AYAHUASCA
[THE HEALING SHAMAN FROM THE AMAZON]
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by ©MiguelPinheiro - Brasil 2021
(all images are copyrighted and cannot be used without written permission)
The CHAKA RUNA
[ artigos/articles ]
_INTRO
Ayahuasca is part of an ancient Native American medicinal tradition. Like many Indigenous practices, the ritualistic use of ayahuasca has historically been ignored and repressed by the Western world. Recent scientific studies have corroborated its therapeutic effects and have inspired the thousands of spiritual seekers, celebrities, and adventurers who fly each year to South America in search of a life-changing experience. This mystic potion is now being explored by the nascent billion-dollar psychedelic industry, but what’s in it for the Native populations of the Amazon rainforest who created the medicine in the first place?
“One wonders how peoples in primitive societies, with no knowledge of chemistry and physiology, ever hit upon a solution to the activation of an alkaloid by a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. Pure experimentation? Perhaps not. The examples are too numerous and may become even more numerous with future research.” - Richard Evans Schultes, the most renowned ethnobotanist of the 20th century, writing about the chemical specificities of the ayahuasca preparation.
[Image by ©MiguelPinheiro]
Records from 16th century show meetings of Spaniards and Portuguese explorers with indigenous groups taking ayahuasca, "... when drunk, they lose their senses, because the drink is very powerful; Through it they communicate with the demon, because they are without judgment and present several hallucinations that they attribute to a god that lives inside these plants." (Guerra, F., 1971).
[Image by ©MiguelPinheiro]
“Shamanism resembles an academic discipline. Both indigenous and mestizo shamans consider people like the Shipibo-Conibo, the Tukano, the Kamsá, and the Huitoto as the equivalents to universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and the Sorbone; they are the highest reference in matters of knowledge. In this sense, ayahuasca-based shamanism is an essentially indigenous phenomenon. It belongs to the indigenous people of Western Amazonia, who hold the keys to a way of knowing that they have practiced without interruption for at least five thousand years. In comparison, the universities of the western world are less that nine hundred years old.” Jeremy Narby, “The Cosmic Serpent” (1999)
[Image by ©MiguelPinheiro]
