Cultural Manifestations of Ayahuasca: Past and Present
Introduction
The shamanic healing practices of jungles of the Upper Amazon basin give a unique contextual perspective on the cultures and consciousness' of those areas of South America. The healing exists within the fabric of the spiritual belief systems of those tribes, nations, and countries of people, which have influenced and interacted with each other in fluid cultural exchange for millenia. The most widely-used of the shamanic healing medicines of the Amazon is ayahuasca, the entheogenic plant brew which has continued to garner academic attention; first in anthropological circles but, more recently, in cognitive psychological, molecular biological, and neurophysiological circles. But what are the mechanisms of the ayahuasca drink which cause the cognitive and physiological alterations for which it is known? What have modern biological research studies shown of the specific influences of ayahuasca on the body? What are the indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmologies which have provided the interpretive and theoretical framework for ayahuasca to the people of the Upper Amazon who rely on it for its medicinal properties? More importantly, how can neurotheological revelations of the ayahuasca experience inform modern transpersonal research into alternate states of consciousness and the subtle mediums of communication potentially facilitated by those states? I consider this final question, that of the legitimacy of the indigenous belief that ayahuasca opens sensitivity to subtle alternate mediums of communication, to be the most important because its answer, if affirmative, would carry the farthest-reaching multidisciplinary implications.
What Is Ayahuasca?
The entheogenic plant medicine ayahuasca (a.k.a., yage, daime, or caapi) is one of many psychoactive substances used by indigenous peoples of the Upper Amazon basin. The word ayahuasca is Quechuan in origin and translates to “vine of the souls,” which can refer to both the hallucinogenic decoction or, less commonly, to one of its main ingredients: the jungle vine Banisteriopsis caapi of the family Malpighiaceae (Schultes, 1957). The role of this ingredient in the beverage mixture is pharmacologically unique in its synergistic relationship with the psychoactive compound of the mixture, typically Psychotria viridis. The leaves of the Psychotria viridis bush contain the powerful endogenic compound N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). The bark and stems of the B. caapi vine contain beta-carboline alkaloids harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine which act as potent monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A) inhibitors. To understand the mechanics of the relationship between the alkaloids of these two plants, the role of monoamine oxidase in our body should first be described:
Monoamine oxidase (MAO) is a digestive enzyme produced by the body which provides a destabilizing function against potentially dangerous amines contained in certain common foods like sauerkraut, liver, and shrimp. This destabilizing function of MAO's has been called a sort of “chemical immune system” which protects the body from the dangerous and potentially fatal integration of these amides into the later digestive chain. With the introduction of a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), the protective function of the MAO is suspended - the “chemical immune system” shut down. This temporary suspension of the MAO enzyme is what allows the psychoactive N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) ingredient to cross the blood/brain barrier, as opposed to being enzymatically neutralized.
There exist many recipes for the ayahuasca mixture, with individual shamans introducing a variance of plant ingredients in addition to the Banisteriopsis caapi and the Psychotria viridis. The additives which, from one shaman to another, are added or subtracted from the decoction are said to change the resultant mixture's psychoactive influence in various ways. As many as ninety different species of plant have been identified as potential ingredients, which supposedly influence the effect of the admixture in more or less subtle ways (Ott, 1993). Plants containing cocaine (e. g., Erythroxylum coca), caffeine (e. g., Ilex guayusa and Paullina yoco), and sources of DMT other than P. viridis (e. g., Diplopterys cabrerana) have been identified in different mixes, each potentially introducing a psychoactive component (Ott, 1993). Yet, among these different regional additions to the drink, tobacco is especially common.
Regional strains of tobacco, when used as ayahuasca ingredients (e. g., Nicotiana rustica or Nicotiana tabacum), can contain powerful amounts of nicotine, which can be added to the boiled tea, introduced by smoking, or both (Herraiz, 2005). It is believed by many shamans that the tobacco smoke nourishes the spirits and that, like food, they hunger for it and stay close to help those who smoke it. Sacrificing of tobacco, by way of burning in ritual fire or smoking and exhaling into the ayahuasca brew, is often believed to attract spirits and bring the smoker's intentions for the ceremony to the ayahuasca. In this way the ingredients of the brew become part of the spiritual belief system surrounding the brew - the rituals surrounding the boiling and drinking often considered as important, if not more important, than the plant material, itself, in deciding the outcome of the ingestion.
