YAGE


For these reasons of a chemico-biological nature, I affirm that the pathogenesis of the Spagyrika tinctures are richer, more profound, active, and efficacious; the pathogenesis of the Hahnemannian tinctures, on the other hand, are diffuse and partial.


To the north-west of the River Amazon, beyond the Orinoco, in the Black River, and extending to the water-sheds and slopes of the Andes, in the falls of the Orinoco, in the rivers Uapes, Meta, Zipapo, Caqueta of the upper Purumayo River, the Napo, and, in a word, in all the tributaries of the Amazon, in the huge valley, lying between Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, lives the Malpigeacea, the “Banisteria Quitensis” of Prof. Gilg of Berlin.

The Quechuas Indians, who lived between the rivers Apurimac and Pampa, and who from their characteristics, might show direct descent from the first Inca, Manco-Capac, knew the “Banisteria Quitensis” by the generic name of Yage, meaning “blue dream”.

Under the powerful Inca dynasty, during the five centuries from the beginning of their empire to the arrival of the Spaniards, which was announced to the Inca, Husina-Capac in his Tumipampa palace about the year 1515 by a drinker of Yage, this plant was known under different names. The Gibaros Indians called it “La Tema”, the coloured Indians “Nepa”, the Cayapas “Pinde” and the Yekuanas “Kahi”, and it is quite possible that there, Indians used the narcotic plants “Haemadiction Amazonicum” (Lewin) mixed with Yage.

The true origin of the Inca race is hidden in the past. According to some it was created by Aborigines. Others ascribe to it Mogul origin, on the supposition that Incas are descendants of those members of the expedition sent by Khan against the Japanese in the thirteenth century, whose ships were driven by a storm on the coast of Peru. The strangers gained the respect of the native Peruvians by styling themselves “Children of the Sun”.

According to tradition the Inca dynasty also gained its appellation “Daughter of the Sun” because, after the Flood, the first rays of the sun were seen on the banks of lake Titicaca, where it sent its son, Manco-Capac, with its daughter Mama-Ocllo. It gave them a piece of gold with the injunction that they should wander over the land, and fix it where they wished it to be. This was done and the piece of gold became fixed and disappeared in the summit of Huauacari, where they founded their city, the immortal Cuzco.

Mama-Ocllo, golden haired and radiant as the suns rays, was the goddess who officiated at the sacred rites of the Incas, in which Yage played an important part. Its use and consumption was permitted only to officiating priests and elders, who attributed to Yage clairvoyant and telepathic properties, the whole enshrouded in an aura of mysticism worthy of the high level of Inca culture.

Thus it was that a certain priest was able to foretell the fall of the Empire, which reached its greatest glory under Husina- Capac in 1475. He predicted the fratricidal struggles between Husina-Capacs sons, Atahualpa and the eldest, Huascar-Inca, also known as Ant-Cusi-Huallpa, the arrival of the Spaniards at Tumbes, and the putting to death of Atahualpa by Francisco Pizarro after the battles of Cajamarca.

The Spanish Conquerors, and particularly the priest Valverde, were aware of the magic qualities of Yage, and initiated a violent campaign of denunciation to the Inquisitors of all those who took Yage, or assisted at the rites and ceremonies connected with it. (Ref. Letters of Padre Valverde to the Holy Office, Archivo de Indias, Seville.).

Knowledge of Yage thus disappeared for centuries, until the German traveller and naturalist Baron von Humboldt mentions a mysterious plant in his book, Travels in the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent. He says it is found in the Upper Amazon and from talks with the inhabitants, add that Bolivar was foretold of the victory of Ayacucho by an old Inca priest who drunk the infusion of this plant in his rites.

Thus it is that “Banisteria Quitensis” or Yage became known again to civilization in the middle of the century. It offered itself to increase mens knowledge, transferred from the slopes of the Andes to laboratories where the brain struggles to reveal Natures secrets.

At the same time, in the middle of the nineteenth century, various Yage drinkers were found in Colombia, and especially in Ecuador, drinkers who had taken the habit to excess so that it had become a vice. Medical science has several workers, well- known homoeopathic pharmacists, who on the basis of the telepathic effects of this plant, have published various treatises on their study of it.

