Psychedelia, p.9
Psychedelia, page 9
The tribal societies of Amazonia are non-literate, relying on an oral tradition unconcerned with notions of a linear calendar history, and temporal reference points rarely stretch further back than two or three generations. If inquired about the history of their ayahuasca use, the tribesman may recount an origin myth of how the sacred vine was first brought to them from the heavens, an event that would have occurred at the time of the very first people. As Dennis McKenna has pointed out, documented knowledge of indigenous ayahuasca traditions does not reach further back than 150 years. One may infer a tradition of some antiquity from ritual descriptions like the one by Spruce above and the drug's revered status in the tribe, but prior to the mid 19th century, there simply are no first-hand accounts or unambiguous ritual objects preserved. This puts ayahuasca in a special position among the Amerindian hallucinogens, setting it apart even from the closely related DMT snuffs, where ancient paraphernalia such as sniffing trays and tubes document a very old tradition. The climate of the rainforest makes for a rapid disintegration of most objects, and further loss is found with the tradition to bury vital ritual objects with the shaman who used them.
Upon his 1852 visit with the Tukano, Spruce took notes and sampled plants which were shipped back to England, where they lingered unexamined for more than a 100 years. He found greater success with his botanical classification, and the native 'caapi' name that he applied to one of the local plants now makes up half the name of Banisteriopsis caapi. This jungle vine is one of the key ingredients in the potion the Tukanos called caapi, and which is known by numerous names across the Amazon river basin: yagé, ayahuasca, natem, caapi, hoasca, vine of the soul, vine of the dead. Today, there is a Western consensus to use 'ayahuasca' (from Quechuan, the language of the Incas, still today the most wide-spread native tongue) as the standard term, while up until the 1980s, the most commonly used word in the West was the Colombian 'yagé'. These regional dialect names should all be taken to refer to the same thing, and in the present book 'ayahuasca' will be preferred.
Behind this profusion of names lingers an ayahuascan quandary which needs to be observed by anyone interested in the field. As Spruce found with the Tukano, they use the same word to denote both the living jungle liana, and the distilled brew consumed during the tribal rite. This may seem confusing, but the habit is mirrored around the continent. The term ayahuasca (or dialect equivalents like caapi or yagé) is used by tribes across Amazonia for both the Banisteriopsis caapi jungle vine which they use for raw material, and the finished hallucinogenic potion. There is the ayahuasca vine, and the ayahuasca drink. The B. caapi vine is a large plant, thick as a man's arm and made up of several intertwined strands, like industrial rope. A section of vine is cut, then pounded and shredded into splinters, which are boiled in water for a long period of time.5 The resulting red- brown ayahuasca 'tea' is profoundly bitter in taste and difficult to drink. Its active contents were identified, after decades of scientific confusion, as three 'harmala alkaloids' (aka beta -carbolines), of which harmine was the most notable. One may note in passing that in an earlier stage of research, the chief active component had been named 'telepathine', following native reports of the potion's telepathic properties.
A native reference to 'ayahuasca' may mean the jungle vine as it grows in situ, or it may mean a hallucinogenic drink. Little in way of clarity is offered if one adds the fact that the ayahuasca potion may contain zero, one, or several admixtures to the basic extract made from the shredded jungle vine. Even if leaves from three other plants have been added, the brew will still be called 'ayahuasca'. What seems to remain certain, irrespective of local customs and linguistic differences, is that a potion which in a native tribal setting is referred to as ayahuasca, will always be a water infusion made from the Banisteriopsis vine, with or without admixtures.
4
This brings us to a puzzle of paradoxes which ill-fitting pieces have confused Western ayahuasca research for the past 150 years. These are not isolated mysteries that can be solved by a clever taxonomist or linguist, but several related question marks around a central enigma, like the spokes of a wheel. This wheel of mystery can be found with almost all documented ayahuasca tribes, even if these tribes otherwise differ considerably. It is not possible to explicate the enigma in any condensed form, yet lengthy discourses tend to be even less useful. Reduced to its simplest terms, the central riddle complex is this:
(A) Ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic beverage used in Amazonia, means a water infusion that contains the Banisteriopsis caapi vine.
