Tuesday

Sex and the Plant Spirits


There has been very little research on sexual relations between shamans and plant spirits. Certainly the spirits can be muy celosa, very jealous, about sexual relations between shamans and human persons. Relations with the spirits may imply both sexual abstinence with humans and sexual alliance with the spirits. There are reports of erotic ayahuasca visions; regular ayahuasca use apparently does nothing to abate — and, by report, may significantly enhance — sexual desire and performance. Psychologist Benny Shanon notes that ayahuasca drinkers “often detect a sensuous, even sexual flavor in whatever surrounds them,” including the eroticization of plants and trees; he reports his own visions of semi-clad women dancing erotically and lasciviously. Ethnobotanists Richard Schultes and Robert Raffauf remark, rather dryly, that “erotic aspects often reported may be due to the individual differences of the participants.” Don Agustin Rivas reports that, while following la dieta, a beautiful strange female spirit, named Yara, would appear to him at dawn, lift his mosquito net, and lie down with him. He would awake just before having sex with her.

Here is an example. I was drinking ayahuasca with two ayahuasqueros, a father and son, with whom I was living in the jungle, in an isolated tambo. They were both singing icaros at the same time, but different ones, producing a decidedly eerie effect. Suddenly in front of me I see a beautiful green woman, lying back on a couch or bed; her arms and fingers are long; her body is covered in some kind of gauzy material. The moment is intense, erotically charged; I lean forward and kiss her. Whoa! says my rational mind. Is this all right? Are you allowed to have sex with plant spirits? The embrace is really arousing; I wonder what my wife would say. The woman fades away, leaving me with a feeling of both relief and disappointment.

Among indigenous Amazonian peoples, there are widespread reports of sexual relations between human persons and other-than-human persons. Anthropologist Elsje Lagrou tells the story of a Cashinahua woman shaman who married the snake spirit, who came to make love to her at night, and, because of her new spirit husband, no longer had sex with her human husband. One of the signs of her alliance with the spirit world was her deformed mouth, eaten away by the spirits, people said; another was her successful healing of fever in small children.

Among the Napo Runa, the supai, the forest spirits with whom the shaman interacts, enter into sexual relationships with humans, often long-term; one shaman was taught by a supai huarmi, female spirit, and his wife made pregnant by a supai runa, male spirit. The daughter of a famous Napo Runa shaman told an interviewer, “My mother gets angry when she wants to sleep with my father. The supai huarmi gets between them and doesn’t let him.” Napo Runa women who give birth to deformed children are said to have been impregnated by supai and, when the child dies, often become shamans. The Shuar tell stories of men who have sex with tsunki women, the shamanically potent underwater people, a manifestation of Tsunki, the primordial shaman, and get power from them; a female shaman has reported a vision of having sex with a male tsunki.

Who was my Green Lady? What should I have done? What would you have done?

5 comments:

  1. I don't know if Im supposed to tell you this yet, but my totem doesn't believe in fear.

    You saw in the green woman that strangeness which is sexuality, the union of your own feminine tradition, the healer's art, the plant - and the masculine tradition, the flesh magic, the magic of animal.
    The Ayahuasca-trick (see Xochipilli), meet Nagual (see Tepeyollatl). Secretly Tlaloc and Tezcatlipoca are in love, of a kind.

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  2. well i am a welsh shamanic practitioner, i had one experience while in a trance upon a hill,

    i have a strong relationship with the west wind, i lay down seeking rest in a reed patch and he kept the flies off of me with a gentle breeze, i then spontaneosly began to twitch and my shamanic vision awakened, [this is usually sudden for me] and i vividly saw the lady of the lake i was lying next to crawl out and..well the rest is X rated but as i walked back home i felt amazing [AMAZING] and my faith was restored once more.

    i am not sure if what i did was right but it was an amazing experience.

    StoneCrow...

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  3. I can orgasm in my dreams as often as I want to, all I have to do is raise my sexual energies before bed and then i go off to the dream world and some kind of female spirit always shows up. Sometimes I've denied it, just to make sure that I'm in control. But most of the time I orgasm. I am familiar with toltec and ancient native teaching and the power of sexual energy over our dreams and our bridging dreams. I have begun to bridge things from my dreams, but I must admit that for a 27 year old male my sexual energies are very very high. Of course in the physicial world i don't put them to use for sexual intercorse unless I'm with my GF. But if I really want to I can sit down to meditate and orgasm, just by raising these energies high enough. Can any other males do this?

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  4. I have a close relationship with both tobacco spirits and cannabis spirits.
    We work together like a team of surgeons
    in the world of spirits.
    These plants give me life quality in return
    for using them with care and respect
    However i have some experience of these spirits
    getting mad at me,for not following their guidance.
    But this has also helped me to understand
    the nature and the presence of the spirits a lot more.
    I enjoyed this article very much.
    Have a good empowering day.

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  5. A mushroom spirit once came to me. She had lavender colored skin, violet hair and a tail with a spade like heart shape at the end. I think she even had little horns. I could see a blue tombstone in some kind of dark valentine suite, it had a heart shaped bed, as she backed up against me and wrapped her long tail around my waist. The vision soon evaporated.

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