which
may be essential to understanding yajé's full visionary
and healing powers.
As an American journalist who has lived in Colombia since 1977,
I have made five extended field trips to the lower Putumayo River
region to study yajé practices under the tutelage of the
respected Siona shaman, Don Pacho Piaguaje. During these visits,
which each lasted a month or longer, I took yajé regularly
once or twice each week, and it was only after many yajé
sessions that I was finally able to make sense of what I was seeing.
At the same time, the yajé itself has made me keenly aware
of the limits of my understanding. Therefore, I must caution readers
that what I am about to say about the nature of yajé is
based largely on my highly subjective experiences, supplemented
with insights and observations gleaned from Don Pacho and other
yajé shamans I have met.
With this caveat in mind, I will start by saying that yajé
is a truly remarkable psychoactive vine. After taking the drink
many times, I fully agree with those Natives who say yajé
is a living presence with a remarkably strong and vivid personality.
It is not unusual for the spirit of the vine to appear in one's
visions and announce that it is a direct channel to a superior
being-- God, Nature, Spirit.
Yajé is probably best known among Westerners for its gift
of extraordinary, multicolored visions. According to various accounts,
yajé pintas (visions) can range from vividly detailed
scenes recreated from one's memories to otherworldly panoramas
filled with exotic plants and animals, mythical creatures, and
spirit beings. Some writers have compared the yajé experience
to LSD or psychedelic mushroom trips. However, the visionary voyages
I have experienced on yajé have few parallels to those
I've experienced on other psychedelics-- the so-called "mind revealing"
drugs.
At the most basic psycho-physiological level, yajé visions
are distinguished by bright multicolored geometrical patterns
that repeat and merge into one another, 
creating a kaleidoscopic montage that rushes by the viewer. It
is as though one is being propelled at high speed through a fantastic
landscape decorated with mythical animals and religious symbols.
The visual experience is comparable to watching a well-made animated
film--like The Yellow Submarine--while one is completely stoned
on strong marijuana.
Although the visual aspects of a yajé voyage can be truly
extraordinary, it is unlikely that yajé will ever become
a popular psychedelic. Yajé involves entirely too much
physical suffering and soul searching for it to become a drug
of choice for recreational trippers. While a few contemporary
psychologists have shown interest in yajés ability to reveal
and transform deep-seated emotional problems, its emetic side
effects may limit its use in conventional counseling. For those
seeking a viable spiritual alternative to Western materialism,
yajés greatest potential and appeal is its ability to open
the door into highly tangible spirit realms.
Unfortunately, first-time yajé users seldom get to enjoy
or even experience the full range of yajé visions, primarily
because their visions are often obscured or even obliterated by
the nausea, fear, and mental confusion that accompanies the intoxication.
Beginners may feel mild exaltation and may catch glimpses of vague,
fleeting images, but they are rarely able to consume enough yajé
to achieve full-scale visions. A few lucky practitioners may have
extraordinary visual experiences during their first few sessions--possibly
because these persons are exceptionally pure in body and spirit.
However, most foreigners and acculturated Natives find their initial
experiences with yajé disappointing. In my own case, I
did not have any breakthrough visions until after I had been thoroughly
purified by the vine.
Working with yajé can involve a long-- and at times extremely
traumatic--purification process. It took me several months of
drinking yajé before I was pure enough to be able to consume
enough yajé to experience visions without suffering too
much. Incidentally, the physical purging did not lessen as I went
on. In fact, as I managed to drink more and more yajé,
the purgings went progressively deeper. However, because the agony
is caused not by the evacuation process itself but by one's resistance
to being purged, the process became gradually less painful. The
more yajé I could tolerate, the easier I could void, and
the more visions I could see.
Don Pacho sometimes compares yajé to a wild animal which
must be approached with great caution--it will not allow you to
make full contact until it knows you very well. According to Don
Pacho, it can take months, or even years, of drinking yajé
on a weekly basis before one experiences its full benefits. Almost
all of the yajé shamans I know agree that a novice must
drink a lot of yajé for a considerable time in order to
become a visionary, and that it can take many decades before one
fully masters the spirit of yajé.
