Grace and Madness, by Alan Shoemaker

for Mariella Noriega Shoemaker

and Dedicated to the Spirits of the Plants

For my sons:

Jesse and Liam Shoemaker

Updated: July 13th 2001

Shamanism: Grace and Madness

An Apprenticeship to Ayahuasca and San Pedro

INTRODUCTION

Shamanic healing has been here for thousands of years and will remain. During the "Age of Reason", we were led away from believing in things we could not see and hear; that we could not place in our hands and feel its weight. This contrived reality found its way to the Americas a little over 500 years ago and through force of arms, unknown viruses and the Spanish Inquisition, it ravaged cultures and humiliated the medicine men, taking away their Gods and forcing them into submission. There remained, however, a few daring souls who continued to practice their magic, hidden away from the death threats of the conquistadors.

At the University in Iquitos, Peru, can be found a scientist hard at work in his test tube laden lab processing one of the Sacred Power Plants, ayahuasca, into powder form. Ayahuasca is an entheogenic and medicinal cocktail that has been used for thousands of years by the jungle shamans. For years now, the professor has been busy trying to decipher the secrets of this ancient medicine, with few new results. The efforts in determining the alkaloids necessarily present to produce visions and hallucinations were easily accomplished, but as the professor says, "We still can not figure out how a group of five people all drinking the same ayahuasca at the same time can have the same hallucination at the same instant." Such is the pity in being a scientist.

"What you are trying to measure or weigh cannot be done." I said. "Whatever intricacies of this medicine you are trying to intellectually discover will always leave you one short. No matter what you do, how many tests you make, or how numerous the compounds you find, your scientific method will never get you to the bottom of this mystery. Why? Because you can not measure God. You can not weigh the Divine."

"Yes, I know that." He said. "But I am a scientist. This is what I must search for; what I have to do."

What a thankless task, looking for the Light in a test tube. Maybe he'll find it one day. Einstein did. Then he joined the Church. How do you factor the Divine into a scientific formula?

Science has come upon an interesting phenomenon within their studies of Quantum physics: The outcome of an event can be influenced by its viewers. It has taken them until now to discover what the shamans have known forever.

The shaman, the "Maker of Myths", who classically keeps one foot in this world and the other with the spirits, is not to be confused with the brujo or witch, dancing with evil. Both are powerful. A shaman "holds hands with the Divine" working as a medium between this World's reality and the spiritual realm. They charm the divine into their rituals by prayer and song. Their's is a world of visions and hallucinations; a world of Grace and Madness. < In Tarapoto, Peru, one of the primary cities in Peru for the manufucture and distribution of cocaine, a Frenchman, Dr. Jacque Mabit, began his vision quest seeking out healers and ayahuasca rituals, looking for a teacher. During his search, a voice spoke to him announcing his future. Jacque set up a clinic in Tarapoto for curing drug addicts through ayahuasca shamanism.

In these days there is an incredible need to keep your immune system high. It has been confirmed by allopathic medicine that ayahuasca and the other Sacred Power Plants are doing just that. According to some of the healers from Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru, the Sacred Power Plants might also affect a cure for AIDS.

Within the mythologies handed down from the mountains of the Andes to the jungles of the Amazon is the same prognostication: The circle has come round - the time is now. Shortly, we will witness a move back to the magic and etherealness of our ancestors, and the rebirth of Shamanism. It is in that realm that we shall ultimately heal all our wounds, for it is there that the soul, the body, and the mind are one and can be cured as a whole, rather than in parts.

Perhaps in the last five hundred years the focus of our world, on industralization, technology and progress, has moved too fast. As for me, I have taken a giant step back, together with the knowledge of the present, to the medicine forgotten, to the curative powers of the plants and their spirits, to the healers who work through nature cleansing the body and who, through the all-encompassing divination's of the spirits and the Gods, purify the soul. For in that place we heal not only our physical selves, but we continually connect with the universal life force carried within each of us and shared by all. The more each and every one of us, throughout the World, understands this principle, and the sooner we realize that a sickness of the body, mind or spirit is within the ether that we all share, the more likely that we, as a whole, will begin to live in health, peace and harmony."

"Grace and Madness"

July, 1999 Chapter One

Seven years ago, under a rain-swept shop canopy on Amazonas street, a wet gringo shouldered into some shelter.

"Tourist?" I asked, after a moment. We were so close together it would have been uncomfortable to stand there much longer in silence.

He studied me a few seconds before deciding to speak. "No, I've been comin' here to Quito a couple months a year for the last 12 years." He continued, explaining how he was by profession a Louisiana schoolteacher but searched for gold in the Andes three months a year.

"How's it going?" I asked.

"It's been gettin' better every year. Last year I was really close - almost found it," he said, exuberently.

What a strange statement, I marvelled. "Almost? How do you know when you've almost found it?" I asked.

"I've got a map!" He proudly stated. I wish I had a map, I thought.

"What brings you here?" He asked.

Why I would go into the details of my quest I do not know, but I found myself explaining to the gold-hunting, Louisiana schoolteacher that I had come looking for a shaman. I felt silly using the vernacular, shaman, but curandero, the correct term for the healers in South America, is way too confusing for the ordinary traveler. Besides, gringos have been telling the curanderos that they are shamans for so long, many refer to themselves this way.

"I came down by land three months ago, through Mexico and Central America to Columbia, and finally to Quito. I've been traveling with Roberto here, from Venice, California. Roberto, this is, ... what did you say your name was?"

"I didn't, but it's Joe," he said, shaking our hands.

I met Roberto back in Tucson a couple of months earlier, when his name was still Robert. I was to be the photographer for an expedition Robert had organized, to the Amazon. Of the 6 members in the party, I were the only one that showed up. I met Robert when he knocked on my hotel room door.

I opened it to a man with long, platinum blonde hair, a chest puffed out like a strutting rooster and eyes the size of chicken eggs. Following a quick conversation, "You must be Robert." He reached up high with his right hand, pulling an imaginary train whistle and yelled, "Whewwwwwww!" I completely understood why the other members of the expedition would not arrive. Robert was the epitome of the stereotypical, Venice-Californian, new age hipster. After quick introductions, he changed my name: "Dude", he said, holding his palm up looking to slap mine in a high-five salute. In the two, too-long, months we had been traveling together, I heard my name, Alan, only enough times to jog my memory. When we walked across the border into Mexico he changed is name too. He was Roberto now. "When in Spain," he said. Robert and I decided to continue with the expedition, even though the rest of the party never arrived. I had a difficult time getting him to agree that he was no longer leading a party, as I was the only member.

Joe, the schoolteacher, reached into his back pocket, pulling a business card from his billfold. "I don't know who this is, drawled the Louisiana schoolteacher, "I got it several months ago and still have it. Don't know why I even kept it. Maybe I'm supposed to give it to you. Anyway, here it is."

I liked the way he considered there must be some reason why he saved the card, especially since this was 1992, and well before publication of "The Celestine Prophecy". The card was in color with a busy logo in the upper left hand corner: A bird in a heart outline and an eye with a lit candle in the pupil. It was the complicated, color calling card of Dr. Valentin Hampjes - Scientific Investigator of Medicinal Plants, Psychiatrist, and Neuro-Medicine.

"Must be a subtle way of saying he's a shaman," I said.

We chuckled about the card and I stuck it in my shirt pocket. As the rain tapered away, the schoolteacher walked away from Robert and myself.

I had not considered that the healer I would be led to would have a business card. Maybe now I, too, had a map. And perhaps it was meant for me. Enough odd synchronicities had occurred to me on this journey already that I couldn't laugh this off. Two months earlier, in the large and over crowded Guatemala City bus station, a handsome couple entered the door the moment my turn came to purchase a ticket onward. An unusual energy zinged through me when I noticed them there, 30 meters away.

"Roberto, I don't know why, but, for some reason, I am supposed to connect with those two people," and I walked across the room to the bench where they were sitting.

The woman's beauty and regal posture took my breath away. Only then did I realize that perhaps they would not understand English. Taking a chance, I asked, "Excuse me, but for some reason I am to speak with you. Maybe you know why?"

The man translated my English to his partner and we continued conversing as she surveyed me. They were brother and sister, from Mexico, on their way home. She finally spoke.

"What do you do?" she asked.

"I'm headed to the Amazon to study shamanism."

They smiled and after she explained that they were brother and sister, from Mexico on their way home, said, "I study sorcery in San Louis Potosi, in Mexico. When you have finished your studies in the Amazon, I invite you to come stay with us to learn sorcery. We have a large ranch." She wrote the address down for me. "Of course, you know you cannot have sex for five years when you take this path. It has been three years for me now. Can you do this?"

I was impressed, embarrassed, bewitched and probably blushing from that statement. She had read my mind.

"It has been two years for me," I lied. It had been only 18 months, but two years nudged me a nearer to her bed.

In Baranquilla, Columbia, I was strolling down a strange street with some person I didn't know.

In Calle, Columbia, I watched a man release a guinea pig. It ran down a lane and into a tiny door cut into an upside-down plastic dog-food bowl. There were about 50 of these bowls forming a horse-shoe pattern at the end of a 20 meter long guinea pig drag-strip. The object of the game is to place your money on the bowl you believe the guinea will enter. An odd sensation came over me to play this game. I felt what I call a "knowing": I was shown exactly which bowl the animal would chose the next time. Holding my hand out in front of me, I allowed it be guided to the correct bowl and placed the change on top. The pig was released and, quite matter of factly, sauntered into my chosen bowl.

Roberto saw me yelling, "Yes! Yes!" and collecting the money. "What's happening, Dude?"

I explained how I had received this information.

"It's just coincidence, Dude," he told me.

"No Robert. It happened just as I told you."

He still refused to accept it, so I told him I would do it again. I held my hand out like a divining rod. Nothing came. I waited. Nothing. It was sort of embarrassing and I became angry. There I was, angry and frustrated, my hand full of change stretched out in front of me, waiting for some other worldly guidance so I could place a bet. This was ridiculous. Worse, however, was seeing Roberto smirking in the background. The very idea of getting a message this way had to be absurd. But, there I was with my arm stretched out, looking like something from 'The Return of the Mummy', hoping something would happen.

I realized that not only was this the first time I had ever called this energy to me, but I had even asked something of it. I quieted my mind and centered myself. Sure enough, after only two or three minutes, it came. Or at least I thought it did.

I followed the sensation and moved toward the left side of the 50 bowls, allowing my hand to place the change on top of the one guided to. The guinea was released. It scurried down the lane to the opposite side of where I had placed my money, stuck its head in the door then stopped, turned around and marched straight across to the other side, directly into my bowl.

I yelled "Yes! Yes!" and turned to see Roberto covering his gaping mouth with his hand.

Still I was shocked and stunned... It meant the energies, spirits, angels - or whatever it was coming to me - could be called in. I had never considered that possibility.

In Baranquilla, Columbia, I was strolling down a strange street with some person I didn't know. Directly in front of us, a man jumps out from behind a tombstone shaped sculpture, screams something in Spanish about a woman and fires a pistol. We dove for cover in opposite directions. The bullet hit me directly in my right temple, blowing my head off. I died.

