Peyote: The Importance of Cultural Set and Setting for a Powerful Plant Hallucinogen
By Catherine H. Knott, Ph.D
“Compared to other hallucinogens, peyote is a very focused and concentrated fire, an inner fire that causes an increase of energy, giving spiritual insights.”
–Anonymous source
Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) a small cactus without spines, found from Mexico to Texas and Southern California, has inspired generations of poets and musicians, as well as members of the Native American Church through the ingestion of its button-like growths. Peyote’s psychoactive alkaloids affect the mind through hallucinogenic experience, and may help some to transcend the material world, enhancing transformation of the spirit. Indigenous people of the Southwest and Northern Mexico have used peyote in ritual religious ceremonies for over five thousand years to heal their communities. Yet contemporary non-native people using peyote at parties or other events may be missing its potential to assist in positive life changes, because of the importance of the “set” and “setting” in which people use this powerful plant. Both the mental states people bring and the environment in which they find themselves when they ingest the plant, or drink tea made from it, provide critical context for the type of experience they will have.
The re-discovery of writings from the sixties and seventies about using peyote, from Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to the writings of Carlos Castaneda, has encouraged experimentation by a new generation of party drug users and others seeking more serious introspection through the use of hallucinogens. But as ethno-botanists have discovered through research on plant use around the world, the use of plant medicines often requires hundreds of indigenous experiments to figure out safe methods of preparation, as well as appropriate dosages and contexts for use. The Native American Church, with the legal permission of the U.S. government, uses peyote to induce deep meditative states that enable participants to transcend their surroundings and present situation, leading to psychological and physiological healing. Sometimes it is used for healing relationships between people. A couple or family describes the pain and problems they face, and the others listen and provide empathy in this ritual based on near hallucinatory experience and a sense of unity with other living beings.
In the Native American Church, a healer, sometimes called the road man, directs the proceedings. All participants are required to sit in a circle, sometimes for ten hours or more, without getting up or moving even their upper body. For some people, this requirement is the hardest part of the whole experience. The road man then directs the individuals to take the peyote, which may be in the form of buttons, or a powder, or a tea. It is extremely bitter, and this alone may account for the vomiting that often follows. Sometimes, as in the case of researcher Dr. John Halpern, the healer may insist that the participant take more peyote after vomiting. During the experience, the participant may feel purified, or frightened, but many feel they have gained greater spiritual insight, tapping into an awareness that they do not have in their daily lives. While the Native American Church limits who may partake of peyote to those whom the healers feel are ready, people from other cultures self-select. A healer may feel uncomfortable with some who want to join the experience, but readiness may be more difficult to ascertain in a cross-cultural encounter.
Some indigenous groups, such as the Huichol of the Sierra Madre in North central Mexico, appear to have little fear of peyote, and ingest it regularly after participating in a religious ritual that allows them to experience blissful communion, as Barbara Myers describes in her classic study, Peyote Hunt: the Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians. She took peyote herself and describes her experience as a sequence of vivid events like beads on a string.
Experiences with mescaline, another name for peyote, among the Yaqui Indians may be so powerful that they overwhelm the participant for more than twenty-four hours. During a discussion about death with Mexican sorcerer or “man of knowledge” Don Juan, in anthropologist Carlos’ Castaneda’s book, A Separate Reality (considered to be at least partly fictional), Don Carlos says,
“Death has two stages. The first is a blackout. It is a meaningless stage, very similar to the first effect of Mescalito, in which one experiences a lightness that makes one feel happy, complete, and that everything in the world is at ease. But that is only a shallow state; it soon vanishes and one enters a new realm, a realm of harshness and power. That second stage is the real encounter with Mescalito. Death is very much like this. The first stage is a shallow blackout. The second, however, is the real stage where one meets with death; it is a brief moment, after the first blackout, when we find that we are, somehow, ourselves again. It is then that death smashes against us with quiet fury and power until it dissolves our lives into nothing.”
Because of the depth and sometimes the severity of the effects of peyote, members of the Native American Church may not allow young people to try it, until elders feel they are ready. Peyote, as other hallucinogens, can cause users involuntarily to experience hallucinations even months after the initial use, and after ingesting the actual plant just one time. Clearly, such a powerful drug has the potential to disturb deeply someone who does not live in a compassionate community that understands its use and potential after-effects. Living in the extended families and close connection of some Native American communities, whether that of the Yaqui or other southern tribes who have used the drug for thousands of years, or in the Navajo communities who have begun to use it in their Native American Churches only since the early 1900′s, provides a very different setting for the use of peyote than living in the current mobile and disconnected society of most Americans. Non-indigenous users take grave risks when they try peyote without the constant cultural context that provides long-term understanding, and interpretation for its effects.
Nevertheless, as Dr. John Halpern reported in his study of the effects of peyote on the brain in a study following Navajo members of the Native American Church, who had used peyote at least one hundred times, “church members show no deficits compared to sober nonmembers, and score significantly better than former alcoholics”. He and others believe that peyote may be useful in treating alcoholism. What is clearest from the anthropological research on peyote and indigenous cultures that use the plant hallucinogen, including the Huichol, is that set and setting matter enormously, which should be ample warning for those individuals who regard peyote as a recreational drug rather than as an aid to spiritual healing in a supportive and compassionate community.
Author Catherine Knott, Ph.D., teaches Anthropology and Sociology for the University of Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. She has a Ph.D. in Anthropology, Natural Resources, and Education from Cornell University and a B.A. from Yale University.
REFERENCES:
Horgan, John. 2003. “Peyote on the Brain”. DiscoverMagazine, February 3.
Horgan, John. 2005. “Psychedelic Medicine: Mind-bending, Health-giving.” New Scientist, February.
Momaday, N. Scott. 1966. House Made of Dawn. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers.
Myerhoff, Barbara. 1976. Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Thompson, Hunter S. 1971. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. New York: Random House
