Yage Plant The Gateway To Supernatural World
Yage Plant or Ayahuasca was well known as plants of shamanism. Indian tribes in America, especially in the Amazon always have magic shamans who can cure illness even predict the future. This mystery has been studied for years by scientists to find the cause. Apparently, there is one plant that can make a person experiencing hallucinations and escort him to the supernatural gate. This plant is a kind of vines that botanists call Banisteriopsis caapi and commonly used by the shamans.
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| Yage Plant |
If the stem is boiled or soaked in the water then mixed with other natural ingredients, the result is a hallucinogenic substance. In the tradition of the most isolated Amazon community, a basic belief has been established that considers the sacred of Yage drinking ceremony. After taking Yage, they usually feel one or more symptoms ranging from dizziness, sweating, trembling, convulsions, nausea, prolonged vomiting, severe diarrhea, mucus flowing from the nose, terrorized terror, and an aggressive action. Amazingly, after drinking it they will also feel as if they are migrating to the infinite borderless world.
Harvard ethnobotany, Wade Davis, has lived in the Amazon for over a year, at the request of Professor Richard Evans Schultes, a pioneer and expert in psychopharmacology (the study of hallucinogens). Indeed, for some community groups in the Amazon, drink a little Yage is done on many occasions for various purposes. For them, Yage is a drug that potentially treats physical and mental disorders. Amahuaca tribe which is well known as hunting expert connects their sensitivity while hunting with the ability to see animal spirits after drinking Yage. So, they can learn the movements and habits of their prey animals.
Meanwhile, for Tukanoan tribe use Yage to communicate with their ancestors and explore the sky. In Davis's note to Richard Evans Schultes on the Kofan tribe, "Yage is the source of all knowledge to the whole society. Drinking Yage means learning. This is where everyone has the power and guidance of life”. When most hallucinogens produce a various picture of hallucination of one person to another, it is different with Yage plant. Yage gives a picture of the same hallucination, a tiger or a large snake.
Some say that this picture if hallucination may be due to memory storage which is genetically inherited in the form of a gesture of fear deeply embedded in the human gene that is brought back by Yage. The vision due to Yage has something else in common. People who experience it can put their thoughts into the minds of people or other creatures. The ability comes from a compound in Banisteriopsis wine and now called harmine. No wonder they called it telepathine. Wade Davis was not surprised that shaman is able to enchant animals in the forest to come surrender as the animal offerings.