by Peter Watson
Allied to the hallucinogens are a number of toxic substances associated with frogs and toads, which feature strongly in Native American mythology and legend. These creatures are interesting to us for at least three reasons. In the first place, apart from butterflies, and as was mentioned above, frogs and toads undergo the most dramatic transformation in morphology, from tadpole to adult form and this is perhaps what attracted interest to them in the first place – frogs and toads show shamanistic behaviour entirely naturally. A second reason is that many species of frog and toad secrete substances that are toxic, and in a few cases hallucinogenic. And third, though this is tenuous, there are similarities between New World frog and toad mythologies and those in China, Japan and along the arctic rim of Eurasia, as far as Finland, where the word for toad, sampo, is also the word for mushroom.
There is also in North and South America a widespread myth complex that connects the toad to the Earth as the manifestation of an Earth Mother Goddess, who is at once the destroyer and giver of life. On occasions, the toad represents the Earth, and from her body grew the first food – maize in Mexico, bitter manioc in Amazonia.36 The Earth Mother Goddess is also the benefactress of the first people or ‘culture heroes’, instructing them in the skills of hunting and the magic arts, and it is her dismemberment which precipitates the origins of agriculture. The Aztecs also had this Mother Goddess/monster theme.37
Michael Coe, professor and curator emeritus at Yale’s Peabody Museum, found a large quantity of the remains of Bufo marinus at the Olmec ceremonial site of San Lorenzo in Veracruz, Mexico, which he published in 1971, and, in view of this toad’s high poison content and sacred character, the practice may have paralleled that of the Maya in Guatemala, who are known to have added toad poison to their ritual drink to give it added potency. Elsewhere in Mexico, small, toad-shaped effigy bowls have been found, suggesting that the habit went wider.38
There was also the practice of tapirage, which occurs in South America. In this procedure, the feathers are plucked from a living parrot and a small quantity of the extremely venomous toad poison, Dendrobates tinctorius, is rubbed into the wound which is then sealed with wax. When the new feathers grow back another transformation has occurred – they are of a very different colour to the originals, yellow or red replacing green, for example. This practice extends from Gran Chaco (on the Argentina/Bolivian border) to Brazil to Venezuela. It is not of course hallucinogenic but it is magical and it is a transformation. Shamans in Guyana use toads and venomous frogs in ritual curing and the Amahuaca Indians of the Peruvian Montaña rub venomous frog poison over their bodies before setting off for the hunt. Their skins have been deliberately burned beforehand so that the poison enters their bodies and can cause vomiting, diarrhoea and hallucinations. In some cases the poison used is the same as that employed in their poison blow-guns: using such a substance as an aid in hunting is a classic shamanistic manoeuvre.39
Which brings us back to deer. Deer were important food animals right across the New World. ‘But,’ says Peter Furst, ‘almost nowhere were they only that.’ They were intimately bound up with shamanism and their flesh was often sacred. Deer deities stretched from the extreme north of Canada to the deep south of Amazonia and deer ceremonies, says Furst, were ‘near universal’. They were never hunted except in a ritual context – this applied, for example, to both the Maya, the Mazatecs in Oaxaca and among the Gé of Brazil. Moreover, the deer was in many places intimately bound up with the use of, and attitudes to, hallucinogens. The best-known aspect of this was the Huichols’ practice of equating peyote with the deer, where it was regarded as the ‘mount par excellence’ to the upper levels of the universe. North of Mexico, deer were linked with tobacco but in the Andes, among the Moche, for example, deer were associated with Anadenanthera colubrine, the principal active ingredient in the divine compound known as huilca. In the southern plains, deer were involved with the ‘ecstatic-sham-anistic’ mescal bean, Sophora secundiflora, where a ‘deer dance’ formed one of the major ceremonies. The Zuñi too had a deer-maize-peyote tradition, reflected in their ceremonies, one of which involved amassing a collection of wild flowers, flowers that include Datura and other hallucinogens and which, the Zuñis believed, attracted deer who ‘go crazy with them’, and where, on these grounds, their shamans sought to transform themselves into those flowers so that the deer would be ‘attracted within range of their arrows’. The Zuñis have a tradition whereby they are reborn three times, then reborn a fourth and final time as a deer.40
Furst argues that, during Pleistocene times, before the glaciers melted, deer would have ranged much further south in Eurasia than they did in later times, so that early peoples would have had a much more intimate relationship with these animals. He shows that among the Reindeer Tungus in Siberia the shamans wear a cap crowned by antler effigies and in many places their attire is indistinguishable from the cave paintings in France. The Scythians, much later, had a practice whereby they put antlers on their horses, in the belief that such devices would help them be transported to the other world. Furst, for one, is convinced that early humankind carried these beliefs with them into the New World. They couldn’t know that there were far more hallucinogens waiting for them in the Americas but, given this background, it would have been natural for them to make the most of what they found there.
