February 18, 2025 • 17 mins
George Noory and author Matthew Pallamary explore the healing practices of shamans, how they share ancient knowledge and traditions with their tribes, and the importance of respecting the spirits of the plants used as medicine.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you,
Matthew Pallamary Back with us. Author and shamantic explorer. He
frequently visits the mountains, deserts, and jungles of north central
South America pursuing his studies of shamanism and visionary experiences.
He lectures about shamanism and writing throughout the United States
(00:26):
as well. One of his most recent books, The Humming
Bird Whisperer. Matthew, welcome back. How have you been.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm doing great?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Hush.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
How did you How did you get involved in shamanism.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I've been fascinating with it all my life. When I
was a kid, I was ready caught up with dan
and talking to the animals. And when I was very young,
I remember doctor Doolittle. I was really caught up with that,
you know, at a very I think six years old.
(01:05):
So that always fascinated me. The natural world always fascinated me.
All of the unusual things fascinated me. And then I
took an honest course in anthropology and it was called
a Forest of symbols, orientation and meaning the South American
(01:28):
Indian religions. And one of the things I discovered is
that the myth of the flood, as in Noah's Ark
in the Bible, is actually a universal myth. There's remote
tribes in the Amazon that they have there's similar mythologies
of the great flood, and.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
So that universal commonality fascinated me. And then I found
out that shamanism throughout all over the world have a
lot of the same customs and traditions and belief systems.
So I was totally drawn into it in that way.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
In your opinion, what is shamanism?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Shamanism is the world's oldest spiritual belief system. I had
a lot of fun some years back. I was speaking
to a group I think it was a rotary club
in Solvaan, California, and all the ladies were all excited
and all the husbands were like skeptical, And so I
got up there in front of the group and I said,
(02:31):
thank you for inviting me to come and speak to
you about the world's oldest profession. And I let us, yeah,
I let us sit for a couple of beats, and
then I went, look where your minds went. You should
all be ashamed of yourself. And then suddenly I had them,
you know, in the palm of my hand. And then
I said, look, Shamanism is the world's oldest profession. The
(02:51):
very first time somebody had any level of awareness and
looked up at the stars and nature and said, what
does all of this mean? That's really where it began.
And then, of course you can research every single religion
in the world. They all have their roots in shamanism.
It's the very basis of prehistoric spirituality. And you can
(03:12):
find shamanism in every religion. Generally speaking now in modern
times so to speak, Buddhism is one of the closest
in terms of shamanic police. But they all, every single
religion has a lot of shamanic beliefs embedded within them.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
What about every type of tribe, do they have shamans
there too?
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Primarily?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
I mean, originally the word shaman it was saman and
it comes from the Tungusk people of Siberia, and that
original meaning of the word is someone who knows so
remote tribes. You know, my specialty of South American shamanism,
although I studied American Indian shamanism, and I've been all
(03:58):
through the Andes, but then the jungles of the Peruvian
Amazon is really my specialty. And you have that person
in the tribe who sometimes they're the chief, but not
always necessarily the chief, but they're the person who knows.
They're the person you go to if you need to
find out something. And you know, shamans were also the
(04:18):
first psychologists, healers, teachers, performing artists, musicians, bart's storytellers. Much
of their knowledge has been passed on through actually the
myth that are told repeatedly, the oral traditions, and that's
something I've always been fascinated with, particularly in preserving them
and passing them on, because it was a way of
(04:40):
passing on knowledge before you know, all this internet and
all this other stuff happened.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Well, Matthew, what was the primary mission of the shaman?
