Cactus of Mystery

by Ross Heaven

  It is fitting, too, that this process takes place through art. The information given to us by teacher plants tends to be revealed in a visual way (not exclusively so; information may also be passed to us in an auditory or kinesthetic fashion or, especially with San Pedro, as a mood or feeling) so it is logical that we would wish to represent the worlds we have been shown in the way that they have been shown to us.

  Many depictions of the shamanic experience also arise from a time before the written word (such as cave paintings, some of which have been dated to forty thousand years ago) so perhaps the alternatives then were limited.

  But there may be more to it than this. Grant Eckert in his essay, “Art and How it Benefits the Brain,” writes:

  Art is very important in helping the brain reach its full potential. . . . It introduces the brain to diverse cognitive skills that help us unravel intricate problems. Art activates the creative part of our brain—the part that works without words and can only express itself non-verbally. Art, in thought and through the creative processes, activates the imaginative and creative side, the spatial and intuitive side of our brain. Art jumps over the process of linear and logical thinking. It trains the brain to shift into thinking differently, broaching old problems in new ways.4

  This, too, is the nature of the entheogenic experience: it is non-rational and nonverbal, the insights coming at an almost cellular level through a remodeling of the self. Trying to capture this experience in words is often too limiting for those who have undergone it. By splashing paint on paper, however, we put ourselves back into connection with the experience itself and reengage with the creative processes that took place then. Because we are no longer completely “in” the experience, however, we can also glean more information from it as we record our sensations in art. We become, in a sense, walkers between worlds ourselves, not quite of this world or fully of the psychedelic one that we have explored and reemerged from.

  Eckert continues:

  There have been copious studies on the relationship between art and its benefits to the brain. Semir Zeki, a former professor of neurobiology at University College London and co-head of the Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology published an article, “Artistic Creativity and the Brain,” in Science magazine in July 2001 [where he] detailed the relationship between the development of cognitive abilities and the creative process. He stated that artistic expression is the key to comprehending ourselves. He also considered art and its expression as an expansion of brain function. In other words, art helps the brain in its search for knowledge.

  Art therapy is now a common means of helping individuals to improve and enhance their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. It bases its approach on the belief that the creative process involved in artistic self-expression helps people in a number of positive ways. It facilitates them in ending or finding a solution to various conflicts and problems. Art also aids them to manage their behavior, develop interpersonal skills, increase self-esteem and self-awareness, lessen stress and attain insight.

  So what are the benefits of art on the brain? When individuals create art and reflect on it, the processes increase self-awareness, initiate awareness of others and help people cope with stress and traumatic experiences. Art enhances cognitive abilities and provides individuals with the ability to enjoy [life].5

  In many ways then, artistic expression is the perfect adjunct to work with a plant such as San Pedro, which itself helps those who drink it to gain insight and overcome stress-related health issues and traumas.

  Research on brain function supports many of Eckert’s conclusions. Neurologist António Damásio, in his book Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (Penguin 2005) points out that in any new situation human beings first experience the world emotionally (a response typical of the San Pedro experience, too). This is true even though we have been taught to believe that the brain is our most important organ and that rational thought is our most vital attribute. In fact, the rational part of our experience arises after an emotionally based decision has already been made from the information that the world has presented to us and that we have absorbed in a nonlinear way.

  “The departing point of science and philosophy should be anti-Cartesian” says Damásio: “I am (and I feel) therefore I think.”

  We have been trained by society to use more of the left (rational) hemisphere of the brain, and like any muscle this has grown in power and dominance while the “muscle” of the right hemisphere—associated with the creative imagination, serenity, synthesis, and selflessness—has atrophied.

  Music, silence, art, and other reflective techniques that lead us into a calm and meditative state begin to correct this imbalance and bring us into more fullness of ourselves. We move from an everyday beta brain wave pattern (where we are consciously alert or agitated, tense or afraid, with frequencies from thirteen to sixty pulses per second in the hertz scale) to an alpha pattern of physical and mental relaxation, with frequencies of around seven to thirteen pulses per second. By doing so we put ourselves in the ideal condition to process, learn, and retain new information.

  Relaxation is the state we are in when we drink San Pedro and when we create art, hence artistic expression is more than just a representation of the entheogenic encounter; it is that encounter relived, even if the work on the canvas bears no “actual” similarity to what we have seen or experienced when we drank the cactus.

  According to neuroscientists, relaxed states like these also produce significant increases in the levels of beta-endorphin, norepinephrine, and dopamine, all of which are linked to greater mental clarity and the formation of new memories, and this effect can last for days. It is an ideal state for synthetic thought, creativity, and learning. Hence artistic expression fully supports the processing of information and insights delivered by San Pedro.

  “It does not seem to be accidental that Eduardo the visionary shaman is also an artist,” writes Sharon Lommel (in Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967], 148), who sees shamanism as intimately related to man’s earliest artistic works and who contends that “without artistic creation in some form or another there is no shaman.”

