An introduction to Wachuma and a teaching Ayahuasca:

On April 6, after 18 hours of air travel and changing planes, I landed in Peru at six o'clock in the morning. The very next day, I was introduced to Wachuma for the first time. I didn’t even manage to put on the white clothes I had brought with me.

The ceremony led by Don Agustin is short. He burned coca leaves, invoked the spirit of the plant and puffed tobacco smoke over my body and aura. I was surprised: from north to south in the Americas, ceremonies have the same scent and emit the same atmosphere, showing themselves to be part of the same cultural zone. Fifteen years earlier I had participated in the sweat-lodge ceremonies of Archie Lame Deer, a Lakota Sioux. He asked me to conduct them in France for my family and close friends. His approach was in the same vein as the one I was now experiencing. Don Agustin presents himself as a facilitator, a door opener who organizes and secures, but does not accompany: he takes no Wachuma himself during his ceremonies. I was alone before the unknown! The large glass of potion is appalling to swallow. The dose is high. Don Agustin offers me honey to help offset its bitterness. Wachuma is prepared from the cactus called "San Pedro" by the Spanish conquistadors because it “opens the gates to heaven”. The Andeans affectionately nickname it "El Jaguar" or "El Shaman." Slowly, the mescaline takes effect. After an hour I lie down and, little by little, recurring uninvited thoughts dwindle and fade. A generalized numbness overtakes me, and I look forward with curiosity to what will follow. Aided by the sound of the fountain that Sylvia, Agustin’s companion, had set in motion, energy begins to rise: disordered, compulsive, anarchic, awakening my inner demons. At this moment I deeply regretted not being accompanied by the singing of Agustin. In all this confusion of images, powerful sensations and unspeakably muddled emotions, a guiding sound, a voice or song, would have been precious. In its place he put on a CD of new-age music, so annoying and inappropriate that I had to mobilize the little muscular energy I had left to drag myself on all fours to the stereo and turn it off. Only the sound of water accompanied the whole avalanche of images which followed. First funny and colorful, they developed into a paradisiacal sensation of pleasure which permeated my whole being, so intense that I didn't even feel myself ejaculating. I only noticed later. Perhaps in reaction to that, or because there was noise and bustle in the house, I then suffered great bursts of paranoia. I said to myself: “JC, you've really screwed up this time. You know that one of a traveller’s basic rules is to always stay on guard in a foreign country[5]. And here you are, the day after your arrival, so pathetic you can’t even get up and walk. All your money, your credit card and everything else is either on your person or in your bag. One could just take it all and throw you naked into a neighbouring street. You don’t even know where you are, in a country whose language you don’t speak.” And so on and so forth.

I managed to not let it get the better of me, finally concluding: “Inch Allah, it is too late. Either you have made a serious mistake and must take the consequences, or you are not deceived and everything will go well: you're in safe place!” I had placed my confidence in Don Agustin, and I was not mistaken.

When mescaline slips you into the right side of the brain for the first time, the side of magic and the present moment, it is terribly difficult to control the ensuing disorder. Aymara had warned me: Wachuma is a youthful maniac.

Fortunately, and I particularly want to thank my friend Aymara[6], she told me to go on a diet two months before: no red meat, alcohol, spices ... The advice was wise and I followed it. A very good thing that was, too. I was already sufficiently encumbered and the mescaline was so strong that I don't really know what state I would have entered had these pollutions been active as well. One risk is probably the danger of being overcome by terror. Wachuma is an impressive tool, but not suitable for unaccompanied beginners.

To emerge from this self-generated chaos, one must manage a fleeting access to the left brain, that of linear time, reason and analysis, always in conjunction with the right brain’s context of magic, vision, cyclical time, quantum leap and the present moment. By the time I had succeeded in this, aided by deep breathing and Agua de Florida (a local eau de Cologne), my paranoia had disappeared. I was unable to estimate the time spent in that state, but the struggle had been long and tense. Whew! I was in non-ordinary attention, an observing/ observer[7].

