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Email me at Kwanitaka@aol.com">Kwanitaka@aol.com to receive a preview of my weekly column,” The Devil's Hammer” which is posted every Monday on fromthebalcony.com and lasvegasroundtheclock.com. MEDIEVAL MYSTICISM AND ITS EMPIRICAL KINSHIP TO AYAHUASCA By Victoria Alexander
My advocacy for ayahuasca - not as a visionary tool solely the domain of shamans and medicine men - but as an agent for mystical experience available to everyone - directed my pursuit of the medicine. In my lifelong study of the mystical experiences of Catholic saints (primarily focusing on those who lived during the Middle Ages), it was evident that thousands of dedicated men and women chose drastic methods to achieve Union with God. Today, we are able to have visions and see God through - less drastic but just as controversial - the use of ayahuasca.
Comparing the visions of mystics with those produced by ingesting ayahuasca, either under the guidance of shamans or through the Santo Daime Doctrine, is consistently addressed by patrons of the sacred medicine. Alex Polari de Alverga, a leader of the Santo Daime Doctrine, said: “In fact, the mirações we experience in ritual works are remarkably similar to visions and ecstatic states described by saints of many religions.”(1)
Huston Smith, a great champion of the religious significance of entheogenic plants and chemicals, wrote the following in an essay titled “Do Drugs Have Religious Import?”: “But given the right set and setting, the drugs can induce religious experiences that are indistinguishable from such experiences that occur spontaneously.”(2)
This article will briefly outline the practices of mystics and saints and present an archetypal pattern similarly found with ayahuasca usage. Attempting this, I would like to quote from my friend Kenneth Ring's article “Near-Death and UFO Encounters as Shamanic Initiations: Some Conceptual and Evolutionary Implications.” Dr. Ring wrote: “First, in stressing certain linkages between NDEs and UFOEs, I make no claim that all varieties of these two phenomena are thus entwined. UFOEs especially cover an extraordinary range, and therefore no one model is likely to do even nominal justice to them all.”(3)
I would like to submit here such a discussion along the lines of Dr. Ring's “framework for a partial conceptual integration of two nonordinary experiences previously held to be quite separate and unrelated.”(4)
I hope to build a theoretical bridge unifying mysticism and ayahuasca inspired by Dr. Ring's approach. Like Ken, I found there are “obvious differences” in the two types of experiences and yet, similarly, a “deep structure” that indicates “important commonalities.”
What is evidently clear about these two nonordinary states is that neither can be manipulated or harnessed. There are signposts and guidelines, but the journey is singularly individual.
Ayahuasca is an instrument that can be used by anyone to seek a direct experience with the spirit world, God, or for profound personal transformation. The democracy of ayahuasca is what gives it power. What gives ayahuasca kinship to mysticism is it can be used as a tool for religious exploration. Spiritual seekers during the Middle Ages used the only avenue available to them to achieve their religious purposes. The fact that mystical experience was impossible to control led to its diminished significance within the Catholic Church. And while ayahuasca is illegal in the U.S., Americans can still find ways to experience it.
Modern scholars have condemned medieval religious practices and have brutally criticized them. In the pursuit of spiritual ecstasy and revelation, I do not.
The fact that prayers and pleas to Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary dominated the ayahuasca ceremonies I attended at a SpiritQuest retreat in Iquitos, Peru makes the relationship of ayahuasca to Catholic mysticism all the more striking.(5) I was not aware of the strong influence Catholicism had on Peruvian curanderos and how harmoniously it shaped their ayahuasca ceremonies. With more and more Westerners traveling to South America for the intent purpose of experiencing ayahuasca visions, it is now possible to achieve what religious scholars have termed “Grand Mysticism.”
THE MEDIEVAL PATHWAY
In the Middle Ages, if one wanted to know God firsthand and have mystical experiences, one embarked on a life of rigid asceticism. Extreme fasting, intense mortification of the body, arduous prayer, self-denial and sacrifice were all deemed the consecrated pathway. Christian ascetic practices began in the third century in the deserts of Egypt and flourished until the fourteenth century. Asceticism worked: Tens of thousands of men and women willingly lived the cruel reality of desert monasticism. The practitioner entered a visionary world far more satisfying than the material world.(6)
Today, contemporary Western religions (with the exception being the religious community known as Opus Dei (7), a Prelature of the Catholic Church, which advocates fasting and corporal mortifications even for its secular members) have denounced self-mortification as a tool for experiencing God. Outside the realm of religious fasts such as the Catholic Church's observation of Lent, abstaining from any food for long periods of time is considered a psychological aberration and denounced as a medical eating disorder. The religious significance of ascetic fasting has been vilified and self-mortification is no longer officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, Christianity rests firmly on a foundation of asceticism.
Opus Die was founded in Madrid, Spain on October 2, 1928, by Blessed Josemaria Escriva (pictured). Nearly 80,000 people from around the world belong to this Prelature of the Catholic Church. Regarding ascetic practices, Blessed Josemaria Escriva wrote: “No ideal becomes a reality without sacrifice. Deny yourself. It is so beautiful to be a victim!” Opus Dei members practice corporal mortifications by using the cilice and the discipline. The cilice is a spiked chain worn around the upper thigh for two hours a day. The cilice, which provides a painful form of suffering, leaves tiny prick holes in the flesh. The discipline is a cord-like whip used on the buttocks and back once a week. A member of Opus Dei may ask permission to use the cilice and whip more often.
Blessed Josemaria Escriva was particularly devoted to the constant use of the discipline and the walls of his bathroom were said to be covered in his blood. Notwithstanding the Opus Dei practices, the modern Catholic Church has set aside ascetic exercises as counter-productive to achieving spiritual progress.
For over nine hundred years such religious practices as extreme bodily mortifications and self-starvation were celebrated as a means to chastise the body bringing it closer to God. These harsh disciplines successfully brought about Union with God, as evidenced in the lives of mystics and saints whose testament proclaimed their efficiency. For individuals who chose the path of the religious life, it was vital to suffer physical pain in order to experience God. By reducing the body's sensation of pleasure to nothing, one was able to attain ecstasy, rapture, and profound visions of God.
