Cactus of Mystery

by Ross Heaven

  Peru is such a gentle, heart-centered place, and those who ran the San Pedro ceremonies were so kind and caring, making it a safe haven for us to journey into ourselves. A special magic came home with me and it is still working beautifully in my life.

  PART FOUR

  San Pedro and Creativity

  There is no poetry among water drinkers.

  OVID

  IF THERE IS PRECIOUS LITTLE WRITTEN about the influence of San Pedro on healing, there is nothing at all about its influence on creativity and the creative process, although anyone who has drunk the cactus remarks that new solutions have been presented to them and new insights received, insights that are creative and remarkable in themselves and have led to new approaches in their lives. This is the essence of creativity.

  This section is a first step, therefore, to forming a link between San Pedro and creativity, and consists of an examination of the role of this teacher plant in artistic and musical processes.

  PSYCHEDELIC RESEARCH

  In fact, there is limited research per se on the uses and effects of psychedelics in the creative process, and most of what does exist was conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, at a time when the world was more fascinated by the “psychedelic movement.” Some of this historic work may, however, be helpful to us as a starting point.

  Rick Strassman reviews this research in his essay, “Creativity and Psychedelics.”1 “Many of us think of creativity in psychological and practical terms which are relatively familiar and not especially controversial” he says, “for example: The quality of being able to produce original work or ideas in any field” [or] “An act of construction: the combining or organizing of existing materials into a new form.” Another definition of creation taps more abstract areas and is of a grander scale.

  The act of creation; especially in a theological sense, the original act of God in bringing the world or universe into existence. This introduces religious and spiritual elements. Indeed, the creative process is often compared to a state of grace or deep meditative contemplation. Creating also may be the most obvious way in which we are made in God’s image: producing something from nothing. In all cases, creativity manifests through its results, some of which are visible. But what drives the creative process is interior, subjective and invisible. The ability to contact and use these inner resources is necessary for creation.

  The 1960s was an explosion of creativity—in fashion, music, art, literature, values, and lifestyle—much of it fueled by a willingness to explore these inner resources through a new awareness of and experimentation with psychedelics such as “magic” mushrooms and LSD. Unfortunately, however, as Strassman points out, while the world was turning differently and undeniable evidence of this new creativity and its origins in the psychedelic experience was pretty much self-evident, there have only been a handful of research efforts that have tried to understand the process.

  In 1960 a Hungarian experiment using DET (a synthetic relative of DMT) found that five out of thirty-eight volunteers (just 13 percent), who were already a creative group, became “inspired” for some weeks after their psychedelic experience. The study itself did not involve acts of creativity, but examined DET’s effects on brain waves. The researchers described their subjects only as experiencing “the rather passive state of accumulating impressions prior to creative work.”

  In 1967 an American group conducted an LSD-based creativity study. Strassman remarks that the setting for the experiment was not exactly conducive to “optimising the aesthetic or creative experience” as it took place in “a sterile clinical research ward.” The researchers did not tell their subjects what drug they were getting until the morning of the study and provided little information about what to expect. They did find, however, that lower doses of LSD were successful in raising scores on tests that reflected “psychoanalytical views of creativity.”

  Results from “the most well-executed and designed study to date” (in Strassman’s view) appeared in 1966. Volunteers received extensive preparation and screening for explicitly stated research on how psychedelics affect creativity. The results showed that low to moderate doses of LSD and mescaline (the “active ingredient” of San Pedro and peyote) enhanced creative problem solving, as assessed by subjective reports and the practical applicability of the solutions they came to. There also seemed to be a carryover of enhanced creativity for some weeks afterward.

  “Unfortunately for scientists of any persuasion, human research with psychedelics ended abruptly in the early 1970’s,” says Strassman, “due to public health concerns of widespread illicit use combined with the political climate of the time, especially the civil unrest resulting from opposition to the war in Vietnam.” And that is more or less it. Not a great deal of further research exists.

  NINETY-ONE ARTISTS

  There is one other study that is of interest, however. In 1967, in an attempt to discover which psychedelics were being used by artists as well as the views of the users, Stanley Krippner studied ninety-one artists who had had one or more psychedelic experiences.2 Among them were an award-winning filmmaker, a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, and a recipient of Ford, Fulbright, and Rockefeller study grants in painting.

  Eight-one percent of those surveyed felt that the term psychedelic artist could be applied to them and agreed with the definition of a psychedelic artist as someone whose work shows the effects of the psychedelic experience. Of the substances mentioned to achieve these effects, LSD was the most popular, followed by marijuana and DMT, but peyote and mescaline were also significant (the others included morning glory seeds, psilocybin, hashish, DET, and ayahuasca, and a few had also tried kava-kava, ibogaine, bufotenin, Ditran, Amanita muscaria mushrooms, or Hawaiian wood rose).

