Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon by Stephan V. Beyer Page B

therefore become sorcerers.46 As we will see, similar self-control is necessary after the new
shaman has been initiated.

    LEARNING THE PLANTS
    But to learn the plants, you do not just diet; you diet with a plant-that is, ingest the plant, take it into your body, let it teach you from within while you
keep loyal to it. Depending on the maestro, there are several ways to learn a
plant while keeping the restricted diet. The plant may be ingested just once,
or just a few times, at the start of the diet period, which is usually a few weeks
to a month, or may be taken every day during that period.47 The plant may be
boiled into the ayahuasca drink, and the plant spirit may then appear during
the ayahuasca vision, or in a subsequent dream; or the plant may be ingested
by itself, and the plant spirit may then appear when subsequently drinking
ayahuasca, or in a dream, vision, stream of thought, insight, melody, snatches
of song, or vague stirrings of intention. Certain plants seem traditionally to be
taken alone for the purposes of dieting rather than mixed with ayahuascamapacho and toe, as we might expect, since they are as sacred and powerful
as ayahuasca itself, and also catahua, mucura, chiricsanango, suelda con suelda,
raga balsa, ajo sacha, and oje.48
    Some masters prescribe at least an initial sequence of plants for their
apprentices. Don Roberto begins, of course, with ayahuasca; then his disciples work to master four medicines-toe, maricahua, camalonga, and piedras
encantadas, magic stones. After that, the key plants include chiricsanango,
chullachaqui caspi, machimango, ishpingo caspi, chuchuhuasi, and ayahuma. And the
apprentice diets with the plants who call.
    Whether ingested alone or with ayahuasca, the goal of the diet is to maintain an ongoing connection and dialogue with the plant; to allow the plant to
interact with the body, often in subtle ways; and to wait for its spirit to appear,
as the spirit wishes, to teach and give counsel. The effect of the most powerful plants may be instantaneous, but the effect of others may be gradual:
the plants become your body and give you the power to heal; they becomethrough this lengthy, dreamlike, silent, sacred process-your allies. You learn
the plants in plant time, not in human time.
    One does not generally diet a second time with a particular plant-don
Agustin Rivas says that would be like going to university and taking the same course twice-but some shamans may diet again with a plant for a longer period of time or drink the plant again if the visions or effects are weak.49

    Amazonian shamans conceptualize this process as learning with the body.
Don Casimiro Izurieta Cevallas puts it this way: "Through the diet, the body
takes on the gift of learning. "51 But we would be wrong to think of this plant
knowledge as being merely cognitive, like learning a recipe. To diet with a
plant is to devote one's attention to the plant, to form a bond with it, to establish a relationship with it-an intimate relationship, taking the plant into your
body, creating mutual love and trust.
    All these plants are called doctores, teachers, healers; these are the vegetales que enseflan, plants who teach. They are not necessarily psychoactive; each
healing and protective plant is a teacher of its own secrets, of how it may be used
as medicine. Learning the plants is learning to listen to the plants, who speak a
language ofpuro sonido, pure sound, and learning to sing to them in their own
language. And once you have learned to listen to the plants, the more easily
you can learn each additional plant-what sicknesses it can heal, what song
will summon it, what medicines it enters into, how it should be prepared.
    This, too, is how the shamans study the properties of new plants, and the
way they expand the native pharmacopoeia.5' Don Fidel Mosombite, a practitioner from Pucallpa, told anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna that he had
taken a mejoral, aspirin, to study it