Hyperbolic: Divining Ayahuasca

Twenty minutes in, like clockwork, the visions begin. They are strong but I was expecting them this time.

Norma, the vegetalista who so astonished me with her care, skill and knowledge during my first ceremony two nights prior, had packed a big bowl with a knot of the local Nicotina Rustica and had blown curling, whistling smoke over a plastic liter bottle filled with an opaque orangish liquid I knew to be ayahuasca, the potent brew of tryptamines and MAO inhibitors that has been prepared in the Upper Amazon for perhaps sixteen thousand years. I knew it to be ayahuasca, since I had, after all, helped mix it the day before, pounding a kilo of the soft woody vine of fresh B. Caapi liana and tossing about fifty green glossy leaves of P. Viridis, a DMT-containing relative of coffee, into the black cauldron simmering over a wood fire on the shores of the Yanayacu River, one of the eleven hundred tributaries of the Amazon. Back home this could be a felony. Here, I now understood, it's a medicine.

The smoke whistle is a trope, a refrain that often begins or ends an Icaro, one of the beautiful songs sung and whistled continuously throughout the four-hour shamanic ayahuasca ceremony. The smoke and its whistling inflection act as protocols to open up a spirit portal, an active earth surface, while keeping unwelcome entities—what I think of as affects—at bay. After my first session, I had also learned that the songs serve to orient the ayahuasca drinker. The songs mime and sample the birdsong of the region, an ecosystem with over two thousand species of birds and the polyrhythms of chatter from over 500,000 insect species. I held onto and was held by the Icaros, giving intense thanks for the whistled orientation.

I took the coffee mug and fearfully eyed its contents. My first contact with ayahuasca had been perhaps the most difficult experience of my life that didn't involve somebody (else) dying. For I had indeed palpably and unmistakably died—the accounts of ego death were not at all greatly exaggerated.

Nonetheless, here I was, two days later, again looking into the flickering, refracted and reversed image of myself that I think I spied in the mug lit only by candlelight in the Amazonian night. The liquid was dark and iridescent, but I now knew that tales of its horrid flavor were something like an urban legend from the rain forest. My first gulp of ayahuasca tasted like nothing so much as my first pint of draft stout slurped in Ireland at the age of seventeen with my now departed brother.

Still, I was fearful and full of respect for this plant intelligence with which I had seemingly interacted. The mug appeared nearly two thirds full, easily as large a dose as the first, most difficult, night. I had secretly hoped for a tinier tourist dose, but had no choice but to drink down the cup I was offered.

As a result of my extensive research into the ceremony (as well as the work of John Lilly), I carefully addressed the ayahuasca to orient my journey. Having toyed with the I Ching as a writing tool, I was comfortable posing questions to non-human entities as a rhetorical experiment, a practice of rhetorical invention that seeks interaction with other forms of order and its disruption. Among other things, I asked how I could possibly integrate the knowledge from my first journey into my life back in North America. Then I threw it back like a fat shot of tequila, opening my throat to the entirety of the flow.

Like I said, twenty minutes of mediation later and the visions began, the same as the first night. A pixilated doorway appeared in my closed-eye visuals and I went through it. Here goes, I thought to myself—what have I done?

Haptic Gaze Smack: Ayahuasca Pilgrims in the Rain Forest

This specially designed tour is for those serious seekers...