Shamanism and San Pedro Through Time

Shamanism and San Pedro through Time: Some Notes on the Archaeology, History, and Continued Use of an Entheogen in Northern Peru bonnie glass-cofﬁn Utah State University Logan, UT bonnie.glasscofﬁ[email protected] abstract

This paper discusses archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence for the use of the San Pedro cactus in northern Peru as a vehicle for traveling between worlds and for imparting the ‘‘vista’’ (magical sight) necessary for shamanic healers to divine the cause of their patients’ ailments. Using iconographic, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic evidence for the uninterrupted use of this sacred plant as a means of access to the Divine and as a tool for healing, it describes the relationship between San Pedro, ancestor worship, water/ fertility cults and also the common symbolic associations between San Pedro and wind-spirits. It closes by suggesting that the more than 2000 year time-depth of using this plant as a means for accessing the realms of Spirit and as a tool for healing should serve to challenge the unfortunate tendency in the contemporary United States to consider this plant as a ‘‘recreational drug.’’ keywords: San Pedro cactus, Peru, shamanism, ancestor worship, cosmology, ecology

& introduction

Shamanic healingFthat archaic technique of ecstasy in which extraordinary individuals ‘‘journey’’ to other worlds in order to mediate between spirits and

58 shamanism and san pedro through time 59 the human communityFis a vibrant and continuing tradition in northern Peru that has been amply described by Peruvian and foreign authors (cf. Sharon 1978; Polıá 1988a, b; Camino 1992; Joralemon and Sharon 1993; Glass-Coffin 1998 to name just a few). Here, as in many other parts of the Americas, the ability to disassociate spirit from body, to enter into modified states of consciousness, and to embark on the ‘‘magical flights’’ to other planes of existence that are characteristic of the shaman’s mediatory role is facilitated by the ingestion of a psychotropic substance. In northern Peru, from the desert coastal regions of Trujillo and Lambayeque to the northern highlands of Huancabamba and Ayabaca, ethnographic reports since at least the 1940s (Camino 1958; Gillin 1947) have documented the ritual use of a mescaline-bearing cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi1 and related species) as a tool to facilitate the shaman’s ‘‘journey’’ in order to diagnose and heal the ‘‘magical’’ illnesses, including ‘‘soul loss’’ and ‘‘sorcery’’ from which patients are believed to suffer. More recently, the use of this cactus by those seeking access to ‘‘other worlds’’ for spiritual enlighten- ment,2 or just for recreational ‘‘escape’’ from the stresses of daily living (Vivanco 2000), has been increasingly popular throughout the Andes, as well as in the United States and Western Europe. Legality of the use of this mescaline-bearing plant substance in the United States is questionable, because, unlike peyote, Echinopsis/Trichocereus is not listed as a Schedule I hallucinogen by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/ scheduling.html), even though mescalineFthe psychoactive alkaloid responsible for its effectsFis specifically named. However, preparing, using, distributing, and selling the plant with intent to ingest is specifically cautioned against by many because of the ambiguity of the law (cf. http://www.erowid.org/ plants/cacti/cacti_law1.shtml). In South America, Echinopsis/Trichocereus has been used throughout prehistoric and historic periods and has been known by many local names including achuma or huachuma, gigantoń, agua collay, and Cardo Santo. The most well-known name by which it is known today is that of San Pedro.Itis considered by contemporary shamans as a planta viva (or ‘‘living’’/spirit-filled plant) that facilitates shamanic journeys to other worlds (cf. Polıá 1988a, b; Glass-Coffin 1998). Even the name San Pedro alludes to this. As contemporary shamans often remark, like the Christian Apostle by the same name, San Pedro is a keeper of the keys; the guardian of the gates to other, unseen, worlds. It is through ingestion of San Pedro that vista (vision) into these other realms is made possible.3 Because of the time-depth, cultural context, and because of its traditional use in ritual context as a means for accessing the sacred, I will utilize the term entheogen4 when discussing this plant in the remainder of this essay. In this paper, I want to discuss the prehistoric and historical continuity of the use of San Pedro on the north coast and in the northern highlands of Peru in order to better establish its legitimacy as an entheogen that deserves to be 60 anthropology of consciousness 21.1 treated as a vehicle for accessing the sacred among those who use it ritually. I believe that an extended treatment of cultural continuity and context for the use of this entheogen are important for a number of reasons. First, as San Pedro usage becomes more popular as a potentially ‘‘legitimate’’ form of mescaline- based ‘‘tripping’’ in both the United States and South America, because of its ambiguous legal status, my concern is that it will become named as a Schedule I substance in the United States unless steps are taken to demonstrate the antiquity and cultural context of its traditional use. Second, in at least one town in southern Ecuador where ‘‘psychedelic tourism’’ has replaced more traditional use of San Pedro, there is evidence that indiscriminate overharvesting is seri- ously impacting sustainability of this natural resource in addition to contributing to serious community conflict in the area (Vivanco 2000). While I do not personally condemn those who choose to use this plant medicine in nontraditional settings or in nontraditional ways, the tendency of U.S. policy makers over the last hundred or so years to criminalize all usage of non- addictive psychoactives as soon as there is public awareness of use by any group for any reason causes me considerable concern. With every web-based article that provides detailed instructions for preparing San Pedro in order to maxi- mize its potency in order to have a better ‘‘trip,’’ I fear we move yet another step closer to explicit criminalizing of this most ancient entheogen. In order to provide the context for cultural continuity of its usage and its fundamental association with ancient religious and spiritual traditions in northern Peru, I will focus in some detail on iconographic depictions of this cactus in prehistoric Peru, as well as on historical and ethnographic evidence for its continued importance in the region.

& cultures, ecologies, and cosmologies in ancient peru

The importance of Echinopsis/Trichocereus on the desert coast and in the central highlands of Peru has a time-depth that long preceded the dawn of written history in this part of the world. This is evidenced by the ancient depictions of this plant on pottery, textiles, and in rock art created long before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores.5 These depictions vary widely in terms of time and space, with appearances on pottery on the southern coast near Nazca (from about 2,100 b.p.), stone sculptures in the central highlands of Ancash (from about 2,900 b.p.), and a multitude of representations in the Cupisnique pottery from the northern coast of modern-day Lambayeque as well as the valleys that rise steeply from there to the Andes mountains of Cajamarca (from about 3,500 b.p.). There is even evidence of San Pedro usage in preceramic times on the northern coast of Peru (from about 4,000 b.p.) and in the area just north of Lima (from about 3,500 b.p.).6 shamanism and san pedro through time 61

