yagecero
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2011
- Messages
- 312
Yagé is a medicine. Perhaps the most powerful medicine on the planet. To the indigenous Cofán of el Putumayo, the southern department of the Colombian Amazon, Yagé is the centre of everything from the forming of the universe to predictions of what will pass in the future. While Yagé is a medicine, it is also an astonishing teacher. These two aspects combined deserve respect; Yagé is not something to consume for kicks. To share it with those that have an intimate relationship with the plants and spirits is to open the door and catch a glimpse of another reality with infinite possibility.
After a night with no sleep on a bus from Bogotá to Macoa, and a six hour minibus ride down a bumpy unsealed road, we arrived at our check point. There ee stocked up on tobacco and walked through thick-muddy-jungle for two hours to finally arrive exhausted at _____ ______ . We ate a light meal of white rice and tuna before walking through the village and back into the jungle to the moloca, perhaps half an hour from our base.
This was the first time I drank with a group of Cofán shamans, having been invited by my shaman, Taita Pablo, to this meeting in the heart of Cofán territory. I felt blessed to be there and more than humbled. With six men of knowledge in the moloca for the ceremony, their experience levels ranging from three years (apprentice) to sixty years (abuelo/grandpa), it crossed my mind upon entering that the brew would indeed be prepared for these medicos, and there would no possibility that, as is sometimes the case, it could be prepared for ‘visitors’.
Earlier, while we were travelling through the war-torn Putumayo by mini-bus, I was discussing the brew with Juan (Taita Pablo’s apprentice) and he told me that the Yagé that the Cofán drink amongst themselves in the jungle is different to what they share in other healing sessions with non-indigenous due to the preparation method used. The shaman’s Yagé is raw, which is to say that the diplopterys cabrerana and banisteriopsis caapi are pulverised together in cold water over an eight hour period – it is not boiled. The result is a brew that is cleaner, less purgative, less horrible tasting, but as I found out later and over the next few days, far more visual.
After setting up our hammocks, we followed the traditional procedure of a Cofán ceremony. The men always drink before the women; one by one we approached the shaman leading the ceremony in descending order of experience. Being my first ceremony in the jungle, I drank last, and the smoother (yet still quite bad) tasting raw Yagé seemed so much easier to drink than the regular, black, thicker and all together smokier liquid. I went back to my hammock and made myself comfortable. As I lay down, watching the women drink the sacrament, I wondered if this easier-to-drink Yagé would indeed be stronger as Juan had suggested…
For me at least, Yagé always comes on with a profound lethargy at first, then I start yawning and before I know it, I feel the drink obliging me to close my eyes. I always have to fight my stomach; it wants more than anything to expel the liquid from my body, and it was no different this time, even if I had learnt to fight it by then. My field of vision began to be filled with colours, predominately pinks and purples, with bright blue, green and golden-white fluorescent lights changing constantly. This was no shock to me as I had experienced this before, my entire field of vision drowned in colour; lights flashing, twisting and turning to create geometric patterns at first, but then going on to evolve into more abstract forms that are completely natural and alien at the same time.
Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the journey was becoming deeper. As I delved further inside myself I simultaneously felt my consciousness expand out into the universe. There was a strong nausea at this point, but my body controlled the situation incognito; I was vaguely aware of burping every couple of minutes. Before I realised, I found myself in an entirely different reality. And when I say reality, I mean what I saw and navigated in my mind (always in my hammock with my eyes closed) appeared and “felt” as “real” as this world, there were no psychedelic colours or patterns or melting or any other well known psychedelic effects.
The space that I explored was a carnival that was completely devoid of people. It was also completely dilapidated and decadent; to me at least it seemed as if it had been throbbing with a crowd a short time ago. There was recently discarded rubbish blowing around the ground. As I navigated the isles, flowing past the then empty stalls (still seeming “just” used) I began to feel a tremendous fear of something somewhere off in the distance. At first this didn’t bother me as I was aware that it was far away from me, so I made ‘conscious’ decisions to move in a contrary direction to its source. The only thing was, in that ‘other’ place, reason does not exist, and every corner or aisle I took brought me closer to the fear. I remember starting to panic, even taking routes that seemed the reverse of my will, but every move I made just brought me closer and closer.
