What is Rapé: Guide To Using Tobacco Snuff for Healing with Ayahuasca

Are you looking for a less harmful alternative for a cigarette? Or do you want a powerful medicinal plant like ayahuasca?

Many people search for natural products to live healthier lives and I’m pleased to tell you that rapé or tobacco snuff is the answer. You have probably heard this already and want to learn more about it that’s why you are searching for it.

To give you a brief overview, rapé or snuff offers almost the same benefits as ayahuasca minus the legal concerns. It is safe and can be administered alone.

Continue reading the page to learn the details about this all-powerful medicinal plant, rapé, one of the miracle medicines to be ever discovered.

What Is Rapé

Rapé – pronounced ha peh or ha-PAY – is a legal sacred shamanic medicine that has been used by the healers in the Amazon basin for thousands of years. Indigenous tribes use them for spiritual purposes such as vision quests and trances. Westerners also call it ‘hape’, ‘hapi’, or ‘rapay.’ It’s a fine, ground-up shamanic stuff.

Rapé is a rare, sacred, powerful and profoundly cleansing medicine. It takes intensive labor to process it because it is a complex blend of pulverized Amazonian medicinal plants, trees, leaves, seeds and other sacred ingredients. It looks grey to sand-colored and it is very fine like dry dust.

It contains Nicotiana Rustica, a type of tobacco species also known as “Mapacho,” “Corda” or “Moi”. It is stronger than Nicotiana Tabacum present in conventional cigarettes.

Don’t confuse this with a regular cigarette or tobacco because rapé is something you do not want to smoke because it is administered into the nose. This will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

Brief History

Rapé tobacco snuff goes back to the time of the Incas. But some believe that it dated back to the discovery of tobacco’s psychotropic properties. Although like a cigarette it contains nicotine, it lacks chemical additives, so it damages the body way less than cigarettes do. It’s also less addictive.

It is frequently used in spiritual practice by shamans and tribes like in ayahuasca ceremonies in Brazil and Peru. But the use of tobacco in these cultures tend to be different around the globe – it’s for ceremony rather than in mindless chain-smoking.

“The unique thing about tobacco is that, compared to other plant medicines, tobacco both grounds and stimulates you,” a medicine woman said⁽¹⁾psychedelictimes.com/from-rape-to-mapacho-uncovering-ceremonial-medicinal-benefits-sacred-tobacco/ about snuff.

Healing Properties

Rapé can also be mixed with other mind-altering plants like coca, jurema or yopo to potentiate its healing capacity like ayahuasca. Also, rapé helps release emotional, physical and spiritual illnesses. It also helps with negativity and confusion and enables the mind to be grounded.

Shamans in tribes also use it to re-align with their energy channels (including the third eye or pineal gland) and higher self. They also utilize it to intensify their connection with the world and the universe. It can also help detoxify the body by removing the exes mucus, toxins and bacteria.

The tobacco snuff is also popularly used to cure certain diseases, sores, wounds and as a defense against insects. There are even specialized blends that can counteract influenza and other diseases. It has analgesic properties and a narcotic substance too to ease the pain.

Benefits and Disadvantage of Rapé

Rape comes with a set of benefits and disadvantages. It can help people improve their mind and body, but it comes with health risks too especially that it has tobacco specific n nitrosamines. In this section, these things will be covered.

Benefits of Rapé

Rapé offers mental, spiritual, and health benefits that’s why many want to take this. For those who are having second thoughts on whether a tobacco snuff will help or not, here is a list of benefits it can help you with.

1. Mental and spiritual effects

Rapé brings you to a place of attention and awareness. It helps your mind to be quieter and more positive. It also helped you release emotional tensions.

Many said it makes you feel grounded and it helped clear up confusion and discomfort. In fact, those who focus on their intention easily achieved what they want.

Apparently, when your mind released the things it has to let go of, you can fill it with good things and your body will follow suit.

2. Physical effects

Rapé can also help you improve your health through purging which forces the toxins and other unwanted things of your body out. The process is good for your immune system because it purifies the system.

It also strengthens immunity and helps with congestion problems. Since the process allows the body to release physical tensions, one ends up feeling relaxed and in a peaceful state.

