How Shamans Affect Ayahuasca Ceremonies

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 consumption, historically, they were also responsible for sourcing the raw plant material and cooking the medicine down into a sacred hallucinogenic tea.

Communion with the Spiritual Realms

Traditionally, part of the sourcing and cooking procedure for ayahuasca also involved singing the sacred icaros to the jungle spirits in order to locate reliable sources of both the ayahuasca vine and the chacruna leaf.⁽³⁾https://www.xapiriground.org/media/shipibo-medicine The hidden habitat of the sacred vine was also commonly believed to be revealed to the shaman while in the dream state,⁽⁴⁾https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/guayusa-tea-ecuador however in modern times it is more common to delegate the cultivation of ayahuasca and chacruna to people who own chacras (jungle garden-farms) that specialize in growing medicinal plants.⁽⁵⁾https://chaikuni.org/news/growing-a-forest-garden-chakra-in-the-peruvian-amazon

This suggests that a shaman’s capacity for healing others was once intimately linked to his ability to uncover the location of the sacred plants, however in order to be receptive to this information, an ayahuasquero had to have a special relationship with the spirit world.⁽⁶⁾https://kapitari.com/myths-and-mysteries-how-did-indigenous-tribes-discover-ayahuasca/ A shaman’s ability to commune with the spiritual realms is what sets him apart from other members of his tribe, giving him access to information that can be used to heal sickness and disease. By receiving information from beyond the veil, a curandero is able to converse with spirit allies, allowing them to serve their communities as healers.⁽⁷⁾ … Continue reading

The Link between Singing and Enchantment: Romancing the Plants

Whether or not a shaman has cultivated and cooked the “sacred vine” himself, most indigenous communities believe that singing special icaros to the medicine as it is being prepared is vital to its overall efficacy because it allows the shaman and the ayahuasca to become one during the initial crucial stages of preparation.⁽⁸⁾https://www.cayashobo.com/shipibo-people-tradition/ This is believed to make the ayahuasca more “responsive” to the shaman’s singing during a ceremony, allowing the medicine to penetrate peoples’ psyches more deeply.

The relationship that a shaman forges with the spirit realms has many parallels with how relationships operate between human beings living in the mundane world. We are more “at ease” with old friends than we are with strangers. Similarly, ayahuasca is more likely to be effective when it is being served by a shaman who has taken his time to sing to the ayahuasca during the initial stages of its preparation.⁽⁹⁾https://www.jstor.org/stable/539808

Many indigenous communities liken a maestro’s relationship with ayahuasca as a life-long romance which must constantly be cultivated through ongoing dedication and loving devotion.⁽¹⁰⁾https://www.jstor.org/stable/539808 By “romancing” the sacred vine through song, a shaman’s worshipful icaros imbue the medicine with the essence of his healing intentions. This means that each new batch of ayahuasca can be infused and consecrated with different therapeutic objectives depending on the specific needs of the healer.

By “charging” the ayahuasca with his own unique energy, a curandero’s sacred brew is often a distillation of his shamanic potency and reflects his aptitude at manipulating and harnessing the power of the medicine world. This suggests that the overall strength of any given brew is not only the result of using the correct vine-to-leaf ratio but, more importantly, with an ayahuasquero’s ability to coax the spirits into helping him during the preparation of the vine and later, during ceremonies.⁽¹¹⁾https://www.elmundomagico.org/shamanic-plant-diet/

Awakening the Spirit of the Medicine through Sacred Dietas

The relationship between a maestro and the spirit of ayahuasca is deeply personal and reflects the mutual symbiosis of the human-world with the kingdom of plants.⁽¹²⁾ … Continue reading According to indigenous cosmology, ayahuasca is omnipotent, all-knowing and all-pervading, however it requires a shaman’s singing voice in order for its power to become fully activated.⁽¹³⁾https://www.jstor.org/stable/539808 This is because teacher-plants require the unique vibrational frequency of a human’s vocal cords in order to awaken their full healing potential.⁽¹⁴⁾ … Continue reading

The relationship between shamans and spirits is like having an enormous library full of books. It is not enough for the books to simply “exist” since knowledge cannot be gained if no one reads them. Similarly, the healing intentions of each and every jungle plant are learned during the curandero’s time spent “dieting” them and they are then “unleashed” when he chants and sings his prayerful icaros which are taught to him during his dieta days.

Not only do these magical incantations serve to protect the healing space from negative influences, they also allow the spirits to safeguard each drinker from being attacked by malevolent spirits and rival shamans. ⁽¹⁵⁾ … Continue reading This means that the more time a shaman spends dieting different plants, the more icaros he is taught in exchange for his dedication and the more adept he becomes at navigating the spiritual realms.⁽¹⁶⁾https://www.elmundomagico.org/shamanic-plant-diet/ The longer a shaman’s dieta, the deeper and more powerful the icaros that are revealed to him during this period.

A shaman’s icaros are unique to him reflect his ongoing relationship with the plant spirits. His years spent in isolation are dedicated to learning to speak and understand the magical frequency of nature and the “plant-language” of the jungle allows him to become adept at navigating the medicine world. This enables him to simultaneously protect and heal his patients using his life experience and, more importantly, his shamanic expertise.

The most powerful of all the chants in a curandero’s repertoire are the ones that were taught to him directly by the plants rather than by other maestros or tribal elders.⁽¹⁷⁾https://www.jstor.org/stable/539808 This means that the longer a shaman has dieted, the more powerful his healing abilities are believed to be as his capacity to commune with the plants has become second nature to him.⁽¹⁸⁾ … Continue reading The plant spirits are deeply embedded in his psyche and have become a property of his soul which makes healing come easily and naturally to him, allowing ayahuasca drinkers to have more transformative, visionary ceremonies.

This suggests that it is of utmost importance to seek out a shaman who has spent many years developing a relationship with the spirit world through ongoing purification and dedication to the plants by undertaking lengthy dietas. A curandero’s dietas reflect the deepening of his understanding – and initiation into – the medicine world. By imbibing specific teacher plants and spending months in isolation filling himself up with their essence, a shaman’s dietas are crucial to his success as a healer because they help erase his “humanness,” transforming him into an otherworldly being that is identical to a plant.⁽¹⁹⁾https://www.elmundomagico.org/shamanic-plant-diet/

Dietas are what help transform the consciousness of a shaman, allowing him to become more subtle and “plant-like.” This is what ultimately makes him more easily recognizable to the spirits who will mistake him as “one of them” and therefore bring their gifts of healing and knowledge to the ceremony.

The Medicinal Value of a Shaman’s Life Experience

Highly experienced shamans have a facility with the medicine that newbies will need to wait a lifetime to acquire and so the older and more experienced a shaman is, the deeper the potential is for healing during a ceremony. The spirit of ayahuasca knows and recognizes experienced shamans easily and effortlessly. Like old friends, they can pick up where they left off rather than having to put in time and effort to establish a new relationship with an unknown person whose abilities are still being “tested” by the spirits.⁽²⁰⁾https://pachamamatemple.org/dark-side-shamanism/

The depth of a curandero’s relationship with ayahuasca is built on a foundation of trust and familiarity in the same way that older friendships tend to be more intimate to us because they are more familiar. By proving his loyalty to ayahuasca through time and dedication, a shaman gains her trust and is ultimately rewarded with heightened shamanic powers and a greater capacity for healing. The more effort we put into cultivating a relationship, the deeper it is and the more trust can be forged between the two parties.

Shamanic skill is cumulative rather than instantaneous and the relationship a curandero forms with ayahuasca reflects the importance that time and patience plays in becoming a master healer. This is not to say that less experienced shamans do not have any protective or healing potential to offer their patients, however, attending a ceremony with a well-established curandero brings added depth and healing capabilities to drinkers thanks to their years of experience and profound knowledge of the plants.

Weaving the Rhythms of the Rainforest through Song

In addition to the experience gained through dieting different plants, a shaman is able to unlock the unique healing potential of ayahuasca by giving it a “voice” through his tuneful icaros. This often means that singing his magical incantations during a ceremony is not enough to unleash the full potential of the medicine and so they must also be sung during the initial preparation of the brew.

