The Magical Phlegm Of The Amazon

The Byzantine Bogomils of Bulgaria had a repulsive creation myth regarding the origin of man. According to I. P. Couliano in the stupendous, expository, dense, and edifying, “Out Of This World: Otherworldly Journeys From Gilgamesh To Albert Einstein,” the Gnostic Bogomils originally saw primordial man, Adam Qadmon, as an innocent flesh vessel that was bereft of soul. Couliano said, “The ruler of this world fabricated Adam’s physical body and wanted to implant the soul in it, but as soon as the soul entered through the mouth it would come out through the opposite orifice, and when introduced through the rectum it would come out the mouth.” It took three hundred years for the ruler of the earth to figure out how to get the soul into the body and keep it there. The ruler eventually consumed a serpent, scorpion, dog, cat, and a frog, and then spit this semi-congealed mess of animal parts onto the antiseptic soul. In the words of Couliano, “Then, plugging up Adam’s anus, the ruler blew the soul into his mouth. Due to its disgusting wrapping, the soul hung onto the body.”

I would like to take this creation myth and deftly transport it across space and time to the verdant environs of the Amazon basin. I would like to do this because we can draw a certain parallel between it and the ambiguity of ayahuasca-based shamanism. In the ayahuasca-based shamanism of the primeval rainforest, the type of shamanism that seems to be most endemic, there are two broad types of shamans. The first type of shaman is the “ayahuasquero,” the brave soul who uses his or her knowledge of herbcraft to heal others of maladies. The other type of shaman is the “brujo,” the ambivalent soul who uses his or her knowledge of herbcraft to inflict harm on others for personal gain or simply for reprisal. The latter type of shaman will sometimes preternaturally attach serpents, scorpions, and other lowly creatures to a pathogenic dart known as a “virote” in order to victimize another shaman. Like in the Byzantine Bogomils creation myth, this “disgusting wrapping” is then lodged into a desired location on the shaman’s body. Sometimes this is lethal. Sometimes it is not. It all depends upon the skill and fortitude of the healer.

One method of defense in ayahuasca-based shamanism involves, oddly enough, phlegm. But not just your average, run-of-the-mill phlegm that looks jaundiced and revolting when it lodges itself in a fissure on the sidewalk. This phlegm has been spiritualized. It has been transmuted in the shaman’s body. Regular phlegm, or flema, is visceral phlegm. It is a mixture of the ayahuasca potion and the body’s own biochemical juices. Through the use of magical songs (icaros) and inner equanimity, the base phlegm is raised from the chest to the throat and from there it becomes “mariri,” spiritualized phlegm. It is this spiritualized phlegm that can either extract pathogenic darts or become a thaumaturgic shield against the wiles of the brujo.

Seeing as a lot of this information came to me via Stephan Beyer’s extensive book on Amazonian shamanism called, “Singing To The Plants: A Guide To Mestizo Shamanism In The Upper Amazon,” it only seems appropriate to quote him here on the reality of mariri, spiritualized phlegm, and how it is transferred from master to apprentice:

“The maestro ayahuasquero can also transfer some of his or her own phlegm—and the fuerza (power) it manifests—into the apprentice, as part of the apprentice’s coronacion, crowning or initiation, by regurgitating the phlegm and putting it into the apprentice’s body. The mariri can also be transferred to the apprentice’s body through the corona, through the mouth, or both; the stream of mariri entering the apprentice is often envisioned as a shining stream of light or as a great snake.”

So it seems that the visceral phlegm can turn into, if nurtured and blessed, a “shining stream of light”. This is pure alchemy. The movement from the visceral to the ethereal, or gross to subtle, is an example of sublimation. To master such a craft is to master the biochemical juices of the body, the virulence of the intoxication, and the very self that mediates and houses the phlegm.

When in Kathmandu learning about Asiatic languages and the nature of “Bon,” a pre-buddhistic type of shamanism that flourished well before the rise Mahayana Buddhism, Terence McKenna stumbled upon the reality of an “ultraviolet psychofluid” or “mariri” one night while having sex with a fellow itinerant traveler on a rooftop. After taking LSD, Terence McKenna decided to take a couple acrid puffs of crystallized DMT, a biochemical agent found in ayahuasca. His female companion also decided to follow him into the rocky psychedelic seas with some puffs. During coitus, and while high on DMT, Terence McKenna burped up the magical phlegm. “I looked at it. I looked right into it, and it was the surface of my own mind reflected in front of me. Was it translinguistic matter, the living opalescent excrescence of the alchemical abyss of hyperspace, something generated by the sex act performed under such crazy conditions?”

Later, while Terence and Dennis were traveling in the Amazon basin in search of a legendary DMT-infused snuff, the ultraviolet psychofluid was discovered once again. This time it was discovered by Dennis McKenna while experimenting with psilocybe mushrooms and the shavings of the ayahuasca vine. In one of his journal entries, Dennis McKenna had this to say about the magical phlegm:

“The hyperdimensional nature is such that it is all material, concepts, events, words, people, and ideas homogenized into one thing via the higher dimensional alchemy of mind.”

This is a pretty bold statement, but it does carry the meritorious flag of fringe science up the mountain of the bizarre. Perhaps what the phlegm becomes after its visceral stage of bodily entombment is a shamanistic fluid capable of either exiting or entering the body at will. It becomes autonomous and etheric. It becomes an extension of the mind.

The next time I cough up icky, jaundiced phlegm from the sick spot within, I am going to think about the “shining stream of light” or the “ultraviolet psychofluid”. Maybe it will heal me. Maybe not.