VEGETALISMO

We have seen this reference time and again in relation to various kinds of culture tourism, anthropological and ethnographic studies, addiction treatment and personal development. It’s origin is within South American indigenous culture; the term ‘Vegetalismo’ is a much more recent development, as you will see as you read on.

Jonathan Standing Bear

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

Vegetalismo is a shamanic practice found in the Amazonic provinces of Peru, which relies on the knowledge of the medicinal as well as spiritual properties of different types of indigenous plants. The word "vegetalismo" is actually a derived term, from the word vegetalista (plural, vegetalistas), referring to a witch doctor that is knowledgeable in this practice. A key belief in Vegetalismo is that some plants, known as doctores ("teachers"), may provide natural and spiritual knowledge if ingested in certain conditions. More specifically, vegetalistas produce a particular brew known as ayahuasca (using plants of the Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis species, and possibly others) which is aimed at providing the knowledge needed to diagnose and cure a wide range of illnesses. These and other "teacher-plants" of Vegetalismo are actually known to have particular psychotropic or biodynamic properties.

THE ICAROS

Singing to the Plants: a Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon

http://www.singingtotheplants.com/

In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages, their houses perched on stilts on the shores of the rivers that are their primary means of travel. Here in the jungle, they have retained features of the Hispanic tradition, including a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine. And they have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca.

The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues not only to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art but also to attract thousands of seekers each year with the promise of visionary experiences of their own.

Singing to the Plants emphasizes both the uniqueness of this highly eclectic and absorptive shamanism — plant spirits dressed in surgical scrubs, extraterrestrial doctors speaking computer language — and its deep roots in shamanist beliefs and practices, both healing and sorcery, common to the Upper Amazon. The work seeks to understand this form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and my own personal experiences studying wilderness survival and plant healing in the Amazon.

Steve Beyer, Author

Susana Bustos, (2006). The House that Sings: The Therapeutic Use of Icaros at Takiwasi. Shaman’s Drum, Number 73.

We take it for granted that music is one of the oldest mysteries explored by human beings. Did you know we’ve even found evidence our ancestor’s used instruments to explore the psycho-acoustics in the depths of their sacred painted caves? Journeying and music have long gone together, and our travels to the Amazon brought us in contact with that tradition as it still lives in the songs of the shamans, who use their icaros to guide their patients into realms of healing and self exploration. We would like to share this article with you on how one Westerner, a French doctor named Jacques Mabit who trained in curanderismo, uses songs to help heal addiction.

Susana Bustos

Susana Bustos (2008) Healing power of the Icaros - Phenomenological Study of Ayahuasca Experiences. PhD Thesis, Califorina Institute for Integral Studies.

http://www.4shared.com/document/Kzn_T

Mestizo Shamanism and Vegetalistas

http://www.ayahuasca.com/spirit/primordial-and-traditional-culture/mestizo-shamanism-and-vegetalistas/

Among mestizo populations of the provinces of Loreto and Ucayali in Peru, the shamans of plant knowledge and medicine, who communicate with Sacha Runa (elemental spirits of the plants), are known as vegetalistas. This term is used differentiate them from oracionistas, who employ only prayers for performing similar shamanic tasks, or from espiritistas, who work solely with spirits. The vegetalista regards plants as teachers, hosts to elemental spirits that can communicate with human beings.

Vegetalistas are more than just herbalists. Vegetalismo is a kind of plant shamanism deeply rooted in indigenous practices. Vegetalistas diet with different plants in turn, spending weeks in isolation in the jungle, eating only certain foods and consuming great quantities of the plant they are “dieting” (they phrase it as “I dieted this or that plant”) until the spirit of the particular plant enters them and teaches them about itself — a sort of Plant-spirit vision quest.

A vegetalista may specialize in other plants besides Ayahuasca; the dieta can be used for learning any Plant. Most vegetalistas tend to specialize in one or a few Plant Teachers in their practices. There are tabaqueros who specialize in Tobacco (Nicotiana rustica); toeros who specialize in the use of Brugmansia species (known in Peru as toe); camalongueros, who use the seeds of camalonga, a plant that grows in the Andes; catahueros who use the resin of Catahua (Hura crepitans); paleros who use the bark of various large trees; and perfumeros who use the scents of various fragrant plants, a kind of aromatherapy. (There are also tragaceros, who use strong alcoholic beverage distilled from sugar cane.)

Most vegetalistas use a number of different plants. But Ayahuasca is the primary plant of vegetalismo. Most vegetalistas use Ayahuasca in addition to their other specialties, or used it during their apprenticeship, because one of Ayahuasca’s roles is to make it possible to communicate with other plants and learn the language of the plant world in general. Without Ayahuasca, there would be no vegetalismo; in the rest of Spanish-speaking America, few mestizos, especially urban mestizos, have anything to do with backward Indian customs like communicating with plants, and nothing resembling vegetalismo is practiced in the mestizo populations outside the regions where Ayahuasca is used. But in the Ayahuasca-using region of Loreto, Peru, plant shamanism has not only survived, it has thrived.