Because of the lack of writing systems in early Peruvian societies, the meaning given to this entheogen and its association with cosmological principles of ancient religious systems can only be inferred. Because of the isolating nature of Peru’s geography, it has often been suggested that we cannot know to what degree the meanings associated with the use of this cactus was shared by the societies in highland and in coastal settings who have left us these iconographic traces (Millones 1982;Donnan Christopher personal communication, UCLA, 1989). Just as customs, languages, food ways, social and political complexity, and religious beliefs vary among the coastal, highland, sylvan, and riverine peoples of Peruvian ecosystems today, archaeologists have been hard-pressed to decipher the degree of diffusion and independent invention of Peru’s ancient coastal, highland, and tropical forest dwellers (cf. Peregrine and Ember 2001). In general, archaeologists agree that Peruvian prehistory on the coast and in the highlands from about 3,000 b.p. until the arrival of the Spaniards in 1532 went through several eras of political and cultural unification and expansion followed by periods of more autonomous regional development (Longhena and Alva 1999:32). As Sharon has recently demonstrated in his wonderful mono- graph entitled Shamanism and the Sacred Cactus (2000), San Pedro seems to have been an important element of cultural traditions throughout Peruvian prehistory, even before the beginning of the first ‘‘expansion,’’ associated with that highland center of religious power and theocratic rule known as ‘‘Chavıń.’’ Although the most widely published of ancient San Pedro representations is probably the famous Chavıń stone-tablet depiction of an avian-fanged-serpent- god holding a ‘‘staff’’ of San Pedro cactus from about 2,900 b.p.7 representations of the San Pedro cactus are frequently found in coastal Cupisnique ceramics from 3,500 b.p. Here, one finds cactus imagery associated with animals like jaguars or deer, mythological beings like fanged-serpents (boas) or jaguars with eye-spots and three-step stairways or volutes as well as with stylized images of mountains and waves. Considering later depictions of the San Pedro cactus from the Moche and Lambayeque regions, Sharon suggests an association between the use of the San Pedro cactus, propitiation of the ancestors, communion with the realm of the dead, abundant water, and agricultural fertility (2000:6). These are themes that are explored in more detail below.

& san pedro, veneration of the ancestors, and the ‘‘calling forth’’ of water

In the dry coastal plains of northern Peru, as well as in the Andes mountains rising to the East, ‘‘concern for water was ancient as is demonstrated by the development of irrigation systems and other management techniques from early on’’ (Sherbondy 1992:52). Considered to be one of the driest deserts in the 62 anthropology of consciousness 21.1 world (Cooke et al. 1993), the 50–100 kilometers wide Sechura desert stretches for more than 188 thousand square kilometers from Piura in the north to Ata- cama in northern Chile. With an average of only 4 inches of rainfall per year (http://www.eoearth.org/article/Sechura_desert) it has been inhabited continu- ously for more than 6000 years thanks to the 50 or more rivers that flow to the Pacific from the Andes mountains that rise steeply to the east. Control and manipulation of available water to meet basic survival needs of inhabitants was crucial for survival on the coast of Peru, and it has been suggested that this was the catalyst for the development of cities, states, and state-expansionist ‘‘em- pires’’ on Peru’s north coast by a myriad of scholars over the last 50 years or more. In the highlands, too, the relationship between the ability/legitimacy to rule and the ability to control water supplies was apparent from at least the time of the Chavıń temple complex. The main function of this templeFlocated stra- tegically on a trade route that linked the coast, the central highlands, and the tropical forestFseems to have been religious, rather than economic, in nature. It has been posited as a pilgrimage destination where peoples of all three regions came to consult oracles and worship the ancestors (Makowski et al. 2000:42–61). There, in labyrinthine underground chambers, water was channeled and flo- wed in ways that ‘‘would have instilled awe in spectators’’ (Peregrine and Ember 2001:41). It has also been posited as a place where an emerging priest class consolidated their claims to hegemonic authority by engaging initiates in a mind-altering experience with the help of the San Pedro cactus (http:// www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2005/janfeb/features/peru.html). The association between the San Pedro cactus and emerging cosmological principles that conflated ancestor worship with water may, in fact, date from the Chavıń period. Whether or not ChavıńdeHuańtar was dedicated to ancestor worship as Makowski et al. (2000) infer it does seem clear from the archaeological evidence that veneration of ancestors was definitely important to the Recuay peoples who lived 1000 years later in the same region. As Peregrine and Ember note,

The roots of the religious ceremonialism associated with ayllu [lineage] founder ceremonies seems to have been established during the period . . . [Typical of religious structure found in later times throughout the Andes] each ayllu (usually a landholding corporate group) has a real or ﬁctional apical founder and . . . access to the mummy of the founding member, to be displayed and incorporated into various processions and rituals, was a crit- ical component of the ayllu. The ancestral mummy would have been kept in open sepulchers, which allowed easy access. [2001:7]

At about the same time as the Recuay peoples of the central highlands were incorporating ancestor worship into their religious cosmologies, it is very shamanism and san pedro through time 63 probable that the Moche peoples (1,900–1,200 b.p.) of the north coast were engaging in similar practices to ensure agricultural fertility. The relationship between ancestor worship, control of water flow to enhance agricultural fertility, and the San Pedro cactus is more explicitly apparent in Moche ceramics than it is in Chavıń and Recuay traditions. In two Moche vessels that are presented in Sharon’s compilation, the first presents a long-haired human draped over the central of three mountains. This scene is accompanied by representations of three San Pedro cacti and a spotted serpent (2000:6). The second vessel presents a priest presumably officiating at a cliff-sacrifice with a ‘‘looming San Pedro behind the [sacrificial] victim and the officiating priest’’ (2000:6). The suggestion is that the underlying theme of the piece is about ‘‘abundant water and agricultural fertility achieved through communion with the realm of the dead and the ancestors achieved through blood sacrifice . . . possibly near the end of the dry season’’ (2000:6). A much more common theme of the Moche, and later Lambayeque pottery that is associated with the San Pedro cactus shows a veiled or cowled ‘‘owl-woman’’ holding the San Pedro cactus in her hand with an open box of what appear to be rocks beside her. On other artifacts this same figure can often be seen with a prostrate figure lying before her, which she appears to be curing (2000:5–11). In the pages that follow, I will return to a discussion of this particular representation of the San Pedro cactus, whose images I published in Glass-Coffin 1998 (between pages 138 and 139). As the Moche period of regional development waned, an empire emerged on the coast and in the central highlands of Peru, potentially uniting coastal and highland cosmologies for the first time ever. In a fascinating article by Glowacki and Malpass (2003), the authors posited that the expansion of the Wari (another spelling of Huari) state was correlated with a sustained drought in their home- land. They suggested that the Wari responded by implementing cosmological beliefs and religious rituals, rather than political or economic strategies, in order to legitimate the acquisition of arable land in foreign territories. They suggested that the key feature of Wari expansionist strategy was ‘‘a strong religious complex’’ involving ancestor worship, where sites associated with the emergence of ancestors were also associated with significant water sources. By associating veneration of the ancestors with these water-rich sacred sites, the authors asserted that the Wari were able to engage in a water control strategy which was cosmological, rather than political or economic in nature (2003:431). Significantly, Glowacki and Malpass suggested that these same religious practices were still being practiced by the Inca more than 500 years later, pos- iting that the cosmological control of water in the Andes is one of those long- standing religious institutions that was key to political and social functioning. In their article, they built a strong case for similar cosmological beliefs between the Wari and the Inca states. Even though separated in time and space, for both groups the movement of ancestors, the flow of water, and veneration of these 64 anthropology of consciousness 21.1 sites of emergence (whether lakes, springs, caves, large trees, or rock outcrop- pings) were incorporated into a cosmology that was still apparent when the Spaniards arrived to document it in the 16th century. Even today, shamanic healers throughout PeruFwhose main purpose is to communicate between the worlds of the seen and the unseen on behalf of their human communi- tiesFvenerate and propitiate what Quechua-speaking natives referred to as huaca (or guaca). Glowacki and Malpass define huaca as the ‘‘Quechua term for any person, place, or thing possessing a sacred or supernatural quality’’ (2003:436). Huaca is a kind ‘‘embodiment’’ or ‘‘receptacle’’ of sacred power and a portal between this world and the world of the ancestors. While often associated with the sacred geography where ancestors emerged from the underworld (discussed below), huaca does not just refer to immovable geologic features of the landscape. What is important to note at this point, however, is that identi- fication of these sacred portals with the flow of water, with the movement of ancestors, and with a power to regenerate life or to cause pestilence and death may provide a window to understanding belief and behavior in ancient Peru that transcended cultural difference (2003:435).

