Shamans died in labor camps during Soviet rule, as did Buddhist monks who fled to the mountains. The landlocked country remains politically and economically tied to its neighbors, Russia and China, which both marginalized and oppressed the Mongolian people throughout history.
Now residents are turning to shamans both for the mysticism of an ancient practice and to seek advice from a familiar villager, along with a rekindled sense of shared culture. Vodka — often seen as a Russian staple — seems an odd choice for those reclaiming religious freedom and purifying objects before a ceremony. At the same time, it breaks stereotypes and reclaims identity. Traditionally, shaman ceremonies used liquor distilled from fermented milk to purify objects.
It has a potent earthy smell and sour taste, almost like a sour beer. Originally, this vodka-like milky drink was considered the most powerful liquor because it contained the essence of the herds.
Today, many shamans opt for the finished product of vodka cheaper, more convenient and frequently given as an offering by visitors to purify items, but still believe in the healing and purifying powers that honor nature and livestock. The shaman spits vodka onto his knife to purify it for the ceremony. Seated on a plastic stool like ours, the shaman faced the offering table, put on his headdress and grabbed a large drum covered with animal skin.
He began beating the drum and humming, swaying side to side to the rhythm for several minutes to induce a trance. The drumming grew louder as he beat harder. His mother motioned for me and a fellow traveler to step back, just moments before the shaman burst from the stool, spinning around in circles and nearly hitting us with the drum. He fell to the floor, shaking and grumbling in a low, gravelly voice. According to shamanic tradition, the spirit of his great-grandfather had been summoned into his body.
She poured a shot and handed it to him. He rose the bowl to his chin, allowing some of the thin black tassels that covered his face like a veil to dip into the drink. The man asked for advice about his upcoming marriage and his struggling business. Of course, he cleansed it with vodka. Vegetalistas have used ayahuasca for more than years. Since the s syncretic religious organizations, which are now found in every major Brazilian city and other countries, have started using ayahuasca as a sacrament.
Modern non-indigenous ayahuasqueros are therefore now emerging from several sources. Indigenous and mestizo ayahuasca traditions met religious Afro-Brazilian religious elements and European esoteric traditions through several waves of migrations into the Amazon from the Brazilian northeast.
The original organization, known as Alto Santo, divided into several small nuclei and remains an Amazonian phenomenon. The religious organization created by de Matos, known as Barquinha, is now going through its own division process and remains in the Amazon. It is found in nearly every major Brazilian city, has members in all levels of society, and is spreading to other countries.
The use of ayahuasca by these religious groups served as a great binding force, especially in the aftermath of Amazonian economic ruin caused by the shift of the center of rubber production to Southeast Asia in the beginning of the 20th century.
The main emphasis is on the doctrine, however, codified in hymns and ritual—not in journeys to other dimensions. Barquinha is more closely associated with spirit possesion than with shamanic flight, even though it is the closest to Amazonian sources because of the importance of the so-called encantados—spirits incorporated in plants or animals—in its cosmology.
People frequently move between different ayahuasca churches, and schisms exist within these religious organizations when new charismatic leaders emerge and other religious organizations gradually incorporate use of ayahuasca into their own activities. As a result, more new groups have been led by neo-ayahuasqueros. Ayahuasca shamanism is thus a broad and complex concept encompassing indigenous use, mestizo use, to a certain extent use by some syncretic Brazilian religious organizations, and use by certain non-indigenous practitioners.
Contemporary Neo-Ayahuasquero. For the last six years I have acted as a neo-ayahuasquero , and can therefore speak of my own work as an example of contemporary non-indigenous practices. I studied indigenous ayahuasca shamanism, was trained by mestizo and indigenous practitioners, and did extensive fieldwork as a participant-observer among the three main Brazilian religious organizations that use ayahuasca as a sacrament.
The decision to start administering ayahuasca to others was not a sudden one. Not until 25 years after my first ayahuasca experience did I start doing rituals of my own, initially more due to external demand from others than by own initiative.
In retrospect, however, I can see this development was logical, because from the beginning I had both academic and personal interest in the particular states of consciousness elicited by the ayahuasca. I have been actively collaborating in scientific studies leading toward a clarification of the ayahuasca phenomenon. My years of participation in rituals in various contexts have given me confidence in my own expertise.
While responsible for a group of people experiencing ayahuasca and under the effects of the brew myself, I think, speak, and act differently from my normal state. I have noticed how effectively I am able—in most cases in a short span of time—to help a person regain balance when they become frightened during their experience.
At times during sessions people may feel they have a pain in a specific part of their body. I symbolically extract the pain, much like a mother comforts an injured child by rubbing the wound and singing. The people later acknowledge relief.
First, I do not act within a shamanic cosmology and body of metaphors. I also do not teach any doctrine or specific body of ideas. Participants in my seminars come from many different cultures and parts of the world, and during the seminar each navigates his or her own internal world when they experiment with the ayahuasca brew. Secondly, I encourage people to face their fears and use the energy that often manifests itself in the ayahuasca experience by themselves, avoiding too great a reliance on others.
My job is to create a secure and supportive environment for intense internal exploration. I must also acknowledge, however, that I am doing shamanic work when I construct, with music through rattling by means of a few icaros I learned from shamans, or through recordings , a comfortable environment for people to enter ASC produced by ayahuasca. I especially use shamanic practices when I treat participants by blowing, humming, or sucking out foreign energies. The seminars include a combination of ayahuasca sessions; holotropic breath work rapid and rhythmic deep breathing that induces ASC ; literary, musical, or artistic expression workshops; lectures by recognized specialists; and excursions.
Wasiwaska is a base for serious exploration and scientific research that reflects my work, and that of other contemporary ayahuasqueros , which is based on indigenous techniques that have changed through time as they have been passed from indigenous groups that used ayahuasca traditionally to indigenous groups that have adopted it in recent times, to mestizo practitioners and non-Amazonians.
Others shamans have reduced their activity or moved their business online. Since then, she has been forced to help clients access the primeval power of the spirit world through drum circles on Zoom. In May, she organised a virtual event to help around 20 people, mostly Scottish women, connect with their power animals. We are sick because we are not in living harmony. We are creating sickness around the Earth by polluting it and not being kind to each other.
There is some weight to the shamanic claim that human mistreatment of the planet led to the outbreak of the pandemic. But Fotoula is adamant that shamanic healing should not replace the medical profession altogether. We are all healers.
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