by Ross Heaven
In a kinder experiment, Backster demonstrated the love and empathy between a plant and its owner. One day he accidentally cut his finger and noticed that a plant being monitored demonstrated a stress reaction, as if it was experiencing his own pain and shock at the sight of his blood. Using this perceived affinity as the basis for his research, Backster then walked to a different building some blocks away and directed loving thoughts toward the plant. The polygraph recording when he returned showed a heightened trace as the plant picked up his intentions.
Even when the plants were locked in a lead container the results were the same. Whatever created empathy between plant and human came from something outside the electromagnetic spectrum.
Another lucky accident led Backster to explore this further. One evening he was about to feed a raw egg to his dog and noticed that as he broke the shell one of his plants reacted strongly. Curious to see what the plant might be experiencing or what feelings the egg was transmitting, he attached another egg to a galvanometer and monitored it for nine hours.
What he got was a trace corresponding to the normal heartbeat of a chicken embryo even though the egg was unfertilized. His conclusion could only be that there is a life force or energy within all things, which exists first in a nonmaterial plane before a physical being even comes into existence—for want of a better word, a soul.
This, of course, is redolent of the shaman’s notion that all things derive from spirit, that thoughtforms exist as a potential in their true state before they are ever made manifest, or more simply, that “the world is as you dream it.” The world (and all things seen and unseen) has soul and we can connect with this and draw from it to create our own reality by giving birth on the material plane to the forces of the universe, shaped as we will.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LOVE
Another researcher, Alfred Vogel, brings us closer to an understanding of the nature of this soul through the work of one of his students.2 As an experiment, his student picked two leaves from a plant and took them into her house. Each day she projected love toward one and the intention that it would live, despite giving it no water and leaving it on her bedside table; the other leaf she completely ignored.
A month later Vogel went to her home to photograph the results. The leaf that was ignored was dry and decaying, as you would expect from any leaf that had been out of water that long, but the second was as fresh as the day it was picked, even though its circumstances were no better. The essence of the soul of the universe, then—the energetic force that Backster discovered—is love. This is what sustains life.
“Plants . . . may be blind, deaf and dumb in the human sense,” said Vogel, “but there is no doubt in my mind that they are extremely sensitive. . . . They radiate forces that are beneficial to man. One can feel those forces! They feed into one’s own force field, which in turn feeds energy back to the plant.”
Vogel, like all of the shamans I have ever met, believed that respect for plants is also vital for effective communication between our species. He remarked of scientists conducting experiments with plants that:
If they approach the experimentation in a mechanistic way and don’t enter into mutual communication with their plants and treat them as friends, they will fail. Hundreds of laboratory workers around the world are going to be . . . frustrated and disappointed . . . until they appreciate that empathy between plant and human is the key and learn how to establish it. . . . The experimenters must become part of their experiments.
SACRED SONGS
If you can allow from this evidence that plants can and do communicate with us and have our best interests at heart, it becomes easier to understand the shaman’s contention that they can also transmit their wisdom and healing to us. One of the ways in which they do so, which is consistent across all shamanic cultures that work with plants, is via song.
Icaros, for example, are magical chants or melodies that are whistled, sung, or whispered during an ayahuasca ceremony to control and balance the energies in the room, or they may be sung directly into the energy field of a person who is to be healed, to provoke new insights, healing, and a new alignment of energies.
Tarjos perform the same function in San Pedro ceremonies, where the huachumero will use them to call helpful spirits, to ensure that energy flows correctly through the ceremonial space, or as the patient stands before the mesa, as a healing tool to realign and smooth the lines of energy within the patient’s luminous body.
Many curanderos begin their ceremonies with a tarjo that they sing (or have sung for them by their assistants) in order to purify themselves and create a connection between them and God before they start their healing work or approach the artes of the mesa. This is “The Chant of Eduardo,” which was used by Eduardo Calderon specifically for this purpose:
I go along giving a good enchantment
A good remedy from my bench [the mesa]
Saint Cyprian
Who from the first years
With the three wise men
Cabbalist and surgeon
With my good San Pedro
All the potions
Of dead man’s bones, ancients
Snake powder, antimony and minerals
Are all accounted
All the ailments of the entire body
All spiritual shocks, hypnotism, suggestions
Are all accounted
Saint Cyprian with rattle in hand
And his glass with the remedy
Well purified
He accounted in his great times
From the Huaringana I go playing [Las Huaringas are the sacred lakes from where many curanderos take their power]
Curer, justifier
And at my game
Where beautiful Shimbe are accounted [Shimbe are the sacred lagoons of the north, home to some of the most famous sorcerers in Peru]
Play!3
Calderon’s tarjo is more complicated than many and certainly more complex than most Amazonian icaros, which are often just a simple list of plants. He calls on the powers of Saint Cyprian (lines 3–6), a primary ally and guardian, for example, and refers to him as a “cabbalist and surgeon.” According to history, Cyprian was born in Carthage to pagan parents who dedicated his childhood to service of the Greek god Apollo. At the age of seven he was sent to apprentice with healers and magicians, and at age fifteen he began his studies with the seven great sorcerers of his age, eventually becoming a magus himself. His practices included calling the spirits of the dead and bewitching individuals through the use of incantations and potions. In his writings he tells of calling demons and commanding them. His conversion to Christianity came in middle age, but he was always a controversial figure within the church, and even today is regarded as the (unofficial) patron of sorcerers.