I was awake in this dream and remember thinking, "I must now be dead. If I die in a dream I must die also in the waking reality." My body was floating in a black void, spinning and spinning. Finally I was flopped back down on my two dollar a night cot at the hostel, awaking with a start and dreached in sweat.

For a couple of years my interpretation of this dream was that I would one day see my death in this manner. Later, I understood that this was an important dream, that this death was an essential beginning for my apprenticing in Shamanism. At least, I preferred to look at it this way. However, even now as I write this, I am not 100% sure my future has not been forecast.

The complicated color-calling-card, (the "map") of the good Dr. Valentin Hampjes that the Louisiana school teacher gave me remained fixed in my mind, so I decided to phone him. He invited Roberto and myself to his home in Tumbaco, a small community 20 miles outside of Quito.

We arrived there the following day, Friday morning, to a cottage nestled at the end of a dirt and cobblestone alley. Surrounding the whitewashed brick home were dozens of columnar San Pedro cactus plants, some over 6 feet tall with several branches. In the center of his front yard was a heart carved out of the grass, two meters in diameter and rimmed by flowers. We knocked on the door and were greeted by a bearded man of about 55 years with silver hair and laughing, mischievous eyes. He invited us in.

Valentin spoke fluent Spanish, as well as his native German tongue, and intoned his English somewhat like an Eastern European count. His eyes and mouth were constantly smiling in that Freudianesque, "I perceive everything" way, especially when he was puffing on his tobacco pipe. That mannerism perhaps coming from his having received his Doctorates in psychiatry and neuro-medicine in Vienna, Austria. On the south wall in his home was an altar covered in fresh and dried flowers with every deity imaginable represented by statuettes, photos, and postcards. He even had a living enlightened master, Si Baba, uncomfortably enslaved there in a framed photograph. To the right of the altar, above the door to his private medicinal and massage room, was a poster of the Virgin Mary in a blissful repose. From the look of all these icons, it was clear Valentin was not the type of curandero to leave anything to chance.

We spent the morning discussing his perceptions of healing through curanderismo. Valentin primarily works with San Pedro, the columnar, psycho tropic, mescaline containing cactus that grows in the Andes, believing it to be a superior medicine to ayahuasca, a boiled cocktail of a vine and leaf growing in the jungles of the Amazon, and also very psycho tropic. However, he is living in the Andes and ayahuasca is not easily available. In my seven years of apprenticing it has been interesting to note that every curandero I have ever met has professed that the plant they have most access to is always the one holding the most power.

Dr. Valentin Hampjes is a spiritual and a wise man, although overly religious and somewhat hyperbolic. He recognized the healing potentials inherent in allopathic medicine as well as Shamanism and chose when one form of medicine over the other would produce the desired results. Lying on the coffee table in front of him was a hardbound book he had written, "Shamanismo - Extasis of Shamanic Consciousness". This had been written, in part, to justify his having being given a license by the Ecuadorian government to administer entheogeics, and more importantly, to pass along the knowledge of their use he had already attained. A quick glance at the book showed that his roots were also firmly entrenched in Krishna consciousness, of which he was a devotee.

He spoke to me of activating the "healer within" by the use of the Sacred Power Plants. "The wisdom within these plants will locate the specific malady within each person, whether it is spiritual, emotional, physical, or combinations thereof. If the illness is physical, the bodies response or immune system immune system gets activated. If there are specific psychological or spiritual maladies, the patient can be shown, through visions and hallucinations while under the influence of the San Pedro, or any of the Sacred Power Plants, when and where the errors were made. In many cases the manifestation of an illness is based in unhealed traumas to the soul. These can lead to psychological imbalances and ultimately, manifest as physical symptoms. If we can allow the spirit of the plants to show us why the disturbances exist or where they come from, we can begin to heal ourselves."

"You can feel the psycho tropic medicines moving through your body, lingering in areas that need attention, activating the immune system to rectify the problem. Occidental medicine treats the symptom and so our immune system is not activated, remaining asleep."

"It is essential to get the ego out of the way so healing can take place. The method is ingestion of the Sacred Power Plants. Sometimes we are granted a vision. That is a gift of grace and should not be confused with the many hallucinations coming to you. However, the mind can manufacture projections of events you have refused to take lessons from or have given little significance to. This is a hallucination of great value. It may come in metaphorical form so it is essential to pay attention. Visions render knowledge directly from the spirit world and are quite rare."

Valentin invited us to return the next day, Saturday, at Noon, for his weekly San Pedro ritual. His pre-ceremonial advice was to fast upon awakening Saturday morning. Additionally, he gave us a long list of herbs we were to purchase in the Quito market and asked us to bring fresh cut flowers for the altar.

Roberto and I arrived on Saturday afternoon, having fasted as per Valentin's instructions. Thru my conversations in Quito about the upcoming San Pedro ceremony, seven other curious, adventure seeking tourists, from various parts of the globe, decided to join us.

Candles were burning on the altar and the smell of incense filled the room. It was early in the afternoon and Valentin used this time for personality checks, determining the variety of profiles he would have to take under consideration during the evenings ingestion of San Pedro. Each person was asked about their drug history, their religious beliefs, what medications they may be on and for how long, what they hoped to gain from participating in his ritual, were there any major physical conditions to be taken into account of, and had anyone a history of mental illness and how had they been classified. In general, he was searching for any clues to possible abnormal behaviors, whether emotional, physical, or spiritual that may surface while under the influence of the San Pedro medicine. He was especially interested in anyone who had long term psychiatric problems. Someone who is not balanced in waking reality could certainly have problems with the entheogenics.

When he questioned me, my responses centered on the energies and synchronicities I had been receiving. I told him that as far as I could tell, it seemed as if a spirit were guiding me. He listened, smiling "hmmm" while puffing his pipe.

We found comfortable seating on cushions against the walls of the room and Valentin instructed us on the proper behavior to maintain during the ceremony:

"When you begin to feel the medicine you must not try and keep your rational mind in focus. This only makes it more difficult. Relax and allow the medicine to move through your body. Ego has no place here. The more you try and hold, the more the medicine will fight you. Get out of its way as quickly as possible. You may see images presented as if on a television screen. Try and not think on them tonight. You will have ample time for that in your reflections tomorrow. If you see something from your past or present, even your future, and it makes you happy or sad, you may laugh or cry if you wish. But do not allow yourself to become too entrenched in it. Do not wallow in it. Allow it to pass. Validate it, but do not try and maintain it. Also, if you become frightened and it is necessary that I take your hand and help you through this, I will do so. But remember, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.' If you can manage to get through this darkness alone until you find yourself on the other side, back in the Light, you will have become a stronger person for it. However, if there come images you feel you absolutely cannot deal with, simply call me, Mohita, or Muridunga (his two apprentices) and we will come to sweep them away.

"Please do not converse here in this room, it disturbs not only the others, who may be deeply involved with their personal work, but also - you must realize, it prevents you from getting the information you need. Conversation is of the mundane reality and works on a different part of the brain, defeating one of the purposes of the medicine by distracting you from the messages you might receive. So, if you feel you must talk, if you simply cannot keep silent, please go outside."

Someone asked, "Should we be thinking of anything, or have some kind of focus as the San Pedro is taking effect?"

Valentin said, "Bueno. At times it is good to focus your thoughts on something you want to have insight into, for to empty your mind of all thoughts is a difficult task to master. And so, no matter how you prefer to approach the ecstatic state, remember: There is a song from North America that goes something like,

'You can not always get what you want, But if you try, Sometimes, You may find, You get what you need,"

and he laughed that big, semi-hysterical, head-tilted-back laugh that later I grew accustomed to, and loved.

We were curiously silent as Valentin turned out the lights and lit candles on the altar, filling the room with the smoke from mapacho tobacco. His two apprentices, Mohita and Muridunga, burned the Holy Wood incense (Palo Santo) and allowed its smoke to fill every crack and crevice of the house. They were purifying the ceremonial space just as is done with sage in the indigenous ceremonies in the United States.

Valentin changed into white clothing and, kneeling on the floor in front of the altar, he prayed. He blew smoke from his pipe onto the floor, crossing himself before each exhale, and then blew smoke to the North, South, East, and West. His prayers continued for five hours, testing our will power.

"When is he going to give us the San Pedro?" whispered one of the guests.

"How much longer?" uttered another voice.

"Soon," I said, guessing it couldn't be much longer.

Then the apprentices rose and together with Valentin blew tobacco smoke into the bottle of San Pedro, the glass it would be poured into, and another bottle of very dark, almost black liquid.

"The tobacco smoke assures that no negative energies have hidden away. If so, the smoke purifies them." He poured tobacco juice into a small glass and walked over to me. "And so, we too must also be purified."

I heard another whisper, "Does he mean we are going to first drink tobacco juice?"

"Drink this Alan," and Valentin offered me the glass.

"Tobacco juice? But won't this make me throw up?" I was confused.

"We hope so," and he laughed. "It will clean out your stomach and act as a catalyst for the San Pedro. Please go outside, either to the rear or the front of the house. And try and avoid throwing up on my cactus plants."

I jokingly motioned him to open the front door and get out of my way. Obviously, as soon as I drank this it was going to come right back up, and with much more force. We laughed as he opened the door. I swallowed some, and it did. Each person drank their dark brown venom and found their way outside as their stomachs dictated them, returning pale and clammy to an awaiting cup of room temperature guyuasa (Ilex guyuasa) tea.

Half and hour later our stomachs settled and we were given an equal amount, approximately 150ml, of San Pedro. The flavor was just as wicked. We waited. He had cooked it the entire day with no additives - just pure, unadulterated San Pedro cactus. A dose for one person was the distance from your elbow to the knuckles of your closed fist of this spiny, columnar cactus.

The San Pedro cactsus (Trichocereus pachanoi) is another of the Sacred Power Plants and therefore not only is an aid to vision but also a powerful medicine. It is not simply a source of mescaline, the psycho tropic alkaloid which resides from the skin of the cactus inward about 1/8th of an inch. Many have come to understand where the alkaloid is and cut away the inner portions of the cactus leaving only a very small percentage of the plant for consuming. This method removes the synergy from the plant, taking the life forces out of balance and negating its inherent medicinal attributes. It replaces the visionary with pure hallucinatory. This sophomoric endeavor strips the plant of a portion of its essence, or soul, and transposes the plants energy into something it never meant to be, much like cocaine manipulated from the leaves of the coca tree.

The flavor of San Pedro was not much better than the tobacco juice but it did not immediately induce vomiting. We set down on pillows arranged on benches placed against the walls and waited for the effects to take hold. Valentin recanted some of his history:

"I came to the jungles of Pulcalpa, Peru almost 20 years ago from Vienna, where I had been a successful resident surgeon in an Austrian hospital. I had become very frustrated with allopathic medicine, especially its method of treating symptoms rather than the whole person. I was not a spiritual man. In fact, I believed in the logic inherent in science. The after-life was a concept for the uneducated. During this time, a very dear friend of mine was diagnosed with incurable cancer and given only a few months to live. As his friends and I believed completely in the validity of modern medicine, we accepted this verdict and decided to give him a going away party. Following the party, we never saw him again and assumed he had literally gone away to die."

