Another (my second) run to the Ceremony. I’m there for San Pedro investigation. A good thing, the journey was enlightening in a hundred ways. All luminous: some easily parsed, others more opaque.
I’m placed on the right side, sort of close to where the guides and minders post themselves so they can quickly help anyone having a hard time. Baby Jesus is on my immediate right, so I’ve scored a pretty good co-pilot. On the downside, I’m in the general proximity of the fire that goes all night, occasionally smoking out when it lacks coconut husk fuel. This means I’ve got a ringside seat for all kinds of psychedelic appropriate imagery as the fire and the smoke perform, but I’m breathing noxious fumes which conspire to keep me on the edge of nausea.
The Ceremony is consistent. Tobacco is blown up your nose, burning eye drops administered, everyone in white t-shirts, didactic instruction, a drum circle fires up. You imbibe the tea.
I and two others start earlier than the rest of the group participating in a mushroom ceremony. For San Pedro, the preparation is a noxious, pasty concoction of water mixed with powdered cactus skin. We start around twelve noon. The experience can last for 8-12 hours. The guides offer fresh quantities at two-hour intervals of San Pedro absorption.
Later, we dovetail with the mushroom folks as we receive a tumbler of mushroom tea. This is two hours after my second dose of San Pedro. The combination must shift the San Pedro experience. It’s hard to know. The tea purges me after diligently working to keep the San Pedro down for over 5-6 hours.
Purging at ceremonies is part of this ride. Buckets are everywhere. Purging nausea and hurling conspire to keep you plenty humble. Evacuation noises augment the overall soundtrack as the cavalcade reacts to the tea.
Lots of smoke. I am swept into a vigorous rush of insights. An entity and I converse and tussle. He shifts me from hallucinated experiences of my own pettiness and general nonsense to whipping insights at me pell-mell. He’s a prankster: silly psychedelic pyrotechnics designed to distract, a malevolent entity hovering off my starboard bow, lines of inquiry dead end.
The entity remains nameless, a wizened, timeless trickster pushing/pulling me across boundaries of perception, time, perspective.