I started to see another image growing in my mind, a creature so hideous and destructive that I tried everything to distract myself, but I was still moving around the carnival, basically on a journey towards whatever was there waiting for me.
All of the sudden the strong smoky scent of burning incense wafted through my nose, reminding me of the moloca and the ceremony, while in the exact same moment, one of the taitas started to sing an icaro. The Yagé obliged me to keep my eyes closed, and as the icaro continued I returned to the space of colours, far from the carnival and whatever I was about to encounter. Images formed of what can only be described as a swarm of snakes, all consisting of the most beautiful golds, pinks, reds, greens and purples. They formed patterns, intertwining, disentangling, seeming to swim in and around the ‘space’ I was witnessing. I don’t know how much time had passed, but I remember opening my eyes while the shamans continued to sing and while I could make out the moloca, the snakes continued to mill around each other, the ceremony space seeming to be made up of them.
When the shamans stopped singing the snakes just disappeared, it was almost as if someone had turned the DMT switch off in my brain. I looked around, astounded by what I had just experienced; everybody was lying back in their hammocks, deep within their journeys. I felt bemused; I had arrived at a profound sense of clarity – ‘this’ world could be seen so clearly, every little detail was perfect, the moloca returned to its ‘regular’ state of wood and thatch roof.
Being the first time that I had achieved clarity on DMT, I had no idea that it was still powerfully firing through my synapses. I stood up and walked outside to find Juan and the men of the group (the men and women cannot interact during the traditional Cofán ceremony) that I usually drink with sitting in a circle while the apprentice masterfully played the charango. The first thing that I noticed was everybody was deep in their journey: heads down, eyes closed, their bodies seeming to be unable to find a comfortable position, moving around as if controlled unawares by outside forces. Juan, however, was aware of me, and while he continued to strum quietly, he asked how I was going.
“I don’t know to tell you the truth. Do you think that I could be accustomed to it already?” I asked, confused by how clear everything was.
This comment seemed to bring my friends out of their journeys which put me off a little. One of the others asked me why I was asking and I told them that I felt like I had, “complete control” over the experience.
Juan looked at me and smiled, “If you feel brave _____, you know that you can ask for another cup.”
The look in his eyes was so mischievous and caring at the same time; I instantly knew that I would be safe if I partook of the brew once again. I asked everyone if they had drunk a second time and received a chorus of no so affirmative I knew that nobody would be drinking again any time soon. How long had it been? I asked Juan if he (as is usually the case) had drunk again, but was told that he too would wait a little while before the second serving.
I smoked a cigarette (smoking tobacco is customary during a Yagé ceremony), and contemplated what to do. I watched everybody fall back into their trances and turned to Juan stating, “I’m going to ask Taita for another cup.”
Juan smiled a devilish grin and went back to playing the charango, the music making the empty bodies in front of him sway to the melody.
I walked inside the moloca with such a clear mind that I almost expected the shamans to be up and conversing. I approached the leading shaman who was curled up in his hammock deep in a trance. Even though I felt a little rude disturbing him, I had already learnt that it is customary to follow your desire when it comes to drinking the Yagé, and the head shaman of the ceremony is there to serve the patients and advise them if he thought it wasn’t necessary that they drink again. When I called taita he ‘awoke’ and sat up instantly, becoming scarily lucid within a second, his eyes deep black pools. I asked him for another cup and he smiled a similar, but much more experienced, smile to Juan’s.
I have no idea how long it was after the first cup, but according to Taita Pablo, less than two hours had past when I drank the second. This was a huge source of amusement for the shamans over the next few days. The head shaman seemed to chant into the Yagé for around fifteen minutes as he prepared my serving and it felt much longer than what I had experienced in previous ceremonies. I remember wondering what exactly he was chanting in the Cofán language, what he was “doing” to the Yagé.
Halfway through the serving, my stomach punished me for drinking again so soon when my mind began to reel even before I reached the bottom of the cup. What had I done? The sense of the clarity I had been experiencing dissipated in the five seconds it took me to walk from the serving space to my hammock in the corner of the men’s area. I laid down feeling a heaviness that I only feel with DMT, a force that feels like I delve into the centre of myself and fall out the other side. On this occasion, I literally popped out into space.
