Yagé and the Tukano: An Entheological Approach to Ecological Perception‍

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‍...after the cleansing was finished, I wandered outside. Dawn was coming. I felt exhaustion mingle with a deeper sensation, an intuition that what I had experienced, a confusion of random visual and auditory hallucinations without form or substance, was only a crude approximation of something indescribably rich and mysterious. No doubt, as Schultes had written, a power lay within this plant.‍

-Wade Davis, One River

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Ayahuasca and Yagé: Marginalizing Ambiguity

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To articulate the impact of yagé on a science of the environment requires from the outset a study of its terminology and an analysis its taxonomy. The word yagé or yajé  originates from the Tukano family of languages indigenous to northwest Amazon, and refers to the entheogenic brew which is the cornerstone of their shamanic practices. Ayahuasca, often used interchangeably with yagé, is the hispanicized spelling of the word ayawaska from the Quechua and Aymara languages of the Andes. Emerging along the continental divide, in the mountainous region at the western-most edge of the basin’s watershed, ayahuasca presents its etymology as a problematic terrain on the margins of its own ecology. Translated as “vine of the soul,” ayawaska derives from aya “spirit”, and waska “liana,”  and refers both to the entheogenic brew and the long-stemmed, woody vines which are its critical ingredient. This conflation suppresses the brew’s actuality as an admixture and fails to underscore the intelligence of the recipe, and the remarkable synergy of its various ingredients. Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (1976) sketches out a didactic ecological scenography in his article “Cosmology as Ecological Analysis: A View from the Rainforest,” drawing attention to the evolutionary paramters of Tukano environment:

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The Tukano Indians occupy a large area in the central portion of the northwest Amazon, mainly on the Vaupés River, a major affluent of the Rio Negro. Although most of the country is flat and densely forested, a transitional terrain of hilly uplands lies on the western fringe, while towards the north the forest is some- times broken by stretches of grassy, tree-strewn savanna country. Although this rain forest area has often been described as a rather homogeneous region, many environmental differences exist which have considerable bearing upon the range and success of human adaptive responses. Game animals, amphibians and reptiles, edible fruits, nuts and insects, and suitable horticultural lands are not evenly distributed and considerable resource fluctuation can be said to exist within and among subregions (p. 308).

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The Tukano, having coevolved as part and parcel of the vine’s ecology for more than 5,000 years, identify more than a dozen subtypes, each used by the shaman, or curandero, for different ritualistic purposes (Schultes, 1979, p. 176). The nomenclature of these myriad subtypes is complexified by the conditioning of language resulting from exogamy. There are seven descent groups or “tribes” within the Tukano people, each with their own language: the Bara Tukano; the Barasana; the Cubeo; the Desana; the Macuna; the Wanano; and the Tukano Proper. With the exception of the Cubeo, each requires females to marry outside their language group; to do otherwise would be considered something like incest. Upon marriage, she will relocate to the longhouse of her husband’s household, introduce her language therein, and raise a child into a multilingual environment . There is no discrimination on the basis of language within the various groups; on the contrary, there exists a strong interest in learning new languages--new ways of understanding and interfacing the natural environment (Wardhaugh, 1986, p. 94). It is in this way that the names of the various subtypes of vine used to brew yagé are complexified, yielding in their ambiguity a linguistic richness in plurality. It is sufficient to note that their nomenclature, although variable depending on language group, is universally driven by microclimate and the cosmological conditions of their cultivation (vines planted under a full moon at the edge of a savannah, for example, are said by the Tukano to produce very different effects than those planted in the jungle under a half moon). The subtlety of these variations are undetectable to even the most scrupulous ethnobotanist. Plant taxonomy distinguishes only two varieties of the vine used in yagé: Banisteriopsis caapi and Banisteriopsis inebrians, the former having more common use than the latter.

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Opportunistic Alkaloids

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Consumed alone, B. caapi and B. inebrians produce sensations of euphoria, but are not entheogenic. Although the plant itself will increase levels of serotonin, it does not inherently contain those alkaloids which are key for modulating the neurotransmitter receptor sites where “trips” into spiritual dimensions begin. To discover the entheogenic potential of the “vine of the soul,” its bark must be stripped and cooked down with leaves containing alkaloids from the tryptamine family (e.g. N,N-Dimethyltryptamine , or DMT).  As metabolic products of plants, alkaloids abound in nature; they are found in roughly one quarter of all plant life (particularly in the large, vascular sort) and botanically identified by the high levels of nitrogen. What is unique, however, in these fairly common compounds, is the structure of their nitrogenous composition. Richard Schultes  (1979) notes in his book Plants of the Gods, that alkaloids generally possess striking similarity “to hormones present in the brain, that is, to physiological agents that play a role in the biochemistry of mental functions” (p. 210).

