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Ayahuasca Tales |
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Written by The Wraith
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Tuesday, 21 December 1999 |
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Page 2 of 16
Shamans may not contact other spiritual forces directly but only through the good graces of Viho-mahse. Consequently, the snuff represents one of the most important tools of the paye or medicine man. Although the sixty species of Virola are spread throughout tropical forests of the New World and psychoactive principles have been found in at least a dozen species, it is only in the western Amazon and adjacent parts of the Orinoco basin that this genus has been used as the source of a sacred inebriant.
The species most important as sources of the intoxicating snuff are V. calophylla, V. calophylloidea, V. elongata, and V. theiodora, the last-named being without doubt the most frequently employed.
Yet locally, V. rufula, V. cuspidata, and other species may supply the drug. There are Indians-- the primitive nomadic Maku of hte Rio Piraparana of Colombia, for example-- who ingest the red “bark-resin” directly, with no preparation, using B. elongata.
Other tribes, especially the Bora and Witoto, swallow pellets made from the paste of the “resin,” valuing for this purpose V. peruviana, V. surinamensis, V. theiodora, and possibly V. lorentensis There is a vague evidence that shamans in Venezuela may smoke the bark of V. sebifera “at dances when curing fevers” or that they my boil the bark and drink the liquor “to drive away evil spirits.”
Although the mythological significance and magico-religous use of Ebena snuff is indicative of a great age, the drug was not known until very recently.
Perspicacious plant-explorer though he was, Spruce failed to discover this fundamental narcotic use of Virola, notwithstanding his special study of the group that resulted in the discovery of a number of species new to science. The earliest references to this hallucinogen dates from the beginning of this century, when a German ethnologist reported on the Yelwana of the upper Orinoco area.
It was not, however, until 1938 and 1939 that he botanical association of Virola with the snuff was made. The Brazilian botanist Ducke reported that the leaves of V. theiodora and V. cuspidata represented the source. The leaves, of course, are never used, but this report first focused attention on Virola which, until then, had never been suspected as an hallucinogen.
The first detailed description and specific identification of the drug, however, was published in 1954 when its preparation and use among medicine men of Colombian Indians was described.
Taken mainly by shamans among the Barasan, Makuna, Tukano, Kabuyare, Kuripako, Puinave, and other tribes in eastern Colombia, the drug was employed ritualistically for diagnosis and treatment of disease, prophecy, divination, and other magico-religious purposes.
At that time, V. calophylla and V. calophylloidea were indicated as the species most valued, but later work in Brazil and elsewhere has established the primacy of V. theiodora.
Recent field studies have shown that the narcotic snuff is used among many Indian groups in Amazonian Colombia, the uppermost Orinoco basin of Colombia and Venezuela, the Rio Negro, and other areas of the western Amazon of Brazil.
The snuff is apparently most highly prized and most deeply involved in aboriginal life among the sundry Indian tribes collectively called Waika in the upper Orinoco of Venezuela and the northern effluents of the Rio Negro of Brazil. These groups are variously named, but are most commonly known to anthropologists as the Kirishana, Shiriana, Karauetare, Karime, Parahure, Surara, Pakidai, and Yanomama. They generally refer to the snuff as Epana, Ebena, Nyakwana, or some variant of these terms. In northwestern Brazil, this snuff and others are often generically known as Parica.
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