Susun Weed, herbalist

My plant teacher doña María Tuesta Flores knew hundreds of plant medicines. The key to healing with plants, she told me, is not only to know which plant can heal which conditions, but also to understand the proper way to prepare the plants for use. “We have all these plants here,” she said, “cures for all sorts of diseases; now that you have learned about them, you must learn how to prepare them.” The practical use of the healing plants, she told me, I would learn in time from the plants themselves.

Before I began to study plant medicine in the Amazon, it was my great good fortune to have worked with several prominent herbalists in North America. The one who most influenced me — with her knowledge, wisdom, earthy humor, and audacious soul — was Susun Weed.

These two plant teachers, Susun Weed and María Tuesta, lived thousands of miles apart, and they never met. But they would have recognized each other instantly.

Weed is one of the best-known authorities on herbal medicine in North America. Although her focus has been on natural approaches to women’s health, her ideas on the nature of herbal medicine, the centrality of preventive care, the primary use of local and wild plants, and the way we must engage with the plant spirits — all of which she calls the Wise Woman Tradition — have universal application. What I learned from her was not only the uses of particular plants — dandelion and nettle and oatstraw — but also a way of thinking about plant healing, simultaneously practical and spiritual. “The Wise Woman Tradition,” she told an interviewer, “invites everyone to weave themselves into greater wholeness.”

Susun Weed with geese and goats

Weed began studying herbal medicine in 1965, and she wrote her first book — Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year, now in its 29th printing — in 1985. Since then, she has written books on menopause and breast cancer, as well as Healing Wise, an introduction to her herbal philosophy and approach to the healing plants.

Weed travels throughout the world to speak at major conferences, medical schools, hospital wellness centers, breast cancer centers, midwifery schools, and shamanic training centers. She has frequently appeared on radio and television programs. Her contribution on herbal medicine appears in the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women, and she writes a regular column in Sagewoman magazine. Her articles have appeared in Natural Health, Woman’s Day, and Herbs for Health.

“My goal,” she says, “is to change how we think about health and healing.” Herbal medicine is “simple, safe primary care… a gift of health from the green nations.” She continues: “My primary ally, my teacher in all things is Nature: the Earth and her many companions. I live with the plants, and the weather, and my goats.” Our relationship with the plants is a giveaway dance, she says. “You may lose your job and your health insurance, but the medicines of the earth will never abandon you. Green blessings are always waiting for us to recognize them and utilize them.”

Weed is thus an advocate of the common plants, especially those that grow locally and wild — what she calls kitchen remedies. “Knowing how wild plants affect health is part of knowing how to cook,” she said in a recent interview. “You don’t need a prescription to eat dinner.”

In Susun Weed’s kitchen

Weed devotes much of her time to teaching. From March through November each year, she opens her home to students, apprentices, and visiting teachers. “Our workshops focus on the teachings of the Wise Woman Way, which nourishes wholeness through story, ceremony, and weeds.”

Her hands-on courses are the most popular — how to identify and pick the plants that grow on her property, how to use them when freshly picked, how to prepare tinctures, decoctions, teas, and vinegars from them. “I see how much confidence my students gain,” she says, “when we go out together to identify, pick, prepare and use the plants that grow around them.”

Some of her teaching methods are unorthodox. The students spend a good part of their time herding the goats, which requires them to be alone in nature for most of the day. “I do my best to create for the apprentices the same situations that allowed me to hear the plants speaking, that opened my heart to the ways of Nature… I want my students to learn as I learned, not what I learned. I want them to find their own way and to trust their own intuition.” Like doña María, she lets her students learn from the plants themselves.

In 2007, Weed was interviewed by herbalist John Gallagher. I have embedded the fifty-minute interview — split into five parts — in its entirety below. It is a wonderful way to get a sense of her warmth, humor, and spirit. She sets the tone right at the outset. “Herbal medicine,” she says, “is people’s medicine.”

]]> http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/08/susun-weed-herbalist/feed/ 5 http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/08/plants-of-the-ancient-maya/ http://www.singingtotheplants.com/2009/08/plants-of-the-ancient-maya/#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:00:08 +0000 Steve Beyer http://www.singingtotheplants.com/?p=3377 In 2001, a graduate student named Charles Zidar heard a lecture on the polychrome ceramics of the Classic Maya. The lecturer mentioned, in passing, that the botanical motifs with which many of these ceramics were decorated remained unidentified. This remark inspired Zidar, a natural historian and archaeologist, to focus his research on plants illustrated on Maya ceramics, culminating in the creation of a botanical resource database of the plants depicted in Classic Maya art, with the goal of rediscovering unknown or forgotten plants that were important to the ancient Maya. The initial results of this research have now been published.
]]> In 2001, a graduate student named Charles Zidar attended the Primer Congreso Internacional de Copán — entitled Ciencia, Arte y Religión en el Mundo Maya — where he listened to a lecture on the polychrome ceramics of the Classic Maya, AD 250–900, presented by Dorie Reents-Budet, an expert on Mayan ceramics and curator of the Art of the Ancient Americas at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Classic Maya vase depicting a scene of the royal court

