Ayahuasca is one of the most powerful and well-known natural entheogens known to Man. It is a hallucinogenic Amazonian plant concoction that has been used for centuries, possibly millennia by native Indian and more recently mestizo shamans across the upper Amazon throughout Peru, Columbia, Ecuador and Brazil. Over 40 other names for this sacred medicine are known including caapi, natema, mihi, and yage.
The name Ayahuasca comes from Quechua, a widely spoken South American language found throughout the Amazon: aya means “soul” or “spirits” and huasca means “vine”, therefore translating to “vine of the soul” or “vine of the spirits”.
Ayahuasca is made from the Ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and the leaf of the chacruna plant (Psychotria viridis). Both of these plants are collected from the jungle to create a potent mixture that offers the drinker access to the realm of spirits and an energetic world that exists around us all of which we are typically not able to perceive in daily life.
It is a mystery how the Amazonian shamans learnt to combine these two plants in order to prepare this profound medicine as individually taken; they are more or less inert. In chemical terms, the leafy chacruna contains the powerful psychoactive dimethyletryptamine (DMT) which is not orally active but is metabolized by the stomach enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO). However, certain chemicals within the Ayahuasca vine contain MAO inhibitors in the form of harmine compounds which inhibit the action of the MAO in the medicine and result in a psychoactive compound that has an identical chemical makeup to the organic tryptamines in our brains. This then results in the mixture circulating through the bloodstream into the brain where it triggers powerful visionary experiences and enables us to access otherworldly realms.
The origins of the shamanic use of Ayahuasca are lost in the mists of history and there are many stories surrounding the how the natives initially came to work with this sacred medicine. In an indigenous context, Ayahuasca was used by the shamans of the Amazon region (Ayahuasqueros) for healing and divinatory purposes. Complex rituals surround the preparation and use of Ayahuasca which have been passed down through generations of curanderos (healers). By holding healing ceremonies, the Ayahuasqueros use the medicine as a diagnostic tool to discover the root of illness in their patients.
Ayahuasca is a medicine that works on every level; on the physical and non physical being, on our consciousness, on our emotions and on our spirit. The medicine also is called “La Purga” so as the name implies, causes purging of physical, emotional and spiritual issues accumulated within the body of the patients.
Fundamental to the work of the curanderos is the knowledge that Nature is alive; that the plant kingdom is conscious and has intelligence; that plants have spirits who can help to heal mankind; that an answer to any illness can be found in Nature. Ayahuasca diagnoses the patients and tells the curanderos which plants to use in order to treat the illness. The curanderos work in altered states of reality; in other dimensions outside the material world. In addition to working with the medicinal plants they consult with spirit doctors holistically and energetically healing the soul of the patient using many classic forms of shamanic healing including soul retrieval and extraction.
