Plant Spirit Shamanism

On October 6 1999, Dutch police kicked down the door of a church in Holland and arrested two Ministers, Geraldine Fijneman and Hans Bogers, while they and their congregation were in the middle of a religious service. Geraldine and Hans were held by the police for three days, charged with leadership of a criminal organisation and distributing drugs.

Their crime? They were members of the Church of Santo Daime, a religious organisation not too dissimilar from Catholicism in its ceremonial aspects; the significant difference being that the Santo Daime church uses ayahuasca, the sacred 'vine of souls' of the Amazon, in its ceremonies to commune with its god.

In effect, then, the behaviour of the police in Holland was a form of religious intolerance; a situation made all the more bizarre because ayahuasca is a plant – a natural, organic, living, growing thing, not a ‘drug’ and, furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever that it is addictive (in fact, it has been successfully used to treat addictions).

The ayahuasca in question was not being ‘trafficked’ either, but handed out as a sacrament within the church, in much the same way as Catholic communion wine - and nobody's kicked a door down over that yet.

The situation that befell the Santo Daime church was preposterous in other ways too because the active ingredient of ayahuasca is DMT - which is already present in significant quantities in the human body. Following the legal logic displayed in this ‘drug bust’, therefore, if you ever decide to make babies you will, by definition, be a drug trafficker yourself.

But perhaps the most important aspect of this case is the question it raises: what right has any authority to dictate what is or is not an acceptable form of worship? The members of the Santo Daime congregation in that church on that October evening were hurting no-one and doing nothing of an aggressive or harmful nature - indeed, they were at prayer when the door of their church was splintered. It was a question which would quickly come to occupy the minds of the police.

On November 20, just a few days after the arrests, a large crowd gathered in the centre of Amsterdam, to protest against the raid and to demand the legalisation of ayahuasca. So troubled were the prosecution lawyers at this, and so embarrassed by their raid on a church, that they made it quietly known to the Santo Daime lawyer that they would drop the case if the church would accept a warning about its drug-taking activities.

The reaction of the Santo Daime lawyer, however, was “no thanks”. In fact, hearing that the prosecution were about to drop the legal proceedings, the church itself decided to take the case to court since it wanted a clear decision on the legal status of ayahuasca to avoid similar harassment in future.

And so the defence became the prosecution and, on May 21 2001, the Ministers for the Santo Daime church were acquitted by the court. Judge Marcus ruled that the Minister, Mrs Fijneman, had indeed owned, transported and even distributed a DMT-containing substance [which she would also have done had she been pregnant and then given birth, by the way], but as there was no proof of a public health risk from ayahuasca, her constitutional right to Freedom of Religion must come first. Since ayahuasca is the holy sacrament of the Santo Daime church, he ruled, it was essential to the defendant’s faith that she be allowed to use it.

The church was also within its rights to demand the return of 17 litres of ayahuasca that had been confiscated by the police, as well as compensation for the time the defendants were in custody.

Apart from the considerations of civil liberty and the right to self-determination and individuality without State harassment, there were spiritual considerations here.

The shamanic traditions of many cultures have long used Holy plants such as ayahuasca as a means of moving out of ordinary consciousness and into non-ordinary reality where spiritual communion can take place. Used in this fashion, and in a respectful way, these plants can be exceptional allies and teachers, opening doors into other worlds and new areas of consciousness. Just about as far as you can get from ‘drug-taking’, in fact.

Ayahuasca, of course, is a plant/spirit of the Amazon. In our own culture, sacred intoxication has traditionally been provided by the magic (psilocybe) mushroom. Whether you personally believe that this plant is divine and has its own spirit, it is nonetheless, a plant, just like ayahuasca. The question therefore arises: who has the right to say that you are allowed/not allowed to consume a perfectly natural substance - plant material - for your own purposes, in circumstances that are not harmful to others or yourself?

You can, after all, write on the head of a pin the names of all the people worldwide who are injured through the ceremonial consumption of sacred substances during an average year. In the same year, there will be thousands of deaths as a result of tobacco smoking and alcohol-related accidents and disease. So why don’t we make those drugs illegal instead?

In other, perhaps better informed, cultures, mushrooms are revered, not feared or controlled in this way. In Mexico, they are known as Teonancatl (‘the flesh of the gods’) and used in sacred rituals and healing ceremonies for the sick.

Mazatec shaman and healer, Maria Sabina, tells us something about the reverence in which they are held when she remarks that: "There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby, and invisible. This is where God lives, in a world where everything has already happened and everything is known. The sacred mushroom takes me to the world where everything is known”

These plants are Holy and have been regarded as such for thousands of years. The people who may choose to take them therefore have every moral and spiritual right to do so, and they deserve better treatment than the State seems able to give.

If you are searched, questioned or arrested for carrying any controlled substance, contact RELEASE on 0207 603 8654, a charity offering free advice and assistance 24 hours a day. Say nothing to the arresting officers until you have spoken to a solicitor.

For a free information pack about sacred ayahuasca journeys to the Amazon (where ayahuasca is a wholly legal sacrament) email ross@thefourgtaes.com or visit http://www.thefourgates.com

Ayahuasca is the jungle medicine of the Upper Amazon. It is made from Ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis Caapi) and the leaves of the Chacruna plant (Psychotria Viridis).

Both are collected from the rainforest in a sacred way and it is said that a shaman can find plentiful sources by listening for the 'heartbeat' that emanates from them. The mixture is prepared by scraping and cleaning the specially-chosen vines and adding the Chacruna leaves. It is then brewed with water and reduced for several hours, attended by the shaman who sings his sacred songs (icaros) and blows his intention for healing (soplada) into the brew. When drunk in the correct ritual context, this mixture becomes a powerful ally that can help us step into the visionary world.

The ceremonial use of Ayahuasca in this way is as ancient as history itself. One of the oldest objects related to it is a specially-engraved stone cup, which was found in the Amazon around 500 BC, and proves that ayahuasca was used as a Holy sacrament from before the birth of Christ - at least 2,500 years ago.

The word Ayahuasca comes from two Quechua words: aya meaning spirit or ancestor, and huasca meaning vine or rope - hence it is known as the ‘vine of souls’. It plays a central role in the spiritual and cultural traditions of the indigenous peoples of the Upper Amazon.

Integral to Ayahuasca ceremonies are the chants and songs of the shaman. These are known as icaros, and they direct the ceremonial and visionary experience.

The shaman has specific songs for each person's needs, the vibrations of which summon healing energies, and the words of which are symbolic, telling of the ability of Nature to heal. For example, an icaro may tell of the power of a sacred stream to wash away illness or uncertainty, or of brightly-coloured flowers to attract hummingbirds whose wings fan healing energies.

You might see such things in your visions. What provides the healing, however, is the understanding Ayahuasca brings of what is happening in your life, allowing inner feelings to unblock so that sadness, anger, and other negative energies are transmuted into ecstasy and love.

FLOWER BATHS
Sacred floral and clay baths to restore balance and harmony to the soul are known of and practiced in many shamanic cultures (though it is an art we have lost in the West) and are integral to the Ayahuasca experience.

By cleansing, ‘flourishing’, and bringing a new sense of balance, the spirit and body are able to heal themselves. These baths call in the powers of our allies in Nature and prepare the ground for our healing.

They are prepared by Master Shamans, using specially-chosen plants and flowers which create particular energetic and spiritual effects, to which is added cooling river waters. The mixture is then poured over the body (you don’t need to take off your clothes) as a blessing or even a baptism of sorts.

DIETING THE PLANTS
The ‘Shaman’s Diet’ is a journey of self-exploration and discovery, bringing greater self-awareness and knowledge of the plants. It also enhances the Ayahuasca experience. Through the ritual exclusion of some foodstuffs and activities and work with a particular teacher plant (or plants), the diet enables you to ‘take in’ the spirit or essence of that ‘jungle doctor’ and initiate into its powers.

Ajo Sacha, for example, is a plant which tunes you in to the reality of the rainforest, sharpening the senses and making you more ‘plant-like’. Because of this, it is harder for the animals of the forest to detect you and, consequently, it has been used as an aid to hunting for thousands of years. In the West, of course, with our ‘fast food lifestyles’, hunting is less important but, interestingly, Ajo Sacha is able to accommodate for this and to transform its powers. What makes it really useful for Westerners is its ability to help us stalk our ‘inner issues’. It is still the plant of the hunter; but its hunting grounds have changed.

As well as its abilities in hunting, this is an important planta maestra (‘Master’ or ‘Teacher Plant’) in the initiation of Amazonian shamans. It brings inner strength, acuity of mind, and the ability to overcome saladera (an inexplicable run of ‘bad luck’), rid yourself of spells and evil magic, and enhance your powers of healing, as well as heightening your ‘stalking’ skills, as mentioned above.

Pinon Colorado is a defence against evil sorcerers. ‘Evil sorcerers’ are around us everywhere. Every time we get on the tube and sit next to someone who is radiating hostility because they’ve had a bad day, or argue with our wives, or have to confront our bosses, we expose ourselves to negative vibrations and bad energy. This has a real and physical effect, such as that sick feeling in our stomachs when someone verbally attacks us, and this energy can stay in our systems. Pinon Colorado is a defence against emanations like these, as well as more deliberate attacks by rivals, competitors, and black magicians in all walks of life.

Bellaco Caspi is for the extraction of virote (evil magical darts). While Pinon Colorado is a defence against bad energy, Bellaco Caspi helps us remove this energy from our systems when we have already been exposed to it. Shamans see such energy (especially when it is sent with deliberate intent) as magical darts called virote. These stick to our energy bodies and can cause physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual harm unless they are removed. Pinon Colorado loosens these darts so our bodies can return to normal and our health is restored.

Diets are not invented by shamans, but are given to them by plant spirits themselves. They involve a state of purification, retreat, commitment, and respect for our connection with everything around us.

For more information on the Ayahuasca experience, shamanic diets, floral baths, and other ritual procedures, see Plant Spirit Shamanism: Traditional Techniques for Healing the Soul, by Ross Heaven. Published by Inner Traditions, 2007.

Ross also runs also leads sacred Plant Spirit Shamanism journeys to the shamans and healers of the Amazon Rainforest in Peru, and plant medicine workshops in France. For details of these, visit http://www.thefourgates.com

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A seguro is a “friend” or “ally”, someone you can turn to for advice and information, who will listen and share your problems.