  Calderon himself put it this way:

  The power of artistic sensibility in curanderismo is . . . according to my evaluation, essential. In general the artist is sensitive, extremely sensitive in this field.

  All that the artist effuses toward the outside world in his expression is of a character which is not intellectual but spiritual. For this reason it goes without saying that within curanderismo artistic appreciations are essential . . . because the symbols are perceptible only to persons who really note a line, a trajectory of appreciation in order to be able to dominate the distinct phases of a curing scene. . . . Those individuals always related art with mysticism, with the esoteric, with the mysteries.

  The earliest artistic depiction of San Pedro so far discovered is a carving on a block of stone, dating from around 1300 BCE, which was excavated from the sunken plaza of the Old Temple at Chavin de Huantar in the northern highlands of Peru. It shows a mythological being, believed to be the central Chavin deity, with serpentine hair, fangs, a serpent belt, and eagle claws holding a four-ribbed cactus in his outstretched right hand.

  Textiles discovered on the south coast of Peru dating from roughly the same period show a spineless cactus along with hummingbirds and feline figures. Both animals are associated with shamanism and healing: the former representing the shaman’s ability to suck magical pathogens from victims of sorcery, and the latter believed to be the alter ego or ally of the shaman.

  Ceramics made by Chavin artists, dating to 1000 BCE, show the cactus with another animal: the deer that, according to Sharon, symbolizes swiftness and is associated with the shaman’s ability to exorcise evil spirits from his patients. (“Hunting the deer” or “the blue deer hunt” is also the name given to the ceremonial collection of peyote in Mexico, another sacred mescaline cactus).

/>   In the art of the Moche period (north coast, from around 100 BCE), San Pedro is often depicted with a shawl-clad female figure who has the features of an owl (the alter ego of the curandera). In these images the healer holds a slice of San Pedro or, in later cases, a four-ribbed cactus of approximately the same length as would be used to prepare the healing brew.

  Even where the cactus is not explicitly shown, such as in modern Andean art—like the paintings sold on market stalls or peddled to tourists by street sellers—the influence of San Pedro can still be felt, perhaps not in the themes but in the colors chosen by the artists.

  In the Amazon the majority of locally produced art follows typical medicine themes, the plant medicine of this region being ayahuasca. Hence forest scenes are often depicted, where trees reveal their spirits, the “lady of the forest” is shown naked and sensual, giant serpents wind their way through the land or cross a moon-filled sky, or the chullachaqui (the mystical jungle dwarf who leads the unwary into the bosque and more deeply into an awareness of the otherworld) is shown ready to entice, confuse, and initiate. These works are typically produced in and on natural jungle-derived materials—black or sepia huitol ink (from the juice of the huitol fruit) on a canvas of bark—or else in muted tones that are themselves reminiscent of the jungle: shades of green and brown.

  This reflects in many ways the nature of the ayahuasca experience. Ceremonies take place in molokas (ceremonial temples) open to the forest, at night when the colors around are themselves muted, and the visions produced reveal magical scenes of a living forest teeming with life and spirit. In this sense at least Amazonian art, although often fantastical, is also representational.

  With San Pedro healing by contrast (particularly in its more modern form where ceremonies are held in daylight) color saturation is often a feature of the process. In The Hummingbird’s Journey to God, I wrote of how during one San Pedro journey a simple marigold became so brilliantly bright that I couldn’t look at it and had to close my eyes.6 This brilliance is referred to by several other participants in that book, and for some it is evidence of intelligence, sentience, and a living God-like quality to nature.

  The author Aldous Huxley wrote similarly of his mescaline experiences in his book The Doors of Perception:

  I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence . . . flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged . . . a transience that was yet eternal life . . . the divine source of all existence. . . .

  I continued to look at the flowers, and in their living light I seemed to detect the qualitative equivalent of breathing—but of a breathing without returns to a starting point, with no recurrent ebbs but only a repeated flow from beauty to heightened beauty, from deeper to ever deeper meaning.7

  It is this vibrancy and life that Andean artists seek to capture in their work, using bright and contrasting colors to create a sense of this beautiful “naked existence.”

  Simple everyday scenes often form the themes for their works—family gatherings, trips to the market—the essence of “transience” that is yet “eternal life,” for it is the simple things that San Pedro reminds us of: the beauty of love and friendship, the living nature of everything we see and are a part of, the wonder of life, and the sacred in the mundane. The remembrance of these qualities in fact may be where the healing arises from with San Pedro, bringing us a reconnection to the Earth, to ourselves, and to a God who is not distant from us and judgmental of our actions but ever present and loving.

  MUSIC AND SONG

  In Amazonian shamanism ayahuasceros find power songs for themselves, called icaros, which are more than just tunes to be whistled, hummed, or sung in ceremony—they are carriers of energy and magical intent. It is their vibrational frequency that counts. This vibration can be used to charge or change the energy patterns within the body of a patient, remove illnesses and blockages, and restore a person to luminosity and balance.

