Ayahuasca is a sacred drink made from the stems and leaves of a tree vine that goes by many names, including hallucinogen, hallucinogenic tea, and mood enhancer, and is also known as a teacher and healer due to its reported ability to help people introspect and come to terms with past trauma.
The plant and its associated rituals are deeply rooted in South American shamanic traditions, but in recent decades, stories about the spirit-enhancing magic of ayahuasca have made their way to Europe and North America.
Praised for its extraordinary healing powers by celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan, athletes such as Aaron Rodgers, and successful businessmen such as Elon Musk, the psychotropic appeal of the plant is now drawing hundreds of thousands of non-indigenous consciousness seekers around the world, with a growing number of ayahuasca retreats taking place around the world.
Indigenous peoples of South America (mainly Peru, Brazil, and other areas considered to be in the upper Amazon basin) have been using ayahuasca for medicinal and religious purposes since at least 900 BCE. Hieroglyphic paintings depict the use of this sacred brew in rituals that took place between 900 and 250 BCE. However, Western interest in ayahuasca has brought some challenges for local indigenous communities.
As a medical anthropologist, I’ve spent the past quarter century studying how culture influences how people think about and make decisions about their bodies.
By studying the connections between sexuality, drugs, and culture, I have come to understand the role that plant medicines like ayahuasca play for individuals and communities.
Die to wake up
Shamanistic anthropologist Michael Winkelmann describes ayahuasca as a “psychotropic agent,” a substance that integrates emotional and thought processes.
According to Western scientific interpretations, the primary function of this substance is to strip humans of their egocentric, conscious perception of the world. The seeker “dies to himself,” one shaman told me.
It is believed that in an altered state of consciousness, a person can get in touch with their true desires and experiences and begin a process of deeper healing, awakening, or spiritual cleansing.
Anthropologists say that ayahuasca has traditionally been used in South America to draw information from the unseen world, often for divination, artistic inspiration, strategic insight, healing, and shamanic journeys.
Botanical medicine
Each year, thousands of tourists from around the world flock to South America in search of “authentic” ayahuasca ceremonies, and while the exact tenets of the ritual today are somewhat debated, some common themes emerge.
Most scholars and indigenous and non-indigenous healers agree that the plant should be cared for and treated by plant specialists called “ayahuaseros,” who use a lengthy infusion process lasting eight to 10 hours to create a drinkable muddy tea.
The medicine is delivered to the seeker in a ceremony that usually takes place in the evening around a sacred fire. At the beginning of the ceremony, the healer, called a “curandero,” calls upon the spirit world for protection. The healer then faces the four directions — north, east, south, and west — and sings “icaros,” or healing songs, using branches of the ayahuasca tree and rattles.
The cleansing usually begins after 20 minutes to an hour. For some people, this cleansing comes in the form of vomiting or a bowel movement. The energetic clearing is experienced physically by some and emotionally by others laughing, crying, trembling, or shouting into the wind. You may then move into hallucinations and a connection with your inner self, and the outside world may begin to fade away.
While each person describes a slightly different experience, recurring themes include ego death (seeing yourself without attachment to material things or status), visions of past selves and lives, waves of healing energy, and painful moments of confronting past wounds.
Cultural Quagmire
In spring 2018, a double murder in the Peruvian Amazon shook the ayahuasca shamanic community and cast a dark shadow over the psychedelic drug. A beloved 95-year-old curandero, Olivia Arevalo, was killed by a Canadian ayahuasca tourist, Sebastian Woodroffe. Revered as a grandmother of the Shipibo-Kobibbo people, Arevalo’s death sparked outrage in the community, and Woodroffe was lynched by a mob.
These cases have sparked a wider debate about non-indigenous tourists who flock to the Amazon to drink hallucinogenic teas. Spiritual seekers do not always respect the boundaries and protocols set by local healers. The cases above are extreme examples.
Thus, as anthropologist Veronica Davidoff points out, the increasing use of ayahuasca among non-indigenous people has given rise to “entheogen tourism” (travel for the purpose of spiritual awakening), raising questions about the importance of the spiritual context in these rituals.
Peruvian archaeologist and healer Ruben Orellana argues that ayahuasca rituals developed within specific indigenous cultural contexts, without which non-indigenous seekers may be treading into the realm of cultural appropriation at best, while simultaneously exposing themselves to the mental and physical health risks of hallucinogens.
Critics of spiritual tourism point out that many of the lodges are not locally owned and that the influx of tourists has a negative impact on ecosystems. Local resources are consumed, yet when outsiders act as intermediaries, local economies do not necessarily benefit from the capital that flows into the area.
Not only is the complexity of cultural experiences not always respected or valued, this entheogenic tourism is damaging ecosystems by increasing demand for plants that lead to the over-harvesting of the vines of the ayahuasca tree, Banisteriopisis caapi.
Harmony and healing
While concerns about cultural appropriation are not necessarily misplaced, scholars such as Mark Hay point out that this does not mean that Westerners should avoid plant medicines altogether.
Hay and his colleagues point out that the plant’s mental health benefits are numerous and could be combined with Western approaches to illnesses such as treatment-resistant depression. Similarly, the healing powers of ayahuasca could be reconciled with Western approaches to mental health treatment and spirituality.
This harmony is similar to many urban Catholic Brazilians who blend indigenous rituals with Christianity. At least three new and distinctive ayahuasca religions emerged in Brazil in the early 20th century: Santo Daime, Barquinha, and União do Vegetar, who arrived in areas where shamans had been performing ayahuasca rituals hundreds of years before Christianity arrived. These religions emphasized the role of the Holy Trinity in providing healing plants for humans and blended Christianity with earth-based spirituality.
Church leaders also stressed that the plant brought them closer to God, pointing out that Christ had spoken to them through the hallucinogenic herb, and as a result the practice took root among indigenous and non-indigenous communities in South America.
These adaptations can provide a roadmap for approaching ayahuasca while properly respecting its cultural and spiritual underpinnings.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
