Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (44 page)

What is interesting about this persistent meme is not that it is wrong but,
rather, that it is correct, although translated into ill-fitting Western clothes. As
we have seen, Upper Amazonian shamans maintain that drinking ayahuasca
gives them visual and auditory information about events that are remote in
both time and space. In the Upper Amazon, too, one of the key features of
icaros, a shaman's magic songs, is that they have the ability to modulate the
visionary effects of ayahuasca and other psychoactive plants, both for the shaman who is singing the icaro and for a patient or apprentice to whom the shaman has given the medicine. Most important, songs can also modulate the
contents of the visions of a patient or apprentice. This is, I think, just what Cesar Calvo was referring to in the passage quoted above; similarly, when Bona
Maria tired of my incessant questions, she would tell me, "I will show you,"
which meant that I should expect my next ayahuasca visions to give me the
answers I was looking for.

THE STAGES OF THE AYAHUASCA EXPERIENCE

Based on my own experience, discussions with others, and review of the ethnographic literature, the ayahuasca experience appears to unfold in three
phases., In the first phase, there are geometric figures, sometimes spinning
or whirling, fireflies, rippling water, raindrops, van Gogh deep space stars
and galaxies, and eyes; in fact, disembodied eyes and eyelike shapes are frequently found in Amazonian visionary art.2 Of interest are the apparently frequent Greek key designs reflected in indigenous ayahuasca art-for example,
in Tukano basketry and Shipibo pottery and embroidery; these patterns were
consistently a part of the first phase of my experiences. Poet Cesar Calvo gives
a description of this stage: "When I closed my eyelids, something like arabesques appeared, complicated decorations of iridescent light and shadows.
... They seemed to be animated, moving against a backdrop of geometric figures, pointed planets, great rocks carved with outlines of ancient animals, an
unending diversity offorms. "3 Anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoffreports a similar experience-geometric shapes, fireworks, jets of water, semicircles, lights, multiplying circles, hexagons, eyes, colors, and stylized palm
trees, lasting about twenty minutes.4

The second phase consists of what we may as well call contact with the
spirit world, often through interaction with other-than-human plant and
animal spirits, sometimes through visionary information-distant scenes, the
whereabouts of missing relatives, the location of lost objects, the identity of
the sorcerer or sorcery responsible for a sickness. These visionary landscapes
often incorporate the geometric designs of the first phase: rooms may be lined
with complex tessellations, faces may appear covered with patterns, a grassy
area may be revealed as an oriental carpet covered with complex designs.

The third phase begins as the visions begin to fade, the nausea lessens,
and one slips into a state of physical weakness and lassitude, sometimes with
short, quiet, pleasant visions.

Indigenous cultures in the Amazon are similar. Among the Cashinahua,
visions seen during the collective ritual drinking of ayahuasca-geometric
designs, transformations of figures such as snakes, reptiles, and vines-are
called dami. Rapidly changing dami are the only images perceived by beginners or at the initial stage of the effect of the ayahuasca; they are said to be nixi
pae besti, "only vine things." To go beyond the dami images requires the good
will and generosity of the owner or parent of the vine, called yube, spirit of the
boa. If the spirit of the boa is stingy with the drinker, he will not see anything
or at most "only vine things." The real images to be seen are yuxin-beings
with the appearance and agency of human beings.5

The Sharanahua, too, distinguish between an initial stage, characterized
by visions of shifting shapes and colors, colored beads and scrolls, growing
larger, becoming like ropes or snakes; and a subsequent stage, characterized
by visions of the spirits-beautiful women, dancing, with painted decorations
and feathered headdresses. The beads and scrolls, vines and snakes, of the
first phase indicate only that the visionary state is about to begin. They are
not the spirits and are not, the Sharanahua say, of any importance. The spirits
come only by singing, and therefore appear only to one who knows the songs
that call them; young men see only the snakes, which terrify them.'

Among the Piro, the ayahuasca experience begins with the sound of wind
rushing through the jungle, followed by what they call the little lights glittering in the dark. It is only after this that the spirits arrive, singing; these spirits, they say, are the kayigawlu, the real vision. Artemio Fasabi Gordon, son of
a well-known Piro shaman, don Mauricio Roberto Fasabi, told anthropologist Peter Gow how he had drunk ayahuasca often in his youth but had not
seen anything-only "those little glittering lights that the night makes." 7 One
Cubeo described this first phase as "a room spinning with red feathers. iI

Similarly, among the Tukano there are three stages of ayahuasca experience. Shortly after drinking, after an initial tremor and the sensation of rushing winds, there is a state of drowsiness in which the person concentrates
with half-closed eyes upon the luminous flashes and streaks that appearflickering and floating star and flower shapes, symmetrical kaleidoscopic
patterns, eye-shaped motifs, concentric circles, chains of brilliant dots. It is
in the second stage that pictorial images take shape, and the drinker can see
people and animals, unknown creatures, spirit beings-the River of Milk, the
Snake Canoe, the boa, the anaconda, the Master of the Animals of the jungle and waters, gigantic prototypes of the game animals. In the third stage, the
images disappear, leaving soft music, wandering clouds, and a state of blissful serenity.9