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The functioning of all entheogenic alkaloids hinge on the subtleties of this similarity; to access specific neurotransmitter receptor sites under the auspices of a morphological similarity between their chemical structure and those which the brain itself produces for receptor site regulation. LSD was discovered by Albert Hoffman while researching the medicinal potential of ergot--a fungus which most commonly grows on rye--by accidentally absorbing its alkaloid derivatives through his fingertips. LSD’s active compounds, however, while derived from alkaloids, are entirely synthetic and do not exist nature; thus its metaphysical implications are problematized, illustrating the imperative for the term “entheogenic” as an alternative to “psychedelic.” The fact Hoffman’s discovery was made through absorption is also it not a minor one. Alkaloids, to become psychoactive, must enter the body through means other than the gastrointestinal tract, where they are oxidized and thus “deactivated” by monoamine oxidase enzymes before they can be absorbed into the blood. The “power” that “lay within the vine” is its ability to neutralize these enzymes. Monoamine oxidase enzymes-inhibitors (MAOI) within the plant suspend the stomach’s and lower intestine’s ability to metabolize the tryptamine alkaloid compounds, allowing them to pass through the blood-brain barrier and modify neurochemistry. Tryptamine alkaloids are both opportunistic and obscure in this sense, wielding in their distribution and composition a propensity for the alteration of consciousness, seeking to syncopate with the receptor sites that their structure mirrors, yet failing to potentiate themselves as they encounter the regulatory mechanisms of the systems they wish to modify.

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In this sense, the unpacking of ambiguous nomenclature of yagé and ayahuasca becomes far more than a pedantic exercise, and brings into focus a didactic point which this study takes as its impetus: ayahuasca is not simply a vine which allows one to to access the soul, as the term would suggest, but but one which disables the body’s regulatory system to allow for a temporary reciprocity between the molecular fundamentals of ecology our apparatus for perception. Furthermore, this coupling of monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIS) and tryptamine-containing alkaloids, an admixture that has driven Amazonian cosmology for nearly 5,000 years, is statistically highly unlikely, given the infinitude of plant species in the Amazonian rain forest and the specificity of preparation required to actualize the psychotropic experience. The odds, seemingly insurmountable to the techniques of botany, challenge the rules of modern science, and have remain unresolved since British explorer Richard Spruce “discovered” the plant in 1851 and sent specimens of B. caapi to the Royal Botanic Gardens for analysis. Wade Davis (1996) articulates the issue in his book One River, recalling the question as it occurs to Richard Schultes in the early 1940s during his research conducted in the northwest Amazon:

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How had the Indians learned to identify and combine in this sophisticated manner these morphologically dissimilar plants that possessed such unique and complementary chemical properties? The standard scientific explanation was trial and error--a reasonable term that may well account for certain innovations--but at another level, as Schultes came to realize on spending more time in the forest, it is a euphemism which disguises the fact that ethnobotanists have very little idea how the Indians originally made their discoveries… The Indians naturally had their own explanations that from their perspective were perfectly logical: sacred plants that had journeyed up the Milky River in the belly of anacondas, potions prepared by the jaguars, the drifting souls of curanderos dead from the beginning of time… The Indians, Schultes realized, believed in the power of plants, accepted the existence of magic, and acknowledged the potency of the spirit. Magical and mystical ideas entered the very texture of their thinking. Their botanical knowledge could not be separated from their metaphysics (p.217-218).