One method, flagellation, holds a secure place in religious history as a hallowed path. In fact, mystical experiences, achieved by any means, are not considered “proof of sanctity” when evaluating candidates for sainthood. In Making Saints: How The Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes A Saint, Who Doesn't, and Why, author Kenneth L. Woodward is quite clear in his assessment of the Church's position. Woodward writes that the “saint-makers seem downright suspicious of causes involving mystical phenomena, and anxious to dispel any notion that mystics are inherently different from other saints.”(8) Further, the author states that the Church regards all mystical gifts and wonder-working as “graces given for the benefit of the Christian community” as a whole and not for the fulfillment of the individual mystic.
Throughout the early history of the Church such religious practices as extreme bodily mortifications and self-starvation were celebrated as a means to chastise the body to bring it closer to God. These harsh disciplines successfully brought about Union with God, as evidenced in the lives of mystics and saints whose testament proclaimed their efficiency. For individuals who chose the path of the religious life, it was vital to suffer physical pain in order to experience God. By reducing the body's sensation of pleasure to nothing, one was able to attain ecstasy, rapture, and profound visions of God.
One method, flagellation, holds a secure place in religious history as a hallowed path. In medieval monasteries, monks wore a special shirt that opened in the back, so a flogging was more readily accessible. Each monastic order, for both sexes, had a flogging schedule that varied from once, twice or three times a week. The Capuchin Friars were required to discipline themselves every day.(9) Young monks crowned themselves with thorns or walked with their arms crossed and tied to a piece of wood. There is an enormous amount of literature on the lives of religious men who whipped themselves in frenzied, bloodthirsty penances. Even the great founder of the Jesuit order, St. Ignatius Loyola, was said to have wholeheartedly used the whip. His Jesuit priests, it is now diversely claimed, became “addicted to whipping.”(10)
In the Middle Ages, the abbess of a convent was customarily expected to whip the novices and was regularly required to submit herself, in private or in public, to a scourging. Some convents trained members especially for the gruesome undertaking of scourging, guaranteeing for a more oppressive flagellation.
The Catholic Church's tradition can be traced to no less a luminary than St. Paul, who was himself an advocate and self-flagellator: “I chastise my body and bring it into subjection…” (I Cor. 9:27). The grotesque devices fashioned by the religious for self-torture also showed a high degree of imagination and purposeful intent on causing the most spectacular suffering. These practices were tolerated because its effectiveness was not only evident in the works and life of the mystic but served their communities in very practical ways. The benefits derived from the prayers, miraculous healings, and social services of these religious persons was so great that when a “living saint” died, communities nearly went to war over their remains.(11)
The spiritual fruits of harsh self-mortification have been known and widely used since antiquity. One famous patron was Jean Vianney, the Curé of Ars, who was born in France in 1786 and canonized a saint in 1925. His spiritual fame was so great that during the last year of his life, over one hundred thousand pilgrims spent days waiting outside his church to see him and hear him preach. He spent from sixteen to eighteen hours a day hearing confessions. The Curé once confided to a fellow priest: “My friend, here is my recipe: I give them a small penance and the remainder I myself perform in their stead.”(12) His ambitious use of the scourge as a means of penance brought him extraordinary psychic powers that he used for the spiritual welfare of his community. Unfortunately, his reputation as a holy man, healer, and miracle worker brought him not only unwanted fame but critical attention by Church officials. His passion for fasting and extreme discipline were finally criticized by his bishop, who demanded that he stop torturing himself. Vianney complied, yet he explained: “When I could do with my body what I wanted, God refused me nothing.”(13)
The tradition of self-mortification is certainly not exclusive to medieval mystics. In the Mesoamerica Mayan religion, royalty and priests bled their penises to stimulate visions. In the Aztec religion warriors practiced autosacrifice, the bleeding of oneself through insertion of spines or other ritual implements specifically to enhance direct communication with deities.
The physiological dynamics at play are well known. Fasting and ascetic practices such as bloody flagellation are very effective modalities producing brilliant visionary experiences. In prolonged fasting, the body is deprived a significant amount of sugar and lowers the brain's ability to function effectively. A severe vitamin deficiency enables a decrease in nicotinic acid, which produces visions. Self-mortification has been used as a tool of religious aspirants since it releases a large amount of adrenaline and histamine, which affects consciousness and intensifies the potentiality of visions. Large quantities of adrenaline can cause hallucinations, and festering wounds - not treated properly - produce toxins that disrupt the enzyme systems controlling brain functions. These toxins are produced by the decomposition of protein that goes directly into the bloodstream. In addition to protracted fasting, long periods without sleep and constraining the body in painful positions also play a part in increasing psychological and physiological stress.
There have always been scholarly critics of mystics who have summarily denounced them in cruel psychoanalytical terms. Evelyn Underhill called St. Teresa of Ávila “the patron saint of hysterics”[i] and St. Paul “an epileptic”[ii]; Eric John Dingwall labeled St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi “a masochistic exhibitionist”[iii]; and W.W. Meissner trivialized St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, as “a phallic narcissistic personality.”[iv] Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, in his classic work on abnormal sexual pathology, “Psychopathia Sexualis,” called de' Pazzi “a heroine of flagellation.”(14) Kraff-Ebing asserts that the whippings de' Pazzi imposed on herself from her earliest youth caused her to destroy her nervous system and invoked massive hallucinations.
The mystical visions brought on by ascetic practices and the positive effect of these visions have been supplanted by modern day denouncements decrying, as Krafft-Ebing did, that these practices “clearly show the significance of flagellation as a sexual excitant.”(15) The brilliance of de' Pazzi's mysticism - which will be briefly discussed below - was lost on Krafft-Ebing. The “Grand Mysticism” of two of the greatest figures of their time, St. Teresa of Ávila and St. Catherine of Siena (now criticized as a neurotic anorexic so desperate for attention that she starved herself to death), are all but dismissed.
Why were mystics and holy men and women important to their communities? It would be unconscionable to reduce their significance to two key points; yet, for the task at hand I would confine their “purpose” in the communities they served as follows: They provided prayers for illnesses (and hoped-for miracles in a world without medical care) by, people believed, having established a special relationship with God; and by praying for the souls of the dead. People were very concerned over the fate of their souls.
