• Psychedelic Drugs Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting RulesBluelight Rules
    PD's Best Threads Index
    Social ThreadSupport Bluelight
    Psychedelic Beginner's FAQ

Ayahuasca Ceremony without a Shaman

consumer said:
I have lots of experience with aya, smoked dmt and mushrooms. A decent aya session is way different to taking an 1/8 oz of mushies. We will have to agree to disagree.
Click to expand...


Most jungle brews are nt dmt heavy at all, i read about someone who sampled a bunch of brews and tested.
The average was just 30mg of dmt per shot, however the harmala content was usually 10x of that.

A pharmahuasca trip with +100mg of dmt and minimal amunt oh harmala is alot more likely to be like mushrooms then a traditional ayahuasca.

But even when using caapi with mushrooms it becomes a very different trip compared to caapi + pure dmt.
 
Never done ayahuasca. If I did, I would want some kind of guidance, but not a shaman.
 
Ismene said:
Language has a scientific basis tho - this is simply some guys opinion about a subjective experience. And the knowledge he's basing his ideas on is pretty limited and he's taking money for it which perverts it even more.

I remember seeing the Piers Gibbon documentary where he went to the "wise" shaman and this shaman really got into the role - he was saying "Oh you need to take ayahuasca every night for the next 40 days and take tobacco juice on top of it" like some strict schoolteacher. As if he was more important than the ayahuasca itself. That's the role you force these people into by going to them on bended knee. I don't know why people need the "wise master" in something like psychedelics. To me the psychedelic is about you and the drug - nothing else matters.

has nothing to do with their level of wisdom.

What wisdom can he offer tho? If I'm deep in an emotion remembering someone I loved who died is the shaman going to come over and start talking in my ear? I don't want anyones wisdom, that's never healed me. The only thing that healed me was crying while high on mushrooms and feeling the comfort and peace of mind that gives you. The mushrooms healed me all by themselves - I never needed anything but them. If anybody else feels the need for a talking therapy with a shaman then that's fine but it's not for me. I like it one on one with the psychedelic.
Click to expand...

Nothing is black and white. I agree that the industry of western ayahuasca shaman "tourism" is rife with people just trying to make money. Although I don't think that it's always true, I'm sure there are legitimately well-intentioned shamans offering the service who also need to make a living, who are actually trying to help people. Besides that though, it's not like that's the only way it happens. True, for a westerner to seek out a shaman for an ayahuasca ceremony, they'll have a hard time finding such a person (I would guess), because what do we know of these people really? But say you were invited to a ceremony by someone connected to it? And it wasn't part of that whole industry? In my mind, you can't just throw it all out because there is a vein of corruption going through it from some.

As for what wisdom a shaman could potentially offer, well, they have been practicing and refining techniques passed down over millenia. They have an intimate knowledge of recipes to make it (there can be many plants added as adjuncts), they understand ways to guide people through that particular experience, they understand how to induce different trance states through chanting/drumming/etc, and so on. We discovered ayahuasca recently, while they've been using it since time immemorial. I think it's rather short-sighted to dismiss them as potentially having something to offer. Surely all that time and tradition has not resulted in nothing gained in terms of knowledge and understanding of the state it produces.

I'm not going to try to seek out a shaman-guided experience, and I doubt I'll ever have one. I don't need a guide to a psychedelic experience, I am my own guide. But if it were to fall upon me organically, I would probably do it. Like I said before, I think there is certainly potential value even for a westerner, because of the exposure to an entirely different cultural context for the experience... this will greatly influence set and is by definition a vastly different setting. And we all know that set and setting influence a trip as much as or more than anything else.

TheBlackPirate said:
Perhaps this explains how even my difficult trips are positive. My thoughts on psychedelics are mingled with the good vibes of the Grateful Dead and the idea difficult trips could be the most beneficial. After all I have enjoyed every experience with classical psychedelics I have had. Could this be the result of my comforting cultural set?
Click to expand...

It certainly could be. I find the same to be true. If I had lived in the dark ages in Europe, in a time full of fear of god and satan, without a cultural context for psychedelics at all, and I had eaten a handful of mushrooms and started tripping unexpectedly, I bet I'd freak out and think I was possessed or something. Instead I read endlessly about them on Erowid and heard about many positive reports... I also heard about them by word of mouth as something that could be fun. I've had really terrifying experiences but I have enjoyed those too, and they've been valuable to me.
 
Last edited:
Actually, it is very shocking to me that someone could say that mushrooms are so similar to ayahuasca.
It is not the case with the trip itself, subjectively, and the statement that they are very chemically similar is simply incorrect.
Mushrooms are powerful and limitless, in my mind, and can show me anything, but ayahuasca can change my life in a flash.
I have had up to 4.5 grams of cubensis before, and I have taken 3 grams or more around 50 times, and had many amazing experiences, but none was anything like my first time on ayahuasca.

To the OP - I don't feel that a shaman is necessary, but having someone with psychedelic experience under their belt as a trip-sitter would definitely be a good choice. I am not big on shamans for myself, at least, based on some of the reasons I have read in this thread, but I have nothing against them if someone wants to use them (depending on how much they charge, of course).
I never wanted one when I used ayahuasca because I wanted to experience the trip myself, in my own way. But I did have a sober sitter in case things got difficult.
 
burn out said:
What do you mean by this? And why do you assume that because something has a "scientific bases" its better or why would you assume
Click to expand...

It can be studied and progress made. What progress can you make on a totally subjective experience that's different for everyone?