(B) The B. caapi vine itself, even if brewed, has almost no psychedelic properties.
(C) The B. caapi vine is held in great reverence by the ayahuasca tribes.
(D) Western botanists and anthropologists frequently report B. caapi to be the sole ingredient in the ayahuasca drink.
(E) While B. caapi was identified as a base ingredient on the very first occasion (Spruce, 1852), Western science needed more than 100 years to correctly identify the admixture plants.
These five points, all of which are factually correct, do not form a logically consistent whole. All five statements above cannot be true at the same time, at least not in the telluric dimension where humans and human logic reside. Ambiguity and inexplicability are qualities generally welcomed by psychedelicists, yet here they seem to stand in the way for vital information. Before discussing the actual effects and cultural impact of ayahuasca, one may want to be sure exactly where its psychedelic powers come from. This is not possible without solving the contradictions of the riddle above.
The part of the list most likely to surprise a newcomer to the field is surely item (B), The B. caapi vine itself, even if brewed, has almost no psychedelic properties. If this could be proven wrong, if the jungle liana is in fact a powerful hallucinogen, perhaps a DMT source, then the entire problem complex around ayahuasca is solved. Unsurprisingly, such an assumption has been frequently entertained over the past century of Western ayahuasca research. Early field botanists like Spruce reported that the ayahuasca potion triggered fantastic visions of cities and spirits and snakes, which effect they assumed to come from the B. caapi vine. However, no one has been able to prove this causal relationship correct. What from ayahuasca culture seemed entirely logical, almost inevitable, has science shown to be untrue. The three harmala alkaloids found in the jungle vine simply do not have any meaningful psychedelic effects, whether one consults scholarly studies, or masses of anecdotal evidence.
According to Amazon field reports, including more than one by Richard Evans Schultes, ayahuasca made solely from B. caapi generates a pleasant, relaxed state with faint color hallucinations, followed by a longer dreamy-sleepy phase. Other reports from modern Westerners find almost no effect at all with the jungle vine alkaloids, except to induce weak hypnagogic visuals and a sort of lethargic stupor (see Psychedelic Review #6; Entheogen Review #2.4; Gracie & Zarkov's Notes From The Underground #7). Nausea during or after the experience is mentioned in all variants. Recent (1998) scholarly analysis by ayahuasca specialists McKenna, Callaway et al, suggests that the three harmala alkaloids have a very slight psycho-active effect only.6 A study of the psychotomimetic properties of harmine performed as early as 1957 reached the same conclusion. Wherever the ayahuasca drink gets its tremendous psychedelic powers, it apparently is not from harmine or the two other alkaloids of the jungle vine.7
Against all these notions go the reports from the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo, who in the 1960s conducted the only known large-scale study of harmaline's psychological effects. Harmaline is one of the alkaloids in the harmala trinity of B. caapi, alongside harmine and tetrahydroharmine. Naranjo set up a study in which a few dozen people, non-aboriginal Chileans of various demographic backgrounds, received harmaline and were told to give verbal descriptions of their experiences. Since then, Naranjo's accounts have reached a far wider audience than most comparable studies, not least because he presented them in popular publications such as the occult digest Fate and the left-wing magazine Ramparts, along with his book The Healing Journey (1967). It appears that Naranjo's harmaline study also inspired an episode of the highly popular science fiction TV series The X-Files in the 1990s, which storyline dealt with a yagé drinker who may or may not have been transformed into a predatory jaguar. This episode, generally maligned by X-Files fans, remains probably the widest presentation that ayahuasca has been given to the general public.