It was then that I saw Rastapopulos again, that swarthy, wicked and vulgar character from Hergé’s album "Tintin in the Land of Black Gold ", which I adored as a child. I saw him yet again, more than once, as the Marquis Di Gorgonzola ("Coke in Stock"), each time in a situation which took me to the deepest emotions of my childhood or my past. Positive or negative, I said farewell. Old situations and buried or forgotten experiences became cartoons with several characters in a scenario whose atmosphere was cheerful and amusing. But, inevitably, I told them goodbye and died. These cartoon scenarios function like the episodes of a television series, one after the other, with always the same dynamic: the springtime of the situation: gay and pleasant, in which we recover the freshness of our childhood. Then the taste of this situation as it becomes mature in summer, followed by winter where all shrivels into old age and energy runs out, then farewell and death. I had been with San Pedro for over six hours. As the effect of the mescaline diminished, I was able to get up and make my way with difficulty to bed. It still acted powerfully over the next two days. The following night, finally sleeping well, I received my first gift in the form of dream.

"I was in my new house[8], recently purchased and still under renovation, and I was examining the roof of an outbuilding. Suddenly, I was stunned to see part of the roof collapse, bringing a section of wall down with it. “Oh, well”, I said to myself, “there always comes a time when one must replace the old with new!” I looked over my stock of wood and found excellent centuries-old oak beams, enough to do a masterful restoration of this old building. I started the work on the spot, happy to clear the rot away.” End of dream.

Wachuma had graphically shown me how it functioned and what it would do: demolish the old, worn out and dilapidated within me - then we would rebuild. At dawn, while I was in that uncertain state where you do not know if you are sleeping, awake or dreaming, Wachuma manifested itself once again. I suddenly remembered an incident that I had neglected as insignificant, or rather without consequence. Twenty-five years earlier, while I was inspecting a micro-hydroelectric power plant, a violent storm arose, and I took shelter in a doorway below the transformation post. Just then, a huge white flash of lightning exploded just above my head, releasing 22 gigawats in a few nanoseconds. My hair stood up on end, like in a cartoon. One could say that I was “shining in the dark”. To my amazement, there was no sound, only the powerful but delicate rustle of the wave as it moved away. I remember that sound perfectly, and have often told this story, but the rest had no real meaning for me. Wachuma afforded me the vision of a quite different explanation: lightning had rearranged me! I had taken me all this time to realise what had happened. Gliding softly, I had changed worlds. For example: I had been fascinated by the energy of water and how to optimise its output in a hydro-electric power station. What became my passion from that day on had been pointed out to me: “hey, by the way: it works the same way in the human body!” I began to be concerned with lifting energy blockages in humans! I had become, without noticing or accounting for it, a ferryman between worlds. For me, the same thing had occurred in another sphere: an optimisation of energy! The passage from one world to another was of such serenity that I noticed nothing and made no connections! I was convinced this must be how a life normally evolves. Wachuma made me see, despite a delay of 25 obtuse years, how and how much this bolt of lightening had redirected my life.

I was therefore still under the influence of the cactus when Don Agustin took me on a 7- hour bus trip to Ica, and from there on to Nasca.

After the collapse of a riverbank south of the city of Ica, an Indian was able to enter a cave which housed, it is told, several hundred thousand engraved stones of all sizes. Events ultimately led to the creation of the informal museum of Ica we now entered.

Impossible drawings were carved on some of the stones: old maps of the planet dating back at least 13,000 years, an open heart operation, caesarean section, a telescope, dinosaurs (yes, dinosaurs), unknown machines, etc., etc.. ...

I handled Dr. Javier Cabrera’s[9] stones as much as I wanted, assisted by the acute perception which mescaline confers. They really are what I thought: a library for shamans. The surface image of each stone is its title. The content of the "book" is inscribed in the stone and it is through psychometry (reading through subtle touch) that one can retrieve the images it contains and observe the situations it describes.