The paintings on these ceramics provide important information about the daily life of the Maya elite class, Reents-Budet said; they depict the decorations that adorned their now bare stone palaces, and the perishable interior furnishings that have not survived in the archeological record — curtains and throne covers of cloth and jaguar skin; ceramic, gourd, wood, and basketry containers; books; regal costumes; musical instruments; scented torches. And she mentioned, in passing, that the botanical motifs with which many of these ceramics were decorated remained unidentified.

This remark inspired Zidar, a natural historian and archaeologist, to focus his research on plants illustrated on Maya ceramics, culminating in the creation of a botanical resource database of the plants depicted in Classic Maya art, with the goal of rediscovering currently unknown or forgotten plants that had been important — symbolically, ritually, or economically — to the ancient Maya.

Painted and sculpted images of whole plants, leaves, fruits, and flowers are represented on many Maya artifacts; the “breath soul,” the carrier of life, was often conceptualized as a flower. However, “despite the importance of plants to the ancient Maya and the many advances in understanding ancient Maya iconography and hieroglyphs,” Zidar says, “there has been scant identification and interpretation of botanical motifs in Classic Maya art. Many Classic period monumental and personal artworks feature plants, the rich variety of imagery reflecting that of the natural environment.”

Trunk spines of Ceiba pentandra (left) depicted on a ceremonial incense jar

Now some of this research has appeared in an article, co-authored by Zidar and botanist Wayne Elisens, and published in the journal Economic Botany.

This first analysis focuses on artwork produced in a single geographic area — the southern lowland region of the Maya, located in the modern countries of Belize, Guatemala and Mexico. In particular, too, the authors searched for depictions of bombacoids, a diverse family of neotropical trees characterized by swollen or spiny trunks and big, colorful, conspicuous flowers with long folding petals. The goal was to see which of these plants were important to the culture, and why.

The study involved evaluating more than 2,500 images of Maya ceramics from the collection of Justin and Barbara Kerr, curated by the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, located in Crystal River, Florida. “It has amazed me that so many plants are depicted,” said in a BBC interview. “These plants are not as stylized as previously thought, and thus you can name the plant family, genus, and even the species.”

Flower of Quararibea sp. (left) painted on a vessel used for sacred chocolate

For example, among the discoveries were numerous depictions of the kapok tree, Ceiba pentandra, which grows around 150 feet high, and was sacred to the Maya as the “first tree” or “world tree,” thought to stand at the center of the earth. The thorny trunks of the Ceiba tree were found to be represented on ceramic pots used as burial urns or ceremonial incense holders.

“The Maya have lived and used rainforest plants to heal themselves for thousands of years,” Zidar said in a BBC interview. “We are just beginning to understand some of their secrets.” He continued: “By determining what plants were of importance to the ancient Maya, it is my hope that identified plants can be further studied for pharmaceutical, culinary, economic and ceremonial uses.”

I have spoken before about my plant teacher doña María Luisa Tuesta Flores. She was born in September 1940, in the town of Lamas in the province of San Martín, and she died, the victim of sorcery, in July 2006. She had begun her healing career as an oracionista, a prayer healer, and, even after she became an ayahuasquera, her icaros, magic songs, remained inflected with the rhythms and melodies of prayers.

Her youth was filled with dreams and visions of angels and the Virgin Mary. She delighted in working with children; when she retrieved the soul of a child, lost through susto or manchari, sudden fright, the soul would appear to her as an angel. When she was seven years old, she had her first dream of Hermana Virgen, sister virgin, who began to teach her how to heal with plants. From that time on, she frequently had dreams in which either the Virgin Mary or an angel appeared to her. The Virgin would appear as a young and very beautiful woman, show her the healing plants, and teach her the plants to cure specific diseases. The angel would appear and tell her where in the area there was a child who was sick and needed her help. She then went to the house of the child and told the family what plant would cure the illness and how to prepare it.

She did not drink ayahuasca until she was twenty-five, when, injured in a magical attack by a vengeful sorcerer, she apprenticed herself to don Roberto Acho Jurema, already at that time a well-known healer, my own maestro ayahuasquero. Unlike many ayahuasqueros, doña María did not herself perform regular Tuesday and Friday ceremonies, although she would from time to time work together with don Roberto. Even as an ayahuasquera, she would go — as she always had — wherever her healing powers were needed.

