Ayawaska

pabaya, originally uploaded by The Stranger.

painting by Pablo Cesar Amaringo

So I left the omega campus and drove out to this house in the woods for the ayawaska ceremony. The house was really nice with lots of crystals and plants and a great memorabilia collection. About a dozen people were present varying ages and styles. There were two facilitators. One black guy from central america who was the leader and a female druidical type, both youngish under thirty. Laid out in the middle of the room was a big alter of feathers and stones and incence burners and other voodoo parephenalia.

The dude handed out these booklets with weird songs in them for example:

the red road is a place
a place in your heart
the place is a space
between me and you.

So he starts talking and he talks quite well about mumbo jumbo in such a way that if you listen he can make you trip out with his words. So he's just talking and then we all sing one of these silly songs and then he talks some more. And we're drinking this foul tasting ayawaska tea. This goes on for several hours.

Im not really feeling much and am getting a bit agitated. Through my readings this plant is supposed to be very powerful, taking you deep into it all, kind of like this painting. But nothing much is happening

So there's a pause and he gets up and walks out and some people go with him so I follow and it turns out that they are smoking. The dude tells me that the smoke is called Santa Maria and that it has a special communication with the Ayawaska plant. So I smoke.

Then we go back inside and the ceremony starts again and he steps forward and starts doing the wierdest beat box routine I've ever seen or heard! Truly he was making such strange noises and movements that it shifted me into a different mode of perception where it seemed as if messages were coming through him at some sort of different frequency than regular perception. I conceived of him or it to be the God or Spirit Ayawaska and I was truly humbled. It was kind of like an insect or something and I felt fearful of it. Yet It was clear that it was indeed medicine and that I would meet it again. I also got the perception that the tea was coming from it. As if the tea was the dudes excrement.

So all that happened and then I was just kind of stupiufied or something for Im not sure how long. And then some people starting raising their hands and saying that they weren't getting anything! And then more people started piping up and soon enough the poor shaman dude was defending himself and eventually the whole thing just broke down!

So I was left with sort of mixed feelings because I knew that I had met the entitiy but the others didn't. Because of the smoke. Yet I know that the mixture must have been weak because normally it's not like that.

One more thing: the next morning I was talking to the lady about Datura and she said oh ya look at this, and there in her front yard was a massive datura bush! So I took a seed pod and now it's in my pocket.