Video: Initiated by the Spirits with Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, PhD & Randy Chung Gonzales
Full transcript:
SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.
SPEAKER 2: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion Series, Initiated by the Spirits February 9th 2023.
CHARLES STANG: Welcome. My name is Charles Stang and I have the pleasure of serving as the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions here at Harvard Divinity School. Welcome to this evening's event. We are pleased to be restarting our very popular series on psychedelics and the future of religion, and we're delighted to have with us this evening Frederique Apffel-Marglin and Randy Chung Gonzalez, who are joining us from Lamas, Peru.
I'll be speaking with them about their new book, Initiated by Spirits: Healing the Ills of Modernity through Shamanism, Psychedelics, and the Power of the Sacred. Before we dive into that conversation, however, allow me to plug an upcoming event in our new theology series led by my colleague, Giovanni Parmigiani.
On Wednesday, February 22nd, from 12:00 to 1:00 PM, Giovanni will be hosting Dr. Amy Hale and Dr. Christa Shusko to discuss Dr. Hale's new edited book entitled Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses. Forgive me. That's quite a number of ss's. There will also be a Zoom webinar like this, and we will put the link to register in the chat function. And as always, the best way to stay abreast of what we're doing here at the Center in its programming is to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Since my questions for Frederique and Randy will prompt them to speak of their own lives in their own work, I'm going to keep my introductions brief. Frederique Apffel-Marglin is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at Smith College. She's also taught at Harvard, Wellesley, and Wesleyan. She founded the Sachamama Center for BioCultural Regeneration in the Peruvian High Amazon in 2009, which she now directs. She's a very prolific author, and her most recent book apart from this one is co-edited with Stefano Varese and is entitled Contemporary Voices from Anima Mundi.
Randy Chung Gonzalez is a self-trained architect and visual artist who is born and raised in Lima, Peru. In June of 2016, he was initiated by disembodied spirits into shamanic knowledge and power. And since then, he's been given powers by other Indigenous spirits, as well as the Virgin of Guadalupe.
He receives regular teachings from a disembodied shaman. He offers healing to others, and he directs an ecological center in the forest called, in English, the place of the sacred mountain. And here's a brief description of the book they wrote together. This book, Initiated by Spirits.
Randy Chung Gonzalez was leading an ordinary life in his hometown of Lamas, Peru when his employer asked him to accompany her to an ayahuasca ceremony led by a local shaman. There, to everyone's great surprise, Randy was initiated by disembodied entities who instructed him and gave him healing powers. In this unique book, Randy tells his story to Frederique, who offers cultural context and describes how she herself has been transformed from an academic anthropologist to an advocate for the sharing of Indigenous wisdom and ecospirituality.
Initiated by the Spirits argues powerfully that shamanic sacred plants can heal the epidemics of mental illness in Western societies, as well as the global ecological crisis. Randy's shamanic initiation serves as a beacon for new ways of conceiving of the human relationship to science, spirit, and our planetary home.
So here's how the evening will unfold. I'll spend the next 45 minutes or so posing questions to Frederique and Randy about their book and its implications. Then we'll transition to Q&A from the audience. So if you'd like to pose a question or a comment, please do so with the Q&A function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. And please do indicate if you'd prefer that your question be anonymous. We'll probably only have time for some of the questions. But rest assured that we'll pass on all your questions and comments, so that Frederique and Randy can see what their remarks provoked in you.
So at this time, let me welcome our guests to the screen. Frederique, Randy, can you please appear? There you are welcome. Good to see you. Thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for writing this remarkable book, which, as I told you, I have just finished this morning. And I enjoyed it enormously. Very, very clear. Very compelling. And so I encourage everyone to get a copy. And appropriately enough, it's available on Amazon.
OK. Now I have a series of questions. And the first one, let's start with a bit of narrative biography or rather autobiography. So your colleague Stefano Varese has described your new book as, quote, a heretical anthropologist and an unorthodox shaman in a profound mystical and intellectual dialogue. Frederique, can you tell us how you came to be heretical in the field of anthropology and why? And what exactly makes Randy's shamanic calling so unorthodox?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: I'll try my best. I have thought about this question. And I think that what Stefano is referring to by calling me a heretical anthropologist is the fact that I have abandoned the modern paradigm, materialist paradigm, the mechanistic paradigm, as Rupert Sheldrake calls it, that was created, invented, especially in the 16th and 17th century in Western Europe during the so-called scientific revolution or mechanistic revolution.
So because I do not hold to that paradigm, which presented from the beginning and continues to be presented, not by everybody, but by the majority as universal and as reality. Just reality. I don't share this. And I don't share the dualism between nature and culture, which is foundational to anthropology. So I guess that's what Stefano was thinking about when he called me a heretical anthropologist or some other thing.
Now about Randy, I think that the reason he calls him unorthodox, in my view, are basically two reasons. One, he was raised by secular parents, which is very unusual in the region here in Lamas. They were secular. And he had absolutely no knowledge of religion. None whatsoever.
So that makes him an unorthodox. And the other is that he was initiated against his will. He did not welcome it. He tried to abandon it halfway through, but could not, by disembodied beings. In the region, this never happens. I have been doing ayahuasca here and in the region for some 25 years.
