PEYOTE: AN OVERVIEW OF GAIA'S SHAMANIC SUCCULENT

By Simon G.Powell

Back in 1978, the fine and wholly objective journal Science carried a remarkable story concerning the chemical analysis of some plant material found in a burial cave at Coahuila in Mexico. The plant material in question consisted of some shrivelled peyote buttons strung on a necklace on a skeletal corpse. These peyote buttons were ancient. In fact, they were believed to be around 1000 years old. For a millennium they had lain there, interred beneath the Earth, withering, drying and aging year-in, year-out.

The scientists who carried out the chemical analysis wished to verify if the plant material was indeed peyote since that was what the button-like vegetal material resembled. The scientists duly subjected some of the buttons to a standard batch of laboratory assays. The analysis revealed that mescaline was present and that the aged buttons were therefore indeed derived from the peyote cactus, more formally known as the species Lophophora williamsii and known to be one of the world's longest employed entheogens, used by both the Aztec's of old and by various tribes of Amerindians to this day.

Not surprisingly, the authors of this paper spoke of the "remarkable stability" of the alkaloid mescaline, for it is the usual case that the chemical constituents of dead plant material degrade and decay over time, especially if the amount of time involved is ten centuries. Consider - if you were to bury a cigarette or some coffee beans or a tea-bag in a chest in the garden and then dig up the chest in a thousand years, would you not expect mere dry inactive stale dust to remain there, a dust resulting from the incessant action of micro-organisms and such like? Certainly, if some manky and unseemly residue of the tea-bag remained after all that time, you would not expect to be able to brew it and come up with a nice caffeine-kick morning cuppa would you? And yet, theoretically at least, the ultra-mature and still-active 1000 year-old peyote buttons unearthed in Mexico could have been ingested so as to potentiate an entheogenic experience. Such an act would make the drinking of highly regarded vintage bottles of wine seem absurdly dull in comparison...

The presence of the alkaloid mescaline within the peyote cactus is thus notable for its longevity and ability to remain stable and potentially psychoactive over immense periods of time. According to many testimonies - most notably that issuing from psychedelic aficionado Aldous Huxley - mescaline is also notable for its psychoactive effect within the human psyche, an effect which makes peyote one the most hallowed and revered of the Earth's entheogenic flora.

THE MYSTERY OF MESCALINE SYNTHESIS

As to why the peyote cactus should forge a compound like mescaline within its tough pulpy body, this remains a mystery. Eleven carbon atoms joined to seventeen of hydrogen, three of oxygen and one of nitrogen. Outside the context of the human brain such a configuration of basic elements is nothing to note. Inside the context of the human wetware neuronal brain however, we find potentially sacred significance. And ask a chemist to rustle up this organic alkaloidal combination from scratch and he or she will have great trouble. Certainly one would need a well-equipped lab and a heap of precursor chemicals obtained at no small cost from pharmaceutical suppliers. Yet, for some reason, the genotype of the peyote cactus holds this alchemical list of manufacturing instructions for mescaline synthesis, inscribed in 4-bit DNA code and embedded in the nucleus of each of its cells. Thus, the cactus will make mescaline as a natural and, in a sense, effortless part of its growth and development.

Perhaps mescaline can be dismissed as some sort of waste product. Or a kind of insecticide produced to ward off predators. However, the fact remains that of all the thousands of species of cacti, only the peyote and a couple of other species produce mescaline so it is by no means certain that it is either a defence compound or a metabolic waste product. It is also the case that 90% of all the world's plants produce no alkaloids whatsoever (such as mescaline, psilocybin, caffeine, nicotine etc). In fact, peyote is known to synthesise more than 40 alkaloids, which, according to E.F.Anderson, author of Peyote, the Divine Cactus, is more than any other species, a number of which may possibly enhance or modify the effect of mescaline upon the human psyche. Which means that we are left without an obvious answer as to why and how a DNA script arose or evolved within the peyote cactus for making such a rare and compelling substance as mescaline. Unless, of course, we begin to wax a little mystical and assume that entheogenic plants like peyote have some sort of shamanic function within Gaia. But before we explore such a Gaianesque option, let us briefly look at the illustrious history of this most esteemed of psychoactive succulents.

