So how did someone think of combining ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaves to make what we call Ayahuasca today? A common question with a fascinating answer and wonderful cosmology around it.
This story begins in times of the Incas. At that time, the whole of the Shipibo people amounted to about thirty families, all living in ten houses in the Kumankaya lagoon in the Amazon.
This being the glory days of the Incas, they were very powerful by virtue of their great faith, spiritual knowledge and connection to God, and so they could work a variety of trades in ways we would call miraculous in the present day. For instance, they had the ability to very finely cut big blocks of rock for constructing their houses and buildings, and also engrave them with great detail. Scientists can’t figure this one out, but one can see drinking Ayahuasca (and dieting Coca, the medicine of the Incas) how they did it: they had a bird with a long beak, the tip of which could get so hot it melted and cut rock. Crafty.
Being contemporary and in close proximity territorially, the Incas shared with the Shipibos a lot of their trades: hand pottery, textiles and embroidery, jewelry, arts, and even the kene, the patterns you see all over the maloca mats and that so uniquely identify the Shipibos nowadays. They also shared a lot of their spiritual knowledge and experience, which put the Incas and the Shipibos at a similar level of power.
In these days, though Ayahuasca was not yet known, the concept of dieting medicinal plants to connect to their spirits and acquire spiritual knowledge was already in use. And so it happened that at the time, the curaca, the authority of that Shipibo village whose name was Rai Nita, was dieting Noya Rao.
And while dieting Noya Rao, he had a dream with the spirits of this tree saying to him: “Go to such place in the jungle and you’ll find this plant. Go to this other place and you’ll find this other plant. Mix them, cook them, and drink that brew. This is a powerful medicine you can use.” In waking, he did as he was told, finding indeed the plants where the dream indicated, preparing them and drinking the brew. This is how Ayahuasca was first “discovered”.
It is worth noting that the ancestral shamans of those days didn’t diet to learn the medicine as we do today, for a few months or a year, but for five, six or even seven years at a time. In these long diets, they would acquire truly great spiritual knowledge and powers—such as being able to levitate using the airs of Nihue Rao, predict the future, or even go to visit the Sun. These shamans are the merayas, advanced doctors in the science of spiritual medicine.
Some time after the discovery of Ayahuasca, the curaca of the Shipibo village, again guided by Noya Rao, ordered his people to gather Noya Rao leaves. They had observed that when the fruits of this tree fell in the river and fish ate them, they would fly (and hence the name: noya means to fly, rao medicine). So they gathered a few canoes full of Noya Rao leaves, crushed them, and laid them all around the perimeter of the village, encircling it completely.
With this, the entire village —people, houses, ground and all— elevated into the air, all without making any rumbling sounds, and began to cruise across the sky hovering about two hundred meters above the ground, until it landed in Contamana, on the Ucayali river. The Shipibos played drums and flutes during this whole passage.
This moment is known as the enchantment of the Shipibos. The age those people had at that time, that same age they have now; they do not die. They also cannot be found or told apart unless they want to be, despite them still going out among people to get their provisions and goods. They have layers upon layers of spiritual protections to ensure this.
This moment was also the enchantment of the Noya Rao tree, for which reason it can no longer be found physically—you might be able to see a glimpse of it from afar, but you won’t be able to find it. Rai Nita and Corin Bari, his wife, along with the people in that village, are spirits and owners of the Nihue and Noya Rao trees.
Because of this enchantment, Noya Rao cannot actually be dieted anymore. One can, however, connect with it spiritually, and therefore also see it in Ayahuasca ceremonies. It’s common to diet Nihue Rao, which does still exist physically, and connect with Noya Rao through that same diet.
The Incas also became enchanted at the time of the enchantment of the Shipibos, and they too are immortal. Unlike the enchanted Shipibos, which are mostly found in the spiritual Cumancaya and in the jungle (these are the chaikuni), the enchanted Incas live in underground cities made of gold, which one can see dieting Coca. They too have extensive spiritual protections and cannot be found or distinguished when out and about.
That is, unless you match their seven year diets…
This is an excerpt from “The True Medicine:
The Nihue Rao Guidebook to Ayahuasca and Master Plant Diets.”
You can read the full guidebook here.