Another important point is that first-time drinkers of ayahuasca, especially
gringos with great expectations, often have disappointing experiences-no
visions, no ecstasies, just profound nausea, explosive vomiting and retching,
distressing diarrhea, and rubbery legs. Dona Maria and don Roberto explain
this by saying that there must first be la purga, purgation and cleansing, before the ayahuasca can begin to teach. Don Agustin Rivas says the same: "After
the body is rid of toxins," he says, "then one begins to see the real spirits. 1110
Don Julio Jerena expresses the same thought. "I was going to paint him with
the colors of ayahuasca," he says of a gringo patient who, eager for visions,
had done nothing but vomit. "But when I looked inside him I realized that
he was like a living room that was full of broken furniture, garbage on the
ground, peeling walls. Who would paint a room like that? No one. So I had
to spend the night cleaning it all out to get it ready for painting."" Don Pacho
Piaguaje, a Siona shaman, puts it this way: "Ayahuasca is like a wild animal
that must be approached with great caution. It will not allow you to make full
contact until it knows you very well. "IZ

Under such circumstances, issues of set and setting become very important. First-time drinkers of ayahuasca are often eager for visions, have read
about the visions of others, and expect miraculous exploding cosmic pinwheels. "The ayahuasca must be weak," they say; but in fact it can take several
sessions-and numerous wrenching purges-before the drinker is able to see
what the teacher plant is ready to show. Novelist William S. Burroughs and
poet Allen Ginsberg both confessed serious disappointment with their first
experience ofayahuasca.13

This is true even of those who become shamans. Dona Maria had no visions until the third time she drank ayahuasca. Don Emilio Andrade Gomez,
a mestizo shaman, says: "The first three times I took ayahuasca I did not see
anything, but I continued being on a diet. The fourth time I saw something.
That made me believe that it was indeed true what they said. The fifth time
I took the brew I really had a vision.1114 Shipibo shaman don Leoncio Garcia
Sampaya drank ayahuasca for three months before he had a vision-and then
it was tremendous, overwhelming. "Probably I was learning from the spirits
during the diet," he says, "but I didn't understand.-5

Thus, too, the accounts of first- or second-time use must be read with awareness that such reports frequently recount the effects of expectation rather
than the effects of the drink, or at least attempt to put the best interpretation on the experience. Finally, some shamans may mix some toe-rich in scopolamine-into the ayahuasca drink, at least the first time or two they give it to
a gringo who has not drunk it before, so that the client is not disappointed at
the lack of any dramatic effect. This may account for some unusually vivid and
frightening first experiences. Don Roberto may, under such circumstances,
have the person smoke toe leaves in a cachimbo, a wooden pipe.

It can sometimes take several experiences to get beyond the geometric
shapes, kaleidoscopic patterns, eyelike figures, and even cartoon characters
that seem to characterize the first stage of the ayahuasca experience. Why is
this? Since ayahuasca visions either are embedded in the hallucinator's ordinary perceptual space or constitute the entire perceptual field, they clearly
require considerable processing. Perspective must be retained and, as the
observer or object moves, continuously updated; spatial relations among
objects must be constantly readjusted. And to the extent that lifelike threedimensional interactive figures are constructed by the mind, it may be that the
process takes some practice. That may be why, too, gringos report early experiences of stick figures and relatively simple cartoon faces and persons.

FEATURES OF THE AYAHUASCA EXPERIENCE

Lucidity

Significantly, ayahuasca does not affect lucidity or clarity of thought. There is
no sense of being narcotized, no decrease in alertness, no inability to process
linearly. I have certainly been puzzled from time to time by what was going on,
but I have never felt impaired in my ability to reason about it. I could walk in a
crooked line in order to avoid banging my shins on cast-iron lawn furniture
while, simultaneously, understanding that the furniture was a hallucination.
Similar results have been found in DIM experiments; reasoning and thinking were, for most participants, reportedly unaffected.,' Indigenous reports
of ayahuasca experiences indicate that visions appear with "complete awareness of what is going on."17 Similarly, there appears to be little distancing in
ayahuasca visions, which appear from a first-person point of view. Finally, visions are sometimes more vivid with eyes closed, but not necessarily; many
visions are perfectly clear with the eyes open, embedded into ordinary perceptual space.

Example i. I am drinking ayahuasca with don Romulo in his jungle hut. The moonlit clearing is filled with black cast-iron lawn furniture, chairs and low tables, intricately filigreed, clearly visible in the moonlight. The pieces of lawn furniture are fully integrated into my
perceptual space, blocking the visible area behind them, changing their
spatial relationship and perspective as I walk among them, solid and
heavy. When I walk across the clearing, held up on my rubbery legs by
don Rbmulo's son, we walk in a zigzag line, to avoid banging my shins
against the tables. I do this even though I know, in my fully functional
rational mind, that there is no lawn furniture in the jungle.