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

called `nti-si-tho in Mazatec, Little-OneWho-Springs-Forth. Maria Sabina called them her saint children. Wasson was
deeply impressed by his mushroom experience. He speaks of ecstasy, the
flight of the soul from the body, entering other planes of existence, floating
into the Divine Presence, awe and reverence, gentleness and love, the presence of the ineffable, the presence of the Ultimate, extinction in the divine
radiance. He writes that the mushroom freed his soul to soar with the speed
of thought through time and space. The mushroom, he says, allowed him to
know God.27
    Wasson's description falls effortlessly into the language of ecstasy, awe,
soul flight, the Divine Presence, the knowledge of God-the same stock of
European concepts from which Eliade drew. But Maria Sabina herself could
not understand any of this. She says: "It's true that Wasson and his friends
were the first foreigners who came to our town in search of the saint children
and that they didn't take them because they suffered from any illness. Their
reason was that they came to find God."
    And none of it, of course, had anything to do with the indigenous uses
of the mushroom, whose purpose was to cure sick people by, among other
things, making them vomit.28 She adds: "Before Wasson nobody took the
mushrooms only to find God. They were always taken for the sick to get
well. 129 To find God, Sabina-like all good Catholics-went to Mass.3°
    When Sabina ingested the mushrooms, the mushroom spirits would show
her the cause of the sickness-for example, through soul loss, malevolent
spirits, or human sorcerers: "The sickness comes out if the sick vomit. They
vomit the sickness. They vomit because the mushrooms want them to. If the
sick don't vomit, I vomit. I vomit for them and in that way the malady is expelled.131 And she would then be able to cure the patient through the power
of her singing. Sometimes the spirits told her that the patient could not be
cured.32
    Wasson had clearly come to Mexico anticipating a religious or mystical
experience, and now he had one.33 Indeed, he had been less than forthright
about his motives. He knew that the mushroom ceremonies were for curing
sickness or finding lost objects, and he told Sabina-as well as other Mazatec healers-that he was concerned about the whereabouts and well-being of his
son. He later admitted that this was a deception in order to gain access to the
ceremonies.34

    Like Wasson, the influx of North Americans who followed him to Sabina's
village were not seeking the cure of sickness; they were seeking enlightenment. Sabina could not understand why well-fed and apparently healthy foreigners were seeking her mushrooms. These people certainly did not look
sick to her:35 "Some of these young people sought me out for me to stay up
with the Little-One-Who-Springs-Forth. `We come in search of God,' they said.
It was difficult for me to explain to them that the vigils weren't done from
the simple desire to find God, but were done with the sole purpose of curing the sicknesses that our people suffer from. 1131 She laments: "But from the
moment the foreigners arrived to search for God, the saint children lost their
purity. They lost their force; the foreigners spoiled them. From now on they
won't be any good. There's no remedy for it. "37
    While Wasson was climbing the mountain of spirit, seeing Sabina as a
saint-like figure, a spiritual psychopomp, "religion incarnate," Maria Sabina
dwelled steadfastly in the valley of soul, healing the sick, vomiting for them,
expelling their sickness, living her own difficult and messy life-until Wasson's spiritual bypass destroyed the power of her mushrooms.38
    Ayahuasca and the Body
    Moreover, ayahuasca shamanism is irreducibly physical. The body is the instrument of power and understanding-power stored in the chest as phlegm,
understanding achieved through ingestion. The shaman learns the plants by
taking them into the body, where they teach