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This study  is located in the space between botanical knowledge and metaphysics: it attempts to outline and hypothesize the reciprocity between the two--negotiated by yagé--as a model for articulating an ecologically-founded subjectivity. Following closely behind the modalities and sub-modalities of yagé’s mediums of expression, design thinking takes particular note on the role of technology, which for the Tukano is conceptualized as tools for optimizing their ecological adaptation (this, in opposition to the technology of Modernity, which seeks to surmount nature as a measure towards profit or stability). Systems analysis and thermodynamics are posited as effective devices for underscoring yagé’s potential for re-thinking design. This study understands the philosophies of the various branches of science to be myopic ideologies which limit both the scales of their inquiry and the impact of their discoveries (consider for example the incommensurability between quantum mechanics, biology, and astrophysics); an analysis is undertaken which seeks to dissolve the brackets imposed by botany by tracing the consumption of its specimens as the key to discovering a critically founded ecological totality. Reichel-Dolmatoff outlines the ethnological bases of the analysis:

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Among the Tukano Indians of the Colombian Northwest Amazon, carrying capacity is defined mainly in terms of the conservation of protein resources such as game, fish and certain wild fruits. In order to maintain an equilibrium and to avoid frequent relocation of settlements, the Indians have developed a set of highly adaptive behavioural rules which control population growth, the exploitation of the natural environment, and interpersonal aggression. The belief that the spirits of game animals cause illness restricts overhunting and, similarly, a large body of beliefs that regulate sex and food habits try to adjust the birth-rate and to counterbalance socially disruptive behaviour. Shamanism thus becomes a powerful force in the control and management of natural resources, and hallucinatory visions induced by native narcotic drugs become an important tool of shamanistic power. In many aspects Tukano concepts of cosmology represent a blueprint for ecological adaptation and the Indians’ acute awareness of the need for adaptive norms can be compared with modern systems analysis.

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This study analyzes the particularities of how “hallucinatory visions” become “powerful tools” for “control and management of natural resources.” The format of the research takes an empirical method--modeled on Schulte’s tendency to understand botany through experiential submersion--as the impetus for investigation: transcribed excerpts from Wade Davis’s first yagé experience are taken from One River (1996), and used as a loose narrative sequence for lines of ecological, cosmological, and entheological pursuit.

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Programming the Molecular Bit Flip

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...the curandero poured the yagé into a wooden bowl, which he set on a short tripod of sticks beside the table. He then sat on a small stool so that his legs flanked the stand and his entire body enveloped the potion. For five minutes he sat perfectly still. No one spoke. Gradually out of his hunched up body came a low, guttural change that ebbed and flowed and then faded like an echo. The rustling of a fan and leaves scraping the air; the sound of water in a distant forest and the chant escalating in pitch… Pablo touched my arm: “the songs release the wilderness, stirring everything up so that with his fan he may sweep away the evil. Now he is asking that the paintings, the visions be strong (Davis, 1996, p. 190).

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The curandero, charged with the responsibility of managing safely the hallucinations, calls forth the spirits at the origins of his universe which are to be encountered on what the Tukano call “the other side.” With his fan he “sweeps away” spirits which for the Tukano originate in one of three categories: as the malevolence of game animals, the ill-intentions of other people, or the vengeance of supernatural beings (Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1979, p. 310). In each case, the presence of evil is understood as reactionary to an act of disequilibrium within the ecology of the rainforest: the role of the curandero is to negotiate the journey and reconcile the ruptures wrought by ill-action. Often in preparation for the drinking of , the Tukano male will fast for weeks in advance, a measure which restricts the amount of energy he “borrows” from the environment, while heightening an awareness of the interior of the body and  maximizing the effect of the brew. This behavior should not be understood as ritual, in the sense of a repetitive action without perceivable  impact, but rather as the meaningful practice of preparation for a journey into the unknown dimensions of the self:

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can yield very different kinds of journeys, depending on the “set and setting”.... including programming offered by curanderos in the form of ícaros the rhythmic and often whistled songs that accompany and guide the journey. Anxious, even terrifying trips are not uncommon, and unlike the legendary brown acid of Woodstock, it is usually not the psychedelic agent that is the ultimate or even proximate cause of the distress. The problem, the drinker discovers, is the self, which must give way on its attachments if it is to abide the massively parallel consciousness induced by . This parallel consciousness is often presented as a multitude of entities and forms for whom death is a transition but not a destination (Doyle, 2005, p. 8).

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Thus the stakes of the curandero’s sweeping away and calling forth come into focus as the “programming” or the self in preparation for a transition, or what Doyle refers to as the  “molecular bit flip” of the  experience. This electrochemical rhetoric definition hinges the reflexive action of  to increase brain activity--shown in PET scans to be shown as high as 90% above normal--in such a way that the subject’s  “reality” turns inward to discovers a more fundamental structure of “the universe” by investigating the topos of his/her self. That is, the universe it revealed to us in its totality as immanent within ourselves.

