The past few years have seen an upswing of interest in the shamanic brew known as ayahuasca. As consciousness pioneer Ralph Metzner explains in his lengthy (45-page) introductory essay, "Ayahuasca is an hallucinogenic Amazonian plant concoction that has been used by Native Indian and mestizo shamans in Peru, Colombia and Ecuador for healing and divination for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years . . . Ayahuasca is widely recognized as being probably the most powerful and widespread shamanic hallucinogen. In the tribal societies where these plants are preparations are used, they are regarded as embodiments of conscious intelligent beings that only become visible in special states of consciousness, and who can function as spiritual teachers and sources of healing power and knowledge. The plants are referred to as 'medicines,' a term that means more than a drug: something like a healing power or energy that can be associated with a plant, a person, an animal, or even a place. They are also referred to as 'plant teachers' and there are still extant traditions of many-years-long initiations and trainings in the use of these medicines."

After covering ayahuasca shamanism in the Amazon, other ritual uses, psychedelic drugs in psychotherapy, ayahuasca's effects on the brain, and more topics, Metzner turns the floor over to more than 20 people who recount their experiences with the ayahuasca vine and the potion made from it. In describing his first session, I.M. Lovetree--a counselor and educator in his fifties--tells of the power of the plant. "I lay pinned to the ground, flattened, possessed. I had done medicines before but they were nothing like this. The ayahuasca spirit vibrated and roared. Like the Santa Ana winds winding their way through mountain passes before their window-rattling, tree-shaking descent, I could sense the ayahuasca coming before it arrived. Here it comes again! A huge, serpentine roto-rooter moving through my systems, sparing nothing, unearthing everything. I did not throw up or vomit. I puked, yes puked. Everything came up. Whatever I couldn't stomach was dredged up from my organs, from my cell beds, from the very depths of my being; la purga was at work. Resistances, defilements, long-held hardened-with-age resentments, all bejewelled and resplendent, cascaded into the bowl set before me. Interestingly, I enjoyed the process. I felt instantly relieved."

The tone of the other trips described are well-represented by their titles: "Having So Recently Experienced My Death, It Felt Miraculous to be Alive", "Breaking from the Bondage of the Mind", "A Vision of the Fabric That Is Woven by Us All", "Ethereal Serpents Held Me in Thrall", "I Was Exploring Being with Greenness", "An Entirely New World of Spirit Beings", "The Buddha, the Christ, and the Queen of the Jungle."

Turning from the subjective to the objective study of ayahuasca, botanist Dennis McKenna gives an ethnopharmacological history; psychiatrist Charles Grob examines the psychological and neuropsychiatric aspects of the ayahuasca experience; and medical chemist Jace Callaway provides a very technical explanation of the phytochemistry and neuropharmacology of ayahuasca. In his concluding essay, Metzner addresses three questions: "(1) what are the most valuable and useful applications or ayahuasca in the context of Western medicine and psychology? (2) what is the worldview or cosmology that is revealed by the shamanic ayahuasca visions, and how does it differ from the modern Western worldview? And (3) what is the significance of the resurgence of entheogenic shamanism at this particular time in the history of Western civilization?"

Ayahuasca is an important, multifaceted look at an important entheogen, and its 140 pages of first-hand accounts make it especially valuable.

The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd.