Of the numerous plants utilized by the local population of the Amazon Basin, perhaps none is an interesting or complex, botanically, chemically, or ethnographically, as the beverage known variously as -ayahuasca, -caapi, or -yage.
Ayahuasca is a Quechua term meaning "Vine of the Souls," which is applied both to the beverage itself and to one of the plants used in its preparation, the Malpighiaceous jungle liana, Banisteriopsis caapi.
The habitat of the plant is the Amazon rain-forest. The liana measure 18 centimeters in length and between 5 and 8 centimeters in width. The inflorescence is multi-flora and the flowers are small and pink. When the plant is young the light can be clear but does not receive it directly. Moisture is very important when new shoots arise. With insufficient heat or humidity the leaves do not grow. If the plant grows rapidly then it tolerates direct sunlight and cool nights. The plant needs a support to grow by climbing it. The plant's behavior in growing can be compared to the grow of the soul in a metaphorical way.
The beverage alone is not a psychological healer, or something that expand the consciousness. Its use is mostly related to religious or spiritual purposes. It purges the spiritual body from negative forces acting in it. If the individual is not efficiently prepared for the religious ritual then its use interfere with the normal process of the neurons and exacerbate existing psychiatric conditions.
The idea that psychedelic drugs have a way of tearing down emotional barriers or walls is only an illusion. They are not a kind of shortcut to a higher truth, instead they work as stimulators to the wild and uncontrollable part of the inner self. The point in which the will power is diminished to the lowest level and the person become unable to control any of its basic needs. The vomiting, diarrhea, crying, laughing and yawning, all at the same time means the brain enter into a complete disharmony with the surrounding energies that comes from positive or negative source. The information of the memory then is exposed in a way similar to when a person suddenly suffer a terrible accident and enter in a coma and after a period of time regain consciousness and remembered what happened with their souls. Unfortunately for the people interested in knowing higher truths through the use of psychedelic drugs the only true thing they acquire is they become persuaded by the illusion of being free and voluntarily choose the addiction to it.
Many coma survivors declared that their souls were kept in a huge world of darkness and the vision of their whole personal lives were exposed like watching a movie to beings in charge of the forces of good and evil. What sort of thing determined the way back and the conclusion of the coma state is something that each person know inside their own hearts. What they really have in common is they experienced a higher truth and they were never the same after that. Little by little their souls grew exactly like the plant ayahuasca grows in its natural habitat.
Ayahuasca is a prepared by boiling or soaking the bark and stems of of the plant together with other plants. It is rarely made from the ayahuasca vine alone. These additional ingredients are most often the leaves of any of three companion plants -the shrub Chacruna (Psychotria Viridis), -the shrub Sameruca (Psychotria Cartha-ginensis), -and a vine variously called Ocoyage, Chalipanga, Chagraponga, or Huambisa (Diploterys Cabrerana).
The active chemical constituent of the liana is named telepathine, a fluorescent alkaloid belonging to the Beta-carboline family of compounds.
The earliest known devices for shamanic purpose in the Andean lands come from Central Coastal Peru -whale-bone trays and bird-bone tubes, dated approximately 1200 BC.
Elaborated carved mortars used to grind beans, have been uncovered, as well as bone tubes, decorated spoons, and elaborately carved trays. Andean people of the highlands were very knowledgeable in practicing brain surgeries and complex surgical procedures in other organs that could match the use of this particular equipment.
An artwork at Chavin of Huantar shows figures with wide-open eyes and streams of mucus running from their nostrils, as a result of a serious lesion in the brain. Some of these heads appear to be half human and half feline or half bird, depicting a form of shamanic transformation.
Much later in time, the site of Tiahuanaco, one of the most important precursors to the Inca Empire, flourished as the religious administrative capital of a major state power. Here too evidence of the use of mortars to grind herbs points out to be shamanic.
The Incas also had acute observational skills and a keen interest in plants, their growing conditions, not only the new species they encountered, but all the local varieties of familiar cultivated plants, and were devoted to creating the ideal method of cultivation of each plant for every micro-climate formed in their highlands. They were experts in performing brain surgeries using medicinal herbs as powerful tools.
Among the indigenous cultures of the Upper Peruvian Amazon, the Shipibo culture are the one of the few cultural groups that have managed to maintain their language, art, and their knowledge about the use of plants for medicinal purposes.
