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28 September, 2009 14:52:53 | in society

The Shaman of 9 de Octubre

by
Dan Jordan
For South American Explorers

Both medicinal healers and conduits to the mysterious spiritual world, shamans are the doctors and psychologists of the Amazon.

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, in the small village of Nueve de Octubre, I visited a shaman named Liborio. Tucked along the banks of one of the Amazon River’s largest tributaries, Nueve de Octubre is home to a few hundred of the 42,000 people who live within the government-run Pacaya-Samiria Reserve.

Here, as in most villages in the area, shamans play an important role in the everyday lives of the ribereños – the local term for floodplain farmers and fishermen.

Entering Nueve de Octubre, I climbed the muddy hill that led away from the river and walked past the wooden stilted houses. Chickens scurried past me and browned children ran barefoot alongside. The warm air was heavy and smoky and weighed me down. I entered Liborio’s home, half-expecting to meet a bearded sage, sitting quietly doing yoga. Instead I saw a youthful-looking man in khakis, a pink-collared shirt and a baseball hat that rested on top of his head. He was clean-shaven and could have passed for 45.

He was in fact 58, as he proudly stated, and had been a shaman for 35 years. By his own count, Liborio has helped thousands of sick people. He usually charged 25-30 soles per visit; the maximum is 100 soles (about US$30). With no medical post in Nueve de Octubre, Liborio is the only option.

Liborio was soft spoken and genuine, and I was struck by his passion and youthful energy as he brought out a bundle of green plants. He showed me several of the medicinal plants he uses, including vines and herbs intended to cure muscle pain, arthritis, impotence, and the common cold. There were also plants that helped with malaria, cancer, and headaches as well as various forms of garlic, lemon grass, cat’s claw, tree sap.

It seems that almost everything found in the Amazon has a function.

According to many, the most important plant in the Amazon is the ayahuasca vine, nicknamed the ‘rainforest king’. Ayahuasca has a reputation of being a hallucinogenic drug, used for vision quests and other bizarre rituals. In fact, ayahuasca, a Quechua word meaning ‘vine of the soul’, is used for ceremonies and religious rituals as well as for medicinal purposes. In the jungle, it is a cure-all and can supposedly prevent any type of illness or pain. There are various ways to prepare it for consumption, and, of course, different effects and timetables for it to kick in, depending on how it is administered.

Liborio sat down next to me on a small bench and explained his method. He first boils the vine, a dark green-brown serpentine root with a potent smell, for at least four hours in water. Often the shaman administering it will mix in menthol, camalonga seeds, or sugar cane rum. He stressed the importance of fasting for a day before taking ayahuasca; during this ritual cleansing, the shaman will often sit with you and pray for your health. It is incredibly potent and taking too much could make you sick for days. Liborio says that if you are in contact with anyone when taking ayahuasca or record any of what you experience, it won’t work properly.

Everything that occurs is meant to exist entirely within one’s self.

The effects begin almost immediately. Within minutes you begin to vomit uncontrollably, cleansing your body of every evil (some call the vine la purga, or ‘the purge’). You become acutely aware of everything in and around you; Liborio claims that with it you can see the past, present, and future all at once. As if in a trance you become rooted in the ground, your brain working rapidly to process all the events surrounding you. You spend the night like this, in a dreamlike state. When you wake up, you are cured of whatever ails you.

Liborio emphasized that ayahuasca is not a drug; the people living in Amazonia have a special relationship with the vine and do not take it recreationally. There are infinite alternate universes connected in the spiritual realm, and the shaman sees ayahuasca as a portal to these dimensions. Some scientists believe that ayahuasca, with the help of a powerful chemical in the vine called DMT, unlocks parts of the brain that are normally inactive and triggers a psychedelic experience much more intense than that of other hallucinogens.

In March 2006, National Geographic Adventure, reporter Kira Salak traveled to the Peruvian Amazon to explore the vine’s powerful effects. She described the work of Dr. Charles Grob, who started the Hoasca Project at UCLA in 1993 to study ayahuasca’s physical and psychological effects.

“According to Grob,” she wrote, “ayahuasca provokes a profound state of altered consciousness that can lead to temporary ‘ego disintegration,’ as he calls it, allowing people to move beyond their defense mechanisms into the depths of their unconscious minds — a unique opportunity, he says, that cannot be duplicated by any non-drug therapy methods.”

Ingesting ayahuasca can result in an inner examination of everything in one’s mind and soul, both good and bad. Cesar Harmes, the owner of the Pacaya-Samiria Lodge, warned me of its effects. “ I have friends who tried it and were never the same,” he said in heavily accented English. He also told stories of shamans who robbed their patients and left them in the jungle while in the deep trance of an ayahuasca experience. Salak quotes Grob as saying, “It’s probably not for most people in our world today. You have to be willing to have a very powerful, long, internal experience, which can get very scary. You have to be willing to withstand that.”

Could I withstand it? Willy, my guide at Cesar’s lodge, offered to take me to a shaman so I could experience ayahuasca for myself. I hesitantly agreed.

What dark thoughts lay in the recesses of my mind — did I really want to know?

