Daniel Mirante
Amongst the many sacred plants of Gaia there is a tea, a 'Great Medicine', whose discovery lies with the jaguar. There is an old story of a master hunter, Uaica, closely identified with the jaguar, who was said to have discovered a bark potion useful in shamanism. The early human groups in the Amazonian forests observed how the jaguar chewed the leaves and stems of a vine, to increase its hunting skills, and would lead to it entering into ecstasy on the forest floor.
It was found that as well as being an excellent tonic for the digestive and nervous system, the tea of this vine also enabled a certain sensitivity to the nature of other plants and susceptibility to trance. Another plant, originally used for dysentery, composed of the glossy leaves of a plant related to coffee, was combined at some point and a miraculous magical potion was created.
When decoctions of these two plants are taken together, a complex biochemical reaction provokes the organism into a process orientated toward reconnection and wholeness.
Ayahuasca is a psycho-integrator, that is, a tea that stimulates mental and emotional processes to force the organism towards an integrative holistic growth state... the stimulation of the mind, emotions, soul and spirit toward integrative development, helping elicit a process of holistic restructuring of the elements of the psyche by amplifying usually repressed aspects of being, and reconnecting the often dissociated psyche with the body and its memories and emotions and subtle energetic (pranic) flows. This process of growing toward inner and outer integrity is the true meaning of the word 'health', the state of wholeness or holiness.
Like a vital messenger molecule within the body of Gaia, Ayahuasca has extended beyond its bioregion and is performing its ancient work of transformation within the disconnected, mediated and institutionalised matrix of Western civilisation.
Daniel Mirante