Modern scholars have elected to ignore the religious practices of the time and deny the positive framework in which the disciplines of mystics were developed. To judge these mystics by our modern standards demeans the ecstatic modality they followed. The path they chose was paved and lit, well traveled, and richly fulfilling in spiritual commerce.
I have chosen to briefly showcase the lives of three great mystics: Saint Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, and Blessed Henry Suso. They chose a locus to revelation that was drastic and harsh, but never-the-less bore luminous fruit. In contrast, the means available to us is both elegantly simple and highly effective: Ayahuasca. Linking medieval mysticism and the modern use of ayahuasca may seem improbable; however, there are striking similarities that students of shamanism will note that unites these two disciplines.
Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi
Like most mystics of the Middle Ages, the life of Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi has been judged - in my opinion unfairly - by modern standards that should not be applied to medieval times. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi (baptized Caterina) was born in Florence, Italy in 1566. Details about her florid mystical life are well known through two biographies written by her confessors, a contemporary life written by a fellow nun, and eyewitness testimony given two years after her death during the petition for her beatification. An ascetic and cloistered nun, Mary Magdalene was also very productive, having dictated two books and corresponded with religious leaders and laypersons.
Caterina experienced her first ecstasy at twelve while looking at a sunset. At fourteen, she entered a convent but after fifteen months of ascetic penances her family brought her home. Against her family's wishes, at age seventeen, Caterina entered a Carmelite convent as a novice and took the name of Mary Magdalene. She continued her ascetic practices with such eagerness that she became dangerously ill. Upon taking her vows as a nun, Mary Magdalene became enraptured for the next forty days. Her mystical experiences were taken down by two nuns and later published as The Forty Days. At the end of forty days of ecstasy, Jesus offered her either a crown of thorns or a crown of flowers. Repeatedly, Mary Magdalene begged for the crown of thorns.
Incredibly, when she was only nineteen, Mary Magdalene received the stigmata, the physical wounds of Jesus' crucifixion. Receiving the stigmata was (and still is) recognized as a sign of immense spiritual favor. Mary Magdalene's physical austerities and mortifications in the service to God dominated her life, and rests as the centerpiece of her sanctity.
Mary Magdalene's interior religious life flourished. Not yet twenty, she defiantly told her superiors that God had instructed her to eat only bread and water. Whatever meager food she was compelled by obedience to eat, she vomited up. Devils haunted her day and night, tempting her with fragrant food to break her strenuous fasts. Demons would fling open pantry cabinets and offer her delicacies. Because of her rigorous self-mortifications she was reduced to crawling. Bridled with feelings of guilt and considering herself unworthy of the nun's habit, she wore a simple tunic.
She was richly rewarded for her penances by visions of Jesus. Mary Magdalene was widely recognized as having the power of precognition, clairvoyance, and telekinesis. Her power to heal was so extraordinary that her extreme ascetic practices, not mandated by her convent, were tolerated. After her death, her veil and pillow were used by the convent for their healing properties.
Mary Magdalene's intimate relationship with Jesus is celebrated by the ecstatic words she spoke to Him: “Mine eyes into the eyes of Thy mercy. Mine ears into Thine ears, that they may hear and understand the voice of my Spouse. My mouth into Thy mouth, that my mouth may speak what my Spouse speaks to me. My breast in Thy breast, my Beloved!”(16)
Her devotion to Jesus was so powerful that the word “love” would drive her into ecstasy. She said to Jesus: “I can no longer bear so much love, retain it in Thyself.”(17) Her passionate longing for Jesus burned so bright inside her body that Mary Magdalene could not wear woolen garments in the winter. Overcome by this fiery love, Mary Magdalene felt it as an immense and consuming flame that seared inside her. To fight off the demonic temptations that prevailed against her, she would push sharp metal objects into her skin and pour hot wax on her flesh.
Mary Magdalene's intentional life of mortifications and suffering culminated in a last illness that left her emaciated and bedridden, suffering with head and chest pains, continual fevers and constant coughing. Her asceticism had destroyed her health. Paralyzed in her bed, she suffered severe bedsores. Her lifelong motto had been, “To suffer, not to die!” Her body, on which she had inflicted so much pain, lay in this manner for three years. She began to pray for “il nudo patire,” a painful death. Mary Magdalene died in 1607 at the age of forty-one. She was canonized a saint in 1669.
Margaret Mary Alacoque When Margaret Mary was twenty-six years old, she had three evocative revelations that would dramatically alter the course of her life and shepherd into the world the brilliant iconography of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The first revelation was so provocative that its physical effects dominated Margaret Mary's entire life. The vision that would consume her took place on December 27, 1673.
Jesus appeared to Sister Margaret Mary and pressed her closely to His breast. He demanded Margaret Mary's own heart, which He took from her body and merged into His own. He said to her: “My daughter, I have thy heart and I give thee Mine, that thou mayest forever live in Me.”(18) When He returned her heart, it flamed inside her body. The intense suffering she felt was always present. “The pain of this wound,” she wrote, “is so precious to me, causes me transports so lively, that it burns me alive, it consumes me.”(19)
Margaret Mary's sole desire was to live a life dedicated to suffering. She heroically succeeded in her quest for spiritual perfection through physical pain. She wrote of her ambition: “Suffering alone can render life endurable to me.”(20) An ascetic athlete, Margaret Mary began her life as an advocate of suffering at a very early age.
Margaret was born in 1647 in L'Hautecour, Burgurdy, France. On the death of her father, eight-year-old Margaret was sent to a Poor Clares school. When she was ten she returned home, suffering from rheumatic fever. Margaret was to be bedridden for the next five years. It was only when her family made a special vow to the Blessed Virgin that Margaret was cured. This miracle, attributed to the Blessed Virgin's intervention, set the course for Margaret Mary's future.
As a young girl, Margaret sought a small corner of her family's garden as a retreat, and spent days there without eating and drinking, lost in prayer. She began to practice austere mortifications and devoted herself to caring for the poor and sick. After making a vow of chastity, Margaret began to experience rapturous visions of Jesus. Against the wishes of her family, she refused to be married. Finally, in 1671, she entered the Visitation convent at Paray-le-Monial where she spent the rest of her life.
The novice continued to have intense visions of Jesus. “My Divine Master let me see that this was the time of our betrothal, and, like the most ardent of lovers, He made me taste what was sweetest in the sweetness of His love.”(21) Margaret Mary insisted on doing all her convent work on her knees. She spent hours kneeling in prayer and meditation and excelled in the use of the discipline. The Mother Superior of her convent said: “If we had not snatched the scourge from her hands, her blood would have never ceased to flow.”(22)
Jesus generously rewarded Margaret Mary's ardor by appearing to her and speaking intimately with her. When Jesus told her she was to be His Spouse, she responded by writing a consecration to Him in her own blood. United to Jesus as his chosen spouse, Margaret Mary's enthusiasm for suffering escalated.
She sought every avenue to harshly diminish even the smallest pleasure. She seasoned her already sparse convent food with ashes. She began to deprive herself of anything to drink from Thursday until Saturday of every week. At another time, she spent fifty days without taking any liquids until she was finally forced to drink by her superiors.
Margaret Mary's sought spiritual perfection the only way she could, through mortification. She wrote: “To avenge in some manner on myself the injury I had done Him, I bound this miserable, criminal body with knotted cords, which I drew so tightly that I could hardly breathe or eat. I kept them on so long that they ate into my flesh. It was only by force and at the cost of cruel suffering that I could get them off again. It was the same with the little chains that I clasped around my arms. I could not remove them without tearing off with them pieces of flesh. I slept on planks, or strewed my bed with sharp sticks.”(23)
Like most mystics, Margaret Mary fasted strenuously as a means to bring on her visions. Her second revelation occurred in 1674, a year after the first. Jesus appeared to her with His five wounds shining like five Suns. Flames came from His heart piercing her, and all of humanity, with His divine love. He asked two things of her: the first, to receive communion every first Friday of each month; the second, to pray for an hour every week for the sins of men.
The final revelation took place in 1675. Jesus told Margaret Mary to establish a feast day to honor His Sacred Heart. Margaret Mary died on October 17, 1690. Her incorrupt body is on display at the Shrine of St. Margaret Mary in the sanctuary of the Chapel of the Visitation Convent at Paray-le-Monial where the apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus took place. She was canonized a Saint in 1920.
Henry Suso “I have lost myself in God. No one can reach me here.”(24) Blessed Henry Suso is acknowledged as one of the three great male mystics of medieval German mysticism (along with fellow Dominicans Meister Eckhart and John Tauler). Suso wrote three influential books, The Life of the Servant, Little Book of Divine Truth and Little Book of Eternal Wisdom. The Life of the Servant is an autobiographical account of Suso's pious practices, visions, and mystical experiences. Suso described his raptures, luminous experiences of God, and exactly how he went about achieving these states-he spent over sixteen years subjecting his body to excruciating torture. Suso believed, as most mystics did, that “Suffering was part of love.”(25)
The litany of Suso's long years punishing his body (he entered religious life when he was thirteen) is spectacularly harrowing. Besides prolonged and cruel fasts (he even severely restricted his intake of water), he wore a hairshirt and an iron chain until he bled “like a fountain and had to give it up.”(26) He made an undergarment of hair containing a hundred and fifty pointed brass nails that were sharpened to a fine point. The vermin that lived on his body would suck and bite him. He placed a belt around his neck and attached two rings of leather to support his hands. Every night he spent this way, with his hands and arms raised and painfully stretched. He devised other tortures for his body: He made a wooden cross and hammered thirty iron nails to it and wore the cross under his clothes day and night for eight years.
In the final year of his mortifications Suso added seven needles that caused deep wounds he bore in praise of the Mother of God. In addition, Suso flagellated himself twice a day, driving the nails deep into his flesh so that they remained there for him to pull out. Further, Suso constructed a scourge with sharp thorns and hooks that caused pieces of his flesh to be ripped out.
What drove Suso to such bloodthirsty excess? Suso's rapturous visions began with a supernatural experience. He wrote that his soul was caught up - in the body or out of the body - he knew not, and he saw and heard what tongues could not express. At one point he felt like he was floating in the air. He said: “If this is not heaven, I do not know what heaven is. Enduring all the suffering that one can put into words is not rightly enough to justify one's possessing this eternally.”(27) After one hour or more, he felt like a person who had come from another world. Departed souls often appeared to Suso telling him what had happened to them, what their punishment was, and the help they needed.
Suso believed his penitent asceticism was fundamental to his quest for heroic piety. He reached his spiritual goal-full union with the Godhead-when he entered into Spiritual Marriage with Eternal Wisdom. His writings are revered as classics of mysticism, but more importantly, represents an honest first-person account of the spiritual process in action.
If flagellation and its use as a paramystical instrument were predominately a medieval fetishism it would be appropriate to strongly admonish the Catholic Church alone for its past popularity. Yet outside western spirituality the religious practice of self-flagellation and “aberrant self-torture” continues to be sanctioned today.
Cases of similar feats abound today in religious communities. They are tributes to the powerful agency of religious belief. Modern-day scientists call these abilities “The Deliberately Caused Bodily Damage” (DCBD) Phenomena, whereby individuals cause serious wounds to their bodies without feeling pain, loss of blood or infection. In these feats, wound-healing is usually rapid. The most recognized and studied group is a Sufi school known as Tariqa Casnazaniyyah.(an Arabic-Kurdish name that means “the way of the secret that is known to no one”).
This sect has followers in many countries including Iraq, Jordan, Sudan and India. The power of invulnerability to physical damage and harm are transferred from master to student. The present Master of Tariqa Casnazaniyyah, Shaikh Muhammad al-Casnazani, allowed researchers from the Paramann Programme Laboratories in Jordan to study twenty-eight dervishes. The remarkable feats performed by the dervishes do not come about by any meditation or hypnosis. Any male can join the order of Tariqa Casnazaniyyah by declaring his intent and then submitting to a ritual initiation that takes only 2 or 3 minutes. The initiation is simply a handshake, and reciting a pledge of loyalty to Tariqa Casnazaniyyah. Then the initiate is granted permission to perform feats that demonstrate the spiritual powers of Tariqa Casnazaniyyah.