My friend, Dr. Jacques Mabit. An MD, a French MD who trained with elder shamans very near here. And the spirits told him he needed to start healing drug addicts. There was a lot of addiction in this area because it was a big area for coca growing. This is where coca grows naturally, and the business of cocaine. So a lot of people got addicted.
So Jacques has been in this center for 30 plus years. In Peru, more than that, married to a Peruvian MD. And he knows. He's been in this business as it were for a very long time. And he says this never happens. And his wife came in while Randy was there. And she said, this never happens. And I had never heard of it. And I had done ayahuasca ceremonies with many, many, many, many different shamans. So that's why I think Stefano called him unorthodox.
Thank you. All right. Let me move on to my second question, which is also about the second part of the book. And in that second part of the book, we hear from Randy in the first person describing his extraordinary experiences. His visions with and without the sacrament of ayahuasca and of the various disembodied spirits he meets, including a shaman who would come to be his master, and a woman whom he would later come to identify as the Virgin of Guadalupe.
So Randy, could you please tell us about that experience with the woman, and how you came to identify her with the famous Marian apparition, who first appeared to an Indigenous man named Juan Diego in the year 1531 outside of what is now Mexico City.
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: So it's like that. I brought him. But first of all, his initiation happened in a ceremony where I forced him to come with me. He didn't want to come. And this is at the center of an Indigenous Quechua s shaman. So what he told me afterwards was so amazing, that I soon thereafter brought him to Dr. Jacques Mabit's center for an ayahuasca ceremony.
And after the ceremony, Dr. Jacques and Randy made an appointment because Dr. Jacques wanted to check whether the master that appeared to Randy without ayahuasca in his bedroom a day or two after his initiation, whether he was a sorcerer or a good shaman, a healing shaman. And Dr. Jacques began a process in his office on Randy, which was a kind of exorcism.
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: So he's in the office and sitting. And Jacques takes a book and reads in what, Randy thinks it's Latin. Because he didn't understand it, in Latin, the long thing, with his hand on Randy's head. And while Jacques is reading Latin to Randy, first, Randy sees everything red, like a red fog if you will.
And out of this red fog comes the face of a young woman of Brown skin, like his own. And with two pearly rings, and a necklace, and a, mantle and a lovely smile. And then from the side comes the master, a shanika, disembodied master, a shanika, that had previously tried to give him his knowledge, from his mouth to Randy's mouth, and who kneels in front of this woman. And Randy is describing everything to Jacques.
And Jacques then immediately says, OK, takes his hand off, his head. And he says, your master is not a sorcerer.
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: So he shows him, at that moment, he shows him a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe. And he asks him, is the woman you saw the same as this one? And Randy says, yes, it's the same woman. And Jacques explains to him that she is the Virgin of Guadalupe, that Randy had never heard of, by the way.
CHARLES STANG: Amazing. Well, I think that's a wonderful opportunity for us to show some of the images that you've included in this book. So Kama, who is helping us on the technical side, is going to bring up some of Randy's illustrations. Wonderful. Now I'm going to pose a question to you both, Frederique and Randy, but feel free to do with these images what you wish or give whatever commentary you wish.
But I'm going to phrase this as a question to Randy. Randy, you've rendered your visions into these powerful images, black and white ink drawings. Tell us more about what led you to represent your visions this way. Were you an artist before these encounters? How did these encounters change your art, both in terms of the style of representation, but also how you approach your artwork? And what role do the images play, if any, in your shamanic practice now?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: So what he's saying is that he was a painter, painted with acrylic, I believe. Paintings, that I love. Many that he sold. But he had stopped painting for about five years before his initiation. He was busy with other things. And it is out of his initiation that he developed this mode, which is absolutely he explained to me that he does it with the ink pen, black ink pen. And he cannot erase. So it's done in one movement. He cannot change anything, which I find absolutely extraordinary.
And then he does not use these images in his shamanic practice. In shamanic practice, he sings. The shamanic song is called icaro. And he plays some instruments. By the way, I just add that. I've known Randy since he's 15. He's now 40. And he never sang, never used an instrument. And the music he produces during ceremonies is, for my taste, absolutely extraordinary.
CHARLES STANG: Wonderful. Frederique, would you like to-- Kama is doing a wonderful job moving through these slides. Are you happy with that as I continue to ask questions, or is there any commentary you want to give on the images?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: No. I mean, it's self-explanatory. The Virgin of Guadalupe appeared. You see this tilted pyramid is the sacred mountain, sacred to the local Indigenous group. The Quechua Lamas. And Waman Wasi means the place of the house of the eagle. And when he invoked this eagle with an offering, this is a long story, the eagle came to him like that.
And with a hand that seemed like a snake, gave him something to drink, which he drank. And it was so painful, he was saying to the person who was there with him, I can't stand it. This is too hard. And the man said, you have to take it. Come on. Do it. And he did it. Yes. So he received powers come to Virgin, and from the shanika master, and from others, and from the mountain, sacred to the local Indigenous people.
