She Is A Shaman | Full Ayahuasca Documentary (2024)

An Ayahuasca shaman balances hallucinatory rituals and her unusual daily life in this meditative documentary that explores the difference between the idolized shamanic figure and who they really are.

Initiation of a Yanomami Shaman

A Channel 4 production that features a lot of incredible footage from the Yanomami people. Released in 1981 this astounding film documents the intensity of a shamanic initiation among the Yanomami. A 7 day ordeal that involves a form of ritual that is almost extinct in the so-called 'modern world'.

The main aim of shamanic initiation among the Yanomami people of the Upper Orinoco River region in Venezuela is the metamorphosis of the human body into a cosmic body, or what Jokic in a 2008 paper terms “corporeal cosmogenesis.” During the initiatory ordeal, the neophyte undergoes an intense experience of death through dismemberment by the spirits and subsequent rebirth, thus overcoming the human condition and becoming an individual living spirit. But, at the same time, he becomes a “collection” of other spirits who leave their natural habitats—located on the mountaintops and in the forest—and move into the initiate's body, which becomes their abode. As the candidate surrenders his soul and humanness to the spirits, the latter become his personal allies and sources of power while imbuing the shaman's postmortem ego with certain properties that can best be described in holographic terms. After the shaman's biological death, his personal spirits become disembodied again and disperse back into the forest and on the mountaintops. When the shaman dies, his soul multiplies, as each of the disembodied spirits becomes a carrier of the shaman's soul image. In this way, through initiations, the shaman becomes a part of a dynamic cosmic circuity, as his hekura can be called upon to invade the bodies of new shamans, and start a cosmogonic initiatory act anew. (Zeljko Jokic, "Yanomami Shamanic Initiation: The Meaning of Death and Postmortem Consciousness in Transformation". May 2008. Anthropology of Consciousness 19(1):33 - 59.)

The Nature of Ayahuasca (2019)

Ayahausca is a traditional plant medicine from the Amazon used to treat a variety of physical and psychology illnesses and conditions. This film explores the use of the Ayahausca as a holistic medicine, challenging stigmas around its use and helping people become more conscious and ethical consumers of the plant if that's the path they choose.

Where Eagles Fly : Seven Years with Siberian Shamans 1994-2001

7 YEARS WITH SIBERIAN SHAMANS 1994-2001 from costanzo allione on Vimeo.

Follow the link to the film. From the ancient Mongol siber, Siberia means “the wonderful and pure earth”. It is a country of marvels, with great mountainous chains, golden hills and powerful rivers; it was like this at the time when the first explorers saw it, in the XVII century. It has stayed the same even now when we have ‘rediscovered’ it in our backward journey in search of Siberian shamanism: a kaleidoscope of peoples, ethnicities, religions and traditions. We wanted to lift the veil on this remote world, after seventy years of state-atheism, in order to understand whether this very ancient tradition had been able to survive the horrors of the Stalinist Regime. We travelled in the Transiberian, we trusted run-down buses, we crossed rivers on improvised barges, trying to sustain the rebirth process of ancient shamanic traditions. We helped the shamans revive and bring to light rites and ceremonies dedicated to the Master Spirits of these savage lands and we lived with them, gathering around the Sacred Fire, sharing the cold of the yurta and the magic of their shamanic chants. During these seven years of life together, we have collected the secrets of their magic arts and their spiritual testament: to respect Father Sky and Mother Earth.

The Transcendental Object At The End Of Time (Terence McKenna Movie)

Terence Kemp McKenna was an author, lecturer, philosopher and shamanic explorer of the realm of psychedelic states. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including metaphysics, alchemy, language, culture, technology, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He has been described by some as being "so far out, nobody knows what he's talking about", and by others as "the most innovative thinker of our times".

To shake us out of our perceptual torpor, McKenna played the holy fool, the crazy wisdom sage. He pushed our faces in the most exotic, lurid inventions of modern science and technology. What elevated him above most other prophets was that he delivered his prophesies with a wink, an implicit acknowledgement that ultimately reality is stranger than we CAN suppose.