The Purification Process
While yajé may resemble some psychedelics in inducing dramatic
visual patterns and dreamlike images, I have come to the conclusion
that the most significant yajé visions are not solely biochemically
induced. Instead, I suggest that yajé removes the physical
and emotional blocks which keep us from seeing the spirit world
around us. In fact, once or twice-during those half-conscious,
hypnagogic states that precede sleep-I have had brief yajé-like
visions that were not yajé induced. These spontaneous experiences--and
the fact that some disciplined yogis and gifted psychics seem
to have regular access to the spirit world--suggest to me that
it may be possible to see visions without yajé.
Many religions preach that one must purify one's body and surrender
one's ego in order to reach the divine--that one must die in order
to be reborn. In the West, Christianity--with its other-worldly
approach to salvation--has taught that the path to enlightenment
is through purifying the soul by denying the body. In the East,
yogic and tantric disciplines have taught that there is no such
separation between matter and spirit, and that it is only by purifying
our minds and bodies that we can open up to the spiritual. While
yajé shamans seldom philosophize about their practices,
I speculate that yajé may induce ecstatic states of consciousness
through a combination of physical purification and therapeutic
ego-death.
The great virtue of the yajé ritual is that it is a relatively
autonomous and self-regulating path to spiritual ecstasy and enlightenment.
While yogic and tantric practitioners seek ecstatic states by
purifying the body through the use of physical exercises, meditations,
and mental disciplines, few people today have the patience to
spend decades struggling to master such rigorous disciplines in
order to achieve ecstatic visions. By working with plant medicines
like yajé, it may be possible to effectively purge the
body through vomiting and defecating, and to achieve ecstatic
visions in relatively few years.
Unlike yogic and tantric practices, yajé doesn't require
great discipline and incredible willpower to stay with the process.
All you have to do is imbibe the brew, and you are irrevocably
committed to an intensive transformative process. Once you have
the guts to drink enough yajé, it will not only purify
your body and psyche from the inside out, it will also send you
hurtling through the doors of perception.
The question is, how does purifying the body help us attain ecstatic
states? Over the years, I have noticed that the people who have
the most difficulty achieving ecstatic states usually suffer from
hyperactive minds. Based on my experiences with yajé, I
am convinced that much of their mental restlessness is a direct
by-product of physical pollution due to chemical additives, too
much food, and environmental contaminants. Once our bodies are
purged of this excess garbage--through fasting, meditation, or
purgatives-our hyperactive minds become calmer and clearer, allowing
us to see, or at least sense, the spirit energy behind physical
forms.
The Therapeutic Process
In some parts of the Amazon, yajé is still used to purge
the body of intestinal parasites, and I do not doubt that part
of the vine's mysterious healing power may stem from its ability
to thoroughly clean out the intestinal tract. Vomiting and defecating
are classical mechanisms for expelling illness from the body,
and yajé is certainly the quintessential purgative medicine.
However, I don't want to leave the impression that yajé
is merely a physical purgative. I have seen yajé work some
of its most purgative magic and dramatic cures on people who were
dealing primarily with psychological or emotional problems.
While working with Don Pacho in the Putumayo, I saw yajé
work some brutal purges on strong young farm workers who were
addicted to alcohol or bazuco (crack). During the process of repeatedly
spilling out their guts, these young macho men would often reveal
their innermost anxieties. As they progressively faced and released
the personal fears and emotional problems that had led them to
their vices, they would often break down and show a softer, more
sensitive side of their personalities. The simultaneous purges
of the body and mind seem to happen, in a milder way, to everyone
who takes yajé.
One interesting characteristic of yajé is that it can make
you expel much more than should fit into your intestinal tract.
It can make you vomit and defecate until you think it's impossible
to expel any more, and then more still comes out. When I first
started taking yajé, I foolishly sought to minimize the
purgative effects by fasting beforehand. To my consternation,
I soon discovered that I vomited and defecated as violently as
the other participants in the session. Because I was already weak
from the fasting, I almost didn't have enough physical energy
to cope with the yajé's assault on my digestive system,
and I sincerely felt that I was close to dying at times. I have
seen similar extraordinary purges happen to others. I remember
one old man whose principal reason for taking yajé was
that he had lost his appetite. Although he had hardly eaten anything
for two days before drinking the potion, he proceeded to vomit
continuously all night long.