In the Paramann Laboratories the dervishes were able to insert skewers and spikes into different parts of their body. The instruments used were not sterilized, and, at the request of observers, were deliberately contaminated before inserting them into their bodies. With the aid of hammers, they drove daggers into their skull bones and knives just below their eyes.
They held red-hot iron plates with their bare hands and even bit them. And finally, the dervishes chewed and swallowed glass and sharp razor blades causing no harm to the inner tissues of the mouth and organs of the digestive system. Besides DCBD feats, the dervishes are able to exhibit no damaging effects - called Damage Resistance feats - from exposing their bodies to fire and snake handling, and to severe electrical shocks.
Further, the califa (a respected group of dervishes who are deputies of the Master) can pierce the body of any person. Califas can use the bodies of children, non-dervishes, and even non-Muslims to exhibit their spiritual abilities.
The researchers were unable to identify what methods their subjects used to perform DCBD feats. The researchers concluded: “Given the nature of the applied stimuli, the seriousness of the induced damage, the unusual reactions, and the instantaneous healings observed in DCBD feats, these phenomena reveal immunities and damage repairing abilities that seem far beyond the normal capacities of [the] human body.” The researchers made an astonishing statement: “DCBD which demonstrate[s] very unusual healing capabilities could well open a new era in medicine, and consequently, could well be responsible for unprecedented improvement in the welfare of humanity.”(28)
To commemorate the martyrdom of their most revered saint, in 1996, nearly 4,000 Shitte Muslim men in Nabatiyeh, Lebanon whipped themselves and slashed their heads in remembrance of the killing of the 7th-century saint Hussein. The men lacerated their heads with curved swords and razors and used iron chains to beat their chests. Blood poured from the shaven heads of elderly men and boys as young as two. Several people fainted from self-inflicted wounds in the four-hour ritual, but no deaths were reported. Similar ceremonies involving thousands of other men took place elsewhere in Lebanon.
MYSTICISM DEFINED
In The Psychology of Religious Mysticism by James H. Leuba (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1925) we are given the following definitions of “mystical”: “Any experience taken by the experiencer to be a contact (not through the senses, but “immediate,” “intuitive') or union of the self with a larger-than-self, be it called the World-Spirit, God, the Absolute, or otherwise.” Leuba also defines mysticism in the context of Protestantism: “Mysticism is a deification of man,” it is “a merging of the individual will with the Divine,” “an intuitive certainty of contact with the Divine.” The author concludes: “In this view, whatever tends to sharpen the demarcation between the self and the not-self, whatever leads to an isolation of the subject from the Principle of Life, is anti-mystical.”
I have chosen Leuba's definition since his well-regarded work primarily deals with Christian mysticism, yet he acknowledges the diverse paths taken by other religious systems to enter into an ecstatic relationship with God. He concedes that there are diverse methods to experience God such as the Ghost-Dance religion of the American Indians, the Sufis' dancing dervishes, and the use of certain plants by primitive cultures.
Interestingly, Leuba, like most religious scholars, is no fan of mysticism. While admitting that states of ecstatic intoxication exist, he unfairly attributes the ecstasy of mystics to unintentional bouts of orgasm. Of Margaret Mary Alacoque, Leuba writes: “Her case is clearly one of erotomania.”
There are unique bodily sensations associated with all three states discussed here: extreme mortification, willful self-starvation, and ingesting ayahuasca. None of these can be confused with orgasm. I have never read of anyone experiencing orgasm as revelatory and life-changing. Orgasm is also not known as an agent for visions or for lasting two to three hours. After experiencing ayahuasca visions and the intense physical sensations that accompany it, I would never confuse the two, even metaphorically. To say these “unsophisticated” nuns and priests experienced orgasm is just too simplistic and naïve. How could the raptures of St. Teresa of Ávila - that literally caused her to levitate - be termed orgiastic? If there is a correlation, then we must reevaluate our sexual experiences. We are all missing something.
AYAHUASCA AS A SPIRITUAL CONDUIT
It is my proposal that the negative aspects of ingesting ayahuasca (the purging, diarrhea, and nausea commonly experienced as well as the dietary and sexual restrictions) are a form of mortification for Westerners. It is therefore appropriate to compare it to the practices of the mystics and saints of the Middle Ages. The outcome accomplished by both disciplines can be illuminating, revelatory, and extraordinary. There is one significant difference. Ayahuasca does not destroy the body.
In “The Ayahuasca Phenomenon: Jungle Pilgrims: North Americans Participating in Amazon Ayahuasca Ceremonies” by Kim Kristensen, the author quotes David Maybury-Lewis: “If drinking yage (ayahuasca) is so unpleasant and frightening, why do people persist in using it? Because they believe the terror is something a person must overcome in order to attain knowledge.”
Those who never had a mystical experience themselves, regrettably, have chosen to scrutinize the mysticism of others. This is a major flaw that must be taken into account when considering the authenticity and truth of mystical experiences as evaluated by scholars.
DEMONIC ATTACKS AND SERPENT IMAGERY IN AYAHUASCA Demonic attacks, considered ridiculous in our culture, are very much a reality in Peru. I was surprised at the seriousness in which this concept is regarded. Religious writers consider demonic attacks and possession, hallmarks in the lives of mystics and saints, as archaic as religious flagellation. This is a narrow, culture-bound view. Throughout the history of religion, mystics have been savagely tormented by demons. For the curanderos of SpiritQuest, reality is populated with good and evil spirits. People can be physically harmed by bruijos and evil spirits. These attacks are not psychological manifestations of a troubled mind.
The lives of mystics are replete with fantastic tales of demonic attacks that are now believed to be an unfortunate byproduct of psychotic personalities crippled by sexual deviancy and crazed by starvation and cruel self-torture. Here is one such example from Holy Anorexia by Rudolph Bell: “Snakes, toads, and ferocious beasts abound in the hallucinations of holy anorexics, but why assume that these have sexual as well as religious significance? When St. Francesca de' Ponziani (d. 1440) saw a serpent she believed the Devil was attacking her, and it seems not to be of historical consequence that this serpent may have symbolized repressed penis envy.”(29)
In The Life of Antony, Athanasius describes a “commonplace” demonic attack on St. Antony (d. 356), who is recognized as one of the founders of Christian monasticism. “The demons, as if breaking through the building's four walls, and seeming to enter through them, were changed into the forms of beasts and reptiles. The place immediately was filled with the appearance of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, and serpents, asps, scorpions and wolves, and each of these moved in accordance with its form.”
