The Non-Prophet blog has a guest entry up from journalist and adventurer Peter Gorman on the practices of shamanism in the northwest Amazonia. The piece is adapted from a talk he gave at the 2006 Shamanism Conference in Iquitos, and deals primarily with the use of ayahuasca and other entheogenic plants for the purposes of healing.

“Among the flora of the world as we know it, several plants are not just allies, they are considered Master Plant Teachers. You might extend that to read: Master Plant Teachers of Man. These plants might be considered gate keepers. These plants are the plants that allow us, we humans, to slow down enough to communicate with the mountains; to speed up enough to communicate with a hummingbird, to visit the other realms past and present and simultaneous that are here but that we don’t ordinarily see or hear within the band widths of our senses.”

Gorman owns a bar in Iquitos, and gives tours of sacred sites in Peru focusing on ayahuasca shamanism. The ayahuasca curandero in this presentation, Julio Jerena, recently passed away at the age of 91.

Tags: ayahuasca, Peter Gorman, shamanism