& discussion

I find the basic assertions of the Glowacki and Malpass article significant to the current discussion for a number of reasons. First, the article provides a justification for assessing the iconographic representations that have been presented here in terms of ‘‘pan-cultural’’ meanings. Second, it builds a strong case for the possibility of using historic accounts of religious cosmologies to understand pre-Columbian iconographic representations. Finally, it provides a compelling ecological argument for understanding just how and why an entheogen like San Pedro would come to be associated with water, with a ‘‘flowering’’ of both natural and social worlds, and with the restoration of ‘‘flow’’ between worlds that is so vital to comprehending health beliefs in northern Peru today. At the time of the Spanish conquest, Inca concepts about water were intimately related to their beliefs about origins, especially origins of ancestors and the kinds of rights and privileges bestowed on peoples from their original creation (Sherbondy 1992:46). Their creation stories, as recounted by Molina and Betanzos, expressed that the ancestors of all peoples were created by the creator God Wiracocha. Wiracocha (sometimes translated as ‘‘sea foam’’ or ‘‘fat of the sea’’) is said to have risen out of the highland ‘‘sea’’ of Lake Titicaca, later cre- ating the sun and the moon, and all elements of creation out of these same waters. According to the stories, he also made all the people of all the nations of the Andes out of mud, dressing them and giving them specific customs, dress, shamanism and san pedro through time 65 songs, language, and even a love for particular foods according to an original plan. Wiracocha then sent these ancestors ‘‘along subterranean waterways to their specific places of emergence to the surface of the earth where they could claim rights to lands and waters for their descendants’’ (1992:54). In order to be able to travel along these subterranean waterways to emerge in paqarina or ‘‘places of origin’’ that included lakes, springs, caves, and even large trees, the corresponding assumption was that all water that emerged to the surface of the earth was connected underground and that all water that ‘‘bubbled up’’ from below was eventually returned to the great sea from which it originated (Sherbondy 1992:57). The ancestors, referred to as mallqui, were the object of much worship during the Inca period. ‘‘Viewed as sacred progenitors of the lineage, the mummies of ancestors were consulted on important matters and served as the focal points of both state and family ritual’’ (Peregrine and Ember 2001:155). According to Gose, mallqui were considered much like desiccated seeds, which through burial were returned to the earth so that life could be renewed. Both [seeds of food plants and ‘‘seeds’’ of the founding ancestors] ‘‘thirsted,’’ and, therefore, just as seeds are watered, the ancestors were offered libations of chicha (brewed corn beer) for their revitalization, which in return, brought prosperity to their communities. Their supernatural journeys through the underground waterways helped to ‘‘aquify’’ the land, sending them to their ultimate dwelling or resting places called upaimarcas, which were bodies of water. Because of their desiccated state, the ancestors were evidently drawn to these watery sites where they were reconstituted. They could then return to their local communities to supply their descendants with water. Thus, death was thought to create sources of water that lay outside the boundaries of the local political unit, as the ancestors moved along these subterranean waterways toward the principal upaimarca such as Lake Titicaca and the Pacific Ocean. These sources of water had to be coaxed or coerced (through ancestor worship and veneration of huacas) into sending water back to the local level for agricultural purposes (Gose 1993:495–496). The links between ayllu-wide veneration of founding ancestors, huacas as portals between worlds for this veneration, and the common use of entheogens like San Pedro to facilitate communication between the worlds of the living and of the dead are made even more clear through a linguistic analysis of the term villca (or willka). Glowacki and Malpass argued that this Quechua term is used to refer to all of the following concepts quite interchangeably (2003:436, see also Guardia 1980:138). Some meanings of the term willca include ‘‘ancestor,’’ ‘‘grandfather,’’ ‘‘sacred,’’ ‘‘huaca,’’ and also the entheogenic Anadenanthera peregrina. Like the San Pedro cactus, this entheogen was used extensively on the north coast of Peru and in the southern highlands of Ecuador in ceremonies to seek connection with other worlds, and, presumably, with the ancestors who 66 anthropology of consciousness 21.1 were viewed as responsible for continued abundance (Vivanco 2000:65; Glass- Coffin 2004:439). My argument here, then, is that it was specifically for the purpose of vener- ating the ancestors and for ‘‘drawing water’’ in the service of human survival that San Pedro was utilized by religious specialists both before and after the Spanish conquest. As mentioned above, during a time just prior to Wari expansion on the north coast of Peru where the use of San Pedro today is so widespread, Moche pottery frequently depicted a cowled woman or a cowled owl-goddess with a box of rocks at her side who also held pieces of the San Pedro cactus in one hand (Sharon 2000:5–11, 56–69). In interpreting the meaning of these depictions, Sharon asserts that,

[The ﬁgure of] the hooded female [is a] mediator between the living and the dead, as well as the earth and sources of water and reproduction . . . The nocturnal raptorial bird is her familiar spirit which helps the mediating shaman communicate with the underworld and the ancestors to facilitate the fecund interaction between earth, water, and sky. [Sharon 2000:12]

