Foreword by Ralph Metzner

Preface to the Second Edition Luis Eduardo Luna and Steven F. White

Introduction

I. AYAHUASCA MYTHS AND TESTIMONIES

Yajé: Myth and Ritual

Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff

The Creation Myth

Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff

A Visit to the Second Heaven: A Siona Narrative of the Yagé Experience

E. Jean Matteson Langdon

Two Ayahuasca Myths from the Cashinahua of Northwestern Brazil

Elsje Maria Lagrou

Mythologies of the Vine

Oscar Calavia Sáez

A Huaorani Myth of the First Miiyabu (Ayahuasca Vine)

Jonathon S. Miller Weisberger

Initiation Experience

Jean-Pierre Chaumeil (as told by Alberto Prohaño)

Light of This World

Don Hilario Peña

Unámarai, Father of Yajé

Hugo Niño

At the End You See God

Fernando Payaguaje

II.AYAHUASCA CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS

On Some Remarkable Narcotics of the Amazon Valley and Orinoco

Richard Spruce

First Known Printed Reference to Ayahuasca (1675)

José Chantre y Herrera

The Drug that Makes Men Brave

Gordon MacCreagh

Discovering the Way

Michael Harner

A Yajé Session

Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff

Yagé Nostalgia

Scott S. Robinson

The Spears of Twilight: Life and Death in the Amazon Jungle

Philippe Descola

One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest

Wade Davis

Becoming-Jaguar

William Torres C.

The Jaguar Who Would Not Say Her Prayers: Changing Polarities in Upper Amazonian Shamanism

Françoise Barbira Freedman

Montage

Michael Taussig

Design Therapy

Angelika Gebhart-Sayer

Healing Icaros in Peruvian Vegetalismo

Susana Bustos

Tracking the River of Change: A Multidimensional Interpretation of Ayahuasca Healing

The Heart: Hungarian Ethnobotanical and Ayahuasca Research Team (Petra Bokor, Ede Frecska, Lajos Horvath, Attila Szabo)

Through the Void: A Cognitive Testimony

Jan Kounen

Twenty Years Later

François Demange

Some Observations on the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience

Luis Eduardo Luna

Ayahuasca as Antidote

Jeremy Narby

III. NEW RELIGIONS: SANTO DAIME, BARQUINHA, AND UNIÃO DO VEGETAL (UDV)

Hymns

Received by Raimundo Irineu Serra

Received by Sebastião Mota de Melo

Received by Alfredo Gregório de Melo

Received by Daniel Pereira de Matos

Received by Francisca Campos do Nascimento

The Book of Visions: Journey to Santo Daime (excerpt)

Alex Polari de Alverga

An Unusual Experience with “Hoasca”: A Lesson From the Teacher

Dennis J. McKenna

IV. WRITING AYAHUASCA

The Vortex (excerpt)

José Eustasio Rivera

The Yagé Letters

Allen Ginsberg

Men of Chazúta

F. Bruce Lamb

The Three Halves of Ino Moxo (excerpt)

César Calvo

Ayahuasca, or What There Is at the End

Mario Villafranca Saravia

Returning

Ib Michael

Aerial Waters

Néstor Perlongher

The Mother of the Voice in the Ear (excerpt)

Alfonso Domingo

Rio NAPO

Dale Pendell

From Sworn to the Plants

Steven F. White

Ayahuasca in My Art and Philosophy

Alex Grey

Ayahuasca

Juan Carlos Galeano

The Woman I Could Have Been

Esthela Calderón

Icaro of the Yacumama

Ana Varela Tafur

Rite of Passage

Percy Vílchez Vela

Ayahuasca Gave Me a Story

Graham Hancock

V. AYAHUASCA IN VISUAL EXPRESSION

List of Color Plates, Ayahuasca in Visual Expression

Bibliography, Select Discography and Filmography

Appendix – Selected Works in Their Original Language

Notes on Contributors