McKenna’s métier was the spoken word — stand-up philosophy that meme-splices Alfred North Whitehead, Marshall McLuhan, James Joyce, William Blake and many others, delivered in a reedy, insinuating voice. Available throughout the Internet with titles like “Having Archaic and Eating it Too” and “Shedding the Monkey,” his lectures are tours de force of verbal virtuosity and pack-rat polymathy, leaping trippingly (in both senses of the word) from quantum mechanics to medieval alchemy, from the chaos theory of Ilya Prigogine to the neo-Platonism of Philo Judaeus.

This movie was created to present and collect (some of) his most profound thoughts, and to possibly show glimpses of the alchemical angel that Terence pursued throughout his life. It does not serve as a biography, (at least) three very important themes were left out for the simple reason that they take hours to unfold themselves: the experiment at La Chorrera, the relationship between the McKenna brothers, and the Trialogues with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abraham. And so, three books are essential to anyone who'd like to dive deeper into the life and mind of Terence McKenna:

True Hallucinations by Terence McKenna
The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss by Dennis McKenna
Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness by Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, and Ralph Abraham

Created by Peter Bergmann, this is a movie/documentary/project/amalgamation made from everything Terence McKenna left us with, mixed with the music of We Plants Are Happy Plants.

From Terence McKenna's Eulogy to Leo Zeff:
Sometimes when Leo would sit with people, they would come out of their reveries and want to talk with him about what they were learning and seeing. And Leo would listen for a few minutes. But he then would always say: "That's fine, that's good, now return to the music." And I think that.. I like to think that Leo has now returned to the music. And some day so shall we. And to whatever degree we follow his example life here, the passage to whatever lies beyond will be made much easier.
Leo showed the way, because Leo knew the way. And I salute him for that, I say for all of us who were his tribe: Goodbye to the secret chief, goodbye to the man who saw most deeply. It's now for us to do as he would have had us do.


The Transcendental Object At The End Of Time

Part 1: Introduction 2:32
Part 2: Human Evolution 10:10
Part 3: Alchemy 15:02
Part 4: Plants 28:26
Part 5: Psychedelics 30:33
Part 6: Culture 34:25
Part 7: Psilocybin 39:48
Part 8: Leaving History 45:16
Part 9: How do you communicate with the mushroom? 51:23
Part 10: What is the voice? 54:18
Part 11: Conversation with Ram Dass 57:51
Part 12: DMT 1:09:46
Part 13: The DMT Experience 1:12:42
Part 14: Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abraham 1:26:46
Part 15: Rap, Rant, Rave 1:38:38
Part 16: The Big Bang 1:52:35
Part 17: Humanity 1:57:07
Part 18: "Why is it important for you to do this?" 2:02:38
Part 19: The Good, The True, and The Beautiful 2:12:30
Part 20: Kathleen Harrison 2:15:10
Part 21: Bad Trip 2:17:34
Part 22: High Water Weirdness Event 2:20:57
Part 23: The Promise Of Art 2:26:00
Part 24: Cannabis 2:35:45
Part 25: From Monkeydom To Starshiphood 2:41:41
Part 26: The Transcendental Object At The End Of Time 2:47:10
Part 27: Last Thoughts 2:51:12
Epilogue 3:10:20

Ever-expanding list of contributors, whose work is featured:
(please mention it in the comments if you run into your art/footage)

Videos and audio recordings

SOUND PHOTOSYNTHESIS
Mike Kawitzky
Lorenzo Hagerty/Matrix Masters

VISUALS:
TAS
DMTRMX
Ben Ridgway
Simon Haiduk
Wanderweird
The Art Of Salvia Droid

Ken Adams, Bruce Damer, Sacred Mysteries, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham, London Real

Don Emilio & His Little Doctors (1982), by Luis Eduardo Luna

This film, by Luis Eduardo Luna, is one of the very first films -if not the first- documenting ayahuasca among mestizo population of the Peruvian Amazon. It was part of Luna's field work carried out in the Iquitos area during July and August 1981, concentrated on the practices of Don Emilio Andrade Gomez, a "vegetalista" living 12 km from the city. The film Don Emilio and his Little Doctors (1982) was made during that time. It is a complement to Luna's doctoral dissertation "Vegetalismo. Shamanism Among theMestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon" (Full PDF), published in Stockholm in 1986.

Don Emilio was born in Iquitos in 1918. When he was 14 years old, and while working in the Amazon river, near the mouth of the Napo river, he took ayahuasca for the first time. He did it in order to curarse, a term that implies the cleansing and strengthening of the body. When he took ayahuasca for the fifth time, while keeping to the prescribed diet imposed by his teacher, an old man with a flute and a drum appeared in his visions to teach him icaros, magic melodies.

The Men of Fifth World

At first glance this documentary seems to be a non-Indigenous production, that recycles some of the myths held about the Indigenous people of Australia. However, it does touch on some good points and the cinema-photography is excellent.

The Men of the Fifth World is a documentary that shows us some of the history, culture and traditions of the Australian Aborigines. The old Garimala Yakar, tells firsthand how their world is accompanied by the sound of the didgeridoo, the beat of their tradition, which keeps them together and attached to the land. These tribes have had to defend their country from the impositions of the white man when he came to Australia for the first time. The aboriginal culture has faded over time but they never cease to tell their story to the youngest and keep the hope that someday find their truth.

In the Kakadu National Park lies Ubirrok, where the Rainbow Serpent stopped after creating the world and was painted on a rock so that people could see her. Over time our forefathers left on the rocks a complete collection of images which depict their way of life and their beliefs. On these ancient rocks they also drew figures of the men of that time, warriors and hunters, who used the same spears and harpoons as we do now.

We share our land with all types of animals, some of them as dangerous the kangaroo is the most characteristic animal of my country.

When we get together to dance around the fire, we sing the dreams of the animals, the stories of how they were created. Those that dance and sing paint their faces and bodies with kaolin, to look like the spirits which, according to our beliefs, are of a grey colour. The dance of the women is slower and more measured. They are normally in a state of trance, possessed by the spirits of the forest which protect them.

The didgeridoo It’s our sacred instrument. The men who know how to play it are very important in our culture. With the didgeridoo they communicate our wishes to the spirits. And they call on them to come to our aid when tragedy befalls us. This sacred instrument brings us closer to the world of our ancestors. It is difficult to play, because you have to blow constantly, using the technique of circular breathing.

The didgeridoos are made by the ants. Our land, here in northern Australia, is the kingdom of the ants.

Our people were nomads, always moving from one place to another, carrying their few belongings with them. That is why we know the forest so well. In the forest, we know how to get everything we need. The men have always hunted and fished, while our women are expert gatherers. They know where to find edible fruits and roots, and how to get honey. The women have always worked in the forest, carrying out these tasks. No one knows nature like they do. Their work is very dangerous. They often come across the king brown, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world, its bite is always fatal.

Hunting and war have always been men’s work, and they have always made their own weapons. Without a doubt, the boomerang is the best known of these. They are pieces of wood carved with a slight curve, which makes them more accurate when they are thrown. In fact, the spear is our best weapon. We used them in our fight against the white men who invaded our country and drove us off the land that belonged to us. Our spears claim other victims. When the tide goes out, we fish for the dangerous sting rays. These are manta rays that hide in the sand, ready to plunge their enormous stings into anyone who dares disturb them.

Our coasts are full of animals, which traditionally provided us with food. When we have speared an animal, we throw a buoy into the water, with a long rope tied to harpoon. Whenever they catch a giant turtle, the fishermen arrange a feast, right there on the beach, to which all their relatives are invited.