Andean shaman, Juan Navarro, was born in the highland village of Somate, department of Piura. He is the descendant of a long line of healers working with san pedro and with the magical powers of the sacred lakes known as Las Huaringas, which have been revered for their healing properties since the earliest Peruvian civilization.

At the age of eight, Juan made a pilgrimage to Las Huaringas and drank san pedro for the first time. Now in his 50’s, every month or so it is still necessary for him to return there to accumulate the energy he needs to protect and heal his people.

Healing sessions with san pedro involve an intricate sequence of processes, including invocation, diagnosis, divination, and healing with natural ‘power objects’, called artes, which are kept, during the ceremony, in a complicated and precise array on the maestro’s altar or mesa.

Artes may include shells, swords, magnets, quartz crystals, objects resembling sexual organs, rocks which spark when struck together, and stones from animals' stomachs which they have swallowed to aid digestion. They bring magical qualities to the ceremony where, under the visionary influence of san pedro, their invisible powers may be seen and experienced.

The maestro's mesa, on which these artes sit, is a representation of the forces of nature and the cosmos. Through the mesa the shaman is able to work with and influence these forces to diagnose and heal disease.

Always on these altars are seguros – magical amulet bottles filled with perfume, plants, and seeds gathered from Las Huaringas.

According to Juan Navarro, a seguro is a “friend” or “ally”, someone you can turn to for advice and information, who will listen and share your problems.

Less poetically, a seguro is a clear glass bottle which contains perfumes, sacred water and, of course, a selection of plants chosen for their specific healing and spiritual qualities.

These bottles are kept on an altar, in sacred space, and regarded as objects of great power. Whenever the person who has a seguro requires help with any practical or spiritual problem, he will take it from the altar and sit with it against his heart, speaking with it as if to a friend. The seguro will absorb and transform the energy of his problems but, more importantly, if he listens carefully, the person who seeks its advice will hear the answers he needs from the spirit of the plants themselves.

A seguro can help you maintain and deepen your link to the sacred because, of course, it contains your plant ally. If there are other plants you have journeyed to or would like to learn from, these can be added to the seguro as well and, when you know the language of your ally, this plant spirit will communicate your desire to the other plants, which will also offer their healing and support. You therefore gain access to the natural world and its powers more widely.

To create a seguro, you will need a glass bottle, approximately 5” high, which can be sealed. Fill this 1/3rd full with perfume of your choice and top up with water. In Juan Navarro’s seguros, this is water from the sacred lakes of Las Huaringas, but mineral water (as pure as possible) can also be used.

Once this base is prepared, meditate for a while on the qualities you would like in your life and which plants might bring you these things. Be informed in this by your work with the doctrine of signatures - heather for luck, honesty for truth, goldenrod for wealth, and so on.

Add these plants to your bottle, arranging them as attractively as possible (some seguros are so beautiful they are works of art in themselves), then place your plant allies in the bottle so they can act as mediators for all others. Before you seal the bottle, blow your dominio (intention) into it three times, and then put on the lid.

Place the bottle on your altar and reflect on its qualities often. Whenever you are in need of advice, sit with your seguro and speak with it. Then notice how things change for you.

Join us for an authentic experience of ayahuasca, San Pedro, and plant spirit shamanism in the beautiful rainforests and mountains of Peru. Email ross@thefourgates.com for a FREE Information Pack or visit the website http://www.thefourgates.com and look under the Sacred Journeys section.

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Since the beginning of human experience, plants have played a role in the evolution of our species, not only in the provision of food and medicine but in our deepest spiritual experiences and the development of consciousness. According to the shamans of the Amazon – one of Earth’s last (mostly) unspoiled areas and a bastion for deep and intimate plant knowledge – it was the plants themselves who taught us how to heal and know our souls.

On a recent trip to the Amazon, Laurencio Garcia, a Shipibo poet, storyteller, and shaman from Peru, told me how “at the beginning of time, the jungle revealed its spirit” to rainforest tribes.

“In those days, our ancestors could still enter the place where the spirits of the animals and forest lived. They could talk with plants and animals and share knowledge of the plants to use for healing. We were one with all life.

“Our ancestors lived like this until the Moon Man came and cut the rope they used to climb into the spirit world. Then we lost our way.

“It was terrible and there was much sadness. But then we found another way back to that world: the ayahuasca vine, which is the rope that we now climb into the spirit realms”.

In the Shipibo tradition, the moon is associated with the rational mind and it is the coming of science, Western forms of medicine, and the victory of dualistic and logic-based thought over intuition and natural wisdom which therefore severed our connection to spirit. The story of the Moon Man is one which speaks of our need to rediscover our spiritual roots by using a new rope – ayahuasca – which was given to us as a way back to the world we once knew.

Ayahuasca: The vine of souls
Ayahuasca is the most important medicine of the Amazon. Made from the vine Banisteriopsis caapi and the leaves of the chacruna plant (Psychotria viridis), it is a potent visionary mixture which opens the person who drinks it to the experience of the world underlying our own. Its name, which suggests these properties, is derived from two native words: aya meaning ‘spirit’ and huasca: ‘rope’ – hence it is commonly known as ‘the vine of souls’ or ‘the rope of the dead’.

It is prepared by cutting the vines into lengths which are cleaned and pounded, then placed in a cauldron with the leaves. Water is added and the mixture is boiled for 12 hours, overseen by a shaman.

When ingested, this muddy, pungent liquid produces feelings of warmth which spread from the stomach, creating a sense of well-being and skin elasticity, as if the skin has become rubber-like and no longer separate from the air. After this, there are visionary effects. Images of snakes and vines and iridescent colours are common but, to the shaman’s eye, symbols of the diseases which inhabit his client’s body are also seen. It is these which enable him, and the spirit of ayahuasca, to heal.

During the visionary phase, purging, in the form of vomiting or diarrhoea may also take place. This can sometimes be emotionally uncomfortable for Westerners who drink ayahuasca, and who have been brought up to control their bodily functions and not ‘let go’ like this. But it is welcomed by people of the Amazon, who believe that this purging releases ‘spiritual poisons’ which can lead to physical illness. By clearing out the system physically and spiritually, la purga (‘the purge’: another of ayahuasca’s many names) restores balance to the soul and empowers the body to fight against disease.

Though these beliefs may seem strange to us, in fact, many remarkable cures have also been attributed to ayahuasca by Western doctors. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Crossing Continents programme, for example, Dr Jacques Mabit revealed how a third of the patients that begin treatment with him for drug addictions are completely cured through ayahuasca use, with a success rate as high as 70% for those who complete the full treatment1. Other accounts include remissions from cancer, cures for deafness, and the lifting of depression2+3.

In scientific terms, ayahuasca vine is an inhibitor which contains harmala and harmaline, while chacruna contains vision-inducing alkaloids. It is this mixture which gives the brew its hallucinogenic properties.

There are still many mysteries about how the shamans knew how to combine these plants, for, separate from the other, each is more or less inert.

The main ingredients in chacruna, for example, are tryptamines which, if taken orally, are rendered inactive by the body’s enzymes. The vine, however, contains MAO (monoamine oxidase) inhibitors in the form of harmine compounds, so when the two plants come together they complement each other and a psychoactive compound results which has an identical chemical make-up to the organic tryptamines in our bodies. The mixture therefore finds its way easily into our brains and bonds smoothly to synaptic receptor sites, enabling a powerful visionary experience.

Some, like the writer and ‘psychonaut’ Terence McKenna, believe that our capacity for expanded consciousness and deep thought arose directly from the ingestion of plants such as these and the visionary effects they produced, at a time when human beings were nomadic hunter-gatherers, barely human at all, and would forage for food and eat whatever they found, or whatever ‘spirit’ guided them to4.

Certainly it is true that a million-and-a-half years ago, the human brain underwent what Rita Carter, in her book, Mapping the Mind describes as “an explosive enlargement.

“So sudden was it that the bones of the skull were pushed outwards, creating the high, flat forehead and domed head that distinguish us from primates. The areas that expanded most are those concerned with thinking, planning, organising and communicating… The frontal lobes of the brain duly expanded by some 40 per cent to create large areas of new gray matter: the neo-cortex [and] pre-frontal lobes”5.

Nobody knows what caused this dramatic enlargement, but an expansion in consciousness could be responsible, the theory being that we would need new grey matter to process and store the visionary information downloaded from the plants.

The ayahuasca experience
In his influential book The Cosmic Serpent, scientist Jeremy Narby writes of his ayahuasca experiences with the people of the Upper Amazon, concluding that shamans there are able, through this brew, to merge with “the global network of DNA-based life"6.

In his ayahuasca ceremonies Narby saw visions of two gigantic anacondas (the ‘cosmic serpents’ of his book’s title), which spoke to him without words and revealed mysteries and healing secrets to him. This fired his interest and he began to explore the consistency of such imagery. The first similarity he noticed was the common image of reptiles and snakes, often a "celestial serpent", that occurs in many shamanic traditions the world over.

The similarity between DNA, the winding ayahuasca vine, and the snake imagery it produces led Narby to suggest that shamans, through their ingestion of the brew, communicate with the information stored in DNA.

He then began to study the characteristics of DNA and found that it emits electromagnetic waves corresponding to the narrow band of visible light. This weak light is equivalent to the intensity of a candle at a distance of 10 kilometres, but has a high degree of coherence, comparable to a laser. It is fascinating to speculate that this is the waveform of consciousness and that plants such as ayahuasca are the means of making it – and the illnesses which disrupt its signal – visible to shamanic sight.

There are certain other plants too, which, because of their healing effects and their importance in the initiation of ayahuasca shamans and the rituals that surround the use of the brew, have also come to prominence. These are the planta maestros (the ‘master teachers’) of the plant world, which are key among the shaman’s tutelary spirits and guides to health and healing. By knowing these plants, the shaman can deal effectively with the most common diseases of his people.

It is difficult to find discrete Western analogues for some of these plants because they grow where they are needed and the healing required by a London banker, for example, will be different from that of a Peruvian farmer. The psychological and spiritual benefits such plants bestow, and their ability to restore emotional balance, banish negative energies, or open the heart to love, are desirable in any culture, however, so it is possible to find herbs with equivalent or similar effects wherever we live.

With this in mind, these are some of the more commonly used planta maestros and (either singularly or in combination) plants of our own that Amazonian shamans say will produce like effects.

