13 VOLUME 8 |ISSUE 2 |2017
The notable Sixties in the 20th century marked history with a
time of social change and a veritable explosion of experiments
in consciousness. Music, drugs, and new spiritual movements
drove the trends. We among the youth cult commonly heard “Do
not trust anyone over 30.” Black Power, Gray Power, and Red
Power emerged among many new movements that celebrated
a tribalism of type or class. Indeed, a college mate once quipped
around 1968 that the only thing missing was Ugly People Power.
The Sixties milieu did not begin or end with that decade, nor was
it all about young people. But an event in 1969 exposed both
the dreams and the flaws of that era. We called it Woodstock
Nation, composed of a Hippie tribe of nearly half a million, mostly
college-aged folks who gathered for an extraordinary music and
art festival on Yasgur’s farm near Woodstock, New York.1
Joni Mitchell, who could not attend, wrote the festival’s now-
iconic theme song, Woodstock,2 which begins, “I came upon
a child of God…,” and that child told her, “I’ll try and set my
soul free.” The song’s refrain is at the core of what this essay on
neoshamanism explores:
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
I did not attend Woodstock either—I thought of going, but I
took my motorcycle and went camping on a beach in Delaware
instead. College mates who did attend were totally hyped telling
me about it a few weeks later. Well, not all of them were hyped:
One spent most of his time in the medical tent being treated for
ingesting brown acid, a particularly pure LSD dose that harmed
hundreds. The “garden” for some was a psychotic state of mind.
“We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden” was Mitchell’s way
of saying that we yearn for return to the Garden of Eden or the
Aboriginal Dreamtime, that time in human consciousness when
all was well, when protohumans, like animals, lived naturally off
the land and made no moral judgments. Sixties seekers who did
not grow up on Native reservations idealized aboriginals as more
noble and somehow more spiritual, more connected to Mother
Earth. Many read Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998). Carlos fed us
popular fiction disguised as his real experiences with a shaman
in his string of best-selling novels, starting with The Teachings of
Don Juan in 1968. The author claimed that his mentor, don Juan
Matus, was a Yaqui Indian sorcerer, and that he had met him in
Albuquerque. Carlos was clever enough to fool top religious
scholars, including Mircea Eliade, who wrote the definitive early
book, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1951). Eliade
endorsed Castaneda’s first book.3 I relished Castaneda’s first few
books before discovering that don Juan was a made-up character,
and that Yaqui Indians had no such sorcerer tradition. I still find
seekers and neoshaman cult members who believe in Castaneda’s
books as real reports.
Recently, I saw Embrace of the Serpent, the 2015 award-winning
foreign film directed by Ciro Guerra.4 The story occurs in the upper
Amazon jungle. It portrays two explorations, one in 1909 by
German Theodor Koch-Grunberg, the other in 1940 by American
Richard Evans Schultes. Both men journeyed upriver with the
same Amazonian shaman, Karamakate, the last surviving member
of his clan, to look for the rare yakruna, a sacred plant. Schultes
in the end convinces the shaman to prepare yakruna brew for
him. The primarily black-and-white film switches in the end to
throbbing psychedelic color images that purportedly represent
Schultes’s soul merging with the cosmos—he and stardust
become one in 1940. Without going into the social complexities of
this mesmerizing blend of fact and fiction, I want to mention that
the actual fieldwork of these two ethnobiologists inadvertently
presaged the psychedelic drug experiments of Timothy Leary,
the cult fiction of Carlos Castaneda, the subsequent neoshaman
movements, and the lately popular ayahuasca cults.
Ayahuasca (also known as yagé) was introduced from South
America to northern seekers in recent decades. Ayahuasca
sessions led by Amazonian Indians and self-proclaimed shamans
are now common around the United States and Canada. This
psychoactive, entheogenic brew is traditionally made from a
vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, and the Psychotria veridis (also called
chacruna) leaf. Caapi alone may produce psychotropic effects,
but plants such as chacruna (translated, yacruna) with DMT
(dimethyltryptemine) need a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MOA)
in caapi to release the DMT and thus enhance the psychedelic
effects. Yagé varies in intensity and content depending on the
preparer’s knowledge and the quality of available plants. Health
Canada made it illegal to administer ayahuasca in Canada because
of questionable harm and lack of information about its effects,
though some Native people claim it helps hard-core addicts.5,6
A veritable industry of psychospiritual tourism has emerged,
with wealthy white executives among the throngs going to the
Amazon for an ayahuasca experience led by a shaman. One of
the most popular shamans has been Piero Salazar of Iquitos, Peru.
Salazar has come to dread the seekers coming to his retreats. As
quoted in the Onion, he said,
I believe this source of healing should be available to
everyone, but lately it seems like the people I guide
toward a vision of cosmic wholeness are all 32-year-old
billionaires hoping to gain a deeper insight into their
SEO strategy or whatever. (May 17, 2016)7
Two new movements prompting ayahuasca sessions are Santo
Daime and União do Vegetal (or UDV). Two of the more popular
neoshamans not necessarily promoting ayahuasca have been
Michael Harner and don Jose Luis Ruiz with their lucrative
transformational workshops.8
Sixties seekers who did not grow
up on Native reservations idealized
aboriginals as more noble and
somehow more spiritual, more
connected to Mother Earth...
