The Cactus Chronicles Vol 1: The Huachuma Connection
Huachuma calls us back into a relationship with the land, with each other, and with ourselves.
Many plant medicines are known for pulling and ripping us apart so that the ego may dissolve. Huachuma is here to put us back together. The spirit of this medicine is very grounded and very interested in simplicity. Huachuma is here to help us build a stairway to the truth of who we are, and as we find holes along the way, we fill them in order to find wholeness within. Huachuma reminds us of how solid the ground is beneath our feet, how fertile it is, and the medicine it holds. It reminds us that we are no more important than the mosquito or the rock. It is the bridge between us and the divine through the expanded state that it shows us. Reminding us: there is no separation.
Huachuma really meets us where we are. It values free will and self-responsibility. It allows us to choose when we wish to accept the invite. Anyone can break an ego with psychedelics. With the right dose and the right synthesized chemicals this can happen in less than a minute. Modern psychedelic science has become a veritable ego dissolving mystical experience generator. Unfortunately, if “ego death” were all that was needed for enlightenment, the most reckless among us would be the wisest. It's easier to break shit than make shit.
Through huachuma we are reminded that our bodies are powerful instruments and conductors to be used to connect to all living things. Our experience with huachuma allows us to internalize this idea so we can embody our gifts and navigate our lives with greatness. Building a healthy, embodied, connected, and fulfilled sense of self can take a lifetime, and that is the building process in which Huachuma is invested. It gives us a present moment experience that isn't so far beyond ourselves that it’s hard to integrate.
Huachuma helps us in measured ways. It will not take us anywhere we don't want to go. It is suggestive: “maybe go here?” It gives us the option to say yes or no. This is not true with all plants. Other psychedelics, especially those with tryptamines like LSD or psilocybin, work in a very cognitive way. We may not understand this until we experience the contrast with huachuma. Huachuma is very “body-based." It is sensory driven, putting us in touch with our feeling senses, giving us the ability to touch our intuitive side more deeply. The main psychoactive alkaloid in Huachuma is mescaline. It can be very visionary but more so sensual, putting it in close relation biochemically to MDMA. It makes us more present within the body, especially in the heart. The frequency that Huachuma embodies is a very perceptive one, based on the frequency and vibration of all living matter. It attunes us to the frequency of plants, the frequency of animals, of culture, of love. This doesn't happen through the mind. The mind is not the gatekeeper for this type of experience.
We tend to get so focused on seeing the world as it is, that we miss the fact that there's this warm water seeping up from below the plant which is inviting us to shift into new frequency. Sometimes all we need to do is tilt our heads a little to see things from an entirely different place– this is where massive shifts can happen within the subtleties of perspective. Not everyone is ready to tap into these subtle shifts or tilt their heads a little to meet it. It can be easier to make a full 180 degree turn… but move too quickly and you could miss it! Huachuma is tuning our bodies and spirit to be able to recognize deeper truths. Many times the first few sessions are exactly that: “Let's move your energy just a little into this frequency and vibration where I exist, and then you'll be able to see me.”
Often our culture really values that “punch a hole through a brick wall” experience. “Give it all to me now and give it to me Fast!” We live in a very fast-paced and distracted society these days. We like things to be quick, and we’re impatient in our own healing process as well. We like our experiences to be very evident and powerful, tearing us out of whatever world we are living in and into another one. Huachuma is not that at all. It is respectful of our natural habitat. It shows us how to walk courageously, to be here now. It invites us into the kingdom of the natural world, the one we live on and in. Through gentle stillness, we can truly see and accept the invitation of Huachuma. This is when everything starts. This is when the self is held by every living organism on this VERY alive planet. We learn from it and it learns from us. Huachuma wants a relationship with US, to experience itself through us and us through it, to help us know it and help it know us. “Let me reach the deepest part of you,” it says. “Commit yourself to me and I will open to you.”
Huachuma is very connected to the memory of light, the memory of the land, and the memory of weather. If we look at the cactus itself and its growth, we see some bands are smaller and others wider. This allows us to see a record of its growth over the years, wider in the sunny warm season and smaller through the darker colder season. Warmth and sunlight allows the plant to grow wider and faster outwardly. In the more cold and dark months, it grows much slower and inward. Looking at the body of the plant allows us to see its historical growth chart. Some could argue that it is immortal by propagation and the body of the plant holds every moment in time. It also holds cultural memory including what humans have been doing with it the past 4,000 years.
The plant is a curious being. It wants to learn about its environment. It wants to learn about the people who are working with it. Not only does it hold a record of memory of light and of time, it is also curious how we work with it. It may recognize a certain type of food consumed when it sits within our bodies. For example, here's an almond: “Oh i've never met an almond before, next time I will remember when someone has had this food.” Huachuma is incredibly sensitive to our energy, especially those that work with it and have an established relationship with it. It remembers. It allows us to direct it.
Huachuma has a history of use with many things outside of its known psychedelic realm in today's society. An example of other traditional use could be if someone stole a farmer’s cattle, the farmer might drink Huachuma, and the plant would show them an image of the face of the person who stole their cattle. It was also used often in divination and diagnosis. In present times, huachuma is meeting modern civilization and learning of newer diseases, mental illnesses, anxiety, worry, depression, and addiction. It is learning, becoming more able and willing to treat these things that are associated with being human in today's world.
Huachuma calls us back into a relationship with the land, with each other, and with ourselves. We as humans learn from the land and the land learns from us. Just like Huachuma, the land holds the memory of the people. Huachuma cares much about lived experience. Not ideas and concepts. It gives us the lived experience that humans are not separate from the land, not separate from nature, and that we are natural outgrowths of this world we live in. Through evolution we are active participants in forming the history of the earth. We ALL really matter in every way we touch the land and in every way we are in contact with mother earth.
What the river knows is so deep and complex. We can spend a lifetime studying that river and we will not know everything that the river knows. Pretending we are the pinnacle of life on this earth is what has got us into this mess we see in the present day. Huachuma IS THE DESTRUCTION OF HUMAN SUPREMACY and the idea that we have anything more to offer than a bee does. We must remember to respect the elements. ALL life is an expression of the earth. Often humans act as though we are just visiting the earth rather than remembering we emerged from IT. We will return to the earth when we die. We have lost that embodied knowing. People act as though they don't belong here or that we should build a new society on mars instead of fixing our current state here on mother Gaia. That is a disconnect from our environment.
In times of growth, collapse, and crisis, Huachuma gives us the gift of knowing ourselves through knowing and expressing our own gifts. It shows us who we are by showing us where we are situated in relation to everything around us. The gift is to know ourselves in such a deep way that we can begin to create with it, with each other, with the natural world, with art, with creativity, with love to ourselves. We begin to know our worth here on this exquisite planet. When we know this, then we can begin to know what it means to live and be here NOW. By connecting back into our body and integrating the traumatized parts, we come back to who we truly are.