Chiric sanango grows in the restingas of the Amazon, on the high ground where it never floods. Chiric, in the ancient Quechua language, means ‘tickling’ or ‘itchy’ and refers to the prickly heat that the plant generates in the patient once ingested. Shamans often prescribe it for fishermen because they spend so much time in the water and are prone to colds and arthritis. It is also used in magical baths to change the bather’s energy and bring good luck.

Used in the West, the plant has a more psychological effect, but still to do with ‘heat’. Here, it enables people to open their hearts to love (it warms up a cold heart, but will also cool a heart that is too inflamed with jealousy and rage). In essence, it helps people get in touch with their more sensitive and loving sides.

It can be prepared as a tea, in aguardiente (weak sugar cane alcohol) or made into syrup by adding its juice to honey. It can also be eaten raw and is said to better penetrate the bones if taken this way.

Mint has some of the properties of chiric sanango and is a balancer of the body’s physical and emotional heat. For these reasons it has been associated with the planet Venus, which was named after the Roman goddess of love.

Guayusa is a plant used for people who suffer from excessive acidity, digestive, or other problems of the stomach and bile. It also develops mental strength and is paradoxical in the sense that it is both energizing and relaxing.

Shamans say that it also produces prophetic or lucid dreams (when you are aware that you are dreaming and can direct your dreams). For this reason it is known in the Amazon as ‘the night watchman's plant’, as even when you are sleeping you have an awareness of your surroundings. The boundary between sleeping and wakefulness becomes fluid and dreams become colourful, richer, and more potent than before.

In the Western world, bracken, jasmine, or poplar can produce some of the same dreaming effects. The leaves and buds of the latter were a key ingredient in the ‘flying ointments’ of European witches, for example, who used it for what we would call astral travel.

Ajo sacha is a blood purifier and helps the body rid itself of toxins (spiritual or physical) as well as restoring strength. More psycho-spiritually, it helps to take the user out of saladera (a run of bad luck, inertia, or a sense of not living life to the full). Used as a bathing essence, it relieves the effects of shock (called manchiari by Amazonian shamans) which can be particularly debilitating to children, whose souls are not as strong or fixed as an adult’s, and a shock can therefore lead to the loss of their energy or spirit.

Western plants with equivalent uses include valerian and vervain. The former was recorded from the 16th century as an aid to a restful mind and, in the two world wars it was used to combat anxiety and depression. By relaxing the mind, the psyche can go to work on the real problem, aided by the plant itself.

Vervain, meanwhile, was well-known to the Druids, who used it to protect against “evil spirits” (nowadays, we might say ‘inner issues’ or ‘the shadow-self’). It is also used as a treatment for paranoia, insomnia, and depression. Once again, by relaxing the conscious mind we can stalk the more deeply-rooted problem.

The ‘medicine of love’
Against this backdrop of healing and the natural benefits available from plants – and their spirits - it is depressing for Amazonian shamans that the rainforest, home to so many healing plants still unknown to Western medicine, is being destroyed by the ‘developed nations’ with little consideration for the consequences. Every three seconds in the Amazon, an entire species is wiped out in the name of progress.

According to Javier Aravelo, a shaman from Iquitos, people are prone to such “madness” as a result of confusion, because “they do not know who they are or what they really want”.

His point was underlined a few years ago when he worked with a group of participants on a trip to the Amazon to drink ayahuasca and, prior to their ceremonies, he asked them what they wanted the healing to accomplish.

“Most gave spiritual or ‘cosmic’ answers and spoke of world peace and saving the planet”, said Javier. “And so I asked them again: what do you want? This time, they were more honest and all of them said that what they really wanted was love.

“This I could understand because their requests were real and personal this time, not about saving the world. But what puzzled me most was that at first they had not felt entitled to ask for love or had been conditioned not to know what they wanted.

“Yet, paradoxically, their honest desires were where true healing can begin, since, if more people were able to experience love, there would be no need for the madness of developed society, and, consequently, no need to save our planet, which would never be in danger.

“Love solves problems and ayahuasca is the medicine of love. This is how plants really cure”.

Ends/

References
(1). Lizarzaburu Javier, Peru Seeks Tribal Cure for Addiction. BBC News, November 5 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/3243277.stm

(2). Heaven Ross, Spirit in the City: The Search for the Sacred in Everyday Life, Bantam Books, London. ISBN-10: 0553813242. 2002

(3). Perkins John, introduction to The Journey to You: A Shaman’s Path to Empowerment, Ross Heaven, Bantam Books, London. ISBN-10: 0553813234. 2001

(4). McKenna Terence, Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution, Rider & Co, London. ISBN-10: 0712670386. 1999

(5). Carter Rita, Mapping the Mind, Phoenix Books, London. ISBN-10: 0753810190. 2000

(6). Narby Jeremy, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, Phoenix Books, London. ISBN-10: 075380851X. 1999

The author
Ross Heaven is a psychologist, author, workshop facilitator, and presenter. He has written more than 10 books on psychology, shamanism, plant medicines, and the healing traditions, including The Journey to You, which was described by Amazon Books as “The most important book on shamanism in years”, Plant Spirit Shamanism, about Amazonian medicine practices, and The Sin Eater’s Last Confessions, about traditional healing and plant cures in Britain and Wales. Ross runs workshops on the themes of his books and trips to the Peruvian Amazon to work with the ayahuasca shamans. His website is www.thefourgates.com.

Shamans believe that the soul can be lost through trauma, abuse, shock – and, fundamentally, by dishonouring nature or ignoring our need to connect with it.

In many shamanic countries, there are still roadside shrines where people can rest, pay their respects to the natural world, and receive healing and replenishment from it.

In the modern West, we have few such sacred places or ceremonies of connection left. Festivals such as May Day, originally a fertility ritual to welcome the coming of Spring, have lost much of their purpose and meaning, and our connection to nature is weakened. In turn, our souls, individually and collectively, have become weak and, despite our great wealth and ‘power’, many traditional societies regard us as the poorest people on Earth.

Healing soul loss, as you might sense from this, often involves the shaman reconnecting his patient to nature, so she is restored to balance and her spirit has a safe, strong, whole, place to return to.

In Japan, one method is to accompany the patient (or advise her to go on her own) on a walk into nature to find and make contact with a particular tree that calls to her. She then sits down with her back to it and speaks to the tree of her problems and sorrows.

If she listens closely, the spirit of the tree – the great gateway to nature – will counsel her on what to do, while at the same time taking and transforming her pains and giving her power and new spirit in return.

In Tuva, the patient is advised to take a similar walk and make an offering to a nature shrine, in return for which the spirits will bring back her soul.

In both cases, of course, the patient is deeply immersed in nature, at one with the trees and held in the peace of the forest, which is itself invigorating and restful.

In the Andes, soul retrieval is a similar but slightly different practice. Here, the shaman will accompany the patient to the physical location where soul was lost to find and bring back its energy. There is always a physical location where trauma occurred, whether an accident blackspot where a car crash took place or a home at the centre of childhood abuse, and that is where the soul remains locked.

The shaman is able to bring back the soul by negotiating for its release with the spirit of this place and by enticing the soul to return by singing to it of the joys that await it back in the patient’s body now that the trauma has ended. In negotiating with the spirit of place, the shaman may also make an offerenda in exchange for the soul, or simply leave flowers. If the spirits of nature are satisfied with the offering and reassured that the soul they are protecting will be treated well on its return - and if the soul itself feels loved and safe - it will be released to the patient straight away.

Andean curandera, Doris Rivera Lenz, comments on this practice as follows:

When a child falls suddenly, for example, its soul can leave its body and it may get ill. If this happens, an offering is made in the place of the fall, to heal the child.

There are many ways to ‘call the soul’. You can get hold of a piece of the child’s clothing and make a little doll and decorate it with flowers or whatever the child likes, and you call his soul in the place where the fright took place. You can also call up and use the energies of herbs, a dove’s nest, feathers, tobacco, coca, or whatever else is needed to help with this healing, but before any session, you must first ask permission from Pachamama, the spirit of the Earth.

If there is no fixed place where the problem began, then you go to the highest mountain or closest river and perform the ritual there.

There is another approach to soul retrieval, common in countries as diverse as Mexico, Haiti, and Peru, which also works with flowers. In these traditions it is believed that the soul can sometimes be, not lost exactly, but so loosely attached that it is vibrating inside and outside the body at one and the same time. This can happen as a result of shock, where events that shake our worldviews and undermine all that we thought to be true can also set our spirits shaking. It is as if we have nothing left to hold on to and all of our balance is gone. Shocks like these can lead to trauma but if the soul is caught quickly enough it can be healed before deeper wounding occurs, by forcing it back into the body and stabilising it there so that balance is restored.

One method is to swaddle the patient tightly in sheets or blankets so that the soul is compressed back into the body and held there. This may also be the origin of the practice of swaddling babies, traditional people recognising that the soul of a baby is less attached to its physical body and needs to be held in place until the child has ‘grown into itself’ and become established in its body. Inside the blanket are placed flower petals and they may also be sprinkled on top of and around patient.

As the patient lies in her sweet-smelling cocoon of flowers that soothe the soul, the shaman will sing to her in lullabies and whispers of how beautiful the world is and how she is loved and wanted by her people. Perfumes may also be sprayed over her, their smells anchoring her memory of the sweet words she is hearing, and the prayers offered for her soul and to the spirits of nature. Then she is left there for a while in the gentle heat of a rising sun, before the shaman unwraps her and welcomes her home as an initiation into a new possibility of life: a rebirth through flowers.

Another method is that related by the Mexican medicine man, don Abraham, who speaks of the alta miza herb, which is “used to heal traumas, to make a regression”.

“Alta miza grasps your spirit and moves you backwards... until you reach the place which hurts. And then she confronts you with the pain. And she will heal the pain”. [Mexican teachings: Plant Spirits in Ceremony]. This is similar to the Amazonian use of the chacapa to remove negative energies and restore spirit to a patient. In both cases, it is the plants, directly, that offer the healing. Interestingly, as well, alta miza is feverfew, which has long been respected for its properties of healing and purification, and was widely planted in old England in the belief that it would purify the air and prevent the spread of plague. Gerard said of it that it “cleanseth, purgeth or scoureth, openeth, and fully performeth all that bitter things can do”.

Plant Spirit Shamanism understands that plants have an affinity for human beings, that they know our pain, and that their intention is to love and to heal. Simply being close to them and their energy fields can be enough to call back the soul.