Ram Daas didn't know what he was talking about

Certainly not about psychedelics. Staying high on LSD for 2 weeks? And that conman pretending he'd swallowed 900 mics? Come on.

What do you mean by this?

That an uneducated guy living in the jungle won't always be up to speed on the latest brain theories of how psychedelics work. He'll tend to stick to explanations like "God".

well, maybe that attitude is why you are so ignorant and can't even reach ego death lol

What gives with all the personal abuse? Can't you even disagree with someone about the "ego-death" without launching a personal attack on them? If you ever did have the "ego-death" you claim it certainly didn't make you a better or more forgiving person.

Lol, that is the reason people go to teachers/shaman/guru/psychologist/counseler/psychologist/doctor in the first place.

Not sure I'd group all those together.

But dont you see that even by saying how mushrooms healed you all by themselves you are providing other people with information based on your experience which they can then use?

That's not the same thing as taking mushrooms with a bloke in the jungle and him imposing his ideas on your trip.

We can still all learn from each other

I'm still wondering what you think a shaman can say to you while you're on ayahuasca that you couldn't get from the ayahuasca itself.

Why do you post here if oyu think its just between you and the drug?

So now you're saying swapping posts on a drug board is the same thing as paying a stranger thousands of dollars to take ayahuasca with him somewhere?
 
Xorkoth said:
We discovered ayahuasca recently, while they've been using it since time immemorial. I think it's rather short-sighted to dismiss them as potentially having something to offer. Surely all that time and tradition has not resulted in nothing gained in terms of knowledge and understanding of the state it produces.
Click to expand...

Are you basing this solely on their own mythology? Otherwise I'd be very interested in your sources. Afaik the use of ayahuasca has only been documented for the last hundred years or so, while we have archeological evidence of the use of snuffs containing 5-MEO-DMT that dates back several thousand years, ayahuasca could be a relatively young phenomenon. Furthermore "since time immemorial" doesn't really mean that much when we are talking about hunter-gatherer-societies, as everything that preceded the grandparents-generation is more or less regarded as 'ancient history'. Even if we assume that ayahuasca has a very long tradition, I don't think it's very likely that we can talk about one ayahusaca tradition that has accumulated a vast knowledge that has been passed down to modern day shamans, we would be talking about a vast array of different traditions and a whole lot of knowledge would have been lost or distorted on the way.

Now, again, I am not saying ayahuasca and the traditions surrounding it have nothing to offer. But I think most religions are going to tell you that they have been in possession of The Right Way™ since time immemorial. I, personally, tend to not take their word for it.
 
Well I don't know, I just presumed it had been used for longer. Maybe that's not true. I guess I don't have a source.
 
tokezu said:
Afaik the use of ayahuasca has only been documented for the last hundred years or so
Click to expand...

^^ Exactly

Ayahuasca shamanism is not something 'new' to the Western mind, it is just esoteric (experiential) Christianity *disguised* as something tribal and primitive and alien to Western history.

In Christianity, the 'priest' gives the holy food and drink to the congregation

In Shamanism, the 'shaman' gives the holy drink to the congregation.

See the similarity? The only difference is whether the sacrament that is fed to the congregation is genuinely entheogenic like ayahuasca, or placebo substitute like bread and wine.
 
tokezu said:
Afaik the use of ayahuasca has only been documented for the last hundred years or so, while we have archeological evidence of the use of snuffs containing 5-MEO-DMT that dates back several thousand years, ayahuasca could be a relatively young phenomenon.
Click to expand...

That's interesting tokezu - must admit I was surprised when I learned peyote use among native americans only goes back 100 years. Ayahuasca too eh? It is frustrating reading about yage use in south america - you can't get past santo daime and other church members who have created this utterly deranged combination of catholicism and yage. You go to a santo daime church and you get the yage and a picture of Mary and jesus on the wall. What on earth is that bullshit about?
 
^ Yeah I was kind of relieved that Xorkoth didn't ask for my source in return, as I can't quite remember where I read it 8) ... so take it with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, if my claim is true this still doesn't mean ayahuasca isn't much older than that, it's just that hunter-gatherer-societies are notoriously bad at keeping records.
And why drink ayahuasca with a crucifix hanging on the wall? I guess they like it, what other reason would they need?

Edit: Found an article arguing that the term 'ayahuasca' was first documented in the mid-18th century, so a bit longer than my estimate, but gives some pretty good arguments why it's probably not thousands of years old. I didn't invest much time checking the credibility of this source though, if you disagree feel free to pick it apart.
 
Last edited:
I remember reading a guy who'd been out in the jungle studying it and one of my favourite things he said - I think he was explaining why the DMT content was so low in native brews - He said a likely explanation was they believed violent shitting and vomiting helped them to get rid of worms. They were drinking river water all day and most of them were infested with intestinal worms. So rather that using ayahuasca to explore their inner consciousness like some jungle-dwelling hippies they were simply hoping to shit out some worms.

That adds a little insight into native use of ayahuasca! :D
 
That's interesting tokezu - must admit I was surprised when I learned peyote use among native americans only goes back 100 years.
Click to expand...

So central America is not America? I consider the native of Central America to be "native americans" also, never heard anyone claim otherwise.
 
Give it a rest.

The aztecs arn't referred to as native americans - there was a different people and a different culture in north america.
 
i never said it was the same culture my point was merely that peyote use goes back thousands of years by native peoples of the americas. which people specifically, though interesting, wasnt my point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top