This remarkable book could not be more opportune, as it comes at a time when there is a keen interest in both psychedelics and Indigenous healing practices. As someone who has followed developments in both fields for decades, I was gratified to read each scholarly chapter, knowing that other readers would share my enthusiasm.
The World Health Organization estimates that only 20 percent of the world’s population has access to mainstream Western medicine. Instead, most people rely on a variety of folk remedies that take various forms in different parts of the world. The term ethnomedicine refers to the comparative study of traditional medical systems, which were once dismissed as worthless at best and dangerous at worst, succeeding only when serving as a placebo. However, some 40% of Western medicine has its roots in various types of ethnomedicine, illustrating their effectiveness. For example, the bark of the white willow tree contains salicin, the original source of aspirin. In another part of the world, cassia, a precursor to quinine, was long used to treat yellow fever. To promote relaxation, folk healers used such remedies as basil, chamomile, fennel, and lavender, now found to lower blood pressure.
The term traditional medicine serves as a broad umbrella that encompasses both ethnomedicine and Indigenous medicine, focusing on the longstanding healing practices that predate modern Western medicine. These traditional systems emphasize holistic, biopsychosocial approaches to health. In an era of increasing globalization and technological advancements in healthcare, recognizing the value and significance of ethnomedicine, Indigenous medicine, and traditional medicine is crucial for fostering cultural respect, preserving biodiversity, and promoting integrative approaches to global health and wellness, often serving the purposes of “decolonization,” a laudable effort to preserve Indigenous traditions.
This landmark book, Entheogenic Healing, provides vivid accounts of surviving psychedelic traditional ethnomedicines and their modern and post-modern adaptations. Entheogenic healing involves treatments with psilocybin and similar LSD-like substances that were originally called “psychotomimetic” (mimicking psychoses) or “hallucinogenic” (inducing hallucinations). However, subsequent scholarship found both terms simplistic and inadequate, giving way to “psychedelic” (mind-manifesting) and “entheogenic” (evoking one’s inner divinity). The chapters of this book focus on the use of these substances to facilitate “entheogenic healing” (“making whole”).
Ever since my first psychedelic experience at Harvard University in 1962, I have been aware of the potentials of psychedelics for art, spirituality, and psychotherapy. I am pleased that my vision is now being incarnated. My contact with traditional Indigenous medicine dates back to 1967 when I met Grandmother Twylah Nitsch, a Seneca elder, at a conference in upstate New York. Grandmother Twylah, a member of the Wolf Clan, a healer, lecturer, and writer, authored vivid accounts of several dozen “spirit animals.” Since that event, I have had the good fortune to have encountered shamans from six continents, marveling at their keen insights and remarkable skills in facilitating healing.
My interest in these entheogenic healing traditions began even earlier, in 1957 when I read an article in Life magazine about a folk healer in Mexico who used mind-altering mushrooms in her practice. My fascination with that article led to several later outcomes, among them a face-to-face encounter with that very Mexican folk healer, María Sabina, in Huautla de Jiménez, Mexico. In 1955 she had allowed an American mycologist, Gordon Wasson, to participate in an evening velada, after which he initiated an analysis of the mushrooms. This eventually led to the discovery by Albert Hofmann, who had synthesized lysergic acid (LSD), that they contained a psychoactive ingredient now known as psilocybin. Consequently, a new line of study, ethnomycology, was initiated. I was delighted to see an entire chapter devoted to the historical and cultural context of the work of Doña Maria Sabina. Michael Winkelman and I met her in 1980 and participated with one of her students, Doña Clotilde, in her nighttime velada.
Another chapter describes the sacramental use of Peyote, the basis of the 300,000-member Native American Church. Its practices are guaranteed by a 1994 amendment to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, originally passed by the US Congress in 1978. Over the years, I have discussed these practices with several officiants of these ceremonies, namely, Roadmen and Firemen, who struck me as erudite as well as devoted to their practices.
Another group of chapters involves ayahuasca-facilitated healing (also known by other appellations such as yagé). These practices were of special interest to me because I first heard about them from my Northwestern University professor, William McGovern, who had described them in his 1927 book, Jungle Paths and Inca Ruins. In this decade and later, ayahuasca evoked three Brazilian spiritual movements: Santo Daime, União do Vegetal, and Barquinha. I have interviewed members of all of those churches and sometimes participated in their ceremonies myself.
The chapter on Santo Daime features the oldest of the Brazil-based “ayahuasca religions” that combine entheogenic spirituality and healing. Santo Daime integrates Amazonian shamanism, Catholicism, and European spiritism. It utilizes hymns the members report that they received as gifts from spirit beings. This eclecticism characterizes the attempts of many Indigenous people to preserve their ancient traditions by integrating colonial intrusions. Another example of this syncretism is illustrated in a chapter that shows how the San Pedro cactus rituals combine Indigenous practices with Catholic sources of power. It is noted in several chapters that Indigenous rituals and ceremonies often include the use of other “plant teachers” (such as tobacco and cacao), as well as music, drama, prayers, crystals, blowing and sucking on the body, role-playing, and spirit “incorporation.” Needless to say, not all plant medicines are psychedelic.