Based on several such experiences, I have concluded that yajé
functions as a kind of transcendental purgative. During my extended
visits--when I was taking yajé several times a week and
the purges were progressively emptying and cleansing my intestinal
tract--I not only began to experience a much-improved state of
health, but I also noticed that I was better able to sustain and
work with my visions. While I am not sure exactly how it works,
I believe that yajé somehow breaks down the bioenergetic
blocks, or tensions, that may be at the root of illness and releases
them in the form of vomit or shit.
In my experience, as the yajé slowly winds its way through
my intestines (it takes at least half an hour to feel the first
effects), I am thrust into an entirely new kind of sensibility.
I become aware of my vital center, my essential being--what Japanese
mystics call the "hara"--lodged in the pit of my stomach. The
yajé makes me aware, at a gut level, that human beings
are the descendants of unicellular creatures and that--no matter
how complex our subsequent development--we are still a tube or
gut through which food flows.
As the yajé works its way through your system, it not
only cleans out the excessive foods, stimulants, and poisons clogging
your body, but it seems to dredge up the old repressed emotions
and traumas stored literally within your guts. Thus, in addition
to suffering from intense pain, dizziness, nausea, and horrifying
visions, most beginners must suddenly confront a lifetime's accumulation
of emotional blocks and wounds.
I can recall many moments during my early sessions when I was
overcome by what is called in Spanish "la palida" (pallidness).
White as a sheet, nauseated, asphyxiated, and unable to move,
I would experience an acute physical and moral desperation which
bordered on madness. Not only was I unable to act, but I couldn't
even conceive of how to release the pain and fear.
Of the many counsels given to me by Don Pacho, the wisest and
most useful was that at these moments the yajé apprentice
(man or woman) must be macho. The apprentice has to summon the
willpower to get up out of the hammock--even if it means crawling
on all fours--and do his business in the bushes. Once I learned
to overcome my paralysis and to get up and defecate, I realized
it wasn't my ego or self which defecates, but my body that does
it.
Based on my own limited experience, I have noticed certain temporal
correspondences between my visionary content and my physiological
state. For example, I have noticed that many of my most intense
yajé visions have occurred during my moments of greatest
intestinal anguish, when I was on the verge of defecating or vomiting.
Interestingly, the most prevalent figures in these early visions
are inevitably serpents-- mirroring the form of both the vine
and our intestines. Moreover, once I was through evacuating and
I went back to the hammock, the visions of serpents often receded.
At times, I had the very real sensation of being grasped around
the chest and head by these figures, as though they were trying
to drag me away into a devil's realm. Interestingly, these visions
and feelings were often accompanied by the sensation of an intense
heat moving through my body, which tended to grow more intense
as I went out to shit.
Time after time, I have realized that the weird serpents or devils
in my visions were wounded spirits, rising up in my intestines
and crying out in protest against years of repression and abuse.
Often when I was on the verge of voiding, I would see the most
malign spirits jeering at my discomfort or threatening to pull
me into the ground. As I became more lucid over time, I began
to recognize these monsters were my alter egos--the shadow side
of the ego masks we all learn to wear in normal social intercourse.
As I learned to face each of them and recognize them as parts
of myself, they began to melt away.
Eventually, I learned that the only way out of the intestinal
agony was to abandon my false ego and to surrender to the circumstances.
Each time I managed to face the metaphorical shit responsible
for my agony, I would release my physical shit, transcend my personal
limitations, and achieve ecstatic visions. Could it be that enlightenment
may be merely a matter of voiding--not avoiding--our old emotional
shit? Ironically, it was when I was literally forced to my knees--completely
helpless, with vomit flowing from one end of my body and shit
from the other--that the first rung of the ladder to heaven appeared.
I am convinced that the principal reason most beginners don't
have the courage to take enough yajé is that they fear
having to face the loss of self-control involved in spilling out
their guts. The realization that our intestines have a life (and
nearly a mind) of their own can be highly disturbing because it
reminds us how much our egos are controlled by the conditioning
of others. This recognition can provoke tears, curses, hysterical
laughter, catatonic states, convulsions and even outright physical
aggression.
