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When I talk about Chichaja
or latin name, gaultheria insipida, Chichaja
or gaultheria insipida, is a plant native to the Andes, used traditionally by
indigenous female healers near the Colombian Amazon, to prepare a brew with this name,
Chichaja, also known as the female Ayuhuasca
Widely used today, before and after the consumption of
Ayuhuasca, in Colombian healing settings.
Chichaja is an element that perhaps I love distinguishing
a particular type of Colombian shamanism. The spice - it's important
importance within Ayuhuasca healing ensemble, Chichaja has been barely
studied.
Well
that's the oldest mention of Chichaja I have found
It's from 1873, but there is no description
of the use of the... as a healing tool.
This was made in Colombia. It is stated that Chichaja, or Gaultheria insipida
grows up in Ecuador
and in Colombia, but it's just in Colombia, to the best of my knowledge
where Chichaja is used as a healing plant.
The aim of this presentation is to describe the effects of Chichaja over consciousness
as Chichaja isn't a known plant, I will make a comparison with Ayuhuasca
which is a better-known plant. I will talk about
differences and relationships with Ayuhuasca
But my main idea is that Chichaja tends to alter in different ways
the consciousness of female and male
drinkers. At least, that's the idea according to observations made here ?in free work? starting two years ago.
which has been conducted in different parts of Colombia
but particularly in the west Amazon forest - the Putamayo, essentially.
Traditionally, Chichaja has been used
by Inga indigenous women
based in Sibundoy, Putamayo
The Colombian anthropologist Clara Giraldo-Tafur has studied
the ways this plant, Chichaja, is used by Inga women in Santiago
one of the main towns in Sibundoy. We found the
Chichaja among another 118 plants
listed by the anthropologists, and we learned that it is
"it is useful to heal laziness,
sleeping excess, and body pains"
Giraldo-Tafur listed 7 different ways to prepare
Chichaja. We count at least two other recipes.
Chichaja brew is nowadays used by
Ayuhuasca shamans in Colombia. We have ???
a long-time winner of the so-called Alternative Priests Prize, in 1990
??? Ayahuasca and Chichaja in our bulletin. I will focus on the shamans
that I have shared time and experience with, within ??? December 2010 and finalized
in July 2011.
So those are the shamans I worked with
They are the Mestizo Gregorio Castro
and his wife, Carmenza Chindoy Garreta, from the Inga indigenous people.
They run a healing center called Ornoyaco
located near Mocoa, below the Sibundoy valley.
While Gregoria is responsible for all the matters related with Ayahuasca,
Carmenza is responsible for preparing the Chichaja. The dry leaf of Chichaja
are ground, put in a cauldron with water, and boiled
the entire night. At dawn, the liquid has reduced to just a few liters.
Once the brew is ready, Carmenza
shakes Huairasaha to cast a spell on the brew
while Gregorio carries out the same ritual with Ayahuasca.
This gender-based division of labor is related to
the spirit that is associated to Chichaja.
It is a female spirit - a mother, who some Chichaja drinkers report to have
seen during their experience with the brew. Sometimes
Chichaja is related with to experience a mother and her daughter
but in any case it is always linked to a female presence.
It is why Chichaja is called the female Ayahuasca, a designation restricted to
Gregorio and Carmenza groups, but that has been adopted all around the country
So - what does it mean for Chichaja to be associated with a female spirit or spirits?
It seems to me that women have less painful experiences with Chichaja
They have normally more relaxed and short processes
with the brew, in comparison with men's experiences.
Indeed, as we can see in ceremonies and as reported by drinkers and shamans, most of the men have a hard time with Chichaja
or in psychedelic terms, we can say they have a bad trip
Why does Chichaja affect in different ways male and female drinkers?
We need a pharmalogical study to answer that question in a complete way
Maybe there are some active components that act in different
manners in male and female bodies, but a chemical research
about the active components of Chichaja, to the best of my knowledge,
does not exist today.
To answer this question, I used the participative observation method.