In the tiny room in were piled more than 11,000 stones of all sizes (from about 300 kilos for the biggest, to 100 grams for the smallest). Disturbed by the disorder and the heavy presence of the guardian, I failed to "enter" into the stones, then and there, as much as I would have liked. I left with a strange sensation, not really of being physically unwell, but rather with an indefinable feeling I had trouble putting into words.

And we went on to Nasca. The effect of Wachuma was still present, relatively powerful, arriving in cycles of short waves. The next morning, just before landing after flying over the famous lines and glyphs, the same feeling seized me, and this time it was so clear and intense that I saw the situation and was able to name it: Despair!

The reality is that this incredible collection of criss-crossing lines is entirely incoherent and random. They are situated in total desert, in a place where there is never wind or rain. There’s nothing there. To attempt an explanation, before coming to Peru I would have tentatively held to the "pre diluvian" thesis, knowing it all the while to be ridiculous, because the flood of 10,500 BC would have erased all traces of this kind. The lines could have been indications for an aviation existing before the flood, a kind of map to guide pilots of flying machines to the main cities and kingdoms of the civilization that preceded ours.

What is certain is that these lines are obviously designed to be viewed from the sky, as they are undecipherable from the ground. Some are several kilometres long and very narrow. My vision was particularly sad and desperate. It was the flood survivors who created these signals, intended to be seen from the sky, in case… some aviation still existed after such devastation. “Here we are!” they said. “Here, we are alive!” These lines and glyphs are a scream, they are tears! Succeeding generations continued to draw lines, without really knowing why, perhaps to do as their ancestors. With respect to the Ica stones, we are in the same situation: a despairing attempt by the direct survivors to preserve as much their knowledge as possible in case… a generation from some distant future could read and understand them. It is men of the same culture who made, at the same time, these two desperate endeavors of Nasca and Ica.

To my great surprise, I found that the small businesses of this city were organized into powerful brotherhoods: shoe-shiners, money-changers, renters of mobile phone minutes ... We were in a situation of corporatism comparable to that of our medieval fraternities. Was Ica still living to the rhythm of ancient quadripartition?

Back in Lima, I twice took lighter doses of Wachuma. The cartoon scenarios ending in death resumed with a vengeance. Hundreds and hundreds of situations, more than six hundred of them, all ending in farewell and death. Wachuma familiarizes us with our death: this is not sad; it represents a breakthrough and a depletion of the energy which manipulates us in spite of ourselves. I quickly realized that all these scenarios were drawn from the vast reservoir of my automatic behaviour. They functioned like Trojan horses in a computer, polluting my instinctive reactions in the here-and-now. Overall, in this phase of the ceremonies, Wachuma was an excellent anti-virus. It does the job painlessly and the process leaves us at peace with ourselves. However, I began to be seriously fed up with feeling and seeing myself die at the whim of the Shaman: I was already sated. We packed up and left for a 12-hour trip in an ancient bus going north to Chavín.

Chavín de Huántar and its temple, listed by Unesco as part of the heritage of humanity, is the site of the first unified civilization attested in this region. A society which extended from the Pacific to the Amazon, and from Ecuador to Bolivia. Chavín is situated roughly in the middle. It is sometimes dated from 3,200 BC, but most of the time from 1,500/1,000 BC, ending at about 200 BC. But my visions had indicated a civilization that already existed around 7,500 BC. Where is the error?

Don Agustin had organised this trip skilfully, and his contacts were excellent. So we met Ignacio (a Hispanic name, though I'm sure he has one in quetchua), one of the site’s official guides. A cultivated Indian, he was in the habit of saying that heaven had endowed him with the good fortune of being born in a context furnishing both roots and a cultural identity. He is a total Indian, yet impeccably finds words for Western ears. He serves very cleverly as a bridge between two cultures.

