Ayahuasca Visions
Excerpted from Visionary Vine: Hallucinogenic healing in the Peruvian Amazon, by Marlene Dobkin de Rios. 1972, Waveland Press
In the year that I worked in Belén, I spoke to many people about ayahuasca and its effects. Listening to scores of informants talk about their experience while taking the hallucinogen was very informative, but after a couple of months this became somewhat repetitious. The same kinds of visions kept occurring time after time, as former patients would describe jungle creatures such as boa constrictors and viperous snakes that appeared before them under ayahuasca. For the most part, after a certain confidence had been established among informants, details of illnesses suffered and their magical origin would be related as the reason for seeking a healer's help.Under the effects of the drug, a screen full of visions would appear to the person, often much more exciting than the occasional movie he might attend in the city. Although some claimed not to have received any visions under their particular ayahuasca experience, most did have things to relate. Both river and jungle animals would fill the mind's eye. Many people would claim to see the person or persons who were responsible for bewitching them.
Some would report a panorama of activity, in which a person would express his innermost thoughts toward the patient, such as sexual desire, vengeance or hate, and then proceed to manufacture some medicine to throw over their threshold or perhaps slip unnoticed into a drink. Sometimes symbols would be reported, rather than panoramic action. One woman spoke of a church and a white veil that she saw in a sort of staccato vision, which represented to her how a rejected suitor wanted her to leave her husband and children to run off and get married. At times, a person would report seeing someone sneak up to their house at night to slip an evil potion across the threshold. At other times, someone might appear in a vision laughing sardonically at the man or woman whom they were causing to be bewitched. In other cases, a totally unknown man or woman would appear before a person in an ayahuasca vision. However, in all cases it was the job of the experienced ayahuasquero to interpret his patients' visions so as to clarify the cause of their illness. Quite often, people would say that their healer, while under the effects of the drug, would tell them he saw the person responsible for their misfortune, but would not say who it was. It was left for their own drug experience to bring forth this information. Through this kind of suggestion, the patient would be brought to a pitch of expectation. It is not difficult to imagine how affective need would be expressed by a particular vision or illusion stimulated by the drug.
When an unknown person appears before a patient, it becomes the healer's job to decide his identity. Many people, however, see members of their family or else people with whom they may be having personal difficulties appear before them, including neighbors, ex-spouses, in-laws, a rejected lover, and so on. If only part of a person is seen in profile, or a turned back or shoulder view, the healer once again is called upon to interpret this vision. The type of vision that is reported by a person may at times depend upon the rhythm of the songs the healer sings. A stacatto beat may bring forth many fleeting momentary visions, while slower songs may be used for more prolonged visionary experiences, such as the ones used to identify evildoers.
The many visions of snakes and boas reported by patients are used by healers to effect cures. It is widely believed that a snake (called in Spanish, culebra) is the mother spirit of the drug. Many herbs and medicines found in nature are believed to have protective spirits which watch over their plant's use and are jealous guardians. Such spirits on occasion must be propitiated when their plant is cut down or removed by man from the jungle confines.
Some fishermen and hunters in Belén who regularly bring psychedelics back from the heart of the jungle to supply some of the ayahuasca healers in Iquitos leave offerings of tobacco and food under the tree when they cut off the woody vine. People often talk about the spirits of these plants as jealous guardians who must be given special attention. Ayahuasca is no exception here, and dietary prescriptions stressed again and again are justified by the jealous nature of the plant. It is for this reason that salt, sweets, and lard must be avoided by ayahuasca users for at least a twenty-four hour period preceding and following the use of the purge. At times, sexual abstinence may also be requested by the healer.
The mother spirit of ayahuasca may transform herself into an animate creature such as a princess, a queen, or any one of many different fantasy forms. This is done to find out if the person who takes the purge is strong or fearful. Strength is generally thought of in terms of self-domination, of not losing control of oneself under the effects of ayahuasca, nor screaming in fear as jungle creatures fill one's visions. For example, a commonly reported vision is that a very large snake enters the circle around which a person is seated in the jungle or else enters a room where one is taking ayahuasca. If the patient is not frightened by this creature, the snake begins to teach the person his song.
