Introduction

Ayahuasca, caapi, dapa, mihi, kahi, natema, pinde are all vernacular names for a powerful hallucinogen known in the Putumayo as yagé. Used throughout the Amazon, it is traditionally employed by indigenous people for the purposes of divination, healing, and sorcery. Yagé is a drink which consists of the vine banisteriopsis caapi combined with one of a number of psychoactive plants, especially psychotria viridis. In combination, they lead to gastrointestinal purging and intoxication and produce spectacular visions which have been a fundamental part of indigenous Amazonian visual and oral expression for around 8,000 years. The first detailed account of the drink by a non–Amazonian was provided by the Victorian botanist Richard Spruce, who observed its effects among the Tukano on the River Vaupés in 1852: ‘All who have partaken of it feel first vertigo; then as if they rose up into the air and were floating about. The Indians say they see beautiful lakes, woods laden with fruit, birds of brilliant plumage, etc.’ Here Spruce identifies some of the key features of visions among native and non–native drinkers of the brew, including out–of–body experiences and heightened perception, with the casually inserted ‘etc.’ hinting at the multiplicity and superabundance of a world glimpsed through yagé.

Despite a number of late nineteenth– and early twentieth–century scientific and literary references to yagé, the hallucinogen remained relatively unknown until the latter half of the twentieth century when, as Kenneth W. Tupper asserts, it underwent a ‘process of globalization’, and was incorporated into the ritual practices of a number of new Brazilian religions such as Santo Daime and the União do Vegetal (UDV), as well as mestizo healing practices in the Peruvian Amazon. More recently yagé has become a staple of ethnobotanical tourism in the Amazon, imbibed by celebrities, the terminally ill, recovering drug addicts, and adventurers as part of what Ralph Metzner considers the ‘worldwide seeking for a renewal of the spiritual relationship with the natural world’. No longer under the strict control of the medicine man, yagé can now be purchased freely online or in shops in Amazonian cities such as Iquitos.