After a restless night I woke the next morning prepared to face my inner self and come out a changed man. Perhaps I would become religious, or maybe denounce faith completely. Or flee into the jungle, never to return. I struggled to come to grips with the unknown and debated changing my mind and turning down the offer. And for all the buildup, I learned that Willy had to leave the lodge a day early and couldn’t take me to the shaman. And strangely, instead of relief, I only felt disappointment at a missed opportunity.

For all the plants and herbs Liborio showed me, the main cure for every disease, he said, is faith. He brought out a black weathered Bible, held it close to him, and said, “Este es mi maestro – this is my teacher.” The convergence of Catholicism and shamanistic practices leads to a complicated and unique set of beliefs in the jungle.

In Nueve de Octubre, Liborio is the people’s only option, and whatever they may believe in, they use him as their doctor — they have no other choice.

Liborio is devoutly Catholic. The ‘black shamans,’ the ones who use their powers to harm and injure people, have sided with the Devil, says Liborio. It is his job to protect his people from them and the diseases they wish on his villagers. In his 35 years as a shaman he has failed only once.

A pregnant woman from his village came to him a few years ago, asking for help. She said she had been pregnant for over four years. He gave her various medications to ease her pain, but nothing helped. Eventually, he sent her to a more equipped modern hospital up the river in Iquitos. The doctors there performed a Cesarean section and found a beast inside of the woman, half-human and half anaconda.

They panicked and tried to kill it; they sliced off the snakehead as the woman screamed in agony. The head hissed as it fell to the floor, rolling around the room as the doctors chased after it. Somehow, Liborio said, the head climbed back inside the woman and reattached itself to its human body. She has been in Iquitos for over a year as the confused doctors continue to run tests on her. Liborio told me that they did not want to bring in outside doctors for fear that the media attention would be an invasion of the woman’s privacy.

As improbable as this story may seem, hearing Liborio tell it made me want to believe. “It is true,” he said repeatedly. “I am not a liar.” In the Andes there are stories of snakes that crawl inside of women who are bent over the dirt. Could it be possible that this happened here, that a snake really has been living inside this woman for almost four years?

The mysterious power of the jungle and the aura of the shaman made it difficult to separate fact from fiction, truth from fable.

Liborio then blessed me with good health. I sat down once more on his wooden bench in the dark hut. Spider webs hung above me and sunlight forced its way through the slits in the thatched roof. Liborio took out a hand-rolled cigarette and began smoking. He had a bundle of dried leaves and tapped me on the head with them repeatedly in an incessant rhythm, as if he were keeping a beat with his foot, and he began to chant quietly in Cocama, the cadence rising, falling, then rising again as the pace remained constant. With my eyes closed I could feel his hot breath and smell the tobacco swirling above my head. His tapping was pushing me down, down into the earth; I felt like I was sinking, deeper through the soil and beyond, away from the jungle.

At first it was frightening and disconcerting; I had lost any sense of where I was. Slowly, however, everything seemed to disappear save his voice and the rustle of the leaves hitting my head. The fear was replaced with a peace and calmness. Liborio’s faith was palpable. The chant continued; the rhythm always at the same pace as the leaves slowly beat my head into the ground. Finally, and without warning, it stopped, and I was back in Liborio’s hut. He whispered something indecipherable, almost to himself, then took a big drag of his cigarette and blew it above my head twice. He told me to open my eyes.

This is the complexity of the jungle: it is an incredibly difficult environment to live in, and yet it is host to some of the most powerful medicinal plants in the world. It is almost as if the jungle feels sorry for its inhabitants.

tags : peru, jungle, shamans, ayahuasca

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4 Comments

# donald cooper jr says :
29 September, 2009 [ 01:27 ]

THE JUNGLE OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON IS AMAZING,ALTHOUGH I THINK YOU WERE LUCKY YOUR GUIDE LEFT EARLY AND YOU WERE NOT ABLE TO EXPERIANCE THE AYAHUASCA.I DOUBT YOU WOULD HAVE EVER BEEN THE SAME.A VERY DEEP AND SCAREY EXPERIANCE MOST PEOPLE NEED NOT ENDURE INCLUDING MYSELF!

# Gart van Gennip says :
30 September, 2009 [ 04:24 ]

A very good article, thank you for that! As a resident of Iquitos I am very concerned about the increasing drug-related tourism to our city. I have posted an article about it on my website ikitos.com. You can find it here: http://www.ikitos.com/ayahuasca.htm (I couldn't get the 'insert link' function to work). I am including a link to this article right now. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to contact me.

# Brien Foerster says :
30 September, 2009 [ 05:40 ]

Ayahuasca is a sacred plant, and when used by a trained practitioner heals many illnesses. I have taken this sacred plant, and my experience was very deep, but also very beneficial and not at all scary.

# Paola Pomposini says :
3 October, 2009 [ 01:42 ]

I totally agree with Brien. Ayahuasca is an effective and precise tool to grow and process what we need to, and trances are not always disturbing, even though not a smooth ride many times.
The same year I did my ceremonies for the first time, I had to face a very serious family problem. I would never had been able to cope had it not been for the teachings I had received from this sacred plant months before.

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