What was his or her role.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Primarily there as guides? And one of shamanism. Shamans have
a number of different sort of beliefs, and one of
the beliefs or the definitions of shamanism is a bridge
so for arguments today in South American shamanism, although in
all aspects of it throughout the world, shaman is the
(05:15):
person who would go to the other worlds or the
other realms or the other realities, however you want to
characterize them and go find the knowledge. They would do
these things, you know, considered soul retrieval, and they would
go find the knowledge. So if somebody is within and
a lot of it has to do with a particular
(05:35):
cultural contact, So somebody is troubled about something and there
and there's there's superstition mixed in with it, and some
of the superstition is actually based in fact. But they
would go to the shaman and say, look, you know,
how's my baby going to be? Or or even in
more primitive societies, we're going to go to war with
(05:57):
this other tribe? Should we do this? How should we
do it? They would do it for big things like
preceding big hunts, things like that, I can get down
a rabbit hole on any one of these things. By
the way, you know, you got to wring me in
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
We'll put you down on that's for sure, as long
as we can pull you back out. Matthew. Yeah, were
shaman's primarily set up to talk about the afterlife.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
That's part of it. In my experience, particularly with Ayahuascar
in the Peruvian Amazon. I've confronted depth a number of
times now, so I am prepared for it because shaman's
generally speaking, are people who look into other realms that
we don't know about, and of course, generally speaking, people
fear what they don't know. So shaman is a person
(06:47):
who will push themselves psychologically, sometimes using visionary plants, sometimes
through fasting, extreme diets, other vision quests where they really
push their physical being to the limits where you tap
into sort of the boundaries between being fully conscious, so
to speak, and then all the realms of the subconscious
(07:09):
and particularly in terms of dreaming and other realms of
perceptions that aren't quote unquote normal within the world. So
they're the person that will go to the edge of
and push the limits of reality as they know it
to go find the hidden knowledge. And as a matter
of fact, much of this the roots of the hero's journey.
(07:30):
Joseph Campbell's Heroes Journey ties in with this.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
How did they interact with the tribal leader.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
It's interesting because in a lot of cultures, the shaman
is separate from the tribal leader. Sometimes they are the
tribal leaders, but they make the ultimate Typically, I mean
there's exceptions to every rule. Obviously, nothing as hard and fast,
but they would make the hard decisions though the trial.
(08:00):
A leader may be puzzling over some situation that may
be threatening the tribe and he wants to know do
I want to do the right thing? And then he
would go to the shaman and ask his advice. It's
not so different in today's society, Western society, so to speak.
If somebody's troubled, they may go to the church and
(08:21):
speak to the to the priests or their their spiritual confessor,
so to speak, and ask them, hey, I'm in this situation,
whether it's normal, moral or physical, and what do you think?
What did your advice on how to do it? And then,
of course a shaman would give them a perspective that's,
for lack of better words, kind of outside the box,
(08:42):
you know, a little bit of objectivity to the situation
from a whole different perspective.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Were they healers primarily.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Yes, but but not even physically in terms of health
and all that. Yes, majorly psychologically speaking. They were also
the first therapists, and they would give advice and in
the jungle, the traditions that I work and the knowledge
(09:12):
of the plants is literally prehistoric, and they have generations
of knowledge that have been passed on about which particular
plants can heal which particular situations and maladies. Years ago,
I worked with a mentor who was the mentor to
the shamans I was working with. He was very old,
(09:34):
and I remember him saying, I am a plant man,
and my father was a plant man, and his father
was a plant man before him, and I come from
a long line of plant men that goes way back
in my lineage from as far as I can remember.
And incidentally, they don't refer to themselves as shamans. They
use different words in the Amazon. Primarily they'll call themselves vegetilistas,
(09:57):
which are specialist in the plant. If they're working with ayahuasca,
they could be called iahwuas guiros as I mentioned a
little bit ago. The word shaman actually comes from Siberia.
That word simon one who knows.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Were they like the staff doctors.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Yeah, they could be like the chief of staff doctors.
Because some people it could be genetics, so to speak,
or within the family where somebody comes to shaman, or
people can have different situations like many situations where in
Western society we would treat as mental illness. In many
(10:37):
shamanic societies, they would see that as a sign that
this person was chosen to do this work. And there
are a number of things like in many cultures, if
somebody is struck by lightning and they survive, they say
that's one way of being chosen to be a shaman.
So there's a number of different ways that it can happen,
(10:58):
but there's usually some sort of sign. And shamans and
particularly indigenous people, they watch they observed nature very very
very closely, because nature gives them everything that they need
and gives them all the signs and things that they need.