In comparing these depictions with the way that contemporary shamans in northern Peru utilize the San Pedro cactus, he further notes that ‘‘once San Pedro is ingested and the mesa activated, the goal of a shamanic ritual is to invoke the presence of the spirits of the past inhabiting ancient shrines (huacas), sacred mountains, and regenerative lagoons to effect therapy, promote fertility, and guide souls to or from the other world’’ (Sharon 2000:11). I have elsewhere suggested that the stones in the box associated with this cowled figure may be linked to the emergence of the contemporary shaman’s ritual altar (Glass-Coffin 1998:37). In the contemporary mesa (altar), stones, together with all the mesa’s other objects are, on ingestion of San Pedro and activation by the shamanic healer, all imbued with the supernatural power of a sacred landscape (Glass-Coffin 1998:20–27). The portability of a shaman’s contemporary mesa, the fact that the supernatural power of huaca resides in the mesa pieces during the course of the ritual, and the shaman’s tendency to equate different objects with different purposes has considerable correspon- dence with the way that worship of lineage ancestors is understood to have been practiced in northern Peru shortly after the Spanish conquest (cf. Ramirez 2005:116–134). Significantly, what Ramirez ‘‘teased out’’ of the historical record in ways that previous scholars seem to have overlooked is the overwhelming significance of ancestor worship in the adoration of their myriad ‘‘idols’’ and often portable shrines. For contemporary shamans in northern Peru, the ingestion of San Pedro always occurs in tandem with ritual acts that utilize the supernatural power of objects found on their mesas. The degree to which contemporary shamans consciously associate the use of these ritual objects with propitiation of ancestors that aid the flow of water can be debated. However, the shamanism and san pedro through time 67 suggestion by Glowacki and Malpass that ‘‘metal and stone [together with the shells of the spondylus or ‘spiny oyster’ which are also ever present on the mesas of northern shamans] are thought to have been intimately linked to ancestor worship in the Andes as forces used to draw water from the earth’’ (2003:441– 442) and the explicit intention of contemporary shamanic healers to ‘‘florecer’’ or ‘‘bring to flower’’ through their rituals provides an intriguing clue to the continuity of this concept over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. As suggested above, Andean cosmologies view the world of the living and the world of the dead as linked by water. Sharon noted that, as long ago as the Cupisnique tradition, the depictions of the San Pedro cactus with associated animals relates to ‘‘a sacred geography of mountains and waters.’’ San Pedro is an integral component used to facilitate communication between spirits of the mountains and spirits of water that links the concepts of male and female, fertility and fecundity, the sky world and the underworld, in a cyclical journey ‘‘of respectable antiquity’’ (2000:12–13). This ‘‘flow’’ of water between worlds has been expanded to include in this cycle of regeneration the kingdom of the ‘‘upper world.’’ There, according to Urton (1981) the Milky Way takes up water from the great ‘‘cosmic sea’’ that surrounds the earth, which is returned to earth as rain in order to fertilize the parched landscape. By means of a complex cycle, water falls from the upper world to fertilize the landscape. It also emerges from the fecund dampness of the Earth Mother (what Quechua speakers refer to as pachamama). This understanding of water as a manifestation of both masculine and feminine principles of fertility and fecundity extends the principle of complementary dualism that is so prevalent in Andean cosmologies. In these, it is the ‘‘coming together’’ of opposites like male and female, fertility and fecundity, sky and underworld that is seen as the mechanism by which creation occurs (Earls and Silverblatt 1978; Sharon 1978:93–99; Urton 1981:36–65, 193–204; Classen 1993:11–55; Glass-Coffin 1998:37–40; Steele and Allen 2004: 25–26). In northern Peru, where San Pedro usage is most prevalent today, the relationship between linked-levels, water flow, and fertility once again seems clear when one considers the ecology of the region. On the coast, one of the driest deserts in the world springs to life wherever mountain-fed rivers run through it. Early inhabitants of the desert coast thrived as a result of learning to channel these rivers to irrigate their crops. Even today, the highland lagoons that are sacred destinations for contemporary healers who use the San Pedro cactus as key elements of their ritual are also understood to be the abodes of mythical serpents and felines whose presence is said to indicate the sacred reproductive meeting between sky and sea, fertility and fecundity, male and female forces. These lagoons are also called ojos del mar or ‘‘portals/doorways of the sea’’ by some contemporary healers, suggesting a shared understanding of the cir- cular flow of water, not only from highland to lowland, but also back again 68 anthropology of consciousness 21.1

(Glass-Coffin 1998, field notes). As Polıá notes, these lagoons mirror the creative potential of the universe as sites,

Where water streaming off the sides of masculine upper-world mountains during the rainy season unites with female spring water feeding the lagoon from the underworld resulting in a ‘‘sacred coitus’’ . . . of the mythical cou- ple’’. [cited in Sharon 2000:12]

The assertions about the association between usage of the San Pedro cactus, veneration of the ancestors, and water also seem apparent in one name given this entheogen in Colonial times. San Pedro is called agua collay in many colonial documents, and aguacolla even today in southern Ecuador (Vivanco 2000). According to Vivanco, the term may have originated from an admixture of Spanish and Quichua terms (agua 5 water; colla 5 queen) because, according to Ecuadorian mythology, ‘‘it seems that aguacolla before becoming a plant was a queen, first born, beautiful and attractive [and it is therefore] the plant used to give tribute to the princess, the queen and the moon’’ (1999:98). In the Andean cosmology of ‘‘complementary dualism’’ touched on above, the relationship of woman/queen to moon/fecundity/moist underworld/water is well established and discussions of the relationship of sun and moon are juxtaposed so that the sun, by contrast, is associated with masculine/upper world/fertility connotations. On the north coast especially, the moon was, together with the sea, considered a more important deity than the sun (Peregrine and Ember 2001:62). It is also possible that the term aguacolla is derived from the Spanish ‘‘water’’ and a Quechua term for ‘‘occult’’ or ‘‘hidden.’’ As Polıá notes, the significance of one particular mountain deity referred to culluna by locals around Huanc- abamba is precisely because of its ‘‘subterranean’’ nature, suggesting that things that carry this name are portals to an interior world (2001:118). By analogy, aguacolla could be understood as being the sacred liquid that gives access to this subterranean world from which the water of ancestors flows to rejuvenate the landscape. For Urton’s informants in the southern Andes, just as for De la Torre’s informants in the northern region of Cajamarca, that world underneath where the ancestors dwell is one that is ‘‘opposite’’ in every way to the world on which humans walk. As Urton puts it ‘‘everything happens just opposite to the way it happens on this earth; our sunrise is their sunset, our day is their night, and our earth is their sky’’ (Urton 1981:37, see also De la Torre 1986). Because San Pedro provides access to this other, hidden world, the cycle of its growth, flowering, and decay are in keeping with those of that ‘‘opposite,’’ hidden world (Sharon 1978:101–121). In this way, the use of the name aguacolla as explicit reference to the subterranean, occult, world of the ancestors also makes sense. Yet another association between the ritual use of San Pedro and the ‘‘calling forth of the waters’’ can be seen in contemporary rituals taking place in the shamanism and san pedro through time 69 sacred lagoons of Las Huaringas, above Huancabamba in the northern highlands, where its use is most widely, and traditionally documented (Polıá 1988a, b; Camino 1992). As Sharon noted:

Today the lakes above HuancabambaFknown collectively as las Huaringas [or las Huarinjas]Fare the destination of pilgrims who come seeking a ritual bath and night healing session performed by local curanderos. They are also sites of shamanic initiation. For northern healers the preferred day for bathing in the lakes is June 24th, the day of St. John the Baptist. Besides its obvious association with baptism in the Jordan River, the date is related to pre-Hispanic solstice ceremonies [associated with abundant harvests and female ancestors] . . . As Millones points out, sierra lakes are ‘reservoirs of regenerative forces’ as well as ‘a door that communicates with the supernatural and acts as a meeting place between the two worlds, [Sharon 2000:12-13].