SCIENCE AND PEYOTE

The peyote cactus first began to be explored scientifically a century ago when German chemist Arthur Heffter managed to isolate (and thence name) the active ingredient mescaline. He even tested the pure substance on himself but was not noted for any poetical testimony to the mescaline experience. Like many other empiricists, Heffter chose to focus his interests upon chemistry and not entheogenisis. It was, after all, the easier option.

The first monograph to appear in English which detailed the actual phenomenology induced by mescaline was that from the hand of American psychologist Heinrich Kluver in 1928. Entitled Mescal, Kluver's little book contains a wealth of experiential data testifying to the awesome psychological effects of mescaline. The book also made it clear at that time that, at least from a psychological perspective, the mescaline experience could be used as a research tool for uncovering the depths and unconscious dynamics of the human psyche. Indeed, in the introduction to Kluver's book, the reader is informed that English investigators:

"...will become familiarised with this plant and be encouraged to employ it in the many suggestive and therapeutic, psychological and neurological avenues which lie open."

Similarly, the opening lines from Kluver read:

"The importance of mescal for psychological research cannot be questioned."

Such scientific optimism was in vain however for, as is well known now, mescaline is a scheduled substance, considered to be of no medical, scientific or epistemological value whatsoever. In the USA for example, peyote is for the most part a banned plant, possession of which is deemed a criminal offence. Societal judgement has it that civilians steer clear of such a dangerous organism. And yet a look at some of the descriptions of mescaline intoxication outlined in Kluver's book makes a clear case that peyote is indeed worthy of investigation and that these early experiments in psychedelic or entheogenic phenomenology were indeed full of promise in the then relatively young field of psychology. For instance, among the descriptions of the symbolic visions induced by mescaline in the subjects administered it by Kluver, we read of one subject who reported seeing:

"...a beautiful palace, filled with rare tapestries, pictures, and Louis Quinze furniture."

Another subject spoke of:

"...visions of human intestines, of sections of abdomens, and sections of the pregnant uterus."

Kluver also included vivid descriptions of mescaline visions given by Weir Mitchell at the end of the 19th century. Mitchell spoke of how:

"...a rush of countless points of white light swept across (my) field of view, as if the unseen millions of the Milky Way were to flow a sparkling river before the eye."

Kluver likewise included a vivid account given by Havelock Ellis in 1898:

"I would see thick, glorious fields of jewels, solitary or clustered, sometimes with a dull rich glow. Then they would spring up into flower-like shapes beneath my gaze, and then seem to turn into gorgeous butterfly forms or endless folds of glistening, iridescent, fibrous wings of wonderful insects..."

On the subject/object dissolution commonly reported in peyote users, Kluver included the following:

"It seemed to me as if tones, optical phantasms, body sensations, and a certain...taste formed a unity, as if what I experienced in my body and what I experienced perceptually in the external world were not separated any more, as if body and object were a unity."

In short, it was clear at the time of Kluver's book that peyote was a visionary plant whose principal active ingredient was capable of catapulting the consumer into a world of symbolic visions and ecstatic delight. What better tool could there be for exploring the frontiers of consciousness? What better tool could there be for opening regions of the unconscious psyche hitherto manifest solely in dreams and rare trance states? Indeed, what better tool could there be to explore the apparently divine potential of conscious human existence? Like it or not, mescaline had mystical connotations...

IGNORING THE AMERINDIAN PERSPECTIVE ON PEYOTE

The apparent failure of scientists to take up Kluver's call for widespread experimentation might possibly lie in the fact that Kluver failed to mention much about the use of peyote by native American Indians who were known at that time to employ peyote in their religious ceremonies. Kluver also failed to discuss the highly salient role of set and setting upon the mescaline experience. He also declined to discuss the role of a priori assumptions which will certainly mediate subsequent interpretations of visionary phenomenology.