Here are more:

• Improves focus
• Helps sharpen mind
• Detoxes the body and mind
• Clears sinuses of mucus and bacteria
• Offers calming and grounding effects
• Clears space or person from distractions
• Can be used in conjunction with other treatments for addiction and mental illness

Health risks

As mentioned, snuff can be addictive and might present some harm but not as harmful as smoking cigarettes. According to Healthline⁽²⁾healthline.com/health/what-is-snuff-is-it-harmful#health-risks it also contains cancer-causing chemicals that increases the risk of the following types of cancer:

• nose and sinus cancers
• oral cancers
• esophageal cancer
• pancreatic cancer

Snuff can also increase risks of other conditions such as

• stroke
• heart attack
• heart disease
• high blood pressure

Also, pregnant women are warned of taking this because it increases premature birth and stillbirth.

How To Make Rapé

It is traditionally prepared by a knowledgable shaman in a ceremonial pounding of Tobacco (N. Rustica) with tree ashes, followed by patiently filtering it through a fine mesh, resulting in a dust as fine as 125 microns.

There are different types of rapé because some added different medicinal plants to give each variety a specific property to either induce visions, have the energy or receive protection to name a few.

The tobacco that the Amazonian tribes use to make rapé is free of additives, pesticides, and fertilizers because they cultivated it themselves.

The art of sacred rapé has been passed on to non-indigenous rapé enthusiasts, so you can find makers of high-quality rapé outside tribal communities and in other parts of Brazil.

The intention and frequency of using it vary by group or tribe. In America, it is commonly used in combination with other spiritual medicines such as Ayahuasca, Sananga, and Kambo.

Here’s how to prepare rapé

Here’s a brief overview of how shamans from indigenous tribes prepare the shamanic snuff or traditional rapé⁽³⁾sinchisinchi.com/how-to-make-rape/.

Start by chopping Nicotiana Rustica (tobacco leaves), into fine pieces and hung it above the fire to dry. Then pulverized it with a pestle made of rosewood to give it a nice and sweet flavor which commercial snuffs lack. After grinding, sieve and ground again until it becomes a very fine powder.

The person who does this must concentrate in absolute silence because it is believed that a large part of the force present in rapé comes from the intentions of the one who crushes the tobacco.

Before you blend your own rapé⁽⁴⁾katukina.com/doc/blending, the traditional approach is to set your intentions first. You should know what you want to achieve before blending the rapé.

Then, mix the main ingredients (tobacco and shes). Taking a powdered Tabaco De Moy and blending it with an equal quantity of ashes and charging with your specific intention can provide a powerful experience close to many current rapé available.

Finally, add the last ingredients to the blend to achieve the final art. This refers to the other medicinal plants which have also been sun-dried or toasted and ground and sieved several times. Some add powerful aromatics of menthol crystals, tonka bean, cinnamon, clover, or banana peel.

The sacred rapé preparation with medicinal significance could take weeks. The shaman of the tribe, the Pajé, usually works under a strict diet and in a trance state when he mixes the snuff herbs. Meanwhile, the other members of the tribe are tasked to collect the plants that are used in preparing rapé.

How To Take Rapé

Traditionally, rapé, again pronounced ha peh, is applied by using a blow pipe made from bamboo or bone, which is blown through each nostril on both sides.

Typically, you should blow into the left nostril first to represent a metaphorical death and into the right nostril to represent rebirth.

It can also be self-administered using a V shaped self-applicator pipe, which connects the mouth to the nostrils. The self applicator pipe is known as “Kuripe.”

It can also be administered by another person using a blowpipe, which connects the blower’s mouth to the other person’s nostrils, called “Tepi.”

In short, it can be administered in two ways:

• As a “Soplada” given by a shaman or medicine brother / sister via a blowpipe called a “Tepi”
• Self-administered, via a blowpipe called a “Kuripe”

Rapé Dosage

Before sharing the safe administration, the dosage has to be determined first. The dosage may depend on the kind of rape being served.

For this, the location matters because those who are getting it in Brazil tend to use huge amounts because there is an abundance of rape in the place.

Meanwhile, since it is more difficult to produce outside of Brazil, North American shamans use smaller quantities during the ceremony.

For beginners who are interested to self-administer, a pea sized amount is a good starting dosage for each nostril. Too much can make one vomit and while others consider it a good thing for purifications, others do not want it. But overdosing is less of an issue with self-administered rapé.

In this section, I will only discuss how to self-administer rape because if you take it with a shaman, then you do not need to worry about it.