Las Huaringas are generally considered to be sacred and feminine in nature. Their deepest parts contain the ‘‘mother of the waters’’ (Mamayacu) which shamans extract for rain ceremonies conducted at the beginning of the wet season (Polıá 1999:657–659) . . . [These lagoons are believed to be encantada or ‘‘enchanted’’], that is, haunted by the spirits of the Incas and the ‘‘virgins of the Holy Water’’ who inhabit sunken cities and cultivate gardens of magical flora in a ‘‘parallel geography’’ accessible only to the shaman . . . They are also seen as the abode of the mythical serpent or Amaru who ascends to the upper sky world and then returns as zigzagging lightning accompanying the fertilizing rain [Sharon 2000:12]. The ceremony by which northern shamans utilize the objects from their mesas (and, of course, the San Pedro cactus) to ‘‘call forth the ‘Mamayacu’’’ is recounted at length in Ramirez (1969:67–71). This is just one more example of an explicit contemporary association between the work of the shaman who uses the entheogenic San Pedro to communicate with and to venerate the ancestors, and the restoration of water to a thirsty landscape. From the historical record, also, we know that the San Pedro cactus was di- rectly associated with priestly attempts to communicate with the powers of the cosmos for the good of the community. Numerous colonial documents refer to ingestion of this plant, often called either gigantoń (because of its large size) or huachuma/achuma as an important part of ‘‘idolatrous’’ rituals. Widely knownFand condemnedFby the Church fathers as ritually important, the plant was said to produce visions and dizziness. As Father Oliva reported in 1631, achuma was,

A water they [the indigenous peoples] make from the sap of some thick and smooth cacti that they raise in the hot valleys. They drink it with great ceremonies and songs, and as it is very strong, after they drink it they remain without judgment and deprived of their senses, and they see visions that the 70 anthropology of consciousness 21.1

Devil represents to them and consistent with them they judge their suspi- cions and the intentions of others. [cited in Sharon 1978:43] And as Father Cobo noted in 1653, ‘‘transported by this drink, the Indians dream[ed] a thousand absurdities and believed them to be true’’ (Sharon 1978:43). Although best known in the Colonial documents by the name achuma or huachuma, the local term for the plant was probably derived from the coastal languages spoken by the inhabitants before the arrival of the Inca and the Quechua language. Although little of what was called ‘‘Yunga’’ by early Spanish linguists is spoken today, as recently as 1920, Yunga speakers near Chiclayo used the term chumay to refer to being drunk or dizzy (de la Carrera 1939:xi) and even today in parts of Ecuador, a person visibly under the influence of strong drink is sometimes referred to as being achumado (field notes 1997).8 As depicted on the Moche and Lambayeque ceramics described above, women apparently also utilized San Pedro to journey to other worlds on behalf of their human communities. When the first written accounts of Indian religious rituals appeared, these were, of course, laced with the moral judgments and ideological assertions of the priests and officials who recorded them while at- tempting to extirpate the idolatrous practices of their parishioners. Because of reasons that have been reported elsewhere (Glass-Coffin 1998:35–49), women were considered particularly prone to idolatrous behavior and to pacts with the Devil by Church officials. But the fact that women were continuing the tradition (depicted in Moche ceramics) of ingesting achuma in order to receive visions and to intercede with the gods on behalf of communities or their clients, seems apparent in the following Inquisitorial Edict. Posted in 1629 by officials of the Holy Office as a warning to all parishioners, it illustrates how Church officials attributed the context and content of these visions to idolatrous, heret- ical, and superstitious activity. It also suggests that women continued to utilize psychoactive substances, including San Pedro, in attempts to access modified states of consciousness well into the Spanish Colonial period. According to the Edict, Many persons, especially women, are easily given to superstitions, they do not hesitate to give or in some way worship the Devil . . . so that they can know the things that they desire . . . to which end the said women, other times go out to the country by day and in the middle of the night, and drink certain drinks of herbs and roots, called achuma, and chamico, and coca, with which they deceive and dull the senses, and the illusions and fantastic representations that they have then, they judge and later reveal publicly, as a certain sign of what will happen. [Medina 1887, vol. 2:38] In spite of the Church’s efforts to exterminate ‘‘pagan’’ idolatrous ways, San Pedro continued to be used by sorcerers to invoke what the Church officials call shamanism and san pedro through time 71

‘‘Devils’’ in order to manipulate the forces of the cosmos with the help of supernatural entities. In the cases described below, the Andean healers themselves often describe these entities as cerros or mountains, reflecting the tendency throughout this region to treat high-peaks as ‘‘receptacles’’ or ‘‘em- bodiments’’ par excelence of sacred power or huaca (Polıá 1999:107). Just as water seems to serve as a means by which this power flows from highlands to lowlands and back again, the flow of air (made manifest in windFand especially whirlwinds) seems also to portend the arrival of the sacred and the presence of huaca in the healer’s ritual.

& wind, spirit, and animating essence

In a compelling new account that reframes the importance of ancestor worship throughout the Andes at the time of the Spanish conquest, Susan Ramirez has recently suggested that ‘‘[the] pantheon of gods, deities, ancestors, and spiritual representations [that] were lumped together by the Christians into one generic category of guaca’’ (2005:65) can be better understood when one considers that, even the ‘‘official’’ religion of the Incas was kinship based, so that the sun, moon, planets, the Inca himself, and even the provincial leaders known collectively as curacas, were all related by descent, and by the animating energy of the cosmos which they shared (2000:65–69). An even bigger contribution that she makes to the literature, however, is the suggestion that imperial authority and Godhead status rested in the Inca himself, as ‘‘el Cusco,’’ as a physical (and highly mobile) manifestation of the navel of the universe. The Inca was ‘‘an articulating point of contact; a link between his celestial kin, the mummified remains of his ancestors, and his earth-bound relatives and followers.’’ Further, this model of Incan ruleFas well as the kin-based relationship he was believed to share with all other manifestations of divine authority on earthFprovided that all similarly vested leaders served as mediators between ‘‘the supernatural immortals and living humans’’ (2005:77) at the level of the regional or local polities that they governed. According to Ramirez, the founding ancestor or the ‘‘spiritual founder of the group’’ was consulted as part of the process for choosing provincial leaders. Once local curacas or provincial chiefs were invested with the literal tiana [stool] that also served as the metaphorical ‘‘seat’’ of their power, they also received supernatural power as well as ‘‘the weighty authority of divinities of the past’’ (2005:135). Once seated on their stools of office, these leaders were ‘‘capable of receiving the vital energy of the ancestors (referred to as the camaquen) or, to paraphrase a modern informant, ‘the breath of life’ (el soplo de la vida)’’ (2005:135). 72 anthropology of consciousness 21.1

