[SIZE=12px][FONT=courier new]The largest reed boats in Peru were depicted as two deckers. Quantities of water jars and other cargo were painted in on the lower deck, as well as rows of little people, and on the upper deck usually stood the earthly representative of the sun-god the priest king, larger than all his companions, surrounded by bird-headed men who were often hauling on ropes to help the reed boat through the water. The tomb paint-ings in Egypt also portrayed the sun-god's earthly represen-tative, the priest-king known as the pharaoh, like an imposing giant on his reed boat, surrounded by minature people, while the same mythical men with bird heads towed the reed boat through the water.
Reed boats and bird-headed men seemed to go together, for some inexplicable reason. For we had found them far out in the Pacific Ocean too, on Easter Island, where the sun-god's mask, the reed boats with sails, and the men with bird heads formed an inseperable trio amomg the wall-paintings and reliefs in the ancient ceremonial village of Orongo, with its solar observ-atory. Easter Island, Peru, Egypt. These strange parallels could hardly have been found further apart. Apparently they could hardly furnish better proof that men must have arrived inde-pendently at the same time in widely seperated places. Appar-ently. But what was even more strange was that the aboriginal people of Easter Island called the sun ra. Ra was the name for the sun on all the hundreds of Polynesian islands, so it could be no mere accident. Ra was also the name for the sun in ancient Egypt. No word was more important to the ancient Egyptian religion than Ra, the sun, the sun-god, ancestor of the phar-aohs. The one who sailed reed boats, with an entourage of bird headed men. Giant monolithic statues as high as houses had been erected in honour of the sun-god's earthly priest-kings on Easter Island, in Peru and in ancient Egypt.
In reading the literature on Amazonian shamanism, I had noticed that the personal experience of anthropologists with indigeÂnous hallucinogens was a gray zone. I knew the problem well for having skirted around it myself in my own writings. One of the categories in my reading notes was called "Anthropologists and Ayahuasca." I consulted the card corresponding to this category, which I had filled out over the course of my investigation, and noted that the first subjective description of an ayahuasca experiÂence by an anthropologist was published in 1968-whereas sevÂeral botanists had written up similar experiences a hundred years previously. 10 The anthropologist in question was Michael Harner. He had devoted ten lines to his own experience in the middle of an acaÂdemic article: "For several hours after drinking the brew, I found myself, although awake, in a world literally beyond my wildest dreams. I met bird-headed people, as well as dragon-like creatures who explained that they were the true gods of this world. I enlisted the services of other spirit helpers in attempting to fly through the far reaches of the Galaxy. Transported into a trance where the supernatural seemed natural, I realized that anthropolÂogists, including myself, had profoundly underestimated the imÂportance of the drug in affecting native ideology.
Hamer explains that in the early 1960s, he went to the PeruÂvian Amazon to study the culture of the Conibo Indians. After a year or so he had made little headway in understanding their reliÂgious system when the Conibo told him that if he really wanted to leam, he had to drink ayahuasca. Hamer accepted not without fear, because the people had wamed him that the experience was terrifying. The following evening, under the strict supervision of his indigenous friends, he drank the equivalent of a third of a botÂtlee. After several minutes he found himself falling into a world of true hallucinations. After arriving in a celestial cavern where "a supernatural carnival of demons" was in full swing, he saw two strange boats floating through the air that combined to form "a huge dragon-headed prow, not unlike that of a Viking ship." On the deck, he could make out "large numbers of people with the heads of blue jays and the bodies of humans, not unlike the birdÂheaded gods of ancient Egyptian tomb paintings."
After multiple episodes, which would be too long to describe here, Hamer became convinced that he was dying. He tried callÂing out to his Conibo friends for an antidote without managing to pronounce a word. Then he saw that his visions emanated from "giant reptilian creatures" resting at the lowest depths of his brain. These creatures began projecting scenes in front of his eyes, while informiig him that this information was reserved for the dying and the dead: "First they showed me the planet Earth as it was eons ago, before there was any life on it. I saw an ocean, barren land, and a bright blue sky. Then black specks dropped from the sky by the hundreds and landed in front of me on the barren landscape. I could see the 'specks' were actually large, shiny, black creatures with stubby pterodactyl-like wings and huge whale-like bodies. . . . They explained to me in a kind of thought language that they were fleeing from something out in space. They had come to the planet Earth to escape their enemy. The creatures then showed me how they had created life on the planet in order to hide within the multitudinous forms and thus disguise their presence. Before me, the magnificence of plant and animal creation and speciation-hundreds of millions of years of activity-took place on a scale and with a vividness impossible to describe. I learned that the dragon-like creatures were thus inÂside all forms of life, including man."
This brew, commonly called yage, or yaje, in Colombia, ayahuasca (Inca 'vine of the dead'*) in Ecuador and Peru, and caapi in Brazil, is prepared from segments of a species of the vine Banisteriopsis, a genus belonging to the Malpighiaceae.-Michael Harner
*Inca "vine of the dead, vine of the souls," aya means in Quechua "spirit," "ancestor," "dead person," while huasca means "vine," "rope").[/FONT][/SIZE]
[LEFT][SIZE=12px][FONT=courier new]Pablo's Warning: Ayahuasca is not something to play with. It may even kill, not because it is toxic in itself, but because the body may not be able to stand the spiritual realm, the vibrations from the spirit world. Pablo said he had several frightening experiences with ayahuasca. Three times he thought he was going to die.*One needs courage, a strong discipline, and to proceed by degrees. It is a long process that might take two or three years before one can venture into the higher realms. One needs a teacher that shows the correct procedures, and how to defend oneself against supernatural attack. But after some time, one needs to continue alone, because even one's teacher might become jealous of one's progress and could take away all one has learned.
The alchemists, Jung believed had been inadvertantly tap-ping into the collective unconscious. This led them to assume they were following a spiritual path to enlightenment-when they were actuafly liberatiing their subconscious minds through the use of ritual. This is not far removed from other ritualistic events- those exploited by faith healers, the ecstasy experienced by ritualistic voodoo dancers, or charismatic Christian services. Jung said of alchemy: 'The alchemical stone symbolises someÂthing that can never be lost or dissolved, something eternal that some alchemists 'Compared to the mystical experience of God within one's own soul.It tusually takes prolonged suffering to burn away all the superfluous psychic elements.concealing the stone. But some profound inner experience of the Self does occur to most people at least once in a lifetime. From the psychological standpoint, a genuinely religious atiitude consists of an effort to discover this unique. experience and;gradually to keep in tune wth it (it is,relevant that the stone is itself something permanent), so that the Self becomes an inner partner towards whom one's attention is continually turned.' To the alchemist, the most important factor in the practice was participation of the individual experimenter in .the process of transmutation. The genuine alchemist was convinced that the emotional and spiritual characteristics of the individual experimenter was involved intiimately wth the success or failure of the experiment. And, it is this concept, more than any other aspect of, alchemy, that distinguishes it from orthodox chemistry,- the scientific discipline that began to supersede it at the end of the seventeenth Century. The alchemist placed inordinate importance upon the spiritual element.of his work and for many sceptics it was this which.pushed the subject into the realms of magic and left it forever beyond the boundaries of 'science'.[/FONT][/SIZE]
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