MAPS - Book and Article Reviews

Yaje: The New Purgatory (Encounters with Ayahuasca) is the verbal purge of one European-American ayahuasca-drinker, Jimmy Weiskopf, who struggles with the beautiful confusion of the healing and consciousness-evolution the brew activates. Part of the Villegas series on shamanic healing, the book is the verbal purge of Wieskopf after several years of experiences drinking ayahuasca (also called “yaje”) in South America. The majority of Weiskopf’s testimony is based on the time he spent as an apprentice to a well-known shaman in Colombia, but he also draws from his study of the brew and its uses in Peru and Brazil. This Bible-thick book (668-pages!) is another interesting contribution to the growing genre of non-fiction by European-Americans who have had worldview-altering encounters with ayahuasca so profound as to subsequently move them to share their memories and thoughts with the public. Weiskopf’s account differs from the others in the novelesque detail his book offers, reminiscent of the deep description required in ethnography. The length and journal-like quality of the work is both the shining strength and weakness.

The author was aware that his audience may have difficulty holding concentration throughout the account, writing in the introduction, “I hope that none of these personal details will be considered gratuitous, for to drink yaje is to subject oneself to an integral therapy that works on one’s body, consciousness and spirit at the same time. This book is a chronicle of the long process of becoming aware of oneself that is effected by yaje, which is a mechanism of self-knowledge, on the one hand, and, of communication with the spirits on the other.” I personally found it difficult to keep going after the first three hundred pages, even though my interest in the subject is intense, being one who holds ayahuasca as a divine medicine and sacrament. I often longed for a different organization of the wide variety of subjects Weiskopf deals with, including how ayahausca was made by the shamans he worked with, accounts of specific ceremonies, reviews of past literature about ayahuasca traditions, and ideological musing prompted by insights gifted by the brew. A glossary would be a fine addition to the work.

Humanity is lucky that Weiskopf decided to go ahead and translate this work from the original Spanish it was published in three years ago. I appreciate the attention and wary homage Weiskopf pays to the purgatory effect of ayahuasca that most drinkers experience. The nausea, vomiting and defecation that the brew is in/famous for inducing is described initially as part of the healing mechanism of yaje, but about 250 pages later, Weiskpf adds “a word about vomiting,” then a postscript to that, and then a postscript to the postscript. Such structure reflects the diversity of experience and changing interpretations of the author, who wrote that, “perhaps the biggest obstacle for the Western mentality when it comes to yaje is our lack of a certain poise about the experience…we feel uncomfortable without ‘rules’; for us it has always to be this or that. Especially in ‘spiritual’ matters we want everything to be clear-cut, and that is simply not the way the vine works.”

In this book it is clear that ayahuasca experiences are mysteriously subjective, that the ayahuasca-drinker’s knowledge is never stagnant and therefore beyond conclusions. It’s understandable that the book is long and autobiographical; it appears that Weiskopf wrote the book as part of his processing and integrating over a decade of experience drinking ayahuasca. Much of that time, he was living in the “ayahuasca hut” in the family of the shaman he was apprenticed to, and apparently did not have much opportunity to verbalize his experience with comrades who shared his culture and language. Read this romantic account slowly and patiently, and know that the experiences of ayahuasca-drinkers are as diverse and ever-changing as the reflections of this man who courageously and generously shares his experiences with us.