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Planta maestras (plant masters or plant teachers) are key among the shaman’s tutelary spirits, his chief allies and guides to the worlds of health and healing. In ordinary reality, they are also considered the jungle’s most skilled and important ‘doctors’ because of their usefulness and relevance to the healing concerns of most patients. Through knowing these plants, the shaman can deal effectively with the diseases of his people.
It can be difficult to find discrete Western analogues for some of these jungle plants because plants grow where they are needed and the healing required by a New York banker will be quite different from that of a Peruvian farmer. The psychological and spiritual benefits bestowed by such plants, and their ability to restore emotional balance, banish negative energies, or open the heart to love, are desirable in any culture, however, so it is possible to find plants with equivalent or similar effects if we wish to diet them and understand their qualities for ourselves.
With this in mind, here is a description of some of the more commonly dieted planta maestras and (either singularly or in combination) plants of our own that will produce like effects.
CHIRIC SANANGO: FOR LOVE
Chiric sanango grows mainly in the upper Amazon and in a few restingas (high ground which never floods). It is good for colds and arthritis and has the effect of heating up the body. (Chiric, in Quechua, means ‘tickling’ or ‘itchy’, which refers to the prickly heat that it generates). Plant shamans often prescribe it for fishermen and loggers, for example, because they spend so much time in the water and are prone to colds and arthritis. The patient should not drink too much at a time though because it can lead to a numbness of the mouth as well as a feeling of slight disorientation. It is also used in magical baths to change the bather’s energy and bring good luck to his ventures.

Used in the West, the plant has a more psychological effect, but still to do with ‘heat’. Here, it enables people to open their hearts to love (it ‘warms up’ a cold heart, but will also ‘cool’ a heart that is too inflamed with jealousy and rage) and identify with others as if they were brothers and sisters. In essence, it helps people get in touch with the sensitive and loving part of themselves. Another of its gifts is enhanced self-esteem, which develops from this more healthy connection to the self.

Chiric sanango can be prepared in water, in aguardiente (weak sugar cane alcohol) or made into syrup by adding its juice to honey or molasses. It can also be boiled in water and drunk, or eaten raw and is said to better penetrate the bones if taken this way.

For a Western diet, mint has some of the properties of chiric sanango and is a balancer of the body’s physical and emotional heat. It can cool you down on a summer’s day but will also provide warmth when drunk by an open fire in winter, and it has the same effect on the emotions, promoting the flow of love as well as alertness and clarity. For these reasons it has been associated with the planet Venus, which was named after the Roman goddess of love.

Good plants to combine with mint include lemon balm and chamomile. Lemon balm was known in Arabian herb magic to bring feelings of love and healing (Pliny remarked that its powers of healing were so great that, rubbed on a sword that had inflicted a wound, it would staunch the flow of blood in the injured person without need for any physical contact with them), while chamomile is a great relaxant and a perfect aid to exercises in meditation and forgiveness. Recent research at Northumbria University in the UK has also proven the beneficial effects of lemon balm in increasing feelings of calm and well-being, as well as improving memory.

Chiric sanango also brings relief from arthritic pain and if this is your concern, Western plants that could be added to mint include marigold and ginseng.

To make a tea of any of these herbs, simply boil the fresh ingredients (the amounts you use can be much to your own taste, but three heaped teaspoons of each is about right) in a pint or so of water for a few minutes and then simmer for about 20 minutes, allowing it to reduce, and blowing smoke – which carries your intention – into the mixture as it boils. This will wake up the spirit of the plants and attune them to your needs. Add honey if you wish, then strain and drink when cool.

For a mixture that will last a little longer, add the fresh ingredients to alcohol (rum or vodka is recommended), with honey if you wish, and drink three-to-five teaspoonfuls a day, morning and night.

These methods of preparation can be used for all plants.

GUAYUSA: FOR LUCID DREAMS
This is a good plant for people who suffer from excessive acidity, digestive, or other problems of the stomach and bile. It also develops mental strength and is paradoxical in the sense that, just as chiric sanango is cooling and warming at the same time, guayusa is both energizing and relaxing.
Guayusa also has the effect of giving lucid dreams (i.e. when you are aware that you are dreaming and can direct your dreams). For this reason it is also known as the ‘night watchman's plant’, as even when you are sleeping you have an awareness of your outer physical surroundings. The boundary between sleeping and wakefulness becomes more fluid and dreams become more colourful, richer, and more potent than before. For those interested in dreams or 'shamanic dreaming', this is the plant to explore.
In the Western world, bracken, jasmine, marigold, rose, mugwort, and poplar, will produce the same affect of lucid or prophetic dreams. The leaves and buds of the latter were often a key ingredient in the ‘flying ointments’ of European witches, who used it for what we would call astral projection. A mixture of these plants can be used to produce a liquid (either fresh or in alcohol) that can be taken in the same way as the examples above. It is also possible to prepare them in a way that practitioners of Haitian Vodou use for working with their native ‘dreaming plants’, by making a bila, or dreaming pillow, by taking small handfuls of mugwort and poplar and blend them together. Sprinkle the mix with neroli, orange or patchouli oils (aromatherapy oils are fine) as well if you wish and, as they do in Haiti, a little rum and water to bind the mix together. Put your intention into this as well – that these herbs will help you to dream more lucidly and gather information from the spirit world – then allow the mixture to dry for a few days. When it is ready, crumble it into a cloth pouch and place it beneath your pillow. Keep a dream journal next to your bed and, as soon as you wake up next morning, immediately note down your dreams and your first waking sensations.
AJO SACHA: STALKING THE SELF
This plant is a blood purifier and helps the body to rid itself of toxins (spiritual or physical) as well as restoring strength and equilibrium lost through illnesses that have an affect on the blood. More psycho-spiritually, it helps to develop acuity of mind and can also take the user out of saladera (a run of bad luck, inertia, or a sense of not living life to the full). It is also used for ridding spells – i.e. undoing the work of curses or removing bad energy that has been sent deliberately or by accident (in an explosion of rage, etc).

In floral baths, it will relieve states of shock and fear (known as manchiari), which can be particularly debilitating to children, whose souls are not as strong or fixed as an adult’s; a powerful shock can therefore lead to soul loss. The same phenomenon, especially regarding children, is known to the shamans of Haiti, where it is called seziman, and those of India, who take great care to protect children from frights of this kind and are often employed by the anxious parents of newborn children to make protective amulets for their babies.

Another key to ajo sacha is that in the Amazon it is used to enhance hunting skills, not only by covering the human scent with its own garlic-like smell (the plant also has a strong garlic taste although it is in no way related to garlic), but by amplifying the hunter’s senses of taste, smell, sound, and vision, all of which are, of course, essential for success and for survival. It is therefore a plant of stalking.

In the Western world this stalking ability tends to translate psychologically, and the plant becomes a means of helping an individual hunt or ‘stalk’ her inner issues. To underline this, the Shipibo maestro Guillermo Arevalo adds that this plant also opens up the shamanic path and helps us to see beyond conventional reality – if we have the heart of a warrior and are prepared to live under the obligations of shamanism. For this, we will need courage, the ability to face the truth, and to know our true calling, and no fear of extremes or ‘ugly’ things.

It is fascinating that this plant which is used to aid hunting in the rainforest still posses this same essential quality in an environment such as ours where food is purchased from supermarkets and we do not need to track down game at all, but we often have work to do in stalking ourselves. It is clear that this plant has extraordinary qualities.
Western plants with equivalent therapeutic uses include valerian and vervain. The former has been recorded from the 16th century as an aid to a restful mind and, in the two world wars, was used to combat anxiety and depression. Today, it is still used for these purposes. It also brings relief from panic attacks and tension headaches, which are regarded as symptoms of an underlying cause arising from an unresolved issue or stress of some kind. By relaxing the mind, the psyche is able to go to work on the real problem, aided by the plant itself.
One way of dieting valerian (which will also aid a deep and restful sleep) is by adding equal parts to passionflower leaves and hop flowers and covering with vodka and honey for a few weeks, after which a few teaspoons are taken at bedtime.
Vervain, meanwhile, was well-known to the Druids, who used it to protect against “evil spirits” (nowadays, we might say ‘inner issues’ or ‘the shadow-self’). It is also used to help with nervous exhaustion, paranoia, insomnia, and depression. Once again, by relaxing the conscious mind it empowers the unconscious to go to work on (stalk) the more deep-rooted problem.
Another protective plant that also has the effect of purifying and strengthening the blood is garlic. Nicholas Culpepper noted its balancing qualities and wrote of it as a “cure-all”. It has long been associated with magical uses, protection from witches, vampires, and evil spells, and as effective in exorcisms (i.e. psychologically speaking, in ridding us of our inner demons). Roman soldiers ate it to give themselves courage and overcome their fears before battle. There is also a tradition of placing garlic beneath the pillows of children to protect them while they sleep and defend them from nightmares.
One way of dieting garlic is in the form of garlic honey - which is not as disagreeable as it sounds. To make it, add two cloves of peeled garlic to a little honey and crush them in a mortar, then add another 400g or so of honey to the mix. This can be drunk in hot water or simply eaten, two teaspoons a day, morning and night.
Other plants that are good for increasing ‘wisdom’ (inner knowledge) include peach, sage, and sunflower, all of which can also be dieted fresh or in a little rum or vodka.

Continued in Part 2/…

Join us for an authentic experience of ayahuasca, San Pedro, and plant spirit shamanism in the beautiful rainforests and mountains of Peru. Email ross@thefourgates.com for a FREE Information Pack or visit the website http://www.thefourgates.com and look under the Sacred Journeys section.

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Continued from Part 1…

MOCURA/MUCURA: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL STRENGTH
One of the qualities of this plant is its ability to boost one’s psychological and emotional strength. For this reason it is regarded as a ‘great balancer’, restoring connection and equilibrium between our rational mind and feelings. For example, it is good at countering shyness and can enhance one’s sense of personal value and authority by helping to overcome painful memories (of past embarrassments and ‘failures’, etc).

Mocura is also used in floral baths to both cleanse and protect against malevolent forces such as sorcery and envidia (envy). Its medicinal properties include relief from asthma, bronchitis, and the reduction of fat and cholesterol.

In the West, there are a number of plants that have similar effects and bring calm and balance to the soul. These include lavender - which Pliny regarded as so powerful that even looking upon it brings peace - meadowsweet, pine, and rosemary.

