Reading his biographical information, it is hard to believe one man has explored so many avenues of enquiry in a single life. He holds law degrees and doctorates in both religious studies and psychology, has lived for a year and a half in a Tibetan monastery in the Himalayas, has published three books on Buddhism and Tibetan language and religion, and has taught as a professor at the University of Wisconsin, the University of California, and Graduate Theological Union.

Through his practical interest in wilderness survival techniques, he encountered the sacred plant medicines of the Amazon, where he received coronación (a high level of shamanic initiation) by banco ayahuasquero don Roberto Acho Jurama.

To deliver the effulgence of visions, traditions, insights and wisdom Steve has gained through his numerous explorations, he runs a fascinating blog called Singing To The Plants, is a contributing editor to Ayahuasca.com and has now published his latest book, Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, his first-hand account of initiation into the magic and mysteries of Ayahuasca — one of the most powerful plant teachers on the planet.

Anyone who has ever worked with the Great Medicine will respect what strength of character, courage, determination and powers of surrender are required to follow such a path. His book, Singing To The Plants is an excellent contribution to the field of shamanistic studies, Ayahuasca research, Ethnography, Botany, Anthropology and also that undefinable field of direct experience and knowledge. It is a book that deserves to become, along with some other classics like ‘The Ayahuasca Reader’ & ‘Ayahuasca Visions’ (Pablo Amaringo, Luis Eduardo Luna), and ‘The Antipodes of the Mind’ (Benny Shanon), representative of the field of Ayahuasca ethnography and anthropology as it stands.

It is important that this book is penned by an author who has worked consistently over years with the Medicina, in contrast to many authors whom have dipped their toes in the waters a few times and then penned sensationalist and speculative accounts of their experiences. Steve uses his own compelling experience with meeting and knowing Mestizo Ayahuasca shamans to thread together a detailed understanding of the rituals and worldview of the Ayahuasquero, expressing his understanding of the deep aspects of his subject, such as the entities and forces of the shamanic realms, with a refreshing phenomenological purity, humility, and respect for the mysteries.

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DANIEL: Steve, thank you for sharing your time and knowledge in this interview. I’d like to start somewhere at the beginning of your pilgrimage into the realms of ayahuasca. You originally arrived in the world of Amazonian shamanism through your practical interest in wilderness survival. What originally prompted you to make this step, deeper into the realms of deep magic and healing with the Great Medicine? And what particular, specific adaptations do you feel a Westerner must make when encountering this unfamiliar territory?

STEVE: Once I asked my maestro ayahuasquero don Roberto Acho Jurama how he began his work as a shaman, and he told me that it was because he was curious — no shamanic crisis, no inner wounds, no visionary call, just curiosity. In many ways, my path was the same. As I studied the ways that indigenous people survive in the wilderness, it became clearer and clearer to me that there was a spiritual component I had been missing. What did they know that I didn’t?

What I found was that indigenous spirituality is rooted in the need to maintain right relationships, both within the group and with the spirits of the wilderness. So, just as I had learned from the Shapra Indians how to make a really clever animal snare, I tried to learn the ways that indigenous people maintain right relationships with the spirits. I undertook four-day and four-night vision fasts in the desert, I participated in rituals with peyote and huachuma, and I also began to work with my ayahuasca teachers.

What I didn’t know was the extent of healing that I needed. I was full of arrogance and rage. I think that we Americans are in too much of a hurry. We want the medicine to give us an epiphany, a quick fix, a transformative experience. I think instead that most often the medicine works slowly and subtly. It heals in plant time, not in human time. And I don’t know whether it was drinking ayahuasca, or the magical phlegm my maestro planted in my chest, or the gentle example of my plant teacher, doña María Tuesta Flores, working in my visions and my dreams, but far from the Amazon I found that my arrogance and rage were just draining away, and my heart was slowly opening. Entering into right relationship with people and spirits was happening spontaneously and miraculously.

