Welcome to the first edition of the Plant Medicine Substack and thank you for subscribing! We will dive into the deep end and explore the plants of ancient India and the Amazon, and the people who use them. This will serve as a bit of an introduction of myself and where I am coming from. Much of the information provided comes firsthand from my time living and studying Ayurvedic medicine in California and northern India and from my work at a shamanic healing center in the deep Amazon. This is my story and these are my musings.
It is said that the ancient Vedic priest-magicians received the knowledge of plants from the plants themselves. In states of deep meditation, they communed with the plants and spirits of nature. They held rituals and ceremonies in honor of plants and their healing power, praising the “soma,” the subtle vegetative-healing and rejuvenating force of nature. To paraphrase a passage of the Rig Veda: Just as the mother’s milk precedes the baby, so the healing herbs populated the earth before mankind was born. Plants have a healing intention toward all life. Whether it is as food or medicine or the very air that all animals breathe, plants remain at the mysterious nexus and nerve center of all things terrestrial, and, perhaps universal.
Life lives on the oxygen provided by plants, as they thrive on the carbon dioxide that we exhale. We are fuel for them and they are fuel for us. We are so ingrained with plants that we cannot see them for the miracles they are. Every breath you have taken reading this was birthed from a tree, some algae, or some grass. Where is the boundary between plant and breath? Do we need it? What if this boundary broke down and we could not tell where the plant kingdom begins and we end? Would we then take better care of the earth, seeing it as a literal part of ourselves and not some concept, “out there?”
Interestingly, the ancient Vedic priest-magicians were not unlike the shamans of the Amazon, who “hear” their icaros, the songs that summon the plant spirits, or “doctorcitos,” as they are affectionately called. In their initiation, the Shipibo shaman goes out into the jungle alone for long periods of time, eats a specific diet without salt or sugar, and goes into an altered state of consciousness whereby they can “hear” the plants. The plant spirits sing a song, a unique melody that is used by the shaman in ayahuasca ceremonies to summon the plant spirits. The shaman sings his or her icaros to the plant spirits, and as one might welcome a dear friend into one’s home. There is a large and apparent love between the shaman and plant spirit, a sweetness that can be heard in their music. Icaros are more than a song, they represent the sacred link between plants and humans, they represent the shaman. The shaman bids welcome to the plant spirits, invites them into the ceremony, and asks them to heal the participants. The shaman does not heal directly. The real healing work is done by the plant spirits. Below is a beautiful example of a shaman singing her icaros.
I was fortunate to run a large shamanic healing retreat center (RefugioAltiplano.org) located about an hour boat ride from Iquitos, Peru. It is a beautiful and enchanted jungle refuge that stands today for people, plants, and animals. I was fortunate to work with Rosendo, a shaman from the Shipibo tribe, and Jose’, an ayahuasquero who lived in the nearby village and who helped to run the Refugio. It was a great pleasure and honor to work with and learn from them everyday I called the jungle home. People from all over the world came to the Refugio to partake in ayahuasca ceremonies. It was my job to make sure they were taken care of and happy in their jungle homes. How I got the job is a trip and a story for another newsletter.
Above: The ayahuasca ceremony house at Refugio Altiplano.
Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic shamanic plant brew typically containing the “ayahuasca” (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine and “chakruna,” a DMT-containing plant, usually Psychotria viridis. It is said that the union of these two teacher plants represents the male and female energies of life, and together they have a “child,” a completely new, divine substance. Ayahuasca has “escaped” the amazon and is being used by psychonauts all over the world who enjoy exploring their inner worlds and people looking for healing. “The medicine,” as it has come to be called, has a reputation for healing many different ailments, especially psychosomatic illnesses, PTSD, and addictions. In my own experience, ayahuasca played a tremendous role in healing past trauma, old feedback loops that played endlessly in my head. I remember the precise moment when I was “brought back in time” by the medicine and was able to re-live the trauma in a very safe, motherly, and nurturing way, and emerge on the other side of the trauma, realizing I am ok, still alive and that past trauma belongs in the past. Many people report feeling a notable feminine presence when in the ayahuasca trance, earning ayahuasca the title of “la Madre” or “la Madre Medicina.”
Above: My home in the jungle.
Both the ancient Vedantic priest-magicians and modern shamans, through ceremony and ritual, received plant knowledge directly from the source, the intelligent, self-luminous, and communicative plant spirits. I was very skeptical of plant spirits; probably just as much as you are, dear reader. I was a non-believer until I saw the plant spirits with my own eyes and experienced their healing first hand. There are thousands of accounts of people seeing “sentient beings of light” during ayahuasca ceremonies, to which I say, yes. The ayahuasca trance is strange enough and hard to describe let alone the sentient light-beings. I remember thinking that they must be fairies. One night in the ceremony, I watched as Jose’ danced with one of them, and all of a sudden, the thing was above me as I lie on the floor, doing amazing aerial flips in the air and taking the form of a self-luminous monkey! I remember feeling how playful and joyous it was. I then felt a very strange sensation, something between an orgasm and popping a pimple, very difficult to describe. I joke with friends and describe the time a fairy and I had sex in the jungle. It felt almost that to the degree that I was a skeptic, I received all that much more “proof” to shatter my skepticism about the spirit world. Several months in the Amazon drinking ayahuasca will probably do it to anyone. I highly recommend it.
Above: bottles of jungle medicines prepared by Sra. Blanquita at the Belen Market, Iquitos.
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Love it! Thanks Tony
Love the stories from Peru!