Burning pine needles will purify the atmosphere of a house and a pine branch hung over the front door will bring harmony and joy to the home. Rosemary, especially when burned, is cleansing and centring, and it is said that if you concentrate on the smoke with a question in mind, rosemary will also provide the answer. There is a European belief that carrying rosemary leaves will protect you from sadness. It is also quite pleasant to drink with honey as a weak tea.

In terms of body energetics and magical uses, moss, orange, and strawberry leaves are effective at removing bad luck, and loosestrife, myrtle, and violet leaves help to overcome fear.

ROSA SISA: HARMONY AND HEALING THE SOUL
This plant is often used to heal children who are suffering from mal aire (‘bad air’), a malady which can occur when a family member dies and leaves the child unhappy and sleepless. The spirit of the dead person lingers, it is said, because it is sad to go and aware of the grief around it, so it stays in the house and tries to comfort its family. This proximity to death, however, can make children sick.

Rosa sisa is also used to bring good luck and harmony in general. One of the ways that bad luck can result is through the magical force of envidia. A jealous neighbour might, for instance, throw a handful of graveyard dirt into your house to spread sadness and heavy feelings. Those in the house become bored, agitated, or restless as a consequence. The solution is to take a bucket of water and crushed rosa sisa flowers and thoroughly wash the floors to dispel the evil magic.

Many Peruvians also grow rosa sisa near the front door of their houses to absorb the negativity of people who pass by and look in enviously to see what possessions they have. The flowers turn black when this happens, but go back to their normal colour when the negative energy is dispersed through their roots to the Earth.

Rosa sisa is also used for making dreams come true, by blowing on the petals with a wish in mind, like we do with dandelions. It can make these wishes happen because it is bright like the sun and contains the energy of good fortune.

Marigolds have similar magical uses in the West. Aemilius Macer, as long ago as the 13th century, wrote that merely gazing at the flowers will draw “wicked humours out of the head”, “comfort the heart” and make “the sight bright and clean”. In Europe, just as in Peru, marigolds are often grown beside the front door or hung in garlands to protect those inside from magical attacks. For the same reason, and to empower the spirit, marigold petals can be scattered beneath the bed (where they will also ensure good – and often prophetic – dreams) or added to bath water to bring calm and refreshment to the body and soul.

As well as drinking marigold tea, the petals can be used in salads or added to rice and pulses as another way of dieting them. Physically, the tea is good for bringing down fevers (especially in children), for gastritis, gallbladder problems, and tonsillitis. Rubbed on the skin, marigold petals will heal skin diseases, cuts, bruises, and rashes.

Alternatives, to create harmony in the self and home, include gardenia, meadowsweet, and passion flower.

PIRI PIRI, MEDICINAL SEDGES: FOR VISION
Native people cultivate numerous varieties of medicinal sedges to treat a wide range of health problems. Sedge roots, for example, are used to treat headaches, fevers, cramps, dysentery and wounds, as well easing childbirth and protecting babies from illness.

Special sedge varieties are cultivated by Shipibo women to improve their skills in weaving magical tapestries that embody the spiritual universe, and it is customary when a girl is very young for her mother to squeeze a few drops of sap from the piri piri seed into her eyes to give her the ability to have visions of the designs she will make when she is older. The men cultivate sedges to improve their hunting skills.

Since the plant is used for such a wide range of conditions, its powers were once dismissed as superstition. Pharmacological research, however, has now revealed the presence of ergot alkaloids within these plants, which are known to have diverse effects on the body - from stimulation of the nervous system to the constriction of blood vessels. These alkaloids are responsible for the wide range of sedge uses, but come, not from the plant itself, but from a fungus that infects it.

There are a number of Western plants that are also said to produce visions – i.e. communion with the greater spirit of the world. The leaves of coltsfoot and angelica, when smoked, for example, will induce such visions, and damiana, when burned, will also produce these effects.

Angelica has long been regarded as a spiritual plant with almost supernatural powers. It is linked to the archangel Raphael, who appeared in the dreams of a medieval monk and revealed the plant as a cure for plague. Native Americans used it in compresses to cure painful swellings and believed it sucked the spirit of pain out of the body before casting it to the four winds. It has also been heralded as an aid to overcoming alcohol addiction as its regular usage creates a dislike for the taste of alcohol. Recent research suggests that it can also help the body fight the spread of cancer. Its leaves can be added to salads and this is another way to diet this plant.

Coltsfoot is another plant with wide-ranging properties but is most highly regarded for its soothing effects on respiratory and bronchial problems. One way of dieting it, paradoxically, is to use it in herbal cigarettes. These can be made by adding a larger part of coltsfoot to other aromatic and soothing herbs such as skullcap or chamomile. Cut the herbs to small lengths and mix them thoroughly with a little honey dissolved in water, then spread the mix out and let it to dry for a few days. It can then be rolled to make cigarettes or smoked in a pipe.

UNA DE GATO: FOR BALANCE
Una de Gato (‘cat's claw’) is a tropical vine that grows in the rainforests. It gets its name from the small thorns at the base of the leaves, which look like a cat's claw and enable the vine to wind itself around trees, climbing to a height of up to 150 feet. The inner bark of the vine has been used for generations to treat inflammations, colds, viral infections, arthritis, and tumors. It also has anti-inflammatory and blood-cleansing properties, and will clean out the entire intestinal tract to treat a wide array of digestive problems such as gastric ulcers, parasites, and dysentery.

Its most famous quality, however, is its powerful ability to boost the body's immune system, and it is considered by many shamans to be a ‘balancer’, returning the body's functions to a healthy equilibrium.

From a psycho-spiritual or shamanic perspective, disease usually arises from a spiritual imbalance within the patient causing him to become de-spirited or to lose heart (in the West we would call this depression). Interestingly, Thomas Bartram, in his Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine, writes that in the West “some psychiatrists believe [problems of the immune system, where the body attacks itself] to be a self-produced phenomenon due to an unresolved sense of guilt or dislike of self… People who are happy at their home and work usually enjoy a robust immune system”. The psychiatric perspective, in this sense, is not so different from the shamanic view. Cat’s claw is believed to heal illness by restoring the peace of the spirit as well as the balance between spirit and body.

The medicinal properties of this plant are officially recognized by the Peruvian government and it is a protected (for export) plant. It is, however, widely available in the West in capsule form and this is one way of dieting it, although its spiritual affects will be less strong, since, once a plant has been processed in this way, much of its spirit is lost.

Echinacea can also be used as a substitute for cat’s claw and will stimulate the immune system and prove effective against depression and exhaustion. As an alternative, you might try a mixture of borage, cinnamon, and blackberry, all of which are regarded as lifting the spirits and good healers in general.

CHULLACHAQUI CASPI: CONNECTION TO THE EARTH
The resin of the chullachaqui caspi tree, extracted from the trunk in the same way as rubber from the rubber tree, can be used as a poultice or smeared directly onto wounds to heal deep cuts and stop haemorrhages. For skin problems, such as psoriasis, the bark can be grated and boiled in water while the patient sits before it, covered with a blanket, to receive a steam bath. It is important to remove the bark without killing the tree, however, which can otherwise have serious spiritual consequences. Oil can also be extracted by boiling the bark, and this can be made into capsules.

The deeper, more spiritual, purpose of this tree is to help the shaman or his patient get close to the spirit of the forest and in touch with the vibration and rhythm of the Earth. Through this reconnection with nature, it will strengthen an unsettled mind and help to ground a person who is disturbed. It will also guide and protect the apprentice shaman and show him how to recognise which plants can heal.

The tree has large buttress roots as it grows in sandy soil where roots cannot go deep (chulla in Quechua means ‘twisted foot’ and chaqui is the plant). This forms part of Amazonian mythology, in stories of the jungle ‘dwarf’, the chullachaqui, which is said to have a human appearance, with one exception: his twisted foot. The chullachaqui is the protector of the animals, and lives in places where the tree also grows. The legend is that if you are lost in the forest and meet a friend or family member, it is most likely the chullachaqui who has taken their form. He will be friendly and suggest going for a walk so he can guide you or show you something of interest. If you go, however, he will lead you deep into the rainforest until you are lost, and you will then suffer madness or become a chullachaqui yourself.

Ross has speculated that the reference is to the initiation of the plant shaman, who must go deep into the jungle to pursue his craft by getting to know the plants and the forest. Such trials can, indeed, lead to madness or even death for the unwary, but for those who succeed, they will become great healers, in touch with the spirits of nature, like the chullachaqui himself. For those who are not ready to meet these challenges, the advice of the jungle shamans is simple: when out walking in the forest, should you encounter a friend or a family member, always look at his feet, as the chullachaqui will try to keep his twisted foot away from you. Do not go with him - turn back and run away!

The chullachaqui, symbolically, is a tree and the motif of the ‘world tree’ – the spiritual centre of the universe which connects the material and immaterial planes – occurs in many cultures and is often to do with initiation. In Haiti, it is Papa Loko (a variant of the word iroco, which is the name of an African tree) who meets the shaman-to-be in the dark woods at night to initiate him into the Vodou religion. In Siberia, too, there is a tradition that the shaman-elect must climb a silver birch while in a state of trance and make secret, spirit-given, markings on one of its topmost branches.

While it is interesting to speculate about the initiatory symbolism of the chullachaqui, it must also be pointed out that Amazonian shamans regard it as very real being. Javier Aravelo, for example, has a photograph of a chullachaqui’s tambo, which he swears is real. The tambo is a hut that stands about four feet high and is used as a dwelling. Javier discovered this one next to a cultivated garden deep in the otherwise wild rainforest

In the West, we have our own tradition of magical trees. One of these is willow, a tree sacred to the Druids. Ancient British burial mounds and modern day cemeteries are both often lined with willow, symbolising the gateway this tree provides between the living and the dead, spirit and matter. The brooms of witches are also bound with willow, enabling their flight to the otherworld.

To deepen a connection to the Earth and the spirit, willow can be ‘dieted’ in place of chullachaqui caspi by burning crushed bark fragments with white sandalwood or myrrh and bathing in the smoke.

CHUCHUHUASI: INCREASED LIFE FORCE
This is another Amazonian tree which forms an important part of the jungle pharmacopoeia. The bark can be chewed as a remedy for stomach ache, fevers, arthritis, circulation, and bronchial problems, but it is rather bitter and so more often it is macerated in aguardiente or boiled in water and honey.