CHARLES STANG: So one of the things that comes through in the images that are up is that some of them were experienced under the influence of ayahuasca, but many were not. Is there any significant difference in the quality of the characters of those visions with or without ayahuasca? And do either of them hold more authority for you personally, Randy, or for those whom you serve?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: So what you said is that actually, the ones that have affected him more powerfully are the ones without ayahuasca because he did not expect them at all. I came upon him usually at night, when he was in bed. But he adds that does not mean that the images that came to me, the visions I had with ayahuasca are any less important. They are very important.
But for him personally, the ones without ayahuasca just were completely unheard of, completely unexpected. You do expect visions with ayahuasca. But he was having them without ayahuasca where he didn't expect it at all. And so it was much more striking.
CHARLES STANG: Randy, could you say whether there any significant difference in the quality or the character of the visions that are had by ayahuasca? You've answered the question about their significance, their importance. But do they have a different feel? Do they have a different phenomenology?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: That's very interesting. Yes. So he says both visions were very clear. The difference is that the visions without ayahuasca were more monochromatic. Either one color or just black and white. Whereas the visions with ayahuasca is with lots of very strong colors, psychedelic colors as we call them.
CHARLES STANG: Wonderful. OK. So this goes back to a point you made earlier, Frederique. You've described in great detail in the book some of the challenges that Randy faced in his local context, including a widespread denigration of Indigenous forms of knowledge among the predominant Mestizo culture of Lamas.
But I want to ask you instead about sorcery, which you mentioned earlier. Dr. Jacques Mabit was very keen to confirm that the disembodied master who initiated Randy was indeed not a sorcerer. So how does sorcery relate to shamanism in your local context? And how has Randy had to negotiate sorcery, whether it's real sorcerers or imputed sorcery. How he had to negotiate that in his own practice?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Well, sorcery and a sorcerer, called brujo in Spanish, locally. Let me just start by saying in Lamas and in the region, the word brujo, which literally means sorcerer, is often used to refer to curanderos, which means shaman or medicine man. Something like that. The healer. Literally means healer.
But the vernacular or the colloquial expression to refer to such people is brujo. They're all brujos. To me, this is a direct legacy of the laws enacted soon after the arrival of Pizarro in what is now Peru in 1531. And they enacted the laws of extirpation of idolatry. And they persecuted shamans and humanists, especially the women, more than the men. Because this was going on in Spain and much of Western Europe at the time.
So the Pope, Pope Innocent VIII, declared witches to be heretics and to be burned at the stake in 1484, way before the invasion of the Americas. So that legacy is alive in the language. And this is something he encounters daily. We encounter. I feel it probably more keenly than him. I have a very mothering relationship with him, and I want to protect him. So when people say he's a brujo, I get all reactive.
But what happened in his very first session, the one I forced him to come, where he was initiated, he was presented during that session at a Indigenous quechua treatment, he was presented with choices. Two roads. One was brilliantly lit, flowers, with two horsemen, gorgeously attired, and said come with us. You will have everything you ever wanted. All the money, all the women you ever wanted come with us.
And then there was another dark path with a soft voice saying to him, don't come back away with us. And he told me afterwards, he said, I was tempted by the brilliant path, but I didn't choose it. And he says that thanks to the education of his parents, he chose the humble path. And if he had chose chosen the other part, he would become a brujo. A sorcerer. So he doesn't do sorcery.
On the contrary, he is very good at identifying sorcery. We can see it in session who has done what, to whom, why. And he can undo it. It's actually a dangerous thing to do, as those who will read the book will discover. Because the one, the sorcerer who did that, gets furious at him and tries to get revenge. So it's a complicated path.
CHARLES STANG: Very clear. And implicit in your answer is the conviction that sorcery is real. Sorcery is a path within the broader community.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: It is totally real. I have suffered from sorcery myself. Thanks to Randy, this was before his initiation, he hired a specialist in removing. And it was very hard, but the sorcery was removed from me, and it worked. So sorcery is real, is effective. I have been here for some 25 or more years. And it can make you sick, deform, kill. And it's real.
And what he does, when people come with symptoms, he immediately asked them, have you gone to the doctor, the allopathic doctor? Because he wants to eliminate that this is a natural cause. And usually, people come when the doctors can't identify, can't diagnose, and the person is very sick. That's where he's able to diagnose the sorcery and remove it.
CHARLES STANG: Thank you. Thank you for being so clear about that. All right. So I want to follow that up with a question about shamanism. So Frederique, you lean heavily on the category of shamanism throughout the book. Indeed, it's in the subtitle. And as you well know, this is a category that has been subjected to vigorous critique within the Academy.
Not least because it was a category invented by 19th century ethnologist working with inner Asian traditions and a category that then, so to speak, went global in the 20th century to name a whole constellation of worldviews and practices spanning the history of this globe. Can you comment on your investment in the category of shamanism and its ongoing utility?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Yes. Before justifying my choice, I want to preface this by saying that I completely understand why certain Indigenous groups, especially in North America. It doesn't happen in South America, but I know it happens in North America. Stefano is a close friend, and he teaches in the Indigenous studies department at Davis, University of California Davis.