HALLUCINOGENS AND SHAMANISM
The interaction between hallucinogens and shamanism is expanded by the ethnographic evidence. Michael J. Harner, one of the foremost researchers in this area, agrees that ‘the American Indian cultures have often preserved an emphasis on shamanism’.41
Fieldwork has now been carried out among several tribes, in a systematic effort to explore what is common across cultures and what is confined to this or that tribe, and why. Among the Cashinahua, for example, a small tribe of about 500 people inhabiting the rainforest of south-eastern Peru, almost any initiated male may drink ayahuasca, the intoxicating brew of the Banisteriopsis or Psychotria vines that we met earlier. Consumption occurs roughly once a week and is never taken alone. Research into these experiences shows that certain themes recur, the most frequent of which are: (1) brightly coloured large snakes; (2) jaguars and ocelots; (3) spirits; (4) large trees, often falling trees; (5) lakes, frequently filled with anacondas and alligators.42 Very often the experience is frightening, but the men persist in their habit because they believe that the visions they see under the influence can act as a warning about ill health, or hunger, or famine, or death, in the days and weeks ahead. After a drinking session, the men spend several hours discussing what the visions meant.
When illness occurs among the Cashinahua, they first try to deal with it themselves, within the family; if that fails, they consult a herbalist, someone skilled in the properties of the plants of the forest; only if that fails repeatedly, do they consult the shaman. In the first instance he tries to draw out the malign substance interfering with the health of the patient, and only if that fails does he resort to ayahuasca, to consult the spirits who will tell him what the real cause of the illness is. Treatment often takes the form of chanting or a sucking motion.
Among the Jivaro of the Ecuadorian Amazon, there are two kinds of shaman, the bewitching shaman and the curing shaman. As part of his researches among this tribe, Harner himself took what the Jivaro call natemä, a substance also extracted from the Banisteriopsis vine. This tribe regards everyday life as a ‘lie’, according to Harner, real life being glimpsed only under the influence of natemä. Here is his (brief ) account of taking natemä: ‘For several hours after drinking the brew, I found myself, though wide awake, in a world literally beyond my wildest dreams. I met bird-headed people, as well as dragon-like creatures who explained that they were the true gods of this world. I enlisted the services of other spirit-helpers in attempting to fly through the far reaches of the galaxy. Transported into a trance where the supernatural seemed natural, I realised that anthropologists, including myself, had profoundly underestimated the i
mportance of the drug in affecting native ideology.’43
Harner found that approximately one out of every four Jivaro men is a shaman, the chief power of which resides in their ability to summon up tsentsak, spirit helpers who are only visible to shamans under the influence of ayahuasca. These spirit helpers can take various forms – giant butterflies, jaguars or monkeys are common – and the services they perform may help the Jivaro on their headhunting raids, or in causing or curing illness. They possess darts – again invisible to all except the shaman in a drug-induced trance – which can kill or injure individuals. Shamans can also suck tsentsak from people’s bodies, tsentsak put there by hostile shamans. Ceremonies take place in the early hours of darkness but the shaman constantly drinks tobacco juice to keep narcotised and his spirit helpers alert.44