Based on the prevalence of such emotional releases, some observers
have suggested that yajé is essentially a powerful truth
serum which prompts people to relive and release intense childhood
frights, interpersonal conflicts, and societal repression. The
yajé ritual is certainly one of the few places outside
of psychotherapeutic institutions where regressive madness is
encouraged, and some of yajé's power as a therapeutic force
may come from its ability to catalyze traumatic memories.
Some Western observers have suggested that the yajé healing
rituals are little more than folk-therapy--a sort of primitive
precursor to contemporary psychotherapies. In certain respects,
the yajé experience does share similarities with the work
of encounter groups and some contemporary schools of "anti-psychology."
Like the work of R. D. Laing and Arthur Janov, yajé rituals
often seem to utilize a type of shock therapy based on a combination
of painful bioenergetic release and interpersonal confrontation.
It is quite possible that cathartic psycho-visions may contribute
to the vine's healing and therapeutic powers. However, any attempts
to explain yajé sessions solely in terms of biochemical
responses or as psychotherapies are inevitably doomed to failure
because they overlook one essential ingredient--the role of the
spirits in the shamanic healing process.
Shamanic Healing Spirits
Although novices are often oblivious to the subtler shamanic
aspects of yajé rituals, it is difficult to participate
in a yajé session without seeing the shaman conduct a number
of shamanic healings. Don Pacho often uses a combination of psychic
manipulations and physical massage to treat his patients during
the yajé sessions. While chanting for spirit aid to the
accompaniment of the swishing of a leaf-fan, Don Pacho physically
kneads points along the torso until he finds "the imprint of sickness."
Then, in alternate or imaginary reality, he extracts the
illness, using a flick of the hand and a sharp exhalation of breath
to blow the evil spirits away. In classical shamanic fashion,
Don Pacho may also suck at a particular point, fill his cheeks
with the evil intrusion, and then blow it away.
Some observers have hypothesized that such shamanic healings
may serve as placebo treatments, helping only those people who
believe in religious and supernatural powers. However, it is hard
to ignore the hundreds of casual testimonials and some documented
healings suggesting that Don Pacho and other yajé shamans
have effected miraculous cures of real physical illnesses, based
on information obtained from spirits in yajé visions.
Don Pacho attributes his successes to spirits who visit him in
his visions, explain the roots of problems, and point out ways
of treating them. "When I am drunk with yajé," he explains
with conviction and sincerity, "I fly up to the Milky Way and
converse with the spirits, and they tell me how to cure. Sometimes,
in these visions, they show me a certain plant and the next day
I go into the forest to find that plant and with it I heal the
sick person."
I do not know whether Don Pacho believes he is actually flying
around in spiritual form, or whether he is journeying in his imagination.
However, Don Pacho has repeatedly said that the spirit images
which surround one during a yajé session do not really
come from another "imaginary" world. He believes the spirit world
reflects the deeper, fundamental essence of things, while the
so-called "real world" is just an illusion. Moreover, Don Pacho
firmly believes that the spirits and energies that he works with
are real, transpersonal powers.
The Visionary Sequence
All of the yajé shamans I know say that apprentices go
through a kind of visionary ascension before they become real
seers or visionaries. One shaman explained to me that first you
see the boa, whose appearance is always fearsome. The boa wraps
you in its coils and strangles you so that you go into an agony
of vomiting; then, after your guts are emptied, you are able to
watch it dispassionately. When those unpleasant sensations disappear--although
they can recur in any session--it means that you are through the
first stage of purification and are ready for the higher levels.
Next, you see the dragon, which is the spirit of fire. Finally,
the crowning level--reached only by a few--comes when you see
and can transform yourself into a tiger.
Since Indians often delight in playing up to the exotic expectations
of outsiders, some of the stories about shamans changing into
tigers and boas should be taken with a grain of salt. However,
the basic idea of a sequential progression of images may not be
that far-fetched. Certainly, further study and research needs
to be con- ducted in this area. If the sequencing is consistent
cross-culturally-and different people at different times do share
the same basic sequence of visions--it could suggest that the
visions may be more than random hallucinations, and they may correspond
to some "objective" reality--whether internal or external.