Western alternatives include burdock for arthritis and for ‘fevers’ as they manifest through the skin in the form of eczema, psoriasis, acne, etc, and ginseng for problems of the circulation. Kola is good for stomach complaints (diarrhoea and dysentery, etc) and saw palmetto is a general tonic which is useful for bronchial problems.

Chuchuhuasi is also regarded as a “libido stimulant” and aphrodisiac, giving the person who drinks it a renewed sense of life and vigour. With these properties in mind, chuchuhuasi is the main ingredient in cocktails at many bars and restaurants in Iquitos, on the banks of the Amazon river, the most popular of which is the Chuchuhuasi Sour, where it is mixed with limes, ice, and honey.

In the West, plants with similar aphrodisiac qualities include burdock, ginseng, kola, and saw palmetto berries. These are not just aids to sexual potency, but reconnect the dieter to the joy of living and a love of involvement with others.

Join us for an authentic experience of ayahuasca, San Pedro, and plant spirit shamanism in the beautiful rainforests and mountains of Peru. Email ross@thefourgates.com for a FREE Information Pack or visit the website http://www.thefourgates.com and look under the Sacred Journeys section.

Plant Spirit Shamanism, soul loss, healing, herbs, herbalism, aromatherapy, homeopathy, teacher plants, stalking, ross heaven

Paracelsus and the shamanic doctrine of signatures in the Amazon and other countries

There is one concept that underlies all work in plant spirit shamanism, which is that nature itself will tell you what they are used for and its well-stocked medicine cabinet is right in front of us every day.

Shamans recognise the spiritual powers and qualities of plants in many ways: the colours of their flowers, their perfumes, the shape and form of their leaves, where they are growing and in what ways, the moods they evoke, and the wider geographical, cultural, or mythological landscapes they occupy.

Although such considerations do not play a role in modern medicine (which does not believe in these spiritual powers at all), it was not long ago that we, too, had an understanding that nature is alive and is talking to us in these ways.

The 16th century alchemist and philosopher, Aureolus Phillippus Theophrastus Bombast – better known as Paracelsus - introduced this notion in his Doctrine of Signatures treatise, which proposed that the Creator has placed his seal on plants to indicate their medicinal uses. This was not just idle speculation on the part of Paracelsus; nature itself taught him the truth of it.

“Seeking for truth”, he wrote, “I considered within myself that if there were no teachers of medicine in this world, how would I set to learn the art? Not otherwise than in the great book of nature, written with the finger of God…. The light of nature, and no apothecary’s lamp directed me on my way”.

In his ‘book of nature’, Paracelsus noticed how the qualities of plants so often reflect their appearance – that the seeds of skullcap, for example, resemble small skulls and, it transpires, are effective at curing headache. Similarly, the hollow stalk of garlic resembles the windpipe and is used for throat and bronchial problems. By the same token, willow grows in damp places and will heal rheumatic conditions, caused by a build-up of fluid on the joints.

In fact, as Thomas Bartram remarks in his Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine, “Examples are numerous. It is a curiosity that many liver remedies have yellow flowers, those for the nerves (blue), for the spleen (orange), for the bones (white). Serpentaria (Rauwolfia) resembles a snake and is an old traditional remedy for snake-bite. Herbalism confirms the Doctrine of Signatures”.

Underlying Paracelsus’ treatise was the premise that nature was itself a living organism which must be considered an expression of “the One Life”, and that man and the universe are the same in their essential nature; an idea that was echoed (some would say proved) by Dr James Lovelock, 500 years after Paracelsus, in his Gaia hypothesis on the unity of life. Gaia shows, for example, that the Earth maintains relatively constant conditions in temperature and atmosphere, etc, which defy rational observations and predictive measurements of what ‘ought’ to happen. It is, rather, as if the Earth is a living organism, which consciously takes care of itself.

Because of this “One Life”, Paracelsus held that the inner nature of plants may be discovered by their outer forms or ‘signatures’. He applied this principle to food as well as medicine, remarking that “it is not in the quantity of food but in its quality that resides the Spirit of Life” – a belief familiar to those who choose to eat organic food and share a common concern over Genetically Modified (GM) substitutes that lack ‘life force’, or spirit.

According to Paracelsus, then, the appearance of a plant is the gateway to its spirit or consciousness.

The doctrine of signatures, per se, is not something known to many indigenous shamans, but they understand the principles behind it well enough – that nature is alive, aware, and communicates with us. These principles are not regarded as fanciful at all, but practical and important enough that they can save lives.
I discovered how the doctrine of signatures operates in the Amazon, for example, during an experience with the jergon sacha plant reported by one jungle traveller, who came across this plant accidentally, when walking through the rainforest with the shaman Javier Arevalo, studying the properties of the plants.

“Javier queried why I always walked around with a machete. I jokingly replied ‘it’s against anacondas!’
“He paused for a moment then beckoned me to follow him. A few minutes later we came across this tall-stemmed plant. This was jergon sacha, he said. Javier cut a stem from it and proceeded to whip me around the body, paying most attention to my legs and the soles of my feet. He then said ‘no more problems, you are protected against snakes’. I asked him why this plant was used in this way, and he indicated the pattern on the stem which looks identical to the snakes in the forest.
“Later, on a hunch, we started to investigate this plant and discovered some amazing correspondences. Jergon sacha is widely used as an antidote to snake venom in the Amazon. Referring back to the concept of ‘signatures’, this plant is a clear demonstration of the outer form indicating the inner qualities. Its use is directly related to its physical appearance, the tall stem closely resembling the venomous pit viper known as the Jararaca or Bushmaster, which is indigenous to the Amazon. The Bushmaster, unlike most other snakes, is aggressive and will defend its territory. It can strike in the blink of an eye from 15 feet and is rightly feared and respected.
“Remarkably, jergon sacha does turn out to be a highly effective antidote for the bite when its large root tuber is chopped up and immersed in cold water and then drunk, or placed in a banana leaf and used as a poultice wrapped around the wound.
“Of course, the pragmatic statement here is that it is not possible to store anti-venom vaccines in the rainforest, where there is no refrigeration, so this plant has exceptional life-saving importance. This importance is recognised because the plant itself tells the shaman of its use through the markings on its stems”.
Another illustration of the connection between the form and function of a plant is provided by Artiduro Aro Cardenas, a shaman who works with plant perfumes.

“If the smell of a flower has the power to attract insects or birds, it can also attract luck to people”, he says.

Artiduro makes fragrances which attract customers into a shop, for example (“You just rub the perfume on your face and it brings in the people to your business”), as well as perfumes for love, and others for “flourishing” – growth and success. “I watch what the plant does and if it is attractive [i.e. has the power to attract], I use it to attract. Plants are the forces of nature”, he says. “All I do is give these forces direction”.

Today’s system of homeopathy is also based on the principle of a sentient universe known through its signatures. Hippocrates spoke of a universal law of similia similibus curentur (‘like cures like’), and the modern pioneer of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), showed, through his experiments, that plants contain a healing ‘essence’ or spiritual quality that has an affinity with human beings and acts on them according to the nature of the illness they are suffering from.

No-one really knows how homeopathy works, but the fact that it does seems clear. In 1836, for example, when cholera destroyed many Austrian cities and orthodox medicine was unable to stop its spread, the government turned in desperation to homeopathy and built a quick and crude hospital in which patients could be treated.

The results spoke for themselves: while orthodox hospitals reported deaths in more than 70% of cases, the homeopathic hospital recorded a death rate of just 30%.

Shamans have a simple explanation for this: the homeopathic doctors appealed to and engaged the spirit of the plants to intervene on behalf of their patients and the spirits answered their call.

Join us for an authentic experience of ayahuasca, San Pedro, and plant spirit shamanism in the beautiful rainforests and mountains of Peru. Email ross@thefourgates.com for a FREE Information Pack or visit the website http://www.thefourgates.com and look under the Sacred Journeys section.

Alchemy, organic food, aromatherapy, homeopathy, plant spirit shamanism, nature, healing, shamanism, herbs, herbalism, Thomas bartram, james lovelock, gaia, flower remedies, flower essences, ross heaven, Paracelsus, doctrine of signatures

Plant Spirit Shamanism: PABLO AMARINGO – THE VISION OF THE PLANTS: The role of plants in ayahuasca and visionary painting

The great visionary artist, Pablo Amaringo, was born in 1943 in Puerto Libertad, in the Peruvian Amazon. He was 10 years old when he first took ayahuasca - a visionary brew used in shamanism - to help him overcome a severe heart disease. The magical cure of this ailment via the plants themselves led Pablo toward the life of a shaman, which he pursued successfully for many years, healing himself and others from the age of ten.

In 1977, he gave up his healing work to become a full-time painter and to set up his Usko-Ayar school. Pablo is now widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest visionary artists. His book, Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman, co-authored with Luis Eduardo Luna, was published in 1993 by North Atlantic Books.

In 2006, Pablo wrote the foreword to my book, Plant Spirit Shamanism. After a lifetime spent working with plants and with plant spirit shamanism, what do plants mean to Pablo? This article is from the foreword.

I owe my life to plants and they have informed everything I have done.

From very young I liked to work with plants and I realised that they gave me daily sustenance, not just as foods, but in my soul. I loved and admired them greatly.

But in my adolescence they became even more important to me. I was very unwell in my heart but I healed myself with the sacred plant, ayahuasca, after many years of suffering - something which medicines from the pharmacy were unable to do.

After years of healing myself in this way, I became a shaman when I saw a curandera [a curandera is the Amazonian term for a female shaman] heal my younger sister, also by using ayahuasca. My sister had been in agony with hepatitis, but with this single healing from the plants, she was cured in just two hours. That was why I started learning the science of vegetalismo [a vegetalismo is a shamanic healer who works primarily with plants].

Later I began dieting and taking la purga [another name for ayahuasca] and she taught me how to use plants for healing and to understand their application through visions. That's how I came to be a shaman, ordained by the spirits.

My visions helped me understand the value of human beings, animals, the plants themselves, and many other things. The plants taught me the function they play in life, and the holistic meaning of all life. We all should pay special attention and deference to Mother Nature. She deserves our love. And we should also show a healthy respect for her power!

Plants mean many things to me: they give life to all beings on Earth since they produce oxygen, which we need to be active; they conform the enormous greenhouse which gives board and lodging to diverse but interrelated guests; they are teachers and show us the holistic importance of conserving life in its due form and necessary conditions.

More than this, though, plants - the great living book of nature - have shown me how to study life as an artist and shaman. They help us to know the art of healing and to discover our own creativity, because the beauty of nature moves people to show reverence, fascination, and respect for the extent to which the forests give our souls shelter.

The consciousness of plants is a constant source of information in medicine, alimentation, and art, and an example of nature’s own intelligence and creative imagination. Much of my education I owe to the intelligence of these great teachers. Thus I consider myself to be the ‘representative’ of plants and for this reason I assert that if they cut down the trees and burn what’s left of the rainforests, it is the same as burning a whole library of books without ever having read them.

For people who are not so dedicated to the study and experience of plants, this is not so important to their lives, but even they should be conscious of the alimentary, medicinal, and scientific value of the plants they rely on for life.

My most sublime desire, though, is that every human being should begin to put as much attention as they can into the knowledge of plants because they are the greatest healers of all. And they should also put effort into the preservation and conservation of the rainforest, and care for it and the ecosystem, because damage to these not only prejudices the flora and fauna but humanity itself.

Even in the Amazon these days, plants are seen by many as only a resource for building houses and to finance large families. People who have farms and raise animals also clear the forest to produce foodstuffs. Mestizos and native Indians log the largest trees to sell to industrial sawmills for subsistence. They have never heard of the word ecology!

I, Pablo, say to everybody who lives in the Amazon and the forests of the world that they must love the plants of their land, and everything that is there!

This expression of love must be a sincere and altruistic interest in the lasting well-being of others. We are not here simply to exist, but to enjoy life together with plants, animals, and loved ones, and to delight in contemplation of the beauty of nature. A shaman has in his mind and heart the attitude of conserving nature because he knows that life is for enjoying the company of this world’s countless delights.

Any painting, or book, or piece of art that spreads this message is to be respected and every reader who picks up a book on this subject is to be honoured.

I invite you to read on and to learn from the greatest teachers of all – the plants, our sacred brothers.

Plant Spirit Shamanism: Traditional Techniques for Healing the Soul, by Ross Heaven, is published by Destiny Books, ISBN 1594771189.

Join us for an authentic experience of ayahuasca, San Pedro, and plant spirit shamanism in the beautiful rainforests and mountains of Peru. Email ross@thefourgates.com for a FREE Information Pack or visit the website http://www.thefourgates.com and look under the Sacred Journeys section.

Pablo amaringo, painting, art, ayahuasca, plant spirit shamanism, healing, visions, the amazon, herbs, herbalism, curandera, nature, ross heaven

Plant Spirit Shamanism: Icaros, the sacred songs - The spirit songs of the Amazon ayahuasca shamans

Integral to any ayahausca ceremony are sacred chants sung by the shamans to call the protective jungle spirits, summon the essence of nature, and to provoke the mareacion or effects of the ayahuasca by making a plea to the spirit of the vine. In the words of Javier Aravelo, quoted in my book, Plant Spirit Shamanism, icaros “render the mind susceptible for visions; then the curtains can open for the start of the theatre”.

Icaros may be magical chants or a melody that is whistled, sung, or whispered into the ayahuasca brew. They may also be sung directly into the energy field of a person who is to be healed during a ceremony.

An icaro can be regarded as an energetic force charged with positive or healing intent that the shaman stores inside his body and is able to transmit to another person or to the brew itself so that this positive energy is ingested when the mixture is drunk.

These songs are taught to the shaman by the spirit of the plant allies he has an affinity with, and the longer his relationship with the plants, the more icaros he may learn and the more potent they will be.

The power and knowledge of an ayahuascero (ayahuasca shaman) is therefore measured in part by the number of icaros he possesses. Javier, for example, has worked with many different plants for 15 years and now knows the spirit songs of some 1,500 ‘jungle doctors’, including the icaro del tabaco (the song of tobacco – one of the most sacred of Amazonian plants), the icaro del ajo sacha (the song of ajo sacha) and the icaro del chiric sanango, amongst many others.

There are precise and specific icaros for many different purposes - to cure snake bites, for example, or to clarify the vision during ayahuasca ceremonies, to communicate with the spirit world, or even to win the love of a woman. Huarmi icaros - from the Quechua word ‘huarmi’ (which, loosely, means “woman”) are of this latter category.

There are also icaros (called icaros de la piedra) which are taught to the shaman by encantos (special healing stones which offer spiritual protection), and icaros to the spirits of the elements, such as icaro del viento, which calls upon the spirit of the wind.

Other icaros, such as the ayaruna - from the Quechua words ‘aya’ (“spirit” or “dead”) and ‘runa’ (“people”) - are sung to invoke the “spirit people” – the souls of dead shamans who live in the underwater world - so they may help during a healing or an ayahuasca ceremony.

Icaros can also be transmitted from a master shaman to his disciple but, once again, it is nature that is regarded as the greatest teacher and the most powerful songs are those learnt directly from the plants themselves. To learn these songs the shaman must fast or follow a special diet for many weeks as he treks deep into the rainforest to find the appropriate plants and places of power where the magical music of nature can be heard.

The words of the chants he then learns are symbolic stories telling of the ability of nature to heal itself: how the crystalline waters from a stream will wash clean and purify a person who is unwell, for example; or how bright-coloured flowers attract hummingbirds whose delicate wings fan healing energies. You might also see such things in your ayahuasca visions as a response to these icaros, but what actually heals you is more likely to be the insights that arise from the experience and which allow inner feelings to unblock so that bitterness and anger can change to ecstasy and love.

A few verses from the icaro madre naturaleza (‘song of mother nature’), which was taught by the jungle to Javier Arevalo, demonstrate the deep bond between the shaman and the natural world, and the healing that is available to us all.

In English:

Don't leave me, don't leave me
My mother nature
Don't leave me, don't leave me
My mother nature
For if you will leave me
I would die or of the pain
My tears of desperation
My mother nature
Yes you have the gift of life
Sacred purification in you hands
Blessed mother nature

Don't leave me don't leave me
My mother nature
Don't leave me, don't leave me
My mother nature
For if you will leave me
I would die or of the pain
Tears of desperation
The white veil that your you have
As it covers this child
Clean my body and spirit
With the breath or of your lips
Dearest miraculous Mother.

Don't leave me, don't leave me
My mother nature
Don't leave me, don't leave me
My mother nature
For if you will leave me
I will die of the sorrow
My tears of desperation
In the mountains or upper jungle
Where you give me peace and prosperity
Without regrets neither bitterness
Dearest pure Mother

Don't leave me , don't leave me
My mother nature
Don't leave me , don't leave me
My mother nature
For if you will leave me
I would die or of the pain
My tears of desperation
Where you Take a bath with the plants
Blessed Child put onto me
Your crown of health
Eternally in my heart

In Spanish:

No me dejes no me dejes
Madre mia naturaleza
No me dejes no me dejes
Madre mia naturaleza
Por que vas i ti me dejares
Moriria o de las penas
Llantos y desesperaciones
Madre mia naturaleza
Si tu tienes el don de la
Santa purificacion en ti manos
Benditas madre naturaleza

No me dejes no me dejes
Madre mia naturaleza
No me dejes no me dejes
Madre mia naturaleza
Por que vas i ti me dejares
Moriria o de las penas
Llantos y desesperaciones
El velo blanco que tu tienes
Como cubre a esta criatura
Limpia mi cuerpo y espirutu
Con el soplo o de tus labios
Madre cita milagrosa

No me dejes no me dejes
Madre mia naturaleza
No me dejes no me dejes
Madre mia naturaleza
Por que vas i ti me dejares
Moriria o de las penas
Llantos y desesperaciones
En las altas o montanas
Donde pone paz y prosperaciones
Sin remordimentos ni rencores
Madre cita la pura

No me dejes no me dejes
Madre mia naturaleza
No me dejes no me dejes
Madre mia naturaleza
Por que vas i ti me dejares
Moriria o de las penas
Llantos y desesperaciones
Donde Banas con las plantas
Obendita criatura ponme ya
La corona de la sanidad
Muy eternal en mi Corazon

Join us for an authentic experience of ayahuasca, San Pedro, and plant spirit shamanism in the beautiful rainforests and mountains of Peru. Email ross@thefourgates.com for a FREE Information Pack or visit the website http://www.thefourgates.com and look under the Sacred Journeys section.

Plant spirit shamanism, healing, ayahausca, icaro, icaros, the amazon, shamanism, chants, nature, ross heaven

Plant Spirit Shamanism: FLORAL BATHS - AN INTERVIEW WITH A SHIPIBO SHAMAN

In Peru, floral baths known as banos florales (‘flower baths’) are a staple of shamanic healing from the high Andes to the Amazon basin, where they are used to wash away unhelpful spirits so that blockages are removed and the energy of the universe can flood in to correct the imbalance.

Shipibo shaman, Artidoro, describes the process in Peru.

How are these baths taken?
The bath is most often taken on the morning after ayahuasca ceremonies so that the body is modified to accept the new information of the visions. But this is not always true. Sometimes baths are taken before the ceremony to open the person up, and sometimes they are taken by themselves, as a healing.

A tub is filled with water and to this is added the plants that the patient most needs, like mocura and ajo sacha, some of the most powerful doctors. Agua florida or agua de colpas [i.e. water from jungle clay licks, which is rich in nutrients] may also be added.

The patient must approach in a sacred manner, in prayer that his needs will be met, and with the intention that they will. The shaman then pours the water over his head and lets it run down his body, also blowing him with smoke to purify him, or with perfume so he will flourish.

Sometimes the patient turns as this is happening – first to the left [in a circle, anti-clockwise], then to the right [clockwise]. The first turn is to get rid of negativity; the second to draw in positivity.

The bath takes place on the bank of a river so the energy that is removed will find its way to the sea [i.e. be taken away completely].

What plants are used in baths?
Floral baths do not contain large numbers of plants. Specific plants or flowers are chosen instead according to the patient’s ailment.

I begin by cooking up good smelling plants from the forest, and to that essence I add a little alcohol and a little agua florida. Then I get flowers and mash them and add that juice to the mixture and put it into bottles. When I do this, I diet and refrain from eating salt, etc. You can either have a one-off floral bath or you can have a series of them for a deeper and more thorough effect.