Unfortunately, despite Naranjo's lingering presence in the field of ayahuasca research, his harmaline study is in many ways problematic. As modern day ethnobotanists have pointed out, the study didn't adhere to any standard scientific protocol, and would not have been accepted as a scholarly, peer-reviewed work. There was no control group, and at least half of the subjects were already under psychiatric treatment. The actual number of subjects varies between Naranjo's reports as either 30, 32, or 35. Even more problematic is that some sessions utilized a mix of harmaline and LSD or mescaline, while others used only harmaline. The article in Ramparts dubiously states that Naranjo 'introduced yagé to modern society', following a visit to Colombia where he offered a tribal shaman LSD in exchange for ayahuasca plant material. Apparently unaware of the long-running enigma of the ayahuasca admixtures, Naranjo then singled out the alkaloid harmaline as identical with yagé, and by his own reports administered this 'yagé' to his subjects in Chile. In the Fate magazine article he makes no distinction at all between harmaline and ayahuasca. It is not clear why harmaline was used, rather than harmine or the full harmala triptych of the B. caapi.8
Working with a psycho-dynamic, Jungian paradigm, Naranjo found strong psycho-active properties in the harmaline he administered, properties which seem surprising in view of the generally dismissive tone of other studies. Not only did the subjects engage in vision journeys of the mind, but many also reported curiously similar results. What they saw, Naranjo reported, were predatory felines such as tigers, dark-skinned people, and the darkness of death. He found this puzzling, since 'there are no Negroes in Chile, just as there are no tigers'. Some of his subjects also reported lengthy 'trip' journeys, of which at least a couple sound like genuine, full-spectrum ayahuasca experiences. Perhaps most interesting is an account of a man who wrestled with a giant serpent, until he finally accepted the snake to swallow him, after which the tone of his journey changed completely; this story is in line with tribal-mythical lore as a classic ayahuasca experience. However, since Naranjo's subjects were given powerful psychedelics like mescaline or LSD before, after, or sometimes even during their harmaline trips, it is meaningless to try and infer anything substantial about harmaline's psycho-activity from such occurrences. Furthermore, the subjects in the experiments were open for suggestion and unintentional influence by Naranjo's test leaders, a factor which the lack of control group makes impossible to rate.
In view of these flaws, it is surprising to note how persistent some of Naranjo's notions have been. The idea of the archetypal jungle cat – which in the Amazonian region would be a jaguar – as a predictable element in ayahuasca visions was propagated in psychedelic literature during the 1970s and '80s. While the jaguar holds an important position in the animal hierarchy of many ayahuasca tribes, its mythological presence in these cultures is often matched or sometimes overshadowed by that of the archetypal serpent or snake. Naranjo does mention a few serpent or reptile hallucinations in passing, but finds this less interesting than the feline motif; a personal bias that may well have influenced the experiments. Ultimately, the uncertainties of Naranjo's study are so many that no conclusion at all can be made about the atypical recurrence of certain themes in his subjects' reports. In the late 1990s, some leading ayahuasca scholars reviewed Naranjo's work and discredited it as 'flawed', and today it is perhaps best understood as another symptom of the confused curiosity with which the Western mind has approached the secrets inside the jungle plants.9
With Naranjo's contrarian view scientifically discredited, there remains no major objection to what Western scientists, field explorers like Schultes, and modern laymen researchers have suggested: the harmala alkaloids found in the B. caapi liana have negligible or very modest psycho- active effects, and these are nothing like the reality-shattering visions that most people report getting from their ayahuasca trips.10 Rather, it appears that the drink made solely from the ayahuasca vine is a rather useless drug that will give you less of a high than a marijuana joint, while often making you sick and lethargic. It is easy to understand why early field botanists like Spruce assumed that the profoundly psychedelic effects of the ayahuasca brew came from the vine, since the vine was ritually revered by the native tribe, but persistent scrutiny of the case suggests otherwise. However, in view of the problematic history of Western research into ayahuasca, one cannot entirely reject the possibility that there exists an unknown dynamic of B. caapi and its harmala alkaloids, to be discovered in the future.11
If, for a fact, the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca do not come from the jungle vine, despite its central role in the preparation, then where does the potion find its power? One must bear in mind that this native plant beverage is one of the most powerful psychedelic agents in the world, as strong or even stronger than LSD or psilocybian mushrooms. Variations in the preparation of the potion, or differences in the set and setting of the participants, do not suffice at all to explain the discrepancy, even if scholars occasionally ventured such theories. It is yet another long-running enigma in the field, shown in the above list of ayahuasca contradictions as item (D), Western botanists and anthropologists frequently report B. caapi to be the sole ingredient in the ayahuasca drink.