I can’t hold myself up as any kind of a model. People come onto the medicine path in their own unique ways. But I think it is important that westerners give up their sense of control. Most foreigners come to ayahuasca shamanism in a way that is very focused on themselves — “Heal me, transform me, improve me.” They come with their own culturally embedded ideas of what their problem is and what caused it. Then they simply assume that an Amazonian shaman shares these concepts, when in fact traditional Amazonian ideas of sickness and healing are very different from ours. And foreigners often do not want to know the jungle and want to be insulated from the realities of jungle life, and they often have no interest in the culture and struggles of the indigenous communities where they seek their own healing.

DANIEL: One thing that is touched on in your book is how shamans in the Amazon do not fit into our usual dualisms of light and dark, good and evil, and that shamanic power is morally ambiguous and ambivalent. As Ayahuasca extends itself beyond the forest, can we anticipate the same patterns of shamanic healing, shamanic warfare, and the same depth of magical reality to emerge in Western entheogen-using cultures?

STEVE: Ayahuasca seems to be spreading along two different paths — the Brazilian new religious movements and the shamanic traditions of the Upper Amazon. Anthropologist Edward MacRae has specifically pointed out that Santo Daime has not incorporated such features of Amazonian shamanism as magic darts, protective arcanas, shamanic phlegm, or the idea of the moral ambiguity of the shaman. I have had some very interesting discussions with people about the extent to which the Brazilian ayahuasca religions can be considered shamanic. But in none of these discussions has anyone maintained that these churches have incorporated any idea of dark shamanism, attack sorcery, or the power of the shaman to harm as well as heal.

I also think that most foreigners are deeply uncomfortable with this darker side of Upper Amazonian shamanism — what I have called its tragic cosmovision. Shamans deal with sickness, envy, malice, betrayal, loss, conflict, failure, bad luck, hatred, despair, and death. But we have tended instead to assimilate the shaman to our existing catalogue of spiritual teachers, along with Zen monks, Tibetan lamas, Ascended Masters, and Hindu gurus. Many foreigners simply do not see the shaman as ambiguously dwelling in the landscape of suffering, passion, and mess.

Some shamans who work with foreign tourists adopt the concepts and language of their clients, some for commercial reasons, some out of a genuine desire to communicate. Mestizo shamanism in the Upper Amazon has always been voraciously eclectic, and we can observe it now as it incorporates currently popular foreign ideas about the nature of healing, the origins of suffering, and the sources of sickness.

This process appears to be largely one way. I just do not see most foreigners adopting the complex, tragic, and ambivalent views on healing and sickness that lie at the roots of ayahuasca shamanism in the Upper Amazon. Yet the existence and spread of the Brazilian ayahuasca churches shows that the teachings of the ayahuasca experience are in some ways separable from its cultural origins. This may be true in other settings as well. We will just have to wait to see how it all turns out.

DANIEL: You mention that westerners, particularly the new age, have incorporated the figure of the shaman into the usual cast of spiritually advanced archetypes, along with gurus, avatars, and monks, and that this may not always square with the reality of most shamans in their day-to-day life. So this question this leads me to another. Can ayahuasca, for the Westerner, actually work as a useful spiritual vehicle? Have you come across many examples of people for whom Ayahuasca has had an important role in the development of advanced human potentials and powers?

STEVE: I don’t think there’s any doubt that people have reported important life-changing and transformative experiences after drinking ayahuasca. And I personally know people whose life directions have changed after such experiences. I just don’t know how to generalize from these events. We lack even the most basic data, not to mention even moderately long-term follow-up.

Perhaps more important is this. I fear that these stories, being powerful and moving, may lead to unrealistic expectations, and to self-blame when those expectations are unmet. As I said before, I think that, for many people, sacred plant medicines work slowly, over time, and sometimes subtly, so that one day you realize, to your surprise, that the world seems different — more wonderful, more miraculous, and filled with the spirits. For me, that is the lesson of the ayahuasca vision — not necessarily the healing of our perhaps irremediably flawed selves, but rather a way to see through the world to the wonders that were there all along, and we could not see.

DANIEL: You mentioned your teacher doña María Tuesta Flores, who from your book sounded like a very wise and beautiful soul. What did she show you on this path of medicine ? Do you think it is important to have a guide when working with Ayahuasca ? What words of advice would you give to Westerners looking for their shaman ?

