Hapé Medicine – the Sacred Amazonian Snuff You Blow Up Your Nose

Rapé – pronounced ha-PAY – is a preparation of powdered medicinal herbs, often with a tobacco base, that is taken through the nose. This practice of consuming powdered plant medicines through the nose is pre-Columbian and was first observed among the Brazilian indigenous tribes.

In Europe, herbal snuff was introduced by the doctor and botanist Francisco Hernández de Boncalo in 1577 and the elites often took snuff as a headache treatment. During the 18th century inhaling snuff became fashionable among the European aristocracy.

Video Thumbnail Credit: Geenss Archenti Flores

Today, indigenous tribes in the Amazon basin continue to use rapé in all aspects of life, from formal ritual use in rites of puberty, initiation, cashiri drinkings festivals, social gatherings and healing ceremonies, to simply tuning into Nature and the healing power of sacred plant medicines alone or with friends.

Haru Kuntanawa blowing rapé.

Haru Kuntanawa blowing rapé into the nose of another shaman.

The Katukina, Yawanawa, Kaxinawa, Nukini, Kuntanawa, Apurina, Ashaninka, and Matses produce their own specific kinds of rapé blends and have different ways of preparing the herbal snuff, different techniques of administering it, and different songs that are sung during the rapé rituals.

The ritual use of rapé is also making its way around the world, introduced to the West through ayahuasca ceremonies by traveling shamans and by visitors who have spent time in the jungle with the Indians.

The Ritual Use of Rapé Among Indigenous Tribes of the Amazon Basin

From the indigenous point of view, rapé is a sacred shamanic snuff medicine with profound healing effects. Rapé is made from different medicinal plants for different purposes – to induce visions, to have energy, to enhance the senses with the aromatic fragrance of the plants used in the blend.

Given that there are myriad medicinal plants you can blend into rapé, there are as many rapé recipes in existence, and these recipes are often closely guarded by the tribes.

Sharing rapé – or “passando rapé” – is a traditionally a ritualistic practice among the Indians that may include specific chants to activate the force of the rapé and to confer the healing power of the forest upon the rapé recipient.

MUST-READ How to Give Someone a Soplada of Sacred Amazonian Rapé – Step by Step

In the video below, you can hear a traditional chant being chanted by Huni Kui shaman Ninawa Pai da Mata, as various people receive rapé at a gathering hosted by the Kuntanawa tribe.

The Art of Making Sacred Rapé

It’s a laborious process to make rapé, and rapé production is typically done in a ceremonial context, from gathering the sacred plants to cooking and processing the medicine. Traditionally, the person making the rapé blend needs to be an experienced shaman with thorough knowledge about the medicinal plants of the forest.

In addition to having broad knowledge of the medicinal plants of the Amazon rainforest – one of the most biodiverse regions in the world – the shaman also needs to know precisely which part of each plant can be used. For example, the root bark of a plant can have a different purpose and effect than the leaves or the seeds of the same plant.

tobacco-rape-snuff

Tobacco is frequently used as a base for medicinal rapé.

This sacred preparation of medicinal rapé is a process that may take weeks. Usually, the shaman of the tribe – the Pajé – works under a strict diet and in a trance-state when endlessly pounding and mixing the rapé herbs.

The other members of the tribe are responsible for the collection of rapé plants. The plants will either be sun-dried or roasted and are filtered several times through a fine cloth and then mixed with other ingredients to obtain the final batch.

making-rape-snuff

Medicinal herbs used to make rapé are sun-dried before being ground into a fine powder

In earlier times, the Pajé used the final batch in a ceremony on his own. Nowadays, the whole tribe takes part in this magical ceremonial event. Only recently, the tribes share their sacred medicine with foreign friends, passing on the knowledge and application for the next generations. Still, many of the blend compositions remain a secret of the tribe.

The Healing Properties of Medicinal Rapé

Rapé can be mixed also with other mind altering plants, like coca, jurema, or yopo and can potentiate the healing capacity of other plants, like ayahuasca. Furthermore, rapé helps releasing emotional, physical, and spiritual illnesses and eases negativity and confusion, enabling a thorough grounding of the mind.

Likewise, shamans use rapé to re-align with their energy channels and with their higher self, and to intensify their connection with the world and the universe. In addition, rapé paves the way to detoxify the body and cleans out all excessive mucus, toxins and bacteria.

MUST-READ How to Self-Administer Sacred Amazonian Rapé Medicinal Snuff – Step by Step

Green rapé from the Apuriná tribe is highly stimulating, but doesn't contain tobacco.

Green rapé from the Apuriná tribe is highly stimulating, but doesn’t contain tobacco.

Medicinal rapé is also used as a cure for certain diseases, sores, wounds, and as a defense against insects and also as an analgesic and narcotic substance that eases fatigue, pain, hunger, and thirst. There are even special rapé blends that are made to counteract influenza and other diseases.

