(NOTE: I wrote most of this blog between July, 2006 and election
day, 2008. Some media references, then, may be outdated or
unavailable.)
Much has been written about this fascinating entheogenic shamanic brew; especially in the last 50 years. In my own reading, book after book has alluded to the brew. Even the internet has a great deal of information regarding it.
As my own focus lately has been on entheogens, I was naturally interested in finding out all I could about ayahuasca.
I've been reading "The Antipodes of the Mind", by Benny Shanon. It reminds me of "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" in it's devotion to methodological studies of the substance involved.
Since the visionary experience is intimately connected to entheogens, I'm interested in how visual artists depict their visions. One of the most well-known in this area is Alex Grey, whose bizarre paintings arise from his own experiences.
I also recently viewed a YouTube video that depicted an ayahuasca experience which had many Grey-like elements woven into the strange, hallucinatory and fairly horrific film. If this is what a true ayahuasca experience is about, I don't think I'd be interested in drinking the brew. But in "The Antipodes of the Mind", Shanon's analysis of hundreds of "trips" he and others have taken tell of the ineffable strangeness of parts of the ayahuasca trip, but the squirming, snake-ridden visions represented in the video seems to be an exaggeration--or at least a just small (but very important) part of the entire trip. I say important, because it is during this "visionary" stage of the trip where the most powerful spiritual "learning" is received.
Visually, however, it's a stunning piece of work and so I've placed it below. Perhaps at some point in the future, I can add a more personal review based on my own experience.