Although I worked with other healers as well, I consider don Roberto, my maestro ayahuasquero, and doña María, my plant teacher, to be to be my primary teachers. Doña María was indeed a wise and beautiful soul, but she was not a simple person, and certainly not a saint; she was genuinely warm, giving of her knowledge, impatient, dramatizing, complaining, generous, fussy, proud, unassuming, earthy, demanding, motherly. She lived as a healer in the disorderly landscape of the soul.

She often shook her head in dismay at my questions, my blockheaded inability to absorb the immense plant knowledge she offered to me. What I needed to learn I would learn, over time, from the plants themselves, she said; the way for me to learn was to “continue on, and all will be shown to you.” This was typical doña María. When I would say I couldn’t learn any more, she would scold me. Study, study, study, she would tell me. Follow, follow, follow.

I was consistently told in the Upper Amazon that it is dangerous not to have a maestro ayahuasquero when working with ayahuasca. Once you begin la dieta, once you drink ayahuasca and start to learn the plant teachers with your body, the world becomes a more dangerous place. Sorcerers resentful of your presumption will shoot magical pathogenic darts into your body, I was told, or send fierce animals to attack you, or fill your body with scorpions and razor blades—especially while you are still a beginner, before you gain your full powers. This is especially true when under the influence of ayahuasca. It is important to have an experienced teacher who can sing the appropriate songs that protect against attack and guide your visions.

But I don’t have any advice on how to find such a person. I generally don’t make recommendations. A shaman who is good for one person may be terrible for another, because of differences in background, personality, and expectations. The right teacher is there for everyone; I am sure, but perhaps the search is an integral part of the journey.

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“Singing to the Plants” is available from www.amazon.com

As she unveiled work after work I became awed at the depth and extensiveness of her ouvre. Quietly, McGillivray has created a vast body of work. Her older work reaches back to deep and heavy primitivism, and her more recent work shines with the refined vibrancy of a new era, the emergence of a new logos.

The common motif across her vast body of work is the inter-relationship of humanity with the plant realm. The human form is frequently depicted as interpenetrated by root and shoot, vine and leaf. These icon paintings of the deep ecological plant realm are in my view the productions of something like a contemporary ‘vegetalista‘, a plant-shaman.

As a personality Yvonne is no less inspiring than her creations, and induced wonder in me as she poetically describes her experiences in nature and the world of visions, encountering natural languages, patterns, realms and beings that she magically transcribes into her art.

Yvonne kindly agreed to take part in this expose of her work.

Interview with Yvonne McGillivray

Daniel Mirante : Your work indicates a profound connection to the visionary realm of elementals, plant spirits, and spiritual rites of passage. How do you gain the inspiration and insight to be able to paint such mysteries?

Yvonne McGillivray : Living close to nature for many years, I became very aware of the natural cycles, the ways of the birds and animals, the plants, the weather, the seasons. Interacting and communicating with the web of life around me, opened me to receive the messages, signs and symbols that nature constantly provides.

Other inspiration and insights come from dreams and from visions received through meditation, shamanic journeying practises, music and sound.

Listening to certain sounds can open up portals into other realities of magic, mystery and spirit where we can journey and access ancestral memory, future possibilities and present awareness.

A painting unfolds and has its own journey into manifestation so it is often a mystery to me what will appear and what it has to reveal.

Daniel Mirante : What role do you feel sacred art could perform within the industrialized societies of the modern world?

Yvonne McGillivray : During these changing times the sacred, visionary, shamanic art that is being channelled can help to guide the way forward, provide hope, healing, teaching and transformation.

It can guide us back to the ways of spirit, nature, truth and beauty.

It can help to remind, to re-enchant and to reconnect people to the sacredness of all life, to the majesty, mystery and wonder of creation and our connection to all things.

The hearts and minds of the material driven cultures may be opened and the spark of imagination rekindled, and awareness and consciousness expanded.

By remembering our divinity, that which is infinite and eternal and waking up to our true nature, we can remember our place and purpose in this matrix of creation and can move forward on this evolutionary journey.

With roots firmly planted we can fly into realms beyond the imagination, into the multi dimensional worlds and realities that exist, to the source of all things.

