5. Hyperbolic: Divining Ayahuasca

During a shamanic ayahuasca ceremony in the Upper Amazon, the author experiences visions twenty minutes after drinking the brew, which is prepared from B. Caapi vine and P. Viridis leaves. The ceremony includes icaros—songs that mimic local birdsong and insect rhythms—and a ritual smoke whistle that opens a spirit portal while keeping unwelcome entities away. The author reflects on the contrast between the legal status of ayahuasca at home and its use as medicine in this context, and expresses gratitude for the orientation provided by the icaros.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Twenty minutes in, like clockwork , the visions begin. They are strong but I was expecting them this time . Norma, the vegetalista who so astonished me with her care, skill and knowledge during my first ceremony two nights prior, had packed a big bowl with a knot of the local Nicotina Rustica and had blown curling, whistling smoke over a plastic liter bottle filled with an opaque orangish liquid I knew to be ayahuasca, the potent brew of tryptamines and MAO inhibitors that has been prepared in the Upper Amazon for perhaps sixteen thousand years. I knew it to be ayahuasca, since I had, after all, helped mix it the day before, pounding a kilo of the soft woody vine of fresh B. Caapi liana and tossing about fifty green glossy leaves of P. Viridis, a DMT-containing relative of coffee, into the black cauldron simmering over a wood fire on the shores of the Yanayacu River, one of the eleven hundred tributaries of the Amazon. Back home this could be a felony. Here, I now understood, it's a medicine. The smoke whistle is a trope, a refrain that often begins or ends an Icaro, one of the beautiful songs sung and whistled continuously throughout the four-hour shamanic ayahuasca ceremony. The smoke and its whistling inflection act as protocols to open up a spirit portal, an active earth surface, while keeping unwelcome entities - what I think of as affects - at bay. After my first session, I had also learned that the songs serve to orient the ayahuasca drinker. The songs mime and sample the birdsong of the region, an ecosystem with over two thousand species of birds and the polyrhythms of chatter from over 500,000 insect species. I held onto and was held by the icaros, giving intense thanks for the whistled orientation.