I listened to people talking about their experiences with Chichaja
paying attention to gender differences in the data observing Chichaja drinkers
I could obtain six testimonies from people who agreed to talk with me about their experiences with Chichaja
Two young men and two women over their thirties,
the testimony from Carmenza and Gregorio, the shamans, and of course,
I drank Chichaja myself... sometimes.
Well, according to Carmenza,
and I quote, "The Chichaja is the master mother, and Ayahuasca is the father.
"Chichaja is amazing for body and mind. When the process of spiritual quest
has begun, they had begin? to look at himself and see what happened in oneself,
and what are the things that one needs to transform in oneself.
"It helps to become conscious - it's a centering plant.
"It allows to re-access the feminine part of each one of us
and teaches you to value your feminine side."
From data collected in interviews, it seems Chichaja offers you bad trips or hard lessons
if you have some patriarchal belief or attitudes.
Some parts of the interviews can illustrate this Chichaja hypothesis
For example, a young man talk about the moment his Chichaja experience became difficult to handle
and I quote, "I had asked Mother Chichaja to be gentle with me - to treat me with love."
"After drinking Chichaja, I continued my prayer, and a short time after, I start
"to see images from the past. I was with my girlfriend in a taxi, traveling to the airport.
"I was being rude with her. I blamed her for not knowing to which terminal we were supposed to go to"
"and for that reason we were risking to miss our flight. When I saw these images, Chichaja told me"
" 'You did not treat your girlfriend with love. Why do you ask to be treated with love by me?' "
At that moment, the young man continues, "It became hell."
As we see from this experience, the spirit of Chichaja can talk to you, show you images,
and you can talk with her, just as with Ayahuasca. This oral account also teaches about
the way Chichaja may spot which aspect of your personality you need to improve
in order to be a better person. Another young man shared with me a very intimate experience
he had had with Chichaja.
He told me that when he was younger, he used to watch a lot of pornographic videos.
Once, under the effects of Chichaja, and I quote, "I saw images of nude women, especially their ***,
"and I started having the feelings I usually have when *** or when penetrating a woman."
"The Chichaja told me: 'You are addicted to that sensation. You are addicted to sex.' "
" 'You cannot escape from here. You must recognize it.' "
"Yes, I do recognize it!" answered the young man to Chichaja,
"and as I say that," he continues, "I puked my soul."
Here, Chichaja is an agent who helps the drinker to realize his limitations, and after doing so,
the drinker has no choice, because he cannot escape from himself.
Chichaja then cleans up the drinker's body, opening the possibility to change,
what is wrong with his sexuality.
So far, we have spoken about Chichaja's healing experience with men.
But what about women? As a female spirit, Chichaja seems to have preference with female drinkers.
It's not strange to observe women who drink Chichaja have short processes
with the brew, while men maybe lay down all the day, or even more,
with a woman ??? assisting other drinkers, like holding the head of the people who need to vomit,
but cannot move their head, changing drinkers clothing, et cetera.
One of the women who had a short process wtih Chichaja, ??? with our assistance, and told Gregorio, the shaman,
Chichaja said to her that the brew has gone to her liver and was working with blood circulation
and that was all the processes she had. Anyway, sometimes the female Ayahuasca gives hard lessons or a bad trip to women.
We have registered the case of a skilled female drinker with several unwell? past experiences with Chichaja.
Although once she made a bad trip. Later she explained she got a hard process because
she had not asked Chichaja spirit to kindly guide her during her experience, instead of that,
she has promised herself to be strong, under the effects of Chichaja, and therefore Chichaja had
punished her brain.
From all the testimonies we have ???, we can argue that one of the main
visions Chichaja offers to her sons and daughters is to learn to be gentle, soft, kind, loving people
Given that softness, delicate manners are associated with female way of being, while aggressive or proud manners
are viewed as a male behavior, Chichaja has been qualified with a female personality
besides the fact that people see, feel, and listen a female spirit.
This is just a hypothesis - I'm not saying that all women are delicate, or that all men are aggressive
but only referring to a type of social representation on gender roles in Colombia and maybe Western Culture in general.
Now that we have a general view of Chichaja, about what is Chichaja,
it's time to make a comparison between the female Ayahuasca and the male, or classic Ayahuasca
in order to understand the place the female Ayahuasca holds in the Ayahuasca ensemble.