I burped loudly, opening my eyes to a swam of colours, the patterns formed what I interoperated as a face, even though it showed no semblance to what we would normally ascribe to the word, it communicated with me in a language that was without words, the messages arriving instantaneously. I looked around at everything buzzing, morphing into an alien landscape before my eyes. The hammocks of the shamans became cocoons housing men that were half animal in the process of metamorphosis.
Without warning Taita Pablo was at my side asking me in a soothing tone if I was “bien borracho (heavily drunk)”, to which I answered with a groan. I wanted to say “yes, Taita, very drunk” but the sound that came out was far from human. I felt my body ever so slowly ‘pouring’ off the hammock as if it were made of thick goo. Taita offered me a lit cigarette and told me to focus, to not give into fear, and that he would be outside if I needed him.
I attempted to make myself comfortable, but the feeling of my body changing substance was too distracting. I wriggled and writhed in the hammock, a profound nausea building in my stomach. The visions came on incredibly quick, there was little difference between what I saw with my eyes opened or closed; everything flowed like a constant narrative, opening my eyes would allow the visions to become more complex as shadows and shapes from the moloca enhanced what was unfolding. Colours exploded in geometric yet serpentine shapes, I could suddenly hear the loud rush of a flowing river. One of the shamans began to sing as my head became dizzier and dizzier. Without knowing how, I found myself on the wooden floor of the moloca, lying in the recovery position. With my line of sight a few inches off the wood, it stretched out before me, forming a room in an Egyptian-like temple; hieroglyphs were clearly visible on the walls that appeared in the candle light.
When people talk about purging, they almost always solely speak of gut-retching-from-the-intestines type vomiting. What is nowhere near as discussed is the purging that occurs from the other end. Yagé, especially in high doses, gives the traveller the nastiest diarrhoea. And while this is of no bother once one is accustomed to it, this was the first time I literally had to purge from my arse. I instinctively stood up from the Egyptian scene on the floor and began walking, completely on autopilot, through the moloca towards the exit, focusing with all of my will to not become lost in what was unfolding around me, the necessity of relieving myself becoming almost painful.
When I stepped out into the open I suddenly froze in front of Taita Pablo and my group of friends, completely buckling at the waste. Somehow I managed to stop myself from fainting as I (think I) ran to the area (lightly cleared near the moloca for this purpose) of the jungle that had been allocated as the ‘cleansing area’. Without realising, I walked about twenty metres into the trees, pulled down my pants to my ankles and squatted, still (luckily) having the foresight to at least keep my pants out of the stream.
As I cleansed, literally feeling as if all of my insides were coming out of me, I looked up and became conscious of the fact that I was in the middle of the jungle. Everything instantly became more alive, trees became mobile, their extremely agile shadows exploded in size before completely smothering me, seeming to crush me in blackness. Everything came down on me with an intense throbbing, a profound weight that pushed me further and further away.
When I came round, I could see snakes everywhere in the shadows, and as soon as I was conscious of them, they began to strike at me. The darkness of the jungle gave way to an even darker blackness, and I began to vomit. The sounds I made as I purged were not human; they seemed to come from the part of me that I ‘fall into’ on Yagé, wherever the fuck that might be.
Being in such an extreme physical state began to worry me – I thought that I’d been poisoned and death (or something worse) was coming. Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw a torch light shining through the scrub, and before I knew it, I had stood up and pulled up my pants. I was utterly confused, everything was completely alien, and the light seemed to have no reference point. All of the sudden, there was a voice asking me if I was ok, and one of the shamans was there standing right at my side. How long had he been there? Had he been there the whole time? His voice was cold and raspy, seeming to be made up of industrial sounds.