Once again, it may take numerous sessions before one experiences
this progression. I know my own ability to see has certainly evolved
over time. During my initial encounters with yajé-often
just before I began to engage in serious defecating and vomiting--I
tended to see vague images of stick figures and geometric patterns
that sometimes formed into insect like animals but usually faded
into vague outlines. My mind screen might be dense with these
images, but their colors weren't very bright and the overall background
was obscure. These patterns usually came and went (interspersed
with periods of no visuals at all) until the first intestinal
convulsions grabbed my undivided attention. Then, the figures
usually became clearer and often transformed into various kinds
of monsters--snakes, predatory animals, and devils--that reached
out to attack me.
This sequence of images and feelings might repeat itself several
times--with visions preceding each bout of vomiting and defecating.
However, I don't want to leave the impression that all that happens
in a yajé session is suffering, seeing visions, voiding,
and returning to your hammock to fall into a swoon. This is far
from the case in most sessions. One is usually surrounded by fifteen
to twenty people who are going through similar processes, each
in his or her own way. People bump into your hammock, the shaman
may chant and rattle as he conducts healings, and participants
engage in sporadic conversations. One's visions are constantly
being interrupted, influenced, and modified by all the surrounding
activity.
Once I survived these initial stages of rigorous purgation--and
if I managed to drink another cup of yajé-then I would
begin to see calmer, clearer visions in my mind's eye. This secondary
stage was often heralded by a journey through a long tunnel, or
by a rush of figurative, geometrical patterns similar to those
experienced earlier. However, the patterns would now kaleidoscope
into complementary shapes without losing their essential nature.
Gradually, the figures would slow down, become more defined, and
take on brighter hues. During this secondary stage, I found it
much easier to hold images in my mind. In time, I learned how
to focus selectively on particular images by shifting my inner
eye's field of vision.
Occasionally, my inner visions seemed to be variations on recent
experiences. For example, in one session--after I had spent the
afternoon walking through the forest-- I saw highly intensified
surrealistic jungle landscapes. At other times, the visions contained
strictly imaginary motifs, but most frequently they contained
certain conventional religious images. I occasionally saw Buddhas
and mandalas, but most of- ten I saw motifs that had to do with
Amazonian Indian mythology.
One of my recurrent visions involved an ancient maloca (a type
of large, communal thatched hut). This particular maloca was an
enormously tall structure with a roof that extended beyond sight,
reaching up to the heavens. In the upper spaces, poised upon the
wooden beams and crosspieces, thousands of Indians dressed in
loincloths were watching and pointing at me. In other visions,
I encountered more bucolic variations on the same theme: groups
of Natives lazing in hammocks, doing craftwork, or bathing in
the river. These visions felt as though they might be happening
in present reality but their content was definitely situated in
some ideal past.
The exact content of my visions varied greatly from session to
session, but I noticed there was a general progression from fear
to calmness, from vagueness to precision, from dark to light.
Based on the fact that the intensity, clarity, duration, color,
etc., of my visions appeared to improve in accordance with the
purity of my body, I believe that yajé may cleanse and
heal the spiritual fibers of our being and allow us to see alternate
realities.
For a long time, I assumed that when Don Pacho spoke of spirits
he was referring to inner visions. It wasn't until after I had
been taking yajé for some time that I began to experience
spirits in waking visions. During most yajé sessions, the
moments of inner visions are interspersed with moments when you
are fully awake--with your eyes open. As I continued working with
yajé, I began to sense--without necessarily directly seeing--many
spirits surrounding me even when I was awake.
My ability to perceive the spirits during waking states changed
considerably over time, depending upon a number of factors: the
amount of yajé I had taken, my emotional or psychological
purity, and my experience working with yajé. In time, I
began to see restless configurations of energy moving through
the atmosphere which betrayed the spirit presence. Then I began
to see the energy fields manifest into something more substantial--zones
or currents of energy charged with flashing points of light. Eventually,
I could see the spirits manifest as faint, dreamlike images, and
then as very vivid and substantial images.
At this point, I am unable to prove the existence of these spirits.
