This story begins with the last time I participated in an Ayahuasca ceremony. I was sick but not with a communicable disease. I had been growing weaker and having a harder time breathing over the prior six months or so but especially recently. At the same time, my pain had also been worsening. I remember hearing my breathing during the dark part of the journey and hoping that the shaman and his trainee didn’t hear it lest they think I was really dying and panic. In layman terms, it sounded like the death rattle, a noise I’ve heard many times during my years of hospice nursing.
Something felt distinctly different about this Ayahuasca ceremony.
I had noticed there were a lot of new people attending and several of them had colored sashes tied around their all-white clothing. And well after Grandmother Aya’s spell was actively upon me, I could still hear much chatter and laughter coming from the other participants around me. It was like they hadn’t just swallowed the medicine too. I dismissed this thought as I chalked it up to me just always being so intensely sensitive.
In fact, until that retreat, I had been scared to say it, for fear of not being believed, but just being in the presence of the medicine during the hour before I actually partook, was enough to increase the medicine’s spell. It seemed to initially start working days to a week before the ceremony. I hypothesized that this must be something like the placebo effect. I expected to soon be under the spell. Therefore, it started happening ahead of time. But anyhow, during this ceremony I noticed a lack of others being under Grandmother’s influence,
Then I heard what I can only describe as a noise which sounded like it belonged in an animated movie where an AI generated monster vomits.
It repeated infrequently and only a few times during the whole ceremony. And it was always only a single retch that was long, drawn out and non-human sounding in origin. I interpreted it as fake meaning a non-organically occurring element of the experience. In other words, it wasn’t part of the non-physical experience. Therefore it must have been intentionally added to the physical experience. But, why?
Next, the music, which was the kind the shaman usually played, gradually changed. First, it became generally darker. And by darker, I mean chaotic and non-melodic. Then came the shaman’s voice chanting and sing-songing a prayer in English during which he repeatedly spoke of the uterus. But he hissed the ends of his words and his tone had a decisively menacing quality to it. I can only describe what played after that as what I imagine Hollywood would depict as the rumblings of demons.
And intertwined with the supposed demon chatter, were snippets of horror music as well as the sounds of snakes and spiders.
I’m pretty sure this mix was supposed to sound scary. But I wasn’t scared. I was confused. Why was this soundtrack being played? As I already stated, I am able to distinguish between what is happening in the physical reality vs what is happening in the non-physical reality while under Mother Ayahuasca’s spell. And this was not part of the trip.