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The “molecular” component of the bit flip consists of glutamate and GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) as the two major neurotransmitters which regulate the mammalian central nervous system. Like circuitry, the brain functions in response to two basic electrochemical signals: the positive charges of glutamate and the negative charges of GABA. Consciousness can be said to be a balancing of these two components. As such, any disequilibrium of consciousness (e.g. depression, anxiety) can  be said to be a disproportionate distribution of  (+) glutamate and (-) GABA (this dialectic functionality, whereby consciousness and ontology are driven forward by the negotiation of contradictory elements, has Hegelian underpinnings which although not within the scope of this study, deserves to be noted). Rather what is of interest here, is the pharmacodynamic details, which distinguish the difference between a “hallucinogenic” and “psychedelic” on the one hand,  and “entheogenic” on the other.

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Pharmacodynamics of an Entheogen

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“Entheogen” is a neologism invented in 1979 by Richard Schultes, in collaboration with other ethnobotanists and mythologists, and refers a particular subset of psychoactive substance--including peyote, psilocybin mushrooms--which have particular anthropological interest for their cultural use in religious, shamanic, or spiritual contexts--contemporary and ancient alike (the Temple of the True Inner Light, the Church of the Tree of Life, and the Church of the Toad of Light, for example, are all contemporary religious organizations which take entheogens as the basis of their cosmology). Etymologically derived from the greek entheos as “full of god, inspired, possessed” and genesthai as “to come into being,” the word implies the accessing of divine dimensions or reality. This is in contrast to “psychedelic” or “hallucinogenic” as the augmentation of reality as an exercise in visual perception. That is, the entheogenic assumes a meaningful desire towards the specific outcome of transcendence (as we will see, the curandero comes to play a central role in managing the outcome, and in the case of yagé, mismanagement can become lethal). The difference between “hallucinogenic”and “entheogenic” is the aforementioned difference between simply consuming the vine B. Caapi by itself (producing visual patterning--usually symmetries of red and yellow), and brewing it with other psychoactive, alkaloid-rich plants (commonly, for example, from the plant family Psychotria carthagin). Pharmacologically, when its recipe is prepared properly,  the chemical composition of  differs from that of other hallucinogens in the number and variety of alkaloids that it contains, and more significantly their distribution.

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Within the brain, there are many varieties of neurotransmitter receptor sites, and each acts as a gate which is unlocked with the right chemical key--provided by the alkaloid--letting through under the right conditions the sodium necessary to “flip” the cells electrical balance through a reduction of GABA (-) and a surplus of glutamate (+). GABA can be conceptualized as the brake which which limits the neural activity through regulation of various receptor sites. These receptor sites are distributed unevenly across the brain, and typically hallucinogens will only “unlock” one specific subset of receptor sites, leaning either more towards serotonin or dopamine. , on the other hand, due the variability and distribution of “keys” which its alkaloid contain, unlock both: DMT, harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine combine to activate more receptor sites across more territories of the brain. That is, GABA is ubiquitously reduced, allowing for a balanced acceleration of the brains myriad processes, in a way which allows its interrelational functions to maintain their faculty. This is key to understanding the metaphysical implications of this pharmacodynamic “molecular bit flip.” Whereas hallucinogens are the provisional reconfiguration of the brain’s structure--comprising in its action the benefits of its interconnectedness-- “opens” all “gates” in harmonious synchrony, allowing critical communication between various faculties to persist in their heightened state. The degree to which one is able to maintain courage through this entheogenic experience is the measure by which the social structures of the Tukano are built. The deeper one is able to foray into the dimensions of “the other side,” the more knowledge he is able to gain. The repetitive ingestion of  is the life-work of one who wishes to become a curandero: in his mental and physical strength to endure the reflexive turbulence of the  experience, the Tukano male strives to discover in its depths the event of his own death, and sublimation into transcendental being. Under the supervision of an existing curandero, he is guided towards the predator which reigns supreme as queen of the Amazonian ecology: the Mother Jaguar, as the apex of Tukano cosmology, awaits the novice at the cathartic terminus of his entheology. To arrive at her encounter, he must first navigate the most fearful depths of his unconsciousness, reconciling with the darkest repressions that lie at his core. To matriculate, he must arrive and suck her breast to become her son, relinquishing his ego as he consumes her nectar. Becoming at once innocent and dependent at his re-arrival to infanthood, he is able--only now, after the observation of his own death and rebirth--to wield the privilege for conducting his own  ceremonies.

