Ayahuasca News

The Ucamara Radio, make a very hard work to maintain alive the language and the knowledge of the Kukama indigenous communities in Nauta, Loreto, Peru.

Yulieth, una joven que a la edad de ocho años probó por primera vez yagé, una planta usada por chamanes para curar el alma que puede producir varios efectos, entre estos alucinaciones, y años después decide volver a tomarlo lo cual la ayuda a reencontrarse con ella misma. Varios son los testimonios de personas que han probado este brebaje, que ayuda a liberar el espíritu. La elaboración de esta bebida, los rituales y la vida de los “taitas”, también hacen parte de esta historia.

The blacksmith is a significant and honored personality in all traditional cultures where metalwork is known. Even today, the Eastern Buryats believe in the divine origin of the smith’s craft; they believe that a person receives it as a gift from God. And with the gift he gets the patronage and protection of the deity who is responsible for the smith’s work. Like a shaman, whose craftsmanship is inherited, a blacksmith should come from a family of blacksmiths. As for the Buryats, blacksmiths and shamans always go hand in hand: the shaman protects the blacksmith and his craft, and conducts blacksmith ceremonies. In his turn, the blacksmith makes metal shamanistic accessories and articles of the shaman’s clothes, which protect him when he travels from one world to the other.

This musical and ritual instrument was kept at the home of the well-known film director Grigory M. Kozintsev. In 1930, he was making his film Alone in Gorny Altai, where he met Tanashev, an unusual person and adventurer, in a sense, but undoubtedly talented. The film director invited Kondrat to Leningrad and shot the episode in which the shaman was beating the drum. The very drum. This was the shaman's winged horse. Speeding it with its whip-tampon, the shaman traveled across the worlds: up to the sky and down to hell. Attached to the drum's handle is the wooden head of Ul'gen', Altaian supreme deity, who grants people the gift of becoming a shaman; on the exterior there is a drawing: the sun, stars, rainbow, and a vertical symbolizing the world tree or a horse line - the Universe in miniature.

A unique “shaitan” burial was discovered on the bank of Omuk-Kuel Lake in the Middle-Kolyma ulus in Yakutia. According to the legends, buried in it are mummified remains of a shaman woman who died during a devastating smallpox epidemics in the 18th c. In an attempt to overcome the deadly disease, the shaman’s relatives used her remains as an emeget fetish. The author believes that these legends reflect the real events of those far-away years

O documentário "Ayahuasca, O Espírito da Floresta" apresenta a medicina sagrada dos indígenas, as últimas pesquisas realizadas pelos principais pesquisadores, cientistas e médicos para a cura da doença de alzheimer, câncer, depressão e dependência em heroína e como essa cultura milenar está trazendo mudanças na consciência de milhares de pessoas pelo mundo.

We offer our readers some chapters from the book The Forest Nenets, which is the result of the long-term project “Our Neighbors: The Forest Nenets”. The aim of the project is to study and preserve the material and spiritual culture of the Forest Nenets, a small ethnic group living in the southern part of the Yamal-Nenetsk Autonomous District (“YNAD”) in the Pur River basin. The project is quite unique because it was carried out by the workers of the Gubkinskiy Museum of North Development jointly with the natives, who still live according to their traditions. The natives recorded and described their daily routine life. For this purpose, the Museum donated to them tape recorders, video and photo equipment. In this way, the daily routine of Nentsy camps was “self-documented” over several years.*

*M. I. Gardamshina, N. A. Chebotaeva, E. V. Kalitenko, G. P. Savrasova The Forest Nenets. Novosibirsk: INFOLIO, 2006, 288 pages with illustrations ISBN 5-89590-086-0

A list of common folk remedies collected from 1737 to 1738, both ordinary and sophisticated, taken by mouth or applied externally by Russians, Tatars, Ostyaks, and Chulim Tatars as cures for various diseases, as well as many treatments

The year 2009 is the tercentenary of birth of Georg Wilhelm Steller and Johann Georg Gmelin, who took part in the Second Kamchatka Expedition, the grandiose research project of the 18th century. They were called to study Siberian nature and to draw the animals and plants. The studies were planned to be done not only in the field: scholars were supposed to make natural collections and dispatch them to the academic museum in St Petersburg for further examination. The things and phenomena that could not be sent had to be impressed as "unknown" natural objects - these were drawn on the spot, and the drawings were sent off to the Academy of Sciences. Many of these observations, studies and drawings have been published but a lot of no less important and exciting things are waiting in the archives. Steller's treatise on folk medicine translated from Latin by the well-known historian of science Tatiana A. Lukina is an early work on the Russian Far North and Far East ethnography. It is of great value as it gives an idea of the rational knowledge of the flora possessed by the Siberian peoples in those distant times; the treatise familiarizes us with the ways and methods of treatment with medicinal herbs used both by indigenous people of Siberia and "immigrants". To this day, many of the plants mentioned in his treatise have been widely applied in folk and official medicine. The treatise deals in detail with some prejudices and magical cures, exotic traditions of Siberian aboriginals. The unique drawings from the St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Archive are used in this article

Did you know that scientists in North America, Europe and South America have been investigating ayahuasca in recent years?
And do you know the different reasons why people all across the world are being drawn to ayahuasca?
If you have an interest in healing, spiritual insight or personal development then...