"Approximately three years later I was on call at the hospital. I looked down to the end of the long corridor and saw what must have been the ghost of this man. I stared at this apparition for what seemed like many minutes - frozen in thought. It began moving towards me. I was shocked. I had never seen a ghost or spirit before. In fact, I did not believe in such trivia. I realized I must be hallucinating, and that, too, was frightening for me. It came closer and closer until I saw it very clearly. It was the ghost my friend who had died of cancer three years earlier. It walked up directly in front of me and spoke: 'Hello Valentin.' I thought I might collapse. Even then I did not comprehend what was happening. I reached out to touch it, thinking my hand must surely go right through it, but it did not. He was alive. My dear, dead friend was alive!"

"I was extremely happy to see him, as you can imagine. I asked him what had happened as we thought him dead all these years. He spoke of a journey into the jungles of Peru to see the healers there. They had cured him with their plants and shamanism. He told me of the spirit world and of magical healing songs, called icaros. He explained how he had taken a psycho tropic, medicinal vine called ayahuasca. He related concepts that, were they not coming from a man I deeply respected and knew should be dead of cancer, I would never have believed."

"He was shaking my whole belief system, my complete foundation. I spent many months rethinking my philosophy of life. This, of course, also effected my approach to medicine. It changed everything. I no longer felt comfortable performing a surgery or prescribing a medicine simply because I could. I began searching for the roots of illness. This method brought me more consolation but was not met with the same outlook by the hospital administration. I ultimately concluded that I could no longer pursue healing in just an allopathic way. I was frustrated with my work anyway, so I resigned at the hospital and traveled to Mexico, foolishly searching for Carlos Casteneeda and Don Juan." Valentin laughed heartily at himself after he said this, then asked if anyone was yet beginning to feel the effects of the San Pedro.

"I then traveled to Peru where I began my studies in Shamanism, or more correctly stated, Curanderismo. Please do not forget, this was over 20 years ago and traveling to Peru was not a simple affair. I apprenticed with many different jungle curanderos, among which was a very powerful and spiritual man, don Jose Fatima of Pulcalpa, Peru, a true healer and ayahuasquero."

Valentin sensed the medicine's beginning effect and moved to the altar. "As a newborn child first enters the world of light breathing its first air, we must never take the light away by extinguishing it with our breath," With a quick flick of his wrist he snuffed out the candles and said, "It is interesting to note that it is in this darkness, under the influence of the San Pedro, that we begin to see. The light reflecting off surfaces of this reality tend to keep us here."

Almost an hour had passed since we drank the medicine. I felt a heat spreading through my system and my palms started to sweat. Muridunga began singing and was immediately joined by Valentin. As we became accustomed to the phrasing of the song, everyone participated. Finger and hand drums had also been spread around the room. The effect of the voices with the ever increasing cadence and intensity of the percussion allowed every song to flower into a cathartic, emotional expression.

It was 3AM and completely black. I could not see my hand in front of my face. I thought my energy must be fueled by the passion of the music and its participants but certainly it must also be coming from the medicine. But, I could not be sure. Having had experiences with mushrooms and LSD, I always measured their strength from the character of the scenery. But here, feeling the medicine in my system without the benefit of any light source, there was no measuring stick.

I decided to move outside. Standing there in Valentin's front yard, I needed to step closely by in order to pass another man. As I did this, I not only felt but glimpsed my aura pass through his and re-enter me as I stepped to his other side, sharing for a second or two the same space with his aura. I felt like I had been washed by a rainbow. He looked back at me with one of those "My God!" type of expressions and before I could finish saying, "Did you feel that?" he was already responding, "Whoa!". I knew then the medicine had its hand on me.

Valentin joined us outside and asked to speak with me.

"Alan, I would like it if you could help me please."

Without knowing what he wanted me for, I quickly stated that I would be glad to do anything that I could for him.

"Thank you, Alan. I want to build a center for the children of the streets, the orphans, in the mountains of Vilcabamba."

"Of course you do, but I don't know how I can help you, Valentin. I don't even understand exactly why I am here, yet." I said. I hadn't expected anything so grand. I thought he was going to ask me to help plant an herb garden or something.

"Excuse me for asking, but why do you want to build this orphanage?" I could tell from his expression I must have looked like a hooked fish and, certainly, he had another a good story for me.

And so he began, "A few years ago a group of medical doctors and I heard that the Holy Mother, the Virgin Maria, had appeared to the villagers in the mountains near Caracas. We decided to journey there together in the hopes that we, too, might also witness this. When we arrived, the entire valley was covered in tents. Many people had come. We were able to speak with a few of those who had witnessed the Holy Mother and we realized another sighting would be very unusual. Never-the-less, we too pitched our tents in anticipation of a possible reappearance. We remained there for a few days while many gathered their belongings to leave. One evening, as we were talking, She came. We were all just standing there, us Doctors, and we witnessed. As you might imagine, we cried. It was a very emotional scene. We made a pact with each other that evening there in the field: For the rest of the time we have here on this Earth we shall dedicate it to saving the children. Although I am a Doctor as well as a curandero, these things are now secondary. This is why I want to build the orphanage in Vilcabamba."

"That's a beautiful reason. I would be happy to help you, but how?"

"Thank you, Alan. Providence surely brought you to me. Don't think about how you may help now; it will come to you. And Alan, you were correct. You do have a guardian spirit with you. However, it is not one, but two. Tonight I have seen them."

I beamed, "So many miraculous things have happened to me - strange, unexplainable things - both before I left for this trip and during it. It is as if I am being led. I am just trying to keep out of the way so they continue."

"I can see that. You must tell me more of your journey later." He said.

"Valentin. To build an orphanage will take some time. Money has to be raised and then there's the construction."

"No. We must do this right away. We do not have the time."

"What do you mean, we do not have the time? I don't understand."

"Oh Alan, surely you know, don't you?"

As much as I wanted to tell him that I did, I was slightly embarrassed, as I had no idea what he was talking about.

"I guess I don't, Valentin. Know what?"

He began a long, impassioned speech about the predictions of Nostrodamus and other prognosticators of doom. I listened, intently at first, but as I felt confident from the San Pedro, I knew I could not and would not subscribe to the same vision of our future. Eventually I interrupted him and asked, "Valentin. Exactly when do you believe this is going to happen?"

"I am sure it will come around the year 2000."

This was distressing to me, not because I was bothered by his forecast, as I didn't believe it, but because he did.

"I don't believe that at all. I think the World is becoming more aware all the time. I prefer to believe that we will continue and that the Planet has turned many corners toward that direction. Besides, as you are a very powerful man, Valentin, for you to even think those types of thoughts, let alone voice them - which is worse - is to give power to their manifestation. For example, I refuse to mention the name of ... - and I hesitate to say it here for you now just to underline my point - the devil, because I believe to do so feeds that energy; gives it life. And you ... you are a healer. It is so much more important that you not do so because you have more personal power. Do you understand what I am saying?"

Valentin put his pipe in his mouth and drew in, smiling back at me and said, "Let's return inside to the ritual, shall we? We'll talk more later, Alan."

Occasionally, he would call one of his patients to sit on a tree stump placed in front of his altar for a curing. He took a set of palm leaves called suriponga (or shacapa) from the side of the altar and began by blowing mapacho tobacco smoke into them for purification of any possible negative energy. This is followed by a misting of agua florida by Valentin first sipping the liquid and then pressure spraying it from his mouth onto the leaves, himself, and the client. Valentin began singing an icaro as he swept the client with the suriponga from their head to their waist. His apprentice, Marcelo, rang tiny bells near and far from their ears to realign any misaligned audio-neural pathways. When he was finished he flicked the palm broom suriponga toward the altar to safely discard any energy it attracted during the cleansing.

After having witnessed this very important aspect of curations during numerous ceremonies, we began to call this portion of the ritual "soul dusting." Over the last seven years as I became more adept at it, I began noticing an interesting phenomenon: When I place the suriponga on the crown of the clients head to begin the cleansing, I sometimes see dark splotches, or what the curanderos call manchas, attached to the soul-body. They seem to be hanging onto the aura. My focus is on sweeping them away. There are also astral or spiritual parasites/insects the mestizo curanderos refer to as biches, but in 7 years of apprenticing I have yet to see them. I have no doubt they exist as too many other superstitious, mystical, and mythical things have stunningly proved themselves to be true.

Apprenticing has been a constant deciphering and weeding of myth and acknowledgment of the miraculous. I have a difficult time accepting things just because I am told they are true. Normally, I believe if a divine mystery is not gifted, first hand by the spirit world, then I remain skeptical. For this, my growth as a curandero has been slow and steady, but sure. However, I am often reminded of an Emily Dickinson poem,

"I never saw a moor, "I never spoke with God, I never saw the sea, Nor visited in Heaven, Yet know I how a heather looks Yet certain am I on the spot And what a wave must be." As if a chart were given."

That first magical ceremonial night with San Pedro was astonishing. From all the praying and singing along with the effect of the medicine, I felt more spiritually connected than I have in my life.

That morning, just as the sun was coming up, a group of us went outside for a glimpse of reality in the light, still under the trip-notic influence of San Pedro. The darkness of the night had given way to an efflorescent bliss within us. We sighed at the beauty of the mornings glimmering colors. Everything was sprinkled with a luminescent mist of dew. Just at that moment of awe, a white horse stuck his head out from the far corner of Valentin's house.

"Look! A white horse!", someone said. The timing of this along with the horse being so white and the colors so much more brilliant from the San Pedro was such a rush of spiritual magic we were over-joyed.

"Look! It's coming up into the yard!" The horse moved slowly up into the yard and continued across. It was approaching the heart carved into the grass of Valentin's yard.

"It's going into the heart!" This was almost too much beauty to handle. The white horse walked into the very center of the heart and just stood there, looking back at us. We were speechless, certain San Pedro was presenting us with some mystical message, some incredible encapsulation of the nights events.

The horse slowly turned around. Its tail was facing us now. We were trying to determine what the significance of this was, when, then and there, as we were in complete wonder of the majesty of it all, searching for the message, it took a dump. Daylight and the reality of the day smacked us in the face.

I cannot remember when I have laughed so hard and felt so healed.

Returning inside, Valentin informed us it was now time to continue our cleansing in his back yard. He led us outside where his apprentice, Mohita, was waiting with more tobacco juice. Mohita drew 6cc's of the vulgar, murky brown fluid into a needle-less syringe and inserted it into our nostrils, injecting first one side, then the other while we held our breaths.

Valentin explained, "The tobacco juice will drop down into the sinus cavities with only a slight sting and an instants sensation of drowning. It washes the phlegm out of the cavities, down the throat, and into the stomach. You must then douse your nostrils with fresh water and quickly drink a 16-oz. cup of warm guyuasa (Ilex guyuasa) tea. The tea mixes with the tobacco and phlegm in the stomach, producing a purgative reaction."

Many of the diseases we have are caused by an excess of phlegm. Curanderismo is also concerned with ridding yourself of as much phlegm as possible. The excess phlegm moves throughout your body and eventually settles, attracting toxins. These toxins cause illness. It is best to repeat this tobacco remedy 3 or 4 times. When you have finished you will hear your voice as if for the first time: Crystal clear."