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Yvonne McGillivray can create giclee and lithographs of her paintings to order, and has a limited number of originals for sale. Missives to : yvonnemc33@hotmail.com

Shamans from different cultures and traditions have been using psychoactive plants since the dawn of human emergence. These plants have been used traditionally for guidance, divination, healing, maintaining a balance with the spirit or consciousness of the living world.

The use of the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus is ancient and its use has been a continuous tradition in Peru for over 3,000 years. The earliest depiction of the cactus is a carving which shows a mythological being holding the San Pedro. It belongs to the early pre-Colombian civilizations, such as the Chavín culture (c. 1400-400 BC) and was found in an old temple at Chavín de Huantar in the northern highlands of Peru, and dates about 1300 BC, and later to the Mochica, 500AD.

Even in present day mythology, it is told that God hid the keys to heaven in a secret place. San Pedro used the magical powers of a cactus to discover this place, and later the cactus was named after him.

‘La Mesa Norteña’

Juan Navarro was born in the highland village of Somate, department of Piura. He is a descendant of a long lineage of healers and shamans working with the magical powers of Las Huaringas. These Sacred Lakes stand at 3,500 meters and have been revered since earliest Peruvian civilization.

At the age of eight, Juan made his first pilgrimage to Las Huaringas, and took San Pedro for the first time. Every month or two it is necessary to return here to accumulate energy and protection to heal his people. As well as locals and Limeños (people from Lima) , pilgrims also come from many parts of South America. His two sons work as assistants whenever working with groups, which is common in this tradition. . Maestro Juan, however, apprenticed in the region of the Sacred Lakes of Las Huaringas where the tradition is most authentic.

During the sessions Juan works untiringly with his two sons in an intricate sequence of processes, including invocation, diagnosis, divination, and healing with natural objects, or artes. The artes are initially placed on the maestro’s altar or mesa, and are an astonishing and beautiful array of shells, swords, magnets, quartzes, objects resembling sexual organs, rocks which spark when struck together, and stones from animals’ stomachs, which they have swallowed to aid digestion!

The artes are collected from pre-Colombian tombs, and sacred energetic place, particularly Las Huaringas. They bring magical qualities to the ceremony where, under the visionary influence of San Pedro, their invisible powers may be experienced.

The Mesa (which means table in Spanish, but it also means a high plateau where the shaman comes to encounter the divine) of the maestro is also a representation of the forces of nature and the cosmos. Through the Mesa the shaman is able to work with and influence the forces of nature to diagnose and heal disease.

The traditional Mesa Norteña has three areas, on the left is the ‘campo ganadero’ or ‘field of the dark’, on the right is the ‘campo justiciero’ or the ‘field of the light’ (justiciero means justice), and in the centre is the ‘campo medio’ or ‘neutral field’, which is the place of balance between the forces of light and dark. It is important for us not to look at these forces as ‘positive’ or negative’ it is what we human beings do with these forces which is Important.

Although the contents and form of the artes varies from tradition to tradition, the Mesa rituals serve to remind us that the use and power of symbols extends throughout all cultures on our planet.

San Pedro

San Pedro or Trichocereus Pachanoi, grows on the dry eastern slopes of the Andes, between 2,000 – 3,000 meters above sea level, and commonly reaches six meters or more in height. It is also grown by local shamans in their herb gardens.

From earliest times it has been recognized that knowledge goes beyond sensory awareness or the rational way of understanding the world. San Pedro can take us directly to a telepathic experience and show us that there is no such thing as an inanimate object. Everything in the universe is alive and has a spirit.

As can be imagined the early European missionaries held the native practices in considerable contempt, and indeed were very negative when reporting the use of the San Pedro. Yet a Spanish missionary, cited by Christian Rätsch, grudgingly admitted the cactus medicinal value in the midst of a tirade reviling it:

“it is a plant with whose aid the devil is able to strengthen the Indians in their idolatry; those who drink its juice lose their senses and are as if dead; they are almost carried away by the drink and dream a thousand unusual things and believe that they are true. The juice is good against burning of the kidneys and, in small amounts, is also good against high fever, hepatitis, and burning in the bladder.”