Doña María often shook her head in dismay at my questions, my blockheaded inability to absorb the immense plant knowledge she offered to me. What I needed to learn I would learn, over time, from the plants themselves, she said; the way for me to learn was to “continue on, and all will be shown to you.” This was typical doña María. When I would say I couldn’t learn any more, she would scold me. Study, study, study, she would tell me. Follow, follow, follow.

Doña María was not a simple person, and certainly not a saint. She was genuinely warm, giving of her knowledge, impatient, dramatizing, complaining, generous, fussy, proud, unassuming, earthy, demanding, motherly. She lived as a healer in the disorderly landscape of the soul.

I feel blessed to have known her, even for such a short time. Here are two of her icaros, her healing songs.

The study is by two distinguished scholars, ethnobotanist Rainer Bussmann and anthropologist Douglas Sharon, who had previously co-authored two significantly useful books — Plants of the Four Winds: The Magic and Medicinal Flora of Peru and Plants of Longevity: The Medicinal Flora of Vilcabamba. The present study was based on research earlier published here and here.

Rainer Bussmann

Northern Peru and southern Ecuador form a single culture area and share the same flora. Both are heirs of a regional plant healing tradition that goes back as far as the Cupisnique culture of the first millennium BC. But the two areas now show striking differences in plant knowledge and use.

The authors did a comprehensive survey — collecting, identifying, and recording vernacular names, traditional uses, and applications — of 510 plant species used for medicinal purposes in Peru and 215 plant species used for medicinal purposes in Ecuador. The number of species used as medicine indicates that the healers, market vendors, and members of the public whom the authors interviewed in Peru had considerable knowledge of plants in their surroundings, while in Ecuador much of this traditional plant knowledge appears to have been lost. Plants used as medicine in southern Ecuador comprise only forty percent of the species used in northern Peru.

How this difference came to be is particularly interesting.

Colonial chroniclers often included detailed descriptions of useful plants in their reports, and the authors reviewed both earlier and later compilations. In 1780, Martínez Compañon, Archbishop of Trujillo, had a complete inventory of the plants in his dioceses prepared, which covered much of the territory in the present study, and which contained 526 plant species. The work included detailed paintings of each plant, which the authors compared closely to the modern medicinal flora of the region, finding that the vernacular names of most plants had not changed since colonial times. In northern Peru, the number of medicinal plants did not seem to have changed significantly since the late 1700s — more than 500 species were found in both the Compañon survey and in modern Peruvian markets — while in southern Ecuador the number of plants used as medicine had declined significantly.

Douglas Sharon

A closer comparison, however, showed that only 41 percent of the plants described by Compañon were still sold in Peru; the remainder of the contemporary Peruvian pharmacopoeia had been added more recently. Even more, the plants used in Ecuador today remain most similar to those reported in the earlier rather than the later colonial herbals, as though plant knowledge there had become frozen at the time of colonization. This means that, from earliest colonial times, practitioners in both northern Peru and southern Ecuador stopped using a certain number of medicinal plants. But in Peru these plants were replaced by new ones, and in Ecuador the pharmacopoeia simply grew smaller.

So: why should this be? Bussmann and Sharon give a historical explanation. In Ecuador, the colonial Spaniards immediately began the persecution of traditional medical practitioners, while in Peru the colonial administration was much more tolerant. And this difference continued. In the 1980s, the Peruvian government established a National Institute for Traditional Medicine, while in Ecuador traditional medicine remained illegal until a constitutional amendment was passed in 1998. The persecution of traditional medical practitioners in Ecuador inhibited experimentation with new remedies, and the tradition withered.

The lesson here is worth emphasizing: the survival of a tradition of plant medicine lies not in its remaining static, but rather in its ability to experiment, innovate, and adapt. A static knowledge base inevitably shrinks. Persecution in Ecuador did not cause the loss of plant knowledge; it prevented the acquisition of new plant knowledge.

And a further implication is worth drawing as well. This finding runs directly counter to the common assumption that indigenous traditions today have survived through lack of change.

How important is traditional plant knowledge in the Amazon? According to a recent study among the Tsimane’ in Amazonian Bolivia, each standard deviation of maternal ethnobotanical knowledge increases the likelihood of good child health by more than fifty percent. And the study raises the question: What will be the cost — to the Tsimane’ and other indigenous peoples — if such ethnobotanical knowledge is lost?

The Tsimane’ number about 8,000 people who live in about 100 villages along the Maniqui River and the interior of the Pilon Lajas region of the Bolivian Amazon. Tsimane’ villages are small, with an average of about 24 households linked by kinship and marriage. At the time of the study, no household had electricity or running water, and half the villages were inaccessible by road. The Tsimane’ have traditionally lived by slash-and-burn agriculture, gathering, hunting, and fishing. However, since the 1970s, their territory has been encroached on by colonist farmers, logging firms, cattle ranchers, and oil companies. The Tsimane’ now increasingly interact with the market economy through the sale of goods and wage labor, primarily on cattle ranches, logging camps, and farms.