Tobacco juice treatments are not for everyone, as they can be quite toxic to some people. The First World has been partially brainwashed by all the unclear propaganda toward tobacco. We need to understand that this plant, in its unadulterated form, free from the addition of chemical additives and grown without pesticides, is used in a sacred and medicinal manner by every indigenous culture in the world that has been introduced to it. It is not the tobacco that is causing the cancers. It is the 400 or so additives the companies are putting into it, some of which have even been banned for any use what-so-ever.

A light lashing with stinging nettles follows the phlegm purge. We strip out of our clothes and hose ourselves down with cold water. Mohita sprays our bodies with an anti-septant, "seguro" (a mixture of basil, camphor, ruda, and wormwood plants in a base of aguadiente, the moonshine made from the distillation of sugar-cane) then whips our entire bodies with the sprigs of the stinging nettles (Ortega). We also build up toxins between the upper two layers of our skin. While we have pores helping rid many impurities, they cannot handle them all. The skin is punctured thousands of times by the tiny barbs, allowing the toxins to escape. Again, this cleansing does not come easy. Your body feels like it's on fire. Small red welts begin to rise that stay with you for the next hour, then slowly fade away. This is followed with a warm herb bath that has been slowing steeping the entire night. This is the final cleansing. You have been thoroughly cleaned inside and out and so it is important not to put any synthetic soaps, shampoo, or toothpaste, into your system for the next 24 hours.

Thus began my teachings under Dr. Valentin Hampjes and San Pedro. Every Saturday I bused to his home in Tumbaco. I continued these once a week ceremonies for 4 months. After the first three rituals, I determined that the San Pedro was too weak for me and would always ask to be given a second dose. One dose would bring in no more than energy and colors. This was frus- trating for Valentin.

"But why do you want such a large dose, Alan?" He would ask me.

"I am not here for homeopathic doses, Valentin. I am physically healthy."

"What are you trying to do, break through a barrier?"

"Exactly." I responded. "I want to see."

Valentin's apprentice, Mohita, often told me of having been visited by the spirit of San Pedro, a small pockmarked man, apparently similar to the spirit of peyote. I wanted to see him and other dimensional things also. I thought, because of my 1st World programming, it would take a healthy dose of the medicine to get me there. He reluctantly poured me a double dose from then on.

When we experience something that cannot be explained in our normal reality, we usually dismiss it, as our eyes are attuned to another version of reality - the waking state, the programmed day to day existence, the reality chosen for us, given to us, and hammered into us. Somewhere around the age of five or six something tragic but evidently essential happens: The psychological programming begins to set in. Whether this is the direct result of having integrated a basic language or simply a learning of social codes, or both, I really do not know. No doubt, each of these has affects. You can see it in the child's eyes and in their manner, their behavior. This conditioning takes so well they even become proud of it and, because of its inherent competitive nature, this game is unending and continues through childhood and old age - until death, unless something happens to create a change of awareness. Socialization steadily paints itself over our intuition and the attunement of our vision is no more.

Our payment for entrance into society is the forfeiture of our 6th sense, which includes our intuition and telepathy. We are taught to draw our conclusions from our five senses as the 6th one isn't tangible, is not logical, and therefore we have no method of discerning its existence.

We live in an allopathic world that has slowly and methodically taken away the credibility of our minds belief system in miracles and the ability to suspend our disbelief. It isn't that the magic has gone, it's just that we have forgotten how and where to look and listen for it. We have foolishly allowed information to replace intuition. Half-wittedly, we have then allowed ritual to be removed from our lives. In our search for concise, logical communication we have spelled near-death to whatever telepathic abilities we once had. We have forgotten that we must continue to allow ourselves to be mystified; we must remain perceptive to the knowledge not generally known.

For instance, about twenty years ago, in a small, mining-town library, my Uncle came to me. I was busy and quiet in the back corner trying to determine what play would be the most appropriate to direct for this Bible belt community. Other than the librarian at her desk near the front door, I was alone. I had never ever been to this library before.

My Uncle, Albert Thomas Shoemaker, was my Father Figure, as my Mother divorced when I was three years old. Just three months after I received a "National Endowment for the Arts" grant with a placement in the Bible-Belt as its "Artist-in-Residence", my Uncle died in an car wreck in Boston.

Two months later, while sitting quiet and alone in this county library, a sensation came over me to stand up and begin walking past several stacks of books. The feeling is difficult to explain as I was spoken to in a way that negated actual words but gave me a "knowing" or "clair-audience." I followed this internal voice passing several stacks, turning left when told to do so, and walking between the shelves until I was asked to "stop, reach out and grab a book." Without looking I did so, pulling down a book with my left hand. Opening it up to the first page, I read: Dedicated to Albert Thomas Shoemaker.

I had never heard of this book. A trace revealed that several years earlier my Uncle had given the author a room in his home in Spain to write it.

I continued drinking San Pedro with the Doctor for several weeks and spent my free time in Quito, Ecuador. During one week I continually saw a very unusual young man playing pool with two of his friends in a local tavern. I sipped a beer and watched him. There was something about him, I did not know for sure, but something was.... wrong. He wasn't very adept at the game and perhaps his uncomfortableness was what I was picking up. He was maybe twenty years old and from his carriage and demeanor, obviously quite intelligent. However, from his movements around the table, it was easy to see that something was out of balance with him. At first I thought it was the pool game but after watching him for half an hour I knew it was something else. But what? I left there thinking about it and two days later saw him in a sidewalk café. As it turned out, we knew some of the same people so I had an opportunity to sit at his table. His name was Alexander but he preferred Sasha and was from Norway. Among the numerous languages he spoke was English. Here on a grant to prefect his Spanish, he had done that in rapid fashion. In our conversation he let me know that he had survived cerebral malaria, sometimes a deadly disease, because the hospitals in Quito had caught it in its early stages. The problem now was his short term memory. The hospital doctors and specialists knew of no way to completely recover it. The electrical connections - the synapses - had been short circuited. He could be in the middle of a conversation and forget who he was talking with, the subject, or even where he was. For this brilliant young man this was his worst nightmare come true. The brain he had trained to understand 15 different languages and speak seven fluently was no longer functioning in proper working order. He had the stamina to withstand this parasitic joke but was under immense internal turmoil.

Dr. Valentin Hampjes, a neuro-surgeon, agreed that the electrical synapses had been over taxed and that drinking San Pedro would reconnect them. His instructions to Sasha for the week prior to the ceremony were to take a holiday and refrain from any intellectual activity.

Sasha attended the ceremony with me. Three hours after drinking the medicine Valentin called him to come sit in front of the altar for a cleaning. Icaros were sung, the shacapas were used to soul dust, and Mohita continually rang tiny bells at various distances to his ears. When they finished he came over and sat down next to me.

"Alan, thank you for bringing me out here. I have my short term memory back."

"Just like that?" I asked.

"Yes. Valentin said the medicine could bring it back, and it has."

Sasha was rarely amazed. Valentin did exactly what he said he would do, Sasha completely expected it, and immediately accepted it. Just like that. One evening in his home I told him of a story of my childhood:

"I was 10 years old and spending the night with my friend. He was on the top bunkbed and I was on the bottom. We decided to play a card game where he would pick a card from the deck, concentrate on it, and I would divine the correct card. I chose the correct card three times in a row, after which Charlie thought the game quite boring, so we went to sleep. One year before I left Seattle for this shamanic journey I mentioned this to a friend and she suggested we try it again. This time she was sitting directly in front of me with a deck of playing cards. Elizabeth chose a card and thought of nothing else. Again I chose the correct card and suit three times in a row."

"Do you think you can do it now?" Sasha asked.

"I think so."

"All right. I have a deck of cards upstairs in the office. I'll be right back."

While he hopped upstairs and grabbed the deck, I headed down the hallway to the bathroom. Entering the doorway, two images of cards came into my head.

"Sasha," I yelled, "Sasha, have you chosen a card yet?"

"Yes, I have."

Walking back into the living room I said, "Look, I haven't done this in a while and I don't know..., this is weird. As I was walking to the bathroom I began getting an image, but it's not of one card but two. And you have chosen a card, right?"

"Yes, I have."

"Well, I get two cards coming, I don't know why but... I get the nine of clubs and a red jack."

"He wasn't even surprised, he just said, 'When I first picked up the deck I saw only the bottom card, the nine of clubs. And here is the Jack of Diamonds', and he took the card off his forehead from under his glasses. 'These are the only two cards I have seen.'

I was impressed, surprised, and amazed. He was very matter of fact, nothing more. When I jokingly suggested we become bridge partners he just said, "Alan, that would be cheating."

Three months of drinking this medicine with Valentin left my physical body cleaner than it had been since I was 20 years old. From all the purging I had done, I also felt emotionally cleansed as I had learned not only to purge myself of the toxins in my stomach but to allow my psychological self to purge at the same time. I was glowing.

I felt called to leave the safety of the group and explore the upper Amazon in search of a maestro who could teach me the mysteries of its medicine, ayahuasca. Valentin attempted to persuade me not to leave. He was sure I would fall into the hands of unethical brujos who would slip other dangerous psychotropics into the ayahuasca in order to control me.

Part Two

Deep down into the Colombian Amazon, on the muddy, rusty colored banks of the Putumayo River, lives an old curandero who has been taking care of this tiny village and its assorted illnesses performing ayahuasca rituals at least once a week for the past 60 years. It was here I began my studies when I realized I was being called to the healers path and later, it was to the ayahuasquero don Ramon, outside of Iquitos, Peru, that I apprenticed myself to the teachings of this Sacred Power Plant, ayahuasca. The signs guiding, affirming, and maintaining my path left no room for doubt of their authenticity.

Ayahuasca and the other Sacred Power Plants heighten our awareness, opening the doors to the spiritual plane of existence. They guide us to our center where within each of us sleeps an internal doctor, i.e. "the healer within", which once activated allows us to heal ourselves. These sacred medicines invoke a specific healing response, clearing out physical maladies and alleviating psychological duress from the past -- like ingrained habits and response patterns which have long outgrown their usefulness -- allowing us to move on and continue to grow. It is imbibed ceremoniously with the guidance of a skilled curandero who controls the numerous spirits conjured from the incantation of the icaros. These icaros are the curanderos' magic melodies, taught to him literally by the "Spirits of the Plants".