In a good session, a certain moment will arrive when everyone who is under the effects of the drug begins to sing a series of songs at the same time as they are visited by the snake in their visions. A frightening vision is often described in which a boa enters the patient's mouth. Often identified as the Yacumama of folklore, these boa constrictors in everyday jungle life are enough to cause horror to the most stout-hearted person. Although poisonless, such a creature measures over twenty-five feet long and one foot wide. Its force is prodigious, and people say it can eat animals of great size. If a person is able to remain cool and not panic, this is a sign that he will be cured. As the boa enters one's body, it is a further omen to the man or woman with such expectations that he will be protected by the ayahuasca spirit. As with don Federico, many healers prepare their patients for the drug experience by discussing such common visions. Expectation among the Cholos, at least, is great that such snakes will appear before them.
In the West, when we read reports of hallucinogenic drug experiences, we don't generally find similar kinds of visionary experience reported as we do in the rain forest. Cultural expectations connected with the use of a hallucinogen such as ayahuasca must be seen as the explanation for the recurrence of the similarity in types of visions. Although I spoke to many people who had never taken ayahuasca, most adults would comment in great detail about points of information concerning the vine, which could later be verified with healers or former patients. The presence of beliefs and expectations of these people vis-a-vis the drug's action must be seen as influencing the similarities reported in the actual drug experience.
This occurs not only among the urban poor, but with primitive use of ayahuasca as well. One recent study of the use of the psychedelic vine among the Cashinahua Indians of Peru by Kensinger (1970), found a certain frequency of occurrence and a high degree of similarity in the content of particular hallucinations. Kensinger's informants reported brightly colored large snakes, jaguars, and ocelots, spirits of ayahuasca, large trees often falling, lakes often filled with anacondas and alligators, traders and their goods, and gardens. All quite frequently were reported with a sense of motion. Certainly, other factors of interest to most drug researchers enter the picture here, such as the personality and past experience of the person taking the substance, the setting in which the drug is taken, the dosage level and so on. However, cultural variables must be stressed once again as a primary aspect of drug use.
When reports made my Europeans and Americans who have taken ayahuasca are compared to jungle populations, some interesting contrasts emerge. The following are some brief descriptions of experiences under ayahuasca tat Westerners, lacking a cultural tradition of drug use have described for ayahuasca or its alkaloids. My own experience with the vine has been included in these accounts.
Richard Spruce: A British botanist from Yorkshire, Spruce traveled throughout the Amazon and its tributaries from 1849 to 1864. He made extensive collections of South American flora and was the first modern investigator to identify ayahuasca in 1851, although his materials were published posthumously. Actually, the geographer Villavicencio wrote of the vine in his Geography of Ecuador, which appeared in 1858. Spruce observed the used of the liana among the Tukanoan tribes of the Uaupes River in the Brazilian Amazon. He wrote of the caapi-drinking ceremony as follows:
I had gone with the full intention of experimenting the caapi myself, but I had scarcely dispatched one cup of the nauseous beverage, which is but half the dose, when the ruler of the feast . . . came up with a woman bearing a large calabash of caxiri (mandioca beer), of which I must need take a copious draught, and as I know the mode of its preparation, it was gulped down with secret loathing. Scarcely had I accomplished this feat, when a large cigar 2 feet long and as thick as the wrist was put lighted into my hand, and etiquette demanded that I should take a few whiffs of it--I who had never in my life smoked a cigar or a pipe of tobacco. Above all this, I must drink a large cup of palm wine, and it will readily be understood that the effect of such a complex dose was a strong inclination to vomit, which was only overcome by lying down in a hammock and drinking a cup of coffee. (Cited in Schultes 1970, p. 26).We can see from the above that Spruce did not describe very many details of his own experience, except of course, some interesting side comments on his disgust with native alcoholic intoxicants.Michael J. Harner: An American anthropologist trained at the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Harner is now a professor of anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York. He went to study the Jivaro Indians of the Ecuadorian Amazon in 1956-1957. During the first year that Dr. Harner worked among the Jivaro, he didn't appreciate the psychological impact of the natema or ayahuasca drink upon the native view of reality. The drink itself has many names in different parts of the Amazon-called yagé or yajé in Colombia, ayahuasca in Peru and parts of Ecuador, and caapi in Brazil. The Jivaro are among the best known Amazonian group to use this preparation in crossing over to the supernatural world at will to deal with the forces they believe influence and even determine the events of waking life. In 1961 Dr. Harner returned to the Ecuadorian Amazon and was able to drink the hallucinogenic brew in the course of fieldwork with another Upper Amazon Basin tribe.