I had always thought that I was a hard head, and remember feeling a sense of bravado as I told him that I was okay even though that was far from the truth: a little personal persuasion that did absolutely nothing to change the fact that the trip was still escalating. The Yagé picked up that bravado and discarded it within a microsecond. Although I couldn’t see the trees because of the darkness, I could still see everything somehow, as if everything was made of different levels of black. Once I became aware of this, everything started vibrating and I held my hair tightly in both hands and closed my eyes as everything suddenly became colour, pinks and purples buzzing with iridescent golds, greens and silvers. My head spun with a profound wooziness as if I had drunk five shots of liquor too many and I felt myself lift off, seeming to explode in all directions as intense nausea and a wave of panic gripped me. I buckled at the waist and began vomiting again, high pitched musical notes ringing melodies in my ears with the symphony of insects that sounded robotic. The colours swirled, seeming to drag me into the other world as the shaman began hitting me lightly on the head with his fan made of leaves while singing an icaro.
It is impossible to describe what occurred with the singing of this icaro. At first there was in extreme escalation in effects – breaking through while drinking orally active DMT is a profound experience. I continued to retch and it felt as if the Yagé was searching for damaged cells throughout my body. The shaman continued to sing, his voice morphing into something that strongly resembled a didgeridoo and I dropped to my knees, all the while feeling the Yagé as it journeyed through me. I become extremely conscious of this, seeming to follow it through my system. After I don’t know how long, it felt as if it had found what it was looking for; there was a distinct feeling of ‘something’ diseased in my liver – almost as if it were containing a toxic fluid.
The shaman began to dance around me singing loudly, stomping his feet. I remember looking up at him in agony, wanting more than anything that he stopped the icaro as it truly seemed to escalate all of the effects, especially the physical ones. His face was that of a jaguar and there was an immense gold halo surrounding him. To his side was a creature made up of shadows, and although it was of a hideous appearance, I recognised it instantly as the shaman’s ‘helper’. The feeling in my liver intensified until I believed that I had been poisoned – my thoughts turned to the idea of dying in the jungle, lying on the ground in my own shit and vomit. I began to panic and the retching intensified – the poisonous feeling seeming to pass from liver directly to stomach before exiting as a small amount of felt like thick sludge from my mouth.
The taita stopped dancing and shined the torch on and off a few times which captured my attention before asking me if I had calmed down. At first I thought this to be the case, but within seconds I fell back into the other place. He returned to his icaro as I sat down, my field of vision morphing into that of a jungle made of light and colour. I heard another icaro being sung and felt the presence of Juan, his chant seeming to intertwine with that of the other shaman. With my friend there, the fear suddenly dissipated in an instant as if it had never existed and I felt myself rise to a different level. The shamans continued to sing and dance around me as the jungle I was seeing began vibrating as a beautiful music came from nowhere, its notes filling me with wonder and awe. I lost myself completely as tiny-little-(perhaps knee height)-light-creatures came out from behind the trees and began interacting with each other in a bizarre fashion, everything happening in tune with the music.
They approached me one by one, reaching up with their hands and placing a ‘gift’ into my chest. I remember feeling the most incredible sensations as their arms disappeared in my ‘body’ an extreme euphoria rupturing the magic after I had received a few gifts. I breathed out and looked at Juan just before he asked me how I was with an enormous smile on his face.
‘How powerful,’ was all I could say in a croaky voice as I chuckled nervously when Juan offered me a hand.
I stood up feeling loved, swaying like an alcoholic that has been drinking for two days. I walked gingerly back toward the group and Taita Pablo told me to sit down next to my friend Nico. I was in a profoundly psychedelic state as Nico and I conversed about how privileged we were to be in the heart of Cofán territory with such men of knowledge. A cigarette appeared to be a split arrow in my mouth that let of small fireworks from its frayed pieces with each toke. The trees were giant spirits watching over us, conversing between themselves on the most pressing matters of the planet and humanity, bright while lights flashed and flew across the sky intermittently, ‘spirits’ moved in and around the fringe of the jungle.
For the next six hours I remained in this state, shaken to the core due to what had occurred in the jungle while I was cleansing, but feeling astounded at the sheer power of DMT. Nothing had rocked me like the raw Yagé that the shamans drink amongst themselves, and I don’t think anything will ever rock me like it does.
We spent the next day sleeping and eating as a tropical storm battered the hut we stayed in for the next twenty-four hours. I felt humbled by the Cofán hospitality and discussed my experiences with Juan and Taita Pablo throughout the day, happy to have provided a few laughs because of my eagerness to explore. After the sun set everybody went to bed except Juan and I. We chose to sit up and smoke a joint; I wanted to discuss the ceremonies that we would be taking part in over the next few days. When I finally went to my hammock a few hours later, I couldn’t wait to start exploring the ‘other’ world again the next day, but I had also developed a profound respect for the Yagé, knowing all-to-well that it has both the power to heal or kill.
