The Substances

The following chapters describe. They give no instructions for use, dosage or method, and chapter 22 is a mandatory complement to them.

15. Tobacco

And it comes first, because that is where it belongs.

The plant

Nicotiana rustica — not commercial tobacco. It is many times more concentrated in nicotine, and in some uses deliberately approaches toxic levels.

The uses — and there are many

• Chewed, often with ash or alkaline material
• Inhaled as snuff
• Smoked in cigars and pipes
• Drunk — concentrated juice, in several peoples through the nose; it is extremely powerful and dangerous
• Blown over the patient (soplar) — the most basic therapeutic gesture of the region
• Smeared on the skin
• Used in initiation, in the dieta (chapter 11), and as offering

There is a whole category of specialist defined by it: the tabaquero.

The argument

It has been systematically argued — principally by Johannes Wilbert, based on decades of work mainly with the Warao of Venezuela — that:

Tobacco, not ayahuasca, is the foundational shamanic plant of South America.

The arguments: it is far more widely spread, is used by far more peoples, appears everywhere while ayahuasca is regionally restricted, and in these doses produces by itself intense states — up to near-death.

And the inversion

The Western image has inverted the hierarchy. Tobacco is considered auxiliary; ayahuasca central.

In the region, in most of it, the opposite holds.

And tobacco in these doses is really dangerous. Deaths from nicotine poisoning have been recorded, including in tourist contexts where it was offered without adequate knowledge.

16. Ayahuasca

What it is

A decoction of at least two plants:

1. The vine — Banisteriopsis caapi. Contains β-carbolines (harmine, harmaline, tetrahydroharmine), which are monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs).
2. The additive — usually chacruna (Psychotria viridis) or chaliponga (Diplopterys cabrerana). Contains DMT.

The chemistry

DMT by mouth is inactive: the monoamine oxidase enzyme in the gut and liver breaks it down before it can act.

The vine’s β-carbolines inhibit this enzyme. So the DMT passes.

Without the first plant, the second does nothing orally. The combination is the whole thing.

The names

ayahuasca — from Quechua, aya (“dead, spirit”) + waska (“rope, vine”): “the vine of the dead”.

Elsewhere: yagé (Colombia), natem (Shuar, Achuar), nishi and relatives (Shipibo), caapi (Brazil), hoasca and daime (in the churches of chapter 18).

And now the difficult question: how old?

The usual narrative — “thousands of years, across the whole Amazon” — is not as safe as it sounds.

What exists in favour of antiquity: in an archaeological find in Bolivia, a ritual bundle approximately a thousand years old was chemically analysed and found to contain harmine and DMT together, along with other substances (Miller et al., PNAS, 2019). This is direct evidence that the combination was known at least that long ago.

What exists on the other hand:

• The first European description is from the 19th century — Richard Spruce’s observation around 1851 and Villavicencio’s published report of 1858
• There is serious ethnomusicological and linguistic work (principally by Brabec de Mori) that argues that in many western Amazonian peoples the ayahuasca complex — songs, terminology, ritual form — spread relatively recently, probably during the rubber period (late 19th – early 20th century), when populations were violently moved and mixed in plantation camps

The honest position

It is not debunking. It is dating.

The most likely scenario, based on what we know:

• The use of the vine is old
• The combination was known at least a thousand years ago in some regions
• But its wide spread in today’s peoples, in today’s form, is largely a phenomenon of the last two centuries, and is connected with the violent restructuring that colonialism brought

And this does not make it less genuine. It is a living tradition with a history — which is what all traditions are.

17. Arutam: the other system

Needs its own chapter, because it undoes the idea that Amazonia is organised around ayahuasca.

The peoples of the Jivaroan family — Shuar, Achuar, Awajún, Wampís, at the Peru-Ecuador border — have a different centre.

Arutam

arutam — a vision-soul. And the critical thing: you are not born with it; you acquire it.

A person without arutam is vulnerable, weak, exposed to violent death. A person with arutam has strength, courage, clear thought, and protection.

How it is acquired

The classical process, as recorded:

1. Journey to a sacred place — typically a waterfall
2. Fasting and isolation, for days
3. Ingestion of a powerful substance — typically maikua (Brugmansia, extremely potent and dangerous) or concentrated tobacco juice
4. A terrifying vision appears — two jaguars fighting, a huge figure, a ball of fire
5. And you must run toward it and touch it

If you touch it, the arutam enters.

The characteristics

• It is lost. It is not a permanent acquisition; it leaves and must be reacquired
• It is cumulative: the more you have, the stronger you are
• Historically it was directly connected with readiness for raid and with the warrior’s standing

And the dreams

Among the same peoples, the interpretation of dreams is a daily technique, not a special rite.

It is recorded that in the morning dreams are discussed and from them practical information is drawn — whether to go out hunting, what you will meet, whether there is danger. There is a taxonomy of dream types, with different reliability for each.

The conclusion

Ayahuasca (natem) is used here too. But it is not the centre.

The centre is the arutam, the waterfall, the fast, the Brugmansia, the dream — and a conception of personal power as something you acquire, lose, and reacquire.

Amazonia is not one system.

18. Vegetalismo and the churches

The most common error in contemporary discussion is to conflate four different things. Let us distinguish them.

1. Indigenous practice

What chapters 10–17 describe: within a specific people, language, kinship and landscape. The healer is a member of the community, treats his own, and his work includes attack and defence (chapter 14).

2. Vegetalismo

Mestizo healing tradition of the Peruvian Amazon — Iquitos, Pucallpa, Tarapoto.

It emerged from the encounter of indigenous, mestizo and Catholic elements, largely during and after the rubber period. It has its own categories of specialist: vegetalista, ayahuasquero, tabaquero, perfumero, palero.

It is a real tradition, with apprenticeship, with dieta, with repertoire of songs, with internal coherence, about a century old.

It is not indigenous, and it is not fake. It is a third thing.

3. The Brazilian churches

Religious organisations with ayahuasca as sacrament, founded in the 20th century:

• Santo Daime — 1930, by Irineu Serra, in Acre
• Barquinha — 1945
• União do Vegetal — 1961, by Gabriel da Costa

Syncretic: ayahuasca + Christianity + Afro-Brazilian elements + spiritism. Legal in Brazil since the late 1980s, with a clear regulatory framework. The UDV won judicial recognition of religious use in the United States.

They have liturgy, hymns, hierarchy, members, children who grow up inside them. They are religions, not therapeutic practices.

4. The retreat model

The tourist-therapeutic model: paid package, international participants, few days, no apprenticeship, no community, with the “shaman” in the role of service provider.

Developed from the 1990s and became an industry in the 2010s.

It has continuity with none of the three above. It is a new institution, with its own motivations and its own problems (chapters 22–23).

Why the distinction matters

Because when someone says “traditional use”, the question “which of the four?” radically changes the answer — about age, about safety, about legality, about what one is entitled to expect.