by Peter Watson
The active substance is found in the bark, stem and leaves of the plant and in one experiment the alkaloids were shown to remain active for 115 years. Furst estimates that the use of yajé is at least 5,000 years old, Tukanoans placing the hallucinogen at the very start of tribal history, where it is said to have emerged in human form after the male sun had fertilised the female Earth with its phallic ray and the first drops of semen had become the original people. The Tukanoans equate vines with lines of descent, each phratry (kinship group) having its own distinctive vine and its own distinctive way of preparing the sacred drink. The pottery vessel that holds the liquid, for example, symbolises the maternal womb and its base is painted with a vagina and clitoris. Before the vessel can be used it must be purified with tobacco smoke.11
The consumption of yajé is highly ritualised. Its distribution is announced by sounds on musical instruments, at set intervals, preceded by ceremonial dances. The hallucinations are called ‘yajé images’ and, to ensure these images are always bright and pleasant, individuals must have abstained from sex and eaten only lightly for several preceding days.
People who take yajé expect to awaken as a new person. They believe that, under the influence, they return to the uterus, where they see the tribal divinities and witness the creation of the first couple, of the animals, of the establishment of the social order. The origins of evil also manifest themselves – these include illness and the spirits of the jungle, in particular the jaguar. Reichel-Dolmatoff’s research has shown that in Tukano society the shaman is closely associated with the jaguar, a powerful nocturnal animal, equally at home on land, in the trees or on water. Shaman-jaguar transformations are closely associated with trances, whether brought about by yajé, tobacco or snuff. Jaguars are regarded as avatars of deceased shamans and under the influence of yajé the Tukano may have a ‘bad trip’ when they are overcome by the menacing jaguar or huge snakes.12
One final ‘origin’: the Tukano attribute the origin of art to yajé. They say that the striking polychrome images that adorn the front of their houses, on their pottery and their musical instruments have all first appeared under the influence of their psychedelic drink, each design having a fixed meaning. Here again images of felines predominate but the more abstract signs have meanings too, in terms of incest, exogamy, fertility and so on. This recalls the ‘entoptic’ images drawn on cave walls in Pleistocene times and studied by David Lewis-Williams.13
Among the Aztec, their main sacred hallucinogen (they used several) was known as Ololiuhqui. The name means ‘round thing’ but is now known to refer to Rivea corymbosa (a species of Morning Glory) and which, together with Ipomoea violacea (another variety of Morning Glory), was worshipped throughout central America – among the Mazatecs, Mixtecs, Chinantecs and others.14 The chemical make-up of these substances was not actually settled until the 1960s, when quantities of seeds were sent to a Swiss pharmaceutical company for analysis. This revealed that their main (psycho)active ingredients were the ergot alkaloids – d-lysergic acid amide (ergine) and its isotope, d-lysergic acid amide (isoergine), both closely related to d-lysergic acid diethylamide or lsd.15 The curious aspect to all this is that Rivea is in fact mainly an Asiatic genus of woody vine, with five Old World and just one New World species. But it was only ever developed for shamanistic use in Mesoamerica, never in the Old World or, for that matter, in South America. Ergot, of course, is what Mott T. Greene believes was the main ingredient in soma/haoma (see above, chapter 10).16
In Central America, however, Ololiuhqui was itself regarded as a divinity. It was worshipped, the seeds prayed to, petitioned with incantations and even honoured with sacrifices and incense.17 Both species featured in the art of the cultures native to Central America, most notably in the mural paintings at Tepantitla, a complex of sacred buildings within the great pre-Columbian city of Teotihuácan, which flourished from the first to the eighth century AD, north of what is today Mexico City. According to Furst, these paintings have been dated to the fifth or sixth centuries AD, when Teotihuácan was one of the largest cities on Earth, with up to 200,000 inhabitants. The main image shows a deity, a highly stylised Mother Goddess (once thought to be the rain god, Tlaloc), from which flows a stream of water, to fertilise the land, but above her is a great vine-like plant with funnel-shaped flowers. Seeds fall from the deity’s hands, seeds of Rivea corymbosa (see figure 9). Rivea has also been found inscribed on the bodies of another Central American god, Xochipilli, the Aztec god of flowers, together with the hallucinogenic mushroom Psilocybe aztecorum and Nicotiana tabacum, one of two principal sacred tobacco species.18
Fig. 9 Mural from Teotihuácan, Mexico, dated to c. AD 500, depicting a Mother Goddess and her priestly attendants with a highly stylised Morning Glory plant, Rivea corymbosa, the sacred hallucinogenic Ololiuhqui of the Aztecs.