And I completely understand that position, that they want people to use the term they use and not generalize. Because of course, there are different varieties of, quote unquote, shamanism or shamanic practice throughout the world. I recognize that, and I respect that desire not to be homogenized into a very broad category that comes from somewhere else. I respect this.
However, for me, if I did not use the category of shamanism, I would never have discovered, which I did during the research for this book, that shamanism has been eradicated in the West from way back when. And if you keep in a way that it has not in any other culture that I've ever come-- of course, I can't say I've gone through every single culture. But I've lived in different areas. I grew up in Morocco. I lived in India for years. Lived here for years. And as a professional teacher of anthropology, you read a lot of ethnographies.
And so for me, it was important to have that category. It was only through that category that this became visible for me. And this is absolutely central to my understanding of the West and how the role of this eradication, the role that this eradication played in the mechanistic revolution, so-called scientific revolution.
CHARLES STANG: OK. Thank you. I think it's a fascinating question as to which Indigenous groups lay claim to the category of shamanism and which Indigenous groups do not. And it's not something I know intimately, but it's been curious to see. My understanding is many of the South American Indigenous groups have laid claim to the category of shamanism. And it seems to me in some way a way of congregating and joining forces with both other local groups, but also groups on other continents, far flung. So it's a category that's doing very interesting political work for Indigenous groups, globally as well.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Absolutely. Yes.
CHARLES STANG: And as I recall from the book, you also said that some of the features that make Randy an unorthodox shaman in his local contexts become legible if you look to the literature on shamanism, including initiation by disembodied spirits. That initiation by disembodied spirits and some of the attacks that Randy's suffered at the hands of sorcerers were very salient features of the literature on shamanism, controversial literature on shamanism, say by Mircea Eliade.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Exactly. Exactly. I had forgotten. I had read Mircea Eliade in graduate school and had forgotten him. And when Randy told me about the brutal, that he thought he was going to die. They tried to kill him literally. And then I reread Eliade, and I read a few others. And then his beating looked minimal compared to what is described. So this was very useful for me. It was very important to be able to see that.
CHARLES STANG: Interesting. I'm just going to pause for a moment and remind our guests that if anyone-- we do have a number of questions in the queue. But please do put comments or questions in the queue. If you're sending them into the chat function, that's not ideal. Please copy paste them and put them in the Q&A. Thanks so much.
Now I just have a few more questions for our guests. So here at the CSWR this year, we have been hosting a very vibrant reading group on the topic of what we're calling plant consciousness. Essentially, whether and how plants can be said to think, feel, exert agency. And I wonder if either of you, Randy or Frederique, would like to comment on how plant consciousness is conceived and cultivated in this shamanic worldview and practice.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: I think the most obvious way is the way Randy and others, other curanderos, speak, and everybody, in fact, speaks that way. The plant told me. The plant healed me. The plant did this. The plant did that. The way people speak. And it's meant literally.
The plant, whether it's a psychedelic plant, like the brew of ayahuasca, which is at least two different plants, or what they call master plants, which you take during what is called a dieta, which we would call a retreat, where you don't hardly eat anything, no salt, et cetera. And you take these master plants.
The plants acts on you. That's how people speak, how Randy speaks. And I have come to speak that way because I'm around him so much and around here so much. And that's how I'm speaking that way. And it's also my experience. I've done many retreats with master plants. And of course, ayahuasca and many more ayahuasca sessions. I've done that for years, and years, and years.
And that's how I experience it. And this is how people speak, and I have come to speak of it when I speak Spanish here. So if I'm writing English, then I become self-conscious. And then I feel that I have to explain. Because here, it's taken as a given. And my belief is that the given comes in fact from the Indigenous because this is a millenarian Indigenous practice that many mestizos have taken up or has been given, in his case, which is very unusual. Extremely unusual. And that's how everybody talks about it.
The plant has a spirit, has sentience, has intelligence. And I've experienced that. I mean, not only intelligence, but a wisdom. I was telling friends that came to a seminar I had just organized. And I was describing how I have been taught things by the plants through images. And one of them said, the depths of wisdom. And it's true.
I mean, years, decades of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy did not achieve what these images achieved for me. Extraordinary. And you cannot come out of that experience not knowing in your gut that the plant is acting and is acting not only intelligently, but with deep wisdom and great compassion.
CHARLES STANG: Wonderful. Thank you. Now I see in the Q&A, thank you all the guests. A number of questions have just come in. Some really wonderful questions. And some for Randy and Frederique, for each of you. But I want to ask you, Frederique, a question about the third part of your book, which is the way you shift back into a kind of more academic idiom.
And it's very powerful. I'm not just saying that. So many academic books belabor their prose with jargon, and there's very little of that. It's very clear. In that third part, you give a very lucid narrative of the destruction of shamanic traditions in early modern Europe and then thereafter in those lands colonized by Europeans, including, of course, as you put it, the invasion of the Americans.
Can you tell our guests what you mean by the, quote unquote, enclosure movement in early modern Europe and its implications, especially for what you go on to call the enclosed self? And you might want to talk about that in relationship to the concept of the gift economy. But essentially, I want you to tell us what you see is important about that enclosure movement, the enclosed self, as it moves from early modern Europe and then into those lands colonized by Europeans.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Yes. Well, the enclosure movement, the enclosure of land in Western Europe has been highly studied. And I am no historian, so it's not my specialty, but I've read as much as I could. And it really deals with the fact that with the decline of the manorial, of feudal system, the economic decline, powerful men, and I mean men, women were not involved, aristocrats, or wealthy merchants began claiming common lands by putting an enclosure literally and doing what they called improving the land.
And it was mostly because they needed new revenues to boost their lifestyle. And there was a world trade in wool cloth. So they wanted to pasture their sheep. And they had to enclose it, so that nobody else could enter it and drain and improve the pastures for their sheep. And this is the enclosure movement. They were powerful people and men, and they were able to make their claims stick mostly in the courts against the poor people who made their living growing food or hunting and gathering in these common lands. So that's the enclosure movement that was a model, goes from the 14th century to the 18th century.
What I call the enclosure of the self is a process. So the intrusion of land transformed land into a commodity. Land was not a commodity. It was not up for sale. It has traditionally belonged to God, and God's representative, the king of France, and probably other kingdoms were like that.
So the commodification of land went also with the commodification of labor because then, the people who used to have their livelihood growing food there could not. And they had to sell their labor power. So labor became a commodity. Now, to sell your labor power, you have to own it exclusively. Your labor power is yours.
And we take this for granted, an obvious thing, but when you compare it to how Indigenous people do things and act, then you realize you have to rethink this what seems obvious to us today. How do they act? The world is alive, has sentience, everything in it. Mountains, rivers, sun, moon, stars, et cetera, everything. Animals, plants. And they have sentience.
And you are one being among the many in the cosmos. So this has been called by Stefano Varese the cosmocentric paradigm, which is the opposite of our modern paradigm, which is anthropocentric, with human beings at the center, as special, different, and the mind of the humans being completely outside of the cosmos.
So in the cosmocentric universe, the human being is in relationship with all these sentient beings. Be they the soil, be they the water, be they the animals, be they the plants, be they the stars, the moon, the sun, et cetera, et cetera. And what does that mean? You treat them like elder relatives, with greater respect than people your age.
And you reciprocate. Because you realize that you cannot live without their gifts. Agriculture is the product of soil, water, sun, moon. So many, right? And there's an awareness. And therefore, there's always a reciprocating gift, offering, if you will, to these spirits. Spirits means it has sentience. It has agency. It has will, et cetera.
So with labor becoming a commodity, the labor to do your reciprocity with all these other beings in the cosmos that are often communal. They're called festivals, fiestas, ceremonies. They're called many things. And they're often communal. And they are considered-- my ex was an economist, and we did work together, critiques of development. In development, this is considered unproductive labor. Waste of time, in other words. It does not produce wealth. So you have to leave it behind.
Whereas in the cosmocentric paradigm, you have to reciprocate part of your energy. Part of your what we call labor power goes to not only your human community, but your non-human and other than human community. By other than human, I mean usually, what we tend to call supernatural.
So here, I use the work of Marcel Mauss, the early French anthropologist, nephew of Durkheim actually. Alsatian, like me. And Marcel Mauss wrote a very famous book, Essai sur le don, on The Gift. And there, and I quote him in the book, he takes the Maori example from New Zealand about hunting some birds. And then part of the birds are given to priests who make an offering that is offered to the spirit of the birds.
Actually what is going on is religious gifts between human beings. So this has kind of, not that it's changing lately, but all of my training and most of my reading when I was in academia, this is seen as true. And spirits and other beings, deities, et cetera, are considered beliefs. Collective human beliefs. Whereas I have changed. That's why I am a heretical anthropologist. I don't take them as a collective human belief because of my experience. They really do exist with sentience, with will, with agency, with wisdom and compassion.
CHARLES STANG: Thank you. I think in light of the time, I'm going to transition to some of the questions from the audience, which have been pouring in. Some of them are very, very astute. So I'm going to start with a simple one. It's a simple question, but the answer is not simple, I imagine. And it's a question for Randy.
The question is, have the disembodied spirits had anything to say to you about what they think about ayahuasca coming to the United States? Or you might say ayahuasca being engaged outside of its local religious, cultural contexts.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: So what he said is that his opinion is that all the plants, all these. He mentioned psychotropic plants, like ayahuasca, like peyote, and other such, really ought to remain where they belong, where they grow. The Amazon basin, the Amazon. And not be exported. We can see that as a kind of a commercialization of shamanism.
CHARLES STANG: I see. So does it follow that some of the traditions that have emerged from Amazon, I'm thinking of say Santo Dame, which have brought ayahuasca to very, very diverse environment, that traditions like that are viewed with some concern or suspicion?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: He does.
CHARLES STANG: He does. OK.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: He would. Yes.
CHARLES STANG: Wonderful. Thank you. There's so many good questions here. It's hard to pick. Here's one that has to do with Joseph Campbell. This is from Nicholas. Thank you, Nicholas. You've posted a number of really, really good questions. Nicholas asks, can you tell me about how shamanic initiation might fit in with the framework of Joseph Campbell's, quote unquote, hero's journey? Specifically, the refusal of the call.
Randy or Frederique, can you tell us more about Randy's attempt to resist the call, and how he was compelled to carry on with? It is this a pattern in shamanic initiations in Peru or other shamanic traditions in Central and South America?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Well, I will only talk about what I know, which is here in Peru, and what I've learned here. And I'll speak for him because he's discussed these things many, many times. And so to spare us the translation time. He didn't want this initiation. He didn't want to go. I forced him to go. And after the severe beating, where he thought he was going to die, and they take him to elders, who said, now, you have passed the test, and we're going to give you powers to help others.
And he said, why me? I'm not interested. He tried. They ignore him. They ignore him. And at the very end of the first initiation, which is very full and very complex, a golden spear appears with a hand giving it to him. and Against his will, but automatically, his hand raises and takes it, which means he accepts it.
So we've discussed that many times he. And what he finally came to say is that the will of the discounted beings overwhelmed his own will. He tried to quit. It lasted 3 and 1/2 years, this intense initiation. Midway, he received a magical dart that was unbelievably painful. And he said, OK, this is it. This is my last session. This will be my last session. I want my whole life back. Simple. No difficulty. No suffering.
And so he does this ceremony. The trance goes down. And he says, OK, now, I'm leaving. And at the moment of leaving, the Virgin appears. Huge. Until then I'm giving you powers to help others. And his whole body gets covered. He has made a tattoo out of it. This whole body was covered with snakes. And it was very hard, but he had to he had to bear it.
And at the end of that session, the Virgin talks to him and says, I want you to build my image. And he says, where? And she shows him. And it's very near here, in a spring, a natural spring. A beautiful place. Very near here. Which he did. We all participated in this.
So that changed, that apparition of the Virgin. Then he decided to accept this path. And he has accepted the path with all its dangers and difficulty. But he has been able to get along the way protection. That's key to continue on this path. Protections from the mountain, the sacred mountain, from the Virgin, and other spirits.
CHARLES STANG: Not surprisingly, there's a number of questions about sorcery, I think prompted by your very clear affirmation of its reality and efficacy. So one question is considering that ayahuasca is such a powerful force for good for many people, how do we explain the brujo phenomenon? How do we explain sorcery? Why do spirits give sorcerers power? Are they bad spirits? If ayahuasca opens the mind to some of the mechanisms of life, the mind, the universe, why do the sorcerers not see that their own path is a negative one with negative consequences?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: His answer is that the ayahuasca brew can be used for good or bad, for healing or for harming. And for harming the sorcerer-- when you do an ayahuasca, you have an altar. And he places certain things and gets the help of certain entities to do harm.
And it's a business. Locally, it's a business. You know, jealousy. Your husband has gone with another woman. And the wife hires a sorcerer to use vengeance against usually the other woman, that kind of stuff. And it's done in ayahuasca ceremonies. You have a different altar. I don't know what it's like. He doesn't know either. I mean, he sees it in vision. He can see the sorcerer, who has done it, to whom. He tells me these things. I'm amazed by it. But that's what he tells me. And it can be used for good or bad.
CHARLES STANG: And it sounds like, implicit in your answer, is that the entities themselves are ambiguous. Some of them are good. Some of them have their own purposes, aims and purposes. So it's not just that the sorcerer is the source of the bad intentions, that the entities themselves be influences. Is that right?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: I mean, in the book, where he's having the session with an old friend and a friend of mine as well. Older man. And out of the body of this older man comes this evil entity with a huge saber, which Randy at first partially neutralized, but he receives a magical dart, which really hurts. And then the second time, he completely neutralizes this evil entity. And then he says, I'm done. That's when the Virgin appears and changes his life. So yes. Evil entities appear and exist. That's all I can say.
CHARLES STANG: Yeah.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: I can't say more than that.
CHARLES STANG: We'll leave that to the theologians.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: What?
CHARLES STANG: I said we can leave that question to the theologians. Frederique, this is a challenging question from one of our guests, who writes, three times, you Frederique, have said that you forced Randy to drink ayahuasca. I find this language troubling. Under what circumstances is it ethical to force another person to ingest a psychotropic plant?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Let me clarify. I didn't force him to drink. I forced him to accompany me. There was a foreign couple. He was Peruvian, and his wife was American. And she needed to do some fieldwork on Amazonian plants. And they wanted to do an ayahuasca ceremony. And this was before his initiation, so he didn't know anything about Amazonian plants, medicinal plants. So he asked a friend.
They asked the friend, we want to do an ayahuasca ceremony. I felt obliged to go because strictly speaking, legally, I am responsible for the safety of students who come to my center. So I felt I had to go and make sure they would be all right to go with them. I couldn't just let them go with this other person. And I didn't the three of them very well, very lightly.
So it was a long trip. And it would be overnight. It would end up being many hours on the road, two or three hours on the road, partly on the boat, on the pirogue, et cetera. And I simply didn't want to be alone with people I did not know. So I asked him to accompany me. He said no. I said you'll have to accompany me. I didn't force them to ingest anything or even to participate. I didn't know if he was going to do the ceremony. He just showed up. He was there with us.
He could have not come to the ceremony. That I would not have forced him to do, come to the ceremony. That has to be his own decision. But he was there. He came with us. I did not force him to come to the ceremony. I forced him to accompany me to the trip, in the trip because I didn't know these people very much. That's what I forced him to do. Yes, indeed. I did.
CHARLES STANG: That's a very important clarification. So thank you for making that clarification. I hope that puts our questioner's heart at rest. All right. I have one more question. Well, the questions are coming in, but I also want to ask you if there's any questions you wish you had been asked. But that's not the question I have right now. I'm just putting that out there before we conclude.
So someone has asked. I've heard an ayahuascero talk down other shamanic medicines, such as San Pedro or psilocybin, healing ayahuasca as a more true medicine. Is this a common pattern, one of making a hierarchy or of these different plant medicines. And if so, why?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: This is absolutely typical. The first shamanic session I did was not with ayahuasca. It was with a Datura plant called locally tomapende. I don't know what its scientific name. It's very strong. And the shaman who did that with me and friends that came with me was typical. Dear old friend. He was a neighbor. I went there all the time. I knew him very well.
He said, forget about ayahuasca. Tomapende is the only right thing. You really hear that. And if you are wachumero, which is San Pedro, whatever you do is the best. That's typical. There's nothing unusual in that. What one does is the best.
I did tomapende only a few times. And I started ayahuasca because my host told me that's what we do. And as a good anthropologist, when in Rome, you do like the Roman. You do whatever they ask you. And I said yes. And I discovered that this was-- I stuck with it because it opened up amazing horizons, which I realized very soon for my spiritual development.
And so I stuck with ayahuasca because it was extraordinary. It was fantastic. I wouldn't say it's the best. It's what I know and what I know best. I've tried tomapende. It's very powerful. And I can't tell you why.
CHARLES STANG: OK. I'm going to combine two questions that are both addressed to Randy. The answer to this question is in the book, but I'm going to pose it for those who haven't yet read the book. The question is essentially, how have Randy's family and friends reacted to this initiation into shamanism? How have the people of your community reacted, both the Mestizo community in which he was raised, as well as the Indigenous community, the Quechua Lama. Am I saying it right? Quechua Lamas?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Quechua Lamas. Yeah.
CHARLES STANG: Yeah. Quechua Lamas community. And how have these different reactions, friends, family, Mestizo, Indigenous, how have all these different reactions kind of landed with Randy himself personally?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: I can translate, but I also the answer. I've known him since he's 15. He's like a son. And it saves us the work. But I will translate after I have answered, to make sure that there's not something else he wants to say.
Most importantly, it's been, what's the word I want to use, very painful. He has lost his parents. I don't think this was about love, but it's a very strong love. I have no sister. His mother was my right arm, my sister. And so I've lost her. He's lost the closeness with them. So the price has been very high.
But it also, it has to do partly, because I try to talk to his parents a lot. And in part it has to do with losing his former partner, who his mother was extremely and I think continues to be extremely fond of. But his current partner and the mother of his first child, who was born two weeks ago. She has a baby up there.
So he could not have a child with the first person. And the current partner was designated to him by the spirits, who told him she's going to be your wife. You're going to have a child with her, which has happened. But he's paid a high price for it. Very high price. His close friends, most of them have not only accepted, but come to him for help. And he has healed many of them. Very serious. Sometimes, physical problems. Sometimes, addiction. Sometimes, different mental problems.
A few, but very few, for specific reasons, have kind of rejected him. But very few. Most of them have become even more friends and very grateful for having been healed by him. [SPEAKING SPANISH]
So I asked him, does he want to say something else? I quickly translated what I told you. He says, that's fine.
CHARLES STANG: One follow-up question I have is were there any skeptics among the Indigenous community-- is there any question of someone like Randy from the Mestizo community being initiated? Is there any resistance to non-Indigenous being initiated to do this shamanic work?
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: No. Not at all. There are plenty. I've done ayahuasca with many Mestizos, as well as Indigenous shamans. This is common. There's a class issue there. The Mestizo shamans don't tend to be the upper class. We tend to be more from the peasant class. You can't say it's a rule, but the tendency is like that. It's totally accepted. Quechuans go to Mestizo shamans.
One of our very valued Indigenous collaborator who works here, now part time, has done many sessions with him, as has his wife, his Quechuan wife. So they come to Mestizo shamans. It's really the reason for coming to a shaman is the shaman's reputation. And Randy has done stunning healings. I mean, absolutely amazing things. And the word gets out. People come, whoever they are. They have come to him.
CHARLES STANG: Frederique, do you want to say anything about the center that you're directing. Because it's woven into the book, and it's adjacent to many of the things you've talked about tonight. But you haven't really addressed it. And I think it might be helpful for you to speak about your efforts in agricultural revitalization and trying to move forward these kind of suppressed Indigenous ways of knowing that are fighting against really--
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Yeah. One of my first and main project. The thing about his initiation came to all of us as total surprise, and it has changed all of our lives. And I have to stop doing what I started doing. And I started trying to regenerate the most amazing soil. It's called by scientists, anthropogenic, meaning made by humans. I don't like that term because it's a cosmocentric soil. It's made by humans, but by all the other entities in the cosmos as well. So that's the caveat, I would say.
