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Mostly_Harmless
wyrd bið ful aræd



Registered: 05/12/09
Posts: 5,043
Loc: Perfidious Albion
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Women Are Leading Amazon Ayahuasca Ceremonies for the First Time 2
#23778850 - 10/27/16 11:28 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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http://motherboard.vice.com/read/amazon-women-are-leading-ayahuasca-ceremonies-for-the-first-time
Quote:
October 25, 2016
This is the first of three dispatches from the 2016 World Ayahuasca Conference in Rio Branco, Brazil.
On a balmy Wednesday evening in the Amazon, Waxy Yawanawa led 100 people in a long-forbidden ceremony. Bright red paint cut her face in half, coating her nose and mouth. Her powerful voice rang off of the trees as she chanted alongside the tribe’s 110-year-old medicine man and served a powerful hallucinogenic tea.
Known as ayahuasca, the tea is thought to bring knowledge directly from God and is central to the spiritual practices of several Amazonian tribes.
The Yawanawa, a tribe of 1,400 people on the border between Brazil and Peru, only came into regular contact with other Brazilians two generations ago, when rubber farmers ventured north in search of land and free labor. They survived for centuries by working in plantations but when the price of rubber tanked in the mid-20th century, they started to commercialize annatto, a spiky fruit with seeds that produce red dye used in lipstick, eyeshadows and bronzers.
Ayahuasca has always been central to Yanawana spiritual practices. For centuries leaders would turn to the tea and the visions it produces for answers on everything from illness to politics. A shaman, or spiritual leader, would drink the tea and touch the forehead of other village men, relaying the messages he received from God through the hallucinations.While tobacco and pepper were also thought to have mystical properties, ayahuasca was said to transport people to another world.
 Waxy Yawanawa leads an ayahuasca ceremony with Tutu Yawanawa.
Ten years ago, Waxy would not have been allowed anywhere near this ritual. Women were considered too fragile for ceremonies and told to avoid coming into contact with spiritual leaders all together. Waxy and her friends are trying to change that—they pioneered a movement to bolster women’s roles in spiritual ceremonies that has now rippled throughout the Amazon.
At first, the Yawanawa men laughed at the women’s quest. After all, they reasoned, becoming a shaman required a show of commitment and discipline few men could muster. Shamen had to abstain from sex, meat, salt, sugar and fish, and live in isolation for a year before being anointed.
Then, after months of pleading, the tribe’s medicine man, Tutu, allowed women to attempt the feat. The Yawanawa men suddenly realized they had underestimated their women.
“If the shaman told us to take one drink a day, we would take three. If he told us to not see our families, we would stay away from absolutely everyone,” said Julia Yawanawa, 35, who, along with her sister Waxy, led the movement to include women in ceremonies. “We went above and beyond what they asked, to prove we were stronger than they realized,” she said.
In 2006 the Yawanawa became the first tribe to consecrate a female shaman. Neighboring tribes, like the Katukina and Ashaninka, soon followed suit.
"If the shaman told us to take one drink a day, we would take three."
Elevating women in the spiritual realm reverberated in other spheres of life. The hallucinations the women experienced while drinking ayahuasca inspired them to make tribal chants more rhythmic, and craft work more intricate. They even improved upon centuries-old technology like tobacco pipes, an integral part of spiritual rituals for the Yawanawa, used by shamen to detoxify the body and align energies.
Today, Julia and the other Yawanawa women are fighting to help women of other tribes obtain the same rights.
“We want them to see that they can be women, moms, partners and at the same time be spiritual leaders. They can learn that spiritual power has no single race, tribe or gender,” she said.
 Julia Yawanawa prepares to speak to several tribal leaders about expanding the role of women in spiritual practices.
That process inherently requires convincing the men, who harbor centuries of information about the tribe’s spiritual practices, that women have equal claim to that knowledge and can help preserve the rituals for future generations. For veteran shamen, it can be a tough sell. Many have denounced the female-led ceremonies as illegitimate.
“Women can’t withstand the power of the medicine. The modern women who are trying to use the tea are not following our tradition. They are creating imitations of our ritual and don’t understand how to perform it properly,” said Gilberto Kaxi Nava, a 46-year-old ceremony leader for the Huni Kuni tribe.
Determined to give women an opportunity to participate in a ceremony of their own, Julia and Waxy planned a ritual celebrating female empowerment and invited women of all tribes to try the tea for themselves.
“The men who are against this still think they should have a measure of control over women,” said 31-year-old Tatiana Marquez, a member of the Guarani tribe from eastern Brazil who participated in the female empowerment ceremony. “But the men are the ones who don’t understand the strength of the medicine and women’s ability to discover their own power through the tea.”
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tyrannicalrex
Strange R



Registered: 04/24/03
Posts: 38,323
Loc: subtropics
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Re: Women Are Leading Amazon Ayahuasca Ceremonies for the First Time [Re: Mostly_Harmless]
#23779958 - 10/28/16 12:38 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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Good! Maybe the women won't be raping and other such nefarious deeds as I've read about recently. There is a HUGE surge of people just now discovering Aya (DMT). It definitely is something otherworldly! Some may feel that the spirit (or one of?) of the plant is female in nature as well, like Salvia. A female shamen could facilitate a different tone/experience to the trip as well.
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musiclover420
psychonaut



Registered: 11/06/12
Posts: 19,563
Loc: PNW
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Re: Women Are Leading Amazon Ayahuasca Ceremonies for the First Time [Re: tyrannicalrex]
#23780115 - 10/28/16 01:56 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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I could see it being most efficient to have a male/ female shaman duo even. That way you get the best of both worlds and better incorporate duality into the ritual.
-------------------- Don't worry about me, I've got all that I need. And I'm singing my song to the sky You know how it feels, With the breeze of the sun in your eyes. Not minding that time's passing by I've got all and more, My smile, just as before. Is all that I carry with me I talk to myself, I need nobody else. I'm lost and I'm mine, yes I'm free
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tyrannicalrex
Strange R



Registered: 04/24/03
Posts: 38,323
Loc: subtropics
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Re: Women Are Leading Amazon Ayahuasca Ceremonies for the First Time [Re: musiclover420]
#23780161 - 10/28/16 02:16 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
musiclover420 said: I could see it being most efficient to have a male/ female shaman duo even. That way you get the best of both worlds and better incorporate duality into the ritual.
ah yeah, I see that now!
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Freedreamer
Out of place


Registered: 06/22/11
Posts: 270
Loc: Here, there and everywher...
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Re: Women Are Leading Amazon Ayahuasca Ceremonies for the First Time [Re: tyrannicalrex]
#23786826 - 10/30/16 08:39 PM (7 years, 2 months ago) |
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Good for the girls!
Despite the many wrongs that are sadly still taking place in this world, I do sincerely believe that our society has never been so progressive and free.
-------------------- "This life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by the desire of changing his bed. One would prefer to suffer near the fire, and another is certain he would get well if he were by the window." - Charles Baudelaire
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durian_2008
Cornucopian Eating an Elephant



Registered: 04/02/08
Posts: 16,693
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Re: Women Are Leading Amazon Ayahuasca Ceremonies for the First Time [Re: Freedreamer]
#23792728 - 11/01/16 07:42 PM (7 years, 2 months ago) |
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It was portrayed as a female spirit and embraced by people who revere the Virgin Mary. The Earth is considered female. Surprised that didn't happen sooner.
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