Indigenous Ayahuasca-influenced Art and Culture of the Upper Amazon
The men and women of upper Amazon basin who rely on ayahuasca for healing have, to differing degrees, integrated the experience into a set of cultural constructs and and shared spiritual beliefs. This integration makes itself most evident through art, which often depicts colorful and gigantic snakes - which are the most universal of ayahuasca visions (Narby, 1998). These most common of visions is experienced by across-the-board, by all who ingest the substance - from a Ticuna tribesman from Brazil to an American lawyer laying in his living room, from an urban shaman living in his parent's basement to a French anthropology student taking part in a Santo Daime church ceremony. This universality of ayahuasca's subjective experience across such varied cultural backgrounds provide a set of alternate cognitive states, like the decoction's induced physiological states, can be discriminated from the social and cultural influence. Other prevalent themes of the ayahuasca experience are visions of twins, or the two-headed or entwined snakes (interpreted by Namby as knowledge of cellular origins and the double-helix form of DNA's spiraled instructional information).
While modern anthropological study of Amazonian culture draws links between art, spiritual/religious belief, and ayahuasca shamanism, the origins of the psychedelic's use cannot definitively be affirmed. While Western ethnographers observe that the practice has spread across the Amazon, the area from which the brew first originated cannot yet be stated with certainty. Yet, the fact that the drink's recipe and healing practice spread so far and wide across the many disparate indigenous societies of Northern South America is, itself, illatively conclusive of it's antiquity.
Archaeological digs have uncovered shamanic tools, anthropomorphic idol sculptures as well as clay pottery, snuff vessels and tubes which show that the use of entheogenic plant substances has existed in a prehistoric spiritual context in the Ecuadorian Amazon, dating as far back as 2,000 B.C. (McKenna, 1998). Yet, even though ayahuasca healing ceremonies are the more extensively practiced than any other shamanic plant medicine in the Amazon today, this fact does not unequivocally establish similar prevalence prehistorically. The shamanic preparation and use of ayahuasca has only been scientifically studied for half a century, through the first important ethnopharmacological explorations of R. E Schultes in the 1960's.
The shamanic healing practices of jungles of the Upper Amazon basin give a unique contextual perspective on the cultures and consciousness' of those areas of South America. The healing exists within the fabric of the spiritual belief systems of those tribes, nations, and countries of people, which have influenced and interacted with each other in fluid cultural exchange for millenia. The most widely-used of the shamanic healing medicines of the Amazon is ayahuasca, the entheogenic plant brew which has continued to garner academic attention; first in anthropological circles but, more recently, in cognitive psychological, molecular biological, and neurophysiological circles. But what are the mechanisms of the ayahuasca drink which cause the cognitive and physiological alterations for which it is known? What have modern biological research studies shown of the specific influences of ayahuasca on the body? What are the indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmologies which have provided the interpretive and theoretical framework for ayahuasca to the people of the Upper Amazon who rely on it for its medicinal properties? More importantly, how can neurotheological revelations of the ayahuasca experience inform modern transpersonal research into alternate states of consciousness and the subtle mediums of communication potentially facilitated by those states? I consider this final question, that of the legitimacy of the indigenous belief that ayahuasca opens sensitivity to subtle alternate mediums of communication, to be the most important because its answer, if affirmative, would carry the farthest-reaching multidisciplinary implications.
What Is Ayahuasca?
The entheogenic plant medicine ayahuasca (a.k.a., yage, daime, or caapi) is one of many psychoactive substances used by indigenous peoples of the Upper Amazon basin. The word ayahuasca is Quechuan in origin and translates to “vine of the souls,” which can refer to both the hallucinogenic decoction or, less commonly, to one of its main ingredients: the jungle vine Banisteriopsis caapi of the family Malpighiaceae (Schultes, 1957). The role of this ingredient in the beverage mixture is pharmacologically unique in its synergistic relationship with the psychoactive compound of the mixture, typically Psychotria viridis. The leaves of the Psychotria viridis bush contain the powerful endogenic compound N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). The bark and stems of the B. caapi vine contain beta-carboline alkaloids harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine which act as potent monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A) inhibitors. To understand the mechanics of the relationship between the alkaloids of these two plants, the role of monoamine oxidase in our body should first be described:
Monoamine oxidase (MAO) is a digestive enzyme produced by the body which provides a destabilizing function against potentially dangerous amines contained in certain common foods like sauerkraut, liver, and shrimp. This destabilizing function of MAO's has been called a sort of “chemical immune system” which protects the body from the dangerous and potentially fatal integration of these amides into the later digestive chain. With the introduction of a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), the protective function of the MAO is suspended - the “chemical immune system” shut down. This temporary suspension of the MAO enzyme is what allows the psychoactive N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) ingredient to cross the blood/brain barrier, as opposed to being enzymatically neutralized.
