San Pedro – The Cactus at the Gates of Heaven
There is a cactus in the Andes of South America that the local Quechua people call Huachuma. This translates as ‘removing the head’ and whilst this may indicate how the cactus can be harvested, it more accurately describes its psychoactive properties and its ability to ‘remove’ the ego. When the conquistadors arrived from Spain, they too were obviously taken by the cacti’s hallucinogenic effects, so much so that they named it after San Pedro, or Saint Peter – the one who stands at the gates of heaven.
In 1999, having just finished a degree in Social Anthropology, I had had enough of all the theoretical study and wanted to experience first-hand the effects of the entheogenic medicine that I had been studying. So I set off with three other adventurous friends to the high Andes of Ecuador and Peru, in search of the famous San Pedro cactus. We eventually arrived in Cusco, the capital of the Incas and found a few places that would take you on a group ceremony, but being young and full of bravado, we wanted to do it on our own. Unfortunately the answer was always the same, ‘You must have a Shaman with you.’
‘Sod that’, we thought, ‘we don’t need a Shaman’, feeling (possibly over) confident in ourselves from our previous expeditions in to the psychedelic realms. One night, after drinking probably a few too many chichas, the local maize home-brew, we ended up talking to a seemingly drunk tramp on the street. After chatting for a while it turned out that he was the descendant of a long line of Quechua Shamans and he said the words that we were waiting to hear – ‘You don’t need a Shaman, the cactus will be the Shaman for you!’
Well clearly this was the Shaman for us and so off he went for a couple of days to find the right specimen. When he returned he was carrying a large piece of cactus in his arms which was swaddled like a baby. We gathered in our hotel where he proceeded to prepare it, continually singing ‘icaros’, the sacred songs of Andean Shamans. When it was over he sent us on our way up and out of Cusco, with what can only be described as a plastic Coke bottle full of green snot.
We walked for two days in to the high Andes until we arrived at the perfect camping spot and proceeded to imbibe the foul tasting cactus flesh. Later on we lovingly labelled this little valley, nestled in between the mountainous peaks as the ‘Bowl of Insanity’. With hindsight this was not an accurate name for the effects of the San Pedro, as I don’t think I have ever felt more sane in my life. Rather than taking you off in to another magical world, the cactus has the ability to show you the magic in this World. We encountered balls of lightening, UFOs, giant hailstones and geometric patterns throughout the stars but not at one point did we ever feel anything other than a deep and profound love for each other, the Earth and Mother Nature. The cactus makes you feel part of the earth, rather than separate from it. It does this by ‘removing your head’ and allowing you to think, feel and live through the heart.
The active ingredient in the San Pedro cactus, as well as the peyote cactus of Mexico, is mescaline. Mescaline has the longest known history of any psychedelic, with carbon dating suggesting its use dates back at least 5600 years. Like psilocybin and LSD, mescaline achieves its mind-altering effects through the neurotransmitter serotonin, however it also a member of the phenethylamine group that includes MDMA. So chemically it can be seen as a cross between LSD and ecstasy. From a Chinese medical energetic perspective it activates the Wood and Fire elements, which indicates that it works on the higher aspects of the spirit. Particularly the aspect of our spirit that resides in the heart and realises that it is part of a greater inter-connected whole.
This is something I can still relate to 25 years later and I have certainly never looked a cactus in the same way since. Most of Mankind’s problems stem from the fact that we feel like we are somehow above or separate from nature and here is a medicine given to us by Mother Nature herself, that can help us to rectify this illusory and potentially destructive way of thinking. So powerful is this cactus that recently even Western psychologists have begun to explore the possibilities of using mescaline in a clinical setting, though personally I would suggest that you should probably consult a Shaman first!