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Becoming Jaguar: Ecological Brokerage in Hyperbolic Space

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...a match was struck, and the glow illuminated the curandero’s as he lit a kerosene lamp. A melancholy light infused the room… With a small calabash the size of a cup the curandero dipped the  from the bowl and then poured it back, releasing a fecund scent that mingled with and then overwhelmed the sweet smell of the resin that was burning in an iron brazier by the door. He filled the calabash once more and drank the contents, gagging, spitting, groaning, and coughing. “See how he barks,” Pedro said, “like a jaguar. He is born of the jaguar, and when he dies, he will become one again. All the living and dead jaguars come to us from their homes in the sky (Davis, 1996, p. 191).

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As the figure from which the curandero emerges, to which he will return, and through which he exercises his authority as the regulator of cosmological equilibrium--the curandero as jaguar “barks,” announcing his arrival into “the other side,” clearing in his presence a path for the journey of those that he guides. From this space, he is able to observe the imbalances of his cosmology, and instrumentalize his esoteric knowledge. It is only through his vast experience on “the other side” that he is able to navigate its treacherous terrain. Using the depth of his experience to evaluate the parameters of the parallel dimension, the curandero recognizes from “the other side” what must be done to right the wrongs of “this side”:

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“The very large denotative vocabulary of a curandero expresses his great concern with establishing the complete inventory of the ecosystem. In order to be able to administer this great store-house, he has to know, name and categorise all its contents. This knowledge eventually provides him with the criteria for ecological planning and this, of course, is problem-solving by anticipation” (Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1979, p. 316).

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Knowledge, gained through the gift of yagé, is utilized by the Tukano curandero through a set of normative ethics which maintain the ecosystem’s balance. The curandero, having submitted himself as an extension of the Jaguar Mother’s will, must act on “this side” in accordance with the values which she has set on “the other side.” Nature, in this sense, is for the Tukano an interface through which they encounter natural objects as the materializations of supernatural beings. According to Tukano mythology, behind every plant and animal is a spirit-being who protects it. These spirit-beings, created by the Sun-Father at the beginning of time, remain benign unless harm comes to the organisms which they protect. Disease, famine, and misfortune are understood to be acts of spirit-being exacting vengeance, and can only be resolved by the curandero on “the other side.” Moreover, at the moment of creation, the Sun-Father’s masculine energy fertilizes the Earth Mother: a limited totality bounded by immutable landmarks, containing a fixed inventory of organisms, each given its own spirit-being protector in the parallel dimension. In this way, a self-regulating system is set forth, in which any aggregation of surplus within the economy of the Tukano would mark out their extinction at the hands of those spirit-beings whose organisms have been subjected.

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As a sort of ecological broker, the curandero must maintain the biomass of the jungle if the flows of fertilization from the Sun-Father are to be fully potentiated. That is, the jungle is understood as a system which the curandero must optimize for consumption of the solar exergy. Any loss of ability to absorb the Sun-Father will result in an overall increase in temperature and the acceleration of the system’s demise. Indeed, the Tukano are aware of the the teleological tragedy of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and this is precisely reflected in their rituals of rebirth and emphasis on returning to their origins. In consuming yagé, and pushing towards a rebirth, the Tukano are resolving the existential crises inherent in their cosmos by seeking to restart its processes: through resetting their subjectivity--pushing their reality back to the moment of its creation--the Tukano refresh both the exergy of the Sun-Father and the jungle’s ability to consume it. The particularities of this process of rebirth, however, seen in the transfer of shamanic knowledge from mentor to apprentice, reveals a process which retains the aggregate knowledge of its successive transitions. Ecologists Eric Schneider and James Kay explain :

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Given that living systems go through a constant cycle of birth/development/regeneration/death, preserving information about what works and what does not, is crucial for the continuation of life. This is the role of the gene and, at a larger scale, biodiversity, to act as information data bases about self-organization strategies that work (Schneider and Kay, 1995).

