Stephan V. Beyer - Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon

There are several reasons why a book on the mestizo shamanism of the Upper Amazon is worth writing at this time. Mestizo shamanism occupies an exceptional place among the shamanisms of the Upper Amazon, assimilating key features of indigenous shamanisms, and at the same time adapting and transforming them. There is today considerable interest in shamanism in general, and in Upper Amazonian shamanism in particular, especially its use of plant hallucinogens; yet there is currently no readily accessible text giving general consideration to the unique features of Amazonian shamanism and its relationship to shamanisms elsewhere in the world.

Moreover, many key texts, such as Luis Eduardo Lunas 1986 dissertation, are out of print and almost impossible to find; and many important studies are in foreign languages, especially French, such as the work of Alfred Mtraux and Jean-Pierre Chaumeil. The beautiful and informative book Ayahuasca Visions , the combined work of mestizo visionary artist Pablo Amaringo and anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna, is organized as a commentary on a series of paintings and thus, despite an extensive index, is not well organized for overall information. And much information, of course, is buried in specialist ethnographies of Amazonian peoples intended for a professional rather than general audience.

We now know much more about shamanism than when Mircea Eliade published his famous overview in 1951. There is now a wider range of excellent ethnographies, including many of Amazonian peoples; debates within the field have sharpened an awareness of many of the assumptions that underlay the fieldwork of many decades ago. Indeed, we now know, too, much more about ethnobotany, hallucinations, and the actions of such substances as dimethyltryptamine. It is time to try to put some of this together.

There was a time when I was deeply interested in wilderness survival. I was filled with machismo; drop me in the desert naked with a knife, I said, and I will eat lizards and survive. I undertook training in mountain, desert, and especially jungle survival, which took me on a number of trips to the Upper Amazon, both for training and to study indigenous survival techniques. One of these trips, with wilderness survival expert Ron Hood, to study the jungle survival skills of the last of the head-hunting Shapra and Candoshi Indians, became an award-winning survival training film.

Figure 1. The ayahuasca vine.

But, as I learned more and more about the ways in which indigenous people surviveindeed, flourishin the wilderness, it became increasingly clear to me that wilderness survival includes a significant spiritual componentthe maintenance of right relationships both with human persons and with the other-than-human persons who fill the indigenous world. Thus I began to explore wilderness spirituality, to learn ways to live in harmony with the natural world, striving, like indigenous people, to be in right relationship with the plant and animal spirits of the wilderness. I undertook numerous four-day and four-night solo vision fasts in Death Valley, the Pecos Wilderness, and the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico. I began to work with ayahuasca and other sacred plants in the Upper Amazon, peyote in ceremonies of the Native American Church, and huachuma in Andean mesa rituals.

So, too, this book is a result of my own need to make sense of the mestizo shamanism of the Upper Amazon, to place it in context, to understand why and how it works, to think through what it means , and what it has meant for me.

Here is a story. I am drinking ayahuasca. Suddenly I find myself standing in the entry hallway of a large house in the suburbs, facing the front door. The floor of the hallway is tiled, like many places in the ayahuasca world. There is a large staircase behind me, leading to the second floor; there are large ceramic pots on either side of the entrance way. I open the front door and look out at a typical suburban streetcars parked at the curb, traffic going by, a front lawn, trees along the curb. Standing at the door is a dark woman, perhaps in her forties, her raven hair piled on her head, thin and elegant, beautiful, dressed in a red shift with a black diamond pattern. She silently holds out her right hand to me. On her hand is a white cylinder, about three inches long, part of the stem of a plant, which she is offering to me.