Such integration into the market economy brings about changes in occupation, preferences, social organization, and health and nutritional status. The Tsimane’ are now starting to merge into a culture that places no value on their indigenous knowledge, especially their ethnobotanical knowledge. Under this pressure, traditional knowledge of medicinal plants is starting to disappear, with little to take its place. Too often, as here, the global market holds out the offer of western medicine without providing the means to gain access to it.

Thomas McDade and William Leonard from Northwestern University set out to learn what impact the loss of traditional plant knowledge might have on the health of children. To do this, they assessed the health of 330 Tsimane’ children, aged from two to ten years old, and tested their mothers and fathers on both their knowledge of local plants and their skills at using them. Local ethnobotanical knowledge was quantified using five measures — agreement with local experts on plant uses; botanical knowledge; skills in using plants; total number of plants used; and diversity of plants used. Child health was measured using three variables — concentration of C-reactive protein, a marker of infectious burden; skinfold thickness, a measure of fat stores; and stature, used to calculate height-for-age scores, an indicator of nutritional and health status.

The results were striking. For each measure of health, mothers with higher levels of plant knowledge and use had healthier children, independent of potentially confounding variables related to education, market participation, and acculturation. The Tsimane’ ethnomedical tradition

may play a particularly important part in protecting health because effective commercial medicines are expensive and difficult for the Tsimane’ to procure. If remedies derived from local plants are effective in preventing or treating illness, this would contribute not only to lower levels of inflammation but also to improved linear growth and body fat stores by reducing allocations of energy to fueling immunity and fighting infection.

Strikingly, although the authors infer a direct association between maternal plant knowledge and child health, it may be that this association is mediated by the children themselves. Tsimane’ children spend much of their time away from parental supervision, playing and foraging in small peer groups, and the authors report seeing older children use medicinal plants both for themselves and for younger children. It may be that plant knowledge — like so much other cultural knowledge — is passed, not from adults to children, but rather from older children to younger children.

In the preservation of plant knowledge lies the destiny of the people.

Significant among the tools used by shamans in the Upper Amazon are piedras, or piedras encantadas, magic stones, sometimes called just encantos, charms; such stones are called inkantos by the Machiguenga and Shipibo. My teacher doña María Tuesta told me that her father was a tabaquero who kept two magic stones, one male and one female, in a jar filled with a mixture of tobacco and water. When doña María was about eight years old, while her father still lived with the family, she saw him work with the stones twice. She could see the spirits of the stones: they both had very dark skin and long black hair. The male spirit of the stone had dark red eyes like huayruro seeds. His mouth was painted red, the color of brujería, sorcery — magia roja, red magic, the worst kind. He could stick his tongue out all the way to his chest, as is typical of sorcerers; his flema, magical phlegm, was filled with scorpions, snakes, and toads.

In addition, doña María, in the dream journey that constituted her coronación as a prayer healer, dreamed that she passed by a stream in which piedritas, magical stones of all kinds, large and small, were singing to her: “Welcome, welcome, maestra, doctora.” Doña María counted such magic stones among her animal protectors, since the imanes, spirits, of the stones became black boas, yellow boas, condors, and macaws in order to protect her.<

Black flint

Magic stones may — but need not be — striking in appearance: color, shape, and texture may indicate that a stone is, in fact, encantada. The stone may be shaped like a person or animal, like a snake or a jaguar claw, or have an unusual color, or be visually attractive, or just be rare. The stone may turn up in an unusual place or behave oddly; among the Aguaruna, a magic stone is often found in the stomach or crop of an animal as it is being cleaned. The stone may speak to the shaman, or the spirit of the stone may appear in the shaman’s dreams, or in an ayahuasca vision. Cocama shaman don Juan Curico says that encantos are stones that with time have taken the shape of jungle animals or human body parts. He himself has stones in the shape of a snail, the head of an anaconda, the head of a crocodile, a human hand and head.

Crystals particularly are prized; they are, says one mestizo shaman, luz solidificada, solidified light, with a celestial origin. Ordinary piedra pedernal, flint — “like a crystal, but black,” doña María explained to me — may be a powerful magic stone, perhaps in part because it is not native to the Amazon. Such stones come from Lima, I was told; they are about three inches long. If you put the stone in a glass jar of water, and then drink the water, the stone takes away shame, sorrow, anxiety.

The doctrine of signatures applies to stones as well as to plants. Don Francisco Montes Shuña says that a shaman can tell what stones have power, and what power they have, by looking at their shape and color. A stone of white marble can be an arcana, protection, because it purifies, cleanses, and protects the body; a red stone can nourish the blood; translucent crystals give vision and clarity. A stone in the shape of a human hand can take away pain from the body part on which it is placed.

