Making Ayahuasca

The process to make ayahuasca varies from curandero to curandero, and even from batch to batch.  The greatest differences are in the admixture plants used in addition to the ayahuasca.  The shipibo, for example, only use chacruna and ayahuasca in their brews.  Others use a variety of plants in addition to chacruna, like ajo sacha, hierba santa, mapacho, or toé, which alter or enhance the effects of the ayahuasca.  The Yagua, however, do not use any admixture plants, only the ayahausca vine and water.

Here is a description of how ayahuasca is made:

First, the vine is cut from the living vine.  Usually, the vine is cut early in the morning, and always at the highest point, which often involves climbing up the tree on which the vine is growing.  Prayers asking for permission to cut the vine are made at the vine before cutting anything. Often, offerings of tobacco are also given at the base.

The age of the vine determines its strength and power, but the thickness of the vine segments is not as important.  The new shoots of a twenty year old vine are as powerful as the base, and cutting the upper vines allows the base to keep growing and producing more ayahuasca.

The vine is cut into segments short enough to fit in the pot.  The amount of vine segments depends on the quantity of ayahuasca being cooked.

The next step is to clean the vine segments of moss or other plant matter that is not ayahuasca.  This can be done by washing the vine segments or by scraping the bark with a knife to ensure that nothing other than the ayahuasca vine will be going into the brew. Making ayahuasca is a long process, so sometimes the vines are cut and cleaned one day and prepared the next.  Fasting is often practiced during the preparation of the sacred medicine to maintain energetic purity.

Once the vine segments are clean they are then mashed with a wooden mallet or hammer.  This breaks the vine into thinner strands, increasing their surface area and allowing more extraction of their medicinal essence.  The vines are hard, so it is important to strike them well but not so hard as to pulverize the segments.  Sometimes, curanderos sing icaros during this process to communicate their intentions with the spirit of the vine and make the effects stronger.

Once the vine segments are mashed into thin strands, they are placed in the pot along with the chacruna leaves.  Some curanderos place the whole leaves in between layers of vine segments and other curanderos tear the leaves into small pieces, removing the central stem of each leaf.

When the vines and leaves are in the pot, water is poured in until it just covers the plant material entirely.

At this point the pot is put over a fire and brought to a boil.  Cooking times vary greatly as do cooking temperatures, controlled by the size of the fire, but the goal is the same: to reduce the water in the pot while absorbing the medicinal essences of the plants being cooked.  A strong boil with a large fire requires less time to prepare than a small fire, which can take days.  Again, singing of healing icaros often accompanies the preparation to ensure its potency and healing power.

When the curandero feels the brew has cooked long enough, the water is removed from the pot, leaving the plant material.  Usually, more water is added to the plant material and the boiling process is repeated.  This procedure may be done several times with the same plant material.  Each reduction increases the strength of the final brew because more medicine is extracted each time and more liquid is produced for the last reduction, which is done without plant material.

Once all the reductions are done, the liquid is combined and put back on the fire to reduce it further.  At this point, the curandero will soplay the brew and may put one or more mapachos in as well.  The reduction is the final step in the cooking process and determines the strength of each dose.  Therefore, the curandero watches carefully as the liquid is reduced, making sure that it is at the strength he/she desires.  The curandero stay with the brew the entire time during its preparation.

The curandero communicates with the brew throughout the lengthy process by praying, singing, and soplaying with or without mapacho smoke.  A batch of ayahuasca not only contains the spirit of the plant ingredients, but also the power of the curandero who made the medicine.  From beginning to end, the process to make two liters of ayahuasca is at least six hours, but can be much longer if the fire is not as big or if the curandero does several reductions.

When the brew if finally done cooking, it is taken off the fire to cool.  Dozens of liters of water are reduced into one or two liters of prepared medicine.  The ayahuasca vine segments may then be saved and used for another batch of ayahuasca.  The leaves are returned back to nature, ‘thrown away,’ so to speak.  Often times while the brew is cooling, multi-colored patterns, or ‘visions,’ form on the surface of the ayahuasca, most likely from the oils in the medicine.

The final step, when the brew has cooled, is to filter the medicine to remove any remaining plant material.  This is often done with a fine cloth or even a shirt. The curandero then says a final prayer over the medicine to bless it.  The brown liquid is then put into a bottle to save for the ceremony.

Ayahuasca will keep for several weeks before fermenting.  Even when it ferments, it still has effect, and can be reheated to reverse the fermentation.

There are many variants to this method, according to the different traditions, but these are the basics of making the sacred medicine ayahuasca.  While the ingredients and preparation are important aspects, the role of the curandero should not be underestimated.

The effects of ayahuasca often have more to do with the person drinking it and the person leading the ceremony than the preparation of the medicine.  Many times in a ceremony, someone will have amazing visions while someone else who drank the exact same ayahuasca in the same ceremony will have none, thus proving that the qualities of each individual determines the power of the brew.  Also, there are many cases when two or more people lead a ceremony and everyone experiences much more powerful visions and feelings when a particular curandero is singing or leading the ceremony than the other(s).  Because it is such a spiritual experience, ayahuasca cannot be understood merely with a chemical perspective, but requires a spiritual viewpoint as well.