  Some icaros are learned from others (usually the shaman’s maestro or teacher), some are copied and do the rounds, as it were, from healing center to healing center and moloka to moloka, but the most powerful are personal gifts from nature that the shaman has found for himself while dieting particular plants or searching for healing skills during ayahuasca ceremonies.

  So it is too with San Pedro shamanism. While some huachumeros believe that there are not and cannot ever be icaros for San Pedro—not in the same sense as Amazonian songs—music and ritual chants form a part of most cactus ceremonies and, like icaros, they are personal to each shaman and carry his healing intent.

  Sharon, writing about the San Pedro shaman’s tarjos, or chants, reported that Calderon “learns the traditional rhythms but as with the various power objects [on his mesa]—positive and negative—he elaborates on the basic complex with his own particular talents and according to the inspiration he receives from a variety of extrapersonal and supernatural sources.”

  Calderon had tarjos for many purposes. To “open an account” (begin a ceremony) for example, “The invocation consists of chanting and whistling a special sacred tune (composed by the healer) to the accompaniment of his rattle.” To know whether a deceased person is in “Heaven, Purgatory or Hell” another song is used. “This is a special task, it is a special account and chant with which one looks in rarely encountered cases.”

  Even the ceremonial structure of Calderon’s nighttime rituals was divided by song. From 10:00 p.m. to midnight there were prayers, rituals, and tarjos interspersed with whistling while San Pedro was drunk and its guardian spirits were called. From midnight to 6:00 a.m.—the curing part of the ceremony—each person present took a turn before the mesa while the curandero chanted a special healing song in his or her name. Other tarjos were sung as particular power objects (swords and staffs for example) were used to heal the patient, the shaman using song to summon the spirit of each. A final song closed the ceremony.

  Sharon described Calderon’s practice as a “modern” interpretation of traditional shamanism. His fieldwork, however, was carried out between 1970 and 1974, and things have moved on in the intervening years. There are now even more modern interpretations to be found in the towns of the Sacred Valley and shamans who work with song and sound in a different way again.

  Chaska Lu, for example, is a healer from the town of Aguas Calientes in the foothills of Machu Picchu whom I have worked with many times in ceremony. With her partner, Carlos, she uses a variety of traditional instruments as well as songs and chants to heal during San Pedro rituals. She calls her work “sound healing” and offers a simple explanation for what she is doing.

  Sound breaks up energies. You have all seen opera singers who are able to shatter a glass with their voices and you know that ultrasound can be used in the treatment of cancer. This is similar to how we work with sound: to shatter and disrupt accumulations of negative energy which we see in the body of the patient or in his magnetic field [energy body].

  If there is a light energy [which I see as] like smoke or cobwebs in the patient I may use a horn to move it since a blast of air will usually disperse it. If it is denser and thicker, then a shrill whistle may be needed as a high-pitched sound will break it into a thousand pieces, like a pane of glass shattering. Throughout the day I also sing prayers for the patient since God is a musician and prefers the sound of beautiful song to dull requests, or I may chant or intone my healing into the patient. This is a form of prayer which finds its mark through song.

  Just as with the icaros of the Amazonian shaman (and perhaps influenced by their practice in fact since improved transportation has resulted in a greater blending of the Amazonian and Andean cultures in recent years), the tarjos of the San Pedro shaman are no longer used just to mark points in the ceremony or call on the spirits, but as healing tools in their own right.

  Shamanism is the archaic predecessor to many modern therapies a
nd again, as with art and its documented positive effects on the psyche, perhaps it is no accident that music and song have long been incorporated into teacher plant ceremonies, not just as a means of guiding the journey and delivering healing, but because it brings benefits in its own right. Psychologists who have made a study of the effect of music on the brain, on mood, and on healing have demonstrated some of these. Research by Sangeetha Nayak, for example, showed that music therapy is associated with a decrease in depression, improved mood, and a reduction in anxiety. It also has a positive effect on social and behavioral outcomes.8

  In depressed adults, another psychologist, Suzanne Hanser, was able to show an improvement in quality of life, a new sense of involvement with the environment, increased ability to express feelings, raised awareness and responsiveness, and new positive associations as a result of music therapy.9

  Other research suggests that music can increase motivation and positive emotions even among those suffering from serious illness (stroke victims),10 and that when music therapy is used in conjunction with traditional treatments it improves success rates significantly, enabling patients to recover faster and better by increasing their positive emotions and motivation.11

  A 2009 review of twenty-three clinical trials also found that music may reduce heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure in patients with coronary heart disease. Benefits also included a decrease in levels of anxiety.12

  Similarly, research suggests that listening to some music (in this experiment, Mozart’s piano sonata K448) can reduce the number of seizures in people with epilepsy. This has come to be called the “Mozart Effect.”13

  San Pedro has the ability to amplify beauty—in the quality of music as it is heard as much as in art and nature—and a poignant or perfectly timed song can shift the mood of a participant or steer a ceremony in a new direction or provide new insights and inspiration. It may well be that the first San Pedro shamans understood the more physically beneficial effects of music on their patients, which studies like these are now confirming in a modern clinical setting.