Una parábola sobre la relación entre el hombre y la naturaleza, una historia ejemplar sobre la capacidad humana para alcanzar cualquier objetivo que s

Realizado por:
Productor/Director: Oscar Laso
Camara: Cristian Cabrera
Sonido: Esteban Lopez
en la Hacienda Las Taparitas de Los Teques

.Finding it two thousand years later is a pure chance; its amazingly good condition is almost a miracle. How it made its way to the grave of a person it was not meant for will long, if not forever, remain a mystery. Of greatest surprise though was the unique embroidery made from wool. Its pattern was the ancient Zoroastrian ceremony, of which the principal personage was …a mushroom. In the center of the composition to the left of the altar is the king (priest), who is holding a mushroom over the fire. The «divine mushroom» embroidered on the carpet resembles well-known psychoactive species Psilocybe cubensis.

Despite the processes of globalization and assimilation of cultures, modern mankind does not have a single face. Rather, this is a great mosaic which consists of a multitude of peoples: small and great

The shaman’s path does not come to an end when he passes away. The Evenks believe that after the death he goes to meet celestial residents – the light gods of aiyy. To ensure the meeting takes place, shaman’s relatives offer the gods deer, equip sledges, and erect a churima – the quarters of the deceased in the world of the dead

This is an exciting time to be involved in psychedelic research. Medical researchers are rediscovering the possible benefits of responsible use of psychedelics in therapeutic settings. The media, too, is beginning to wake up to this wealth of scientific discovery. The stigma surrounding psychedelics is being lifted, and journalists are no longer afraid to seriously discuss the therapeutic potential of these compounds.

The December issue of SCIENCE First Hand (# 6 (12), 2006) featured documents of the Second Kamchatka Expedition dealing with the role of alcohol in the life of 18th century Russian Siberians. The present article dwells on the alcoholic habits of Siberian aborigines as well as on their consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms and other narcotics producing euphoria and stupor.

On one of those first nights, the shaman gave two tourists, both men, a plant bath, which entailed his spreading a specially prepared mixture of medicinal plants directly on their skin. After the men’s treatment, the shaman told Ross to do as they had: go into the hut and strip down to her undergarments. “I knew in the back of my mind that you’re not supposed to take your clothes off and go into the private place with the shaman for the healing — that’s how creepy things happen,” she told me later. “But then having seen him do these baths with these men, I was like, All right, I think I can actually trust this.” The shaman covered her in a fragrant concoction of plants. He instructed her to put her clothes back on and left.

A real-life ‘Breaking Bad’ for the psychedelic set, THE SUNSHINE MAKERS reveals the fascinating, untold story of Nicholas Sand and Tim Scully, the unlikely duo at the heart of 1960s American drug counter-culture. United in a utopian mission to save the planet through the consciousness-raising power of LSD, these underground chemists manufactured a massive amount of acid, including the gold standard for quality LSD, ‘Orange Sunshine,’ all while staying one step ahead of the Feds.

Join us in an exploration of how the international drug control regime is being influenced by ayahuasca globalization. Presenter Jeffrey Bronfman will share with us the lessons learned from the União do Vegetal historic legal success in the USA.

On May 21, 1999 Jeffrey Bronfman answered a loud knock on the door of the offices of the União do Vegetal (UDV) church in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He opened the door to encounter more than a dozen armed US Customs Service and FBI agents with a warrant to seize all the church’s sacramental hoasca tea (ayahuasca) claiming it was contraband and impermissible to possess and distribute under both US and international law. This event initiated a legal action where the small church eventually sued the government of the United States for the return of it’s sacrament and a court order authorizing its religious practice.

The legal action, which occurred over a more than 10 year period, ultimately reaching the Supreme Court of the United States, was fully resolved in the church’s favor. In a truly historic precedent setting decision internationally the UDV ultimately secured its rights through an agreement negotiated with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) whereby it became a legally registered importer, distributor and manufacturer of an otherwise prohibited substance.

This webinar will include a presentation of the central legal questions that were at issue in the UDV case; the implications of the Supreme Court decision as it relates to international drug control. It will also offer an analysis of the philosophical foundations of the regulatory agreement reached between the UDV and the government, and reflect on how this agreement could perhaps serve as a model in allowing for other sincere, beneficent, responsible uses of ayahuasca.

Join us in this inaugural ADF webinar series!

For more information about the Ayahuasca Defense Fund visit www.ayahuascadefense.com