What is the afterlife of ayahuasca now that she is long past her peak cultural moment of about 15 years ago, let's say like Graham Hancock and Joe Rogan and so on?

Because nothing ever stops, okay? You can still go to the ballet. You can still write a penny farthing if you're a hipster. So she's not

going away. Things have a tendency to just continue under different conditions. Foreshadowing alert,

in magic, we might call that syncretism.

I am back in the Amazon and I want to talk about what Western magic might be able to learn from

ayahuasca's journey so far and where I suspect she might be going next.

Actually, let's start with where I am, because I am in the Amazon, but I'm not on the

Amazon.

I am on the Ukiyali River, which, for all intents and purposes, you might consider the Nile

of Shepibo civilization.

The Shepibo people have been living along the banks of the Ukiyali, which is the upper Amazon

and a tributary to the Amazon in many respects for about 3,000 years, as far as anyone can tell,

maybe longer.

Today you can get ayahuasca from a Shoebo or Shepibo trained shaman in Barcelona,

in L.A., in Cancun, on Kauai, all over the place. But this is where that particular form

of ayahuasca ultimately originates. And I think maybe the secret to unpacking the

lessons that Western magic might learn from ayahuasca are to be found here both in terms of

how that happened and also potentially what happens next. So how do you get here?

You fly in to the capital of the Yucayali province of Peru,

so it's named for the river and so on, called Pukalpa.

Now, the first time you arrive beforehand, people will tell you

there's not a lot to do in Pukalpa and it's kind of a dangerous town and so on.

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