How to Self-administer Rapé – Step by Step Guide

First, start by finding the best-fit self applicator pipe or Kuripe. It should perfectly fit from your mouth up to your nostril. Thus, you have to try it on when you are buying one.

Here are the steps to self-administer snuff through a Kuripe.

1. Find an appropriate place to take your rapé.
2. Ground yourself into the present and focus on your intention. What do you want to achieve from the plant medicine? Or what guidance are you seeking from the spirits in the forest?
3. Recite your rape chant of prayers as you measure out the amount of snuff you want to consume on the palm of your hand.
4. Load up the nose end of the rape applicator with half the amount on your palm. Tap the V end on a hard surface to remove any stuck snuff or air pockets.
5. Take a deep breath, place the mouth end of the blow pipe into your mouth and fit the nose end snugly into your nostril.
6. Lean forward a little, close your eyes, and forcibly blow the rape into your nostril
7. Take a moment to feel the first dosage.
8. If you need more and you are ready, load up the nose end of your Kuripe with the rest of the rape on y our palm. The V end on a hard surface to remove any stuck rape or air pockets.
9. Repeat steps 5 to 8. If you are good, then place the fingers on your middle fingers on the top of the bridge of your nose, move the energy of the rape up your forehead and run all your fingers along the top and sides of your heads.

Brush the energy down the back of your had, along with your shoulders and off into the air. You can also snap your fingers to clear any old, stuck or negative energy being moved out of your field.

Ground into the present moment and allow your consciousness to connect to nature and to the healing plants in the medicine, you just consume. Lean forward to minimize rape backdrip. Feel the ground with your hands.

Is Rape Addictive

Rapé snuff works wonder but one has to be careful with it because it still contains nicotine – the very element that makes cigarette addicting.

In fact, there are people who have quit smoking for years but get addicted to it and crave cigarettes again when they started using rapé.

Some even temporarily switch to smoking cigarettes when snuff is not available. So, do not underestimate it.

The good thing about snuff is that despite its nicotine content, it is less harmful compared to cigarettes.

In fact, it could also help smokers quit smoking like how nicotine patches do because it can be used as a replacement to satisfy nicotine craving.

The best part – it has no additional addictive chemicals, quitting rapé is so much easier compared to smoking. So, one can switch from cigarette to rapé and eventually quit nicotine completely.

Is rape legal in the US?

For those wondering if rapé is legal in the country, good news… the shamanic snuff is completely legal in the United States. For those interested, feel free to look for one who is experienced to administer it to help you enjoy your first take.

However, snuff is less readily available in the country and is only typically found in specialty tobacco shops or online. The nasal snuff is also subject to the warning label found on other smokeless tobacco products that read like…

“WARNING: This product is not a safe alternative to cigarettes.” Also, the warning must appear on 30% of the packaging.

Conclusion

The use of rapé is not as popular as ayahuasca, but even if it’s behind the popularity race it actually offers the same results. Both are natural medicine except that they are two different products with different applications. One drinks ayahuasca but rapé or snuff or smokeless tobacco is blown to the nostrils.

Also, the intention is very important and one should breathe slowly with intention after each application.

Rapé can do wonders from improving your health, clearing your mind, realigning your energy to opening your pineal gland and more.

People who are interested do not need to look for an indigenous tribe to try it because there are rapé products online and it can be self-administered. However, one has to get a self applicator pipe or kuripe, a blow pipe made from bamboo to accomplish it.

Rapé or tobacco snuff is legal and less harmful than your favorite cigarette. If interested, ask about it on your next aya visit because it is often used in conjunction with an aya ceremony or sananga! Buy ayahuasca kit here

References

• chakraopenings.com/pages/what-is-rape
• entheonation.com/blog/rape-amazonian-snuff/
• psychedelictimes.com/sacred-tobacco/
• ayahuascachurches.org/what-is-shamanic-snuff-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-rape/
• psychedelictimes.com/healing-tobacco-rape-tribal-snuff/
• verywellmind.com/what-is-snuff-and-how-is-it-used-2824867
• ayahuasca.com/amazon/indigenous-worlds/what-is-rape/
• entheonation.com/blog/shamanic-guide-rape-snuff/
• psychedelictimes.com/from-rape-to-mapacho-uncovering-ceremonial-medicinal-benefits-sacred-tobacco/
• katukina.com/doc/blending
• reddit.com/r/Ayahuasca/comments/4j2uvc/anyone_have_experene_with_snuff_rape_blends/