We can list first the characteristics which distinguish Chichaja from Ayahuasca.
Chichaja has always been associated with a female spirit, while Ayahuasca could be linked either with female or male spirits,
or no *** experience. Chichaja tends to induce different effects, depending on the drinker's sex
which is not the case with Ayahuasca. And it produces some particular symptoms: you feel
hot wetness on the face, the arms, your skin becomes extremely sensitive.
Any sensory stimulus is dramatically amplified as an electrical vibration in your nerves
Indeed, you are advised not to take a shower after the experience, because the feeling of water on the skin would be unbearable.
Carmenza offers doses of about twenty centiliters of Chichaja brew,
which is much more than a standard Ayahuasca dosage. Chichaja is a very less-concentrated brew,
and its taste is not as bitter as Ayahuasca taste, but it's not very pleasant either.
About twenty or forty-five minutes after consumption, you start to feel the Chichaja effects.
It is quite common to see bright colors at the beginning of the process,
orange, red, blue - that occupy all your field of vision. During these moments, you see nothing but
??? colors. Between this experience of colorful blindness, you can go through ??? of total blackness
and this full blackness could appear a ?? of your experience, in that many minutes, you can feel very
anxious. An American described this part of the Chichaja experience. He lived in Barichara, a little touristic town in Northeast Colombia
where he'd done Chichaja a few hours after the effects of Ayahuasca had fallen. The American had no idea
about what he was drinking, so it was a surprise for him.
"As I looked over my shoulder, the whole place (eco-village) where I was standing just disappeared."
"I could no longer see anything. I went blind."
"'I couldn't see a single thing except my own body. The entire place was pitch dark and somehow I felt like I was in outer space."
Ataxia means a loss of body movement, individuals sometimes experience with Ayahuasca. It's much more common with Chichaja.
It's almost a rule.
Therefore, with Gregorio and Carmenza, it is mandatory
if you are about to drink Chichaja, to have a personal assistant who will take care of you.
Ideally, the person who will assist you may be a relative or close friend. Eventually, he or she will guide you to the bathroom,
help you with your clothes, because you cannot stand up or walk by yourself.
This is very different for an Ayahuasca drinker, when you don't need any ??? personal assistance.
If you went ???, you can just rely on the help of the shaman, or shaman's assistance.
With Ayahuasca, you may choose the place you want to stay. That is the Ornoyaco Healing Center.
With Chichaja, because of the very common ataxia, you must let a place to lay down before drinking.
We have people - they just drank the brew.
You may ask: "What is the reason to drink Chichaja plus Ayahuasca? In the end, what does Chichaja offer that Ayahuasca does not?"
Well, Chichaja specializes in certain ??? because of its female nature, as it has been argued in this presentation.
Also, it is possible that Chichaja complements the clean of Ayahuasca
at least the use of Chichaja and Ayahuasca is very related in Ornoyaco Healing Center.
Most of the time, Ayahuasca consumption takes place at night, while Chichaja consumption takes place at the beginning
of the day, before breakfast. Chichaja would clean you out before Ayahuasca - in that way, according with
??? Gregorio Castro, you'll be able to reach a direct connection with the soul information, God, yourself
thus Chichaja will allow you to have an actual entheogenical experience, by skipping the punitive period
often precedes Ayahuasca visions. Chichaja may improve the Ayahuasca experience and foster your courageous Chichaja/Ayahuasca drinker.
And at the end of Chichaja processes, just as with Ayahuasca, you feel more
connected with yourself and with nature.
To conclude this presentation, I would like to insist in the need to carry out ethnobotanical research of Gaultheria insipida
as well as anthropological studies. You can go to Colombia and contact shamans using Chichaja.
We also need a chemical study of the active components of Chichaja - maybe they would not be listed in any protocol,
in that case, just ask - we have people doing shamanic work with tobacco because tobacco is legal
it would be possible to Chichaja without facing legal troubles.
Finally, somebody's looking for a PhD project or some subject to research in the entheogenical domain,
Chichaja is almost unexplored matter. Thanks.