It is impossible to review any literature on ayahuasca without coming across the image of the serpent. However terrifying it appears to us, Westerners are advised not to be afraid of the snakes, serpents, and other horrific animals that inhabit ayahuasca visions. Religious scholars would be shocked at Jeremy Narby's statement in The Cosmic Serpent: “Then I learned that in an endless number of myths, a gigantic and terrifying serpent, or a dragon, guards the axis of knowledge, which is represented in the form of a ladder (or a vine, a cord, a tree…). I also learned that (cosmic) serpents abound in the creation myths of the world and that they are not only at the origin of knowledge, but of life itself.” (30)
The serpent imagery frightened a past culture, is embraced as revelatory by another, and dismissed as mythical (or denounced as Freudian “penis envy”) by our own.
THE SHAMANIC DIET AND RELIGIOUS FASTING There are demonstrative similarities between the stringent practices of saints and mystics and ayahuasquero initiates. The process to become an ayahuasca shaman is arduous and involves years of commitment to celibacy, solitude, cultural mortifications, and extreme fasting.
In an informative interview, ayahuasquero Don Agustin Rivas-Vasquez discussed his six-year shamanic apprenticeship with Jaya Bear (See Shaman's Drum, No. 44, Mar/May 1997). Don Agustin (pictured) spent a year living in solitude in a tree. Regarding his initiatory diet, he said: “For a year, I ate only rice and plantains. I didn't eat any meat, butter, fruit, sugar, or salt. I learned many things over that year, by dieting and working with different plants.”
Food asceticism was an important feature in the lives of mystics and saints. Like Don Agustin, they abstained from using salt, sugar, and spices and never ate meat, fruit or fish.
The role fasting has played in the history of nearly of religions cannot be disputed. In The Gospel According to Mark (9:24-28), Jesus's disciples are unable to rid a man of an unclean spirit. Jesus is summoned and commands the unclean spirit to leave the man. Later, his disciples ask him why they were not able to cast out the spirit. “And he said to them, ‘This kind can be cast out in no way except by prayer and fasting.'” Jesus identifies fasting as a powerful instrument - a tool his apostles did not, or were not willing, to use. The words of Jesus were not lost on the men and women of the Middle Ages who sought mystical union with God. Coupled with prayer and physical mortifications, the spiritual graces of long, ascetic fasting were well known.
Fundamentally, a question arises: “Does unintentional starvation produce visions?” I am not aware of any research that has addressed this. The obvious inappropriate nature of this query-no one would be so insensitive to poll survivors of Nazi concentration camps or famine victims-leaves this entire area of the subject open to conjecture. Further, there are strict protocols that would prohibit such research being undertaken. My interest in the relationship between self-starvation and visions led to my conducting a one-year pilot questionnaire of self-described anorexics called “The Religious and Spiritual Aspects of Anorexia Nervosa.” Over 1250 anorexics responded to the detailed questionnaire that aimed to see if there is a correlation between self-starvation and religious experiences.
The raw data I collected requires statistical analysis. I have contacted several anorexia nervosa organizations regarding this questionnaire to no avail. Anorexia afflicts mostly upper-middle class families. With residential treatment easily costing $50,000 - and the success rate unknown - the medical community is more interested in years of therapy and treatment instead of answers.
It can be firmly stated that intentionality plays a primary role. A mystic not only fasted, but prayed.
Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, Heaven and Hell, commented on the role of fasting in visionary states: “A person under the influence of mescaline or lysergic acid will stop seeing visions when given a large dose of nicotinic acid. This helps to explain the effectiveness of fasting as an inducer of visionary experience. By reducing the amount of available sugar, fasting lowers the brain's biological efficiency and so makes possible the entry into consciousness of material possessing no survival value.”
Piero Camporesi, author of The Incorruptible Flesh, Bodily Mutation and Mortification in Religion and Folklore (Cambridge University Press, 1988), acknowledges the potency of fasting: “…the efficacy of fasting for the purposes of producing a visionary experience cannot be underestimated, or of restricted diets in unleashing hallucinatory ‘highs' in a controlled and secret environment. The combination of cell and fasting was a melting pot for the visionary experience.”
Thirty days before my arrival at the SpiritQuest retreat (located along the banks of the Rio Momón outside Iquitos, Peru), I began an exacting interpretation of the recommended “Shamanic Diet.” I took my lifelong, restrictive 500 calories per day diet and further eliminated all salt, sugar, oils, and spices. On the evening of Dec. 29, 2000, I was confident I had prepared myself and was ready - at least physically - to participate in my first ayahuasca ceremony.
Later I asked Howard Lawler, founder of SpiritQuest, why my experiences with ayahuasca were more brilliant in scope than the other eight drinkers. Howard said my exact adhering to the diet was the significant factor. I was the only participant to do so. I also attribute my Amazonian well-being to my strict diet. Seven out of the ten participants at SpiritQuest spent nearly half of our 11-day ayahuasca journey sick with various infirmities and were often bedridden. I did not have any nausea or the dreaded diarrhea that most foreigners fear and often experience. Clearly, the importance of following the dietary restrictions (as well as sexual abstinence) are well documented in the literature on ayahuasca.
I should mention that a few people in my group experienced nausea and vomiting but no visions whatsoever. Subsequently, during other ceremonies they chose to try inducing visions by drinking more than one cup of ayahuasca. One woman, despite two cups of ayahuasca, still did not have the visionary experiences she sought. This clearly defies a physiological explanation.
The religious significance of sexual abstinence need not be discussed here; however, I would like to briefly note the sexual restrictions recommended during an ayahuasca retreat at SpiritQuest. We were told not to engage in any sexual activity three days prior to taking ayahuasca, while at the retreat, and three days afterwards. During the retreat I asked why and was told: “The Goddess Ayahuasca is very jealous.” I did not question this because I went to Peru to fully engage in and respect the religious nature of the experience, not to circumvent any ritual. I told my husband I intended not to challenge the Goddess Ayahuasca on this.
I have been asked if the dietary restrictions are solely for the protection of novices and do not apply to curanderos, shamanic adepts and long-term users of ayahuasca. The highly restrictive “shamanic diet” does facilitate the visionary aspect of the experience. The scientific data unequivocally supports this statement.[v] Whether dietary and sexual restrictions are psychological in nature and merely ceremonial is unimportant. The value of ritual and its primary function is to prepare the individual for a spiritual transformation.
BIGU: AN UNRECOGNIZED FACTOR IN MYSTICISM AND CURANDERISMO?
Many mystics and saints did die of willful self-starvation and through their severe mortification practices. However, I would like to suggest an alternative to the concept of enforced fasting. There may be another state attained that allows some mystics and shamans to work unencumbered by the effects of starvation.
Qigong is an ancient Chinese healing art that consists of gentle movements with deep breathing, self-massage and meditation. An unusual byproduct of Qigong is a state called “Bigu,” in which practitioners experience a complete loss of hunger. Practitioners do not take any food and need only to drink some water or beverage. There is no sense of hunger in the Bigu state. Practitioners feel full and uncomfortable if they drink or eat. If they do eat, vomiting may occur. Most say they are more alert and have increased energy. Practitioners maintain they are able to conduct normal activities without any harmful effects.
In 1988, Chinese researchers studied a thirteen-year-old girl who had experienced Bigu for three hundred days. According to the report, the girl had avoided eating for more than four years. The researchers found that despite the girl's severe lack of caloric and nutritional intake, she responded well to physical activities and maintained a normal life.
Ancient Chinese texts describe Bigu as important for the well-being of the human body and as a cure for some diseases. Bigu is not considered fasting or imposed starvation, since it occurs unintentionally. It is a state of being that is said to correspond with one's moral attitudes. It is theorized that in a state of Bigu, “the human body may be able to absorb enough unknown elements and high quality energies other than oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, solar energy from the atmosphere and synthesize them into body calories and nutrition.”(31)
In 1992, U.S. researchers studied four persons who had experienced Bigu for several months. The subjects, who had practiced Yan Xin Qigong, were observed and closely monitored for 30 days. The study's purpose was to evaluate the physiological and psychological functions of Bigu on the body. The results of the study proved remarkable. Most subjects lost some weight and had low body temperatures, blood pressures, and pulse rates. The biochemical and hematological indices were within the normal range.
The subjects were able to maintain their lifestyles and in some cases, improve their aptitude test scores. The study was not able to explain the phenomenon of Bigu.
In June 2000 the First National Conference on the Bigu Manifestation was hosted by my friends Rustum Roy (as Conference Chair) and Gary Schwartz (who organized the 1992 U.S. bigu study). While the Bigu phenomenon entails the cessation of eating solid food for periods of weeks to months and even years while maintaining a normal daily life, the researchers concluded that the bigu state is “a “mind-body ” balanced state which needs only 250-300 calories or even less instead of the usual 2000 calories to run the human engine for a day.” Both Roy and Schwartz (pictured) insist I am in a “spontaneous” state of bigu and, they reasoned, be the cause of the potency of my ayahuasca visions.
The lifelong dietary practices of ayahuasca shamans has yet to be studied. What has been studied, and ignored, is the mystics' explanation of their diets. Their own words are dismissed. Margaret Ebner (1291-1351) was a Dominican nun and mystic who wrote about her mystical union with Christ in The Revelations of Margaret Ebner. After experiencing an ‘indescribably mysterious lightness of body,' she wrote: “From that moment I never felt any desire for bodily food, no matter how long I waited to eat.” Interestingly, Margaret also felt the need to give up sugar: “And I had the desire to give up all sweet things for the sake of the sweetness I received from God.”(32)
St. Catherine of Siena, one of the greatest mystics of the Catholic Church (and now anointed anorexia's poster child), had a life filled with brilliant visions and extraordinary mystical experiences, which were highlighted by her Mystical Marriage to Jesus and stigmata. In one vision Jesus asked her to drink from his side wound. Thereafter, she refused all food, living solely on the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Catherine was twenty-five years old at that time and following that vision did not eat anything for the remaining eight years of her life. She also slept only a half an hour a day. Her ability to survive exclusively on the Eucharist caused a sensation in her religious community. Her confessors demanded she eat; but even a small amount of food caused her to vomit. If any food reached her stomach, her face swelled and became disfigured. She suffered painfully until it was removed. Eventually, she refused to even attempt to eat.
Catherine herself said she wanted to eat, but she could not. She said she was following God's will. For the last eight years of her life, Catherine's inability to eat (called inedia) was miraculous and not an intentional act of self-discipline. Moreover, it was often thought in medieval times that the inability to eat was a sign of demonic possession, a charge a nun like Catherine - with the Inquisition at hand - would not actively promote. On January 1, 1380, as Catherine contemplated the Feast of the Circumcision, she decided to increase her ascetic practices by not drinking any water. She certainly understood the effect it would have on her body. After a month she was severely dehydrated and in debilitating physical anguish. She died on April 29, 1380. Catherine never told anyone why she decided on this course of self-denial and scholars have summarily condemned it as simply the product of severe depression.
BITTER HERBS, PURGES, VOMITORY PRACTICES, AND THE HEALING POWER OF SALIVA
Bitter Herbs
The vile, lingering bitter taste of ayahuasca is a defining hallmark of the experience. The bitter taste accompanying many herbs possessing hallucinatory qualities is well documented. Medieval people were familiar with the hallucinatory properties of certain herbs, such as the herb thorn apple.
Did mystics use commonly found hallucinogenic herbs to enable them to have religious visions? Some modern writers have taken this position. Certainly the local townspeople and religious authorities would have known if this were the case. The selfless lives of mystics and the good works they provided their communities is what ultimately made them revered and honored as living saints. It was not their personal visions but their miraculous healings and prayers that was of value to others. However, students of herbaria will find the following of much interest and offers fascinating conjecture.