The old Siona curandero in the village on the banks of the Putumayo River poured my first cup of ayahuasca. We sat, surrounded by the jungle, in a thatched-roof, dirt-floored, open walled tambo. Present in the ritual were eight tribesmen in various modes of hand-me-down 1st World clothing: Well worn t-shirts, US imitation bluejeans, overly abused tennis shoes, flip-flops - obviously just a couple of generations out of their traditional attire - and 3 shaman-hunting gringos who were sharing the 15 meter long dug-out canoe with me. We had pooled our money in Quito, Ecuador, and headed for Colombia, in search of the entrance to the Upper Amazon via the Rio Putumayo, a narco-traffic river with the harshest reputation for kidnappings and untimely disappearances. We traveled by bus up and over high mountain passes on narrow one-lane dirt roads that looked as if they could cave in at any moment. In three days of breathing dust and exhaust fumes and being stopped by the Colombian police for drug searches, we finally found ourselves in the brawling cowboy town of Puerto Asis, Colombia and the headwaters of the Putumayo. Here were dirt streets, motorcycles reined-up outside saloons, and front row seats to street shoot-outs viewed from our hostel balcony. An English speaking, gringo-friendly, out-of-work school teacher, whose son supposedly represented Colombia in fencing for the Olympic games, even came up with a brilliant way to introduce our innocence to Puerto Asis and the cocaine Mafia. He suggested a recorded welcome to its residents, in English, on the local radio station. I recorded the greeting, simulating as closely as I could, Robin Williams in "Good Morning Vietnam!":

"Good morning, Puerto Asis! This is Alan Shoemaker from the United States wishing each and every one of you a fine and healthy good morning. Buenos Dias!" Which may still be playing now for all I know.

It took two weeks of daily searching to find a 15-meter long dugout canoe and a 40 horsepower motor. We rigged it with curved re-bar roof supports to uphold a black plastic rain tarp and bought enough food to last one month. Four 55 gallon drums of gasoline and a few mechanics tools rounded out our purchases. We motored out of Puerto Asis by a small tributary and onto the Rio Putumayo, maneuvering into what seemed a fast, 11-mph current. It was a shaman hunt, and we were determined to ride this dug-out all the way to La Chorrera, Colombia - a Bora, Witoto, and O'Kaina village nestled around the impassable waterfalls on the banks of the Igara-Parana river.

After solving various engine problems we eventually motored onto the banks of a tiny Siona tribal village where we were greeted by some of the natives. We asked to see their curandero.

"Si, senor. He can't see you today. He's drunk."

Drunk? Their healer is drunk. "That's okay, we'd like to see him anyway."

The other gringos followed him to a thatched roof hut, built on 12-foot high stilts for protection from the rising river and wild animals. After arranging for one of the locals to guard our dugout, I, too, climbed the stairs to his house and, for some strange reason, pushed the door open and paused for a moment before going in. I heard a drunken shout of, "Jaguar!", then abashedly eased into the room like a clumsy house cat knocking over a flowerpot, the faces anxiously staring at me. An old man, apparently their curandero, was sitting on a small stool near a large screen less window overlooking the village. The hair growing out of his head was silvery, long, and lent a haunting effect to a face of sun-baked, cracked mud. A few seconds looking at him and all my illusions of the serene "holy man" shaman floated away into the wrinkled tributaries of his face. It was early still so he asked us to buy him another half-pint of aguardiente, the potent alcohol made from the distillation of sugar cane. He quickly chugged it, then agreed to brew a pot of ayahuasca and perform a ritual for us that very evening.

"But, don't we have to diet all day?" I asked.

"No, no. Meet me here later. My wife will cook dinner and we go out to the tambo and drink."

"We can eat just before drinking ayahuasca?" I was confused. This was contradictory to the teachings of Valentin.

"Of course we can. Won't you be hungry? She'll make chicken soup. Don't you like chicken soup?" He asked me.

We arrived at his home at 6pm. I spooned away two bowls; the second one going down with only shadowy thoughts of the possible repercussions from not following what I had been taught was the proper diet before a ritual. It was dark when dinner was over so we grabbed our flashlights, mosquito nets and hammocks, then followed him along a muddy trail deeper into the jungle until we arrived at his ritual hut, a tambo approximately 1 kilometer from his home. The ayahuasca had been cooking since early afternoon and the ashes were still warm.

"Has it been cooking long enough?" I asked.

"More than enough time." He assured me.

I was skeptical, but then this was the jungle and I really didn't know what to expect. From the information I had gathered about ayahuasca, I thought it had to cook at least 8 hours. But what did I know? I decided to go with the flow and take his medicine with an open mind, just as I had eaten two bowls of his wife's chicken soup.

I swallowed my very first cup of still warm ayahuasca kneeling in respect to the maestro and toasted the ritual for all its spiritual qualities. The flavor was so atrocious. He handed us a four-inch piece of peeled sugar cane, instructing us to suck on it to take the flavor away. When he gave me a piece and I remembered Valentin's instructions: "No sugar in any form after taking a Sacred Power Plant." I thought this was one of the many rules you were simply not to break. However, he was the curandero, this was his jungle, and the flavor was sickening. So, as with the 6pm dinner, I gladly followed his instructions.

Then I waited. An hour passed and I was feeling no effect. While the others were obviously under the ayahuascas influence, walking as if the ground were in the throes of a small earthquake, I listened to the various cacophonous purging noises coming from the jungle outside the tambo. The old ayahuasquero slapped the harmonica on his hand, emptying its excess saliva, and rose from his hammock. He had not sung even one icaro, apparently preferring to work with the vibratory sounds of his harmonica. He ambled over to his pot of medicine, squatted down, opened the lid, picked up the coffee cup he used to dose it out and nodded for me to come join him. Immediately I stood and walked over to him. He just sat there behind his pot of still warm ayahuasca, studying me. After a few moments, he tendered another cup, and suggested that I might have some resistance to the effects of the first one; that perhaps I had a block. And again, as with his 6pm dinner and the sugar cane, I refused to allow preconceived notions to guide me. I had to go for this; had to trust in my instincts of this initially inebriated, codgy, old Siona ayahuasquero. I shot this repulsive fluid past my taste buds into my throat, and had no problem accepting his offer to suck on more sugar cane. I waited. I watched the stars glistening under a half-moon. My awareness heightened from listening to the symphony of jungle music blending with the extraordinarily mellifluous notes of these icaros, blown into the harmonica by a crusty curandero. An hour and a half had passed since my first cup, half an hour since my second. When I started to clear my throat, a geyser beginning in the deepest pools of my stomach announced itself with such force that I ran out of the tambo with both my hands slapped firmly against my mouth, unstoppable spews spraying squirt gun like from its sides. I stopped running about 30 meters outside, and in removing my hand let fly this unyielding liquid, completely awed by its strength and pressure, gushing forth a meter in front of me, over and over again. When it finally finished with me, I slowly raised up. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I noticed light. The ceremonial participants, obviously concerned, surely must have followed me out into the jungle and were now standing all around me because I noticed what must be the glimmers of their flashlights. I was embarrassed. I realized that by the time I was to be standing again I must gather my wits about me and present them with a proper mask. When I raised myself up, I witnessed the most unbelievable thing I had ever seen: All the jungle plants in the semi-circle of my vision were inhabitated by spirits. They were glowing from the inside out! Within the very small plants just off to my left were the spirits of indigenous children, and directly in front of me, at twelve o'clock, the large shrubs contained giant 20-foot tall tribal spirits, resplendent in attire: Arm-bands, below the shoulder length hair with head-bands, and dressed in long robes with a checkered pattern of lime green, cream and white. I knew that this medicine was a powerful hallucinatory and thought it particularly interesting that my mind would be so detailed as to fabricate their collars in a Nehru fashion.

"What was happening to me? Was I hallucinating? Was this a vision?" My mind searched the various possibilities while my body responded with cold chills running up my spine. Just at that moment, the entire group of spirits, eight in all, put their arms out, palms up in a welcoming fashion, and began singing my name. There were the soprano and alto voices of the women and children, and the deep resonant voices of the men, beautifully singing over and over, "Alan, Alan, Alan, Alan, Alan." And tears streamed down my cheeks. I restrained myself from bowing down in reverence, nodding my head instead in an honoring gesture of respect as I continued absorbing this Amazonian vision. After 10 minutes in absolute wonderment, I finally spoke, thanking them for what they had shown me, explaining that I must return to the tambo and the ritual. And I promised them, finally, that I would never forget what they had shown me.

Maybe now I was beginning to understand, but I was still unsure. "Is this it? Curanderismo?" Are there literally spirits of plants and, if they so choose, do they heal for you? I had too many things to think about, but they would all have to wait until the morning.

When I had quickly run out of the tambo to purge, I noticed no change in my coordination. After purging I had trouble determining when my feet were going to hit the ground. The upper portion of my body, however, was in complete control. The drunken effect was only in my feet. Perhaps it was just that my feet were the furthest from my eyes and my eyes were then the actual cause of this? Could it be the further away objects were the more likely you would hallucinate on them? And had I been hallucinating everything? That would help explain what I had just seen. But these spirits sang to me also, didn't they? And they even knew my name. I returned to the ritual and was astonished by completely vivid images of jaguars and boas coming out of nowhere, ferociously presenting their- selves just inches away from my face. Although I was unsure exactly what this was or why it was happening, I decided to suspend my disbelief and imagine it a bizarre test of bravery. On each pass of the jaguar, roaring directly into my face, I saw, in full color, each and every tooth, the tongue, and even down into the throat. Instead of allowing myself to become frightened, I literally decided to appreciate the beauty of the images, for, what choice did I have? This was beyond my control. And what if this really was a test of courage? I had learned many years ago to have an admiration for danger, maintaining fortitude in its wake. For the next three hours I was bombarded with it, finally tapering away as the effects of this ayahuasquero's brew came to a close.

As my thoughts continued whirling and the visuals slowly melted away, we clumsily climbed into our hammocks and fell asleep. I awoke with the first light and as each of us slowly roused, we gathered what gear had been brought and returned to the reality of the curanderos home in the village.

One of my dugout partners, Thea, and I openly discussed the night's imaginings. She told me about the curanderos son, who had drunk the ayahuasca with us. He had met her down by the stream where she had gone to purge. After splashing some water on her face she began her return to the tambo, but he was standing in the middle of the trail, blocking her way. She thought nothing of it and continued walking toward him. He didn't move. She stopped directly in front of him and he reached out, placing his hands on her breasts. Thea looked at him, calmly and firmly said, "No," and he moved aside. She returned to the ritual, deeply under the influence of the medicine, and he followed, sitting between us on a small platform. I had occasionally looked over at him during the night, especially when he was making deep roaring sounds like a bull. He seemed to be in a deep trance, his eyes closed.

Thea explained, "During the night while I was in deep meditation, I sensed he was trying to come to me in spirit form for sex." She was unsure whether this was real but felt strongly enough to erect an other-dimensional wall, not allowing him entrance; and it was real enough to mention to me; however, because it revolved around sex she wasn't completely convinced of its authenticity. Within this ayahuasca state she believed, on the other hand, that had she wanted to allow him into her visions, she could have.

I didn't know what was real or imaginary either but thought that perhaps this was a gift, from the spirits to her, concerning sexuality. "The only way you will ever know is to ask him." I suggested, realizing I too had a visionary gift still to process.

Thea, however, felt too uncomfortable to approach him and a few days later told me, "Alan, I wish I had done as you suggested. Because now, I will never know."

I, too, thought I would never know, as for the next year during my apprenticeship in curanderismo I was never absolutely convinced of what I had seen that night. The old Siona curandero had plainly told me his medicine contained only the ayahuasca vine, chalipanga, and a few leaves of datura. I correctly believed him, as now I know that the effects of this medicine last only 4 hours and the dry, parched-throat feeling coming from ayahuasca over-laced with datura had not been present.