An account of the cactus by a shaman is in radical contrast to this rather contemptuous view:

“it first … produces … drowsiness or a dreamy state and a feeling of lethargy … a slight dizziness … then a great vision , a clearing of all the faculties … it produces a light numbness in the body and afterward a tranquillity. And then comes detachment, a type of visual force … inclusive of all the senses … including the sixth sense, the telepathic sense of transmitting oneself across time and matter … like a kind of removal of one s thought to a distant dimension.”

San Pedro, considered the ‘maestro of the maestros’, enables the shaman to make a bridge between the visible and the invisible world for his people. The Quechua name for it is punku, which means doorway. The doorway connects the patient’s body to his spirit; to heal the body we must heal the spirit. San Pedro can show us the psychic causes of our illness intuitively or in mythical dream language.

The effects of San Pedro work through various stages, beginning with an expanded physical awareness in the body. Soon this is followed by euphoric feelings and then, after several hours, psychic and visionary effects become more noticeable.

The spirit of the cactus is sometimes said to be masculine whereas ayahuasca is feminine, but however this is understood, they are certainly very different or complementary. Frequently people have a clear preference for working with one rather than the other.

Interview with Juan Navarro

What is the relationship of the maestro with San Pedro?

In the North of Peru the power of San Pedro works in combination with tobacco. Also the sacred lakes – Las Huaringas – are very important. This is where we go to find the most powerful healing herbs which we use to energize our people. For example dominio gives strength and protects you from supernatural forces, sorcery etc. It is also put into the seguros, or amulets – bottles filled with perfume, plants and seeds gathered from Las Huaringas. You keep them in your home for protection and to make your life go well.

These plants do not have any secondary effects on the nervous system, nor do they provoke hallucinations. Only San Pedro has strength and is mildly hallucinatory, but you cannot become addicted. It doesn’t do any harm to your body, rather it helps the maestro to see what the problem is with his patient. Of course some people have this gift born in them – as our ancestors used to say, it is in the blood of a shaman.

Is San Pedro a teacher plant?

Of course, but it has a certain mystery. You have to be compatible with it because it doesn’t work for everybody. The shaman has a special relationship with it. It circulates in the body of the patient and where it finds abnormality it enables the shaman to detect it. It lets him know the pain they feel and whereabouts it is. So it is the link between patient and maestro. It also purifies the blood of the person who drinks it. It balances the nervous system so people loose their fears, frights and traumas, and it charges people with positive energy.

Everyone must drink so that the maestro can connect with them. Only the dose may vary from person to person because not everyone is as strong.

What about the singado? (inhalation of tobacco juice through the nostrils)

The tobacco leaf is left for 2-3 months in contact with honey, and when required for the singado it is macerated with aguardiente or alcohol. The function depends on which nostril is used. When taken in by the left side it is for liberating us of negative energy, including psychosomatic ills, pains in the body, bad influences of other people, or envy as we call it here. As you take it in you must concentrate on the situation which is going badly, or the person which is giving out a negative energy.

When taken through the right nostril it is for rehabilitating and energizing so that your projects go well. Its not for getting high on. Afterwards you can spit it out or swallow the tobacco, it doesn’t matter. It has an interrelation with the San Pedro in the body, and intensifies the visionary effects.

Can you smoke in the session?

No, no, no. It may be the same plant but here another element comes into play, which is fire. As the session is carried out in darkness, the fire in the darkness can perturb, create a negative ‘reflection’ (vision). It can cause trauma. As a personal observation, sound and light are interrelated during the San Pedro sessions, as the sound of the maestro’s maraca is experienced as a beam of a light penetrating the darkness.

How does the tobacco work to have these effects?

Tobacco when smoked, has the property of making people tranquil when they are anxious and thinking about their problems or even when they can’t get to sleep. It harmonizes people. This is the property of tobacco.

We have negative associations with tobacco in the West, addiction etc. bad health….

No, no. Here we do it with a healthy end in mind, not to provoke an effect. The next day you get up feeling clear in the head and good psychologically and comforted.

What is the power of the artes – the objects on the mesa?