However, when I am inebriated on yajé, I have the undeniable
sense that the spirits are very real, and that I am experiencing
a realm which is beyond ordinary existence. Unlike inner visions,
these spirit energies felt uncannily real, as if they were independent
entities. In contrast to the spirit of yajé, which feels
like a benevolent master, some of these other spirits felt sublime,
and some truly evil. Interestingly, whenever these energies appeared,
the yajé itself would instruct me to keep vigil over them
by chanting or invoking my animal totems for protective purposes,
as I have seen Don Pacho and other shamans do.
Paranormal Abilities
While several recent books have discounted reports regarding the
telepathic nature of yajé visions, there are some tantalizing
indications that yajé may, in fact, eventually open up
a sixth sense and allow us to see into shamanic realities. There
is considerable cross-cultural evidence that Native practitioners
have relied on yajé visions to guide their shamanic hunting
abilities. Numerous anecdotal reports in anthropological literature
also suggest that some yajé visions--like some common dreams--may
contain precognitive infermation. Moreover, I have noticed that
after working with yajé for extended periods, I am often
propelled into a world of uncanny intuitions and extraordinary
synchronicities, a condition that lasts long after the session
is over and I have returned to "normal" life.
Of course, yajé novices should be cautious about placing
too much faith in their initial visions as blueprints for real-life
ac- tion. While yajé visions--like some dreams--may contain
genuine insights and clues regarding the present and future, they
may contain elements of wishfulness mixed in with elements of
truth. It can take considerable experience and maturity to distinguish
between the two.
Don Pacho says that, when the apprentice and master are under
the influence of yajé, the master can teach the apprentice
directly through a process that we might call "mental transmission."
According to Don Pacho, the telepathic transference of knowledge
and power from master to apprentice is not a metaphor but a strictly
empirical process that occurs in conjunction with the use of the
magical chants. While in some cases the words of songs may assist
in this process by invoking certain images through the power of
suggestion, Don Pacho says that the most vital shamanic information
cannot be conveyed directly in words. 11
For outsiders, the existence of yajé spirits and the efficacy
of yajé visions may exist only in the eyes of the beholders
and believers. However, based on what I have seen so far, I cannot
dismiss yajé visions as mere hallucinations or primitive
superstition. It took several sessions for yajé to cleanse
my psychic windows before I could experience the spirit of yajé
as a living presence. It took even more sessions before I began
to see the spirit energies surrounding us, but the effort has
been worth it.
Despite the emphasis in this article on defecating, vomiting,
and suffering, the yajé rituals are seldom negative experiences.
Once you have survived your personal purgatory, the experience
can be highly pleasant and positive. In contrast to the post-trip
depression, hangover, and uncontrollable mental restlessness I
have experienced with other psychedelics, yajé has always
left me feeling light, clean, calm, and filled with great optimism.
If nothing else, yajé has enabled me to taste the wellsprings
of bliss and enter into a genuine religious ecstasy, in a completely
down-to-earth and unpretentious way. This may be its great paradox
and great mystery. On one level, a yajé session is a profound
cathartic spiritual experience that results in the purging of
pity and fear. On another level, it is a grand, rowdy party where
you stay up all night in the midst of drunkenness, merrymaking,
and traumatic revelations, get scared stiff and shed your worries,
make friends with complete strangers, sing and curse, call on
your deities--and then miraculously enter the morning without
a hangover.
The yajé ritual may start with a near-death experience,
but it ultimately ends in rebirth. The sense of renewal and well
being that comes as the day dawns is definitely not a delusion.
It can be seen in the relaxed faces and bodies of other participants
as they wake to the new day. Their radiant faces express the unpretentious,
vulnerable look of young children and the illumination of those
who have experienced enlightenment. Having drawn close to agony,
madness, and death, the participants have come to terms with their
suffering and have become better persons for it.
NOTES
1. Although sometimes chewed and sometimes extracted
cold, yajé is generally "cooked"; that is, the bark is
stripped off, the vine is pounded into a pulp, and the mashed
vines are boiled in water for up to a day. The vine is almost
always cooked with a complementary plant, of which there are at
least eighty varieties. In the community where I was initiated,
the dark green leaf of another vine which Don Pacho calls el compañero
("the companion") is added to the mixture, for the stated purpose
of "cooling" the potion. According to Don Pacho, yajé itself
is a very "hot" substance, which can "burn" internal organs if
it is not balanced by this leaf.
