Ancient Songs and Green Magic

A Search for What Is Real in the Amazon Jungle of Peru

by David P. Crews___

Ayahuasca session one. Monday night.

We rested and contemplated the ceremony for the rest of the day. Darkness fell, and we convened at 8:30 in the ceremonial room. We had arranged our small rocking chairs and brought our pillows and blankets. It is best to sit during the ceremony so that one does not become tempted to sleep or otherwise become lost in the vision space.

The helpers half-filled our purge bowls with water and eight candles were lit on the mesa at the end of the room. These provide our only light. The mesa or table contains many spiritual and symbolic items, including a loop of the Ayahuasca cappi vine. It is surrounded by wonderful drapes made by the Shipibo people. Each has a mandala painting depicting a cross section of the vine with vision geometry surrounding it.

Some of the Yahua people came and sat outside the room to also take part in our session. The chief joined us inside the room.

Don Rober made his opening statements, translated by Howard, then began his first healings by going around the room, cleansing us with mapacho smoke on our heads and torsos, and patting our heads with his shacapa while whistling his icaros. This is very comforting and sets the tone for the ceremony.

The shacapa is a leaf fan that acts as a soft rattle throughout the ceremony. The icaros are the songs the shaman sings or whistles that guide the visions during the night. Don Rober will sing them for the next five or six hours straight.

Now, all but one candle is extinguished. Don Rober blesses the Ayahuasca with mapacho smoke and whistles an icaro song into the bottle – singing to the Spirit of the plant.

Then, the moment came and we were called up one by one to take the Ayahuasca drink. I went second. I went to the mesa and kneeled before the two shamans.
Howard poured the tea into a small cup and Don Rober handed it forward to me.
I silently expressed my Intentions to the Spirit of the plant, then I held my nose and took the drink in one draught.

Ayahuasca has a well-deserved reputation for tasting terrible. Up until now, I had been very focused on what this would be like and how nasty the drink would be and whether I would gag or throw it up immediately. In fact, it was surprisingly not-so-bad and I had no trouble drinking and holding it. It has a definitely unpleasant earthy, pungent, oily taste, but it was not viscous, and truly had the consistency of tea or water. The taste is quite difficult to describe.

My Intention was this: “Let me SEE; Let me LEARN WHAT I NEED TO LEARN; and please HEAL me.”

Once everyone has partaken of the brew, including Don Rober of course, the final candle is extinguished and the rest of the ceremony is conducted in total darkness. Only the occasional flare of a match for lighting a mapacho breaks the darkness, but after a while, my eyes adjust and I can make out the shadowy outlines of the people in the room.

Don Rober ceases his whistling icaros now as we wait for the onset of the Ayahuasca effects. Later, he will begin the singing icaros that guide us throughout the night. For now, however, only the susurrus of the jungle night sounds, with the occasional eerie barking of the bamboo rats nearby and far away, surround us as we wait in the darkness.

One by one, we partake of the tea.

The onset came in 30 to 40 minutes (typical for Ayahuasca). For me, it began with a very pronounced back and forth sway, in the distinct rhythm, I suddenly realized, of the hammocks I was in much of the day. Even though I was sitting still, I would swear I was swaying back and forth strongly.

Then I noticed my extremities beginning to buzz and this buzzing increased dramatically and quickly until my entire legs and arms were buzzing like a high-voltage electric line. We were perhaps 5 minutes into the onset of the session. This buzzing increased more and more and MORE, and it felt like what happens sometimes just before one faints.
I told myself, "I think I'm actually going to faint from this!"
It built up to a high audible buzz that began to drown out all other sounds.

Instead of fainting though, someone CHANGED THE CHANNEL.

The Ayahuasca session disappeared entirely - not even a thought or echo of it existed in my mind.

I was not the adult man who had just been sitting in a room full of people in the Amazon darkness. I felt like I was floating in black space and I was just a little boy David. Now, images began to appear like a stack of cards to my left side and moving very quickly. I was seeing many hundreds of images coming at me and flying by me very rapidly - a collage of textures, surfaces, and images. They came too fast for me to comprehend any one of them – just random shapes and textures.

It was very confusing and for some reason it was frightening to me and I could tell I was beginning to panic. The images were flying by so quickly now, it was like putting one's face into a waterfall and looking up at all the millions of droplets cascading at your eyes. Fear built up in me and it seemed to be a primal fear, not caused by anything in particular, but more like Fear Itself, manifesting in me like a rising tide of panic.

As the images continued to fly by me, I knew I was fully panicked and I felt my heart and breathing racing!
I was struggling - very hard now, and I almost ceased to process the images or remember anything coherent at all. It felt like I was lost in a nightmare of truly alien forms in a monstrous and overwhelming rush of images.

The only image I remember vividly was the last one, which came up and became still as the other cascade of images faded away. It was a door with a red knob. It seemed that this was, perhaps, my bedroom door. It was dark on my side. There was light beyond the door. It all seemed to be floating in space. My panic and fear had now increased to a howling crescendo of emotion. I knew that I HAD TO reach that door and open it or I would be swallowed up by this black void. My very life and existence depended on this task!