And its oldest layers discovered by archeologists quite a while back. But the serious work began in the '60s, I believe. '50s and 60s of last century. And the oldest strata have been dated as being 8,000 years old by soil scientists at Cornell. So this is an amazing soil made by humans and other entities and full of broken ceramics.
And what's published on it by mostly scientists doesn't say anything about the ceramics. But one of my Quechua collaborator, I discovered through his grandmother, that it comes from offerings to the spirits of the field. So we do this. And Roiner, our Indigenous specialist, who taught me the little Quechua that I know and many other things, leads us in the ceremonies of offerings this reciprocity, this unclosed self that I tried for many years.
I taught study abroad courses here for undergraduate and sometimes, graduate students from US and Canada, where we did these things, because I don't force people to do them. But usually, they want to do it. They always join in these rituals. So I didn't know where I was going with this.
CHARLES STANG: Well, maybe I can jump in because one of the things that I found so interesting is that it sounds as if the scientists working on this anthropogenic soil, so-called anthropogenic soil, didn't really know how to interpret the existence of broken ceramics. And they attribute it to middens, which are essentially ancient trash heaps. But still, that didn't seem to explain its ubiquity. Why they were there. Why are there broken ceramics in the soil, everywhere? When it doesn't seem like the broken ceramics are providing any obvious organic function to the soil.
And what I gather you are proposing, based on an Indigenous testimony--
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: And also the testimony of an archaeologist, a proven archeologist.
CHARLES STANG: Is that this proves or suggests that the very least that the creation of this soil is a collaborative effort in which the humans understand themselves as making offerings to disembodied or either non-human or other than human entities. And so this is why the soil isn't really anthropogenic because even the humans don't understand themselves as doing all the work.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Exactly.
CHARLES STANG: And they're involved in a gift economy with a whole host of other beings. And they're giving these very precious ceramics to those beings. It completely changes our understanding of what the efficacy of the soil is.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Exactly. So this is an example of non-enclosed self. You're in constant reciprocity with all the other beings. You are also with humans, but not only with humans, as Marcel Mauss insisted.
CHARLES STANG: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Fascinating. Well, thank God we're involved in an economy with more than human beings. That might be our only hope.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Exactly. Exactly.
CHARLES STANG: Well, I have run out of my questions, and I think we've been through a good number of the questions that came through from the audience. I suppose, in closing, I just want to invite Randy or you, Frederique, to say anything you wish to that you haven't had a chance to say.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: [SPEAKING SPANISH]
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: So what he just said, he wanted to say that, I said very quickly, told the story when he finally decided to accept this path, after he had decided to give it up, when the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared. And he wants to say that She especially is his patron. But not only She. The Waman Wasi. The sacred mountain is also. But also the Hindu God Ganesh, the Hindu God Shiva, especially Shiva Nataraj have appeared to him, have given him powers, and others. And he wants to say that their patronage and their help have become crucial to him and are what made him accept the path halfway through after trying to quit.
RANDY CHUNG GONZALEZ: [SPEAKING SPANISH]
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: He said. We had a conversation the other night where he spoke so poetically. It was beautiful. And now he's referring to it. And he was explaining to me that when he heals, when he leads a ceremony and he's trying to heal, he says I am not healing. He used several, but the one that stuck with me, he says, I'm like a flute. And the Virgin or the others are blowing. And it goes through me. But I'm not the author of it. It comes from above. And that's how healing happens.
CHARLES STANG: That's beautiful. Well, that seems like a wonderful image with which to close this evening.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: I agree.
CHARLES STANG: A beautiful, poetic image. So thank you again, both of you, Frederique and Randy, for this rich book and this rich conversation.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Thank you, Charles, for inviting us, very much.
CHARLES STANG: It's a delight. And it's such a wonderful way to re-begin this series. And in fact, this semester, we're going to have a whole host of events, many of which will be dealing with ayahuasca traditions.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: I'll be joining if I'm-- we're both traveling a lot with book presentation to Europe and other places. So I'll be moving around a lot. But I'll try to come to those because as you know, very interesting. Thank you, Charles.
CHARLES STANG: They're always recorded, and we will distribute them. So if you can't attend in person--
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: Great.
CHARLES STANG: We have Bill Barnard coming, who's just written a book on Liquid Light on the Santo Daime tradition. Anyway, those of you who are joining, if you're not subscribe to our newsletter, please do so. That's the best way to find out about these talks. They're not yet on our website because not all the details are finalized. But in any case, for those of you who are joining us, we still have a good number of people with us. Thank you so much.
And in the meantime, I wish you all well, Frederique and Randy. Thank you again for the interview. Please come to see me when you're back in Cambridge.
FREDERIQUE APFFEL-MARGLIN: I will. I definitely will.
CHARLES STANG: OK. Thank you all. Good night. Good evening.
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