He met with us in the morning following the ritual and we traded harmonicas: My new blues harp for his slightly rusty and well-used Colombian one. It was a gift I treasured. He was the first to explain that according to legend, the new curanderos would be gringos: That a little over 500 years ago the Spanish had come with their disease and instruments of War and decimated them, not interested in being healers. Now the time was here: The beginning of the next 500-year cycle. He could find no one to teach. Even his son, whom he would most like to pass his wisdom to, isn't interested. We, us gringos, are. Those of us who have seen and understand the idiocy inherent in the cause and effects of the logic systems we have implemented are interested. We have been educated well enough to respect what was left behind and to try and save what parts of it we can before it is lost forever. The missionaries have come with their first world financing and float planes and set up churches in the deepest reaches of the jungle, bringing with them their God, their ethics, and their morals. They have convinced the mestizo and indigenous through gifts of clothing, medicine and money that the traditional medicine from their grandfathers is nothing more than superstitious folklore. Now the newly attired children prefer to swallow a pill and worship a God they previously knew nothing of.

The old Siona healer disheartenly continued telling me of his son and various other apprentices who had given up. Besides the competition from the missionaries, there are the free-clinics floating up and down the Putumayo and stabilized in various pueblos dispensing antibiotics and parasite medications. The apprentices would not return after they began the various difficult diets required in order to master a Sacred Power Plant. Some of the tree Doctors require strict diets of 90 days and more alone in the jungle before you can drink them. He was quite sad that his knowledge wouldn't be passed on through his tribe and bloodline, and so he fully understood the significance of handing me his harmonica, as well as did I. He was passing something very special on to me in the hopes that I might continue the chain: That I might one day become this new curandero - the "gringo shaman" - and therefore a vessel maintaining the ancient knowledge he treasured and hoped would survive the passage into this new age that he, from time to time, saw fleeting glimpses of as it floated by on the Putumayo.

When we left the following morning, the parting was bittersweet. I informed him I would try and return but he knew, as well as I, the actual possibility of this was slim. However, both of us realized this was also one of the many beginnings of the 500 year legend. I saw and felt real, earthy curanderismo; unadulterated by 1st World concepts and unadorned by all the rules I had sacrificed so much to learn and tried so hard to break.

Amidst the bedlam of the Putumayo exists a key to healing. In a tiny dirty village on the muddy, rust colored banks of this dangerous river lives a sometimes drunken and always sad ayahuasquero who showed me that the worlds rain forests and the ancient practices of healing evolving there are not a sham. There does exist the possibility to discover the cure for the maladies of the world. It just may be it won't come in a pill or a bottle; it might not be something you can even put into your hand. Maybe it's an ethereal magic that will never be glimpsed under a microscope. Perhaps the future of healing is in access to and communication with another plane of existence.

That night I realized my methods of healing would also evolve. I hoped I would learn to direct my energies towards asking questions of my patients following rituals, guiding them through self-inquiries, helping them recognize and work with their own internal healing energies.

For the following 6 months I moved from one healer to another, searching for one I felt could teach me. The quality of the ayahuasca always differed and never was it as potent as the Siona healer's. Skepticism continually gnawed at me, preventing me from completely accepting as visions the many hallucinations I had received within the 50 or 60 healing rituals I had participated and assisted my maestros in that year. I had failed to really secure my beliefs in the spiritual plane of existence as I thought I had seen so vividly on the banks of the Putumayo River. Yes, I was working with, speaking with, and witnessing many spirits, but I had a difficulty completely believing this plane of existence was real. The curanderos I had been working with also never seemed to be the "one" to whom I felt I had been sent to. Their singing of the icaros, in many cases, was too robotic; lacking the sensitivity I felt should naturally be there. Others I tested obviously just wanted money. Each of the various teachers I came to all told me that they were the only true healer and everyone else I might decide to work with were brujos. In many ways I appreciated this egotistical information as it made my decision to move on, continuing my search for a teacher, much easier.

A little over a year later, as I was preparing for a return trip to Valentin and San Pedro in the mountains of Ecuador, I was informed of yet another curandero on the outskirts of Iquitos, Peru. I knew that one of the most precious gifts I could take to my maestro in Ecuador would be a bottle of freshly brewed ayahuasca because the vine doesn't grow in the chill of the Andean high altitude. I wandered through a small village persistently asking directions from the locals for the house of their community curandero. All of the homes in the neighboring villages on the outskirts of Iquitos are built on very small plots of land. They usually don't have anything in the way of a garden as the land has been so washed with rainwater over the years that growing any sorts of garden plants is out of the question for lack of nutrients in the soil. The houses are also plotted very close to each other. I finally rounded a corner at the back edge of a pueblo and came to a small, typically unpainted wooden slatted, thatched roof home. I called out, "hello", and the door was opened by a young Peruvian girl without the slightest register of interest that a gringo was now standing before her. She called for her Father. When he came into the house and our eyes met, I felt I had met a kindred soul. He was smiling inwardly and an air of humbleness issued from his body language. He walked me through his house to his back yard, which was full of various medicinal plants and four times as large as any other yard in the neighborhood. It even had grass growing in the center, which normally is machete-chopped out by the locals who prefer bare clay and daily sweeping to keep it clean. I explained that I would like to take a bottle of ayahuasca to my San Pedro maestro in Ecuador and asked if he could provide me with one.

"Si. I can have it ready for you tomorrow." He took me to his own patch of ayahuasca vine he had planted on the back edges of his property. "You have a San Pedro maestro in Ecuador?"

"Si, don Ramon. I was working with San Pedro before I began working with ayahuasca."

"And you will be returning here to the jungle again." He stated as he finished chopping the vine. We gathered the pieces and walked back to his home. As I shook his hand we made plans to meet the next day and he told me, "When you return from the mountains you come back here. If you like, you may study here with me."

This was the first time an ayahuasquero had asked me to apprentice. In the past I had visited the healers with this question in my mind. This time, it came naturally through him. The following day I returned to his home and paid him for his freshly cooked bottle of medicine.

When I arrived in Ecuador and presented the medicine to Valentin, he immediately asked me about the spiritual orientation of the man that cooked it. His concern was not that the ingredients were correct or the cooking had not been managed properly. Ayahuasca, after all, is a rather simple medicine to make. His interest was geared toward what types of energies the chef would have put into his pot. I could only confess that I did not know, but that the short time I had been around him the feelings I had were quite soulful. Valentin placed it in his refrigerator for safe keeping.

The following Friday, before we began the San Pedro ritual, I described numerous ceremonies I had been involved in as well as a wide variety of curanderos and their various styles and belief systems. Valentin was concerned that I had compromised myself and even picked up some bad energy while working with ayahuasca.

He proceeded to explain the meaning of this nights ceremony to the clients who had come. "On a psychological level we have all been programmed by our peers, family and society in general to behave in specific ways which have all been deemed appropriate and acceptable. This includes most importantly those patterns ingrained so deeply it is very difficult for us to change. Our wisdom has out grown most of the habitual emotional response patterns we have so meticulously developed and now, in adulthood, we find ourselves burdened with an antiquated emotional language that we do not know how to rid ourselves of, that we may move forward into full realization. During this evening with San Pedro it is possible to focus your thoughts onto what so ever psychological character traits you no longer desire and wrap them up, locking them away into the semblance of a safe deposit box, of which you have the only key, and never to see or deal with them again, unless you desire to. It puts you into the drivers seat, so to speak. The medicine will allow you, if you can singularly focus your thoughts on specific issues, to rid yourself of any and all manifestations you think are incongruent with your continued emotional growth. On a physical level the medicine will seek and destroy. As you drink the medicine you can literally feel it moving through your system from the tips of your toes to the very crown of your head. As it is coursing through your body, it lingers here and there a bit longer, and it is in those areas that the medicine has found that you need more assistance."

He began the ceremony as usual, praying and blowing mapacho tobacco smoke, and handing out the Shots of tobacco juice followed by San Pedro. When it became obvious we were beginning to feel its effects, he asked Mohita and his wife to take me into the back room to cleanse me of the bad energies he thought I had picked up in the jungle.

Mohita had me lay face down on the massage table, removing jewelry and clothing. He sprayed me with agua florida and began sweeping me from head to foot with the shacapas. When he reached my thighs a look of shock came onto his wife's face and I started to rise up.

Mohita said, "Don't get up Alan, just stay here. We'll be right back."

Twenty minutes later they returned, finished cleansing me and I returned to the ceremony. The following morning I asked him what had happened.

"When I reached your legs, sweeping the shacapas over you, two tiny hands came out of your thighs. I continued sweeping at them but they were holding on. Finally a small man jumped out of your body and ran into the ceremonial space. We left you there to find him and chase him out."

"Did you find him?" I asked.

"No, we didn't. It is really of no importance. We call these 'elementals' and they don't do any harm."

Interestingly enough, this same small man had now reappeared for the third time in my life. The first time was when I was visiting my family for a weekend during college. I picked up the clay of my nephew and haphazardly began playing with it as I was watching television. When I looked down my hands had formed the perfect image of an old man, complete with a hat and wrinkles in the pants. The next time he had surfaced, I was working on a movie called, "Brubaker". One day following shooting my friend and I returned to my sports car. There was a Polaroid in the rumble seat and when my heavy friend sat down in the passengers seat the camera fell to the floor and the flash went off. We watched the resulting photograph develop: A tiny man, again with hat and rumpled pants.

As the sunlight slowly entered the room I was very relaxed, lying on the couch directly across the room from the altar, which receives the first soft light being next to the door. I had been basically "spacing out" on the altar, tired and not thinking. My internal chatter was accidentally but completely shut down. It was at this point that I began to see. Within the table and on the wall behind the altar I began noticing things moving, very calmly, as if it were an early morning landscape in the countryside. I had been watching this for what must have been 10 minutes and really didn't give it a thought until, for the third or forth time, a bird kept flying from one perch point to another within this 3-D movie. As I watched, I finally understood I was looking into another reality or dimension and I began hearing a voice that gave me names for the world of trees and plants I was looking at within the altar. This voice was naming the plants, the birds,... everything. This continued for several minutes until everyone got up, heading outside to the back yard for the mornings sinus tobacco purge. Valenin asked if I was coming but he could see from the look on my face, staring at the altar, that I was involved in something. He kindly gave me a knowing nod and continued on out. It was only then I realized how long I must have been staring at the altar, as the full light of the morning was upon us. Either my internal dialogue started up again, or with the interruption, ... I simply don't know, but my visions stopped. Maybe it was because I was thinking too much; I was analyzing, intellectualizing.

I wandered out to the back of the house and sat down next to Valentin explaining what I had seen. I told him that I had been seeing into another world that had manifested itself within the altar.

He smiled at me and said, "The plant is finally showing itself to you, Alan."

More and more I looked forward to the next weeks ceremony. Each time I drank the San Pedro I had to ask Valentin to give me a larger dose, explaining that I was not here for healing, not here for homeopathics.

"Alan! Why do you want to drink so much! You act as if you are trying to break through a barrier or something."

"Yes, Valentin. You are exactly right. I am trying to break through a barrier. I am trying to see." I responded.