By singing to the medicine as it is being prepared, an ayahuasquero is able to establish a deeper rapport with the spirits before a ceremony has even begun and can start “coaxing” them early on, telling them that they will be needed for important healing work when the medicine has finished brewing. This allows them to infuse the ayahuasca with their healing essence which reinforces any healing that will take place when a ceremony is under way. ⁽²¹⁾https://pachamamatemple.org/dark-side-shamanism/

Icaros decode the language of nature in the same way that astrologers decode the hidden language of the stars. By singing his sacred icaros, an ayahuasquero is able to articulate the sacred intentions of the plants which can then be transmitted to others via ritual consumption of the medicine. The prayerful songs a shaman sings while preparing his brew are of utmost importance because they help awaken the spirit of ayahuasca, thus imbuing the medicine with its potent healing powers.⁽²²⁾https://www.elmundomagico.org/shamanic-plant-diet/

This means that the different plants a shaman has dieted can vastly affect the outcome of a ceremony. This is because not all shamans diet the same plants and so each shaman will have relationships with different groups of plants, each with their own distinct personality and transformational medicine.⁽²³⁾https://shamaniceducation.org/why-do-a-dieta/ Every plant spirit brings its own unique gifts to a ceremony, adding layers of nuance and intricacy to the overall atmosphere of an ayahuasca ritual. This means that shamans who have dieted a lot of trees bring a lot of “strength” and “directness” to their ceremonies while shamans who have dedicated their shamanic practice to dieting “dreaming plants” such as guayusa (Ilex guayusa) or Piñon Colorado (Jatropha gossypiifolia) are likely to imbue drinkers with a greater capacity for visions and dreams.⁽²⁴⁾https://www.elmundomagico.org/shamanic-plant-diet/

In short, if you bring a stand-up comedian to a business meeting, you can expect that there will be lots of laughs, but if you choose to bring a “Debbie Downer” instead, he will modify the atmosphere of the meeting with his pessimism and negativity. Plants work in the same way during ceremonies and each one will help to infuse the atmosphere of the room with their own unique personality.

Preparing Ayahuasca: A Mystic’s Cookbook

When a shaman chants his special icaros while cooking ayahuasca, the plant spirits are said to take over the preparation of the medicine, which helps to unlock gateways into other realms. Although this can arguably be done by chanting special icaros during an actual ceremony, anyone who has tried a wide variety of different ayahuasca concoctions will tell you that there are no two batches of medicine that are the same. Like a bottle of fine wine, each brew has its own unique character which makes preparing ayahuasca a mysterious process with no two batches of medicine ever being truly identical.

One of the (many) reasons for this lack of consistency comes down to the icaros that are infused into the medicine while it is being prepared. A shaman’s icaros are unique to him, and so is his relationship with the spirits. This greatly affects the essence of the medicine, infusing it with an “X factor” that cannot be replicated by others no matter how closely they follow his recipe.

The “personality” of the medicine can be modified even further by mixing additional teacher plants into the brew. Popular additions include datura (Brugmansia suaveolens), tobacco and bobinsana flowers (Calliandra angustifolia), however there are countless others that may be added as well. These “modifier” plants are believed to impart an even stronger effect to the ayahuasca mix if the shaman cooking the medicine has actually dieted the plant in question, meaning that curanderos often doctor their brews to create “signature” medicine that reflect their unique gifts and experience as healers.⁽²⁵⁾https://shamaniceducation.org/why-do-a-dieta/

A curandero’s cooking methods are believed to affect the overall quality and power of their medicine.⁽²⁶⁾https://pachamamatemple.org/dark-side-shamanism/ This is because there are literally countless different ways a shaman is able to cook his ayahuasca concoction with many relying on tried and tested methods in order to get (relatively) consistent results. Whether a shaman places ayahuasca vines at the bottom of the pot or whether he adds the raw plant material in layers starting with chacruna leaves, every ayahuasquero will strongly defend the rationale behind his cooking methods. This is due to the fact that every phase of the preparation process is believed to affect the final result and so whether you add your chacruna or your ayahuasca vine to the pot first, it’s going to make a difference to the result you get when you are sitting in ceremony.⁽²⁷⁾https://daily.jstor.org/the-colonization-of-the-ayahuasca-experience/

There are also shamans who play close attention to the quality of the water they use to cook their medicine. While some swear that using highly alkaline water allows them to extract more psychoactive properties from the mixture, others subscribe to the idea that using river water – regardless of its pH balance – makes for the most powerful hallucinogen. There are even shamans who add vinegar or lemons to their brew in order to manipulate the pH levels of the water as this is believed to extract all the goodness from the medicine, leading to a more vivid visionary experience during ceremony.⁽²⁸⁾https://daily.jstor.org/the-colonization-of-the-ayahuasca-experience/

