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Title: Ayahuasca Reading Author: Peter Lamborn Wilson Date: 1994 Language: en Topics: drugs Source: Retrieved on 17th May 2021 from https://hermetic.com/bey/ayahuasca-reading Notes: Read by Peter Lamborn Wilson on WBAI 99.5FM NYC sometime in 1994 during one of his Ayahuasca shows (same as the icaro tape). In this audio transcription unknown words are spelled phonetically and marked with (sp) when they first appear.
Ayahuasca Drinkers among the cha-ma (sp) Indians by Heinz ku-sel (sp)
see what I mean? Originally appeared in the Psychedelic Review, 1965
Read from reprint in the Psychozoic Press I lived for seven years
traveling and trading in the upper Amazon region and often heard stories
about the effect of ayahuasca.
Once on a long canoe trip down the river my Indian companion had chanted
the song of the Goddess of Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca, a Quechua word meaning
‘vine of death’ is the collective name for various climbing tropical
lianas and also designates the tea prepared from the leaves of the vine,
either by itself or in combination with other leaves. Indians and the
Mestizos alike visit the ayahuasquero or witch-doctor when they are
ailing or think they need a general check-up, or want to make an
important decision, or simply because they feel like it.
Among the scattered half-casts and natives of the swamps and rainforests
of the Ucayali region the ayahuasca cult plays a significant role in
their religious medical practices and provides them with a good deal of
entertainment. Repeatedly I heard how in a vision induced by drinking
the tea prepared from the liana the patient had perceived the specific
plant needed for his cure — had later searched and found it in the
jungle and had subsequently recovered.
To the enigmatic mind of the Indian ayahuasca opens the gate to the
healing properties of the forces of nature at whose mercy he lives. A
recurrent theme whenever the natives refer to the results of the drug is
the vision of the ‘Procession of Plants,’ with garlic, ‘the king of the
good plants’ leading the way. Garlic, tobacco, quinine and oh-hey (sp),
a tree latex, are at the head of a long line of friendly elf-like plants
which, in ayahuasca visions, bow to mankind, offering their services.
The Campa Indians, sturdy fellows, who today specialize in drawing
mahogany and cedar logs for the sawmills in Iquitos undergo a purge of
ayahuasca before they enter the flooded areas of the forest to float out
the logs and assemble them into tremendous rafts. For a cure of that
nature they prepare themselves by a prolonged diet, avoiding meat, salt,
alcohol and sugar.
Aside from the main use of the drug for curing or keeping the consumer
in good general condition, ayahuasca will, according to its users,
induce clairvoyance and may for example solve a theft or prophesy the
success or failure of a given enterprise. A man might be planning a trip
to a certain river where he knows of a good place to tap rubber, but to
be sure of good results he will consult ayahuasca first. After that,
more than likely, he will abandon the enterprise altogether and set off
in another direction to pan gold, hunt peck-oh-re (sp) or do something
else.
In these unhurried hours and days I arrived at an insight into the
native’s fantastic beliefs and images, the richness of which is equaled
only by the growth of the surrounding vegetation. Their superstitions,
ideas and images freely cross and recross the borderline of reality in
strangely patterned ways. Their stories have one thing in common — man,
plant and animal are one, forever woven into an inextricable pattern of
cause and effect. Later I found that ayahuasca visions are fabrics that
illustrate endless combinations of this pattern. Man, plant and animal
also passively undergo the irradiations of each other. Irradiations of
powers that to us are mostly non-existent. Somehow sometimes they even
acquire each other’s characteristics.
Once, while drifting in a canoe the Campa Indian with me disturbed the
silence by imitating the voice of the kuto-mono (sp), a copper colored
monkey. A kuto-mono from the shore answered him, a third joined in.
After a while the whole shoreline seems to come alive with kuto-monos.
The natives use this ability to imitate voices to such a degree that
hunting takes on the character of treacherous assassination. Though
hardly in the way of an equivalent, the animal world puts out a bird
that I heard one night on the pa-cha-tey-ah (sp) River. It filled the
darkness with an ascending scale of glass clear notes. Quite likely it
is a beautiful scale but nevertheless it resembles the hysterical
laughter of an insane women. It shocked me. I felt upset, mocked,
laughed at. Everything calls in the jungle.
Once a Campa Indian in my boat when we were drifting far from the shore
was called by ayahuasca! He followed the call and later emerged from the
forest with the a sampling of the fairly rare liana that today is
cultivated by the ayahuasquero in secret spots. I myself certainly did
not hear the call.
If this jungle life and its irrational mutual dependency forms a picture
of general confusion, ayahuasca is the magic mirror that reflects this
confusion as something beautiful and attractive. For whomever I listened
to, all manifested the enjoyment of a wondrous spectacle that was
pleasing to the senses. If fearsome visions occurred they said that the
ayahuasquero could easily dispel them by shaking a dry twig near the ear
of the affected drinker; or by blowing the smoke of a cigarette on the
crown of his head. The aesthetic climax of the spectacle was, they
claimed, the ‘vision of the goddess with concealed eyes,’ who dwelt
inside the twining tropical vine.