That's why you know they are familiar as in uh
totem spirits and stuff like that. If you're if you're
(11:21):
in the middle of nature, particularly in the jungle, and
you're listening to all the sounds of the different animals,
the animals and the bugs and everything else. They're all
listening to each other. So one bird may give out
a particular cry and everybody else went out, oh there's
a jaguar around, we better be careful, and others. You know,
there is so cross uh cross species communication. The caason
(11:44):
it's very complex.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Were most of the shamans righteous or any of them evil?
Speaker 4 (11:52):
There's there are there are evil ones, but particularly and shaman,
you don't, I mean, there's the whole concept of evil,
but in a broader perspective. Generally speaking, they don't think
of it necessarily as evil, but they think of it
as degrees of awareness or degrees of consciousness. If they're
(12:12):
doing this work and they're spending their consciousness, they won't
really do evil. But I was shown there's a plant,
there's a small palm thing. I can't remember the name
of it. I've got it in my notes, and all spikes,
all spikes coming out of it, and nothing grows near it,
near it. The whole area around it is blank. And
(12:36):
I was told by a shaman that that's the dark
magic plant. And if you vibe of that plant, you
go to the dark side. And once you do that,
there's no turning back. You commit to it. But anyone
who continues to do this work, if they're following the
path to become a man of power or a woman
(12:58):
of power, or a mineralment of knowledge, their awareness expands
and they know better than to partake an evil because
evil thrives on fear, and fear comes from not knowing
the lack of awareness.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
What are they called spike plants?
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Yeah, there's a name. It's not there's a name for it.
You by Cassa, I think it was. And it's really
ugly looking. It's got these big spikes all sticking out
of it, you know, like you can see a cactus
with a lot of spikes. You don't want to go
near that thing. You're going to get stabbed. And this plant,
just by looking at it, you go, oh, I don't
(13:37):
even want to go anywhere near that thing because it's
it's like a bunch of banets all sticking out of
it all around it.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Are the principles of shamanism still around?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Absolutely yeah. One of the things about shamanism is it
adapts with the times, Like going back when all the
knowledge was passed on through oral traditions, repeating the myths
with each successive generation. The present generation at the time
(14:10):
of the telling would take the knowledge that was passed
on through the myths from their predecessors and they would
alter it a little bit to explain what's going on
in time. Because times change, things evolve, situations change, so
they would modify the myths a little bit each time
in order to keep it present so that it has
practical knowledge, because myths have practical knowledge within them. I mean,
(14:35):
even a lot of the stories in the Bible, whether
their myths or not, much of it are morality tales.
You know, the prodigal Sun or you know, all of
those things where it's guidance for the culture. So its
myths have primarily been a cultural teaching tool to keep
(14:56):
the culture relevant.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
I guess they would also be not only the doctor,
as we talked about, but the pharmacist.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Absolutely. Oh, the pharmacology in the jungle is fascinating, and
a lot of times they'll.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Tell, matter of fact, that's where modern pharmacy came from.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Absolutely. In fact, there's a thing that goes on now.
There are a lot of traditions that the indigenous people
are worried about because the pharmaceutical company is something that
they've been given away, that's been for free all this time.
Pharmaceutical companies will come in and try to patented or
get this particular component within this particular plant and isolate
it and use that. One of the for lack of
(15:37):
better words, the biggest violations of that is cocaine. In
the Andes, the coca plant is sacred and it's considered
the mother plants of the Andes. And as a matter
of fact, when the Spanish took over the Incas and
they took the coca away, the anchors could no longer
perform because one of the things that the coca plant
(15:58):
does is that oxygenates your blood and it allowed them
to function at higher altitudes. So when the Spanish put
them into slavery and took their cocoa away, then they
could no longer function. Now, what they say in the
traditions in the Andes is with you have all the problems,
you have crack cocaine and heart attacks and you know,
mental dysfunction, all these things that happen. What they say
(16:22):
in the Andes is that that is what you get
for disrespecting the spirit of the plant. Because when you're
isolating cocaine from it and doing all the things that
go on, and you know all the you know, the
drug cartels and the murders and the deaths and all
the physiological horror things that happened. They think that's what
happens when you disrespect the spirit of the plant. But
(16:44):
when you use it in the sacred way, in the
way that they've been doing it for, you know, one
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. It's actually a
very healthy planet. It's high envitamin CE, potassium, calcium, it's
one of the nature's most.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Perfect Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight
at one a m. Eastern and go to coast tocoastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you,
Matthew Pallamary Back with us. Author and shamantic explorer. He
frequently visits the mountains, deserts, and jungles of north central
South America pursuing his studies of shamanism and visionary experiences.
