82: The Cannabis Shaman
Experiential journalist Rak Razam interviews Hamilton Souther, one of the more prominent Western ayahuasca shamans and the founder of the Blue Morpho lodge outside Iquitos. Souther is also pioneering 'Cannabis Shamanism' using the songs and structure of his ayahuasca lineage with cannabis as the active sacrament. Cannabis has been revered as sacred by Hindus, Rastafarians and others, and with Souther's '420 Shamanism' movement there is the opportunity to resacralize the West's dominant recreational drug into something more, at the same time as marijuana legalisation sweeps America. If recreation and medical use of marijuana is becoming accepted, can spiritual use as well? Is this the start of a cannabis-shamanism revival, as the modality of shamanism itself crosses the tipping point into the mainstream? Souther shares his initiation story on the shamanic path, the difficulties of training as a Westerner and the secret bias towards many Westerners from local practitioners. How do we separate the indigenous wisdom from the dogma to apply shamanic training for the modern world? How do we become our own Western Shamans, not culturally repackaged copies? How far can we integrate and change the existing styles? For instance, as well as integrating icaros or healing sounds into Western dance music for consciousness expansion, Souther is about to sing his healing in ceremony, livestreaming across the internet in a 21st century 'distributed shamanism' modality. A provocative interview that will challenge your conceptions of what shamanism is, and how it can be integrated into the West… The 420 Cannabis Shamanism Movement launches April 20th, 2014. For more information, see: http://hamiltonsouther.org/ The groundbreaking shamanic documentary Aya: Awakenings is now available for viewing and download on Vimeo on Demand and you can read the book that inspired the film and join the discussion on our Facebook page. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.