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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 9 of 16
The drug may be the shaman's tool to diagnose illness or to ward off impending disaster, to guess the wiles of an enemy, to prophesy the future. But it is more than the shaman's tool. It enters into almost all aspects of the life of the people who use it, to an extent equaled by hardly any other hallucinogen.
Partakers, shamans or not, set all the gods, the first human beings, and animals, and come to understand the establishment of their social order.
Ayahuasca is, above all, a medicine- the great medicine.
The Ayahuasca leader among the Campa of Peru is a religious practitioner who, following a strict apprenticeship, maintains and increases his shamanistic power through the use of Tobacco and Ayahuasca. The Campa shaman under Ayahuasca acquires an eerie, distant voice, and a quivering jaw which indicates the arrival of good spirits who, splendidly clad, sing and dance before him; the shaman`s singing is merely his own voice echoing their song.
During the singing, his soul may travel far and wide- a phenomenon not interfering with performance of the ceremony nor with the shaman's ability to communicate the wishes of the spirits to participants.
Among the Tukano, the partaker of the drug feels himself pulled along by powerful winds which the leading shaman explains as a trip to the Milky Way, the first stop on the way to heaven.
Similarly, the Ecuadorian Zaparo experience a sensation of being lifted into the air. The souls of Peruvian Conibo-Shipibo shamans fly about in the form of a bird; or shamans may travel in a supernatural canoe manned by demons to reconquer lost or stolen souls.
The effects of the drink are greatly altered when leaves of Banisteriopsis rusbyana or of Psychotria viridis are added. The tryptamines in these additives are believed to be inactive when taken orally, unless monoamine oxidase inhibitors be present. The harmine and its derivatives in B. caapi and B. inebrians inhibitors of this kind, potentiating the tryptamines.
Both types of alkaloids, however, are hallucinogenic.
Length and vividness of the visual hallucinations are notably enhanced when these additives are present. Whereas visions with the basic drink are seen usually in blue, purple, or gray, those induced when the tryptaminic additives are used may be brightly colored ill reds and yellows.
Without additives, Ayahuasca intoxication may be pleasant with visions of light setting ill with the eyes closed after a period of giddiness, nervousness, profuse sweating, and sometimes nausea.
A period of lassitude initiates the play of colors- at first white, then mainly a hazy, smoky blue that later increases in intensity; eventually sleep, interrupted by dreams and occasional feverishness, takes over. Serious diarrhea, which continues after the intoxication, is the uncomfortable effect most frequently experienced. With the tryptaminic additives, many of these effects are intensified, but trembling and convulsive shaking, mydriasis, and increase of pulse rate are also noted. Frequently, a show of recklessness, sometimes even aggressiveness, marks advanced states of the inebriation.
The famous Yurupari ceremony of the Tukanoans is an ancestor- communication ritual, the basis of a man's tribal society and an adolescent male initiation rite.
Its sacred bark trumpet, which calls the Yurupari spirit, is taboo to the sight of women; it symbolizes the forces to whom the ceremony is holy, favorably influencing fertility spirits, effecting cures of prevalent illnesses, and improving the male prestige and power over women. The Yurupari ceremony is now little practiced.
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