The plain, coarse convent food was deemed too rich for St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, so “she seasoned it with ashes to render it more unpalatable. She deprived herself of every kind of beverage; and at one time she took the resolution not to drink anything from Thursday until Saturday of every week.”(33) In The Life of Blessed Birgitta, we are told that every Friday, Birgitta (d.1373), in honor of Christ's passion on the cross she was accustomed “to hold in her mouth a certain very bitter herb, which is called genicana. She also did this on other days when she had uttered some unconsidered or incautious word.”(34) The Sicilian Eustochia of Messina's (d.1485) life was that of a classic mystic: a meager bread crumbs-and-water diet, flagellation, wearing of a hairshirt, and praiseworthy work with the poor and sick. She is said to have “always added bitter white herbs to all her food.”(35)
During his life (d. 1663) “abstained from bread for five years, from wine for ten years, and ate only herbs, dried fruits and beans, to which he added a powder, which several religious who tasted it described as of unspeakable bitterness. The vegetables which he ate on Fridays were of such repugnant savor that a friar who tasted them with the tip of his tongue, was so sickened that for several days all food caused him nausea.”(36) Piero Camporesi identifies the powder Suso used as “the bitterest wormwood.” Moreover, in Camporesi's translation Suso's Friday food was not “vegetables” but “a particular herb, which was so bitter….”.
St. Catherine of Siena also used an unidentified herb; however, no one reading about her life would conclude it was anything but a “bitter herb.” Her biographer wrote: “She made it her practice, therefore, not to swallow such herbs as she put into her mouth, but only to chew them and then expel the solid matter from her mouth.”(37)
St. Catherine of Genoa in her mystical work The Spiritual Dialogue wrote:
“[God] made her moderate in her eating so that she stopped eating fruit (of which she was very fond) or meat or anything rich. So that she would still further lose the taste for eating, He had her use hepatic oil and ground agracio, with which she would season any food she had a particular liking for.” One modern writer speculates that “agracio” is a mistranslation for “agaric.”(38) This invites an entirely new interpretation. Considering Catherine's fame and the sanctity she was well known for - as well as the Church's close watch on those who were revered for their holiness - her intentional use of a hallucinogenic herb as a visionary agent seems incongruous.
The medieval Church's position on “living saints” can be summarized in the following manner: “Living saints” were problematic. The cult of the saint took people away from God and Jesus and undermined Church authority. “Living saints” were carefully monitored for fear they preached something contrary to doctrine. They interfered with the priesthood's role as intermediary between man and God. While the Church could not stop people's devotion and need for “living saints,” they certainly kept abreast of their visionary and mystical forays.
Purges and Vomitory Practices of the Middle Ages
The evacuatory and vomitory nature of ayahuasca is well known. What is of interest here is the belief held in the Middle Ages regarding the healing properties of these practices. Medical theories of the time felt vomiting and induced evacuative remedies to be the chief measures for ensuring a healthy and long life.
Is there indeed a value to these side effects that ingesting ayahuasca facilitates?
During the Middle Ages white hellebore or veratrum (which was called a “sacred medicine”) and black hellebore (the most drastic) were deemed sovereign treatments for cleansing the body and liberating the soul. Piero Camporesi has this to say about such practices: “The ravaging effects of the hellebore, the hastening and slowing of the pulse, nervous system and brain, caused by veratrum, the fainting fits and therapeutic convulsions, the leaps into unreality, the loss of balance (to which should be added other kinds of permanent toxification cause by other herbs and self-punitory diets) may have had some imponderable relationships (though small and not verifiable) with the swoonings, catalepsy, warblings and flights of the armies of ecstatics, convulsionary visionaries, in that atmosphere charged with giddiness, raptures and loss of consciousness.”
Camporesi is obviously not a champion of purification rites. He notes that the liberation by purge using the hellebore began with a whole series of preliminary steps including lotions, baths to induce sweating, moistening of the body, poultices, enemas, fomentations and special diets. Medieval patients were required to undergo a series of emetics and vigorous purges, some lasting for seven days or more, to expel their demons.
Anyone who has taken ayahuasca in a ritual setting can see the similarities. Ayahuasca shamans, like medieval exorcists, may be utilizing the curative aspects of evacuatory and vomitory disciplines in conjunction with the medicine. Perhaps the use of ayahuasca is less drastic, though it's interesting to note that most ayahuasca retreats are usually seven-to-ten days in duration.
The Healing Power of Saliva Like Jesus did (Mark 7:32-35, 8:22-24 and John 9:6-7), shamans such as Don Agustin use their saliva as a healing agent. This “magical phlegm” is called yachai and shamans apply it as a healing salve that is spat directly on the diseased part of a patient's body. They also suck the yachai back into themselves. This is certainly not considered repugnant or bizarre behavior. Saints also used their saliva for healing, though modern scholars have cruelly eviscerated its meaning: The mystics were either sensational masochists or the behavior was homoerotic in coloration.
Saint Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi frequently healed her sisters of leprosy and skin diseases by licking their sores. She even sucked the wound of one sister who was suffering from a leg ulcer that had festered with maggots. Saint Catherine of Siena worked with the dying during an outbreak of the plague in her city. She assisted diseased patients, using her mouth to clean the putrefying breast of an ill woman. Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque said she delighted in kissing the wounds of the sick she ministered to, and pressing her lips to the most revolting ulcers. She sucked the festering toes of the sick. In her Mémoire, Margaret Mary tells of nursing a fellow nun who was dying of stomach cancer by clearing away the sister's vomit with her lips and tongue.
St. Hugh of London (d. 1200), when asked why he kissed a leper replied: “…the leper's kiss cleansed my soul.”[vi] Medieval mystics Lukardis of Oberweimar (d. 1309) and Margaret of Faenza (d. 1330) breathed deeply into their fellow nuns' mouths as a means of healing them. The intense physical sensations Lukardis and Margaret said they felt throughout their body were understood by them to be their receiving of God's grace. Colette of Corbie (d. 1447), who began her religious life as a hermit and later reformed and founded many convents, miraculously multiplied food and wine for her monasteries. She effected cures with food, putting bread she had chewed into the mouths of two sick sisters. On another occasion, her kiss healed a leper. Today, scholars consider these acts as “erotic kisses” and have not associated them with traditional shamanic healing practices.
It is my position that mystics such as Catherine of Siena, Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi and Mary Margaret Alacoque understood the potent healing power of their saliva; they were not, as modern scholars suggest, acting
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