Crystal

Magic stones will stick for several hours to the place on the body where sorcery has struck, suck out the harm — the dart, the insect, the scorpion, the phlegmosity — and then drop off. Stones can also be used to rub the place where the sickness is located, to loosen the intrusive pathogenic object, so that the shaman can suck it out from the suffering flesh.

Just as the shaman drinks the plants in order to master them, the shaman drinks the magic stones. The shaman leaves the stones in water for a day, observing la dieta, blowing tobacco smoke over them, telling the stone what the shaman wants to know, and finally drinking the water. The spirit of the stone will then appear in a dream and teach the shaman what the shaman seeks. The spirit of the stone can also be seen when drinking ayahuasca; the stones can also be kept in a tobacco infusion, and the tobacco drunk. “It is something admirable,” says don Juan Curico, “to share the wisdom of millions-year-old beings.”

Beliefs about magic stones are widespread in the Upper Amazon. Among the Waiwai, a magic stone, called ñukwa, appears in the mouth of the apprentice shaman during a dream; holding the stone in his mouth, the apprentice learns to sing the magic songs. Similarly, Warao shamans acquire magic stones which descend into their mouths during dreams. Among the Aguaruna, magic stones are generally used for a variety of purposes — hunting, seduction, planting, warfare. These stones have souls, and can assume human form in dreams; they can drink blood, eat souls, and run away if not properly fed. Rock crystals among the Desana are invested with complex cosmological and sexual symbolism. The stones are fed on tobacco, and stored in water infusions of tobacco; these nicotine-rich infusions are drunk in order to communicate with the spirits of the stones.

Vance Gellert, Victor Ventos, Stone Healer (2005)

Yagua shamans keep two kinds of magic stones — small stones called soul-stones or invisible stones, which are kept safe in the stomach; and visible stones, which are kept in a bag hung around the neck. No shaman ever shows these visible stones, saying that they would then lose their power. Blowing tobacco smoke on these stones increases their size a hundredfold. When small, they may be used as weapons, just like darts; when enlarged with tobacco smoke, they became a barrier of protection. Shamans can also keep pieces of glass, called transparent stones, in their stomach, which they can regurgitate and place in the beer gourds of their victims; when swallowed, the glass cuts up the body from the inside.

The Machigengua apprentice receives stones from an invisible celestial being who appears in the apprentice’s ayahuasca vision. The stones must be fed regularly with tobacco smoke; when they are thus nourished, they turn into jaguars. Machigengua shamans acquire these stones — light-colored or transparent, especially quartz crystals — during initiation or from the shaman’s father or other close relative. These stones are considered the body, or residence, or material manifestation of the spirits. The shaman carries the stones in a small bag and feeds the stones tobacco daily; if the shaman fails to do so, the spirits will leave the stones, and the shaman will die. Canelos Quichua believe that the spirits in their magic stones are those of dead shamans. If you gently blow on such a stone, you will see condensation appear on its surface; this shows that the stone “has breath,” that it is a powerful shaman.

The article he wrote two years after this diagnosis tells an extraordinary story. Beginning four months after his surgery, he drank ayahuasca four times — twice in ceremonies of the Santo Daime church, and twice with an unidentified person who claimed to have studied ayahuasca with shamans in Peru. A week after his fourth ayahuasca session, he was given a blood test for carcinoembryonic antigen, a cancer marker, and the following week the oncologist told him that his CEA count was completely normal. “You’re one of the lucky few,” the oncologist told him. Topping attributed his recovery to ayahuasca.

A year later, in 1999, he followed up with another article in the Bulletin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies entitled Ayahuasca and Cancer: A Postscript. Here he said that “the metastasized cancer appears to be in complete remission.” He said that he has no scientific understanding of how ayahuasca had the effect it did, but he suspects that it had something to do with ayahuasca realigning his cells.

Topping died of his cancer on June 29, 2003, at the age of 73, apparently having continued to refuse chemotherapy. Fewer than ten percent of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer survive for three years after the initial diagnosis; fewer than four percent survive for five years. There is no question that Topping’s seven-year survival was remarkable. The question is whether it had anything to do with his having drunk ayahuasca four times shortly after his diagnosis, and — this is unclear — at various times after that. There seems to be very little reason to believe that it did.

No scientist or physician ever considered Topping’s ingestion of ayahuasca to have anything to do with his remarkable survival. No study — indeed, as far as I know, not even a case report published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal — has ever associated ayahuasca with cancer remission. No constituent of the ayahuasca drink has ever been associated with anticancer activity.