There exist many recipes for the ayahuasca mixture, with individual shamans introducing a variance of plant ingredients in addition to the Banisteriopsis caapi and the Psychotria viridis. The additives which, from one shaman to another, are added or subtracted from the decoction are said to change the resultant mixture's psychoactive influence in various ways. As many as ninety different species of plant have been identified as potential ingredients, which supposedly influence the effect of the admixture in more or less subtle ways (Ott, 1993). Plants containing cocaine (e. g., Erythroxylum coca), caffeine (e. g., Ilex guayusa and Paullina yoco), and sources of DMT other than P. viridis (e. g., Diplopterys cabrerana) have been identified in different mixes, each potentially introducing a psychoactive component (Ott, 1993). Yet, among these different regional additions to the drink, tobacco is especially common.
Regional strains of tobacco, when used as ayahuasca ingredients (e. g., Nicotiana rustica or Nicotiana tabacum), can contain powerful amounts of nicotine, which can be added to the boiled tea, introduced by smoking, or both (Herraiz, 2005). It is believed by many shamans that the tobacco smoke nourishes the spirits and that, like food, they hunger for it and stay close to help those who smoke it. Sacrificing of tobacco, by way of burning in ritual fire or smoking and exhaling into the ayahuasca brew, is often believed to attract spirits and bring the smoker's intentions for the ceremony to the ayahuasca. In this way the ingredients of the brew become part of the spiritual belief system surrounding the brew - the rituals surrounding the boiling and drinking often considered as important, if not more important, than the plant material, itself, in deciding the outcome of the ingestion.
Indigenous Ayahuasca-influenced Art and Culture of the Upper Amazon
The men and women of upper Amazon basin who rely on ayahuasca for healing have, to differing degrees, integrated the experience into a set of cultural constructs and and shared spiritual beliefs. This integration makes itself most evident through art, which often depicts colorful and gigantic snakes - which are the most universal of ayahuasca visions (Narby, 1998). These most common of visions is experienced by across-the-board, by all who ingest the substance - from a Ticuna tribesman from Brazil to an American lawyer laying in his living room, from an urban shaman living in his parent's basement to a French anthropology student taking part in a Santo Daime church ceremony. This universality of ayahuasca's subjective experience across such varied cultural backgrounds provide a set of alternate cognitive states, like the decoction's induced physiological states, can be discriminated from the social and cultural influence. Other prevalent themes of the ayahuasca experience are visions of twins, or the two-headed or entwined snakes (interpreted by Namby as knowledge of cellular origins and the double-helix form of DNA's spiraled instructional information).
While modern anthropological study of Amazonian culture draws links between art, spiritual/religious belief, and ayahuasca shamanism, the origins of the psychedelic's use cannot definitively be affirmed. While Western ethnographers observe that the practice has spread across the Amazon, the area from which the brew first originated cannot yet be stated with certainty. Yet, the fact that the drink's recipe and healing practice spread so far and wide across the many disparate indigenous societies of Northern South America is, itself, illatively conclusive of it's antiquity.
Archaeological digs have uncovered shamanic tools, anthropomorphic idol sculptures as well as clay pottery, snuff vessels and tubes which show that the use of entheogenic plant substances has existed in a prehistoric spiritual context in the Ecuadorian Amazon, dating as far back as 2,000 B.C. (McKenna, 1998). Yet, even though ayahuasca healing ceremonies are the more extensively practiced than any other shamanic plant medicine in the Amazon today, this fact does not unequivocally establish similar prevalence prehistorically. The shamanic preparation and use of ayahuasca has only been scientifically studied for half a century, through the first important ethnopharmacological explorations of R. E Schultes in the 1960's.