Shamanic retreat in Sachamama Ethnobotanical Garden: Dieting the plant teachers of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest

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El Mundo Magico

Sachamama Ethnobotanical Garden

Cielo ayahuasca [Banisteriopsis sp.]

Dieting plantas maestras in Sachamama

Ayahuasca and Tobacco: Two Important Plant Teachers

Ayahuasca, dieteros and Tobacco

The spirits of the ayahuasca and tobacco plants are believed to be - by all the vegetalistas of the Peruvian Amazon - closely related. The use of tobacco is a must for all dieteros: like all over South America, mapacho (Nicotiana tabacum, Nicotiana Rustica), or black jungle tobacco (either cultivated, or in its most potent wild form) - is considered a sacred plant with the power to cleanse, purify and protect one from negative energies and malevolent spirits. Not by chance, at the beginning of each ceremony, the ayahuasca brew is soplada (e.g. is blown smoke on), with a mapacho cigarro, to tame and guide in a benevolent way the indomitable spirit of the medicine. The blowing of mapacho smoke over a patient's body (top of the head, back, chest, hands and feet) is a consolidated practice during every healing session and during all ayahuasca ceremonies.

Anthropologist Luna thus report on the importance of the use of tobacco among the vegetalistas of the Peruvian Amazon:

"Although I emphasized [..] the use and role of ayahuasca, it is important to realize that this plant is one among others which belong to the category of the plant teachers. Tobacco, one of them, is in a way more important than ayahuasca, because it is considered to be a mediator between the vegetalista and other plant spirits. Sin el tabaco no se puede usar ningun vegetal (without tobacco no other plant can be used), says Don Emilio. Tobacco purifies the body and expels the illness. [...] Tobacco is also the food of spirits [...] Mastering the use of tobacco, either smoked, or ingested orally or through the nostrils, is part of the shamanic initiation [...]. Tobacco is always present at ayahuasca sessions."

Luis Eduardo Luna (Vegetalismo - Shamanism Among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon - Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis - 27, Stockholm 1986: 159)

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