For several hours after drinking the brew, Harner found himself, although awake, in a world literally beyond his wildest dreams. He met bird-headed people as well as dragon-like creatures who explained that they were the true gods of this world. He enlisted the services of other spirit helpers in attempting to fly through the far reaches of the Galaxy. He found himself transported into a trance where the supernatural seemed natural and realized that anthropologists, including himself, had profoundly underestimated the importance of the drug in affecting native ideology.
In 1964, Dr. Harner returned to the Jivaro and studied the shamanistic use of the plant. An article he published in 1968 in Natural History reproduces drawings of one Jivaro shaman, who drew figures of what he saw while under the influence of the powerful natema. Snakes, devils of the Christian religion and jaguars were some of the things he saw.
Chilean Psychiatric Patients: The Chilean psychiatrist, Claudio Naranjo, administered one of the three major alkaloids of ayahuasca, called harmaline, to a population of thirty volunteers in Santiago under controlled conditions. The reactions of these persons are interesting to examine. Physical sensations accompanied the drug experience, with a sense of numbness of the hands or feet generally present. Distortions of body image were only rarely encountered, while subjects indicated isolated physical symptoms such as pressure in the head, discomfort in the chest or enhancement of sensations such as breathing or blinking. Eighteen of the volunteers reported dizziness or general malaise, which tended to appear or disappear throughout the session.
As far as perception was concerned, rarely were distortions of forms, alterations in the sense of depth or changes in the expression of faces part of the drug's effect. Naranjo found that with harmaline, the environment remains essentially unchanged, both in regard to its formal and aesthetic qualities. With eyes open, the most often reported phenomenon was the superposition of images on surfaces such as walls or ceiling. Or else imaginary scenes would be viewed simultaneously along with an undistorted perception of surrounding objects. Such imagery, however, was not usually taken to be "reality." Some people described lightning-like flashes.
When the subject's eyes were closed, colors were predominantly red-green or blue-orange contrasts. Among his middle-class urban Chilean volunteers, Naranjo reported the occurrence of certain themes such as felines, Negroes, and flying. More than half the subjects reported buzzing sounds in their heads.
When he gave his patients mescaline at a later date and compared the two sets of reports, he found that harmaline effected emotional activity less than mescaline. Thinking, too, was affected only in subtle ways, if at all. Naranjo found visions his patients concerned with religious or philosophical problems under harmaline's effects. The typical reaction could be said to be a closed-eye contemplation of vivid imagery without further effect than wonder and interest in its significance. The psychiatrist concluded that this was quite in contrast to the ecstatic heavens or dreadful hells of other hallucinogens. Interestingly enough, although harmaline had a lesser effect on the intensity of feelings, it did cause qualitative changes in emotions. In Naranjo's opinion, this may have accounted for the pronounced amelioration of neurotic symptoms which eight of the thirty subjects evidenced.
Desire to communicate was found to be slight under the effects of harmaline. Other persons were felt to be part of the external world and such contact was avoided. Some of Naranjo's subjects felt that certain scenes which they saw had really happened, with their own disembodied presence bearing witness to them in a different time and place. He saw this to match the experience reported for South American shamans who take ayahuasca for purposes of divination. In further animal experimentations Naranjo did with harmaline, he found complex brain modification which permitted him to conclude that the neurophysiological picture matches that of the traditional ayahuasca dreaming often reported, in that the states he described involved lethargy, immobility, closed eyes and generalized withdrawal from the environment. At the same time there was an alertness to mental processes and an activation of fantasy.