Every morning following the all night praying and chanting I spent my time staring at the poster of the Virgin Mary above the door. One morning as I was engrossed in her beauty I saw, superimposed, the face of an old woman which suddenly changed to a skeleton. This confused me. I was comfortable with the various expressions she would shift into but such a hallucination was bewildering to me. I went to Valentin, outside administering the tobacco juice into the sinuses and told him what I had seen.

"You can see that in the face of Maria?" He was shocked. "Alan, you have picked up some very negative energy from the brujos in the jungle. How is it possible you can see ugliness in Maria?"

"No, Valentin. I have not picked up anything from the jungle. I saw it. I was simply hoping you might have an explanation for me."

"Alan, when you are in the ceremonies you must conduct yourself as a warrior. You must put forth sufficient energy that extraneous thoughts and energies cannot enter into your concentration. You must sing with more energy and not allow yourself to relax as much as you do."

Here was one of the points that Valentin and I diverged. He as a believer of Castaneda. My experience had led me to believe that a lack of focus brought me more into other realms more easily. I had read Castaneda's books while tucked away in a private library in Quito. When I finally stuck my head out of the shell I noticed that I had come out into the light with less respect for his words than Valentin. I noted many incongruence in the writings and simply could not accept what he was delivering as experiencial studies in shamanism and sorcery. I said nothing, however, and the following ceremony I expended more energy, giving Valentin the benefit of the doubt.

When daylight broke the group went outside and Valentin began administering the tobacco juice into their sinuses. Just as they finished, Madann arrived with his wife, an older woman of perhaps 65 years. She complained of having a sense of being full and was hoping Valentin might cure her. She drank a cup of tea and relaxed there in Valentin's living room with me.

"I feel much better now, thank you for the tea. I think I'll go to the small house and hold a women's prayer circle." And she left.

Later, I too went to the other house and Valentin, Mohita and I listened intently from an adjoining room as the women prayed together. The older woman was leading them in the prayers of the Virgin Maria, holding a rosary in one hand and a bible in the other. I listened for about 20 minutes, then returned to Valentin's house and relaxed while looking up into the poster of Maria again. After about 15 minutes the face of the older woman leading the prayers of the Virgin Maria superimposed itself on the face or Maria. She was smiling down at me with rosy cheeks, vibrant and healthy. It was a beautiful vision and I wanted to leave and tell her what I had seen. At that moment Valentin rushed into the room.

"Alan! Who is in this bathroom?"

"The young girl who had attempted suicide by drinking Drano. I've checked her. She's okay." I said.

"Then please grab the ax and hurry with me. The old woman must be in the other bathroom outside. She's not answering the door and I can't open it. Hurry Alan!" I grabbed the ax and wedged the door open. When I looked in I saw the old woman lying beside the door, eyes open but vacant. I squeezed into the room and took her pulse. She was gone. We carried her outside and Valentin and I administered mouth to mouth and heart massage. It was too late. She had died.

The vision of her I had received had confirmed the death but also had relayed to me that she was at peace. We carried her into the medicinal room and laid her down onto the massage table. We lit candles and as all of us surrounded her, Valentin said prayers. While we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Madann decided he wanted to see her one last time. He returned to us in a state of shock.

"Valentin! Alan! Please come and look at her again. I think she's breathing!"

We hurried into the room to check. Valentin was searching for a pulse and I tried to determine if she was breathing by placing a mirror under her nose. Finally, Valentin announced, "Of course she is dead. Alan had a vision of her as she passed through to the other side. She has certainly gone."

An autopsy was performed a few days later. She had died of a pulmonary embolism while straining to relieve her bowels. The sensation she had described of feeling full that morning had explained that. The embolism had exploded while she was straining on the toilet. She had drowned, falling to the floor. I had seen her death one week earlier when I saw the vision of an old woman changing into a skeletal face. That morning, as she floated away, she graced me with another.

I continued working with Valentin for many more ceremonies until I felt it was time to return again to the jungles of the Amazon and its' medicine, ayahuasca. I informed Valentin of my decision to leave and that I would be there on Friday for a final ritual. As always, he was disturbed that I would be working with other teachers but I sensed that I had more of an affinity for the jungle and ayahuasca than the Andes and San Pedro.

I arrived late on Friday evening. Valentin began the ceremony just after I arrived. As usual, I asked him for two glasses of his medicine and, somewhat haughtily, he gave them to me. Two weeks earlier I had come across bushes of a beautiful Datura in full flower and given them to Valentin's assistant, Mohita, to dry and prepare for me. Mohita had been trained in Datura by his maestro in Argentina and was prepared to introduce me into the mysteries of this quite dangerous plant. When Valentin had seen the flowers drying he was distressed that I had an interest in learning this plant as it is primarily used by the brujos for doing their ill fated work.

As the ceremony began Valentin asked me to change seats and sit nearest the altar, suggesting that the male and female energies would be better balanced if I would do this. It was a strange request. In all the ceremonies I had been in with Valentin he had never arranged the room in any manner at all before. But, I did as he suggested. This meant that I would be the first person served the medicine also. Valentin gave me the first glass, but I noticed that it had already been poured as it was sitting on the altar already full. I drank it and, since this was to be my last ceremony, I asked for and received another. It was a large gathering, perhaps 20 people, and it was the strongest San Pedro I had drunk. I clumsily made my way outside to purge about 2 hours into the ceremony and returned to my seat near Valentin and the altar. At one point I attempted to help Mohita and Valentin working with a client on the massage table in his healing room but, as I walked into the room, I was moving through too many of what appeared to be spider webs, or so it seemed, so I returned to the security of my seat.

About 4 hours into the ceremony Valentin began chanting the Lord's Prayer, in Spanish, over and over, and the others in the room also chimed in. When they had repeated this prayer maybe 5 times I decided that I too would do the Lord's Prayer, but I would chant it in English and for the express purpose of giving healing to Jamie. Jamie comes every week to the ceremonies because he has what the occidental doctors have described as an incurable kidney cancer. As I began canting the others in the room canted with me, but in Spanish, such that I thought that they enjoyed me doing this. So, I continued repeating the prayer over and over. I must have done the prayer 10 times until finally I was tired and thought I should let it rest for a while.

At first light I squinted my eyes and headed outside to Valentin's front yard. Awaiting me there on his normally manicured lawn were two large jungle cats, black with orange spots, surrounded by jungle plants and vines. They were beautiful and from the expressions on the faces they seemed to know me. I returned inside and told Valentin that someone had put something else in my San Pedro.

"Alan, why would someone put something in the San Pedro?"

"I don't know, Valentin. You tell me. All I know is that there were two very large black jungle cats surrounded by jungle waiting for me on your normally very manicured lawn outside."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Alan."

I returned outside and discussed this with Mohita. He told me that Valentin had seen the Datura flowers drying and was very angry when he discovered they were for me. From this information and Valentin's constant warning to me that I should be more careful about whom I drank ayahuasca with, that they could put other things in the medicine that I wouldn't be aware of until it was too late, I deduced that Valentin had himself played a cruel joke on me. I called Valentin outside to discuss my theory and it became obvious that he had indeed doctored my medicine.

I told him that he should never ever put anything in the medicine that the person would not be aware of and agreeable to. Ultimately, in a rage, I grabbed a handful of grass and threw it in his face.

When I returned to Quito I began having an odd sensation that something was going to happen to me as soon as I returned to Peru. I was in Sasha's apartment, bags packed and ready to be driven to the bus station.

Sasha asked me, "Alan, you seem preoccupied about something. Are you all right?

"Yes, I am okay. It's just that I have this feeling that as soon as I cross over the border into Peru something will happen to me. I can't tell what it is, but it is something I am not going to like. I have a feeling it is coming from Valentin, but I can't be sure."

Sasha drove me to the bus station as we continued to talk about this. I felt that if I could speak with Valentin before I left that perhaps I could dissipate this energy pattern that had been set up. I tried phoning him from the bus station but the lines were down. The sensation was becoming stronger and stronger until Sasha suggested that I return to his home for the evening and delay my return to Peru until the next day. I continued trying to phone Valentin but could not get through. The following morning Sasha asked me if I still had the same feelings.

"Yes, I do, but I don't think staying here will remedy anything. At least I am aware of it so that I can be on my guard."

Sasha again drove me to the bus station and I tried for the last time to phone Valentin. There was no answer.

The bus ride to the border of Peru is about 16 hours. I received my Ecuadorian exit stamp and Peruvian entry visa and hired a taxi to take me into Tumbes. My burro bag weighed in at over 70 pounds. Fortunately the agency that sold me my onward bus ticket to Trujillo gladly allowed me to store it until the bus left. I wandered about the herbal market in Tumbes, eventually purchasing 4 stalks of San Pedro and depositing them in my backpack. I still had 2 hours to await until the bus left and noticed that across the street from the bus station was a restaurant called, "Dos Hermanos" (Two Brothers). This obviously meant the uniting of North and South American and so this would be a safe refuge until the bus left. I placed my backpack with my money and passport in it on the table beside my Coca-Cola so that I could keep a good eye on it and began writing in my journal. When a couple passed by the window and I thought I noticed them eyeing my pack, I realized someone could easily reach inside the window and grab it, so I moved it to a chair beside me and out of reach. If I could only get on the bus without anything happening to me I felt I would make it out of this border town and avoid the terrible consequences I had sensed would come to me here. The same couple that had passed by the window returned and took a table across the room. I was getting paranoid from their presence but when the waiter arrived at their table I felt ridiculous. They both ordered a bowl of innocent soup. I must be fabricating this sense of doom, because they obviously had not been looking at my daypack at all but had simply been looking for a place to eat. Perhaps they were even waiting for the same bus. I relaxed and continued writing in my journal, the workers in the restaurant cranked up the salsa and all seemed right with the world. 20 minutes later I turned to ask for my check. My pack was gone. The couple was gone. I ran outside but they were nowhere in sight. Almost all of my money, my passport and the San Pedro were gone.

Following a long, sad bus ride, I found myself in northern Peru, in Chiclayo, with 4 hours until the next bus left. I learned of a museum in the neighboring pueblo of Lambayeque and took a three-wheeled motor-rickshaw there, beginning my very first tour of a South American museum. I traversed the first and second floors, taking in the various layouts of the old cultures and their art. Finally, I climbed the stairs to the third floor and as I rounded the corner I gasped in amazement: There before me, behind 10 foot tall glass panels, stood a mannequin draped in a full length robe. It was of a checkered pattern. The colors had faded but of more interesting note was the cut of the collar: Nerhu style. The sign below read: "INCAN." This was ancient Incan clothing. I had to sit down there to fully integrate my thoughts, but then I absolutely knew. The spirits I had seen on the Putumayo and those coming to me during San Pedro and ayahuasca rituals were not simply abstracts of a vivid imagination manifested by a potent psycho tropic. My mind had not been playing with me. I had not been hallucinating. They are real. I realized that had I, at any point in my life, ever studied South American art or history that the vision I had of the Spirits in the Plants could have been imprinted on me. I could have hallucinated and projected these images. But I had never studied these things. Finally I felt I could begin my apprenticeship to the plants in complete sincerity.