I was now in full instinctual reaction mode. This fear must have been coming from the primitive reptilian part of my brain. I was in "fight or flight" mode, and I was fighting now, just as hard as I possibly could. I lunged out with my right hand and tried to reach the door knob – and the door would recede out of reach.

I lunged out again, desparate to grab the door, and again it would recede just out of my reach.

Suddenly, I realized I was screaming at the top of my voice, "I CAN'T REACH IT! ___I CAN'T REACH IT!"

Then, everything stopped.

Someone changed the channel again.

I realized that I was panic-breathing, very fast breaths like I had been running for miles. I was trembling - physcially trembling, very hard, and I was in a full-body sweat with water rolling off my eyes and nose. I felt like I was on my hands and knees, and I opened my eyes, but there was nothing but blackness. I had no idea of who I was, where I was, or what was happening to me.

Then I looked up to my right and there were just barely visible the ghostly forms of shadow people all in a row. I was still completely at a loss for where I was or what had just happened.

Then it suddenly dawned on me, and I said to myself, "Wait a minute . . . , this is still a part of the Ayahuasca session! Those are the other people from the group! I have had some strange episode and made some kind of an embarrassing scene."

Still trembling and sweating, I reached out with my hand and felt the surface around me. Floor boards. "Oh great. I'm on the floor." Apparently, I had launched myself out of my chair and onto the floor.

Just at this moment, Don Rober reached me and I felt his shacapa patting my head. Howard's wife, Reyna, who assists in the ceremonies, was at my side with a comforting hand. Don Rober sang his healing icaros and did several "extractions" where he sucks against my neck and head to remove the negative energies or spirits and then spits them away from me. Although I am still trembling and panic breathing and in a rolling sweat, this healing from Don Rober grounded me very quickly and I began to catch my breath and calm down out of the experience. I purposely made myself take deep, calming breaths, and my panic subsided quickly.

After a few minutes there on the floor, Reyna whispered if I was ok to move, and I felt hands helping me back through the darkened room to my seat.
I was fully myself now, and I settled into this strange new space, presumably what most people experience in a "normal" Ayahuasca session, if one can use the term "normal", for the duration of our session. I was also still just drenched in full sweat - running off my eyes and nose – and this lasted the rest of the night. Once I was reseated, the buzz in my extremities, limbs, and face was still extremely strong, and this buzz was very uncomfortable, especially in my legs.

My harsh episode occurred just at the beginning of the session, and probably lasted only a very short time, perhaps 10 minutes, but it seemed out of time for me. Now, back in my chair, the session continued on, and we had about five hours to go.

In my great discomfort, I drifted in and out of a variety of visions and vision states. After my episode, I only saw mild, unimpressive, and fragmentary visions the entire session, but they were all either negative or mysterious and somewhat menacing. I saw one Egyptian Annubis statue, which I was arcing around, and I saw a large spider with huge curving legs scuttling away.

By midnight, about three hours in, the effects of the Ayahuasca had diminished to roughly 15 or 20%.

Many of the participants purged, sometimes quite strongly, throughout the night. Don Rober and Howard purged also. Some people do not purge during one session or another. As it happened, I did not purge this entire session.
Body temperature can vary unpredictably with Ayahuasca, and I began to grow cool, even though I was still very sweaty, so I pulled up my blanket to wrap up in it a bit.

For the last hour or so, certain people would be called to a small mattress in the center of the room for Don Rober to perform specific healings on them with icaros, mapacho smoke, and extractions. Afterwards, he made the rounds of everyone in their chairs, performing a final shacapa healing on each of us in turn. This was a very welcome and settling thing to me.

The session ended at 2:30 am with the first words spoken in all that time. A candle was lit, and Howard said, "Well friends, we have come to our intermission."

What he meant is that the ceremonial session is not officially over until the flower bath in the morning, which I will describe shortly.

At this point, however, everyone is free to go back to their rooms and sleep if they can. I am feeling better now, but very dizzy still, and tired and wrung out with all the sweating and high-voltage buzzing. I made it up the long wooden walk to my room and my bed and fell asleep – after a good purge from the other end.

A funny side note from later discussions:
In my opening remarks to the group, I had mentioned how I had been brought up in a kind of "Leave It To Beaver" style household without alcohol, drugs, or foul language. During the session, I had been seated next to H., an artist and fellow Texan, who was on my right.

When I had my "episode", I had been afraid that I had screamed out loud, as I felt that I was doing in my mind, thus disturbing the entire group. As it turned out, I only mumbled, and H. said he heard the word "reach". When I was reaching for that door, though, I did reach out physically with my right arm and nearly punched H. in the face!

He asked me if I knew what my first words were when I came to on the floor, and I said I had no memory of it. "You said, 'GEE WHIZ!', which really cracked me up!" Howard said he heard me say that, too, and they both thought it was very funny. I said, "I told you I was brought up right!"