  The artists were asked if their psychedelic experiences had been pleasant. Ninety-one percent said yes while 5 percent gave a qualified yes, stating that their initial trips were difficult but later ones were more pleasurable. This might generally be consistent with the processes of San Pedro and ayahuasca, at least sometimes. Shamans say that the first time you drink either brew it may be that the spirit of the plant needs to perform a clearing or bring you face-to-face with your issues so these can be explored and healed during subsequent ceremonies. Having done so, later ceremonies tend to be easier.

  When the artists were asked, “Have your psychedelic experiences influenced your art?” Ninety-one percent said yes. Only 3 percent believed that they had not been influenced, and none of the group felt that their work had suffered as a result of their experience. Those who said that they had been influenced by psychedelics mentioned a number of effects, which fell into three main categories: content, technique, and approach (although most felt that they had been affected in more than one category).

  Seventy percent said that the psychedelic experience had affected the content of their work, the most frequent example being a new use of eidetic imagery as subject matter.*30 Fifty-four percent said there had been a noticeable improvement in their artistic technique (a greater use of color was mentioned most frequently). And 52 percent mentioned a change in their approach, such as the elimination of “superficiality,” and the discovery of a new depth in themselves as “people and creators.”

  Some referred to their first psychedelic encounter as a “peak experience” and a turning point in their lives. “My dormant interest in music became an active one after a few sessions with peyote and DMT,” said one musician. Another reported that his experience “caused me to enjoy the art of drawing for the first time in my life.”

  The impact of psychedelics on one individual is illustrated in the case of the artist Isaac Abrams who was amongst Krippner’s subjects. In an interview he stated:

  [The] psychedelic experience has deeply influenced all aspects of my life. It was an experience of self-recognition . . . which opened my eyes to drawing and painting as the means of self-expression which I had always been seeking. During subsequent experiences many difficulties, personal and artistic, wer
e resolved. When the personal difficulties were solved energy was released for the benefit of my art.

  Abrams became a part of the “psychedelic fellowship” when he was offered psilocybin by a friend. Under its influence, he realized for the first time in his life that he had been acting for years “like a person who had no mind,” driven as if by a mission but with no idea of what that mission might be.

  A few months later he took mescaline. “It was beautiful,” he said. His inner life having been opened by these episodes, Abrams thought that he might discover his “life’s mission,” a new sense of meaning, but in fact that did not come until three years later when he took LSD for the first time. During that session he began to draw. “I experienced a process of self-realization concerning the drawing,” he said. “When the drug wore off I kept on drawing. I did at least one ink drawing every few weeks.” He began to attend art classes and to learn about technique and materials. His skills developed and he began to paint.

  Abrams concluded:

  For me, the psychedelic experience . . . has been one of turning on to the life process, to the dance of life with all of its motion and change. Before . . . my behavior was based on logical, rational and linear experience. Due to psychedelics I became influenced by experiences that were illogical, irrational and non-linear. But this too is a part of life. This aspect is needed if life is to become interrelated and harmonious.

  Psychedelic drugs give me a sense of harmony and beauty. For the first time in my life I can take pleasure in the beauty of a leaf; I can find meaning in the processes of nature. For me to paint an ugly picture would be a lie. It would be a violation of what I have learned through psychedelic experience.

  I have found that I can flow through my pen and brush; everything I do becomes a part of myself—an exchange of energy. The canvas becomes a part of my brain. With the psychedelics you learn to think outside of your head. My art attempts to express or reproduce my inner state. . . . Psychedelic experience emphasizes the unity of things, the infinite dance. You are the wave but you are also the ocean.3

  Krippner noted that he rarely found artists among the casualties of psychedelic usage and suggested that an artist must stand apart from his culture in order to create. “To invent something new” he said, “one cannot be completely conditioned or imprinted. Perhaps it is this type of an individual—the person who will not be alarmed at what he perceives or conceptualizes during a psychedelic session—who can most benefit from these altered states of consciousness.”

  Despite studies like Krippner’s and examples like Abrams, the research data on creativity and psychedelics (at least as far as it relates to LSD) were finally summarized with the rather noncommittal statement, “Whether LSD does or does not increase creativity remains an open question. . . . All that can be said at this time about the effect of LSD on the creative process is that a strong subjective feeling of creativeness accompanies many of the experiences.”

  MORE RECENT RESEARCH

  Strassman’s more recent experiments with the psychedelic experience (some of them reported in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule) were driven by a desire, he says, “to understand the biological basis of mystical experience, although the experiments themselves partook, and stayed within the bounds, of traditional clinical research models. The drug that drew my interest the most was DMT, or dimethyltryptamine.”4

  As stated elsewhere, Strassman eventually became disillusioned by the lack of long-term effects that DMT had on the subjects he studied. Although many of them experienced deeply mystical and highly creative states, not many did much with the new awareness they had been given. They did not apply it to their lives.