In short, Kluver's book is devoid of any shamanic bent and provides no conceptual context within which to fully make use of the mescaline experience, his research with mescaline lacking an historical epistemological legacy. It seems that, like many other scientists, Kluver was more interested in categorising and reducing psychedelic phenomenology rather that using such experience to build a new conceptual vision of reality. Only 25 years later would Aldous Huxley explore this more radical option in his seminal book The Doors Of Perception, a publication which marked the birth of the West's attempts to integrate the psychedelic experience into mainstream culture. Yet even Huxley remained fairly taciturn on the shamanic use of peyote. True, he managed to forge a kind of new history of the psychedelic experience, yet without the shamanic approach so long employed by native peoples in their dealings with entheogenic flora, such a contemporary enterprise could never generate more than a fleeting wave of cultural change.

To explore the true virtue of the peyote cactus then, one must undoubtedly refer to its shamanic use by native American peoples for it is the aboriginal use of the cactus that carries with it a long, colourful and pragmatic history as well as emphasis upon set and setting. It is also the shamanic approach which might supplement our scientific understanding of peyote and give us a less reductive understanding of the dynamics of psychedelic consciousness.

TRADITIONAL USES OF PEYOTE

Although the most prominent group to have employed peyote in a ritualised context are the Huichol Indians of Northern Mexico, it is also the case that peyote has been used, and still is used, by a number of Amerindian tribes.

Anthropologist Weston La Barre's classic study/thesis of peyote use The Peyote Cult written in the 1930's and updated several times in the following decades, notes that the essential goal of the native Amerindian peyote user is to obtain visions for prophecy, curing and inner strength. On a typical Plains (Kiowa) ritual, La Barre comments:

"At intervals older men pray aloud, with affecting sincerity, often with tears running down their cheeks, their voices choked with emotion, and their bodies swaying with earnestness as they gesture and stretch out their arms to invoke the aid of peyote. The tone is of a poor and pitiful person humbly asking the aid and pity of a great power."

It is noteworthy that La Barre here describes the peyote user as "poor and pitiful". In fact, it becomes clear in reading La Barre that he is not wholly sympathetic the native use of peyote, or at least he is not of the opinion that peyote grants any kind of important spiritual insight. Indeed, La Barre holds that peyote produces, "...profound sensory and psychic derangements..." and, in a later edition of his book when he deals with the musing of Huxley, Leary and other psychedelic champions, La Barre asks us:

"Can we be sure that "heightened" perception of ineffable truth is not lowered critical faculty as in drunkenness and dreams?"

The case is clear. Although La Barre has provided what is deemed among anthropological circles to be the definitive overview of native peyote use in his The Peyote Cult tome, he is certainly no psychedelic enthusiast. Which means that, for him at least, the peyote cult is a kind of ritual of escapist intoxication, with any seemingly divine and sacred visions being no more that flights of fancy induced by a toxic alkaloid with no real place in the human brain. And yet a look at some further accounts provided by La Barre would seem to suggest that there is more than just simple flights of delusory fancy at work in the peyote experience. Consider the following comment by the Lipan tribe on how to approach peyote:

"If a fellow is not scared...he will surely have a good time. But when a fellow is rough and ill tempered he will have a hard time learning from peyote. It will scare him...If someone has wrong thoughts, he had better look out or he will go crazy..."

Similar caution from the Cheyenne who report that a person must:

"...keep hold of himself and must be straight or peyote will shame him."

Pertinent too are the Winnebago who state that:

"...if an individual...does not believe in its virtue, he is likely to suffer a great deal."

These sorts of simple uncontrived beliefs about peyote highlight just how seriously native Amerindians treat their divine cactus. Indeed, it is this overtly cautious approach to the mescaline experience that can be regarded as the hallmark of spiritual authenticity. For if there were nothing to the experience but simple flights of fancy, then there would be little reason to pay special attention to one's inner state prior to ingestion. It can even be argued that churches and mosques do not attract this kind of inner searching and inner appraisal of one's psychical state before entry precisely because a truly entheogenic experience is unlikely to transpire within the ostensibly holy building. This is in direct contrast to peyote consumption which, through its profound effects, can elicit a bona fide sacred experience. This is the very big difference between genuine spiritual activity and the pseudo variety.

Entheogen expert Jonathan Ott has made the same point in reference to Christian communion - the taking of bread and wine - and entheogenic communion. Ott points out that the former ritual uses surrogate and non-active substances and is thus a placebo form of communion - as compared with the living and blatantly apprehensible visionary and ecstatic effects of ingested entheogenic flora.