Many times I listened to these tales but it never crossed my mind to try
the liana myself. It belonged definitely to the local Indian lore, to
something sordid, outside of the law, something publicly frowned upon
like the binding up of the heads that the cha-ma (sp) practice on their
babies; or like burying one twin alive as they also do; or so many other
equally fantastic or ghastly things.
In 1949 I had my headquarters in a white washed brick house in pu-cul-pa
overlooking a wide curve of the Ucayali. Pu-cul-pa at that time was a
village of about 200 homes, a Catholic church, an American Protestant
mission, a Masonic temple and two primitive hotels. The place had gained
some importance by being at the end of the only road precariously
connecting Lima and the Pacific with a navigable river of the Amazon
system. It also had an airport which could be used when the ground was
dry. After the war and the falling of prices for rubber, the importance
of the road decreased and Pu-cul-pa fell back into the stagnation of a
Peruvian jungle settlement.
At that time I realized that my days in the jungle were coming to an end
and in spite of being somewhat skeptical about the possible effects of
the drug, I decided to try it. I drank the bitter salty extract of the
vine three times. It seemed too much trouble to look for a venerated
great ayahuasquero like Juan in-uma (sp) who lived up the river near
masi-eh-sia (sp). There were a number of less widely esteemed fellows in
pu- cul-pa such as no-lore-bey (sp) who was recommended to me as the
most reliable of the witch doctors in the village. Hs hut was the last
upstream in the long row of buildings above the steep shore of
pu-cul-pa.
It was there that I found myself sitting on an empty gasoline crate
while other people squatted on the floor. I drank the required dose,
about a quart, and nothing happened. The only noticeable effect was an
increased auditory sensitivity which is the reason why the drug is
usually consumed in secluded places at night. A neighborhood rooster
crowed recklessly which upset me considerably for it seemed to happen
right inside my head. The people in the hut were disturbed also — they
sighed and shifted their positions uneasily. No-lore-bey blamed the
ineffectiveness of the drug on the fact that it had not been freshly
prepared.
Another evening the guide who carried my blanket led me to a hut far
outside the limits of the village. The hut, a typical structure of a
floor on stilts without walls covered by a thatched roof, belonged to
sal-dani-ah (sp), a mestizo I did not particularly like who had many
patients in the village. I lay down on the raised floor of beaten palm
bark, overlooking the clearing, and sal-dani-ah handed me a bottle of
ayahuasca. I started to drink and heard him singing behind a partition
where he was tending his patients. I listened carefully to the startling
song that is always sung in ken-cha (sp), the language of the highland
Indians which only old people in the Ucayali region speak. The song
starts with a shrill musical question and continues with a series of
answers intermixed with hissing sounds and syncopated with guttural
noises produced with the tongue against the palate.
I drank the whole dose sal-dani-ah had prepared for me and felt slightly
dizzy and nauseated. After a while I climbed down from the raised floor
using the ladder, made as usual by hacking footholds into an upright
log. The clearing and surrounding jungle looked as though covered with
white ashes in the strong moonlight. From the hut behind me I heard
sound of voices speaking monotonously. I heard sal-dani-ah
intermittently singing the song or administering his cures. One of the
procedures used to relieve a pain is actually to suck the pain out of
the hurting member. When this has been often enough the pain is supposed
to be located in the doctor’s mouth and removed from there by spitting.
Again my stimulated hearing reported those awful noises so intensely
that at times they were hard to endure.
The next day sal-dani-ah attributed this failure to the fact that I has
a slight cold. I was more skeptical than ever. After all, if unlike
those people, I was not able to hear the call of the plant, or to walk
noiselessly through the jungle maybe I lacked also the required
acuteness of senses to meet the iridescent goddess.
I am glad that I went a third time. I made another appointment with
no-lore-bey for a Saturday night. I walked out to his place at the edge
of the forest at about 10pm. I realized that his one room house that
stood in darkness and silence was crowded and waited outside till he
emerged. I told him that I would rather not join the crowd and he
obligingly showed me a good-sized canoe pulled up for repairs and
resting about twenty feet from the cane wall of his shack towards the
edge of the jungle. I wrapped myself in a blanket and lay down
comfortably; my shoulders against the cedar walls of the dugout — my
head resting on the slanting stern. I felt relaxed and full of
expectation. No-lore-bey had appeared eager and confident. A small
barefooted Indian with something queer and slightly funny about his face
he showed a nervousness that did not go with his sturdy build. He seemed
to be never quite present as if continuously distracted by frequent
encounters with his vegetable gods and devils. His eyes were not steady
but pulled in different directions. While something fearful, there was
something very happy about this man, as if a hidden gaiety were buried
under his worried features. He believed himself smart and powerful. He
lived a glorious life, even if sometimes he seemed to go to pieces in
his effort to walk back and forth professionally between two equally
puzzling worlds. I remembered seeing him once in the como-sari-ah (sp)
in conflict with one of them (one of those equally puzzling worlds),
accused again of leading a disorderly life and practicing quackery. He
was standing in his formerly green trousers before a wooden table and
the Peruvian flag answering the rude guardia-seville (sp) with a humble
smile — his eyes going apologetically in all directions.