“My people have always felt the need to express themselves through painting, now and since the beginning of time. Our art, now called aboriginal art by the white man’s tourist industry, is born from the dreams of each artist and the intense colours we see in our land.

Near the city of Darwin, my people call to the spirit of the king of the crocodiles with piercing cries.
It is a dance of invocation. It is performed whenever someone has to travel to an area where the powerful sea crocodiles live. They ask for its permission and protection, but the great spirit is always asleep, and so they have to cry out to wake him, so that he knows that people have gathered together to dance in his honour.

Yagé is Our Life - Documentary

Yagé is Our Life is a documentary film captured in the Putumayo region of Colombia. For centuries the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon have been using yagé (sometimes known as ayahuasca) for the health, social cohesion and spiritual guidance of their communities. Yagé is rich in the potent psychedelic substance DMT and for these indigenous groups it is sacred, allowing them access to ancient wisdom and the spirits of nature. In their ceremonies, the taitas or traditional doctors use yagé to treat their patients for physical and emotional illnesses and as a guide for making decisions.


The communities are now facing many new threats to their traditional way of life. Primarily, the commercialisation of their yagé medicine and foreign pressures exerted on their homelands by industrialised civilisation. This film gives indigenous leaders from the region a platform to discuss these issues and the importance of yagé as a living tradition in their communities.


Winner of the 'Best International Short Film' at the Respect Human Rights Film Festival, Belfast, 2017.

AYAHUASCA documentary ! full movie ! HEAVEN EARTH I 2008

HEAVEN EARTH explores the practice and commercialization of amazonian ayahuasca-shamanism in Iquitos. A critical look on ayahuasca-shamanism-culture in Iquitos.

SYNOPSIS
The film displays all day activities of Percy, a peruvian healer and another western ayahuasquero, named Ron. Both live near Iquitos and work with ayahuasca.

Participants of ayahuasca ceremonies, touroperators and --guides, as well as western visionquesters recount episodes of their journeys and internal imagery. A growing global pop cultural phenomenon, swinging between psychotherapeutic healing procedure and spiritual sell-out.

Mestizo- and gringo herbalists recount episodes of daily life and their career histories. Amazonian tourists and western visionseekers report about interior spaces, motifs and passages of their journeys.

Representatives of the local tourism industry talk about guided tours, the psychoactive drink ayahuasca, vanishing indigenous cultures, spiritual sellout triggered by "experience consumerism" and also discuss excursions into the surrounding rainforest of a jungle metropole.

Iquitos - a city affected by the change of time, fluctuating between tradition and modernity - a locus of cultural transition facing the impact of globalization and its sequences.

Terence McKenna's True Hallucinations (Full Movie) HD

Terence McKenna's True Hallucinations is an experimental documentary about the chaos at La Chorrera, the imagination, time, the Logos, belief, hope, madness, and doubt. Created by Peter Bergmann, this project is an expansion of ideas first presented in "The Transcendental Object At The End Of Time".

In 1971, Terence McKenna, along with his brother Dennis and three other companions, ventured by plane, boat, and foot to the paradisical Colombian mission town of La Chorrera, where they hoped to encounter the elusive psychedelic oo-koo-hé. Fate would have it otherwise. Their attention soon turned to the large numbers of Stropharia Cubensis that they lucked upon, and before long, Terence and especially Dennis were formulating the psychopharmacological "experiment at La Chorrera" which would eventually give rise to Terence's expanded Jungian notion of the UFO as human oversoul, and his I Ching based TimeWave Theory which holds, among other things, that history as we know it is accelerating and, in fact, will come to a major concrescence.

Based on the underground classic book and talking book 'True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise', this tale of alchemical understanding is a deep dive into the young minds of the McKenna brothers, and an effort to provide some kind of visual aid and emotional center to a much larger story, with details scattered through hundreds of talks. Featuring unearthed photos and notebook pages which have never been seen by the public since generated in 1971.

Special Thanks to Dennis McKenna, Klea McKenna, Kathleen Harrison and Stephanie Schmitz, since their contributions of documents, and approval were crucial in making this film a reality.

