A taxonomy of ayahuasca hallucinations

A wonderful list categorising hallucinations experienced by the Cashinahua people of Peru after drinking the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca.

1. Brightly colored, large snakes
2. Jaguars and ocelots
3. Spirits, both of ayahuasca and others
4. Large trees, often falling trees
5. Lakes, frequently filled with anacondas and alligators
6. Cashinahua villages and those of other Indians
7. Traders and their goods
8. Gardens

It was reported by the anthropologist Ken Kensinger in a chapter in the book Hallucinogens and Shamanism.

It reminded me of writer Jorge Luis Borges’ whimsical classification system for animals.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: