While some people attend medicine ceremonies to treat specific ailments, others trying ayahuasca for the first time are simply curious to experience its hallucinogenic effects. With its wide range of healing benefits, ayahuasca is a panacea for all kinds of mental, emotional and spiritual afflictions. Often giving drinkers more than they bargained for, this sacred […]
Ayahuasqueros (ayahuasca shamans) have been around for as long as people have been drinking ayahuasca.(1)https://kapitari.com/myths-and-mysteries-how-did-indigenous-tribes-discover-ayahuasca/ As the spiritual leaders of their communities, they are responsible for the physical and emotional well-being of their tribes and are like musicians, doctors and chefs all rolled into one.(2)https://raokaibo.org/the-shipibo-cosmovision/ Not only do ayahuasqueros oversee the ceremonial aspect of ayahuasca […]
The Shamanic Link Between Myth and Medicine The origins of ayahuasca are rooted in the indigenous creation myths of the Amazon and its people. From a native Amazonian perspective, these ancient myths are far more than just simple stories and reveal deep truths about the hidden nature of ayahuasca and the holistic nature of healing.(1)https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/73583 […]
The Dissemination and Distribution of Ayahuasca Rituals The Amazon jungle is one of the vastest and wildest terrains on the planet. Spanning nine countries and covering over 40% of the entire South American continent, it is the world’s largest tropical rainforest and is home to a potpourri of different people and cultures, each with their […]
A Three-Fold Model of the World’s Oldest Religion Many anthropologists agree that as long as there have been humans on the planet, there have been shamans. Widely considered the “world’s oldest religion” and the most archaic of all spiritual practices, to follow the development of shamanism is to track the evolution of human consciousness.(1)https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cusrd_abstracts/373/#:~:text=Shamanism%20is%20known%20as%20the,still%20existing%20in%20our%20planet. Although […]
Santo Daime and the Origin of Brazilian “Ayahuasca Religions” Outside of the indigenous context of ayahuasca usage, there exists in Brazil several different “ayahuasca religions” that fuse together various cultural and ethnic worldviews, blending Portuguese Catholic, native and African elements. The most famous of these “ayahuasca religions” is Santo Daime, a syncretic religion that was […]
Drinking ayahuasca is believed to help make dreams more vivid, aiding with dream recall due to the compounds in ayahuasca binding with various neurological receptors that effect and modulate brainwave activity in humans. The chemical changes that occur as a result of drinking ayahuasca have been shown to stimulate various regions of the brain that […]
Ayahuasca and Chacruna: The “Perfect” Pair Ayahuasca is a potent psychotropic concoction that is made from two different plants, chacruna (Psychotria viridis) and its namesake, ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi). This means that although we refer to this entheogenic brew by only one of its two constituents, it must always contain both plants in order to retain […]
How the West “Discovered” Ayahuasca Apart from a handful of hippies, ethnobotanists and anthropologists, ayahuasca was relatively unheard of in the west at the turn of this century. Despite being sampled by notable cultural icons such as Paul Simon and Sting in the early 90s(1)https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/aug/08/ayahuasca-bees-klaxons-devendra-banhart, knowledge of this potent hallucinogenic brew had not yet reached […]
The spirit of ayahuasca is known as the “Mother of the Plants” to the indigenous peoples of the Amazon and because of her role as the creatrix of the world, she is believed to have the power to connect us to many different levels of reality. Ayahuasca and Rao Nete According to the Shipibos, an […]