I have found very few additional claims by cancer patients of having been cured by ayahuasca. In a 1996 interview, a woman named Anna reports having been cured of malignant breast cancer by a Peruvian shaman during a single very intense ayahuasca session, during which she was also given an infusion of the bark of a tree she calls capipa, which she says is a traditional cancer remedy, and which I have been unable to identify. The story has very few medical details. Another story, interestingly, tells of how an increase in the cancer protein marker Ca125 led the writer to fear a recurrence of her earlier — and apparently successfully treated — ovarian cancer. She was reassured by a vision during an ayahuasca session that she had no cancer, and, upon retesting, her Ca125 level had in fact returned to normal. Sadly, the reassurance proved false. A year after her ayahuasca experience, her Ca125 levels again began to rise, several small tumors were discovered, and she began chemotherapy again.

A number of curanderos claim that they can cure cancer, although, for reasons discussed below, it is often not clear that they are claiming to do so by using ayahuasca rather than other traditional healing plants. Ayahuasquero don Juan Tangoa Paima claims, for example, that he can heal cancer, as well as AIDS, epilepsy, heart disease, stomach and intestinal conditions, sexually transmitted diseases, depression, drug addiction, mental disorders, migraines, anxiety, and obesity — indeed, the “complete and total healing of any and all afflictions.” Dr. Roberto Incháustegui Gonzalez , who is the drector of the Hospital de la Luz in Iquitos, or perhaps director of the Instituto de Medicina Tropical de Loreto, has been said to cure cancer with ayahuasca, although elsewhere he claims to cure Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, psoriasis, and various forms of cancer using hierbas de la selva, jungle plants, among which ayahuasca may or may not be included.

Thus, apart from a few anecdotes and apparently inflated claims, I am aware of no scientific basis to believe that ayahuasca can cure cancer. Now this is an entirely different question from the idea that ayahuasca can bring healing in the sense of acceptance, reconciliation, or life-affirming joy. It is an entirely different question from whether any profound spiritual experience can have an effect on cancer survival — a proposition that is itself deeply controversial. And it is an entirely different question from whether some other jungle plants that are traditionally used for the purpose, such as uña de gato, Uncaria tomentosa, might have anticancer properties.

Robert Forte is a scholar of the history and psychology of the ancient and modern use of psychedelic drugs. Over the last thirty years he has worked with Stanislav Grof, Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Claudio Naranjo, and many other figures in the modern psychedelic movement. He edited the collections Entheogens and the Future of Religion and Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In. He holds a master’s degree in the psychology of religion from the University of Chicago Divinity School, was a director of the Albert Hofmann Foundation, and taught at the University of California–Santa Cruz. He is currently adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and advisor to the Purdue University Library Special Collection on Psychoactive Substances.

On December 11, 2008, Forte posted a notice on the message board of the CancerCompass website, where he says:

There are several very compelling reports of ayahuasca — a medicine used throughout South America — combined with rigorous diet, and a profound spiritual and psychological component, being helpful in treating cancer…. I have been studying ayahuasca for several years and have received a small grant to explore its uses in its native context. I’d like to invite one or two people who have cancer to embark on a journey to Peru, for one month and see if these natural remedies work. I can show you, and perhaps introduce you to people who have done this…. I’ve posted here with the hope to find someone who might be up for an adventurous healing journey.

The message contains only two references. The first is to the second of the two articles by Donald Topping, which we discussed above; and the second is to Forte’s own book, Entheogens and the Future of Religion, whose writings, he says, “reflect my approach to these practices.” Already one person, suffering from angiosarcoma of the breast, has expressed interest.

I think what we are observing here is the slow imposition of a western idea on traditional shamanic practice in the Upper Amazon — the idea that ayahuasca is a particularly powerful healing plant. The power of its healing is then apotheosized as being a cure for cancer, the ultimate disease — intractable, unpredictable, disfiguring, deadly.

But this is not how ayahuasca is thought of in the Upper Amazon. I am aware of no ayahuasca-using culture of the Upper Amazon in which ayahuasca is considered to be autonomously healing of anything, including cancer. Rather it is viewed as a tool for diagnosis and prescription.

Shamans in the Upper Amazon do not drink ayahuasca to heal; they drink ayahuasca to get information — as Cocama shaman don Juan Curico puts it, “to screen the disease and to search the treatment.” Mestizo shaman don Manuel Córdova says the same thing: “Ayahuasca, it tells you how, but by itself it cures nothing.”

If a patient comes to an Upper Amazonian shaman to be healed of, say, cancer, the traditional purpose of drinking ayahuasca is not to heal the cancer, but rather to determine both the etiology and the treatment of the disease. The ayahuasca tells the shaman where to suck, and what healing plants to use after the carcinogenic projectile has been removed. The ayahuasca reveals to the patient the person ultimately responsible for this intrusion and the resulting cancer — the identity of the sorcerer who projected it, the faithless spouse or false business partner or offended stranger who instigated the attack.

