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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 11 of 16
There lived among these carly Tukano a woman; the first woman of creation, who “drowned” men in visions. Tukanoans believe that during coitus, a man “drowns”- the equivalent of seeing visions.
The first woman found herself with child. The Sun-father had impregnated her through the eye. She gave birth to a child who became Caapi, the narcotic plant. The child was born during a brilliant flash of light. The woman -Yaje- cut the umbilical cord and, rubbing the child with magical plants, shaped its body. The Caapichild lived to be an old man zealously guarding his hallucinogenic powers. From this aged child, owner of Caapi or the sexual act, the Tukanoan men received semen.
For the Indian, “the hallucinatory experience is essentially a sexual one... to make it sublime, to pass from the erotic, the sensual, to a mystical union with the mythic era, the intrauterine stage, is the ultimate goal, attained by a mere handful but coveted by all.”
All or much of Indian art, it has been proposed, is based on hallucinogenic experience. Colors, similarly, are symbolically significant: yellow or off-white has a seminal concept, indicating solar fertilization: red -color of the uterus, fire, heat- symbolizes female fecundity; blue represents thought through Tobacco smoke. These colors accompany Ayahuasca intoxications and have precise interpretations.
Many of the complicated rock engravings in the rivers of the Vaupés, are undoubtedly based upon drug experiences. Likewise, the stereotyped paintings on the bark wall of Tukanoan communal houses represent themes from Ayahuasca hallucinations.
It has been suggested that many of the design motifs induced by Caapi are, on the one hand, culture-bound and, on the other hand, controlled by specific biochemical effects of the active principles in the plant.
The special painted clay pot for preparing Caapi is sacred among the Tukanoans, and when not in use, always hangs outside of the maloca in a northeastern orientation. The designs are directly connected with the characteristic visual effects experienced during Caapi intoxication.
Pictures and decorations on pots, houses, basketry, and other household objects fall into two categories: abstract design and figurative motifs.
The Indians know the difference between the two and say that it is due to Caapi intoxication.
Someone watching a man at work or finding a drawing would say: “This is what one sees after three cups of Yajé,” occasionally specifying the kind of plant that had been used and thus giving an indication of the nature of the narcotic effects they attributed to different concoctions.
It would seem that such an important drug would have attracted the attention of Europeans at a very early date. Such was not the case. In 1851, however, the English botanist Spruce, who was collecting among Tukanoan tribes in the Rio Vaupés of Brazil, met with Caapi and sent material for chemical study to England. Three years later, he observed Caapi use again among the Guahibo Indians along the upper Orinoco. Later, he encountered Ayahuasca among the Zaparo of Ecuador and identified it as the same hallucinogen as Caapi.
“In the course of the night,” Spruce wrote of Caapi, “the young men partook of Caapi five or six times, in the intervals between the dances; but only a few of them at a time, and a very few drank of it twice. The cup-bearer -who must be a man, for no woman can touch or taste Caapi- starts at a short run from the opposite end of the house, with a small calabash containing about a teacupful of Caapi in each hand, muttering ’Mo-mo-mo-mo-mo’ as he runs, and gradually sinking down until at last his chin nearly touches his knees, when he reaches out one of his cups to the man who stands ready to receive it...”
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