Among the Aztecs, the hallucinogenic experience was called temixoch, translated as ‘flowery dream’, and the sacred mushroom was called teonanácatl, teo meaning god and nácatl meaning food or flesh.
The so-called ‘magic mushrooms’ of Mexico and Guatemala are perhaps the most-studied hallucinogens of the New World. They were used (and in several cases are still used) in the Mayan area, and there is evidence that they have been employed for 3,000 years, notably, according to archaeological discoveries, between ~1000 BC and AD 900. One of the more interesting references, as we shall subsequently see, is that found in a sixteenth-century Spanish account of mushroom use, which refers to them as xibalbaj okox, xibalba being the Mayan word for ‘underworld’ and okox being mushroom. The Mayan underworld (again as we shall see in more detail later) was deemed to have nine levels but the Mayan phrase meant, in effect, that this particular magic mushroom gave people images of hell or the dead.19 Many of the other terms associated with mushrooms implied that it was an intoxicant or inebriant – it made people ‘crazy’, or they ‘fell into a swoon’.
In the early 1960s details were published of nine ‘beautifully sculpted’ miniature mushroom stones and nine miniature metates (grinding stones) dating back 2,200 years. They were found in a richly furnished tomb outside Guatemala City. In Mayan cosmology there are nine lords of Xibalba, the underworld, as described in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché-Maya, and so there is a strong presumption that these statues were sacred in some sense: either they were there to accompany the dead person on his or her journey to the underworld; or they were themselves divinities offering companionship and protection. Effigies of mushrooms have been collected all over Central America (El Salvador and Honduras as well as Mexico and Guatemala). According to Furst, some 200 different species have been identified. Many of them, especially those that date to between 1000 and 100 BC, incorporate a human face or figure, or a mythic or real animal, where again the jaguar but also the toad are most represented (the toad, of course, undergoes a major transformation during its lifetime).20
Mushroom effigies in fired clay have been found in both Central and South America, some of which appear to resemble Amanita muscaria, the fly-agaric mushroom of Siberia rather than Psilocybe, the predominant New World psychoactive species. The ceramic art of the Moche of Peru (~400 bc–AD 500) also shows anthropomorphic mushroom effigies, as do gold pendants from Colombia and Panama – again it seems as though a deity is represented.21
Several of the early Spanish explorers in Central America mentioned the sacred mushrooms used by the New World inhabitants, and more than one cult, we know, survived into the twentieth century. From this we also know that different species were revered for their different properties. In this way, it also became clear that shamans used mushrooms primarily for divining the cause of illness, though elsewhere they were used for their visionary properties.
Furst says the mosaic of magic mushrooms is now fairly complete, in that we know which ones were most often used and what their properties are. ‘Psilocybe Mexicana, a small, tawny inhabitant of wet pasture lands . . . is probably the most important species utilised hallucinogenica
lly in Mexico, but the strongest psychedelic effects seem to belong to Stropharia cubensis.’22 But eight other species (in 57 varieties) were in widespread use, different shamans having their own favourites.
The question as to whether Central American traditions are a carryover from Siberian practices, or a separate development, cannot be answered directly. The spread of Amanita muscaria is native not only to Eurasia but to British Columbia, Washington, Colorado, Oregon and the Sierra Madre of Mexico. In historic times the urine of shamans was considered to posses great magical and therapeutic powers by the tribes of the north-west coast and by the Eskimos. This recalls the shamanistic tradition of reindeer hunters in Siberia, discussed in chapter 3. At the same time, many of the edible mushrooms of central America sprout at times of the year when other foods – such as maize – are not yet ready. Their psychoactive properties could have been discovered accidentally.