Then other medicines, empowered by magic song, are used to heal.

According to his biography on the Global Giving website, Mabit was born in New Caledonia in Melanesia, spent much of his early childhood in Algeria and Djibouti, and then moved to France, where he completed his studies in general medicine. He pursued additional studies in tropical medicine in Belgium and then traveled to Peru.

From 1980 to 1983, he served as director of a hospital in the province of Lampa, in the high plains region of Puno, under the sponsorship of Doctors Without Borders. Here he conducted research on environmental, cultural, and social factors in the design of an appropriate health care strategy in the central Andean plains, for which he received a research doctorate from the University of Medicine in Nantes in 1984. He received a further diploma in natural medicine from the University of Paris in 1986 — the year, coincidentally, in which he had his first ayahuasca experience.

Although he maintains his French nationality, Mabit has lived and worked in Peru much of the time since 1980. He has also traveled widely in Asia and Africa and worked in various medical capacities in Tunisia, Burkina Faso, and Bangladesh. In fact, it was during a visit to Calcutta in 1984 that Mabit witnessed the spiritual tranquility of a dying man under the care of Mother Teresa — an experience that led him to examine the contributions that traditional healing practices could make to contemporary medical understanding and care systems.

In a 1997 interview with Nicholas Saunders and Anja Dashwood, Mabit describes his first ayahusca experiences:

In 1986 I had my first ayahuasca session. I was terrified by what I might experience, but nothing happened! So I took it a second time and within five minutes I was inside the experience. I experienced death — I was fighting giants and snakes and I was being pulled inside a very deep black hole… I was fighting for my life and it forced me to see what life really was. At one point I accepted that I would have to die and everything was finished and I had been very stupid to come to the jungle to die but it was time and, in the end, Jacques is not important. But at that moment everything changed and suddenly I understood many things, saw a lot of connections, and in that one moment ten years of previous psychoanalysis became clear. Two days later I was taking ayahuasca again.

I had had about ten sessions when the spirit of the plant told me that I was to work with drug addicts. Before that I had never had any interest in that area at all…. It was a total surprise and at that moment I had no idea what to do. But this ayahuasca revelation was so strong, it felt more real than ordinary reality. From 1986 to 1989 I didn’t do anything about drug addiction and just carried on doing ayahuasca and diets and fasting, following the way of learning to cure myself.

In 1989, during another ayahuasca session, the ayahuasca spirit told him that it was time to begin. Soon after that session, he returned to France to seek support for the project, traveling as well to the United States, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, Belgium, and Denmark. He found inspiration at a Buddhist temple in Thailand where they cured drug addicts with plants and a strong spiritual practice.

Most important, he lived with and learned from traditional Amazonian healers and shamans in Colombia and Peru. Speaking to BBC Radio’s Crossing Continents he said: “The idea was the result of my experience as a medical doctor, when I saw how limited traditional [Western] treatments were…. I met spiritual healers — shamans — and realised they had resources unknown in the West.” In 1992, three years after he began his quest, he founded Takiwasi.

The following video is an extended discourse by Mabit, recorded by Jerónimo M. M., which gives a good idea of his personality and ideas.

Thus the ayahuasca drink is reduced to dimethyltryptamine, its single active molecule.

The DMT molecule

Indeed, modern science has defined medicines as having only one compound that is bioactive. This approach has solved some practical problems, such as the need to patent and standardize medicines. The idea has been that the medicinal or psychoactive effects of a plant are accounted for by specific chemicals, and that the best medicine consists of standardized, predictable dosages. Science journalist Joel Swerdlow puts it this way: “The study of whole plants and combinations is rare — largely because single active compounds, particularly those that have been modified, are easiest to patent and because FDA regulations encourage this approach.”

But there are several problems with the assumption that the ayahuasca experience is due to its single active molecule.

Ultrapure crystalline DMT

First, there is a significant experiential difference between drinking ayahuasca and parenteral ingestion of dimethyltryptamine. Differences in the rapidity of onset and duration of the experience mean differences in the amount of time available for contemplation and exploration; the presence or absence of purging means differences in the experience of corporeality and catharsis; and, as we have discussed, the harmala alkaloids — and even MAO inhibition itself — may make independent contributions to the quality or contents of the experience.

Second, emphasis on a single active molecule has prejudiced consideration of whole plants, which can contain dozens of bioactive substances. There is little doubt that every plant contains a unique mix of multiply interacting substances in complex additive, synergistic, and antagonistic relationships, presumably in a variety of feedback loops. The fact that it is difficult to describe these relationships is no reason to decide that they are unimportant.

Yet, once it has been determined that the companion plant contains DMT, the inquiry stops. But mestizo shamans select particular companion plants — and combinations of companion plants — for their specific effects. If their only function is to provide the single active molecule dimethyltryptamine, what is there to choose among them?