He soon appeared with a gourd full of liquid he had carefully prepared
by stewing for hours the leaves of the vine with those of another plant
who’s name possibly was his secret. He squatted at the canoe and
whispered, his eyes going sideways, ‘Gringo, today you will experience
the real thing. I will serve you well. We will have the true
intoxication. You will be satisfied, wait and see..’ and he left me
alone.
After a while a girl approached me from the hut and asked for a
cigarette. She lighted it, inhaled, and for a moment I saw her wide face
surrounded by hard black hair, then she walked noiselessly back into the
hut. A two-eye-oh (sp) bird began to call repeatedly high above my face.
The whistling and melodious sound at the end of his call seemed to touch
me like a whiplash. A truck loaded with cedar boards left the village
and on the distant highway accelerated madly and shifted gears. By that
time I knew the drug was working in me. I felt fine and heard no-
lore-bey whispering near my ear again, ‘Do you want more? Shall I give
you more? Do you want to see the Goddess well?’ And again I drank the
full gourd of cool bitter liquid. I cannot say how often no-lore-bey was
present whispering and drinking with me, singing the song near my ear
and far away, treating his patients and making those awful primitive
noises that I despised. There was another sound that upset me more than
anything, like something round falling into a deep well, a mysterious,
slippery and indecent sound. Much later I found out that it was produced
by normally innocuous action of no-lore-bey ladling water out of an old
oil barrel by means of a small gourd. I yawned through what seemed to be
an interminable night till the muscles of my face were strained.
Sometimes I yawned so hard that it seemed to me as loud as the roaring
of the sea on a rocky coast. Things got so gay, absorbing and beautiful
that I had to laugh foolishly. The laughter came out of my insides of
its own accord and shook me absurdly. At the same time I cried, and the
tears that were running down my face were annoying, but they kept
running madly and no matter how often I wiped my cheeks I could not dry
them.
The first visual experience was like fireworks. Then a continuously
creating power produced a wealth of simple and elaborate flat patterns
and color. There were patterns that consisted of twining repeats and
others geometrically organized with rectangles or squares that were like
Maya designs or those decorations which the cha-ma paint of their thin
ringing pottery. The visions were in constant flux. First
intermittently, then successively the flat patterns gave way to deep
brown, purple or beige depths like dimly lighted caves in which the
walls were too far away to be perceived. At times snake- like stems of
plants were growing profusely in the depths, at others these were
covered with arrangements of myriads of lights that, like dewdrops of
gems, adorned them. Now and then brilliant light illuminated the scene
as though by photographic flash showing wide landscapes with trees
placed at regular intervals or just empty plains. A big ship with many
flags appeared in one of these flashes. A merry-go-round with people
dressed in brightly colored garments in another. The song of no-lore-bey
in the background seemed to physically touch a brain-center, and each of
his hissing, guttural syncopations hurt and started new centers of
hallucinations which kept on moving and changing to the rhythm of his
chant. At a certain point I felt helplessly that no-lore- bey and his
song could do ANYTHING with me. There was one note in his song that came
back again and again which made me slide deeper whenever it appeared,
deeper and deeper into a place where I might lose consciousness. If, to
reassure myself, I opened my eyes, I saw the dark wall of the jungle
covered with jewels — as if a net of lights had been thrown over it.
Upon closing my eyes again I could renew the procession of slick,
well-lighted images.
There were two very definite attractions. I enjoyed the unreality of a
created world. The images casual, accidental or imperfect but fully
organized to the last detail of highly complex, consistent, yet forever
changing, designs. They were harmonized in color and had a slick
sensuous polished finish. The other attraction of which I was very
conscious at the time was inexplicable sensation of intimacy with the
visions. They were mine and concerned only me. I remembered an Indian
telling me that whenever he drank ayahuasca he had such beautiful
visions that used to put his hands over his eyes for fear someone might
steal them. I felt the same way. The color scheme became a harmony of
browns and greens. Naked dancers appeared turning slowly in spiral
movements. Spots of brassy lights played on their bodies which gave them
the texture of polished stone. Their faces were inclined and hidden in
deep shadows. Their coming into existence in the center of the vision
coincided with the rhythm of no-lore-bey’s song and they advanced
forward and to the sides, turning slowly. I longed to see their faces.
At last the whole field of vision was taken up by a single dancer with
inclined face covered by a raised arm. As my desire to see the face
became unendurable it appeared suddenly in full close-up, with closed
eyes. I knew that when the extraordinary face opened those eyes I
experienced a satisfaction of a kind I had never known. It was the
visual solution of a personal riddle. I got up and walked away without
disturbing no-lore-bey. When I arrived home I was still subject to
uncontrollable fits of yawning and laughter. I sat down before my house.
I remembered that a drop of dew fell from the tin roof and that its
impact was so noisy that it made me shudder. I looked at my watch and
realized it was not yet midnight. The next day, and for quite some time
I felt unusually well.
Three years later in a letter from pu-cul-pa I heard that no-lore-bey
had been accused of bewitching a man into insanity and had been jailed
in Iquitos.