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Yagé’s gift is its ability to integrate the subjective moment into the totality of this information database, compressing information inwards towards the self and upwards towards the transcendental knowledge of ecology’s recursive processes. From a limited finitude to a limitless transcendence, yagé inverts a spherical space into a hyperbolic space, flipping of the normals of the surface of the self, modifying the parameters of its curvature on the basis on an infinite plane. Doyle calls attention to Mathematician Daina Taimina describing hyperbolic spaces in an interview with science writer Margaret Wertheim:

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There are many ways of describing the hyperbolic plane. In formal geometric terms it is a simply connected Riemannian manifold with negative Gaussian curvature. In higher-level mathematics courses it is often defined as the geometry that is described by the “upper half-plane model.” One way of understanding it is that it’s the geometric opposite of the sphere. On a sphere, the surface curves in on itself and is closed. A hyperbolic plane is a surface in which the space curves away from itself at every point. Like a Euclidean plane it is open and infinite, but it has a more complex and counterintuitive geometry (Wertheim, 2004).

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To navigate the complex and counterintuitive territories of the frontiers of infinity, as the Tukano and the curandero well know, is a laborious undertaking which becomes exponentially difficult with each step. The hyperbolic model is evident in the stages of becoming curandero--where the only the strongest men are able to transition to infinity through rebirth as the son of the Mother Jaguar. This model is expressed by Taimina through the medium of crochet:

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I have crocheted a number of these [hyperbolic] models and what I find so interesting is that when you make them you get a very concrete sense of the space expanding exponentially. The first rows take no time but the later rows can take literally hours, they have so many stitches. You get a visceral sense of what “hyperbolic” really means (Wertheim, 2004).

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‍Good Vibrations: Tuning into the Totality of Ecology

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I heard a distant humming, which i took for cicadas or tree frogs, until i realized that the sound was vibrating from beneath my skin (Davis, 1996, 191).

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The initial sensation of absorbing the biotic vibrations of the jungle is commonly experienced, by native and non-native users alike; McKenna (1993) explains in Invisible Landscapes how tryptamine modulates neurotransmitters to function as “an antenna for picking up and amplifying the harmonic ESR tones of all tryptophan-derived compounds of all living organisms within its range. Since the [tryptamine] undergoing metabolism is superconductive, this means that its range of reception is theoretically infinite. The antenna does, to some degree, pick up a signal whose ultimate origin is the totality of living creatures”(p. 99).

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The rainforest of the Tukano thus becomes an information ecology, nested scales of closed signalling loops, modulated by yagé into a single, pulsing totality. On the scale of the gene: environmental pressures elicit the continual reconfiguration of RNA, whose emergent morphogenetics are charge-transferred via alkaloid action to the perceptive mind of the curandero. At the scale of the curandero: cycles of yagé consumption condition aggregate knowledge as the basis for regulation of the jungle’s resources. At the level of the jungle: the knowledge revealed to the curandero is instrumentalized through measure of adaptation; optimization of  the jungle’s biomass for the the consumption of the Sun-Father’s exergy is of principal interest for the Tukano and their technology. At the level of the Sun-Father: the thermodynamic inevitability of entropy between the sun and the earth is overcome through ritual rebirth--with each yagé experience, the Sun-Father and Mother-Earth are looped through their own origins, emerging again from the beginning of time and renewing the exergy of the system. Reichel-Dolmatoff articulates the circuitry of of a system with a recursive functionality; within each cycle of revolution, the system receives user input and reconfigures in response:

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The seminal energy of the sun is thought to constitute a huge circuit in which the entire cosmos participates. This circuit is imagined as having a limited quantity of procreative energy that flows continuously between man and animal, between society and nature. Since the quantity of energy is restricted, man may remove what he needs only under certain conditions and must convert his quantum of ‘borrowed’ energy into an essence than can be reincorporated into the circuit (Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1979, p. 310).

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It is this “reincorporation” into the circuit which is the basis of technology for the Tukano. If the jungle itself is understood as a sort of circuitry of information, any removal of its components is conceptualized as a reduction of information and the eradication of instructions for adaptation. Reichel-Dolmatoff pushes the idea in terms of conforming to biological realities:

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Among the Indians there is usually little interest in new knowledge that might be used for exploiting the environment more effectively and there is little concern for maximising short-term gains or for obtaining more food or raw-materials than are actually needed. But there is always a great deal of interest in accumulating more factual knowledge about biological reality and, above all, about what the physical world requires from man. This knowledge, the Indians believe, is essential for survival because man must bring himself into conformity with nature if he wants to exist as part of nature’s unity, and must fit his demands to nature’s availabilities (Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1979, p. 310).

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To bring one’s self into conformity, of course, one must have a clear picture towards which they conform. This is precisely what yagé provides as a morphogenetic visualization mechanism: a reflexive and ethical image of the origins of the self as an immanent topos for discovering correct ecological functioning.

