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TALES OF FORESTS,
HERBS, SPIRITS
& DREAMS



"THE INCORPORATION'S EYES", © Pablo Cesar Amaringo



I met Luther on a return flight from Brazil. He was on his way home fromthe Peruvian Amazon jungle where he had just participated in a ratherunusual event. For about two weeks Luther had been in the company ofAmazonian Shamans with whom he had participated in a number of rituals.Guided by his experienced companions, he tasted the far reaching realms ofayahuasca's hallucinogenic powers. In this article, OneWorld takes a lookat Luther's experience, his interpretation of it and the understanding hegained on his visit to the Peruvian jungle through an interview conductedby Linda Brookover.

We chose to illustrate the interview with the paintings of Pablo CesarAmaringo, founder of the Usko-Ayar school and recipient of the prestigiousGlobal 500 Peace Prize from the United Nations Environmental program,joining Jacques Cousteau, Chico Mendez, and Jimmy Carter, among many others,as a true hero of the environmental movement.

INTERVIEW WITH A LOTUS EATER by Linda Brookover

He could be the person sitting next to you on an airplane. He winters in Arizona, summers in Wisconsin, plays golf, and travels to Africa. But once in a while, as he reaches the age at which he can qualify for full social security benefits, he is up for a certain kind of travel adventure.

OW: When you went to Peru were you particularly looking for an hallucinogenic experience?

LUTHER: No, not really. I had read the Wild Mushroom Travelling Road Show literature several years ago and my focus wasn't exactly that, but that's what happened. The more that I travel the more that I seek to make a connection with the rest of the world and the oneness in it. Maybe people from other parts of the world are not able to come to me, but I can go to them.

OW: Can you pinpoint where exactly this trip occurred?

LUTHER: We boarded the houseboat in Iquitos and then we went North on the Amazon and then we went off into the tributaries--the remote tributaries where normally no boats are going. During the day, the motor canoes travel up the tributaries to visit the tribes who are not normally visited by Westerners. As we got up there, we'd be visiting with these tribes and they'd have these gourds that were cups and we'd mention the words ayahuasca and then they'd get this really interesting look on their faces

OW: Do you think that traveling the Amazon with native shamans is unusual for someone in your age group?

LUTHER: A lot of people there were in my age group. There were a couple of people from Russia who were just a little bit younger than I was.

Ayahuasca is a Quechua word meaning "vine of enlightenment" or "vine of the soul." It is also natem to the Shuar, who call it their "plant teacher." It is also known as yaje, and caapi. Known to early ethnobotanists since at least 1850, it was once called telepathine, which reflects its reputation as a substance which produces collective or telepathic visions. Ayahausca is made from a mixture of a jungle vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, of the Malpighiaceae family, with other psychotrophic plants. It is the giant jungle vine which contains betacarbolines which is the chief ingredient in ayahuasca. Known throughout the Amazon and the Andes, ayahuasca is the center of the most widely spread psychedelic plant cult in the western hemisphere reaching from the jungles of the Amazon to Panama, the Brazilian west coast to Bolivia. It is currently gaining in popularity among members of the psychotherapeutic community in the US.

http://www.herbweb.com/tryptamines/26.htm

OW: Were you interested in revisiting your psychedelic experiences from the past? Or is this type of exploration completely new to you ?

LUTHER: I never used drugs previously . I had always intended to do an experience with hallucinogens when I was younger and had always decided that I wasn't ready for it at the time. I thought, well, I'm going to wait until I am totally comfortable with it, so my statement to myself and to other people was "when I get to a certain point in my life I will go and sit on top of a mountain and experience drugs.". Oddly enough, when I went down to the Amazon, I realized that it was my mountain.

OW: So ayahuasca revealed itself to you as part of this journey, it wasn't something you were sure you would try when you departed?

LUTHER: I knew what I was getting into because I had read the travel company material and then I had read books about shamanism. When I went I knew what the possibilities were, but I never knew about the extent of that type of experience.

The Interview Continues
About the Painter

Pablo Amaringo, the seventh of thirteen children, was born in 1943 in Puerto Libertad, a small settlement near the town of Tamanco in Peru. His parents were small farmers. While Quechua was the mother tongue of his parents, they raised their children to speak Spanish. Many of Pablo's ancestors were healers and shamans. Pablo had completed only two years of schooling when his father abandoned the family. They lost their farm and moved to Pucallpa. After two more years of school, Pablo was forced to work to help support his family. At 15, he worked on the docks in Pucallpa. After falling critically ill, and with his family in extreme poverty, he began to draw. He found that he could create bank notes using brushes and Chinese ink. Arrested for counterfeiting, he escaped from jail and fled to Brazil, where he worked for almost two years. He returned to the Peruvian jungle, where he was cured of his heart trouble by a ayahuasquero, or vegetalist shaman.

Arrested again for his past crime, he spent several months in jail and was released in 1969. Soon after, Pablo was taught the mysteries of healing by a forest woman who appeared to him in dreams. He practised vegetalismo from 1970 to 1976, travelling throughout the Peruvian Amazon. Plunging deeper and deeper into the power of Ayahuasca, or yajé, an herbal concoction widely used in a shamanic context among the Indian and mestizo population of the upper Amazon, he became tortured by the spirit world. After fighting, and being injured by sorcerers and spirits, he decided to abandon shamanic practices and forsake Ayahuasca. He began to paint, interpreting the other worlds of his experience in his art, and working for preservation of Amazonian environment and culture.

In 1988, Pablo founded the Usko-Ayar school, where he teaches his students to visualize internally what they are going to paint, in the same way that he does himself. "The school's purpose is well defined: it is a tool for the conservation of the Amazonian environment and culture. By observing and depicting nature, people - especially young children - become more aware of its beauty and richness, and they learn to respect it. In addition, the students hope that their paintings will inspire other people to share similar attitudes of appreciation and reverence."* Pablo feels that he has a mission, which is to show through his own paintings glimpses of other dimensions. Language, he says, is an imperfect means of communication. The spirits do not talk, but express themselves through images.

In 1992, Pablo was presented the prestigious Global 500 Peace Prize from the United Nations Environmental program, joining Jacques Cousteau, Chico Mendez, and Jimmy Carter, among many others, as a true hero of the environmental movement. You can read more about Pablo's introduction to and slow education in the way of the shaman in the book Ayahuasca Visions - The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman by Luis Eduardo Luna - © 1991, 1993, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, sponsored by The Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, and from which this biography is summarized.
No unauthorized reproduction may be made of this text or images. - The Electric Art Gallery





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