Alien Ginsberg: The well-known poet Alien Ginsberg and the writer William S. Burroughs corresponded about the powerful psychedelic vine. Burroughs' early letters to Ginsberg in 1951 described his picaresque search for the mind-expanding drug, known in Colombia as yagé. Some seven years later, Ginsberg wrote to Burroughs about his own experience with ayahuasca in Pucallpa, Peru. Excerpts from the following letter published in Yagé Letters, is dated June 10, 1960:
... the first time, much stronger than the drink I had in Lima, Ayahuasca, can be bottled and transported and stay strong, as long as it does not ferment--needs well closed bottle. Drank a cup-slightly fermented also--lay back and after an hour . . . began seeing or feeling what I thought was the Great Being, or some sense of It, approaching my mind like a big wet vagina--lay back in that for a while--only image I can come up with is of a big black hole of God-Nose through which I peered into a mystery--and the black hole surrounded by all creation particularly colored snakes--all real.Ginsberg also describes a second experience as follows:I felt somewhat like what this image represents, the sense of it so real. The eye is imaginary image, to give life to the picture. Also a great feeling of pleasantness in my body, no nausea. Lasted in different phases about 2 hours--the effects wore off after 3-the phantasy itself lasted from 3/4 of hour after I drink to 21 hours later more or less.
... then lay down expecting God knows what other pleasant vision and then I began to get high--and then the whole fucking Cosmos broke loose around me, I think the strongest and worst I've ever had it nearly (I still reserve the Harlem experiences, being Natural, in abeyance. The LSD was Perfection but didn't get me so deep in nor so horribly in)--First I began to realize my worry about the mosquitoes or vomiting was silly as there was the great stake of life and Death--I felt faced by Death, my skull in my beard on pallet and porch rolling back and forth and settling finally as if in reproduction of the last physical move I make before settling into real death--got nauseous, rushed out and began vomiting, all covered with snakes, like a Snake Seraph, colored serpents in aureole all around my body, I felt like a snake vomiting out the universe ...Ginsberg's visions continued with spectral rays around the hut in which he was taking ayahuasca. Although the crooning of the maestro was comforting, he was frightened and lay there with waves of fear rolling over him. He resigned himself to whatever fate was in store, after a thorough examination of his soul. He feared he would go mad, he wrote, if he took yagé again, although he had plans to go upriver on a six-hour journey to take ayahuasca again with an Indian group.Richard Evans Schultes: An eminent American botanist and world authority on narcotic and stimulating plants, Dr. Schultes is now director of the Harvard Botanical Museum. He spent fourteen years from 1941 to 1954 living with various Indian groups of the South American Amazon, and has identified many little-known hallucinogenic plants. He became interested in Spruce's work on South America and retraced most of his itinerary, re-collecting many of the plants that Spruce originally found in that area. Schultes' list of publications is enormous: he has worked in areas from Mexico to Brazil. Editor of the prestigious journal, Economic Botany, Dr. Schultes has spent much of his botanical career in helping to clarify taxonomic problems connected with the ayahuasca vine. Like other scientists in the field of botany, psychiatry and medicine, Schultes prefers not to take anyone's word that a particular plant can cause a particular effect. Whenever possible, he has taken preparations in ritual settings along with his informants.
In discussing his own Banisteriopsis experience, he mentions that it is often difficult to describe an ayahuasca intoxication since the effects of the alkaloid harmine, apparently the prime psychoactive agent, does react variably from one person to another. Moreover, methods of preparing the plant differ from area to area and admixtures can alter the effects of the drink's principal ingredient.