As many psychedelic students know today, the hallucinogenic drink called 'ayahuasca' usually contains admixture plants which are boiled along with the shredded liana splinters. While the aboriginal tribes have found ceremonial use for a pure ayahuasca brew made from only the vine, few Westerners would consider serving ayahuasca which hadn't been spiked with psycho-active plants. The added plant leaves may contain DMT, or in some cases Datura, and this ingredient radically alters – improves – the psychedelic potency of the brew. In Amazonia, even with this crucial admixture added to the potion, the brew will still be called 'ayahuasca'. In other words, a visitor may be offered an ayahuasca drink and not know whether he or she is getting a weak drink derived only from the jungle vine, or a mixed potion made from the vine and a powerful psychedelic ingredient. Anecdotal evidence suggests that visiting strangers who ask for ayahuasca often will receive the weak, unmixed B. caapi brew. Perhaps this custom helps to explain the remarkable problems that botanists and anthropologists have had in identifying the admixture plants. In retrospect, it is a curious scientific failure.
One can trace this lack of scholarly progress by working backwards through the ayahuasca literature. The further back in time one gets, the stronger the picture emerges of an ayahuasca drink that is linked almost entirely to the jungle vines in the Banisteriopsis family. In theory, this would mean that references to the psychedelic nature of the brew disappears, but this is not the case – even the earliest descriptions, like the one by Spruce quoted above, describe a fully hallucinogenic drug. A few years later in 1858, a geographer named Villavicencio wrote what is probably the second scientific observation made of ayahuasca usage, and he mentions only the liana. The first account of any type of mixture occurred in 1886, when again from Ecuador it was reported, somewhat amusingly, that the indians drank 'ayahuasca mixed with yagé'. When Richard Spruce finally published his findings in 1908, he mentioned an admixture, but unfortunately misidentified the specific plant. A few decades of confusion and little progress followed, diligently analyzed by Richard Evans Schultes in various later papers. The presumed active ingredient in B. caapi was variously called telepathine, banisterine, and yajein; all terms have later been dismissed.
In 1935 Rafael Karsten, one of several Scandinavian ethnographers making contributions to Amazonian field work, reported in some detail of natem (ayahuasca) usage among the feared 'head- shrinking' tribe, the Jivaro. His account is particularly interesting as it reports the jungle vine as the main source for the beverage, but also distinguishes between two types of natem. The first type has tobacco leaves added and is used for a tribal feast that includes ceremonial drinking of the ayahuasca, followed by a phase in which the participants retire to their huts or the jungle to 'dream' visions caused by the brew. The second type is reported to be 'a stronger decoction' and is used by the medicine man for healing purposes according to the classic shamanic model. The strength of this second brew, apparently restricted for use, is reported to come from a much longer period of brewing, rather than from any further admixtures. Karsten also reported, somewhat erroneously, on ritual use of the hazardous Datura plant. Following Karsten's work, a scholarly dispute broke out which produced a number of helpful anecdotal accounts of ayahuasca use; in this context we find references from Louis Lewin, Henry Wassén, C G Santesson and E H Snehtlage, none of whom refer to any admixture added to the brew made from the B. caapi vine. A typical quote:
[Dr Snehtlage of Berlin] in 1933-1934 visited the border districts between Bolivia and Brazil, inter alia the region surrounding Rio Cautario [where] he met a half-breed woman from Peru who told him that her 'famuli' habitually made themselves drunk on a beverage prepared from Banisteria, known as 'huascar', singing the while – as an important component of the ritual – a lengthy song. When properly drunk they had visions of animals, particularly snakes, 'until the spirit was freed, and able to travel where it desired'.