Continuing by bus toward Iquitos, Peru, I decided to visit with Valentin's teacher, an old ayahuasquero named don Jose Fatima of Pulcalpa, Peru. A traveling companion I had met along the way, Gina, had a very specific medical problem she hoped he might divine a cure for. She was 34 and without a menstrual cycle for over thirteen years. All possible allopathic tests had been performed in France without arriving at either cause or cure. Explaining this to don Jose, he deferred to his wife, a curandera, who was more of an expert with female maladies.

She listened to the problem, then asked, "Can you give me a cigarette, Alan?"

I handed her one.

"I need three."

Don Jose Fatima closed the wooden window covers allowing for a darkened room. She banded three cigarettes together to resemble a pan flute, and lit them. She watched as the smoke swirled up slowly; she turned them, twisting her wrist first one way, then another. An ash fell off and she studied that. The cigarettes had burned down more than halfway, and as she looked back and forth to Gina, the ashes, and the smoke, she finally asked, "Do you have a friend named Sasha?"

We had been staying in Quito, Ecuador with a man named Sasha and I told her so.

"No, Alan. This isn't a man. It's a woman; a black woman from many years ago."

Gina thought for a moment, and finally her face lit up. "Yes! I had a friend named Sasha years ago in France. A woman. Maybe 15 years ago or more." The two women looked at each other in that telepathic way men are so often envious of.

"Si, senorita. This friend you had many years ago, Sasha, used to have the same problem you have now." There was a long pause again as the meaning slowly sank in. "But she doesn't have the problem anymore. You do. This woman has taken your birthing power away. You must get it back. You must go and see her to do this."

"Do you mean that this woman.... has menstruation now... and she didn't before? That she took this from me? On purpose? ...She is some sort of witch?"

Don Jose's wife gazed deeply into her soul and repeated, "You must go and see her."

That evening, Gina, Don Jose's apprentice and I drank ayahuasca sitting strangely quiet on the concrete floor of his house in one of the slums surrounding Pulcalpa, Peru. Don Jose is about 80 years old and said he didn't drink ayahuasca anymore. It wasn't necessary. Recently, he had a prostrate operation and the forces involved in purging were just too great. Later, during the ritual, I literally saw he could reach the state required to heal by using only his mind.

I sat on the concrete floor with don Jose on a short stool almost on top of me. No patients had come, as this was an impromptu ceremony. The apprentice began air whistling icaros and everyone spoke in curiously subdued tones. His wife explained that we dared not risk singing the icaros aloud because of the late night thieves. This could be dangerous if they discovered gringos were in the house as they might want to rob us. Don Jose just sat there, staring at me the entire evening, occasionally asking me how I was doing, interrupting my train of thought. There were no locals present for healing so I felt I had an opportunity to explore some of the techniques used in searching for animal spirits. I had skimmed several books on shamanism while visiting the US and one of the subjects getting the majority of attention was "animal spirits". Each time I looked up from this search, don Jose was staring at me. I assumed he was trying to determine how his former student, who was my San Pedro curandero-maestro, was doing by studying me. I thought this rather humorous because I didn't know what I was doing. I had never been taught anything about animal spirits. I thought it interesting that, from one of the books I had read, you could find your animal spirit by closing your eyes and listening to drumming. How absurdly simply. Even though there was no drumming, I did have an evening free and decided to experiment. Two hours into the ritual I looked up and found myself face to face with a milky-white substance. Containing my initial shock, I looked it over trying not to get cross-eyed. It was in the form of a coyote.

"I see you there." I whispered, and it swooped back, entering the head of don Jose. We slept on the concrete floor that night with his entire extended family. My mind was too busy with travel logistics for the return to Iquitos to get any sleep and then the baby began crying and crying. I was so tired, and with this noise unable to be abated by its mother, sleep was next to impossible. I began trying to soothe the baby in my mind and laughed to myself when the child stopped crying. My mind wandered again - scattered energy. The baby started crying. I mentally soothed and, oddly enough, the crying stopped again.

"That's funny," I thought, and I again mentally cruised the various travel possibilities for the next day. The baby cried. I soothed. It stopped. There were now just too many coincidences.

Purposefully, I started thinking discordantly and the baby cried. I soothed and it stopped. To my dismay at having to use the baby this way, I repeated this over and over just to make sure. It was real. This was happening.

We stirred awake in the morning and don Jose said to me,

"Alan, you were very concentrated last night. What were you doing?"

I felt ridiculous as I didn't know what I was doing, or if he had any knowledge of, or interest in, animal spirits. I explained that I had been looking for my animal spirits and when he responded with, "And did you find any?", I knew he understood.

"No, I didn't, but I saw one of yours."

As I watched for his reaction, the entire family came around behind him, scrutinizing me.

Don Jose just smiled. "What was it?" He asked.

"A coyote," I said.

And while he gently nodded his head in affirmation, his family was more ecstatic, responding, "Si, si!" and one of the younger children even clapped his hands.

A year later, Gina returned to France and, strangely enough, received a letter from her old friend Sasha the day after her arrival: Sasha wanted to see her. Later, I visited Gina in France and asked her what happened.

"Well," she hesitated, "I haven't been to see her."

After a long, pregnant pause, I asked, "Did you at least write her back?"

"No." She said.

"Gina. I don't think you really want your power back."

After visiting with don Jose Fatima, we continued on down the Amazon river to visit another curandero, Fernando, who had a camp 5 kilometers into the jungle at Requena, where he ran "ayahuasca tourism" programs. Gina had studied here for three months, two years earlier, drinking ayahuasca, and hoping, along with the other tourists, for visionary experiences. In all of her rituals with Fernando she had yet to be gifted with anything resembling even a hallucination, let alone a vision. "But profoundly meditative and very cleansing," she told me. While living in Iquitos I had heard he brewed an extremely strong ayahuasca, although a bit heavy on the vine (betacarbolines), so I was looking forward to drinking with him. He had personally invited Gina and I to his camp. Requena is a moderately sized but depressed mestizo community of maybe 700 people, ten hours up the Amazon river from Iquitos by a slow river-bus. We spent the night with a local Peruvian family and the following afternoon walked with Fernando and his lover the 5 kilometers into the jungle to his camp. During the walk Fernando entertained us with some of the more outlandish hallucinations the tourist had seen in his rituals. He also explained how he believes it to be unsound to sing icaros memorized from another maestro in his ritual unless specifically asked to do so. He had invited the local Requena villagers to drink with us and eighteen showed up. In the largest and most centrally located hut in his camp, we drank his brew sitting around the inside perimeter walls, quietly listening to the icaros he quite beautifully blew into a pan flute, then alternating with plucking a one-stringed, guitar-like instrument. He was absolutely an artist, an entertainer, and I was reminded more of theater than curanderismo. I drank two small glasses of "La Purga" and the evening passed rather humorously as most of the villagers fell asleep around four in the morning, after having purged with forces ranging from quietly lady-like fortissimo's to manly tubas syncopating a marching beat. That evening I listened to a full symphony of regurgitation in utter psycho tropic darkness. It was a pleasant experience, with none of the seriousness normally found when people have come to be healed. For this, I appreciated the evening and don Fernando, and so, too, did the villagers who knew him. At daybreak you could hear them joyously laughing and carrying on pleasant conversations while they bathed in the nearby stream.

Now we were four: Fernando and his lover, Gina and I. In his open air kitchen we had a heavy, under-cooked, bean-soupy sort of breakfast and exchanged thoughts about last nights show. Gina and Fernando had a chance to catch up, as there had been no opportunity to speak with each other since she left his jungle refuge five months earlier. Just before he left, Fernando gave Gina a bottle of ayahuasca for our use that evening. He informed us of the two spirits continuously with him and those that guard this camp. This subject for a conversation came as a complete surprise. It seemed he was telling me because he thought I might have perceived it during last night's show, or maybe I had heard some odd things about him while visiting other curanderos. I realized it could also be his way of insuring we treat his camp with respect after he left. He related a heartfelt story of how, on one occasion, he requested these spirits guarding his camp to help him in preventing the loggers from cutting on his property. When the company began chopping close to his land, two of the loggers apparently died in bizarre ways, which he claims were the direct effect of his guardian spirits. He seemed sincerely depressed about this, as he had only wanted the logging stopped. He did not fathom the spirits would or could actually cause anyone's death. Shortly following the slow death of one logger from a debilitating disease, the cause of which the doctors could never determine, the second logger came uninvited to Fernando's home during a party. The man danced, had a few drinks, and left, without ever actually mentioning anything about the death of his friend. He was attempting to befriend Fernando. The man said, in passing conversation that he simply worked for the logging company and had no authority as to where they were told to cut. In subtle ways this was either his attempt to ask for safety while not actively and consciously suggesting that a brujo could have had any influence on his friends death, or he was denying the possibility that malevolent spiritual energies could have been responsible.

Fernando explained, "I am not in control of these spirits. They are indeed evil and for some reason incredibly protective of me. There was really nothing I could do to help him, even if these spirits were responsible."

This man also died a few months later in a strange accident involving a bulldozer. Fernando told me he was sad, but these events were out of his control. He seemed completely sincere as he related this story but because it was so totally bizarre I was unsure as to exactly what he was trying to tell me. Was he insinuating he was a brujo? That he had spirits protecting his camp? That two spirits always remained with him, I easily accepted as I have mine also, I've felt them, been contacted by them and my San Pedro maestro has even seen them during rituals. But, that his spirits could kill? I was somewhat skeptical. He then explained how Gina should be careful with whom she drinks. He told us that it is possible for men to come to her in spirit form in an attempt to have sex and that she must recognize this as a real event and prevent it through strong concentration.

That evening Gina and I drank one large dose from the bottle he left with us and entered the large conference hut, placing a mattress in the center of the room. We made ourselves comfortable, curling up under two blankets. As darkness slowly approached I began chanting, singing the icaros learned from my maestro Valentin. After an hour or so the medicine was in full affect. Gina, sitting on the mattress to the right of and slightly behind me, began a conversation. I stopped singing, as she must be talking to me -- we were the only people here.

"What is it Gina. What do you want?"

"Just keep singing Alan. I'm not talking with you."

"You're not talking to me? Then who are you talking to?"

"Alan," she chided, "to the other people here from the village drinking with us."

"Other people from the village?" I asked. "How many other people are here, Gina?"

"Oh... I don't know exactly, but I'd say about 20. Just look around for yourself."

But, ... there were no other people here. I knew what she must be seeing and explained that they were spirits of people, not flesh and blood. She just laughed it off.

"Alan, will you please stop joking with me?"

She started walking about this large open space, going through invisible doors, entering rooms that weren't there, and quite pleasantly carrying on two-and-more sided conversations until, in the far corner, the darkest area of this large open space, she had a very long talk with what, finally I began to see also, were two people, one of which was in a long hooded black cloak. I began to see him also. I glimpsed a milky colored face and became concerned that possibly it was a skeletal head under that black hood. I couldn't help but associate negative forces with black clothing and after I had seen what I thought was a skeletal face, I had no choice but to behave towards this as if it were dangerous; especially after the breakfast conversation I had with Fernando. I told Gina to return to the mattress immediately.

"Sit down here with me please," I suggested.

She rather pleasantly stated, "I'd like to sit down with you for a while, but you have," and she counted them, "one, two, three, ... eight other people on the