Chasing Demons In The Night

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As ayahuasca ceremonies go, it is one of the stranger ones, a night of ferocity, shrieking, madness, gallons of water splashed all over the place, exhausted helpers having performed yeoman’s duty, the rest of us relieved when Yuri’s screams have subsided and the storm around him has died down.

Reflections on ESC & the Psychedelic Renaissance

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ESC is a nonprofit launched in late 2013 and dedicated to “assuring the sustainability and safe use of traditional plants,” of which ayahuasca has been the clear priority thus far. All in all, ESC seems well-intentioned. So what are 17 experts (now 62) from Canada, Brazil, the UK, Australia, Costa Rica, Mexico, the US, and Colombia up in arms about?

Snake Medicine: How Shamanism Heals

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Animistic perspectives, which hold the cosmos as “a being to whom prayers and offerings are made, who is endowed with understanding, agency and sentience, and responds to the actions of humans,” are often dismissed as primitive, yet this account of a healing within the shamanic traditions of the Native American Church and the vegetalistas of the Peruvian Amazon reminds us of how profound healing can be when it arises from indigenous perception of a sentient, living cosmos.

Flashback, Pucallpa 2000: Mystic Terror

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I look forward to each of my trips there. I look forward to this specific moment, the greatest adventure I’ve ever been able to experience, and yet, as soon as this adventure happens, fear enters into the dance. Fear mounts from night to night, in step with new invisible encounters. It turns into terror the last few days, and on the last night I end up making my way through it.

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