He lectures about shamanism and writing throughout the United States
(00:26):
as well. One of his most recent books, The Humming
Bird Whisperer. Matthew, welcome back. How have you been.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm doing great?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Hush.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
How did you How did you get involved in shamanism.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I've been fascinating with it all my life. When I
was a kid, I was ready caught up with dan
and talking to the animals. And when I was very young,
I remember doctor Doolittle. I was really caught up with that,
you know, at a very I think six years old.
(01:05):
So that always fascinated me. The natural world always fascinated me.
All of the unusual things fascinated me. And then I
took an honest course in anthropology and it was called
a Forest of symbols, orientation and meaning the South American
(01:28):
Indian religions. And one of the things I discovered is
that the myth of the flood, as in Noah's Ark
in the Bible, is actually a universal myth. There's remote
tribes in the Amazon that they have there's similar mythologies
of the great flood, and.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
So that universal commonality fascinated me. And then I found
out that shamanism throughout all over the world have a
lot of the same customs and traditions and belief systems.
So I was totally drawn into it in that way.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
In your opinion, what is shamanism?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Shamanism is the world's oldest spiritual belief system. I had
a lot of fun some years back. I was speaking
to a group I think it was a rotary club
in Solvaan, California, and all the ladies were all excited
and all the husbands were like skeptical, And so I
got up there in front of the group and I said,
(02:31):
thank you for inviting me to come and speak to
you about the world's oldest profession. And I let us, yeah,
I let us sit for a couple of beats, and
then I went, look where your minds went. You should
all be ashamed of yourself. And then suddenly I had them,
you know, in the palm of my hand. And then
I said, look, Shamanism is the world's oldest profession. The
(02:51):
very first time somebody had any level of awareness and
looked up at the stars and nature and said, what
does all of this mean? That's really where it began.
And then, of course you can research every single religion
in the world. They all have their roots in shamanism.
It's the very basis of prehistoric spirituality. And you can
(03:12):
find shamanism in every religion. Generally speaking now in modern
times so to speak, Buddhism is one of the closest
in terms of shamanic police. But they all, every single
religion has a lot of shamanic beliefs embedded within them.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
What about every type of tribe, do they have shamans
there too?
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Primarily?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
I mean, originally the word shaman it was saman and
it comes from the Tungusk people of Siberia, and that
original meaning of the word is someone who knows so
remote tribes. You know, my specialty of South American shamanism,
although I studied American Indian shamanism, and I've been all
(03:58):
through the Andes, but then the jungles of the Peruvian
Amazon is really my specialty. And you have that person
in the tribe who sometimes they're the chief, but not
always necessarily the chief, but they're the person who knows.
They're the person you go to if you need to
find out something. And you know, shamans were also the
(04:18):
first psychologists, healers, teachers, performing artists, musicians, bart's storytellers. Much
of their knowledge has been passed on through actually the
myth that are told repeatedly, the oral traditions, and that's
something I've always been fascinated with, particularly in preserving them
and passing them on, because it was a way of
(04:40):
passing on knowledge before you know, all this internet and
all this other stuff happened.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Well, Matthew, what was the primary mission of the shaman?