After a night with no sleep on a bus from Bogotá to Macoa, and a six hour minibus ride down a bumpy unsealed road, we arrived at our check point. There ee stocked up on tobacco and walked through thick-muddy-jungle for two hours to finally arrive exhausted at _____ ______ . We ate a light meal of white rice and tuna before walking through the village and back into the jungle to the moloca, perhaps half an hour from our base.
This was the first time I drank with a group of Cofán shamans, having been invited by my shaman, Taita Pablo, to this meeting in the heart of Cofán territory. I felt blessed to be there and more than humbled. With six men of knowledge in the moloca for the ceremony, their experience levels ranging from three years (apprentice) to sixty years (abuelo/grandpa), it crossed my mind upon entering that the brew would indeed be prepared for these medicos, and there would no possibility that, as is sometimes the case, it could be prepared for ‘visitors’.
Earlier, while we were travelling through the war-torn Putumayo by mini-bus, I was discussing the brew with Juan (Taita Pablo’s apprentice) and he told me that the Yagé that the Cofán drink amongst themselves in the jungle is different to what they share in other healing sessions with non-indigenous due to the preparation method used. The shaman’s Yagé is raw, which is to say that the diplopterys cabrerana and banisteriopsis caapi are pulverised together in cold water over an eight hour period – it is not boiled. The result is a brew that is cleaner, less purgative, less horrible tasting, but as I found out later and over the next few days, far more visual.
After setting up our hammocks, we followed the traditional procedure of a Cofán ceremony. The men always drink before the women; one by one we approached the shaman leading the ceremony in descending order of experience. Being my first ceremony in the jungle, I drank last, and the smoother (yet still quite bad) tasting raw Yagé seemed so much easier to drink than the regular, black, thicker and all together smokier liquid. I went back to my hammock and made myself comfortable. As I lay down, watching the women drink the sacrament, I wondered if this easier-to-drink Yagé would indeed be stronger as Juan had suggested…
For me at least, Yagé always comes on with a profound lethargy at first, then I start yawning and before I know it, I feel the drink obliging me to close my eyes. I always have to fight my stomach; it wants more than anything to expel the liquid from my body, and it was no different this time, even if I had learnt to fight it by then. My field of vision began to be filled with colours, predominately pinks and purples, with bright blue, green and golden-white fluorescent lights changing constantly. This was no shock to me as I had experienced this before, my entire field of vision drowned in colour; lights flashing, twisting and turning to create geometric patterns at first, but then going on to evolve into more abstract forms that are completely natural and alien at the same time.
Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the journey was becoming deeper. As I delved further inside myself I simultaneously felt my consciousness expand out into the universe. There was a strong nausea at this point, but my body controlled the situation incognito; I was vaguely aware of burping every couple of minutes. Before I realised, I found myself in an entirely different reality. And when I say reality, I mean what I saw and navigated in my mind (always in my hammock with my eyes closed) appeared and “felt” as “real” as this world, there were no psychedelic colours or patterns or melting or any other well known psychedelic effects.
The space that I explored was a carnival that was completely devoid of people. It was also completely dilapidated and decadent; to me at least it seemed as if it had been throbbing with a crowd a short time ago. There was recently discarded rubbish blowing around the ground. As I navigated the isles, flowing past the then empty stalls (still seeming “just” used) I began to feel a tremendous fear of something somewhere off in the distance. At first this didn’t bother me as I was aware that it was far away from me, so I made ‘conscious’ decisions to move in a contrary direction to its source. The only thing was, in that ‘other’ place, reason does not exist, and every corner or aisle I took brought me closer to the fear. I remember starting to panic, even taking routes that seemed the reverse of my will, but every move I made just brought me closer and closer.
I started to see another image growing in my mind, a creature so hideous and destructive that I tried everything to distract myself, but I was still moving around the carnival, basically on a journey towards whatever was there waiting for me.