Alex Grey, DMT—The Spirit Molecule (2000)

Similarly, if the purpose of the ayahuasca vine is to contribute a single active molecule, or even just a few active molecules, whose function is to inhibit peripheral MAO, then it should not matter if another plant is substituted, as long as it contains the same molecules. But substituting, say, Syrian rue for the ayahuasca vine, even though the rue contains the same harmala alkaloids, does apparently make an experiential difference. The experience with rue has been described as crystalline, cold, overwhelming, erratic, and uncaring, compared with that of the ayahuasca vine, which has been described as warm, organic, friendly, and purposeful.

This difference may be because the harmala alkaloids are in different proportions in the two plants: levels of THH are higher in the ayahuasca vine, harmaline in rue. Experiential differences might also be due to the fact that rue contains tannins and quinazoline alkaloids not found in the ayahuasca vine. Thus, too, self-experimenters tend to use only the minimum amount of rue necessary to inhibit MAO; using more apparently serves no purpose other than to increase the emetic effect. But the amount of ayahuasca vine can be increased beyond the minimum necessary, and increasing the amount is claimed to add a special dimension to the experience.

Randy Mack, The Magic Molecule DMT (2006)

Third, the emphasis on the single active molecule ignores the presumably complex interactions among plants deliberately used for modulatory effects during the ceremony. For example, no metsizo shamanic ceremony takes place without the additional ingestion of tobacco and all of its constituent molecules as well. The ayahuasca experience is the confluence not only of all the molecules in the ayahuasca vine and its companion plants, but also of the modulating effect of nicotine and other tobacco alkaloids — not to mention any of the scores of additional plants that may be added to the ayahuasca drink.

Finally, the focus on single active molecules ignores context. The terms pharmacologicalism and pharmacological determinism have been coined to capture the often unstated premise that the effects of a substance are entirely determined by its chemical structure, thus ignoring the effects, among other things, of traditional ceremonial settings, the authoritative presence of a healer, social pressures both within and outside the ceremony, and expectations of particular outcomes. Expectations of what is supposed to happen during an ayahuasca ceremony may be the most powerful additive of all.

Piñon rojo

While my plant teacher, doña María Tuesta, frequently distinguished between male and female forms of the same plant, the spirits of many plants can appear in either male or female forms — sometimes both at once, as in doña María’s first vision of the ayahuasca spirit, in which two genios appeared on either side of her, one male and one female. Doña María once showed me two cubes of commercially prepared camphor, wrapped in clear plastic, while describing how she used camphor in some of her preparations. “One of these is male and one is female,” she said. I asked how she could tell. She looked more closely. “Oh, these are both female,” she said. “The male ones are a little larger.”

Piñon blanco

Mestizos also use colors as a plant classificatory device, typically distinguishing between light colors, usually white and green, and dark colors, usually red, purple, or black. Thus, shamans come in two colors — on the one hand, light, which includes doña María’s healing practice of pura blancura, pure whiteness; and, on the other, dark, which includes the magia negra, black magic, or, even worse, magia roja, red magic, of wicked sorcerers. Similarly, jaguars fall into two categories — the otorongo, or tawny jaguar, and the yanapuma, the black jaguar, which are regarded as two distinct species, with different habits; western zoologists consider both animals to be the same species, Panthera onca, with the yanapuma being a rare melanistic form of the otorongo.

Patiquina morada

A distinction is also made between light and dark forms of the same plant — for example, toé blanco and toé negro, white and black toé, considered by botanists to be in completely different genera, Brugmansia and Teliostachya, but ethnoboanically linked through their uses and effects; or ishanga blanca and ishanga roja, white and red ishanga, in different genera, Laportea and Urera, but both with stinging hairs used to treat snakebite; or verbena blanca and verbena negra, in different genera, Stachytarpheta and Verbena, but both considered to be cold plants to treat hot conditions such as fever and diarrhea.

Patiquina verde

Often the dark form of a plant is the one used in sorcery. Doña María often called the darker variety morado, purple or dark, and the lighter variety verde, green or light. Thus mestizos consider the plant called, variously, piñon rojo, piñon colorado, or piñon negro and the plant called piñon blanco, which botanists consider two different species in the same genus, Jatropha gossypifolia and J. curcas, to be the dark and light forms of the same plant, with the dark form being a planta bruja; the same is true for lupuna colorada, Cavanillesia umbellata, and lupuna blanca, Ceiba pentandra. A similar distinction is drawn between the plant — or, perhaps, plants — called patiquina morada or patiquina negra and the plant called patiquina blanca or, often, just patiquina, which at this point all seem to be a confusing variety of Dieffenbachia species, with a variety of leaf patterns and colors. Dona María called these groups of plants, respectively, patiquina morada and patiquina verde.