The earliest hallucinogenic cactus depicted in ancient American art is a tall member of the Cereus family, Trichocereus pachanoi. Used by the folk healers of coastal Peru, it is known to contain mescalin and the cactus has been identified on the funerary effigy pottery and painted textiles of Chavín, the oldest in a long succession of Andean civil-isations, dating to ~1000 BC. The hallucinogenic cactus is also identified in the ceremonial art of the later Moche and Nazca cultures, giving this sacred psychedelic plant a cultural ‘pedigree’ of at least 3,000 years.23
But the most important hallucinogenic member of the cactus family is a small spineless North American native of the Chihuahuan desert, slap in the middle of the ‘Thermal trumpet’, as mentioned in chapter four. This is Lophophora williamsii, more widely known as ‘peyote’. Peyote was held in great esteem right across Mesoamerica, where it is represented on ceramics from 100 BC on, at the very centre of shamanic rituals over a wide area (even to the north, as far as the Canadian Plains). And its use continued, so much so that it has now been legally incorporated into the Native American Church, which has hundreds of thousands of adherents.24
Peyote was described by Richard Shultes as a ‘veritable factory of alkaloids’, with more than 30 types of their amine derivatives being isolated. The best known by far is mescaline, which is the principal vision-inducing ingredient. Its effects include not only brilliantly coloured images but also ‘shimmering auras that appear to surround objects in the natural world . . . auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile sensations, together with feelings of weightlessness, macroscopia [seeing things from far away, or from high above], and alteration of space and time perception’. Its continued use can probably be put down to the fact that many of its practitioners came from very isolated groups, such as the Huichols and their cousins the Coras who, despite being discovered by the Spanish, managed through their isolation to resist European influence for many centuries. Even today, therefore, the Huichols regard peyote as sacred, divine.25
It should also be said that peyote is more than a psychedelic substance. It is a remarkable stimulant, an effective antidote against fatigue – very useful in a mountain environment. It also has antibiotic properties against a wide slew of bacteria.26
Culturally, peyote is notable for its identification with the flesh of the deer. In Huichol mythology, at the time the Great Shaman led the ancestral gods on the first peyote quest,27 all the ills of the tribe stemmed from the fact that they had forgone the great hunt for the Divine Deer, peyote. Even today every Huichol is familiar with the story, which is recounted to the young when the first ears of maize have ripened in the fields. Among present-day Huichols, says Peter Furst, about half the adult men are regarded as shamans – mostly the heads of families – and although some are more prestigious than others, with more influence among their people, all of these shamans are regarded as having more intense experiences under peyote, travelling to other levels of the cosmos, including the underworld.28
The Huichols also make use of another hallucinogen, to which they pray and give the name Kieri. This grows in remote, rocky places and consists of white, funnel-shaped flowers and spiny seed pods. This is Datura inoxia, though there is some evidence that Kieri is also sometimes Solandra guerrerensis, equally narcotic if not quite as potentially dangerous. Datura was first encountered by the Spanish among the Aztecs, where it was given to those about to be sacrificed so that they would feel less pain. But Datura features in a prominent myth of the Huichol in which the shaman, Kieri, battles with an adversary, Kauyumarie, who shoots several arrows into him. Instead of dying, however, Kieri is allowed by his protector, the sun deity, to transform into a flowering plant. Furst says that this myth is a folk legend of a change in ideology, away from Datura to the more benign peyote, and may represent an historic account of a battle, perhaps, between rival groups of shamans who used different hallucinogens.29
Certainly, Datura, a genus that grows in many parts of the world, not just the Americas, is a powerful narcotic: deadly nightshade, henbane and mandrake are all related more or less closely. In the New World, among many peoples, it was added to other hallucinogenic preparations to augment the effect but by itself, beyond its analgesic properties, it can cause unconsciousness and even death. Native Americans were well aware of this and its lethal possibilities no doubt had something to do with the Huichol legend about the fight between Datura and peyote.30
Properly managed, however, it was undoubtedly useful. Among the Zuñi, where the Rain Priest Fraternity had a special relationship with Datura, it allowed curers to perform simple operations while the patient was unconscious – resetting fractured limbs, making incisions to remove pus, opening abscesses.31
It is also known that the amount of scopolamine – one of the active ingredients in Datura – can vary in strength from 30 per cent to 60 per cent and this may account for some of the negative stories about temporary derangement or permanent insanity that surround its use – people were simply given too much. Properly controlled, and used by experienced shamans, like other hallucinogens it enabled the initiated to travel to other realms of the cosmos, to communicate with the ancestors, to trace and capture the souls of people who were sick, and generally to commune with deities.
Other evidence for the sheer strength of Datura comes from the Luiseño Indians in California, who are related to the Uto-Aztecan peoples of the south, and where a puberty rite for young men, or boys, used Datura. In one part of the rite, the initiates were given the substance as a drink, the only time in their lives when these individuals would consume this liquid. The Datura was normally kept hidden in secret hiding places and was only drunk from a freshly painted mortar where the liquid was prepared, and which was used for no other purpose. Enough Datura was taken for each boy (and some girls) to become unconscious. Even in these ceremonies, so carefully calibrated, some initiates died but those who didn’t reported visions under the influence, visions in which they encountered an animal, from whom they learned their own personal song, teaching them wisdom and which they would remember always. A few weeks later, the initiates had to pass through a trench, climbing over an animal/human effigy where they mustn’t slip or, it was held, they would die early. The trench was said specifically to represent the Milky Way.
Another California tribe, the Cahuilla, regarded Datura as ‘the great shaman’, so that only other shamans could communicate with it during ceremonies. This was achieved by an esoteric ‘oceanic language’, which only shamans understood, and was spoken by the supernatural beings that lived on the ocean floor. (Underwater volcanoes?) Among the Cahuilla, too, the shaman (called a puul) could transcend ordinary reality and fly to other worlds, transform himself into other animals (especially the puma and the eagle), and bring back lost souls.32 The Cahuilla shamans used Datura as a medicinal paste, though here again not everyone shared the same enthusiasm for a substance that was clearly unreliable.
SACRED SNUFFS AND TOXIC TOADS
Hallucinogenic snuffs were also widely used, though with a somewhat different distribution: they appear to have been confined to South
and Central America, and to the Caribbean. Holly (Ilex), acacia and mimosa species may all have been used at one time or another (not forgetting tobacco, see the next chapter) but the Anadenanthera and Virola families seem to have accounted for most forms of snuff, infusions and even hallucinogenic enemas.33
The active alkaloids in both Anadenanthera and Virola are the tryptamines. These require a monoamine oxidase inhibitor to become active in man, and Indians solved this problem by mixing different hallucinogens together. This had the added effect of making intoxication with snuff extremely rapid. For example, among the Waika (in the Roraima province of Brazil), one man blows the prepared snuff through a long bamboo pipe directly into the nostrils of another man, who almost immediately begins to react. The effect lasts only a short time but during that interval the man will experience instant communication with animals, plants, deceased relatives and other supernaturals. There is some evidence that trained shamans can control their reactions better than others.34
The animals most frequently seen under the influence (and this seems to be a characteristic of snuff, that animals are seen) are the bird-feline-reptilian complex, the specific animals being those who, like shamans, can move between the different realms of the cosmos. Apart from the jaguar – always very popular, as the alter ego of the shaman – diving birds are common, appreciated for their ability to reach the underworld, and eagles and condors, which appear to reach the sun.
Snuff pipes and other equipment have been found from ancient Bolivia, Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Brazil dating back to 1600 BC. In Mexico there was an ancient snuffing complex that dated back at least to the second millennium BC but seems, for some reason, to have died out by AD 1000. Snuffing activity – effigies of people in ‘trances’ with snuff pipes inserted in their noses – are known from tombs in Colma, western Mexico, dated to 100 BC and from Xochipala, Guerrero, southern Mexico, from 1300–1500 BC. There are also some famous Olmec jade artefacts, called ‘spoons’ by some archaeologists, that could have been snuff equipment. They too have bird-jaguar motifs and date to 1200–900 BC.35