They come from Las Huaringas, a group of lakes very high up where a special energy is bestowed on everything there, including the healing herbs which grow there and nowhere else. If you bathe in the lakes it takes away all your ills. You bathe with the intention of leaving everything negative behind. People go there to leave their enemies behind so they can’t do them any harm. After bathing, the maestro cleanses you with these artes – swords, bars, chontas, saints, and even huacos from archaeological sites. They ‘flourish’ you – spraying you with agua florida and herb macerations, a giving you sweet things like limas and honey, so your life flourishes.

We maestros also need to go to Las Huaringas regularly because we make enemies from healing people, so we need to protect ourselves.

The reason for this is that two forces exist: the good and the bad. The bad forces are from the pacts which the brujos make with the devil. The brujo is the rival of the curandero. So when the curandero heals, he makes an enemy of the brujo. Its not so much because he sends the bad magic back, as because he does the opposite thing to him, and they want supremacy in the battle.

Not far from Las Huaringas is a place called Sondor which has its own lakes. This is where evil magic is practiced and where they do harm in a variety of ways. I know because as a curandero I must know how sorcery is practiced, in order to defend myself and my patients.

Do people go there secretly?

Of course no one admits to going there, but they pass through Huancabamba just like the others who are going to Las Huaringas. I know various people who practice bad magic at a distance. They do it using physical means, concentrating, summoning up a persons soul, knowing their characteristics etc. and can make them suffer an accident or make an organ ill or whatever, or making their work go badly wrong. They have the power to get to their spirit so it may not even be necessary to have a piece of their clothing.

But don’t people also do harm unconsciously?

Yes – to themselves even, for example if a person has bad intentions towards another and that person is well protected with an encanto, (amulet) then he will do himself harm.

How does the rastreo work? (Diagnosis through psychic means.) Are you in an altered state?

No, I’m completely normal and lucid. What allows the reading of a person’s past, present or future, is the strength of the San Pedro and tobacco. It is an innate capability, not everybody has the gift, you can’t learn it from someone, it is inherited. The perceptions come through any one of the senses – sound, vision, smell or a feeling inside of what the person is feeling, a weakness, a pain or whatever. Sometimes a bad taste in the mouth may indicate a bad liver.

All the things on the mesa are perfectly normal, natural things: chontas, swords, stones etc. They have just received a treatment – like a radio tuned to a certain frequency – so they can heal particular things, weaknesses or whatever, but always it is necessary to concentrate on the sacred lakes, Las Huaringas.

Is it necessary for the maestro to take San Pedro to have vision?

Of course he must take San Pedro and tobacco. But it is to protect himself from the person’s negativity and illness, not because he needs it to have the vision.

Last night many people seemed closed to the things you were saying. They said ‘no’ but their body language seemed to say something else. Later it turned out that it did mean something to them.

Incredibility on their part – they are not accustomed to the method, a minor fault in their thinking.

So a Peruvian would respond differently?

Certainly. Also its different because we speak different languages, I see something in a flash and it has to be translated.

What is going on when flowers are thrown?

Flowers, perfumes, sweets and limas are part of nature and the power of nature. For a flower to grow in the earth from a seed, it needs water, and it needs fire and air – the four elements of nature. The same is needed for a bee, which makes honey, to live. Its very smell, texture, softness and sweet taste, penetrates the body, cleanses us and makes us flourish. It helps us to make a good impression at work and with our friends or partners, and wherever we go. That is making our luck flourish.

What about the shells on the mesa, for the singado and for drinking San Pedro?

This is a tradition. The shell helps to transmit. Our ancestors used the shells for communicating long distances. So when we drink the San Pedro certain frequencies enter our bodies. The very texture and the fact of it coming from water is healing.

It is not symbolic?

No. Everything has a purpose. It is all complementary.

Chonta has strength, it was used by Indians and Incas to make weapons, its strong and can defend us. Some stones come from archaeological sites, saints are great healers like San Jeronimo, San Cipriano, San Ilarion.

The bells, maracas?

They are to invoke the spirits of the dead, whether of family or of great healers. So that they may feel comfortable with us. Chunganas (maracas) are to give us enchantment, (protection and positive energy), it has a relaxing effect when taking San Pedro.