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. 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 legalization sweeps America.
If recreational and medical marijuana are becoming accepted, can spiritual use also be used? 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 indigenous wisdom from the dogma to apply shamanic training to 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, live streaming across the internet in a 21st century 'distributed shamanism' modality.
A provocative interview will challenge your conceptions of shamanism and how it can be integrated into the West - The 420 Cannabis Shamanism Movement launched on April 20th, 2014. For more information, see: https://hamiltonsouther.org/
Originally aired on: Mar 15, 2014