A practised sorcerer and psychonaute, at the beginning of the tour he quickly made me pass into non-ordinary attention, an observant/observer. There were four of us walking in single file on a prairie trail: Ignacio the guide, I behind him, Sylvia and Don Agustin following, when suddenly Ignacio stopped, squatted and meticulously scrutinized - what? A spider web! It was across the trail, and if we had gone on, it would obviously have been destroyed. I watched attentively. Ignacio took his time studying the web. Suddenly, with incredible skill and delicacy, he took a thread (I do mean one thread) of the fabric between his right thumb and index finger and moved it in an arc of 90 degrees, pasting it on a blade of grass on the other side of the path. Totally impossible, therefore incomprehensible: the web had been moved in full, freeing up the trail, while the spider at its center had not budged!

His gesture left me literally speechless! I was jarred open, sent deeply into heightened awareness!

Don Agustin Ignacio had arranged the ceremony with Ignacio so that I could move freely about the temple site without being too disturbed. So, around midday I took a strong dose, and "El Jaguar" again began to move forcefully in my veins. The place has two parts: a collective outdoor space and individual, small underground cells. After having made my labyrinth[10] as well as I could, and spent time becoming impregnated with the energies of the site, I left the square outdoor area. Already in 7500 BC, the Chavin civilization practised quadripartition[11], as witnessed by this great square.

In the afternoon, on the hillock above the stone knife's cave, with Ignacio (who had taken to calling me " los ojos del Jaguar[12]”), I had an exceptional moment of grace, happiness and ecstasy contemplating 5 workers in the distance (one hundred metres perhaps) who were cutting grass with sickles. They were on their knees, cutting three handfuls at a time, then carefully examining each blade (I repeat: each blade) to be sure that there were no little creatures hidden there, and slowly filling the wheelbarrow placed nearby.

When I went back down to the village, I was no longer a visitor to Peru, but an ethnologist in a vanished world. All around me were humans looking like gnomes and trolls: two tiny women in top hats and short skirts, a twisted dwarf, three miniscule girls of pure Cinderella beauty and fiery eyes, some dogs, sheep and their shepherds, two chatterboxes of the Fairy Carabosse variety and more…. Incredible: this little world communicated, and I heard. I fused with it and listened to the direct language it spoke: the language of the birds. The animals themselves participated, and all understood! To my great surprise, I saw myself practicing the "art goth", that state of mind in which telepathy, the joke, stories, legends, humor and astounded laughter are foundations of a culture!

I suddenly had the vivid sensation of being connected to a river or power station of universal energy. It was as if I had only known the boundaries of a gray cloudy sky above me, when suddenly I was torn away, projected into pure night and the Milky Way.

Everything indicated that the path of my DNA started here and connected me to other unknown places. Philosophically and practically, the West ever and always believes itself in a pre-Galileo system: proud elites who see themselves as beacons of humanity, while the rest of the universe is either a satellite in orbit around them, or in total submission. At this moment, these genetic remnants of heliocentrism, of being the center of the world, were broken up by El Jaguar, opening me to immensity and allowing me to join in the song of the world.

But Wachuma is nuts! At dusk, the paranoia returned and an icy cold gripped me. I took refuge in my hotel room under a pile of blankets, terrified that I might have cancer.

My first dream that night was as follows: "I was in my property, a kind of private village a little like those the Dutch or English organize in the Dordogne, and I was examining a house to see if it could be made liveable. I had just tested the Internet connection. What was my surprise, on climbing the stairs, to see that there were no walls or roof and that one could see the sky! I was speechless, while a voice was saying to me: “Try it; nothing can prevent you from sending an e-mail to Florence... ”. End of dream. "

The night went on, bearing a vision in which the cursed Western domination and its overblown pride could now cease. We Western peoples are the sons of Quetzalcoatl. I was at his place of departure, where he probably conducted his last ceremony with "El Jaguar" before he and his people left for Europe. I had closed the round of questions about our origins. Spiritually, we are becoming reconnected to the cycle of eternal knowledge. At this moment, as Solon Plato might have said, we cease to be children without a history, and can enter the adult sphere of the wise, capable of pushing roots deep into the memory of the World and allowing it to reinvigorate us!