Worthy of mention are L. Lewin, author of Phantastica, and Dr. Guillermo Fischer-Cardenas, of Colombia, who has made a study of it from the chemical and pharmaceutical points of view. He discovered in it an element which he called “Telepatina” with inoffensive characteristics similar to hashish. Dr. A. M. Barriga-Villalba, Prof. of Chemistry in the University of Bogota, has published a profound study on the chemical analysis of the alkaloids of Yage, Boletin de la Sociedad Colombiana de Ciencias Naturales. Un Nuevo Alcoloide 1925. (Ref. Bulletin of the Society of Natural Sciences of Colombia. A New Alkaloid 1925.) The work, Yage (Berthelot, Laboratorios Samper-Martinez, Bogota) is also interesting.

The German medico-pharmaceutical press also treats of the plant in Chemisches Zentralblatt, 1925, II, 1176. It is treated by Professors Perrot and Ramond Amet in their Comptes rendus de lAcademie des Sciences, Tome 184, p. 1266. Mention is given to it in the Bulletin de Sciences Pharmacologiques, 1927, Tome, 34, pp. 337, 417, 500.

The German firm of E. Merck gives an account of the writers Wolfes and Rumpf (Archiv der Pharmazie, 1928, Tome 266, p. 188). These men isolated a chloride of this alkaloid, which, on being analysed, gave a formula which corresponded to the chemical formula obtained by the German investigator Fritsche (Annalen der Chemie und Pharmazie, 1847, Tome 64, p. 365) for the Russian steppe plant called “Peganum Harmala” containing the Harmin alkaloid. According to W.H. Perkin, Robinson, and their collaborators, the constitutional formula of Harmin, and therefore that of Yage, is.

The neurologist Beringer of Heidelberg has a very extensive study of this plant in E. Mercks Jahresbericht, XLII, 1928, based on experiments on test animals set apart for this purpose. The study concludes: “Finally I can give an assurance that, with the chemical equality of Harmin and Yage established, I have been unable to discover symptoms which would denote a therapeutic value in this plant”.

When all the allopathic doctors, including well-known chemists and pharmacologists, had pronounced the Yage plant useless to allopathic therapeutics, I was the first to take it seriously. In 1923, I began to study the problem in the Berlin Pharmacological Institute together with Dr. Joachimoglou, then Professor of Pharmacology in Berlin University. We had both realized the uselessness, from the scientific point of view, of pharmacology to modern therapeutics.

We were in effect able to perceive the series of toxic symptoms, already published by other writers, appearing in test animals such as rats, dogs, cats, rabbits, monkeys, etc. These provided the rapid and classic symptoms, whilst the precious mental symptoms which homoeopathy offers remained unnoticed. It is because this scientific fact was realized that the German Government in August of 1934 declared forbidden the practice of any kind of vivisection on animals and human beings.

With the use of Yage discountenanced in Germany –my own country– by the most outstanding allopaths, I undertook alone the study of the pathogenesis of this plant, the German Homoeopathic Spagyrika Society coming forward to help me. Thus it is that for the first time in the history of German homoeopathy, a medicament such as Yage has been offered for conscientious and profound examination in all its aspects.

In effect, more than 500 samples of Yage were distributed to doctors in all the German speaking countries, Austria, Bohemia, Switzerland, Danzig, etc., so that each one might observe, in a state of perfect health, the symptoms produced by Yage taken internally. Three years of untiring labour were necessary to elucidate the pathogenesis of Yage, which is as follows:.

The patient sees a thick blue mist, imagines himself threatened and persecuted by shades of the dead, carried through the air, and is full of fears. He perspires abundantly. There is a profound and pricking pain in the forehead which spreads along the felt temple to the occiput. He feels great uneasiness and moves about excitedly from side to side. His face reddens, eyes gleam, mouth becomes dry and thirst intense. Heat makes him worse. He talks heatedly, without knowing what he is saying, and gesticulates, mainly with the right arm, the movements of the left being slower and sluggish. He begins to jump and dance, with the sensation of walking on air, and the excessive physical exercise does not tire him.

There comes then a paralysis of the right side, particularly of the extremities, which are dragged on the ground. The patient feels head tremors which revolve rapidly from right to left. He stutters and it is a great effort for him to speak. In this state, there is an abundant secretion from the sublingual glands, producing sickness and vomiting. There is a shivering round the spine, and a heavy feeling in the lumbar region. The peristalsis increases, giving rise to abundant defaecation of normal colour and formation.

Rudolf Wedel