Ayahuasca, an indigenous Amazonian shamanic brew, is being adopted by Australian neoshamanic practitioners who treat it as a medicine that provides personalized visions with clear moral meaning. This adoption reflects a new style of practice rooted in Western notions of individualism and visualism. In contrast, indigenous Amazonian approaches emphasize synesthetic and socially shared personhood, where visions are entangled in morally ambiguous everyday life. The article argues that neoshamanic ayahuasca use reproduces Enlightenment modes of property ownership by integrating visions as inalienable objects of healing, highlighting divergent forms of individualism between indigenous and Australian groups.
The use of ayahuasca, even in its original indigenous context, is not a fixed body of traditional knowledge but rather a dynamic network of human and non-human actors—including spirits, biochemical substances, specialists, clients, and theories—that transform the practice as they perform and disseminate it. This paper surveys the diversity of ayahuasca's composition, uses, and agents across the Amazon, describing it in terms similar to modern science and technology.