A community which takes Wachuma generates a unified vision of the world, one represented by the civilization of Chavin. Their society maintained this vision, originating from the brain of dreams, into the world of everyday life and the rational brain. A dual world: the permanent interference between yin and yang means that nothing is fixed; all is linked in the shifting magic of the moment.

The night continued to furnish its dose of dreams. This time, the laughing stone head told me: "Welcome to the International Chavin Club. Each of the languages of the world has its own language of the birds. Goth art is the art of being and connecting, half with the left brain, and half with the right. You are in the country of My Mother Goose: see, the word “bird” (oiseau) starts with “goose” (oie). We are the original religion, so get to work JC !” I had undertaken this trip for excellent, justified and selfish reasons, and now I found myself charged with a mission concerning the old religion! I replied in complaint that, without receiving or reactivating a whole list of mystical powers of the Superman variety, there was no point in bothering to lift a finger: failure was guaranteed.” End of dream.

The ancient religion haunted me. I had the intimate feeling of being at the center of a problem in which the revival of Western spirituality was the main issue.

At dawn the following morning, Don Agustin took me on an excursion to a place called Huari. By this time in my life I had come to detest climbing mountains, but I summoned all my courage for the two hours of forced march and steep climb to a height of 4000/4500 meters, just to admire a magnificent ferruginous waterfall.

On the way back, due to the recurring effects of Wachuma, fatigue, lack of oxygen and shortness of breath, I slumped in front of the bus, looking straight ahead so as not to see the precipices boarding this dizzying descent of chaotic bends. As it often does, the taxi stopped. Only vaguely attentive, I opened my eyes, and once again:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was blown away, transported straight into non-ordinary awareness!

Before me, a shrivelled old Indian pygmy woman about 1.30/1.40 meters high, wearing multicolored clothing and a top hat, was surrounded by sheep. Over her left elbow was the handle of a basket full of wool, in her left hand she held a distaff, while with the right she spun. This pastoral scene suddenly evoked a vision of "the land of my mother goose": I was with the shepherdess from the "little people". For the second time, I had access to goth art. She looked me in the eye and we communicated from the depths of our souls. She burst out laughing, telling me we were both the sons of Quetzalcoatl and it was therefore normal that our distant great-grandmother was a "Yankee." This slang amazed me. I watched astounded, and she broke into laughter! Still looking at me, she added: “in the mountains, storytellers of My Mother Goose still exist, as do teachers of the language of the birds: you can meet them”.

The taxi drove on. I was deeply moved by the incredible sensation that the "country of my mother goose" really existed - and Queen Pédauque too! This, of course, in a non-ordinary dimension of consciousness, but one accessible with the help of the Jaguar. I was overcome by these ideas, and animated by the desire to make a film of this story and little world.

As winter approached, some high-altitude passes were already closed. Even so, Don Agustin still wanted us to cross the white Cordillera. We had to make a big detour over appalling roads to finally reach a pass of more than 6000 meters above sea level and start down on the side of the Amazon rainforest in the direction of the Inca hot baths.

Don Agustin had proved to be an excellent facilitator, organizing the trip much as I did at one time with my visitors in the forest of Broceliande: a mixture of sacred, touristic and ordinary places, miles of road and dust to tire the body and wear out the left brain’s chatter. The ceremonies were to resume with a formidable ally: the medicine springs of Baños.

Two average doses followed over two days: Waschuma taken at about 13h, a light lunch, arrival at the baths towards 16h, back around 20h. The water is hot (38/40 °) and sulphurous. It softens you in less than two minutes, settling you rapidly in éricksonnienne hypnosis, a sophronique state of deep meditation and fluid attention otherwise known as idle dreaming.

I had begun to get used to the Shaman, and here follow the conclusions which I was able to make at that time. I always experienced a more or less successful rise in energy, more or less dispersed in genitality, paranoia, or (if functioning correctly) ecstasy. The whole could be combined in a brew whose meaning was not always clear.

1. It requires about 2h/2h30 for its effect to begin, and it remains operative with high intensity for at least 6 hours. Then it recurs sporadically for another 24 to 48 hours.