  Doing something with it is important for achieving full healing from the plants. We must use what we have learned in the business of living, otherwise it becomes merely a concept or a flight of fancy and nothing much in our lives can change.

  In this section we hear from two artists—a painter and a musician—who are doing something with it. In their essays they talk about the healings they have received from San Pedro and how they have put their insights to work. As we hear, not only their art but their lives have been improved and enriched by doing so.

  David Hewson. David (“Slocum” to his friends) is an internationally known artist trained in Italy, Switzerland, and New York who now lives in the Amazon rain forest near Iquitos, Peru. As well as portraits, which he sells worldwide, he has produced altar pieces and frescos for churches in America and elsewhere that illustrate his interest in religious iconography and themes—but with a twist. His style could be described as “modern Renaissance.” Inspired by the old masters and often including gold and water gilding in his highly studied portraits, murals, and frescos, the twist comes from his incorporation of jungle scenes, visionary experiences, and his knowledge of plant medicines into his work. In the article that follows he writes about his interest in plants and shamanism, and how San Pedro has helped shape his views on life as well as his work.

  Peter Sterling is a musician who is also inspired by his work with San Pedro and other teacher plants. His first album, Harp Magic, was nominated for the NAIRD*31 Indie Award, and in 2004 his CD Harp Dreams went to number one on the N.A.R. top-100 radio playlist, remaining there for eight weeks and making it the most played new age music CD in the United States, Canada, and Europe. It was then nominated for Album of the Year. As a result, Peter signed with the prestigious Real Music record label for the worldwide release of his CD Shadow, Mist, and Light. He performs worldwide and has a website at www.harpmagic.com. In this article he writes about a healing he underwent with San Pedro and the inspiration he has drawn from it, which he now uses to guide his music and his life journey.

  Before we hear from these artists, however, I present a short essay on the interrelationship between San Pedro and the use of music and art by shamans to draw closer to the spirits and as a channel for healing their patients.

  14

  San Pedro in Art and Music

  Ross Heaven

  There has always been an affinity between art, music, and teacher plants, and the number of shamans who are also artists is remarkable in itself. In ayahuasca healing the best example of this is Pablo Amaringo.

  Amaringo, one of the world’s greatest visionary artists, trained first as a shaman in the Amazon, healing himself and others with ayahuasca from the age of ten, but gave this up in 1977 to become a full-time painter and art teacher at his Usko-Ayar school. His book, Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman, coauthored with Luis Eduardo Luna, was published in 1993 and has become a classic of visionary art.

  In my own book, Plant Spirit Shamanism, Amaringo had this to say about the connection between art and plant medicines:

  My visions helped me understand the value of human beings, animals, the plants themselves and many other things. Plants—the great living book of nature—have shown me how to study life as an artist and shaman. They help us to know the art of healing and to discover our own creativity because the beauty of nature moves people to show reverence, fascination and respect for the extent to which the forests give our souls shelter. The consciousness of plants is a constant source of information in medicine, alimentation and art and an example of nature’s intelligence and creative imagination. Much of my education I owe to these great teachers. Thus [in my art] I consider myself to be the “representative” of plants. . . . Any painting, or book or piece of art that spreads this message is to be respected.1

  In San Pedro shamanism, probably the best known curandero was Eduardo Calderon, and he too was an artist. Douglas Sharon, an anthropologist who apprenticed with Calderon, writes in Wizard of the Four Winds about Calderon’s initiation into shamanism.2 “During my youth from more or less the age of seven or eight years I had some rare dreams,” Calderon is quoted as saying.

  I flew . . . and I went to strange places in the form of a spiral. . . . I tried to restrain myself and I could not. . . . I have seen things as if
someone opens a door and the door is closed. I have had nightmares but not ordinary ones. I have seen myself introduced through a hole in the air and I went through an immense, immense world. I have felt numbness in all my body as if my hands were huge but I could not grasp. I could not hold up my hand.

  Those familiar with shamanism (for example from Mircea Eliade’s classic study, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy) will recognize here the onset of what has come to be called the initiatory crisis of the shaman: the call of the spirits in dreams and life experiences that are sometimes unsettling and can lead to physical or emotional illness until the shaman-elect heeds the call and agrees to shamanize.3

  Sharon continues: “Medicine seemed to be the best avenue of expression for Eduardo’s idealism but it was not economically feasible. His frustration, however, was temporarily mitigated by his growth as an artist . . . art provided the best medium of expression.”

  And so for Calderon as for Amaringo, his means for both making sense of and translating the messages of the spirits was art, a creative process he continued to work with for the rest of his life, even when he became one of Peru’s most famous healers.

  This is not surprising, as there is an obvious connection between visionary worlds and visionary expression. It is a yearning within human beings to understand the world of the spirits through engagement with them beyond the experience itself and to honor these worlds through art. Shamans are known as walkers between worlds, and art is one way by which the intangible is brought into the tangible and the unseen realms become seen.