As Ramirez continues,

The word camaquen has several meanings, including ‘‘soul’’ and ‘‘effective, powerful animating or sustaining force,’’ and is associated with the concept of camac, another word meaning ‘‘divinity’’ or ‘‘guaca.’’ The curaca accessed this camaquen either by communicating with it or being possessed by it. [2005:135]

One of the roles of the curaca was to mediate with the ancestors on behalf of the community, to interpret their oracles, and to propitiate these with sacrifice and adoration. In fact, ‘‘the enstooled curaca was likened to a priest, worshipped by most, and accepted as the embodiment of a spirit by man’’ (Ramirez 2005:135). From Ramirez, we also learn that the ‘‘soul power’’ of the ancestors was believed to produce in the curaca a state of ‘‘ecstasy’’ that caused him to be ‘‘deprived of his senses [so as to] hear the said ancestor speak’’ (2005:135). Try as they might to eradicate worship of the ancestors by destroying the mummy bundles, stones, wooden statues, or other physical manifestations of the ancestors, the native peoples continued in their worship, sacrificing to these objects even though their original physical presence was gone. Even when the physical idol was destroyed, Ramirez reported, ‘‘the soul of the said idol lived and came down to the sacrifice and received it . . . This suggests that the locus of divinity lay not in the object or representation itself, but in the spirit, soul, or vital force that it represented, [which was] the essence of superhuman power’’ (Ramirez 2005:145). Most significant to the current essay, Ramirez reported that ‘‘veneration could continue because the . . . deity ‘came in the form of wind to receive the offerings’’’ (2005:145). This association with winds or vientos and a manifestation of spirit is clear in both the historical documents (presented below) and in descriptions of contemporary healers about their experiences ingesting the San Pedro cactus, leading to all-night rituals thatFlike the altars they utilize to do their mediatory work between worldsFare also called mesas. According to Ysabel Chinguel, a female healer from Huancabamba with whom I have worked extensively,9 the manifestation of spirit power on her ritual altar is most often perceived ‘‘as energy, or as the vital force that unites humans with the earth and with the cosmos. Sometimes this energy appears as the light of the stars and sometimes as the whirlwind or as wind in motion’’ (Glass-Coffin et al. 2004). According to Ysabel, each of the objects of the ritual altar or mesa are ani- mated by this spirit power. Rather than residing permanently in the mesa objects, this power comes when called by the healer (and when appeased by offerings) into these objects for the purpose of healing. When not in use, the power returns along an umbilical-cord-like filament to its place of origin, which may be a spiritually charged cave, spring, mountain, highland lagoon, or other encantado (‘‘charmed’’) site in the natural world. That the wind is understood as shamanism and san pedro through time 73 portending the arrival of this sacred power is not surprising considering the close association with moving air and the resuello or breath which animates all living things (cf. Glass-Coffin 1998: 24–25, 190–192 for more). Furthermore, in the lore of the region, wind is also associated with the spirit-essence of the ancient dead (gentiles) who are associated with the underworld and who are believed to live in caves and mountains because, when the body dies, flesh and substance fall away and can no longer be seen. But the wind, as evidence of spirit, remains.10 Just as wind emanates from caves and communicates with the underworld, the wind is also associated with the thunder, rain, and hail that serves as a portal to the upper world. Like the water that flows down the mountainsides, under the earth, and back to the plane on which humanity lives and flourishes, so it is with the wind, which connects the forces of the living with the sacred power of huaca that animates life itself. Thus, if one of the main functions of the shamanic healer is to communicate with and mediate between worlds on behalf of the human community, the presence of the wind as evidence of the healer’s ability to do this should not surprise us. In the Colonial record, this association can be seen as early as 1547. In that year, an indigenous healer known as Paico was accused of participat- ing in an act of sorcery against the Spanish conqueror Francisco de Ampuero at the behest of his wife, don˜ a Ynes Huaylas.11 According to the accusation, Ynes had apparently approached the Indian Paico for a hex so that Ampuero (who it appears from the story was in the habit of mistreating her) would be kind to her on his return from Quito where he was fighting at Gonzalo Pizarro’s side during the famous battle of An˜ aquito. As he recalled, she told him, ‘‘Look, Ampuero’s coming and he’s going to hurt me. What can we do to him?’’ When questioned, he admitted to sacrificing a bit of fat to what his inquisitors insisted was a ‘‘Devil’’ to conjure Ampuero’s shadow-soul for this reason. When the soul arrived, he recounted admonishing it not to become angry with don˜ a Ynes when next he saw her but to treat her with kindness. When pressed to give details about how he called on his Devil for this purpose and in what form it came to him, Paico said that sometimes it came ‘‘on the wind in a whirlwind of dust and wind.’’12 The more direct association between the use of San Pedro, the invocation of the sacred, and the sign of the whirlwind as a manifestation of that power can be seen in a number of cases that were prosecuted by Ecclesiastic Judges in northern Peru between 1752 and 1824. One of these documents describes a case in which Juan Catacaos, a goat-herder who lived in the mountains outside the town of Guadalupe, was denounced in 1771 by one of his former patients for practicing sorcery. He was captured, together with a saddle-bag containing his ritual paraphernalia. In his interrogation, he was commanded to describe the artifacts, which he referred to as part of his ‘‘Meza’’ (mesa), and to explain their 74 anthropology of consciousness 21.1 use within his rituals. He explained that he had acquired his knowledge, as well as his ritual paraphernalia from a woman, now deceased, named Marıá Angulo to whom he had apprenticed for an entire year. She taught him how to call on the winds and the mountains with his rattle, and to say, ‘‘Yea Mountains, Yea Winds now is the time to help me.’’13 Another case from this period seems also to reflect the association with whirlwinds and arrival of the spirits who are called on by healers, often with the aid of psychotropic plants like San Pedro. Brought by the Holy Office of the Inquisition against a mestizo from San Pablo (Cajamarca) in the 1730s, the document stated that,

The aforementioned sorcerer, named Juan Santos Reyes, directed [his patients] to go out into the countryside in order to cure them . . . [of sorcery] carrying in a basket the instruments of his office, including shells, crystals, bird feathers of various colors, tobacco, colored corn, and the powder of these, as well as many herbal concoctions and bundles of various trifles. And there, under a makeshift shelter he would be singing and dancing and sounding his rattles from seven o’clock at night until the break of dawn the next day cleansing [his patients] and purging them with agua collay which is the herb Gigantoń... [And those present] heard him speak things they didn’t understand and . . . asked him with whom he was speaking and [to whom] was he drumming and singing . . . and the aforementioned sorerer answered that with his airs and his mountains, who, when he invoked them, always came to him, accompanying him in his labors, and that they shouldn’t be afraid. [AHN, vol. 1:17–20]

Perhaps the clearest association of all between the use of the San Pedro cactus to call on spirit entities and their arrival with the wind is the 1768 process brought against Marcos Marcelo, an indian born in Ferren˜ afe who was accused of practicing hechicerı´as or witchcraft. When asked the nature and process of the cures that he conducted, Marcelo replied that,