2. Breathing is very important. It must be swift, profound and ample: in by the nose and out with the mouth. This type of breathing is necessary for taking a step back from oneself.

3. One demand, and one only, must be made and then kept in focus during the first phase of rising kundalini. It will not do to confuse the Shaman: he is already crazy enough as it is.

4. In the second phase, it is possible to change one’s objective, but it is best to let the cactus work as it will.

For this first ceremony in hot water, I had asked the plant to remove the hatred I could have in my heart. When I had finally become just sensation, floating in a vacuum, I saw myself open my own chest and, with the Shaman’s help, tear out my heart and offer it to the sun god for him to breathe upon and purify. The feeling was extremely liberating, accompanied by immediate physical relief, as if a burden was leaving my body.

The young maniac acted up during a portion of the night, this time with an amazing sensuality, lust and eroticism in scenarios whose scenery and environment were reminiscent of Luis de Funès and Yves Montand in "The Madness of Grandeur". I had visions of many excellent recipes, worthy of the film about Vatel, chief cook of Louis XIV. I've forgotten them all and am loath to bother searching them out. Too bad for gourmets!

For the following ceremony, I had no particular request. When the Shaman took hold of me, I saw myself bloody and felt skinned alive, this skin being offered to the god of water for him to clean. I saw him replacing the red and black filaments inside my body with white and gold ones.

Without knowing it, I had relived what was abundantly represented in the sacrificial imagery of these regions. What our scholarly archaeologists interpret as ceremonies by bloodthirsty priests is in fact a simple metaphor for cathartic processes.

The following night brought a strange dream. "I was with a group of djhadistes in an unknown Muslim country. With them, but a foreigner. It was evening, and I was lying down. One of the men approached and drew a Z-shaped sword, still in its scabbard, out from under my body. He raised it respectfully above his head and said: This is the most beautiful sword in Islam! " End of dream.

Another ancient mini-bus and endless dusty paths leading to Huanuco, then a descent to the Tinto Maria jungle and its ancient cave for an earth initiation. The opening of the cave strangely resembled the mandorla of the 21^st tarot card: the world.

It would be useless to put up a wall with boulders of this magnitude just for protection against bows and arrows, slingshots and lances! This fortress is only strong on its eastern side. There, the zig-zag points are positioned as breakwaters, all self-blocking and earthquake-proof. Everything is in place for resisting the wave of the Great Flood.

I was walking on the isle of survival, sacred place of the ancestors, cradle from which immense civilisations would be reborn. For me, the cycle of the world’s memory began and ended here.

Another gift from my visit to Machu-Pichu was this magnificent “Inca mirror”. I was able, after a fashion, to explain to Julian the use the Sons of the Sun made, at one time, of this reflected light (see the site devoted to phosphenism).

Aware of my program, Don Agustin had equipped me with some of his magic potion, the idea being that I visit the site in the company of the Shaman. I'd barely opened the bottle when I was overcome with nausea. I was surprised, not having experienced any nausea in the course of the Wachuma ceremonies. As I closed the bottle, a vision and certainty arose.

So, after a break of 3 or 4 days, I encountered another teaching plant: Ayahuasca. I had already participated in a ceremony in France before it was banned, and knew more or less what to expect. Aymara had told me: the Shaman is a young maniac, which proved quite accurate, and Ayahuasca is a mother, tender and sweet. I might not go so far as to say that. What I had experienced the first time was a long wait, senses more and more intensified, when suddenly with the singing, the plant caught me up into a very short, powerful vision of a concealed phase of my birth. The plant had delivered its message, and I vomited shortly after. The effect diminished rapidly, and soon I fell asleep.

On my return from the extraordinary Machu Pichu, one of the wonders of the world (as the Peruvians like to remind us), I had an appointment for the first ceremony of this new cycle.

Jessica practices locally as a therapist and holds Ayahuasca ceremonies for people from Cusco. In our previous discussion, I had referred to an experience of rising energy when I was 33 years old. “Ah!” says she, “that’s just my age”. Young, friendly, multilingual, she would also prove competent.