What was his or her role.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Primarily there as guides? And one of shamanism. Shamans have
a number of different sort of beliefs, and one of
the beliefs or the definitions of shamanism is a bridge
so for arguments today in South American shamanism, although in
all aspects of it throughout the world, shaman is the
(05:15):
person who would go to the other worlds or the
other realms or the other realities, however you want to
characterize them and go find the knowledge. They would do
these things, you know, considered soul retrieval, and they would
go find the knowledge. So if somebody is within and
a lot of it has to do with a particular
(05:35):
cultural contact, So somebody is troubled about something and there
and there's there's superstition mixed in with it, and some
of the superstition is actually based in fact. But they
would go to the shaman and say, look, you know,
how's my baby going to be? Or or even in
more primitive societies, we're going to go to war with
(05:57):
this other tribe? Should we do this? How should we
do it? They would do it for big things like
preceding big hunts, things like that, I can get down
a rabbit hole on any one of these things. By
the way, you know, you got to wring me in
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
We'll put you down on that's for sure, as long
as we can pull you back out. Matthew. Yeah, were
shaman's primarily set up to talk about the afterlife.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
That's part of it. In my experience, particularly with Ayahuascar
in the Peruvian Amazon. I've confronted depth a number of
times now, so I am prepared for it because shaman's
generally speaking, are people who look into other realms that
we don't know about, and of course, generally speaking, people
fear what they don't know. So shaman is a person
(06:47):
who will push themselves psychologically, sometimes using visionary plants, sometimes
through fasting, extreme diets, other vision quests where they really
push their physical being to the limits where you tap
into sort of the boundaries between being fully conscious, so
to speak, and then all the realms of the subconscious
(07:09):
and particularly in terms of dreaming and other realms of
perceptions that aren't quote unquote normal within the world. So
they're the person that will go to the edge of
and push the limits of reality as they know it
to go find the hidden knowledge. And as a matter
of fact, much of this the roots of the hero's journey.
(07:30):
Joseph Campbell's Heroes Journey ties in with this.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
How did they interact with the tribal leader.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
It's interesting because in a lot of cultures, the shaman
is separate from the tribal leader. Sometimes they are the
tribal leaders, but they make the ultimate Typically, I mean
there's exceptions to every rule. Obviously, nothing as hard and fast,
but they would make the hard decisions though the trial.
(08:00):
A leader may be puzzling over some situation that may
be threatening the tribe and he wants to know do
I want to do the right thing? And then he
would go to the shaman and ask his advice. It's
not so different in today's society, Western society, so to speak.
If somebody's troubled, they may go to the church and
(08:21):
speak to the to the priests or their their spiritual confessor,
so to speak, and ask them, hey, I'm in this situation,
whether it's normal, moral or physical, and what do you think?
What did your advice on how to do it? And then,
of course a shaman would give them a perspective that's,
for lack of better words, kind of outside the box,
(08:42):
you know, a little bit of objectivity to the situation
from a whole different perspective.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Were they healers primarily.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Yes, but but not even physically in terms of health
and all that. Yes, majorly psychologically speaking. They were also
the first therapists, and they would give advice and in
the jungle, the traditions that I work and the knowledge
(09:12):
of the plants is literally prehistoric, and they have generations
of knowledge that have been passed on about which particular
plants can heal which particular situations and maladies. Years ago,
I worked with a mentor who was the mentor to
the shamans I was working with. He was very old,
(09:34):
and I remember him saying, I am a plant man,
and my father was a plant man, and his father
was a plant man before him, and I come from
a long line of plant men that goes way back
in my lineage from as far as I can remember.
And incidentally, they don't refer to themselves as shamans. They
use different words in the Amazon. Primarily they'll call themselves vegetilistas,
(09:57):
which are specialist in the plant. If they're working with ayahuasca,
they could be called iahwuas guiros as I mentioned a
little bit ago. The word shaman actually comes from Siberia.
That word simon one who knows.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Were they like the staff doctors.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Yeah, they could be like the chief of staff doctors.
Because some people it could be genetics, so to speak,
or within the family where somebody comes to shaman, or
people can have different situations like many situations where in
Western society we would treat as mental illness. In many
(10:37):
shamanic societies, they would see that as a sign that
this person was chosen to do this work. And there
are a number of things like in many cultures, if
somebody is struck by lightning and they survive, they say
that's one way of being chosen to be a shaman.
So there's a number of different ways that it can happen,
(10:58):
but there's usually some sort of sign. And shamans and
particularly indigenous people, they watch they observed nature very very
very closely, because nature gives them everything that they need
and gives them all the signs and things that they need.