When a sick person who believed he was bewitched solicited the Declarant in order to cure him, he first cooked an herb that he always has; which is called Gigantes; which usually is found on mountain slopes, and that he drank the juice of this herb, well cooked, with which he came into full awareness and patently saw with his eyes the sick person’s maleficio and if he had a frog, a snake or another animal in the gut, and that with this certain knowledge he gave the sick person the news about his condition and also whether his illness was sorcery; and he also recognized the sorcerer had done the danõ, and that being thus assured the sick one of the state of his illness he begged the declarant to cure him; and then, to proceed with the cure, what he did was to give the sick person of the same herb to drink; after shamanism and san pedro through time 75

drinking it the sick person became drunk, and fell exhausted and that if the sick person could be cured he got well and if not he died. And in order to know if he was capable of curing the sick one or not what he did was, after covering up the drunken patient, and meanwhile with a gourd rattle and whistling only he called to his wind that he had, that which came from a cerro called Cuculi, in the shape of a whirlwind and that this came and covered the patient and that with all this he got well and that when the wind did not come to him nor reach the patient; this was a sure sign that the sorcery was not curable, and (that the patient) was dying, and in this case, he gave up on the patient because without remedy the patient would die and he would let go his hand. [AAT 1768] The association between San Pedro or Gigantes and winds in the form of remolinos is interesting given that, as Sharon notes, early Chavinoid ceramic pots (ca 700–500 BC) of the cactus portray it in association with a spotted jaguar and volute designs which resemble stylized spirals. According to Sharon, The volutes may symbolize the subjective experiences caused by the ingestion of San Pedro, an effect known to curanderos, as remolino or whirlwind. Recent clinical studies indicate that the ‘‘tunnel perspective’’ triggered by the intake of San Pedro is a visual image induced by many other hallucinogens. [Sharon and Donnan 1977:378–379]15

& san pedro, vision, and contemporary healers

As suggested above, contemporary healers often associate the spirit of San Pedro with the wind. But whether as a whirlwind or in some other guise, it is the arrival of the spirit of San Pedro that modern healers depend on to awaken their magical sight or vista with which they see the causes of affliction. As one cur- andero from Huancabamba told Polıá, ‘‘It is the (plant’s) power (poder) or virtue (virtud) that permits one to see. The power is a spirit (espı´ritu) that is in the plant, if it weren’t there it would not be possible to see’’ (Polıá 1988a:54). While sometimes associated with the whirlwind, healers also describe the arrival of the spirit of the plant in the form of a gringo or gringa with blond hair, as an Incan prince or princess, or as an animalFespecially a feline. Some- times, they liken it to the image of the apostle San Pedro for which the plant is named (Polıá 1988a:59, 1988b:224). As Ysabel once told me, all of the power objects on her mesa have spirit or the animating essence that connects with other worlds. But, without the San Pedro, whose spirit is considered the master of the mesaFguiding, directing, and making it possible to see the spirit power of all the other mesa objectsFshe would not be able to work. According to Ysabel, it is the spirit of GodFthe Holy SpiritFthat possesses the San Pedro at the beginning of her all-night ritual. The 76 anthropology of consciousness 21.1 entheogen opens the doors so that she might see the spirit reflections of the evil sorcerers who hex her patients as well as the spirit powers of natural phenomena who are persuaded to capture and imprison their victims’ shadows (field notes, 1988). When asked to describe the appearance of the spirit of San Pedro at Ysabel’s mesa, her assistant remembered one, very momentous, appearance when,

San Pedro appeared in the sky like a light, like an exploding star . . . and the clouds came together and formed the body of a person . . . and the clouds came down [to the mesa]. The clouds seemed to come down. We were there in the middle of it and it seemed as though they were descending . . . And the mesa was lit-up . . . everything was lit. And then, at that moment when the clouds descended . . . [Ysabel] fell unconscious . . . [and began speaking] with that old man’s voice. [Glass-Cofﬁn 1992:237]

Certainly, the most important function of San Pedro is to give the healer vista, so that they may diagnose and cure their patients. For Ysabel, this vista manifests in multiple ways. Sometimes the spirit of San Pedro whispers into Ysabel’s ear, sometimes it presents scenarios like a pantalla or movie-screen. Sometimes, as alluded to above, it even possesses her, so that its voice speaks through her and her own spirit travels in space and time. The first time this happened, according to her assistant, ‘‘her entire body was like that of an old man and her voice was of an ancient . . . (her) spirit wasn’t there (at the mesa) but in the sky . . . as though from there she looked out over all the problems that the patients would have.’’ Ysabel added, ‘‘I sat in the clouds, not on the earth . . . If I reached out my hand I felt nothing, I touched the emptiness [of the sky] in spite of the fact that I was really sitting on the ground’’ (Glass-Coffin 1992:237). San Pedro-induced visions often utilize the naturally occurring sights and sounds of the curing ceremonies, but an additional dimension of the experience for the healer is that San Pedro imbues these phenomena with meanings unavailable to all but the shamanic healer him or herself. In these instances, the San Pedro cactus is described not so much in terms of giving ‘‘visions’’ but as clarifying the meaning of phenomena that all participants can readily discern. For example, in the all-night ritual that I attended with Clorinda Cortez, another healer from Huancabamba, I saw fireflies, heard the braying of bulls and the screeching of owls, and felt rain which fell from an apparently cloudless sky. Thanks to the whispered voices of San Pedro, Clorinda understood that these fireflies were the manifestations of human spirits, the red or white appearance of their light indicating the intent with which they visited her mesa. According to Clorinda, the screech of the owl and the bray of the bull were manifestations of the work of evil sorcerers, while the rain was evidence of the power of a sacred highland lagoon, whose spirit she both dominated, and had called to accom- pany us during the ceremony. shamanism and san pedro through time 77

Similarly, Ysabel often commented on meanings contained within clouds, stars, the sounds of animals, and even falling objectsFmeanings which were largely unavailable to my untrained senses, and meanings which were illumi- nated by San Pedro. For Yolanda, a curandera from the highland city of Cajmarca whose ceremonies were conducted during daylight hours, the spirit of San Pedro presented information about the cause of her patients’ misfortunes in the patterns of dust which swirled beneath the participants’ feet as she ad- monished us to stamp and move across the cement floor of her indoor curing arena. The whispered voice of San Pedro indicated names, or clarified the shape of heads and noses, or even the color of hair and eyes for Yolanda. Meanwhile, all I could discern were dusty images whose forms were as ambiguous as Rorschach ink-blots. VisionsFunavailable to most mesa participantsFwere also an important part of San Pedro’s revelatory power for the women with whom I worked. Ysabel spoke of seeing trucks careen off mountains, sorcerers stealing victim’s shadows, and of the powerful encantos of streams, mountains, swamps, or even cadavers who were often called on by sorcerers to complete the hex. Yolanda described seeing how her first husband had bewitched her, the first time she ingested San Pedro. As she recounted, I saw everything he had done to me . . . I saw myself in a cemetery, I saw some open tombs. It seemed like one soul was pulling me, then another, then another and in the [unfolding] of the entire curing ceremony, I saw my ex- husband. He was there. He flew this way, he was flying, and I had realized. I related it all in my mind, how he had done it, what method he had used, everything, everything, everything. [Glass-Coffin 1992:176] Finally, San Pedro inspired ‘‘visions’’ often imply much more than movie- screen-like revelations. Psychic-travelFor the dissociation of spirit and body so that the healer’s spirit voyages to places and times far removed from the setting of the ceremonyFis perhaps the most important power ascribed to the spirit of San Pedro.

