“There is a war to destroy the shamanic model so that biomedical practices can prevail”

“There is a war to destroy the shamanic model so that biomedical practices can prevail”

Francisco Azorín is a veteran in the defence of cannabis clubs, an experience he applies to put recent police operations on ayahuasca ceremonies into perspective. Azorín achieved a landmark court ruling on ayahuasca in the Malaga provincial court in 2021. It recognised that ayahuasca cannot be considered a “toxic drug, narcotic or psychotropic substance”. Only two years have passed, but the current situation of the plant is very different. Nobody would dare to speak today of the “(pen)last judgement on ayahuasca”.

We talked to Azorín, member of the Murcian law firm Brotsanbert, about laws, politics, police strategies and the role of shamanism in the booming ‘psychedelic renaissance’.

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Sebastião Salgado: “Paradise exists: it is the Amazon”

Sebastião Salgado: “Paradise exists: it is the Amazon”

“For me, the Amazon is the last frontier, a mysterious universe where the power of nature can be felt like nowhere else on Earth. Here, there is a forest that stretches to infinity and contains a tenth of all existing plant and animal species. It is the world’s largest natural laboratory,” writes Sebastião Salgado in the foreword to his new book ‘Amazonia’, which has just been published by Taschen.

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“The deeper the mystical experience with psychedelics, the better the therapeutic results”

“The deeper the mystical experience with psychedelics, the better the therapeutic results”

Slowly but surely, the repeal of the ban on psychedelic drugs is progressing state by state, country by country. The normalisation of entheogenic substances raises, however, several questions: who is legitimised to give these medicines: doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, shamans…, what experience does a traditional healer need and how can he or she prove it, can these substances be dispensed as if they were conventional medicines?

To answer these and other questions, we talk to Manuel Villaescusa, psychologist, musician, ayahuasca expert and co-founder of the Plantaforma de Defensa de la Ayahuasca.

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When ayahuasca was called “telepathine”

When ayahuasca was called “telepathine”

One of the most disconcerting effects of ayahuasca is that it sometimes seems to allow us to “read” other people’s minds or “transmit” ideas without the need to speak. The description of this phenomenon is not anecdotal but very frequent in the scientific literature, to the point that the active principle of ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) was baptised “telepathine” back in 1915.

The term was coined by the famous Colombian botanist Rafael Zerda Bayón, and appeared for the first time in his paper ‘Informes sobre mi excursión científica en las regiones colombianas de Caquetá, Bogotá, Colombia’ (Reports on my scientific excursion in the Colombian regions of Caquetá, Bogotá, Colombia). However, the error persists of attributing the discovery to the American ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, who began to use the term “telepathine” during the 1940s. Since Schultes studied yagé in Colombia, it is very likely that he was aware of Zerda Bayón’s studies and writings three decades earlier.

But it was neither Bayón nor Schultes who popularised the telepathic abilities of ayahuasca but the novelist and drug addict William Burroughs, who in his ‘The Yage Letters’ to his friend, the poet Allen Ginsberg, wrote the following:

“A Colombian scientist isolated a substance from yagé which he called telepathine. I know from my own experience that telepathy is a fact. I have not the slightest interest in proving telepathy to anyone or anything. I want to have the useful knowledge of telepathy”.

The book was published in 1963 (although it was written ten years earlier, in 1953) and aroused great interest in ayahuasca in North America, giving the starting signal for the ayahuasca tourism that is so common in the Amazon region today.

Telepathine, a personal experience

Like Burroughs, many of us who have been touched by the ayahuasca angel can affirm that telepathy is a fact. I had the certainty exactly one year ago, during the summer solstice of 2019. It was in Madrid, at a ceremony of my dear Nak, then president of the Plantaforma. Rita and I went together, once again, and spent a good part of the trip in each other’s arms, our heads in contact, and we were able to have telepathic “conversations” without uttering a word or even looking at each other. I felt like his brain was mine and I could directly access his thoughts.

-Don’t worry, I’m fine.

-But you’re making me worry by telling me that.

The next day we confirmed these and other “words” by word of mouth. Rita had a hard time that night and tried to reassure me, but I knew – I could see – that she was having a hard time.

Harmina = telepathine

Unfortunately, the evocative name “telepathine” is no longer used (the last references are in the writings of Claudio Naranjo in one of his last books ‘Ayahuasca’, which is also written half a century ago, during the 50s and 60s). The reason is that telepathine is exactly the same molecule as ‘Harmine’, a beta-carboline described a few years earlier and which takes its name from harmel, the common name of the Syrian rue (Peganum harmala), a plant widely used in the traditional pharmacopoeia of Arab countries and which some call the “European ayahuasca”.

*”The first among us who undertook its study was Dr. Rafael Zerda Bayón, of pleasant memory, a true man of science, who spent most of his life observing nature with the idea and conviction of one day extracting from it some of its hidden secrets.

