Your Grandma’s Guide to Ayahuasca

Written in a kindly, didactic tone and grounded throughout in solid research, Grandmother Ayahuasca: Plant Medicine and the Psychedelic Brain is the book you would give to a starry-eyed youngster eager to set forth to the Peruvian jungle, or your grandma who just expressed interest in that unpronounceable plant you keep talking about. It is a primer: a straightforward introduction to the neurobiology, culture, history, and experience of ayahuasca.

It is, in short, highly accessible. Grandmother Ayahuasca offers up-to-date information and reflections upon the neurology of psychedelic experience, the anthropology of plant medicine use, quantum mechanics, therapeutic effects of plant medicines, epigenetics, plant sentience and sapience, and shamanic technique — along with the usual collection of “trip reports.” It concludes with a valuable discussion of the challenges of integration of entheogenic/psychedelic experience and reflections on its role in healing the anima mundi.

It also has a touch of naivete. Continue reading “Your Grandma’s Guide to Ayahuasca”

What the Psychedelic Renaissance Could Learn from Amazonian Shamans

When ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin showed up on the UC Berkeley campus for this interview, he was accompanied by a shaman. And it was no blond guy with dreadlocks from Brooklyn who presided over weekend ayahuasca ceremonies, either.

Don Fernando was a member of the Ingano tribe, a soft-spoken middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap who Plotkin had brought to the United States as part of a campaign to help him protect his people from the violent incursions into their region by timber and oil companies. Unlike most anthropologists, who may work to document dying cultures before they are snuffed out, Plotkin’s organization, the Amazon Conservation Team, or ACT (www.amazonteam.org), has been remarkably effective in doing something to protect the rainforest, its peoples, and its shamans.

Cultural and ecological survival is high-stakes work, however. Before arriving, Plotkin said, “You can photograph me if you want, but no photos of the shaman. If his image got back to Colombia, it could be very dangerous.”

As one of the few remaining swashbuckling ethnobotanists trained by the legendary Amazonian explorer Richard Evans Schultes, Plotkin also has a deep, abiding love of the healing and visionary plants of the rainforest. He is the author of several books: Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice, Medicine Quest, and his newly released The Amazon: What Everyone Needs to Know.

While he claims that as a scientist the “technology of the spirit” practiced by shamans is beyond his understanding, it is likely that the two men who settled into their seats in the campus coffee shop knew more about shamanism than could be found on the shelves of the nearby UC Berkeley library.

Continue reading “What the Psychedelic Renaissance Could Learn from Amazonian Shamans”

Mayantuyacu Retreat June 18th to 26th 2020

Juan and Susana

Dear Friends, for fifteen years I have been accompanying committed men and women into the heart of the Peruvian rainforest to work with Asháninkan healer and teacher Juan Flores Salazar at his Mayantuyacu center. This 2020 journey is inspired by the vision of hope and renewal this beginning of a decade brings.

I am inviting a small group of men and women committed to their inner paths to an immersion in nature, with nature, and through nature; individuals willing to support the co-creation of a safe and solid container for each other; and who are ready to go deep into their own healing, blind spots, and overall growth. I will be accompanying and facilitating the process all the way through.

Please see the full invitation by clicking the link below!

Susana Bustos, Ph.D.

Mayantuyacu Retreat 2020

The “Shamanic” Invasion — On the Encounter between Amazonian Shamans and Western Apprentices

Jacques Mabit

This from Jacques Mabit, the founder of Takiwasi and a pioneer among those Westerners who have apprenticed in the ayahuasca tradition. Mabit is unique in that he has lived in South America for decades and so is deeply informed of the inside workings of the world of Amazonian vegetalismo. Noteworthy here is his discussion of the “well-developed art of seduction” that we Westerners are virtually defenseless before, which have led to virtual cults surrounding certain Shipibo shamans. Western apprentices of these Shipibo shamans now utilize the same “darts” to seduce their followers here in the West.

In the small haven of the High Peruvian Amazon where I have lived for almost 20 years, I am seeing a growing wave of Westerners eager to approach the practices of traditional Amazonian medicine. Having myself been one of the initiators of this movement, I cannot help but oscillate between satisfaction and fear in the face of this enthusiasm for what is now known as “shamanism”; a very inappropriate term from an anthropological perspective. The progressive realization that Westerners have of the serious deficiency of sacredness in their everyday lives, and the audacity of some, take them to the other side of the world in search of a renewal of their spirituality that seems to bring hope. At the same time, the Westerners’ capacity to transform everything they touch into a commercial product, including spirituality, has something terrifying to it. We are currently witnessing a massive landing of people from countries in the North of the world coming to the most isolated corners of the forests, mountains and deserts of Peru, and to many other places, to discover the “shaman” that is still “pure”, and who can reconcile them with themselves. It is here that things get complicated in a particular way, after the movement began in the opposite direction with the shifting of “shamans” to Europe, and white people presenting themselves as initiated and capable of substituting indigenous teachers.