Dr. Schultes summarizes his own experiences as follows:
"... The intoxication began with a feeling of giddiness and nervousness, soon followed by nausea, occasional vomiting and profuse perspiration. Occasionally, the vision was disturbed by flashes of light and upon closing the eyes, a bluish haze sometimes appeared. A period of abnormal lassitude then set in during which colors increased in intensity. Sooner or later a deep sleep interrupted by dream-like sequence began. The only after-effect noticed was intestinal upset and diarrhea on the following day".Marlene Dobkin de Rios: When I spent three months in 1967 studying mescaline healing in the Peruvian coast, I observed several ritual sessions where I was invited to drink the hallucinogenic potion. Yet, although it was readily available to me, I must admit that I was frightened, in fact horrified to imagine all the terrible things that self-knowledge might bring me. Sure as I was that I was harboring all sorts of incurable neuroses within, I hesitated and decided not to try the San Pedro brew. Many rationalizations sprung to mind--time was short and I might have bad side-effects. What would I do if the after effects were so severe that I couldn't continue my work? I felt alone, and what would happen if my self-protective shield was knocked over? And so, despite the kindly offers of my informants and the healers I visited, I resolved not to try the mescaline cactus.When I returned home and wrote up my field experiences about San Pedro use, it seemed as though I had somehow missed the point. In October 1967, I was invited to participate in a conference sponsored by the R. Bucke Society in Montreal, Canada. Bucke was a Canadian psychiatrist who coined the term cosmic consciousness. The society which bore his name was concerned with religious and mystical states in which Bucke showed much interest, despite the general disdain and scorn such matters still hold for many serious scientists.
At the meeting, after listening to various participants discuss some aspect of the question, "Do Psychedelic Drugs have Religious Significance?", I realized that the reality I reported on was quite a different one than that of people who used such substances for mystical or religious purposes. By the time I returned to Peru in June of 1968 to begin my ayahuasca study, I sensed that if I were ever to go beyond the detachment that I had so carefully cultivated, I would have to take ayahuasca myself.
Yet, as the months passed and opportunities presented themselves to try ayahuasca, I still managed to avoid the experience. Finally, the time approached for me to leave Iquitos to participate in a symposium on "Hallucinogens and Shamanism" which was to be held at the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. I knew that I would be addressing a large group of my colleagues about a substance which in truth, I had to admit I knew very little. Although I had been collecting data for almost five months on ayahuasca, it was really just hearsay evidence. I often had the smug feeling that I was the only sane person in an insane world.
Resolved then finally to take the purge, I decided first to take advantage of the availability of a small dose of 100 micrograms of LSD, which my colleague and I originally planned to give to the healers we worked with at the end of our study. Unfortunately, this plan did not materialize, as legal production of such substances was terminated. Nonetheless, I was able to take the LSD at home under medical supervision, albeit in the comfort of my Iquitos house, surrounded by the music I liked, with a friend as company and in the presence of paintings, folk art, and flowers. Two weeks later I took an unknown dose of ayahuasca mixed with chacruna (probably containing DMT) under the supervision of don Antonio. My experience with LSD was simply one of the most aesthetically rewarding experiences I have ever had in my life. Accompanied by eighteenth century harp music which seemed endless in its reception, I could not really describe the aesthetic dimensions of the fast-moving kaleideoscopic visions, although many medieval images probably invoked by the quality of the music filled my vision. As the height of these pseudo-illusions lessened, I found myself discussing who I was, what I was doing, what I wanted from life, what life meant to me, and a series of questions that I hadn't been concerned with since I was a teenager. I might point out that at the beginning of the session, upon the advice of a friend, I decided to ponerme en bianco--or simply, to flow with the force of the experience. From my readings about drug experiments, I knew that a common feature of the "bad trip" was the resistance that a person might offer in attempting to hold back or try to control the drug's effects.
When I took ayahuasca, the previous LSD experience stood me in good stead in that my book-learned expectations had been replaced by the real thing. It was with enthusiastic expectation that I met don Antonio one Monday night, along with my colleague, to take the ayahuasca brew that had been prepared for me.