Other chapters focus on other cultural traditions of use of mescaline-containing cacti and other plant medicines such as ibogaine, Cannabis, and the fungus Psilocybe, with all of which I have had first-hand experiences. A whole section of Entheogenic Healing describes forms of entheogenic practice that reflect the interaction of Indigenous groups with Western colonization, particularly the acculturation with Christianity. This is followed by a section of chapters on the post-modern entheogenic reinventions that have repurposed ancient plant medicines in new entheogenic worldviews.
I have not had direct experiences in observing the use of 5-MEO-DMT and Kambo, so I learned a great deal by reading these chapters. They added to my insight that contemporary entheogenic practices have substantial commonalities, such as evoking a social event that engages an ego-dissolution, followed by the reunification of participants’ psyches, often with performances of singing, drumming, and dancing.
The chapter on Cannabis speaks of its stimulation of the “eternal feminine,” and I have observed many aspects of honoring internal and external “female power.” There is often a unification of one’s “male” and “female” potentials, as well as the empowerment of female practitioners (such as doña María Sabina), often in cultures where women are degraded. I spent time with Doña Maria Menininha de Gantois, a Candomblé “Mãe de Santos” in Brazil, who became a national icon, and who told me, “When the spirits come knocking at your door, you must let them in.”
These informative chapters illustrate the many similarities in the practices of entheogenic healing, similarities that make sense within the context of evolutionary psychology by demonstrating adaptations for survival in the elicitation of endogenous healing processes. The perspectives of these chapters indicate that traditional entheogenic healing practices can realistically provide well-grounded guidelines for developing 21st-century psychedelic medicine.
Several chapters emphasize the “postmodern” adaptations of elements of traditional entheogenic healing. Postmodernism is a broad and often complex concept, one that intersects with entheogenic practices in several ways. For example, postmodernism emphasizes the subjective nature of reality, arguing that consciousness is a personal, subjective experience shaped by cultural and social contexts, aligning with the postmodern idea that objective truth is elusive or non-existent. The very nature of psychedelic experience disrupts one’s “objective” conventional worldview, allowing for novel insights and behaviors that may promote healing. Finding “new” uses for “old” psychedelics is a postmodern concept, one that permeates the later sections of Entheogenic Healing.
Indeed, postmodernism challenges the ordinary notion of the “self,” suggesting that identity is constructed through language and social interactions rather than being innate or fixed. Entheogenic healing traditions take advantage of this fluidity and often fragmented identity, providing guidance to foster development of a new, healthier self-concept. In postmodern thought, language is seen as central to constructing reality, positing that one’s understanding of oneself is largely shaped by the narratives and discourses to which one is exposed. Again, proper guidance during an entheogenic healing session can create novel and healthier narratives fostered by powerful images, symbols, and metaphors derived from the entheogenic experiences.
Postmodernism’s assertion that there are no absolute truths resonates with entheogenic healing by suggesting that each individual’s perception of reality has its own validity. These more adaptive perceptions may emerge during an entheogenic session. Moreover, these perceptions vary across cultures and societies, a situation that may promote the choices and unconventional ideas that often emerge during a psychedelic session. In traditional societies, psychedelics typically reinforce a culture’s worldviews. However, in contemporary times, participants’ personal mythologies may be more adaptive than their culture’s mythologies.
Postmodernism often critiques the idea of objective science, which has implications for entheogenic healing. It argues that scientific understandings of healing are culturally and socially mediated and, thus, are not entirely objective. Reflecting postmodernism’s embrace of pluralism, entheogenic healing often incorporates multiple perspectives—psychological, neurological, spiritual, and cultural—acknowledging the complexity and multifaceted nature of healing. All too often, science has been laggard in modifying its views of gender differences, ethnic variations, and sexual diversity.
Each of these perspectives illustrates how postmodernism offers a unique lens through which to examine and understand entheogenic healing, highlighting the subjective, constructed, and multifaceted nature of participants’ worldviews. However, these positive adaptations rarely occur automatically, but need the guidance of a skilled shaman, curandera, counselor, or psychotherapist to bring personal material into one’s awareness—and to embody this new awareness in a new worldview after the session ends.
These postmodern perspectives are illustrated in how Michael Winkelman and his colleagues advocate for the recognition and integration of the perspectives of Indigenous knowledge systems in contemporary psychedelic healing. They point out that Indigenous medicine, with its integrated approach to physical, psychological, cultural, and spiritual well-being, can contribute significantly to global health challenges such as substance abuse, child trauma, and the psychic scars of war, especially in those areas where Western medical resources are limited or ineffective.
Bravo to Michael Winkelman and his colleagues. After so many years of neglect, tribalization, and opposition, Entheogenic Healing is truly an idea whose time has come.
Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.
References
McGovern, W. (1927). Jungle paths and Inca ruins. New York: The Century Company.