He made a famous scientific expedition to Caquetá and Putumayo with the purpose, among many others, of studying more closely and in detail the active principle of this plant, which was the object of a profound and conscientious work, by means of which he managed to suppose, after multiple experiments without managing to isolate it, that this plant must contain as its active principle an alkaloid, which he baptised with the name of telepathine because of the very particular and curious effects produced by the ingestion of its preparations.

In honour of the memory of this illustrious scholar, the alkaloid which we have isolated, and which he supposed to exist, should retain the name of telepathine”.

‘Study on the active principle of yagé’, Guillermo Fishcher Cárdenas.

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“Psychedelics are good catalysts for processes, but they are rarely the end point of anything, they are often the starting point”

“Psychedelics are good catalysts for processes, but they are rarely the end point of anything, they are often the starting point”

Marc Aixalá, psychotherapist, holotropic breathing facilitator, founder of the ICEERS Support Centre and now also a writer, has just published a book that looks set to become an instant classic: ‘Integración psiquedélica’, published simultaneously in Spanish by Eleftheria and in English by Synergic Press (with translation by Adam Aronovich), was born “as a ‘self-reflection’ to clarify in writing the ideas of what I had learned in these years”, as Marc explains to us in this interview, which you can watch and listen to in full here:

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Harsh speech of the President of Colombia in United Nations: “The war on drugs has failed”

Harsh speech of the President of Colombia in United Nations: “The war on drugs has failed”

Gustavo Preto, President of Colombia, delivered one of the most courageous, forceful and emotional speeches ever heard at the United Nations Assembly last September 20th. Petro spoke to the representatives of the world’s nations, but with special emphasis on the United States, promoter and guarantor of the “failed” war on drugs, a disaster that has been dragging on for 40 years and has political, social and environmental consequences in Colombia, his country, and also throughout Latin America.

The war on drugs, said the Colombian president, is, together with greed for oil and coal, co-responsible for the destruction of the Amazon rainforest: “As in a paradoxical crossroads, the rainforest that we are trying to save is at the same time being destroyed”.

Petro is not the first Latin American leader to point the finger squarely at the war on drugs as responsible for the violence in Colombia, but also in Mexico, Brazil and Peru. The difference lies in the fact that, unlike, for example, Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, he does so from his presidential post and not after leaving office.

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“Psychiatric pharmacy lags far behind the rest of medicine. Nothing new has been invented in the last 40 years”

“Psychiatric pharmacy lags far behind the rest of medicine. Nothing new has been invented in the last 40 years”

Ediciones La Llave published in 2021 ‘El viaje sanador’, the first edition in Spanish of a classic book by Claudio Naranjo: ‘The Healing Journey’, published in English in 1973 and, nevertheless, very topical, now that the taboo on therapeutic research with psychedelics, a field in which Naranjo was a pioneer, is finally beginning to be broken.

We spoke to David Barba, editor of La Llave, member of Fundación Beckley Med,and an advanced disciple of Claudio. Through his words, David brings us not only snippets of the master’s wisdom but also his own, after decades of deep personal work with Gestalt, Buddhism and, of course, psychedelics, including ayahuasca.

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“Expanded states of consciousness are fundamental to shamanic work”

“Expanded states of consciousness are fundamental to shamanic work”

Leo Artese is a free radical within the Santo Daime church. While he follows the official calendar and the original design bequeathed by godfather Sebastian, he also sings his own hymnbooks (‘O Curandeiro’ and ‘Camino das Virtudes’), and performs a powerful shamanic ritual (‘Voo de aguila’), unheard of within the daimist liturgy: “I was a shaman before I was a daimist, just as others are engineers or teachers”, Artese justifies himself during this interview we had in Ibiza as part of his annual European tour.

Besides being a shaman, Artese is a qualified musician and has ‘received’ immortal hymns from the astral, such as ‘Yemanjá’ or ‘Livre’. Leo guides his ‘trabalhos’ by playing the bongos and imbuing the rituals with rhythm and good humour.

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«Some people consider themselves shamans because they have taken two weekend courses»

«Some people consider themselves shamans because they have taken two weekend courses»

The journalist, novelist and documentary filmmaker Alfonso Domingo (Madrid, 1959) tried ayahuasca for the first time in the late 1980s in the Amazon. He had a transformative experience, which was followed by a phase of proselytising, trying to convince others to try this marvellous mixture. Now his attitude is very different: the abuses and “spurious uses” that are being made of the sacred drink have made him adopt a much more discreet attitude, close to mutism, with regard to ayahuasca. In transit, he has published a book about his experiences in the Amazon, ‘La serpiente líquida’ (Punto de Vista Editores, 2018) and a documentary of the same name. In them, ayahuasca is not the protagonist, although it is a constant thread running through Domingo’s story, as if it were the snake of the title.

We chatted with Domingo about master plants, extractivist capitalism, the first steps of ayahuasca in Spain… and about Alfonso Graña, the Galician adventurer who was chieftain of the Shuar Indians in the 1930s and about whom we will talk soon.

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