maestro 



s from tl 



limbs 



spinning the patient, he hit each one with a switch on the back, 

 and hurried the patient to the end of the veranda, as he yelled an 

 order to shake violently. Then the apprentices took over, 

 rubbing each patient with black round stones, white rocks, 

 crystals of quartz and finally melted glass. There followed 

 another rub down, first with two wooden staffs and then with 

 two colonial swords. Finally, with the aid of the two staffs 

 placed across the chest of the patient, the apprentice swung him 

 or her off the ground, violently shaking the lower part of the 

 body. The swords were placed in the form of a cross on the 

 ground and the patient was led ceremoniously across the 

 threshold that the swords represented. 



^The actual intoxicating effect of the San Pedro was minimal. During his first three 

 sessions with San Pedro, at least, it is clear that Sharon himself did not become 

 intoxicated (Sharon 1972: 133-135). In part explaining his own failure to be affected by 

 the psychoactive preparation, he stresses that "much more than the psychoactive cactus 

 itself is at work in learning to *see\ To see, to attain vision beyond what we would call the 

 real world requires hard work, lengthy training and most important a very special kind 

 of psychological predisposition combined to cultural conditioning" (Sharon 1972: 117). 

 While acknowledging that, in general, a shaman's ability to interpret the hallucinogenic 

 vision is a highly evolved skill, 1 fear that I must consider the rather prosaic matter of 

 dosage. Having self-experimented on a number of occasions with two species of 

 Trichocereus {T. Pachanoi and T, Bridgesii Britton et Rose) and having experienced 

 extremely strong psychoactive intoxications during each experiment, I would argue that 

 I was quite adequately predisposec' to experience mescaline narcosis. Yet during neither 

 of the two sessions in which I participated at Huancabamba did I, niy "sTmilarly 

 experienced assistant, nor any of the participants become noticeably intoxicated. In fact, 

 a number of experienced students of psychotomimetic drugs have commented informally 

 on their repeated frustration when participating in indigenous rituals involving 

 psychoactive plants (Plowman, Weil, McKenna, Schultes pers. com.). This may be a 

 reflection of psychological and physiological predisposition on the part of the western 

 participants. Luis Luna (1983) has written a fascinating paper suggesting that a 

 particular ritualistically prescribed and rigidly followed diet greatly enhances suscepti- 

 bility to ayahuQsca {Banisteriopsis Caapi (Spr ex Griseb) Morton). In the San Pedro 

 cults, however, and perhaps in other cases, it appears to be, at least partially, a rather 

 mundane matter of dosage. The maestro clearly controls access to the spiritual realm in 

 the sense that a Roman Catholic priest is the only conduit through which the believer can 

 partake of what he believes is the body of Christ. The sub-threshold dosages certainly do 

 not realize the complete pharmacological potential of the hallucinogen. Rather, the 

 hallucinogens may have become symbolically analogous to the Eucharist. Perhaps the 

 maestro, himself utterly famihar with the visionary world illuminated by the 

 psychoactive plants, retains a firmer control on the access to that spirit realm than has 

 been commonly assumed. 



375 



