Dieta of Teacher Plants & Trees

... See MoreSee Less

... See MoreSee Less

"We ask for things from the medicine that do not belong within the light of Great Spirit: to [have the visionary experience] of becoming a jiboia or a jaguar, to gain powers or abilities, to be better than others. And that is when we can get lost and go astray. There is no secret to the medicine - it is simply to ask for the healing of our bodies and spirits, and the purification of our minds, so that we can become a better person."

- Chief Tuim Nova Era of the Huni Kuin tribe ... See MoreSee Less

Cielo, a wonderfully messy, honest, and straight-talking woman, who went through her ups and downs, kept the faith, and who will be missed .

____________________Cielo (posted publicly on her FB page): "I am posting this as I have had people recently wanting to come for a month or so and think they can serve afterwards. I will never accept or endorse this.""Just want to say clearly and strongly - do not come to me with your ideas of becoming a shaman in a week or month or even a year.""I have too much experience with the medicine, good curanderos and bad, to endorse these ego-induced delusions of becoming a guru.""I have sat in over 2,000 ceremonies, have dieted over 20 master plants, have facilitated thousands of people in their process, and I know that you cannot come to Peru for 3 months and propose to serve medicine. There is so much more to the medicine than dishing out ayahuasca, playing some ambient music and basking in glory in the morning as everyone adores you. Shit can happen and does often.""If you do not know how to bring down a person who is high and losing it, things can go terribly wrong very quickly. This cannot be learnt quickly.""This medicine, ayahuasca, is strong, amazing, healing and insightful when used correctly, with impeccability, authenticity, responsibility and with respect and knowledge.""If served without these and with ego and desire for yourself you are putting people at risk.""I am struggling financially here to keep my center going with the pandemic this last year and a half. While I charge a fee here as there is overhead to take care of you, it is not a way to get rich. If it was, after 13 years, I would be a millionaire. Even though I am struggling, I will never accept guests who have the idea to abuse the medicine."____________Psychedelic enthusiast and ayahuasca & mushroom "healer": "Hey Cielo, whenever I drink ayahuasca, I see dead prostitutes, blood, corpses, and other horrible images. Why is that?"Cielo: "Because you are very dirty."__________Cielo: "I did warn you about him."Me: "Uhm...you warned me that he might steal my money, not that he would almost kill me."Cielo: "Ha ha ha. I was taken in by him and my visions blocked for a long time by him. I had some pretty horrible ceremonies getting rid of it all."__________Me: (babbling after a tremendous purge back in the day) "I think I was purging for everyone in the ceremony space...."Cielo: "You need to shut up, stop looking around in ceremony, and focus on your personal work."___________Me: "I hear he is sending plants to the U.S. and telling people they can open dietas for people?"Cielo: "He tells people they are shamans when they are not trained at all. He sings beautifully but when there is an issue with someone in ceremony, he cannot bring their mareacion down. I have had several problems with it. His medicine is too strong and he does not know how to control it. I love him and I love his ceremonies but they can go sideways because he is not a medico."___________Me: "I started dieting with Luzmila Mori recently."Cielo: "Luzmila is so sweet. I have known her since I first drank at her house with all the potential curanderas for the Temple of the Way of the Light back in 2008. I am sorry to say the women I drank with then were pure but corrupted through the Temple. I left the Temple in 2009 vowing to never work here like that."_____________Me: "I had one of the most frightening yet profound ceremonies in recent memory with Olivia Arevalo. Have you ever dieted with her before?"Cielo: "The last dieta I started with Olivia was Pinon Blanco. She had to leave me mid-dieta and she asked her son Julian to take over. I sat in one ceremony with him and it felt so dark that I broke my dieta rather than to work with him."__________Cielo: "One night, years ago on the bridge in my house, Abraham and I were waiting on Antonia [partner of Benjamin Mahua] in the bathroom. Abraham leaned in to me and said: "I want to give you a gift." He started singing into my neck below my ear and I saw him directly connected to the stars. I really do think he is illuminated by God. I receive more healing from him than I do with any Shipibo."______Cielo: "Goodness, I cannot be bothered with all this stuff. This stuff of shamanic competition or even business. I am with God.""I was given some pretty strong things I had to deal with personally, so that I could then help others go through such things themselves. I can only do my best.""I am not striving for more dietas, more force, more knowledge, and all that constant wanting. I strive to help those that God entrusts to me.""I am nothing. I am a bridge. I am a mother. So I do not fight. I encase with love. And I try the very best for each person God entrusts to me. Sometimes things are given to us in ways we cannot understand. But it is always right." ... See MoreSee Less

Excerpts from a thoughtfully written essay "What ayahuasca wants" by Silvia Mesturini Cappo:

________________"As ayahuasca becomes a complex space in which people live and get related, we can see that it is not only an active biochemical principle, a plant or a ritual setting, not only shamanic tourism, mass consumption or another intrusion of modernity in the heart of the Amazon, not only an alternative way to learn about the world, not only a remedy, not only a way to cultivate witchcraft in order to damage those who are thought of as damaging, not only the expertise of trained ayahuasqueros and ayahuasqueras of varied origins, not only what links individuals from all parts of the world into new forms of shared experiences, lives, and values, but all of these realities entangled together.""In this collective becoming, beyond the divide of the Western and the Indigenous, beyond the divide of “human” and “nature,” beyond the comparison of “us” and “them,” ayahuasca becomes a complex relational space where usual frontiers are blurred, frontiers that have since long been functioning as basic concepts of the anthropological discipline itself."_______________________"These ingredients are plants that the apprentice ayahuasquero or ayahuasquera has “dieted.” They have ingested, each one of them separately, within a process of assisted training with a master ayahuasquero who has helped them meet the plants’ “spirits” through song and vision in order to learn how to communicate with them.""Encountering the plants means learning their songs. The plants teach their songs to the ayahuasquera who acquires the ability to call the plants and to put them to work in the ceremonial space or during smaller healing sessions by learning to sing them. Each plant encountered by the ayahuasquera through ingestion and song can then become “familiar” to her; meanwhile, she becomes known among the plants’ “spirits.” The apprentice ayahuasquero will progress in recognizing each plant in vision, their modes of intervention, their likes and dislikes, and their way of working or of refusing to work, and, through this process, the plants will become his “allies,” “friends,” and “family.”"Training with teaching plants means “meeting” them regularly, spending time with them and getting to know them well. It is a relational training. It means negotiating relational ethics and subtleties. It implies learning to meet with radical otherness; and yet, meeting these plants means recognizing them as people. It means finding that very space, or that very song, where the ayahuasquero’s and the plant’s spirit are close enough, similar enough, to actually exchange something, to actually commune and communicate. In a second phase, the ayahuasquera will meet all kinds of other spirits for whom other songs can be sung, thanks to the mediating power of the plants.""As Labate, Cavnar, and Gearin well synthetize: ayahuasca is an “ultimate agent of metamorphosis, akin to the greatest tools of any rite of passage, past or present, that reveals and transcends the limits of the human experience to the ‘Other’".___________________________"Ayahuasca is described as the one that introduces the other spirits. It is the one that opens the vision, the one that opens the way: the door and the gatekeeper. It stands as a guardian of those who travel with it. Therefore, if the ayahuasqueros speak of meeting with ayahuasca’s spirit, this is only considered the very beginning of a training that not only involves a plurality of spirits, but that also appears as a relational training, forging the very capacity of the ayahuasquera to relate to as many beings and forms of existence as possible.""Ayahuasca as a brew, therefore, appears as an analogue of the ayahuasquero’s apprenticeship and expertise: it is made of what he had to learn and with the challenges he had to confront in order to gain knowledge, experience, and closeness with all kinds of beings. It is all of this, “made liquid.” Ayahuasca does not “represent” the ayahuasquera’s knowledge, experience, and relations. It is made by it. It is all of this, liquid and drinkable."________________________"As one of the ayahuasqueros I’ve worked with explains it:"You are not drinking a plant that allows you to see spirits. You are drinking spirits in a liquid form. Ayahuasca is spirit, millions of spirits, turned into liquid for you to drink. When you drink those spirits you are actually choosing to host them into your body. That’s why you have to diet. You have to prepare a space acceptable enough for them to be in and comfortable enough for them to get to work. That’s why diets can be very strict sometimes. You are actually inviting people into your body and these guys are trees."_______________________"Yet a third component has to be added to this plurality: the participants in the rituals. Each one comes to the ceremony with his or her own agenda, with his or her own “intention.” Diet and intention are often described as analogues. Dieting and working on the intention behind the participation in a ceremony is what the participant “puts” in the ritual space. Ayahuasca’s answer shall be pertinent and congruent with each one’s input – ayahuasca being, as we’ve just argued, the coming together of the brew, the ayahuasquero’s expertise, and all their relationships.""Moreover, during the ceremony itself, and thanks to the mareación, the participant is required to work with ayahuasca in order to address what needs to be addressed and to attentively respond to what it addresses. As a common saying in the milieu goes: “She meets you halfway.”"Therefore, participation in ayahuasca rituality cannot be taken lightly. The ayahuasqueras put it to work with their singing, ayahuasca puts the participant to work through the mareacion; and yet, this only goes halfway. The participant’s contribution is a third and important part, together with the brew and the ayahuasquero, of what ayahuasca does during ritual practice."_______________________"Yet, who does what? Who cures? The brew? The songs sung by the ayahuasquero? The participant, through their commitment and concentration? And where do the healing songs come from? From the plants, who intimate them to the ayahuasquera, or from the singing ayahuasquera who uses them to get the brew to work? So, who puts who to work?""The impossibility of answering any of these questions by referring back to one type of “agent” is at the very core of what interests us here. Partly human, partly vegetal, partly visible, partly invisible, at the same time singular and plural, related to each person individually, and yet made of all the relationships that together bring it into existence; ayahuasca as a relational space is made, at the same time, of the plants, the brew, the ayahuasqueros, all the ritual participants, and all their relations. To understand ayahuasca as entanglement, participation is key."_______________________"Participating with ayahuasca means, becoming with it and, at the same time, refining the capacity of relating to it. In this process of tying knots with ayahuasca, we become entangled with everything and everyone that ayahuasca is tied to. And yet, in this entanglement, what emerges is something not only bigger, but also far livelier and far more intelligent than any of its separate parts; something that holds together, and that, because of the very processes that sweep through it, can provide unexpected answers as a whole." ... See MoreSee Less

“When my thoughts turn sad, I sometimes ask myself if, some time in the future, there will be any true shamans left. Maybe not".

"But if that happens, our children will have their spirits so entangled that they will no longer be able to see the spirits. They will no longer be able to hear their songs.""Without shamans, our children will be unprotected and darkness will take over their thinking”- Davi Kopenawa, leader of the Yanomami people ... See MoreSee Less

Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento with a young Benki Pianko, now Sheripiari & one of the leaders of the Ashaninka people, during a visit to Aldeia Apiwtxa in the year 1989 | Photo by Beto Ricardo ... See MoreSee Less