"One Step Beyond": The Sacred Mushroom

In this rather amazing episode, Newland travels to Mexico to eat magic mushrooms. This show aired less than a year after Timothy Leary had traveled to Cuernavaca and had his first experiences with psilocybin, making Newland, along with Leary, one of the handful of high profile pioneers of psychedelia and one of the first public figures to praise psilocybin’s mind expanding properties.

The Embrace of the Serpent / El abrazo de la serpiente

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Presented here without subtitles, it can downloaded from the site and subtitles are available here to add yourself.

The film tells two stories thirty years apart, both featuring Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and last survivor of his tribe. He travels with two scientists, firstly with German Theo von Martius in 1909 and American named Evan in 1940, to look for the rare yakruna, a (fictional) sacred plant.

The film blends visions, dreams, memories and the conventional story of a journey into a hallucinatory account of how human societies exist in the world-  one against the frame of a luxuriant and cruel nature, the other against a cruel and powerful colonialism. The world of spiritual integrity grows dim and men and women lose the connection with their dreams, and nature is destroyed as a result. This film is an important document for the evolution of human consciousness in a time of great ignorance and misunderstanding. 

The Mindscape of Alan Moore (2003)

The Mindscape of Alan Moore is a 2005 documentary film which chronicles the life and work of Alan Moore. In it, he details his startling and profound worldview.

Alan Moore presents the story of his development as an artist, starting with his childhood and working through to his comics career and impact on that medium, and his emerging interest in magic.

The film features the first film adaptations of scenes from Moore's acclaimed series V for Vendetta and Watchmen, shot in early 2002. Another key scene features a direct reference to the character of John Constantine from the comic book Hellblazer. The film also contains a brief look into Lost Girls, which would not be officially released until years later.

Quantum Men

The work of Cristobal Jodorowsky, the son of the famous director, artist, poet and writer Alejandro (psycho magic and psycho shamanism). The film explores the shamanistic practices of the Americas.

Korean Shaman (Mudang 무당) - Objects of Worship: Material Culture in Korean Shamanism (musok )

Shamans (mudang 무당) in South Korea dance, sing, heal, and divine the future through the mediation of various artifacts. Colorful flags assist in predicting good or bad fortune, food offerings appease gods and spirits, and various costumes and paintings depict supernatural entities and are manipulated to summon those powers into the shaman's body during a ritual called Kut (굿). The material culture of musok is now increasingly being sold in shaman good stores, allowing store owners and art traders to become active participants in the production process of ritual events. By Shai and Liora Sarfati. umsinai@hotmail.com

Uutai. Live Jew's​-​Harp by Olga Podluzhnaya (2013)

Rarely do I place just music on this blog. I do so here and now because this is an incredible work of art from the depths of human expression that stretches back to the sources of our belief and perception. In short, a trance masterpiece.

From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers' Warning (Kogi message)

The Kogi people are warning society of destruction we face if we fail to embrace nature.

The Kogi (/ˈkoʊɡi/ koh-gee) or Cogui or Kágaba, meaning "jaguar" in the Kogi language, are an indigenous ethnic group that lives in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. Their civilization has continued since the Pre-Columbian era.

The Kogi are descendants of the Tairona culture, which flourished before the times of the Spanish conquest. The Tairona were an advanced civilization which built many stone structures and pathways in the jungles. They made many gold objects which they would hang from trees and around their necks. They lived not much differently from modern day Kogi. Before the Spanish conquistadors arrived, the Tairona were forced to move into the highlands when the Caribs invaded around 1000 CE. The decision to flee to the mountains proved beneficial and strategic by the time the Spanish entered modern-day Colombia in the 15th century. In 1498, the Spanish arrived in Northern Colombia where they began to enslave indigenous groups. Threatened by dogs and soldiers alike, the Tairona remained in isolation. Regardless, many priests were hanged, women were stolen and raped, and children were forced to accept Spanish education. Later, missionaries came and also began to influence their way of life, building chapels and churches amidst their villages to train and convert the locals. In the years since, the Kogi have remained in their home in the mountains, which allows them to escape the worst effects of colonization and aids them in preserving their traditional way of life.