That's why you know they are familiar as in uh
totem spirits and stuff like that. If you're if you're
(11:21):
in the middle of nature, particularly in the jungle, and
you're listening to all the sounds of the different animals,
the animals and the bugs and everything else. They're all
listening to each other. So one bird may give out
a particular cry and everybody else went out, oh there's
a jaguar around, we better be careful, and others. You know,
there is so cross uh cross species communication. The caason
(11:44):
it's very complex.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Were most of the shamans righteous or any of them evil?
Speaker 4 (11:52):
There's there are there are evil ones, but particularly and shaman,
you don't, I mean, there's the whole concept of evil,
but in a broader perspective. Generally speaking, they don't think
of it necessarily as evil, but they think of it
as degrees of awareness or degrees of consciousness. If they're
(12:12):
doing this work and they're spending their consciousness, they won't
really do evil. But I was shown there's a plant,
there's a small palm thing. I can't remember the name
of it. I've got it in my notes, and all spikes,
all spikes coming out of it, and nothing grows near it,
near it. The whole area around it is blank. And
(12:36):
I was told by a shaman that that's the dark
magic plant. And if you vibe of that plant, you
go to the dark side. And once you do that,
there's no turning back. You commit to it. But anyone
who continues to do this work, if they're following the
path to become a man of power or a woman
(12:58):
of power, or a mineralment of knowledge, their awareness expands
and they know better than to partake an evil because
evil thrives on fear, and fear comes from not knowing
the lack of awareness.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
What are they called spike plants?
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Yeah, there's a name. It's not there's a name for it.
You by Cassa, I think it was. And it's really
ugly looking. It's got these big spikes all sticking out
of it, you know, like you can see a cactus
with a lot of spikes. You don't want to go
near that thing. You're going to get stabbed. And this plant,
just by looking at it, you go, oh, I don't
(13:37):
even want to go anywhere near that thing because it's
it's like a bunch of banets all sticking out of
it all around it.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Are the principles of shamanism still around?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Absolutely yeah. One of the things about shamanism is it
adapts with the times, Like going back when all the
knowledge was passed on through oral traditions, repeating the myths
with each successive generation. The present generation at the time
(14:10):
of the telling would take the knowledge that was passed
on through the myths from their predecessors and they would
alter it a little bit to explain what's going on
in time. Because times change, things evolve, situations change, so
they would modify the myths a little bit each time
in order to keep it present so that it has
practical knowledge, because myths have practical knowledge within them. I mean,
(14:35):
even a lot of the stories in the Bible, whether
their myths or not, much of it are morality tales.
You know, the prodigal Sun or you know, all of
those things where it's guidance for the culture. So its
myths have primarily been a cultural teaching tool to keep
(14:56):
the culture relevant.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
I guess they would also be not only the doctor,
as we talked about, but the pharmacist.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Absolutely. Oh, the pharmacology in the jungle is fascinating, and
a lot of times they'll.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Tell, matter of fact, that's where modern pharmacy came from.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Absolutely. In fact, there's a thing that goes on now.
There are a lot of traditions that the indigenous people
are worried about because the pharmaceutical company is something that
they've been given away, that's been for free all this time.
Pharmaceutical companies will come in and try to patented or
get this particular component within this particular plant and isolate
it and use that. One of the for lack of
(15:37):
better words, the biggest violations of that is cocaine. In
the Andes, the coca plant is sacred and it's considered
the mother plants of the Andes. And as a matter
of fact, when the Spanish took over the Incas and
they took the coca away, the anchors could no longer
perform because one of the things that the coca plant
(15:58):
does is that oxygenates your blood and it allowed them
to function at higher altitudes. So when the Spanish put
them into slavery and took their cocoa away, then they
could no longer function. Now, what they say in the
traditions in the Andes is with you have all the problems,
you have crack cocaine and heart attacks and you know,
mental dysfunction, all these things that happen. What they say
(16:22):
in the Andes is that that is what you get
for disrespecting the spirit of the plant. Because when you're
isolating cocaine from it and doing all the things that
go on, and you know all the you know, the
drug cartels and the murders and the deaths and all
the physiological horror things that happened. They think that's what
happens when you disrespect the spirit of the plant. But
(16:44):
when you use it in the sacred way, in the
way that they've been doing it for, you know, one
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. It's actually a
very healthy planet. It's high envitamin CE, potassium, calcium, it's
one of the nature's most.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
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