Questions across traditions
Each page here asks one question and lets several traditions answer it in turn. The answers come from different places, peoples and times, and they often disagree: they are not versions of one idea. Each answer is a short summary of what one of our tradition articles reports, with a quotation from that article and a link to the section it draws on, so you can read the full account and its sources.
Is the plant a teacher?
From a mushroom in Oaxaca that speaks and names the remedy to a Piaroa shaman who says yopo “is not a teacher.”
Who chooses the healer?
The call comes from ancestors, from healing beings in dreams, from the powers of the hills, or from a gift the healer is born with.
Who takes the medicine, and how does it heal?
Sometimes the healer takes it, sometimes the patient, sometimes both, and in Fiji it is not taken as a cure at all.
Ayahuasca: who drinks, and how does it heal?
Six traditions disagree: some healers insist the patient must not drink, others give a little, and one rule says to refuse no one who asks.