Tobacco-based rapé contains nicotine, so its use increases the brain blood flow and affects the release of several stimulatory neurotransmitter leading to antidepressant and stimulatory effects – thereby heightening your focus, presence, and intuition and opening the body to higher communication and holistic thinking and understanding.

MUST-READ The Modern Shamanic Guide to Taking Rapé – the Sacred Medicinal Snuff of the Amazon

The art of making rapé has been passed onto non-indigenous people, so that you can even find rapé-making enthusiasts and groups in parts of Brazil outside the Amazon. The use of rapé has also been adopted by the Santo Daime communities as well. Outside of Brazil, rapé is often offered by Western facilitators of ayahuasca ceremonies.

While there is a great deal of debate among the tribes and between the elders and younger generation over the extent that this knowledge ought to be shared with outsiders, appreciation of the sacred art of making and taking rapé is growing in the global shamanic community.

For detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to administer shamanic stuff ceremonially, check out this Master Class with Brazilian medicine priestess Aluna Lua:

Learn to Serve Hapé Like an Amazonian

Deepen your alliance with the Tobacco Master Plant & enhance your shamanic faciliation skills. Sign up and:

  • Be initiated into Divine Father Tobacco Wisdom
  • Receive the Principles of Impeccable Tobacco Guardianship & serve hapé with the highest healing energy
  • Learn Hapé administration & self-application techniques  to support a range of shamanic intentions
  • Get an introduction to Huni Kuin traditions & vocabulary
lorna@entheonation.com'

About Lorna Liana

Lorna Liana is a new media strategist and lifestyle business coach to visionary entrepreneurs. She travels the world while running her business as a digital nomad. Lorna's boutique agency provides “done for you” web design, development and online marketing services for social ventures, sustainable brands, transformational coaches and new paradigm thought leaders. She is also a personal development junkie, and 20 year practitioner of shamanism, with extensive training in Tibetan Bon Shamanism and the ayahuasca traditions of the Amazon Basin. A self-professed ayahuasca snob and perennial ayahuasca tourist, Lorna has been drinking ayahuasca since 2004. She's been in approximately 150 ayahuasca ceremonies (from terrible to fantastic), and tasted wide variety of ayahuasca brews (from awful to exquisite). Her ayahuasca experience spans 30+ different shamans and facilitators, 7 indigenous tribes, several Brazilian churches, and a host of neo-shamanic circles, in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Europe, the US, and Asia. Through this widely-varied background, she hopes to shed some perspective on the globalization of ayahuasca.

7 Comments

  1. paula.oerter@gmail.com' Ishikaya on April 20, 2017 at 4:20 pm

    Hello Lorna, thanks for your articles. Good to get the information all together. I started to share my experience and medicine. Now I have a friend who had a stroke few years ago. I don´t think that this is a problem but i would like to ask if you have any experience (or someone else reading this). Further I know that you can not give health advice…i Just would appreciate your opinion…thanks a lot

  2. Billyharriscr@gmail.com' Billy on November 1, 2018 at 9:08 pm

    Love your website..! Informative and easy to read. I would like to purchase rapé from you tribe. Please let me know how to do it.

    Thank you!

  3. T8ocv34@gmail.com' Ashaa reshag on April 18, 2021 at 3:44 am

    I want to experience the rape as mentioned on this site. I feel that I have been a great addition to the team and I want you to have an amazing experience and a great time to be a good name and to the world.

  4. Pslattier@yahoo.com' Pamm on April 22, 2021 at 12:07 pm

    How can I purchase the green rape’ that does not contain tobacco?

    • saiwattermon@protonmail.com' Sài on November 29, 2021 at 11:08 pm

      The green rapé I tried still had tobacco in it. The website, katukina.com said it was a special wild green tobacco that grows by the rivers and is accessible only in the dry season. It is called Apurina Awiry. Apurina is the tribe that makes it, and Awiry is their name for the plant.

      The reason it stays green is they sun-dry it and don’t let it ferment. Fermentation makes tobacco brown and gives it the strong brown smell and flavor. Some have said fermentation creates carcinogens.

      The green rapé is very pleasant and is also available at queenoftheforest.org located in the US to avoid the high shipping cost to the US from the European vendor katukina.com.

      For more great information on the amazing healing powers of sacred medicinal tobacco, check out Jeremy Narby’s latest book: Plant Teachers, Ayahuasca, Tobacco, and the Pursuit of Knowledge.

    • saiwattermon@protonmail.com' Sài on December 4, 2021 at 3:25 pm

      I got some Apurina Awiry from katukina. It may not contain the plants commonly called tobacco, Nicotiana Tabacum, Nicotiana Rustica, but I’m my understanding it does contain a plant of the Nicotiana family, and seems, from it’s effects, to contain some nicotine, though maybe not as much as the aforementioned tobaccos.

      I replied to your post earlier but my comment was not approved by the moderator.

  5. renatamixcom@gmail.com' Julia on November 21, 2021 at 3:20 am

    Hi! You mentioned “coca” as an example of mixing. How safe is “this”?

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