The name ‘Sharanahua’ means ‘good people’. They inhabit an area of eastern Peru, along the banks of the Upper Purús River, practising slash-and-burn agriculture and subsisting, mainly, on manioc, plan-tains, bananas, peanuts and maize. Three out of twenty-five males in Sharanahua society are shamans. They too are admired and feared because they can cause harm as well as offer help. They too can suck harmful substances from ill people, and they too can cause illness or misfortune by throwing dori, a magical substance, into the bodies of their victims. One of their major techniques of curing – and this is repeated elsewhere – is by singing. The Sharanahua have hundreds of songs, about everything, but the songs are sung in an esoteric form of the language, difficult for others to understand and ‘filled with metaphors’.45 As in other tribal societies, among the Sharanahua the apprentice shaman must undergo a prolonged period of celibacy, shamans frequently take on the form of animals, ceremonies tend to begin in the early hours of darkness, and particular attention is paid to dreams. Janet Siskind, who carried out the fieldwork, believes that experienced shamans can – to an extent – control and even manipulate their visions under the influence. More interesting still, she thinks that many occasions for shamanistic ritual deal less with physical illness than what she called ‘alienation’ from tribal society.46
Among the Campa, another tribe of eastern Peru, Gerald Weiss found that shamans also used a mix of Banisteriopsis (also called ayahuasca) and tobacco juice. Ayahuasca puts the shaman in touch with the spirit world and, among the Campa, the shaman keeps a supply on hand so he can enter this spirit world frequently. Ceremonies once again begin in the early hours of darkness and occasionally consumption of ayahuasca will be a group activity, not just of the shaman. But only the shaman undergoes soul flight and he leads the singing designed to offer up cures for afflictions. In this case, however, the shaman is not possessed by the spirits, instead he merely repeats what they say. According to Weiss, among the Campa the shaman is the master of ceremonies, the director of the show, ‘but not the only virtuoso’. He argues that this is an important change: the shaman is beginning to take on more of the qualities of a priest.47
Overall, Michael Harner found there were five themes common to all cultures where shamans used hallucinogens: (1) the soul is believed to separate from the physical body and make a journey, often with the sensation of flight, and frequently to the Milky Way (we shall see why the Milky Way was so important in chapter 20); (2) there are visions of snakes and jaguars, often fearsome; (3) visions of demons and deities; (4) people and locations are seen at a distance; (5) divination occurs – seeing who committed crimes, for example, or which hostile shaman is bewitching sick or dying persons.
All this was augmented by an intriguing experiment carried out by Claudio Naranjo in Santiago, Chile, and published in 1967, in which he gave yajé to young, thoroughly modern Chileans who had no real knowledge of anthropology. He found that these individuals mostly wanted to close their eyes in trance ‘since the external world appears as of little interest and [as] distracting from the world of visions and inner happenings’. Under the influence of harmaline, there was invariably ‘an inclination to think about personal or metaphysical problems with a feeling of unusual depth, insight and inspiration’. Several subjects became nauseous and experienced some form of malaise, but the sensations of rapid movement, and/or of flying and/or weightlessness, were common, together with the feeling of being separated from one’s soul, of being at the bottom of the ocean, the centre of the earth or in the middle of heaven. Visions of giant animals, big cats (including the jaguar) and fearsome reptiles were also reported by seven of the thirty-five participants. Sometimes people felt they had been transformed into these animals, sometimes they were wearing masks of the creatures.48
It would appear, then, that the psychedelic effects of yajé are not entirely culturally determined but that there is something in the narcotic that exerts a physiological effect on the brain which induces experiences that have determined several of the features of shamanism.
Perhaps the most important thing about yajé, ayahuasca, natemä and related chemicals is their strength. There are dangers in consuming these substances but, provided they are culturally managed, and not taken alone, the dangers seem manageable and are far outweighed by what are perceived as their benefits.