When a Westerner and an Amazonian or Mestizo shaman meet, it is not just two people coming face to face, it is two cultures discovering each other, and finally, confronting each other. Continue reading “The “Shamanic” Invasion — On the Encounter between Amazonian Shamans and Western Apprentices”

Plant Medicines, Mythology & The Hero’s Journey: A Medicine Path Podcast

Yoga teacher, musician and artist Brian James, who has been exploring the intersection of music, yoga and shamanism for over 20 years recently spoke with Robert, In this conversation we talk about our explorations of indigenous healing traditions of North and South America, including work with ayahuasca and peyote, and get into a discussion about mythology and the hero’s journey.

Listen here:

The Intensified Trajectory of Consciousness in Odysseus’ Vision in Hades

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The winding path that led to this essay, just published in Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, began with the traditional lore of an Ashaninkan shaman working in the Peruvian Amazon. It may be the first significant discussion of Homer’s Odyssey in the light of contemporary knowledge of sacred plant medicines, indigenous ways of knowledge, and shamanic practices to appear in decades.

Towards the end of our year long investigation into the healing practices of the vegetalistas, as the indigenous and mestizo practitioners of rainforest medicine are known, we engaged in a plant dieta under the direction of one of the informants in Susana’s dissertation research, the curandero Juan Flores. One day, Flores tramped back to visit us during our solitary fast, and there the conversation turned to the mythic—and quite real according to him—beings that inhabit the Amazonian waterways. As Flores described the behavior of these sirenas, Robert was struck by the intriguing parallels between their seductive behavior and that of the Sirens described by Homer. Flores had never heard of the Odyssey, yet when given the story of Odysseus’ ordeal in the orbit of their rapturous song, Flores nodded his head and said grimly, “That’s them, alright.”

It was then we began to suspect that the indigenous experience of the natural world, which has a marked universality among native peoples, might have an underlying, shaping influence upon Homer’s narrative.

Along with familiarizing us with the cosmovision of the Amazonian peoples, our fieldwork also introduced us to the practice of shamanic journeying, which among Amazonian peoples, who live in an environment of extraordinary biodiversity, is often conducted in ceremonies utilizing ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant medicine whose name translates from Quechua as “vine of the spirits” or “vine of the dead.”

There we were also struck by certain parallels between Odysseus’ visionary descent into Hades and ethnographies of traditional shamanic practices among indigenous peoples worldwide, especially when supplemented by cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams’ theory of the intensified trajectory of consciousness. These parallels are suggestive of a deeper morphological relationship between Homer’s narrative and the traditions of vision quest among the ancient, indigenous Mediterranean peoples (whose material culture is preserved in the Paleolithic cave sanctuaries), than is generally recognized. By viewing, as our main objective, just one episode in the Odyssey, the hero’s visionary journey in Hades, from an ethnographic perspective, this essay hopes to open up more inquiry into the indigenous, and shamanic, background of the epic poem.

To read the entire article, please enter here: The Intensified Trajectory of Consciousness in Odysseus’ Vision in Hades

snakes!

The Siren’s Rapturous Song: A Video on Shamanism and the Healing of Addiction

Awareness of the remarkable efficacy of psychoactive plant medicines to heal addiction is growing. These presentations by Robert Tindall and Susana Bustos, sponsored by City Lights Books, were inspired in part by the authors’ work at Takiwasi, a center for the treatment of addiction in Tarapoto, Peru which utilizes the traditional medicine of the rainforest, including ayahuasca, with a high degree of success.

These videos interweave two perspectives on the spiritual nature of addiction: An exploration of addiction versus shamanic initiation in the light of ancient Western texts, and a report on research into the shamanic treatments of addiction just conducted at Takiwasi, focusing especially on the lesser known vegetalista practice of the plant diet.

Part One is Robert’s talk on addiction versus initiation in the light of the ancient Greek and Celtic traditions.

Part Two is Susana’s talk on the vegetalista practice of plant dieta and its unique efficacy in the treatment of addiction.

With gratitude to Emerald Tablet, upon whose premises these talks were given on December 19th, 2013; to Vincent Tamer who captured them on video; and to Peter Maravelis at City Lights Books.

On Paleolithic Dreamtime

Traditional people, and I think the people of the Paleolithic had, very probably, two concepts that change our vision of the world. The concept of fluidity and the concept of permeability,

French Prehistorian Jean Clottes, interviewed in Werner Herzog’s recent exquisite film, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” continues describing the creators of the art of Chauvet Cave, whose works dates from 32,000 B.C.E., thus:

Fluidity means the categories that we have, man, woman, horse, tree, etc., can shift. A tree may speak. A man can get transformed into an animal and the other way around, given certain circumstances. The concept of permeability is that there are no barriers, so to speak, between the world where we are and the world of spirits. A shaman, for example, can send his or her spirit to the world of the supernatural or can receive the visit of supernatural spirits. When you put those two concepts together, you realize how different life must have been for those people from the way we live now. Continue reading “On Paleolithic Dreamtime”