Thus, it is the case that although La Barre lays his cards down at the start of his classic study and does not hide his 'mistrust' of the peyote experience, his subsequent quotes from various native peyote users show them to be perhaps more noble than he, certainly more humble and respectful of Great Nature or the Great Spirit who provides peyote and whose numinous presence reputedly dwells within such plants.

THE EARLIEST USE OF PEYOTE

Peyote has a millennia-old history which dates back before its use by Amerindian tribes north of Mexico. The Aztecs are known to have employed peyote in their religious rituals (along with psilocybin mushrooms) and before this time it was known to be used by various other groups of indigenous Mexican Indians. For instance, 2000 year-old bowls with peyote cactus effigies have been found in Colima and, from the same era in Oaxaca, pipes have been unearthed fashioned with deer motifs holding peyote.

Since peyote grows most abundantly in Mexico its use is believed to have diffused northwards at the end of the 19th century at the time when native Amerindian tribes were most persecuted. Just as the Ghost Dance phenomenon spread through North American Plains tribes during the 1870's in a cultural attempt at spiritual unification in the face of colonial oppression, so too did the use of peyote spread in the wake of the Ghost Dance's demise.

According to ethnobotanist R.E.Schultes, the Kiowa and Commanche Indians first learned of peyote from visits to allied tribes in Mexico. They then took this knowledge and spread the word north. By the first few decades of the 20th century there was a concerted effort by Amerindians to get their newborn and evermore popular religious peyote practice made legally secure. Thus, in 1918 the Native American Church was instituted (the NAC), an inter-tribal organisation headed by leaders drawn from various Amerindian tribes. Today, there are believed to be more than a quarter of a million members of the NAC, with all members being allowed to legally ingest peyote for religious purposes.

It is evident that the modern-day peyote ceremony provides native Amerindians with solidarity and also with a link to their aboriginal past. And since the vision quest is a prominent part of Amerindian culture it is quite natural that an entheogenic plant be employed to potentiate such an endeavour.

In the first 10 years after the establishment of the NAC there were some 10 bills presented to Congress by the Bureau of Indian Affairs aimed at banning peyote use. This is typical. However, none of those bills became law. Apparently the biggest threat to the NAC was, and still is, that posed by Christian missionaries. It would seem that certain people simply cannot make the connection between Gaia and the sacred; that the sacred can be potentially accessed by ingesting certain alchemical plant products in the natural environment; and that the sacred is here all around us as part and parcel of the web of life itself and not part of some unreachable supernatural domain. One must here assume that, at heart, plants like peyote raise fear in the minds of those tied to religious dogma and the words of old religious scripture. With entheogenic plants, it is clear that the theological proof lies in the entheobotanical pudding. Yet for many the pudding is avoided. The well-worn adage about native Americans talking with God and Jesus and Whites only talking about God and Jesus still sums up this curious cultural polarity.

THE MODERN NON-SHAMANIC USE OF MESCALINE

As I alluded earlier, it was Aldous Huxley who described the mescaline experience most elegantly and influentially to the West in the 1950's. Preferring to keep his eyes open during his mescaline experimentation, Huxley reported a "sacramental vision of reality", where every object that he saw "shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance".

Whether or not Huxley planned it, his publication initiated a burst of cultural interest in psychedelic exploration which climaxed briefly in the next decade with the rampant and pop use of LSD.

Our peyote expert Weston La Barre was not amused by these events, referring in later editions of The Peyote Cult to Huxley's book as being "rather absurd". Yet however absurd Huxley's praise for mescaline in the eyes of some hardhearted scientists, by 1960 mescaline was in vogue with Beatniks and other early psychedelic pioneers. In May of that year for example, 311 pounds of peyote buttons (the buttons are the dried top parts of the cactus) and 145 capsules of powdered peyote were seized from the bearded and barefoot owner of a New York east-side coffee house thus testifying to the growing subcultural appeal of this strange new drug.