& conclusion

As has been demonstrated, the San Pedro cactus was and continues to be the catalyst by which spirit power is made manifest, is harnessed, and is channeled in order to cure Peruvian patients of the magically caused illnesses from which they are believed to suffer. As Clorinda once told me, ‘‘without San Pedro, there is nothing’’ (personal communication, 1988). This sentiment seems echoed in the testimonies of the Colonial healers presented here, and even in the pre-Columbian ceramics where the visionary power of the plant, as well as its ability to communicate and mediate between worldsFpresumably in service of 78 anthropology of consciousness 21.1 the shamanFis pictorially represented. As recalled by the late Eduardo Cal- dero´n, perhaps the most famous of contemporary Peruvian healers, the attainment of San Pedro-inspired visions are key to the healer’s ability to cure. What is also clear from this account is that the entheogen itself serves both as messenger and as mediator between the worlds to which the shaman sends his or her soul during the all-night mesa. In this, as outlined above, little seems to have changed over the millennia that this sacred plant has served as the Peru- vian shaman’s portal to other worlds. Hopefully, this knowledge can serve to challenge the unfortunate tendency of some U.S. policy makers and short- sighted individuals to dismiss the sacred power of this plant. It is about time that San Pedro becomes recognized by those of this generation as the venerated messenger and portal to the Divine that it has always been.

& notes

1. Also classified as Trichocereus pachanoi, the Echinopsis label is more recent, more botanically correct, and much less widely used. 2. Just a few examples of rituals that incorporate the use of Echinopsis pachanoi ‘‘plant spirit medicine’’ in areas of Peru beyond what Camino (1992) and others describe as the northern ‘‘axis’’ of more traditional use include Ross Heaven’s ‘‘The Four Gates’’ program in Cuzco (http://www.thefourgates.com) and Miriam Hacker’s Center of Alternative Medicine and Healing in Iquitos (http://www.goddessofamazon.com), among many others. 3. I was told of this association between the function of the San Pedro plant and the namesake Apostle by two of the healers with whom I worked in 1988–89. Polıá also discusses this in his account of work among northern curanderos (1988a:64). 4. Generally defined as ‘‘that which generates God-within,’’ according to Tramacchi, the term entheogen was first proposed by Ruck in 1979, and is more specifically defined by Jonathan Ott as ‘‘a name for a sub-class of psychotropic and psychoactive plants . . . [that is meant as] a broad term to describe the cultural context of use, not specific chemistry or pharmacology . . . [It was proposed] as an efficient substitute for cumbersome terms like shamanic inebrient, visionary drug, plant sacrament, and plant teacher’’ (2006:92). Tramacchi further suggests that the term was adopted to encourage distinction from ‘‘recreational use’’ of plant-based hallucinogens in the minds of policy makers and law enforcement officials by linking it with traditional use of these plant substances for the purpose of shamanic journeying and contact/ interaction with the sacred. Unfortunately, as the author also notes, while policy makers have been sympathetic to use of entheogens as legitimate religious ritual/ sacrament among groups with distinctly ‘‘non-Western ethnic identities,’’ they have been reticent to extend this same approval to ‘‘cultural dissidents in the West, especially to the constituencies of renegade pharmacological sub-cultures displaying shamanism and san pedro through time 79

significant cognitive divergence from material realist sensibilities and aesthetics [otherwise labeled as] ‘a bunch of hippies’ ’’ (2006:93) 5. Depictions of some of the most famous of these can be found in Hocquenghem (1977), Sharon (2000), and also on the Internet (cf. http://www.biopark.org/peru/ huachuma.html). 6. All dates in this section are from Sharon (2000). 7. First published in the Swiss magazine Graphis in 1974, images of this stone sculp- ture have been reprinted numerous times. The image can be accessed in Sharon (2000:52) and online at http://www.ayahuasca-shamanism.co.uk/achuma.htm, and http://www.biopark.org/peru/huachuma.html. 8. My thanks to Douglas Sharon for this insight. 9. Ethnographic fieldwork with female curanderas including Ysabel Chinguel, Clo- rinda Cortez, Flormira Sanchez, Yolanda Santa Cruz, and Vicky Guillermo was conducted during a 23-month period between 1987 and 1989 on the northern coast and in the northern highlands and has been reported in Glass-Coffin (1998). Re- search with Ysabel has been ongoing, including repeat visits to her home in Chiclayo in 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, and, more recently, her visits to my home in Utah in 2004, 2008, and 2009. 10. This kind of wind is sometimes called evil air of the ancient dead (mal aire del gent- il) and is believed to emanate from caves, swamps, and other places considered as portals to the underworld and to cause illness when the living come into contact with it. This phenomenon has been written about extensively in the Andes (cf. La- uris McKee 2003) and helps explain the phenomenon of mal aire which is considered a serious, spiritually caused illness. One illustration of this complex can be seen in the legend about the enchantment of the ancient city of Huancabamba recounted by Justino Ramirez (1969) in which a man was pulled into an enchanted city by means of a ‘‘cold wind that drug him towards the cave.’’ There are multiple references to this kind of aire in the Colonial documents I have reviewed and, even today, many healers’ rituals that I participated in focused on protecting their patients from this kind of spiritually induced aire (Glass-Coffin, field notes 1988–89). 11. Ynes Huaylas was the daughter of Inca Huayna Capac who was Francisco Pizarro’s first consort and the mother of the first mestiza born in Peru. She was married to Francisco de Ampuero, one of Pizarro’s cavaliers and also an important figure in the early years of the Spanish Conquest by 1538 (Rostworowski 1989:13–30). 12. Summarized from AGI Justicia 451, ‘‘Querella de don Francisco Sańchez . . . ’’ photocopy on file with author. I was personally able to consult this manuscript, as well as the manuscript on file at the Archivo Nacional Historico in 1997. Cases from the Archivo Arzobispal de Trujillo that are translated here were consulted in the archives in 1989. More recently, Laura Larco has transcribed these cases for publication in the Boletıń of the Instituto Frances de Estudios Andinos (IFEA), although I did not consult her transcriptions for this essay. 80 anthropology of consciousness 21.1

13. ‘‘Ea Zerros, Ea Vientos haora es tiempo de ayudarme.’’ 14. Translation mine. 15. The psychotropic effects of the plant can be scientiﬁcally attributed to the mescaline (trimethoxy-phenilethilamine) contained in the skin and rind of the plant in a concentration of 0.12 percent (Polı´a, 1988b: 221). works cited

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