Translating the Language of the Jungle

Shamans don’t just modify the actual medicine with their energy and experience, they also strongly influence the ceremonies they oversee as these are often a reflection of the years they have spent honing their craft. The lineage and culture they come from as well as the icaros they sing during an ayahuasca ritual all have enormous bearing on how a ceremony will be experienced by others. This might explain why indigenous ceremonies are believed to be the most powerful since tribal-style dietas and icaros are said to recapitulate the very essence of the medicine, imbuing native curanderos with more power than their mestizo or foreign counterparts.⁽²⁹⁾https://shamaniceducation.org/why-do-a-dieta/

According to native cosmology, icaros are the single most powerful force in an ayahuasca ceremony because they unleash the medicine from the vine.⁽³⁰⁾https://www.afterlife.coach/after-life-blog/ayahuasca-icaros They are an audible manifestation of the curandero’s own personal medicine and demonstrate the apex of his shamanic power. Icaros sung in native or made-up tongues emanate directly from the spirit world and are thus more powerful than icaros sung in non-native languages.⁽³¹⁾https://www.elmundomagico.org/shamanic-plant-diet/This is because they do not need to be “translated” by the spirits who are always more proficient in understanding their mother tongue. Since native languages are believed to have come from the spirit world, they are more effective in communicating with beings in other realms.⁽³²⁾https://www.afterlife.coach/after-life-blog/ayahuasca-icaros This might explain why experienced drinkers usually cite native ceremonies and shamans as being the most profound.

Based on the law of mutual dependency, plants are only able to unfold the fullness of their power when they pass through the minds, mouths and hearts of humans. Similarly, humans are only able to fulfill their true spiritual potential when their consciousness becomes united with the plants during ceremony. Thanks to millennia spent communing with the spirits of the medicine world, native curanderos are the custodians of the most ancient teachings of the plants and this is usually reflected in their uniquely powerful ceremonies.⁽³³⁾https://deepearthdreaming.world/2018/06/27/amazonian-curanderismo-the-art-and-science-of-plant-spirit-medicine/

Final Thoughts

With infinite healing potential for those who imbibe it, ayahuasca is a panacea for all kinds of ailments, ranging from physical aches and pains to emotional depletion and spiritual malaise. Although many people wrongly assume that a shaman has very little bearing on the outcome of a ceremony, experienced drinkers know how much a shaman can affect an ayahuasca ritual with his energy and experience.

This makes it vitally important to research the intentions and credentials of a shaman before sitting with him in ceremony since a lack of experience might result in a weak ceremony at best and a downright dangerous ceremony at worst.⁽³⁴⁾https://www.vice.com/en/article/exmpww/a-beginners-guide-to-ayahuasca Choosing shamans with little to no experience can sometimes prove fatal and almost every ayahuasca ceremony that ends in disaster is the result of using a self-styled shaman who has little to no practical knowledge or experience with the plants.⁽³⁵⁾https://www.businessdestinations.com/destinations/tourists-are-having-a-bad-trip-on-counterfeit-ayahuasca/

Shamans are mediators between the plant-realms and the world of humans and without dedicating many years of his life to undertaking dietas and spiritual austerities, a man has no more right to call himself a shaman than a cat or a dog. This also makes it crucial to choose a shaman who cooks his own ayahuasca – or at least hands over the process to a trusted friend or ally – since “counterfeit ayahuasca” is on the rise⁽³⁶⁾https://www.businessdestinations.com/destinations/tourists-are-having-a-bad-trip-on-counterfeit-ayahuasca/ and a lack of expertise in cooking a reliably potent brew can result in wasted money since it takes a pro to cook strong (read: effective) ayahuasca.

In the same way that positive people can lift us up and affect our overall mood for the better, shamans are crucial in creating an atmosphere conducive to healing and safety during ceremonies. Choosing a shaman who emanates positive vibes while also having sufficient experience cooking and serving medicine to different kinds of people makes all the difference between having a negative experience or a beautiful, transformative one full of insight, visions and healing.