You Must Respect the Circle of Life to Drink Ayahuasca

Space

It’s a mistake to believe psychedelics shelter us from the realities of existence, says The Temple of Light’s Deanna Rogers

From ‘Carmézia Emiliano: The Tree of Life’ at MASP till 11 June

“Life in the jungle is hard. So there are different rules.”

Thus speaks Deanna Rogers, facilitator at The Temple of the Way of Light in Peru. It’s a Shipibo tradition retreat centre where Bruce Parry and Jeremy Narby like to settle in for a brew and a therianthrope chit-chat.

Deanna is also trauma-healing hierophant Dr Gabor Maté’s shamanic bat-woman for his own ceremonies. 

“We think of these healers as peaceful, enlightened beings,” says Deanna, who compares this convenient simplification to a Jungian ‘shadow’ interpretation of a more complex reality.

“But they're human and… they view it like a warrior culture,” she continues, “It’s not about peace and love. That element is there. But for some of them, it's very much about, like… ‘We're spiritual warriors. We go in there and go to battle’,” she explains during Vital’s special lecture series on Jungian shadow therapy. 

Deanna has studied with Shipibo curanderos in Peru for over a decade.

“Westerners come here thinking you can heal everything with peace and love”

Including in Iquitos with a tabaquero shaman, specialising in spiritual energy field defence type stuff, which is obviously sweet. “A total character,” she says, “So, I asked him one day, I don't know if it's good for my diet [pre and post-plant medicine fast], but last night I killed someone in my dream’.” 

The tabaquero threw her an animistic curve ball: “He just laughed at me and he's like, ‘Yeah, westerners come here and they think that you can heal everything with peace and love. But sometimes you need to kill things in order to just put them back in their place.’ I was like… ‘Okay…’”

Lecture host, Vital founder Kyle Buller illustrates Deanna’s point with a gory anecdote.

“Sometimes you need that edge. You need to be the killer. To have that really tough, direct, clear energy”

He describes a Peruvian shaman unsheathing his machete to decapitate a snake; despite protests from his Western voyagers. “Apparently he responded, ‘You must respect the circle of life to drink ayahuasca’.”

There’s a ‘piece’ here, as a therapist might say, about perspective. “How it's been shared with me,” explains Deanna, “is sometimes you need that edge. Sometimes, you need to be the killer. Sometimes you need to have that really tough, direct, clear energy.”

Boundaries can be far more complex to establish than those animated CBT videos makes out. And the Sociopath Next Door, to quote the book, ‘thrives in decorum.’ Which takes fortitude to breach.

“My father Timothy Leary was not a pacifist”

Perhaps this is what Ernst Junger, Germany’s greatest First World War hero and coiner of the term ‘psychonaut’, was getting at when he refused to completely condemn militarism. “My father was not a pacifist,” says Zach Leary, son of Dr Timothy and MAPS podcast host, whenever he gets the opportunity. 

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