The notable Sixties in the 20th century marked history with a
time of social change and a veritable explosion of experiments
in consciousness. Music, drugs, and new spiritual movements
drove the trends. We among the youth cult commonly heard “Do
not trust anyone over 30.” Black Power, Gray Power, and Red
Power emerged among many new movements that celebrated
a tribalism of type or class. Indeed, a college mate once quipped
around 1968 that the only thing missing was Ugly People Power.
The Sixties milieu did not begin or end with that decade, nor was
it all about young people. But an event in 1969 exposed both
the dreams and the flaws of that era. We called it Woodstock
Nation, composed of a Hippie tribe of nearly half a million, mostly
college-aged folks who gathered for an extraordinary music and
art festival on Yasgur’s farm near Woodstock, New York.1
Joni Mitchell, who could not attend, wrote the festival’s now-
iconic theme song, Woodstock,2 which begins, “I came upon
a child of God…,” and that child told her, “I’ll try and set my
soul free.” The song’s refrain is at the core of what this essay on
neoshamanism explores:
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
I did not attend Woodstock either—I thought of going, but I
took my motorcycle and went camping on a beach in Delaware
instead. College mates who did attend were totally hyped telling
me about it a few weeks later. Well, not all of them were hyped:
One spent most of his time in the medical tent being treated for
ingesting brown acid, a particularly pure LSD dose that harmed
hundreds. The “garden” for some was a psychotic state of mind.
“We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden” was Mitchell’s way
of saying that we yearn for return to the Garden of Eden or the
Aboriginal Dreamtime, that time in human consciousness when
all was well, when protohumans, like animals, lived naturally off
the land and made no moral judgments. Sixties seekers who did
not grow up on Native reservations idealized aboriginals as more
noble and somehow more spiritual, more connected to Mother
Earth. Many read Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998). Carlos fed us
popular fiction disguised as his real experiences with a shaman
in his string of best-selling novels, starting with The Teachings of
Don Juan in 1968. The author claimed that his mentor, don Juan
Matus, was a Yaqui Indian sorcerer, and that he had met him in
Albuquerque. Carlos was clever enough to fool top religious
scholars, including Mircea Eliade, who wrote the definitive early
book, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1951). Eliade
endorsed Castaneda’s first book.3 I relished Castaneda’s first few
books before discovering that don Juan was a made-up character,
and that Yaqui Indians had no such sorcerer tradition. I still find
seekers and neoshaman cult members who believe in Castaneda’s
books as real reports.
Recently, I saw Embrace of the Serpent, the 2015 award-winning
foreign film directed by Ciro Guerra.4 The story occurs in the upper
Amazon jungle. It portrays two explorations, one in 1909 by
German Theodor Koch-Grunberg, the other in 1940 by American
Richard Evans Schultes. Both men journeyed upriver with the
same Amazonian shaman, Karamakate, the last surviving member
of his clan, to look for the rare yakruna, a sacred plant. Schultes
in the end convinces the shaman to prepare yakruna brew for
him. The primarily black-and-white film switches in the end to
throbbing psychedelic color images that purportedly represent
Schultes’s soul merging with the cosmos—he and stardust
become one in 1940. Without going into the social complexities of
this mesmerizing blend of fact and fiction, I want to mention that
the actual fieldwork of these two ethnobiologists inadvertently
presaged the psychedelic drug experiments of Timothy Leary,
the cult fiction of Carlos Castaneda, the subsequent neoshaman
movements, and the lately popular ayahuasca cults.
Ayahuasca (also known as yagé) was introduced from South
America to northern seekers in recent decades. Ayahuasca
sessions led by Amazonian Indians and self-proclaimed shamans
are now common around the United States and Canada. This
psychoactive, entheogenic brew is traditionally made from a
vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, and the Psychotria veridis (also called
chacruna) leaf. Caapi alone may produce psychotropic effects,
but plants such as chacruna (translated, yacruna) with DMT
(dimethyltryptemine) need a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MOA)
in caapi to release the DMT and thus enhance the psychedelic
effects. Yagé varies in intensity and content depending on the
preparer’s knowledge and the quality of available plants. Health
Canada made it illegal to administer ayahuasca in Canada because
of questionable harm and lack of information about its effects,
though some Native people claim it helps hard-core addicts.5,6
A veritable industry of psychospiritual tourism has emerged,
with wealthy white executives among the throngs going to the
Amazon for an ayahuasca experience led by a shaman. One of
the most popular shamans has been Piero Salazar of Iquitos, Peru.
Salazar has come to dread the seekers coming to his retreats. As
quoted in the Onion, he said,
I believe this source of healing should be available to
everyone, but lately it seems like the people I guide
toward a vision of cosmic wholeness are all 32-year-old
billionaires hoping to gain a deeper insight into their
SEO strategy or whatever. (May 17, 2016)7
Two new movements prompting ayahuasca sessions are Santo
Daime and União do Vegetal (or UDV). Two of the more popular
neoshamans not necessarily promoting ayahuasca have been
Michael Harner and don Jose Luis Ruiz with their lucrative
transformational workshops.8
Sixties seekers who did not grow
up on Native reservations idealized
aboriginals as more noble and
somehow more spiritual, more
connected to Mother Earth...
