By Suzannah Weiss — 2018
The truth behind those pre-Ayahuasca dietary and drug restrictions.
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CLEAR ALL
How can conscious engagement with plants, with which we’ve co-evolved since the dawn of our species, support healing in the physical, emotional and spiritual realms and help mend our separation from nature? Three brilliant herbalists/botanists, long on the cutting-edge of re-empowering the...
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Eliot Cowan, an American-born healer, fully initiated Tsauirrikame (shaman) in the Huichol tradition, teacher, author, and founder of the alternative healing technique known as Plant Spirit Medicine, remains as a leading authority on the healing wisdom of plants.
Ayahuasca has become increasingly popular with North Americans and other Westerners in recent years, as more and more people are looking for alternative ways to explore their inner selves and connect more deeply with a broader consciousness.
In 1995 I published a book called The Cosmic Serpent that dealt with ayahuasca and other subjects. The enthusiasm of many readers took me by surprise. In the book I describe ayahuasca as foul-tasting and my experience drinking it as an ordeal involving vomiting and frightening visions of serpents.
The following is a version of an interview I held over several days in September 2006 with my mother, Doña Julia Julieta Casimiro, one of the most distinguished representatives of the traditions of the thousand-year-old Mazatec culture, which is centered in the northern mountains of the state of...
The growing popularity of "authentic" ayahuasca rituals in Western circles can present multiple problems, including indigenous fetishization, a lack of cultural context for traditional ceremonies, and potential abuse from untrustworthy shamans, all of which can be problematic or sometimes even...
It was as if I were being shown my life from a greater distance. The ceremony gave me clarity. At some points I even sobbed; deep, body racking sobs that I don't think I'd cried since I was a child. I also vomited heavily.
It’s impossible to be truly prepared for a psychedelic which hauls you through the doors of perception and unceremoniously throws your sense of self and reality off the edge of the world.
What the psychedelic drug ayahuasca showed me about my life.
Here, we asked Graham Hancock about plant medicine, the purpose and meaning of hallucinogenic experiences, and what bigger opportunities he sees for humanity in all of this.