However, mescaline - due to its relative rarity - never really became a popular psychedelic and, instead, cheap mass-produced LSD eventually became the fashionable and readily-available hallucinogen of popular experimentation. But to reiterate, there was no ritual context in which to take hallucinogens in the 60's, apart that is, from the infamous Merry Prankster acid tests and other trippy hippy gatherings. It was arguably this complete lack of shamanic context which ensured that psychedelics did not effect a permanent paradigmatic change within Western culture. Some would say that pioneering icons like Huxley, Ken Kesey and Leary came close (see Jay Stevens' Storming Heaven for example) but at the end of that dreamy decade, Western culture continued on its relentless consumer-driven course. Nothing but art itself really changed. The 60's can be viewed as but a glimpse of some kind of utopian possibility for mankind and no more. After all the partying and quixotic enthusiasm it was back to business as normal as the profane and mundane aspects of society eventually overan those plant allies with the inherent capacity to forge both inner and outer revolution.

All the while, amidst Leary and Huxley's calls for a global change in consciousness, dwindling Mexican tribes like the Huichol continued to partake of their peyote sacrament as part of a shamanic ritual handed down from generation to generation. Perhaps it is from the Huichol that we can learn the true and long-lasting virtue of entheogenic plants, on how best to approach their inherent power and how best to integrate their effects into culture. At any rate, what follows is an account of the Huichol peyote hunt and their deeply shamanic approach to this most important of plants.

THE PEYOTE HUNT OF THE HUICHOL

The often condescending tone of La Barre to the study of native peyote use is in stark contrast to the work done by ace ethnographer Barbara Myerhoff. Myerhoff's groundbreaking book Peyote Hunt (1974) provides us with the most valuable account available pertaining to the Huichol's special relationship with peyote.

In 1966, along with noted anthropologist Peter Furst, Myerhoff became the first European to fully partake in the ritualised Huichol peyote hunt. As Myerhoff notes:

"The peyote hunt is the central ceremony in the Huichol religious calendar and the pivotal event which unites the Huichols with one another, with their deities, and forges into a single complex the deer, the maize, and the peyote."

Thus, to gain access to the Huichol's sacred peyote ceremonies was no small feat, and echoes the work of R.G.Wasson who first managed to fully partake of a sacred mushroom ceremony south in Oaxaca some 11 years earlier. In each case, we come to experience first-hand the power of ritualised shamanic ceremonies involving hallucinogenic plants.

Central to Huichol culture is the shaman or mara'akame. The mara'akame plays the role of both priest and healer. Such a neophyte shaman must be strong and intelligent and have much endurance as well as possessing medical knowledge and a subtle understanding of human psychology. The Huichol shaman must be completely devoted to the shamanic path, devoted to keeping his tribe healthy and in communion with the spiritual realm, a highly esteemed and responsible function within all native cultures. As Ramon, the shaman figure befriended by Myerhoff, put it:

"The mara'akame is rich, very rich, the most fortunate man of all, but he has very few things. He is a poor man, but he is rich."

The shamanic aspect of Huichol culture is very marked, for about 1 in every 8 males in any given Huichol community (the Huichols live in small communities called ranchos) may be a shaman, or an apprentice shaman.

THE EPIC TRIP TO WIRIKUTA

The Huichol are based in the rocky Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico. 300 miles away lies Wirikuta, that place considered by the Huichol to be the mystical land of their arising, their homeland and source of the First People. Wirikuta is believed to be a sacred place where the divisions between sexes, ages, humans and animals and gods dissolve. And it is to Wirikuta that small groups of Huichols travel each year in order to observe their religion and to gather peyote.

These so-called peyote hunts are undertaken by small groups of both men and women. Prior to leaving for Wirikuta, the participants of the peyote hunt receive new names - often those of deified ancestors. Myerhoff interprets this as symbolic of the fact that those on the peyote hunt are to become transformed as they make there way to, what for them, is the promised land, or paradise.

In preparation, the participants also observe dietary and sexual restrictions. Indeed, a 'confession ceremony' takes place on the evening prior to the hunt. In this ceremony, all infidelities are confessed to the shaman heading the hunt - in this case Myerhoff observed the confession ceremony being conducted by Ramon (who had to make confessions himself). Such honest disclosures of misconduct are considered important to those about to embark on the sacred journey since the process enables them to eventually confront peyote with a clear mind free of guilt and remorse. Though this might seem like elementary psychology to some, it is unfortunate that we in the West do not have such a practice before commencing psychedelic experimentation. Not that this suggests we are free of moral transgression but rather that we do not - traditionally at least - pay such careful attention before taking entheogenic substances. In short, we lack the concept of the sacred - but I shall comment on this later.

Within Huichol culture, sexuality is synonymous with the mortal - and thus limited - human condition. The Huichols therefore deem it necessary that sexuality be put aside if the peyote pilgrim wishes to adopt a divine status during the forthcoming peyote hunt. However, the confession ceremony is conducted light-heartedly. Confessed adulteries are 'knotted' onto a special cord and this cord is then ceremoniously burned so as to symbolise cleansing and that the pilgrims are now made anew and will be equal with one another on their sacred trip to Wirikuta.

After the aforementioned ceremony, the party led by Ramon left their rancho for Wirikuta (on this occasion the group used Myerhoff's transport where possible!). When they had come to that part of the land known as Wirikuta (recognisable by a number of landmarks learned by Ramon), then the first peyote plant found by him was ceremonially 'shot' with an arrow. 'Peyote blood' was anointed on each pilgrim after which each was given a single piece of peyote on which to chew. Where the first peyote had been 'hunted', offerings were laid.

Over the next few days, each pilgrim spent time filling baskets with as much peyote as could be found. During the evenings each member of the group was allowed to consume peyote around the campfire - fire being the living manifestation of the Huichol deity Tatewari (Our Grandfather Fire). Ramon informed Myerhoff that only the visions of the shaman contain a divine message whereas the visions of others were, according to him, "for beauty alone".

After the pilgrims had returned home with their bounty of peyote, another set of rituals were carried out so as to symbolise their return from Paradise and their reintegration into the mundane world.

THE FUNCTION OF THE PEYOTE HUNT

Huichol shaman Ramon described the peyote hunt in the following words to Myerhoff:

"You have seen how it is when we walk for the peyote. How we go, not eating, not drinking, with much hunger, with much thirst. With much will. All of one heart, of one will. How one goes, being Huichol. That is our unity, our life. That is what we must defend."

In essence, the peyote hunt and the ensuing mescaline experience is considered to represent a return to Paradise, to a primal state of divinity, characterised by peace, contentment and unification. In this sense, although the Huichol are doubtless re-enacting some features of their migratory past history, the peyote hunt with its myths, rituals and symbols is more a kind of localised fractal reiteration of the universal tale of Paradise Lost and the age-old desire to regain a state of universal harmony. As Myerhoff explains:

"Wirikuta is Paradise, Valhalla, Elysium, Eden - the land which existed before time...before Creation, before there was life and death, light and darkness."

The great authority on shamanism Mircea Eliade similarly wrote on this universal yearning for paradise, calling it the myth of Eternal Return:

"We have the right to assume that the mystical memory of a blessedness without history haunts man from the moment he becomes aware of his situation in the cosmos."

SACRED UNITY

The idea of unity, so pertinent in the Huichol's trip to Wirikuta, is interestingly highlighted in the strange practice of 'reversals'. Ramon would continuously make statements, often absurd, in which a contradiction was stated - like saying that they had found only flowers instead of peyote, or that the sun was cold when it was palpably hot. According to Myerhoff, these reversals reflect the union of opposites, that the two sides of the one coin as it were are being alluded to. So here we find yet another manifestation of the desire to attain a condition of wholeness in which polar opposites are seen to be the two sides of One.

The name changing and cleansing prior to the peyote hunt also indicate the Huichol's intent to loosen the individual ego so that all pilgrims can become one at Wirikuta. At heart, unity is sought and we can be confident that the experiences elicited by peyote support such a quest. Arguably this is the principal virtue of plant alkaloids like mescaline - that they can help humankind overcome personal differences and bring us together under the numinous glow of the Gaian Mind, that sacred entelechy arguably bound up with the natural systems of the Earth and with which native peoples throughout the ages seek communion.

MYERHOFF'S VISIONS

Mostly, anthropologists steer well clear of their subject matter if that subject matter consists of some reputedly sacred sacrament. Myerhoff, however, sampled peyote under shaman Ramon's instructions. Her experiences are noteworthy and no doubt aided her sympathetic treatment of Huichol culture (unlike La Barre who, although admitting to having tried peyote on a few occasions, presumably had either neutral or negative experiences since he declined to write about them).

