Ayahuasca, or ayaguasca and aioasca, from Quechua ayawaska ; or yagé, is a South American entheogenic brew made out of Banisteriopsis caapi vine and other ingredients. The brew is used as a traditional spiritual medicine in ceremonies among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin and is known by a number of different names.
Shamanism is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with what they believe to be a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world.
An entheogen is a psychoactive substance that induces alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, or behavior for the purposes of engendering spiritual development in sacred contexts. The religious, magical, shamanic, or spiritual significance of entheogens is well established in anthropological and modern contexts; entheogens have traditionally been used to supplement many diverse practices geared towards achieving transcendence, including divination, meditation, yoga, sensory deprivation, asceticism, prayer, trance, rituals, chanting, hymns like peyote songs, drumming, and ecstatic dance.
Pablo Cesar Amaringo Shuña was a Peruvian artist, renowned for his intricate, colourful depictions of his visions from drinking the entheogenic plant brew ayahuasca. He was first brought to the West's attention by Dennis McKenna and Luis Eduardo Luna, who met Pablo in Pucallpa while traveling during work on an ethnobotanical project. Pablo worked as a vegetalista, a shaman in the mestizo tradition of healing, for many years; up to his death, he painted, helped run the Usko-Ayar school of painting, and supervised ayahuasca retreats.
Dennis Jon McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, lecturer and author. He is the brother of well-known psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna and is a founding board member and the director of ethnopharmacology at the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit organization concerned with the investigation of the potential therapeutic uses of psychedelic medicines.
Jeremy Narby is a Canadian anthropologist and author. In his books, Narby examines shamanism and molecular biology, and shamans' knowledge of botanics and biology through the use of entheogens across many cultures.
Santo Daime ([ˈsɐ̃.tu ˈdaj.mi] is a syncretic religion founded in the 1930s in the Brazilian Amazonian state of Acre by Raimundo Irineu Serra, known as Mestre Irineu. Santo Daime incorporates elements of several religious or spiritual traditions including Folk Catholicism, Kardecist Spiritism, African animism and indigenous South American shamanism, including vegetalismo.
Jan Kounen is a Netherlands-born French film director and producer.
Icaro is a South American indigenous colloquialism for magic song. Today, this term is commonly used to describe the medicine songs performed in vegetal ceremonies, especially by shamans in ayahuasca ceremonies to induce a profound state of healing, awareness or amazement. It is also commonly used to describe a traditional artisanal pattern of the Shipibo tribe based on the visions induced by ayahuasca.
Chakapa is a Quechua word for a shaker or rattle constructed of bundled leaves. Bushes of the genus Pariana provide the leaves for the chakapa. Chakapa is also the common name for these bushes.
Yachay is a special type of phlegm generated by shamans and sorcerers of the Peruvian Amazon Basin which is believed to contain the essence of their power in the form of virotes, tsentsak, darts, arrows, or splinters of bone that are believed to be contained in the phlegm. It is believed that these may be fired from the mouth, and that being pierced by virotes causes various conditions. These may be removed by a shaman, who sucks them out of the victim's body.
The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge is a 1998 non-fiction book by anthropologist Jeremy Narby.
Jivaroan peoples refers to groups of indigenous peoples in the headwaters of the Marañon River and its tributaries, in northern Peru and eastern Ecuador. They speak one of the language family of the same name.
Michael James Harner was an anthropologist, educator and author. He founded the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and the New Age practice of "Core Shamanism." His 1980 book, The Way of the Shaman: a Guide to Power and Healing, has been foundational in the development and popularization of "core shamanism" as a path of personal development for new age adherents of neoshamanism.
Vegetalismo is a term used to refer to a practice of mestizo shamanism in the Peruvian Amazon in which the shamans — known as vegetalistas — are said to gain their knowledge and power to cure from the vegetales, or plants of the region. Many believe to receive their knowledge from ingesting the hallucinogenic, emetic brew ayahuasca.
Chris Kilham is an author, educator, and world-traveler researching and promoting plant-based medicines. He is the founder of Medicine Hunter, Inc., and was a Fox News integrative alternative medicine TV personality and columnist for 9 years. He is the author of 14 books, including The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook - The Essential Guide to Ayahuasca Journeying, The Five Tibetans, Tales from The Medicine Trail, Psyche Delicacies, and Kava: Medicine Hunting in Paradise. The New York Times has referred to Kilham as “part David Attenborough, part Indiana Jones." Richard Branson writes about Kilham's sustainability work in his book, Screw Business as Usual.
Guillermo Arévalo Valera is a Shipibo vegetalista and businessperson from the Maynas Province of Peru. His Shipibo name is Kestenbetsa.
Manuel Córdova-Rios was a vegetalista (herbalist) of the upper Amazon, and the subject of several popular books.
Blue Morpho Ayahuasca center is an ayahuasca shamanism center in the Amazon jungle. Blue Morpho, established in 2002, is located on the Iquitos–Nauta Road at kilometer 53, one hour away by road from the city of Iquitos, Peru.
Charles Grob is a professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor–UCLA Medical Center. He received his two BS degrees from Oberlin College and Columbia University before receiving an MD from the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center. Grob’s research interests include anxiety and mood disorders and also self-medication and substance abuse. The FDA approved one of his Phase 1 studies to study the psychological and physiological effects of MDMA and the hallucinogen Ayahuasca.