What Calderon is invoking here, therefore, is not just the saint but his powers to summon helpful spirits and to control and banish demons in cases of spirit possession and exorcism that the shaman may be faced with.
In lines 7–11 Calderon lists (and so “brings to life”) the healing tools of the mesa, beginning with San Pedro, of course, then “all the potions . . . dead man’s bones . . . minerals,” and so on. The potions referred to are plant medicines, aguas, and other magical formulas available to him for curing, the spirits of which he knows; the dead man’s bones refer to sacred huacas (power objects) that may indeed be bones or cemetery dust, or some relic taken from a holy site. The bones of the ancestors (especially if they were shamans or holy men themselves) contain great power, and because they are taken from graveyards this power extends to interventions in matters of life and death. All of these, says Calderon, are “accounted”—that is, awakened by his chant and brought into play.
He next accounts for the body and its ailments, in effect claiming mastery over them. Finally (in lines 19–23), Calderon talks of “playing,” a simple word that contains a number of meanings and nuances. Firstly, to play means to cure, but it also recognition of the fact that life itself is
play, a “game,” and that illness, in a sense, is a role we have chosen for ourselves. This corresponds to the Andean concept of life as a flow and exchange of energies, and the idea that as individuals we must take at least some responsibility for everything that happens to us, as we are the ones who attract and connect to these flows of energy. As we saw earlier in reference to illnesses, for example, even in the case of a magical attack such as envidia where a rival is jealous of us and sends bad energies our way in order to harm us, we must ask ourselves why. What have we done to deserve this? Perhaps we were not humble enough about our good fortune and so invited the jealousy that now affects us?
Finally, the word play is recognition that, no matter what may befall us, life is beautiful, an adventure, a game, and even in our direst moments we must be aware of this, because to take life seriously is to invite ill health, depression, and a diminution of the soul by becoming too attached to particular outcomes instead of allowing the energy of life to flow.
A lot of information and power is, therefore, contained in Calderon’s opening purification. Contrast this with the following icaro from an Amazonian ayahuascero4 (Javier Arevelo).
No me dejes no me dejes
Madre mia naturaleza
No me dejes no me dejes
Madre mia naturaleza
Por que vas i ti me dejares
Moriria o de las penas
Llantos y desesperaciones
Madre mia naturaleza
Si tu tienes el don de la
Santa purificacion en ti manos
Benditas madre naturaleza
The English translation:
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me
My Mother Nature
Don’t leave me, don’t leave me
My Mother Nature
For if you will leave me
I would die of the pain
Tears of desperation
My Mother Nature
Yes, you have the gift of
Sacred purification in your hands
Blessed mother nature
It is a simple prayer to Mother Nature and calls for her support during ceremony, but there is no complexity to it and no invocations or appeals beyond a general one to nature as a whole. Most icaros (and many tarjos) are in fact like this, so Calderon’s can in many ways be regarded as the exception instead of the rule.
HOW THE SONGS COME TO BE
The songs of the shaman are energetic forces charged with positive healing intent that the curandero stores inside his body and is able to transmit to another person or into the medicine he is preparing so that this energy is ingested when the mixture is drunk.
The most powerful are taught by the spirit of plant allies or artes that the shaman works with, and the longer his relationship with a particular plant continues, the more songs he may learn from it and the more potent they will be. Typically, the relationship with the plant ally is created through the process of dieting it.
For example, in 2010 I spent several months in Peru with the intention of beginning a more formal San Pedro apprenticeship. During an early ceremony I asked the cactus what other plants I should get to know in order to become a more effective shaman.
A whole range were presented to me but it is never a good idea to diet more than one at a time. You need to spend time with a single plant, just as you would if you were getting to know a new human friend. This can be frustrating when you want to develop your skills with a number of allies, but there simply is no shortcut (shamans say that you must have the patience of a saint to do plant medicine work). So I began the process of dieting one of these plants: Chanca Piedra.
All plants have an essence—a spiritual healing intent—that underlies and is deeper than their purely medicinal properties. Chanca Piedra (also known as Stone Breaker or Shatterstone) can be used for—and is highly effective in—breaking up stones in the body, such as gallstones or kidney stones. In keeping with the Doctrine of Signatures its leaves also look like small round stones.*32 5 This in fact is one way in which shamans come to understand the purpose of different plants: according to the doctrine they will tell you by their appearance. The spiritual intention of Chanca Piedra is to crush and break through, and it will do this energetically too: freeing patients from blockages caused by an accumulation of negative energies, which might over time become denser, leading to physical problems such as kidney stones. As important to me in my choice of plant was that Saint Peter (San Pedro) is known as “the Rock,” the foundation on which the Christian Church (or more fundamentally, our connection to God) is built.
During the diet you are forbidden certain foodstuffs and activities that might interfere with your ingestion and integration of the spirit of the healing plant, which you take each day in the form of a tea or infusion. Food is especially bland and there can be no sex or alcohol. The diet continues for a minimum of seven days, and because the food offered is unappealing I usually prefer to fast throughout it. For seven days following that there is an after-diet where slightly more flavorsome foods can be eaten but some (alcohol, strong spices, etc.) are still off the menu.
The diet is a commitment, therefore: a promise to the plant and a contract you make between you and it that if you keep your part of the bargain the plant will keep its and offer its power to you so that in ceremony by calling on it and directing its energy toward another, you will be able, in this case, to break through the blockages within a patient that are causing misfortune or ill health.
The direction of these energies is through song, and what you therefore hope for during a diet is that at some point a song will be given to you by the plant. My song for Chanca Piedra arrived on day four of the diet, but like many it is still a work in progress, my connection to it (and through it to the power of the plant) deepening over time.
Shatterstone
Chanca Piedra
Encantos! Encantos! [Encantos are magical stones with the power to cure disease]
I am your gravity
I hold you
So they [or she or he] in front of me shall be free
Shatterstone
Chanca Piedra
Encantos! Encantos!
I am your gravity
I crush you
So they in front of me shall be free
O medicina medicina
Medicina for the soul
O medicina medicina
Medicina for the heart
O medicina medicina
Medicina for the mind
O medicina medicina
Medicina for the self
Shatterstone
Chanca Piedra
Encantos! Encantos!
I am your gravity
I hold you
So they in front of me shall be free
In this way shamans have precise and specific songs for many different plants and purposes—to cure snake bites (Jergon Sacha), or to clarify visions during ceremonies (Piri Piri, perhaps), to communicate with the spirit world (Ahlbaca might be one plant option), or even to win the love of a woman. Huarmi songs—from the Quechua word huarmi (which, loosely, means “woman”) are of this type. There are also songs (canciones de la piedra) that are taught to the shaman by encantos (special healing stones that offer spiritual protection) and songs to the spirits of the elements, such as canciones del viento, that call on the spirit of the wind. Others, such as the ayaruna—from the Quechua words aya (spirit or dead) and runa (people)—are sung to invoke the “spirit people,” the souls of dead shamans, so they may help with healings during a ceremony.
To connect with the power of the artes on his mesa and call them to assist during ceremony, Michael Simonato (featured in chapter 4) has another approach, which is similar to that of Calderon and other Peruvian healers.
Artes (arts) are power objects that have a specific meaning and intention for the shaman. As described in earlier chapters, they may be mundane things in themselves (stones, bones, etc.) but their symbolic and spiritual content is impressive to the
shaman and enables him to connect with power in order to do his work. Or they may be huacas from sacred sites or other specific locations that are generally accepted to have spiritual power (such as water from Las Huaringas, the sacred lakes, or the relics of wise men).
A shaman collects these objects, sometimes intentionally, sometimes because he is called to do so when the items simply present themselves and suggest their powers and applications to him as he is going about his normal business. While walking in the countryside, for example, with no intention of seeking power, he may be inexplicably drawn to a rock or a feather and, acting on impulse or the whispers of spirit, he will take it and explore later the reasons for its calling.
For Simonato, this exploration takes the form of a shamanic journey to the spirit of the arte. On a trip to Peru in 2010, he advised me to do the same with my own mesa. “I drink San Pedro first,” he said:
Then I focus on each of the objects in turn, blending with them so I hear their particular spirit—like hearing from a friend—and that tells me their personality. Then I focus on the mesa as a whole so I understand the connections between these things and how they work together. After that [in ceremony] I know exactly what arte to use for any need that arises because I understand what these objects intend to do.
Following from this, Simonato has developed a divinatory practice for the start of a ceremony (which I have also now adopted). He lays out his mesa and then throws coca leaves into the air above it. Where they land (in which quadrant of the mesa, that is, whether the East, for me representing the body, the South for the emotions, the West for mental healing, or the North for the spirit) and which artes they touch gives him a focus for the day, telling him how the healing will proceed with San Pedro and the type of energy he needs to hold.
THE CREATIVE NATURE OF THE SHAMAN AND HIS SONGS
We began this chapter with a look at some of the research that offers credibility to the idea that plants are sentient and able to communicate with us and through this to teach us certain things about ourselves or pass on information that we might use in healing.