When the mescaline began to have its characteristic visionary effect, Myerhoff witnessed a sequence of elaborate and fully-formed visions which appeared somewhat like beads on a string, in that they seemed to exist simultaneously and each of which she could 'visit' at will (Ramon was later to inform her that these visions were special and important). Firstly she found herself:

"...impaled on an enormous tree with its roots buried far below the Earth and its branches rising beyond sight, toward the sky. This was the Tree of Life, the axis mundi or world pole which penetrates the layers of the cosmos, connecting Earth with underworld and heaven, on which shamans ascend in their magical flights. The image was exactly the same as a Mayan glyph which I was to come across for the first time years after this vision occurred."

Myerhoff also remarks, somewhat shamanically, on the didactic nature of these visions, that they were teaching her important knowledge. At the close of her visionary ecstasy, Myerhoff became absorbed in looking at the centre of a yarn painting (this was still part of an inner vision) which depicted mythical creatures. As she felt the effects of the mescaline reaching their zenith, she expected some "final lesson" to become suddenly apparent. Just as the yarn picture vanished, an image flickered at the the periphery of her inner eye and Myerhoff felt that she had missed something important since she had been looking at the centre of the picture instead of the boundary. Myerhoff confesses that this last vision taught her in the years to come to prepare to seek answers not where they might obviously be expected to be found, but to be open at all times to surveying the whole picture...

REDISCOVERING THE HEARTFELT SACRED

Myerhoff has this to say about psychedelic shamanic vision questing:

"...in some philosophical systems such experiences are considered the most elevated and most intensely spiritual available to man. As such it is the very opposite of those aspects of religion which are ritualised, mechanical and impersonal."

This, it seems, is the crux of the matter, for we have two radically different ways of comprehending, interpreting and conceiving of reality. The heartfelt shamanic view, as evinced by the Huichol and other peyote using natives, holds that reality is essentially spiritual, that a great body of intelligence exists whose presence is all around us and bound up with the Earth. The shamanic view also holds that entheogenic plants like the peyote can put one in direct communion with this most sacred aspect of Nature and that it is from such a transcendental communion that sublime knowledge can be obtained and be given over for the good of the community.

On the other hand, many Western scientists would argue that the hallucinogen-wielding shamanic enterprise is little more than wishful thinking, that plants like peyote serve only to confuse and delude the mind. And yet if we entertain the notion of Gaia, that the biosphere is indeed one vast living ecological entity, then it makes sense that one part of such a 'living skin' - in this case entheogenic plants - can, by rare and sophisticated alchemical cunning, feedback upon and help maintain human culture in some sort of sensible and harmonious balance.

In essence, this implies that shamanic knowledge gained through ingestion of entheogenic flora and thence disseminated through culture wholly for the well-being of culture, represents a subtle form of Gaian homeostasis in action, an organic control process no different in principal than the release of some homeostasis-inducing enzyme or hormone within an individual organism.

Although a native shaman might not describe this elaborate information-flowing process in such terms, I think that such a Gaian-sized organismic paradigm tenably captures the very real power of entheogenic plants. Furthermore, if we in the West wish to fully utilise our visionary plant allies then it is incumbent upon us to learn from shamanic techniques all that we can by seeking to transpose such an archaic and psychological approach within the framework of Western conceptual thought. The notion of the sacred, so clearly appreciated and brought to bear within Huichol and other Amerindian cultures, ably demonstrates the difference between the casual approach to entheogens and the shamanic approach.

As far as we know, shamanism is found in all native cultures and it is only in the modern industrialised world that we have forsaken the key role of the shaman within society. However, those power plants utilised shamanically the world over are still with us and some would say that we have more need than ever for the transcendental knowledge which they can potentiate. For if the sacred is indeed a genuine realm or dimension bound up with Gaia, then a new channel of illuminating influence can surely be integrated into culture at large. Given that entheogenic plants are natural and given that the visions they produce are natural, then it is likewise natural that we once more come to embrace these wisdom-generating gifts of Great Nature. In this sense, perhaps the human race can yet make soft entry into Wirikuta which may well extend across the entire face of the good Earth.