All of the sudden the strong smoky scent of burning incense wafted through my nose, reminding me of the moloca and the ceremony, while in the exact same moment, one of the taitas started to sing an icaro. The Yagé obliged me to keep my eyes closed, and as the icaro continued I returned to the space of colours, far from the carnival and whatever I was about to encounter. Images formed of what can only be described as a swarm of snakes, all consisting of the most beautiful golds, pinks, reds, greens and purples. They formed patterns, intertwining, disentangling, seeming to swim in and around the ‘space’ I was witnessing. I don’t know how much time had passed, but I remember opening my eyes while the shamans continued to sing and while I could make out the moloca, the snakes continued to mill around each other, the ceremony space seeming to be made up of them.
When the shamans stopped singing the snakes just disappeared, it was almost as if someone had turned the DMT switch off in my brain. I looked around, astounded by what I had just experienced; everybody was lying back in their hammocks, deep within their journeys. I felt bemused; I had arrived at a profound sense of clarity – ‘this’ world could be seen so clearly, every little detail was perfect, the moloca returned to its ‘regular’ state of wood and thatch roof.
Being the first time that I had achieved clarity on DMT, I had no idea that it was still powerfully firing through my synapses. I stood up and walked outside to find Juan and the men of the group (the men and women cannot interact during the traditional Cofán ceremony) that I usually drink with sitting in a circle while the apprentice masterfully played the charango. The first thing that I noticed was everybody was deep in their journey: heads down, eyes closed, their bodies seeming to be unable to find a comfortable position, moving around as if controlled unawares by outside forces. Juan, however, was aware of me, and while he continued to strum quietly, he asked how I was going.
“I don’t know to tell you the truth. Do you think that I could be accustomed to it already?” I asked, confused by how clear everything was.
This comment seemed to bring my friends out of their journeys which put me off a little. One of the others asked me why I was asking and I told them that I felt like I had, “complete control” over the experience.
Juan looked at me and smiled, “If you feel brave _____, you know that you can ask for another cup.”
The look in his eyes was so mischievous and caring at the same time; I instantly knew that I would be safe if I partook of the brew once again. I asked everyone if they had drunk a second time and received a chorus of no so affirmative I knew that nobody would be drinking again any time soon. How long had it been? I asked Juan if he (as is usually the case) had drunk again, but was told that he too would wait a little while before the second serving.
I smoked a cigarette (smoking tobacco is customary during a Yagé ceremony), and contemplated what to do. I watched everybody fall back into their trances and turned to Juan stating, “I’m going to ask Taita for another cup.”
Juan smiled a devilish grin and went back to playing the charango, the music making the empty bodies in front of him sway to the melody.
I walked inside the moloca with such a clear mind that I almost expected the shamans to be up and conversing. I approached the leading shaman who was curled up in his hammock deep in a trance. Even though I felt a little rude disturbing him, I had already learnt that it is customary to follow your desire when it comes to drinking the Yagé, and the head shaman of the ceremony is there to serve the patients and advise them if he thought it wasn’t necessary that they drink again. When I called taita he ‘awoke’ and sat up instantly, becoming scarily lucid within a second, his eyes deep black pools. I asked him for another cup and he smiled a similar, but much more experienced, smile to Juan’s.
I have no idea how long it was after the first cup, but according to Taita Pablo, less than two hours had past when I drank the second. This was a huge source of amusement for the shamans over the next few days. The head shaman seemed to chant into the Yagé for around fifteen minutes as he prepared my serving and it felt much longer than what I had experienced in previous ceremonies. I remember wondering what exactly he was chanting in the Cofán language, what he was “doing” to the Yagé.
Halfway through the serving, my stomach punished me for drinking again so soon when my mind began to reel even before I reached the bottom of the cup. What had I done? The sense of the clarity I had been experiencing dissipated in the five seconds it took me to walk from the serving space to my hammock in the corner of the men’s area. I laid down feeling a heaviness that I only feel with DMT, a force that feels like I delve into the centre of myself and fall out the other side. On this occasion, I literally popped out into space.
I burped loudly, opening my eyes to a swam of colours, the patterns formed what I interoperated as a face, even though it showed no semblance to what we would normally ascribe to the word, it communicated with me in a language that was without words, the messages arriving instantaneously. I looked around at everything buzzing, morphing into an alien landscape before my eyes. The hammocks of the shamans became cocoons housing men that were half animal in the process of metamorphosis.