That evening in Belén, Antonio was even busier than usual, attending to the many patients who came to him to be exorcised or treated for assorted ailments. I sat patiently for over an hour, chatting with my colleague, Dr. Rios, who had just returned from a brief trip to Lima. He was full of details about the people we knew. Finally, Antonio led us through a maze of houses to a distant reach of Venecia. where a friend of his allowed him to use his floating balsa house for our session. Two other people were present, but I paid very little attention to them in my nervousness. We got comfortably seated on the floor of the house, and Antonio passed the potion around. I noticed as I drank that Antonio, to be sure that the "gringa" got her full share of visions, gave me a cup brim-full of the not so pleasant-smelling liquid. Others who drank that night, in retrospect, seemed to have been given a much smaller amount.
The following is an account of what happened:
About ten minutes later, feelings of strangeness came over my body and I had difficulty in coordinating extremities. Quick-arriving visual forms and movements hit before my eyes some twenty minutes after taking the drink, and a certain amount of anxiety that was not difficult to handle was felt, especially when Halloween-type demons in primary reds, greens and blues loomed large and then receded before me. Very fast-moving imagery almost like Bosch's paintings appeared, which at times were difficult to focus upon. At one point after I touched the arm of my friend for reassurance, the primary colors changed to flaming yellows and pinks, as a cornucopia full of warmth filled the visions before my eyes and gave me a sort of peripheral vision extending toward the person I had touched. Then in harmony with the healer's schacapa, a series of leaf-faced visions appeared, while my eyes remained open. They were followed by a full-length colored vision of a Peruvian woman, unknown to me but sneering in my direction, which appeared before me. Then more visions arrived, followed by heavy vomiting and diarrhea which lasted for about three hours.
In New York, where I grew up, vomiting was hardly anything to celebrate, and I remember my concern at the terrible noises I made with the "dry heaves" that afflicted me. Yet, later on, when chatting with others, I realized that in the rain forest, people periodically induced vomiting in their children so as to purge them of the various parasitical illnesses which are rampant in the region.
My colleague told me later on that don Antonio in his subsequent healing sessions would often refer to the gringa who had vomited heavily with ayahuasca and the terrible noises she made. He even imitated me to the great amusement of his audience.
Throughout the experience, any light was painful to my eyes. Time was experienced as very slow-moving. After-effects included physical weakness for a day or two, but a general sense of well-being and looseness in dealing with others.
At this point, it might be interesting to examine some of my experiences under ayahuasca, since my own lack of a cultural expectation toward the use of such a substance gave me differing responses than those reported by the informants with whom I worked, despite the fact that I had been collecting data on informants' visions. No jungle creatures filled my vision, nor did I experience the often-reported floating sensation. The visions I had contained symbols of my own culture. The unknown woman who appeared to me in my vision was dressed very much like the urban poor among whom I worked, but she somehow looked more opulent and well-off than many of the near-starving friends I had made in Belén. I remember my curiosity at her apparent dislike of me and that she should behave in that manner, but I didn't pay much attention to the vision nor did it change my mood at all. Later on, when telling of my experiences to friends in Belén, some ventured that this woman who appeared to me may have been responsible for a parasitic illness I developed during the course of my work. I could see how people appearing before a sick person might easily be linked to malice regardless of whether or not they are known to the patient. Had I grown up in this society and received continual conditioning toward a belief in magical source of sickness, it is quite probable that I would have interpreted this vision as a revelation of who it was that caused me to become ill.
When I took ayahuasca, I was unaware of the unwritten rule about not touching another person. I was later told by the healer who guided my ayahuasca session that I had received a double dose of the potion by touching another person and magically had the experience of two doses. The vomiting and diarrhea that afflicted me, thus, were my own fault for not following precepts that were unknown to me. The Peruvian painter, Yando, whose arm I touched during the session has prepared a series of drawings portraying the visions he has had under the influence of ayahuasca. In addition, he has made some ink drawings of the sessions which are difficult to photograph because of the problem of pupilary dilation and painful light. That evening, he had no visions from the purge.
The feelings of well-being that dodged my steps for several months after the ayahuasca experience were one area, however, that did overlap with my informants' reports. Many people agree that the ayahuasca experience stays with them for a long time, relaxing them and making their dealings with others somewhat more easy and fruitful.
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