A common reason for people to want to take floral baths is that something is not going well for them – like, for example, they can’t get work or they are having bad luck. First I give them a cleansing bath to take away the saladera [bad luck] which is shows up as salt on their skins. In that bath I put ajo sacha, mishquipanga, ruda and romero [rosemary]. Then the floral bath follows to give the things the client wants: luck, work, etc.

Can you give examples of other baths and what they are used for?
For changing luck, mocura is used and the patient will find that after a couple of weeks, things have changed. For example you may find the job you were looking for, or where your life felt stuck or turbulent there is some momentum; things start to shift. Mocura is also used for clearing negative thoughts and feelings sent to you by others.

For cleansing the spirit, the dark red leaves of pinon colorado are used to undo sorcery and harm. This plant is also used in steam baths and when this is done you can actually see the phlegm, which is the bad magic, appear on the patient’s skin as it comes out of the body.

For flourishing or blossoming, bano de florecimiento plants are used. These help us to connect with and draw upon the strength and courage within ourselves, to overcome obstacles, and to lead a purposeful and productive life in accordance with our soul’s intention. The mixture for this bath is agua de colpa water from a place in the forest where pure rainwater collects. Often hunters drink this water as well to attract the animals.

To this is added albacca, which is a plant used widely in Peru for its strong, sweet perfume. It is used instead of an aerosol spray to freshen a house and is also placed on corpses during funerals. From a floral bath perspective, it attracts lots of friends and positive outcomes. It is also used medicinally for gastritis, appendix, or gall bladder problems, in which case you can take it as a tea. Menta [mint] is also added to freshen and re-vitalise the bather. Menta is also good for calming the nerves and releasing worries and preoccupations.

When the person bathes, all of these plant qualities are absorbed by the skin and the spirit.

Join us for an authentic experience of ayahuasca, San Pedro, and plant spirit shamanism in the beautiful rainforests and mountains of Peru. Email ross@thefourgates.com for details or visit the website http://www.thefourgates.com and look under the Sacred Journeys section.

Plant spirit shamanism, healing, herbs, herbalism, the amazon, flowers, flowers baths, flower essences, aromatherapy, homeopathy, ayahuasca, ross heaven, shamanism, peru

Plant Spirit Shamanism: Divining with Coca - An interview with an Andean curandera

The Incas regarded coca as the divine plant, mainly because of its ability to impart endurance, and its use was entwined with every aspect of life, art, mythology, and the economy of the Incan Empire.

Millions have chewed coca on a daily basis and the practice has continued for hundreds of years. It continues as a custom, not because coca (the basis for cocaine) is a ‘habit drug’, but because it is a part of Andean culture. Even today, distances are measured in cocadas - how far a load can be carried under the stimulus of one chew of coca.

Andeans chew coca just as they do everything else: ritually, deliberately, and systematically. A mouthful of leaves is carefully chosen from an exquisitely woven coca bag or chuspa and lliptia is chewed with the leaves to liberate their active ingredients.

But the ceremony which really brings out the spirit in the leaves is coca divination. Doris Rivera Lenz is an Andean curandera (shaman) who is expert in its practice. In the following interview, she offers insights into the nature of healing and illness, and the role of plant spirit medicine in this.

What is coca divination?
It is meeting with the spirit of the element that you are working with, whether it is coca, maize or a mountain. In the case of coca, you meet the mother spirit, soul or power of the plant, which is the sacred part which never dies.

The practitioner must be in total communication: spirit-to-spirit. It is more like listening to the coca leaves than reading them. It is a higher state of consciousness. You have to be prepared to integrate yourself spiritually to help another spirit.

Human beings are sacred cosmic seeds in evolution. The coca is a sacred seed like us, only of the vegetable kingdom. It has been created by the Earth to guide and heal its younger brothers: ourselves. Similarly we have been created to help other people. As we become more open, we discover plants like coca. Not everybody sees the spirit of coca, but it is here to help us.

What is the cause of disease, and how is it cured by the spirit of the plants?
Illnesses do not exist. We create them with our minds according to our attitudes and the things we do. Resentment, for example, causes cancer. A woman whose ovaries are unwell [with cancer] may be resentful and [so] suffers trauma. People who do not have the freedom to express their feelings suffer from throat problems, and so on.

So how do we heal them? First we need to look at them through the coca leaves, to know what has happened. Why are they resentful, fearful, or anxious? What is causing their problems? Difficulties existing outside our bodies, such as a theft, disillusionment, or being lied to, affect us because we are predisposed to have this pain. Such people get ill because they are not in equilibrium with themselves. The coca shows when and how this began; it tells the story of how they got ill.

Human beings are always predisposed by their attitudes. This is why you need to know their story. Someone who has a superiority complex or is aggressive and violent is on a downward spiral. They are weakened in their heart, stomach, and solar plexus: the ñawi or naira [the Andean equivalent of chacras] where emotional attitudes are held. In the Andes, people will frequently consider an aching stomach to have been caused by sorrow.

A person who harbours feeling of hate may feel perfectly well for a time but problems with their children, their husband, or lack of money, intensify their emotions which degenerates their body on a cellular level. So they create their illness because they are already out of equilibrium.

Can you explain the concept of the ñawi and how it relates to illness?
In Quechua it is ñawi, or in Aymara, naira. It means ‘eye’, or energy centre of the body, but chacra is also a very common word in Peru, and is Quechua for a piece of cultivated land or field. I believe it has the same linguistic root as the Hindu ‘chacra’. Just as some fields have lots of stones, and others are very fertile, so our bodies, also part of nature, are similar.

Less than a generation ago, people would make offerings before preparing their fields for sowing. They would chew coca leaves, drink chicha or maize beer, and even play music - a whole ceremony. The ancient healers or shamans would give floral or smoke baths to people, curing them of illnesses, fright and so on – the ‘health’ of the land and the people were treated as interrelated.

People identified themselves with their fields and with nature. So when I remove negative emotions from a person, it is like I am removing weeds from their chacra/field.

When they are feeling desperate, the people of the Andes benefit from going to a wild place or some ruins, to scream and shout so that even the mountains will hear. They align with natural forces; this puts them back into equilibrium.

So, do people come to you for coca divination because they are unwell? Is it more than ‘divination’ as we would understand it in the West?
The majority are unwell in their spirit or mind; there are lots of problems today. They are particularly afflicted in the stomach, the place of emotional pain, and also where we are joined to life.

The first thing is to discover what is going on: the wife had an accident, the husband was unfaithful, they haven’t got a job, the house is falling down… Then I look to see their capacity to accept criticism, to listen to the mother leaf ticking them off saying: ‘You have done this, you are insecure, weak, a drunk, or a prostitute’. What is the story? Is it karmic - or something they are doing?

That sounds like a psychological approach - what people are doing to themselves. How do you make sense of the belief that some problems are caused by sorcery?
I show the person that he is not the victim of sorcery and is creating the problem in his mind. Talking about it brings it out and is the first part of becoming well again.

It is true that some people will take vengeance through black magic when they feel prejudiced or offended in some way, because they are sick. When people think they have power and feel superior, the ego can become very negative. The first thing I do is to wake up the consciousness of the person who has been harmed and tell them that evil does not exist! ‘You are inventing it’, I tell them. I need to use a bit of psychology.

Black magic does not exist then?
Neither good nor bad exists; it is a universe, and we create the good and the bad. But I recognise that the person may feel attacked. When someone falls ill it means they are weak and the curandero [an Andean plant healer] must speak positively and encourage them to shine light on it. Then they can create positive thoughts for themselves. If I agree with them and say they are bewitched it makes them worse.

But do you believe that black magic can exist?
Of course, but the act itself is not so powerful as white magic. It is the negative spirit of the black brujo [sorcerer] which creates the power of the spell. If you get hold of a chicken and take off its feathers, put a toad inside, and hang it in the doorway of a hated neighbour [An Andean form of cursing], you can give them a nasty fright, but without a powerful negative spirit nothing will happen. But if the intentions are very negative and the person is weak, they will pick it up quickly.

The most powerful brujos are found in the jungle where there are powerful plants for healing, just as there are dangerous plants that can paralyse your body and so on. But plants have much more wisdom than people. Do you think that if I go to a floripondio [a shaman who works with flowers] and say ‘I want help to do harm to so and so’, that their plants will automatically be at my disposal? No! You have to make a pact with the spirit.

Do people need to believe that your ceremony has done something in order for it to work?
When people trust that you are a white curandero they open up. You have special permission to go into their soul and work with suggestion. Let’s say you give them a bath in a herb with spines, and you ask permission from the spirit of that plant to heal the person with fright or a bad spell - you bathe them, you put them on a diet, you cleanse them and purify them. You call their soul and give them strength and they get well.

What is different about people from the West? What do they need?
Their heads cutting off! No, its only a joke! Their religion has failed them, the church authorities have kept vested interests and institutions going. Eventually people have thrown the baby out with the bath water. We are Gods and we should believe in ourselves first.

All Gods come through nature. But what has become of Western religion? Materialism, loss of identity, loss of customs. There is so much struggle today. People are no longer thinking about nature, but about money and the help they need. They have become completely insecure. Imagine if we went to live in nature again, surrounded by mountains, or in the rainforest, how much more healing it would be.

Yet the tendency today is for everybody to want to move into the cities, to live like Americans, build motorways. It’s sad. I’ve spent time with people in the Andes. I have seen people leaving their traditional clothes and customs. They say ‘Why do you believe in the Earth, the Sun, the puma and the condor’? They go to the city and see a TV and think, ‘What a beautiful TV!’ They sell their llamas and buy one. I am sad to see their children, who are so pure, being contaminated in this way.

They learn negative habits and are hypnotized, and no longer want to work their land. It really hurts in my soul to see them obsessing about dollars and forgetting their power. This loss of values for material things is happening so fast, its incredible! But it’s the Western influence which has been working over 500 years.

People will get a nasty shock from seeing the increasing changes and natural disasters on the Earth and we will be shocked into changing.

Desperation will show the necessity of love. Who will want to do harm when money and material things have become useless? We will come back to a new kind of community consciousness. We are beginning to anticipate this and becoming more conscious, but we are swerving about. There is so much wisdom in nature, she rears us like her children, teaches us to ask permission, to care for her like ourselves.

Join us for an authentic experience of ayahuasca, San Pedro, and plant spirit shamanism in the beautiful rainforests and mountains of Peru. Email ross@thefourgates.com for details or visit the website http://www.thefourgates.com and look under the Sacred Journeys section.

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