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Violet Vomit: Purging the Self

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It was as if my stomach, acting as a conscious entity, had sought out and purged every negative thought and fear trapped within the maze of my mind (Davis, 1996, 191).

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It is significant that the success of yagé to suspend these regulatory mechanisms is not perfectly pleasant; users often vomit as alkaloids move through the gut unoxidized. For the Tukano, the infinitive “to purge” is an imperative considered central to the yagé experience. Reichel-Dolmatoff (1979, p. 12)  characterized the action of vomiting as a “gift that spawns further giving,” an endeavor beyond the simple “effect of the allegedly nauseating flavor of the (extremely variable)  brew,” the imperative to purge is “instead the very action of the mixture on a human drinker”:

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If the stomach and small intestines are empty the passage of the drug into the lymph-tracts takes place much more rapidly and with greater force. These conditions are realized when caapi is consumed in the usual manner, because certain doses of the substance give rise to vomiting, which is desirable and to a certain degree necessary, as a preparation for the final action on the brain (Schultes, 1979, p. 117).

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Doyle (2005) calls to attention to motif of vomit in art inspired by yagé:

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This infinitive, “to purge,” often presents itself as an imperative to  drinkers. Among the crowd of visual conventions found repeated in the Peruvian Painter Pablo Amaringo’s work are jewelled cities of numinosity, converging rainbows of twisting triple helical anaconda assemblies, green feathered bird men in rapt discussion and wearing belts, Numerous Ladies of the Reptilian Rainbow Feather With Ceramic Pots Balanced Upon Their Noggins, flying saucers, DNA, and men gathered together in a common and thoroughly violet projectile vomit (p. 12).

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Entraining Euphoria: Symmetry/Assymmetry

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I shut my eyes, and the world inside my head began to spin and pulsate with warmth and a sensual glow that ran over a series of euphoric thoughts, words that stretched like shadows across my mind, paused, and then took forms as diamonds and stars, colors rising from the periphery of consciousness (Davis, 1996, 191).

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This emergence and dissipation of lights, sounds, colors, textures, and movements occur in the yagé experience as an oscillation between symmetrical and asymmetrical elements. This phenomena can be analyzed as the coming and going of information within a process of entrainment:

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Rhythmic entrainment is the formation of regular, predictable patterns in time and/or space through interactions within or between systems that manifest potential symmetries. We contend that this process is a major source of symmetries in specific systems, whether passive physical systems or active adaptive and/ or voluntary/intentional systems, except that active systems have more control over accepting or avoiding rhythmic entrainment. The result of rhythmic entrainment is a simplification of the entrained system, in the sense that the information required to describe it is reduced (Burch and Collier, 1998, p. 165).

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Less significant than moments of symmetry--considered to be a lack of information--it is instead yagé’s breaking up of symmetry that is of interest: the unfolding of information into consciousness, and the hyperbolic action which compresses it; the extension of our perception to the degree which allows us to see within ourselves an ecology that is  “capable of transforming itself in suddenly novel ways, forgetting its own premises, breaking symmetry, and suddenly experimenting with an increased capacity to degrade entropy and hence compress information, again, hyperbolic…. By continuing to divine it [yagé], we create novel dissipative structures for dissipation of ever more information, information we can perhaps sustain if we tune into the totality of all living creatures” (Doyle, 2005, p. 30).

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End

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‍Bibliography

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Burch, Mark and Collier, John. “Order from Rhythmic Entrainment and the Origin of Levels Through Dissipation.” Symmetry : Culture and Science Order / Disorder, Proceedings of the Haifa Congress 9.2-4 (1998). 165-172. 19 Dec. 2013. <www.ukzn.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/order>

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Luna, Luis Eduardo, and Steven F. White. Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s Sacred Vine. Santa Fe, NM: Synergetic, 2000. Print.

5, 8, 10, 11, 15-17, 19-25, 27, 28

Schultes, Richard Evans., and Albert Hofmann. Plants of the Gods: Origins of Hallucinogenic Use. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979. Print.

1,3,4,6,7,9,12-14,18

Schultes, Richard Evans., and Robert F. Raffauf. The Healing Forest: Medicinal and Toxic Plants of the Northwest Amazonia. Portland, Or.: Dioscorides, 1990. Print.

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Zuroweste, Peter. Map of Tukanoan Populations in Northwest Amazon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard GSD, 2013