Ayahuasca is declared a national cultural heritage in Peru

EL COMERCIO (LIMA) Sunday July 13^th 2008

DECLARATION TO PROTECT THE TRADITIONAL RITUAL USE AND SACRED CHARACTER of AYAHUASCA

Ayahuasca declared a national cultural heritage

This plant is considered an essential part of the identity of the Amazonian peoples of Peru.

The knowledge and traditional uses of Ayahuasca practiced by the Amazonian indigenous communities, was declared a cultural heritage of the nation by the Institute of National Culture (INC). This announcement was made yesterday in the publication of Directorial Resolution 836 by that body, in the official gazette "El Peruan".

According to the declaration, the ritual use of Ayahuasca is one of the fundamental pillars of the identity of the Amazonian people. It's ancestral use in traditional rituals, with therapeutic benefits directly related to the qualities of the plants, has guaranteed its cultural continuity.

The provision states that the measure seeks to protect the traditional use and the sanctity of the ritual of Ayahuasca, and to differentiate between this and Western commercial and consumer interests.

The Ayahuasca is a plant species that has an extraordinary cultural history with it's psychotropic qualities as it is an essential ingredient of a brew in conjunction with the plant known as Chacruna. In the indigenous Amazonian world this plant brew is regarded as wise teacher.

ORIGINAL SPANISH TEXT

El Comercio Domingo 13 de julio del 2008

BUSCAN PROTEGER USO TRADICIONAL Y CARACTER SAGRADO DEL RITUAL

Declaran patrimonio cultural de la nacion a uso de la ayahuasca

Planta es considerada parte essencial de la identidad de los pueblos amazonicos del Peru. Los conocimientos y usos tradicionales de la ayahuasca practicados por las communidades nativas amazonicas fueron declarados patrimonio cultural de la nacion por el Institiuto Nacional de Cultura (INC). Ello se dio a conocer ayer tras la publicacion de La Resolucion Directoral 836 de esa entidad en el diario oficial “El Peruan”.

Segun se consigna en el texto, la practica de sesiones rituales de ayahuasca constituye uno de los pilares fundamentales de la identidad de los pueblos amazonicos. Su ancestral uso en los rituales tradicionales, vinculado a las virtudes terapeutics de la plants, ha garantizado su continuidad cultural.

La disposicion establece que la medida busca proteger el uso tradicional y el caracter sagrado del ritual de ayahuasca, con el fin de differnciaro de los usos occidentales descontextualizados que tienen propositos comerciales y consumistas.

La ayahuasca es una especie vegetal que cuenta con una extraordinaria historia cultrural en virtud sus cualidades psicotropicas, ya que es ingrediente esencial de un brebaje asociado a la planta conocida como chacruna. En el mundo indigena amazonico se la considera una planta sabia o maestra.

Ayahuasca, Moses, and the Ten Commandments - Biblical Entheogens: Speculative Hypothesis- Original Text

Moses, Ayahuasca, and the Ten Commandments! - Original text of paper by Professor Benny Shanon

Biblical Entheogens: Speculative Hypothesis

Paper originally published in:

Time and Mind:
The Journal of Archaeology Consciousness and Culture
Volume I—Issue I, March 2008, pp. 51–74

Biblical Entheogens: Speculative Hypothesis- Original Paper

Benny Shanon is Professor of psychology at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem (Israel). His main foci of research are the phenomenology of human consciousness and the philosophy of psychology. His publications include The representational and the Presentational (1993) and The Antipodes of the Mind (2002). At present, he is working on book devoted to a general psychological theory of human consciousness.

plant spirit shamanism

Ayahuasca, Moses, and the Ten Commandments - Plant Spirit Shamanism of the Bible

"Moses was high on drugs: Israeli researcher"

The world wide media interest in Benny Shanon's paper about Moses and entheogens, is encouraging us to take a good and hard look at the roots of religions and the notion that they were based on fertility cults, and shamanic practices such as Entheogens (or hallucinogenic) plants as a source of spiritual communion with the universal consciousness, or the mind of God.

John Allegro, in his book “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East”, postulated through the etymology of words and relates how the development of language indicated that the roots of the religions emanating from the Middle East were based on fertility cults, and shamanic practices such as Entheogens (or hallucinogenic) plants as a source of spiritual communion with the universal consciousness, or the mind of God..

Back in the 1970's the reaction against these ideas was so strong that it destroyed Allegro's career, the book was not published in the UK as it was regarded as blasphemous, and blasphemy was still a crime. It's good to think that we have made some progress in recent years.

Allegro’s theory was visionary and ground-breaking. He was the first to propose in some detail that two major religions Christianity and by extension Judaism were entheogen-oriented and that the entheogen was Amanita Muscaria. His book was published at a time when there was little or no awareness about the use of entheogens, and was indeed a courageous act to publish this book.

Another great explorer and pathfinder in human consciousness was Terence Mckenna, in his book “Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution”, proposed that hallucinogenic plants, in this case Psilocybin mushrooms, were the cause of the astounding and unexplained rapid evolution and development of the human brain within the evolutionary time scale (just 500,000 years from the hominids). In other words how we developed from our ape relatives . His theory also encompasses the development of linguistics , and human civilisation itself


JERUSALEM (AFP) - High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

source: Yahoo News.

Paper originally published in:

Time and Mind:
The Journal of Archaeology Consciousness and Culture
Volume I—Issue I, March 2008

TiTLE: Biblical Entheogens: Speculative Hypothesis

pp. 51–74

Benny Shanon is Professor of psychology at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem (Israel). His main foci of research are the phenomenology of human consciousness and the philosophy of psychology. His publications include The representational and the Presentational (1993) and The Antipodes of the Mind (2002). At present, he is working on book devoted to a general psychological theory of human consciousness.

View original article by Benny Shanon

plant spirit shamanism