The Ayahuasca Sessions: Conversations with Amazonian Curanderos and Western Shamans

In areas of Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru, the traditional herbal brew known as ayahuasca or yaje_ is legally used to heal physical ailments and to cleanse and purify the spirit by connecting it to the web of life; Sting and Tori Amos have admitted sampling it in Latin America, as has Paul Simon, who chronicled the experience in his song “Spirit Voices.” Australian journalist Rak Razam documents the thriving business of 21st-century Amazonian hallucinogenic shamanism from multiple perspectives, revealing the stark differences between indigenous and foreign approaches as well as the commonalities.