Without warning Taita Pablo was at my side asking me in a soothing tone if I was “bien borracho (heavily drunk)”, to which I answered with a groan. I wanted to say “yes, Taita, very drunk” but the sound that came out was far from human. I felt my body ever so slowly ‘pouring’ off the hammock as if it were made of thick goo. Taita offered me a lit cigarette and told me to focus, to not give into fear, and that he would be outside if I needed him.
I attempted to make myself comfortable, but the feeling of my body changing substance was too distracting. I wriggled and writhed in the hammock, a profound nausea building in my stomach. The visions came on incredibly quick, there was little difference between what I saw with my eyes opened or closed; everything flowed like a constant narrative, opening my eyes would allow the visions to become more complex as shadows and shapes from the moloca enhanced what was unfolding. Colours exploded in geometric yet serpentine shapes, I could suddenly hear the loud rush of a flowing river. One of the shamans began to sing as my head became dizzier and dizzier. Without knowing how, I found myself on the wooden floor of the moloca, lying in the recovery position. With my line of sight a few inches off the wood, it stretched out before me, forming a room in an Egyptian-like temple; hieroglyphs were clearly visible on the walls that appeared in the candle light.
When people talk about purging, they almost always solely speak of gut-retching-from-the-intestines type vomiting. What is nowhere near as discussed is the purging that occurs from the other end. Yagé, especially in high doses, gives the traveller the nastiest diarrhoea. And while this is of no bother once one is accustomed to it, this was the first time I literally had to purge from my arse. I instinctively stood up from the Egyptian scene on the floor and began walking, completely on autopilot, through the moloca towards the exit, focusing with all of my will to not become lost in what was unfolding around me, the necessity of relieving myself becoming almost painful.
When I stepped out into the open I suddenly froze in front of Taita Pablo and my group of friends, completely buckling at the waste. Somehow I managed to stop myself from fainting as I (think I) ran to the area (lightly cleared near the moloca for this purpose) of the jungle that had been allocated as the ‘cleansing area’. Without realising, I walked about twenty metres into the trees, pulled down my pants to my ankles and squatted, still (luckily) having the foresight to at least keep my pants out of the stream.
As I cleansed, literally feeling as if all of my insides were coming out of me, I looked up and became conscious of the fact that I was in the middle of the jungle. Everything instantly became more alive, trees became mobile, their extremely agile shadows exploded in size before completely smothering me, seeming to crush me in blackness. Everything came down on me with an intense throbbing, a profound weight that pushed me further and further away.
When I came round, I could see snakes everywhere in the shadows, and as soon as I was conscious of them, they began to strike at me. The darkness of the jungle gave way to an even darker blackness, and I began to vomit. The sounds I made as I purged were not human; they seemed to come from the part of me that I ‘fall into’ on Yagé, wherever the fuck that might be.
Being in such an extreme physical state began to worry me – I thought that I’d been poisoned and death (or something worse) was coming. Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw a torch light shining through the scrub, and before I knew it, I had stood up and pulled up my pants. I was utterly confused, everything was completely alien, and the light seemed to have no reference point. All of the sudden, there was a voice asking me if I was ok, and one of the shamans was there standing right at my side. How long had he been there? Had he been there the whole time? His voice was cold and raspy, seeming to be made up of industrial sounds.
I had always thought that I was a hard head, and remember feeling a sense of bravado as I told him that I was okay even though that was far from the truth: a little personal persuasion that did absolutely nothing to change the fact that the trip was still escalating. The Yagé picked up that bravado and discarded it within a microsecond. Although I couldn’t see the trees because of the darkness, I could still see everything somehow, as if everything was made of different levels of black. Once I became aware of this, everything started vibrating and I held my hair tightly in both hands and closed my eyes as everything suddenly became colour, pinks and purples buzzing with iridescent golds, greens and silvers. My head spun with a profound wooziness as if I had drunk five shots of liquor too many and I felt myself lift off, seeming to explode in all directions as intense nausea and a wave of panic gripped me. I buckled at the waist and began vomiting again, high pitched musical notes ringing melodies in my ears with the symphony of insects that sounded robotic. The colours swirled, seeming to drag me into the other world as the shaman began hitting me lightly on the head with his fan made of leaves while singing an icaro.
It is impossible to describe what occurred with the singing of this icaro. At first there was in extreme escalation in effects – breaking through while drinking orally active DMT is a profound experience. I continued to retch and it felt as if the Yagé was searching for damaged cells throughout my body. The shaman continued to sing, his voice morphing into something that strongly resembled a didgeridoo and I dropped to my knees, all the while feeling the Yagé as it journeyed through me. I become extremely conscious of this, seeming to follow it through my system. After I don’t know how long, it felt as if it had found what it was looking for; there was a distinct feeling of ‘something’ diseased in my liver – almost as if it were containing a toxic fluid.
The shaman began to dance around me singing loudly, stomping his feet. I remember looking up at him in agony, wanting more than anything that he stopped the icaro as it truly seemed to escalate all of the effects, especially the physical ones. His face was that of a jaguar and there was an immense gold halo surrounding him. To his side was a creature made up of shadows, and although it was of a hideous appearance, I recognised it instantly as the shaman’s ‘helper’. The feeling in my liver intensified until I believed that I had been poisoned – my thoughts turned to the idea of dying in the jungle, lying on the ground in my own shit and vomit. I began to panic and the retching intensified – the poisonous feeling seeming to pass from liver directly to stomach before exiting as a small amount of felt like thick sludge from my mouth.
The taita stopped dancing and shined the torch on and off a few times which captured my attention before asking me if I had calmed down. At first I thought this to be the case, but within seconds I fell back into the other place. He returned to his icaro as I sat down, my field of vision morphing into that of a jungle made of light and colour. I heard another icaro being sung and felt the presence of Juan, his chant seeming to intertwine with that of the other shaman. With my friend there, the fear suddenly dissipated in an instant as if it had never existed and I felt myself rise to a different level. The shamans continued to sing and dance around me as the jungle I was seeing began vibrating as a beautiful music came from nowhere, its notes filling me with wonder and awe. I lost myself completely as tiny-little-(perhaps knee height)-light-creatures came out from behind the trees and began interacting with each other in a bizarre fashion, everything happening in tune with the music.
They approached me one by one, reaching up with their hands and placing a ‘gift’ into my chest. I remember feeling the most incredible sensations as their arms disappeared in my ‘body’ an extreme euphoria rupturing the magic after I had received a few gifts. I breathed out and looked at Juan just before he asked me how I was with an enormous smile on his face.
‘How powerful,’ was all I could say in a croaky voice as I chuckled nervously when Juan offered me a hand.
I stood up feeling loved, swaying like an alcoholic that has been drinking for two days. I walked gingerly back toward the group and Taita Pablo told me to sit down next to my friend Nico. I was in a profoundly psychedelic state as Nico and I conversed about how privileged we were to be in the heart of Cofán territory with such men of knowledge. A cigarette appeared to be a split arrow in my mouth that let of small fireworks from its frayed pieces with each toke. The trees were giant spirits watching over us, conversing between themselves on the most pressing matters of the planet and humanity, bright while lights flashed and flew across the sky intermittently, ‘spirits’ moved in and around the fringe of the jungle.
For the next six hours I remained in this state, shaken to the core due to what had occurred in the jungle while I was cleansing, but feeling astounded at the sheer power of DMT. Nothing had rocked me like the raw Yagé that the shamans drink amongst themselves, and I don’t think anything will ever rock me like it does.
We spent the next day sleeping and eating as a tropical storm battered the hut we stayed in for the next twenty-four hours. I felt humbled by the Cofán hospitality and discussed my experiences with Juan and Taita Pablo throughout the day, happy to have provided a few laughs because of my eagerness to explore. After the sun set everybody went to bed except Juan and I. We chose to sit up and smoke a joint; I wanted to discuss the ceremonies that we would be taking part in over the next few days. When I finally went to my hammock a few hours later, I couldn’t wait to start exploring the ‘other’ world again the next day, but I had also developed a profound respect for the Yagé, knowing all-to-well that it has both the power to heal or kill.
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