For the ceremony, we were four plus Jessica. I arrived around 8 PM. She made us sign the usual disclaimer and, after the routine questions, the ceremony began. Her singing is beautiful and very sweet, making onomatopoeia which draw the spirits of the plant. When the time came, she gave us the drink. The taste is horrible, but it didn’t matter. She also took the plant: she is a curandera who accompanies. She vomited the plant fairly soon and concentrated on looking after us. We knew that we, too, would vomit the plant after it had brought us, guided by our personal necessities and Jessica’s singing, to a vision.

She sang for each of us in turn; I was last. I’d already been yawning for a long time: I yawned and yawned: I became a yawning machine. Her singing is absorbing, but I wasn’t really into it. Just without, the mental was still there, floating around, but she was infinitely patient. Suddenly, my body went into powerful vibrations and crack! - I found myself in a vision of colored geometric designs. The next day, Jessica told me that this was a cellular vision of DNA, and gave me a bracelet of beads representing this vision.

Then, I felt myself forcefully opened in two, cut lengthwise from the bottom up, as by a great sword-stroke. I was suddenly in the belly of an animal: a snake. Its mouth gaped toward the sky, fangs wide enough apart to allow free passage. With a power that I had never before experienced, energy exploded. I was totally enflamed and carried away, turned into a rocket climbing at full speed towards the sky. I passed through a violet space with small yellow areas and multicolored pixels, then to a zone where I exploded into white light, in white light. Heightened awareness was there; I was distanced, an observing/observer. This whiteness invaded me in a flash and then, just as suddenly, everything stopped.

I was again in my body, dazed. I felt under myself: my hand was wet; I saw that everything indeed had opened, including the anal sphincter. Jessica continued to sing, but I resisted, soaked in shit, tightening the buttocks and leaving no chance for any energy to rise once again. Unable to sleep, I awaited the day and the chance to go wash myself. I had expelled the plant, but not in the usual way!

Two days later, a new ceremony. A little worried, I had bought diapers for adults! Nothing ever happens as it did the first time. Soon after taking the plant, I had hot flashes, an endless series of powerful yawns and deep, accelerated breathing. While waiting for Jessica, I lay down. This was certainly a mistake, as my body was not completely free to handle the situation. I should have remained sitting up. The songs that Jessica addressed to my co-participants disturbed me. I listened to them, but they lead me nowhere. Time passed: the yawns diminished, and the deep breathing as well. The moment at which energy could rise also went by. Finally Jessica arrived. I sat up and she sang, but it was too late. She was unable to reconnect me, it was over: she gave up and I remained with the plant. And the plant spoke to me, spoke to me: God, it was talkative! That is why I’m writing this text. It told me that I was a case study, as I had been with the tarot, and that the way Ayahuasca had worked with me was an archetype of its functioning. It was insistent about this. Here, then, is the teaching that I was asked to transmit:

The yawns are a sign that the plant will act not on emotions, but on energy. They prepare for a rise of kundalini. They function as a pump and accumulate the energy which will suddenly be released by the plant. They announce that the door to mastery will probably open, but also that an evacuation will not occur by vomiting, but much more certainly by the sphincter.

Following this second ceremony, I dropped three or four litres of liquid. The plant had literally emptied my guts and cleaned me of my shit.

During the short debriefing time available, I told Jessica that it was very important to pay attention to yawns. They are a sign of rising energy and the key to an opportunity for entering into mastery. The experience of white light is the doorway. I told her that it was more important to assist in the delivery of a master than to fuss over an apprentice. This direct language did not please her: egalitarian, she refused to hear it. It is highly probable that she will not want to pay special attention to the workings of rising energy until it is her turn for the plant to refuse being vomited, leaving her in her shit with her clients. I hope she’ll have the courage to revisit her masters and learn about the full rise of energy, requesting them to conduct ceremonies for her until she herself achieves it.