The Kogi base their lifestyles on their belief in "Aluna" or "The Great Mother," their creator figure, whom they believe is the force behind nature. The Kogi understand the Earth to be a living being, and see humanity as its "children." They say that our actions of exploitation, devastation, and plundering for resources is weakening "The Great Mother" and leading to our destruction.

Like many other indigenous tribes, the Kogi people honor a holy mountain which they call "Gonawindua," otherwise known as Pico Cristóbal Colón. They believe that this mountain is "The Heart of the World" and they are the "Elder Brothers" who care for it. They also say that the outside civilization is the "Younger Brothers" who were sent away from The Heart of the World long ago.

From birth the Kogi attune their priests, called Mamas (which means sun in Kogi), for guidance, healing, and leadership. The Mamas are not to be confused with shamans or curers but to be regarded as tribal priests who hold highly respected roles in Kogi society. Mamas undergo strict training to assume this role. Selected male children are taken from birth and put in a dark cave for the first nine years of their lives to begin this training. In the cave, elder Mamas and the child's mother care for, feed, train, and teach the child to attune to "Aluna" before the boy enters the outside world. Through deep concentration, symbolic offerings, and divination, the Mamas believe they support the balance of harmony and creativity in the world. It is also in this realm that the essence of agriculture is nurtured: seeds are blessed in Aluna before being planted, to ensure they grow successfully; marriage is blessed to ensure fertility; and ceremonies are offered to the different spirits of the natural world before performing tasks such as harvest and building of new huts.

The Kogi Mamas have remained isolated from the rest of the world since the Spanish Conquistadors came to plunder South America for gold. In order to preserve their traditional way of life, they rarely interact with the modern world or with outside civilization. Outsiders are not allowed inside their ancestral lands. The Kogi Mamas say that the balance of the earth's ecology has been suffering due to the modern-day devastation of resources by Younger Brother. The Kogi Mamas in turn believe that their work as Elder Brother is instrumental in helping to prolong and protect life on earth. In a desperate attempt to prevent further ecological catastrophe and destruction, the Kogi Mamas broke their silence and allowed a small BBC film crew into their isolated mountaintop civilization to hear their message and warning to Younger Brother.

Tribe: Sanema

The full episode Going Tribal - Season 1, Episode 6: Waking the Spirits: The Sanema
The remote Sanema people of the Venezuelan Amazon inhabit a universe full of powerful spirits and ancestors. Explorer Bruce Parry lives with the tribe, eats the same food as them and takes part in a dramatic shamanistic festival.

Gringo Shaman

Part One


Part Two


Part Three

This is the story of Ronald Wheelock, a man who dared to dream an impossible dream and succeeded at making it a reality. As the rainforests are being leveled and the indigenous peoples relocated to the city, it is up to people like Don Ron to keep the flame of shamanism alive so that future generations know more about the power of medicinal plants and the sacred context in which they thrive. Our world just might depend on it. A film by Matthew Vincent and Mendel Kaelen.

Jan Kounen - D'autres mondes - Other Worlds

French director Kounen tackles a subject which should interest most everyone to some degree - be it shamanism or hallucinogens. Kounen's travels along the Amazon lead him to a tribe with century-long experiences of sacred plants and a "parallel universe" reached through the use of said herbs. Documenting the rituals of the tribe, his own encounters with the plants and the opinions of various experts from around the globe, the director seems to aim to unravel some of the myths of shamanism and everything related to it. He succeeds, but not completely. A part of the problem is that one cannot (at least Kounen isn't able to) begin to describe an alternate universe by producing surreal images on the silver screen or claiming things such as Kounen hadn't understood that he never left childhood prior to participating in the shaman's sessions.

Download the entire film here...