In contrast, Harner looked at a number of accounts of witchcraft in Europe, many little-known and published in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Latin. Most of these practices had been stamped out by the Catholic Church, especially the Inquisition, but Harner found there was more to it than that. He observed that, in the main, European witches rubbed their bodies with a hallucinogenic ointment containing such plants as Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Mandragora (mandrake), and henbane, whose active content was atropine, absorbable through the skin. Paintings of the time show in particular women rubbing poles between their legs and Harner argues that this was a particularly efficient (and erotic) way to absorb the substance. Like harmaline, atropine ‘sent’ individuals on ‘trips’ and this is where the tradition of the witch’s flying broomstick may have originated.49
Harner also makes the observation that deadly nightshade, man-drake and henbane belong to the same family as the potato, tomato and tobacco, a family which also includes Datura. He therefore offers the theory that the European witchcraft hallucinogens were actually, like Datura, too powerful to control and this is why witchcraft never became more organised than it did, why it didn’t catch on more than it did, and was one of the associated reasons for why the Catholic Church was so opposed to it.
Here then we have an overlap of sorts with Andrew Sherratt’s theory, that in the Old World more moderate psychoactive substances took over from stronger varieties as society became more technologically complex. In the more vegetal New World, where communities kept themselves to themselves, because they were far more dependent on plants with a limited distribution, where there were in any case no domesticated animals who could be used for their energy, or where pastoralism developed, societies remained less technologically complex, more isolated, and hallucinogens of a fairly powerful level of activity were more widely available and perceived as more useful. The whole experience of psychoactive chemicals was different in the New World and the sheer availability of yajé, ayahuasca, natemä and other substances kept the phenomenon of shamanism alive and well.
• 13 •
HOUSES OF SMOKE, COCA AND CHOCOLATE
THE DIVINE PLANT OF THE INCAS
Strictly speaking coca is not an hallucinogenic – it is a stimulant. But, according to W. Golden Mortimer, it is quite unlike any other plant, and its lack of hallucinogenic properties did not affect its importance to the Incas, who regarded it as a ‘divine plant . . . nature’s best gift to man’.1
Coca exists in several forms, all native to northern South America (and, in a few cases, to Madagascar). The genus Erythroxylum contains 250 species, of which at least thirteen are cocaine-positive, cocaine being the active alkaloid which mainly gives coca the properties that made it so attractive to ancient South Americans (though it is not the only active ingredient – coca also contains ph
osphorus, calcium, iron and several vitamins). The shrub that is generally used is Erythroxylum coca variety coca, though Erythroxylum coca variety ipadu has also been harvested in the Amazon Basin for thousands of years. A third species, Erythroxylum novogranatense, variety truxillense, was regarded as the best by the Incas, who called it ‘Royal Coca’, though the active ingredients in this plant are fewer and harder to extract.2
Coca grows faster at sea levels but its cocaine content increases at higher altitudes and so it is usually cultivated at between 1,500 and 6,000 feet. Even so, the amount of cocaine in the leaves is very low, so that its effects are by and large beneficial, unlike the commercially concentrated cocaine of our own day (cocaine itself was not isolated until 1859). The most common form of ingestion of coca is by chewing, by forming a small ball or bola of leaves, mixed with lime (called llipta), to aid the release of the alkaloids, and is held between the gum and the cheek (and sometimes mixed with tobacco). It soon induces a form of numbness in the mouth but coca’s properties are legendary in South America, where it has been described as a cure for snow blindness, headaches, constipation, neurasthenia, asthma, to stimulate uterine contractions, to cure open wounds and is even said to act as an aphrodisiac and induce sleep (not at the same time, presumably).
Its chief effect, however, is undoubtedly the contrary, as a stimulant – it suppresses hunger, thirst and, most important, fatigue. Ernest Shackleton took Forced March cocaine tablets to Antarctica in 1909 for the energy boost they gave.3 Even today, in South America, journeys are still regulated in terms of cocadas, the number of bolas needed to complete a journey, the effects of a bola usually lasting around 45 minutes, or three kilometres on level ground, two when climbing. Coca is also credited with keeping chewers warmer in the cold mountains.