2. In Colombia, the urbanization of yajé
rituals has only occurred in an occasional and informal way. However,
in Brazil, yajé visionaries have established several urban
yajé cults with many thousands of followers.
3. Throughout this essay, I have deliberately
used the term "visions" rather than "hallucinations." Both may
be products of the "imagination," but a hallucination implies
the creation of unreal images that are the work of a diseased
or malfunctioning mind. In contrast, visions carry real truths
and come from a healthy and inspired mind.
4. In some Amazonian cultures, boys are initiated
into the use of yajé at the age of seven or eight. According
to Don Pacho, the reason is that prepubescent boys-- who are emotionally
innocent, psychically clean, and sexually pure--can enter into
the yajé world more easily than adults. I also acknowledge
that I have seen some urbanized Colombians reach the visionary
stages with remarkable speed and ease. Since most Colombians have
a measure of Indian blood, I speculate that there may be a mystical
genetic factor at work.
5. Of course, mastering yajé has nothing
to do with being a brutish macho, or he-man. I have observed that
women taking yajé generally suffer much less than men,
probably because the ability to void is primarily a matter of
bodily awareness, and women are often more in touch with their
bodies than men. In contrast, White urban males, especially intellectuals
who are out of tune with their bodies, often seem to suffer the
most. Their whole ego formation is based on instinctual repression
and the idea that they are smarter than everyone else--something
that goes against the spirit of yajé.
6. Although the release of bodily waste is fundamentally
an involuntary, organic process, our parents and society have
taught us that bodily functions are dirty and disgusting. Society
later uses the internalized anxieties surrounding bodily functions
to teach children to deny and repress other instinctual drives.
While it may be useful up to a point for children to conform to
the expectations of others, most of us become slaves to a set
of unconscious conditioned reflexes which not only hold us back
but cause us a lot of grief and even harm. Under the influence
of yajé, it is suddenly easy to understand Wilhelm Reich's
concept of "body armoring." Reich argued that our neuroses stem
from internalizing psychic shocks experienced in early childhood.
Whenever we are punished--through words or blows--for expressing
our instinctive natures, our body instinctively protects itself
by forming body armoring. Moreover, because this armoring inhibits
the natural functioning of internal muscles, organs, and autonomous
functions, it can lead to serious physical and psychological problems
later in life.
7. See R. D. Laing, Politics of Experience (Fantheon,
1983); and Arthur Janov, The Primal Scream (Putnam Publishing
Group, 1981).
8. It is worth noting that, although it is customary
for participants to discuss and analyze their visions with the
shaman after the session, this is usually done in a highly confidential
manner. I have been told by some Native participants that it is
unwise or even dangerous to reveal one's visions to anyone but
the shaman.
9. The appearance of malocas in my visions was
an anomaly because, while they are common in many Amazonian cultures,
they are not used in the Siona community where I did my apprenticeship.
10. According to many indigenous myths and traditions,
all beings were originally endowed with paranormal abilities,
but humans have lost these abilities due to "contamination." It
is easy to see how these visionary capacities, which were once
vital to the survival of hunter-gatherers, might be forgotten
and lost in urban cultures that depend upon nourishing other kinds
of talents and sensibilities.
11. The memorization of myths or chants - which play such an
important role in some Amazonian coca cultures - are secondary
in the yajé traditions. The spontaneous yajé songs
which the potion inspires in the master are not meant to be copied
by the apprentice. The goal in the yajé ritual is for the
apprentice to reach a certain level of enlightenment so he can
receive his own songs directly from the vine.
12: Jimmy Weiskopf is an American-born journalist who graduated
from Columbia University, New York, and Cambridge University,
England. Having lived full-time in Colombia since 1977, Weiskopf
is a member of the Colombia Foreign Press Association, writing
for the Wall Streel Journal, Time, Americas, and other publications.
He also writes regularly for the Colombian Post and La Prensa,
a Bogota daily.
Contact
Jimmy
This Article is from the Fall 1995 Issue of Shaman's Drum
A journal of experiential shamanism
