Ritual Reconstruction

The complexity of the cultural heritage of Ayawáskha make difficult to approach when studies are made from a different culture. For indigenous people, the existing scientific studies on ayawáskha fail to understand the benefit of the plant as the studies analyse the effects in isolation from different disciplines observing the specific factors. However, for indigenous people study ayawáskha as a whole, finding connection and new meaning from different perspectives, from how the way the plants grow and how it can affect the way they are. Additionally, it is required to acknowledge that in indigenous culture Ayawáskha is also a metaphor for the exchange of feelings between the brew, the shaman and the participants.

The rituality of ayawáskha revolves around ethical principles such as ‘respect and admiration’ that can be directed towards plants, animals, spirits and cultural ethical norms of ethnic groups. The ritual is a social mechanism that enacts thus values and allows and transfer to people’s daily life and behaviour. This mechanism includes another aspect of a psychological nature, concentration, discipline, perception management. The different ritual artefacts and elements are tools that serve to shape human consciousness. It is not the form of the ritual that matters, but the function it achieves, in focusing human consciousness to a common purpose, understand its relationship with the ethereal.

Within indigenous thought, restoring good health is not just a matter of correcting perceptible discomfort or symptoms, it also has to do with the need to establish a balance between ‘human’ and its natural environment, which can also include his society. The disturbances that occur in the ethereal world are reflections of bad relationships or discords between man - nature - society. Seen this way, everyone is sick, since the balance between man and his environment is susceptible to constant shocks and periodic adjustments are required. So Ayawáskha becomes a preventive medicine space, a weekly cleaning, carried out directly by purging each body and in a more subtle way, by the energy harmonization work carried out by the Taita. The ritual is the process in which the individuals self-reflect in nature, re-evaluate themselves, and change the way they relate with it. It enact thus actions that changes their society towards a common purpose, coexistence. Ultimately, of Ayawáskha is a way of living, a praxis of being.

Contents:

Human, fear of becoming the other

Omitting ego for Self-reflection, Self-recognition and Self-redefinition

Repentance and accepting the consciousness of Nature

Conviction to evolve with each other in Sympoiesis