It is very plausible, Jessica, that we will never meet again. So, once more, a great thank-you for your ceremonies and your bracelet. May a good wind fill your sails...and don’t forget to buy a chamber pot!

Four months have passed since my return. The memory of all these ceremonies is intact. The plant teachers still work on me, continue to change me: sometimes a quantum leap, sometimes in desperate slowness. I am still floating and do not yet feel landed. In experiencing the teachings of these plants, I have learned to love them. So I have decided to garden, cultivating medicinal plants. I wish to practice entheogenic medicine here in Europe. My general shape is amazing; I haven’t felt so well in ten or fifteen years. I'm ready for another full and rich slice of life.

In drafting this text, I surfed the Web out of curiosity. Apart from a few interesting sites, what horror: absolutely incomprehensible comments by young and inexperienced psychonauts looking for kicks. Analyses by hypocritical journalists who never took any of these plants themselves and yet dare to talk about them, just exposing their poverty of soul. A great void, incapable of feeding a hungry spirit. Yet, these teaching plants remain one of the only traditional medicines still available to us. They are at the base of our culture, so how can we hope for better?

[3] Shamanism is tribal and linked to a living traditional society with inter-generational transmission. In today’s post-industrial society, the word “shaman” no longer means anything, tarnished as it is by all the “false ethnics” of the planet, western swindlers above all. It has become a catchall term. So, how should we call those who try to connect, to become actors in the spiritual world and in the between-world of the spirits? None of the old traditional terms are satisfying. Some options: master-ferryman, man of knowledge, sorcerer, shaman, medicine-man… “Ferryman between worlds” is accurate, but too long and complicated. Lacking better, for the moment I’ve adopted the term “Psychonaute”. It is cousin to “Argonaute”, and we undertake the same voyage, our generation has gone on the same inner adventure, three or four thousand years later. Like them, we are sailors on the ocean of the soul, and like them are in quest of our “Golden Fleece”

[5] An old custom practiced by travellers and medieval constructors’ fraternities still lives today with the “Wanderers”, German compagnon builders.
They start by accomplishing a three-year apprenticeship in their profession. Then, as aspiring compagnons, they have another statutory three years of wandering, always with a companion, always on foot and “in uniform”: largeau (corduroy trousers held by a wide belt), hat and walking stick with specific colored ribbons. They aren’t authorised to take on work with an enterprise in their field. They must hold numerous little jobs and let themselves be inspired by chance. Wandering is necessary for discovering the world and finding your place in it. It remains the last-chance solution when your life makes no sense and you’ve lost the wave you’re surfing. You go off, then, to let yourself be inspired by the Spirit. Wandering is the state between apprentice and compagnon.
During your « tour », good travellers’ habits were inculcated. Tired in a bistro from the day’s travel and one-too-many beers, your head falls to the table. Your companion then takes a hammer and great nail from his sack and, with one strike, nails your ear to the table and leaves. This is the penalty for allowing oneself to relax in an insecure place.
The memory of this ancient custom rose to tell me: “you’ve been nailed”.

[7] C.f. Pèlerinage des Bateleurs, page 135

[8] I’ve found my new hermitage deep in the countryside, in a village with the predestined name of Saint Mars du Désert. I’ll be able to preach the tarot to the Martians in the desert! The icing on the cake is that this old inn “Au Lion d'or “ (“At the Golden Lion”) was built in the beginning of the 18^th century, just the time my main tarots, Noblet and Dodal, were edited. It has a reception room of golden section proportions with huge windows. I am enchanted by the idea of playing and reading tarot in a bistro of this quality.

[10] Making one’s labyrinth is a compagnon’s expression for the following ritual: when you enter a Romanesque church for the first time, you go in by the western door and follow the path of the ambulatory three times, clockwise, in order to absorb the energies of the site, often described on the capitals along the way. The next time you visit, you enter from the north by a small and discreet entrance known as “the initiates’ door”.

[11] I give an extensive explanation of quadripartition in my book “Pèlerinage des bateleurs” – page 259.


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