Utterances at the ayahuasca ceremony: a dirty hermeneutics mini case study

The above phrases are commonly uttered during ayahuasca ceremonies in Colombia and Peru. They are expressions often chosen by shamen to focus their healing intentions towards the ceremony participants. They could be described as equivalents from different cultures.

To be more precise, a taita (shaman) in Colombia will give you yagé (ayahuasca) and wish you a "buena pinta," along with some other ritual formalities such as an energy cleanse of your hands. While the phrase is literally wishing a high quality vision to the participant, it is also more than that, it is a desire for the sacred vine to work well with the healing intentions of the participant.

On the other hand a shaman in an equivalent situation in Peru might wish you "buenas mareaciones." This one is not so obvious, as a mareación would usual be translated as a spell of dizziness, or in this context as intoxication. The term is akin to drunkeness, but in this case, of course, of being drunk on the sacred vine.

Neither expression is particularly well honed for the purpose for which it is used. These expressions can be seen as simply vehicles for more rounded intentions on the part of the shaman, which might be summarized along the lines of: "may your soul achieve the healing your heart desires."

During a ceremony I once asked the mother about the meaning of translation. She showed me that it can be used energetically to lose meaning or energy from a system. Translation can be placed in a similar category to laziness. Both laziness and translations are excuses we can make to ourselves when we don’t get it.

However the translation could also be considered as insignificant to a higher form of consciousness. The vine facilitates communication on a level higher than language.

I have known shamen, heard their words and have discerned the vibrations which they pass through their words.

In a sense, language is unimportant. This is a startling conclusion which could prompt a very deep conversation, which involves the meaning of Babel no less. To my mind there has been little philosophical analysis of the dimensions which the sacred mother shows us through ceremony. There implications for language and culture are immense.

To me, this is hermeneutics. The dirty part is because I am composing this on my phone, ex cathedra number 7 of a National Express coach. I define this writing as “dirty” in relation to the system, this capitalist world we live in: it does not come from the squeaky clean towers of academia, forgive the cliché. I could have qualified everything I have written 8 times and strung out my article into a mini-thesis.