Stephan Beyer's "Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon" is by far the best book on ayahuasca shamanism I have ever read. Despite the title, which had me expecting another New Age journey of the spirit, this book delivers the goods. Written with clarity and keen academic observation, Beyer deconstructs the methods of shamanic ontology and ritual with both a healthy skepticism and sincere admiration. Where other texts have passing mentions of shamanic constructs like phlegm or
virote, the sourcerer's magical dart, Beyer explores the functional properties of these spiritual tools in a way that fascinates, horrifies, and amazes. Descriptions of shamen storing darts in their stomachs, regurgitating rarefied phlegm into the mouths of their students, pushing poison black needles through space and time towards their enemies... Holy crap!
Beyer's work is admirable in that he moves past surface elements of shamanic craft and takes an objective look at everything he reports. In a few instances Beyer seems overly taken with the magic he is exploring, such as seeing a spider escape from his mouth in a fit of jealousy, and wondering if it was the cause of his instructor's wife's illness. These few instances are far outweighed by the comprehensive and level-headed analysis of ayahuasca spirit ontology and the phenomenology of hallucination. While I thought I had exhausted all sources on this subject Beyer had me rethinking some fundamental assumptions about the magical nature of the ayahuasca space, and the dangers posed by jumping into the game of healing and sorcery without proper magical protection. Written with years of field study and well sourced and referenced, I would highly recommend this book to anyone studying ayahuasca, shamanism, or sorcery.
