The Top 20 Ayahuasca Books for 2021
There have been many books written about ayahuasca over the decades. The psychedelic brew has aroused the inspiration of researchers, doctors, ethnobotanists, and entheogenic explorers alike. These pioneering writers and researchers have endeavored to explore its history, the visions it inspires, and the science behind the mysterious plant medicine. Dive into these books which explore the colorful realms within the world of the ayahuasca visionary, the shamanic pathways they invite, and the potentials for therapeutic usage of this ancient plant.
In Sacred Vine of Spirits: Ayahuasca, Ralph Metzner, a pioneer in the study of consciousness, has assembled a group of authoritative contributors who provide an exploration of the chemical, biological, psychological, and experiential dimensions of ayahuasca. He begins with more than 20 firsthand accounts from Westerners who have used ayahuasca and then presents the history, psychology, and chemistry of ayahuasca from leading scholars in the field of psychoactive research. He concludes with his own findings on ayahuasca, including its applications in medicine and psychology, and compares the worldview revealed by ayahuasca visions to that of Western cultures.
Why we think it’s important
Sacred Vine of Spirits is an excellent overview of ayahuasca, from a Western perspective.
This ground-breaking book is one of the first studies of ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon. It’s lucid and very easy to read for an academic text. The author spent several years with vegetalismo ayahuasca healers. The book covers everything from traditional models of illness and healing to herbalism, indigenous tarot traditions, and Western medicine.
Why we think it’s important
Visionary Vine was one of the first accounts of a Western encounter with indigenous ayahuasca practitioners, and is a crucial read for any amatuer ayahuasca scholar.
The most prolific and influential indigenous ayahuasca painter is undoubtedly Pablo Amaringo. In this beautiful book, anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna joins with Amaringo to convey the visionary, spiritual and cultural scope of ayahuasca. Amaringo apprenticed in vegetalismo shamanism and worked as a shaman for many years before becoming the world’s most distinguished ayahuasca painter.
Why we think it’s important
Sometimes, ayahuasca needs to be translated through art, not words. This book is filled with music, chants, and of course visionary art, alongside stories of shamanism and magic.
4. The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience by Benny Shanon
This is a pioneering cognitive psychological study of ayahuasca, a plant-based Amazonian psychotropic brew. Benny Shanon presents a comprehensive charting of the various facets of the special state of mind induced by ayahuasca and analyzes them from the cognitive psychology perspective. He also presents some philosophical reflections. Empirically, the research presented in this book is based on the systematic recording of the author's extensive experiences with the brew and on the interviewing of a large number of informants: indigenous people, shamans, members of different religious sects using ayahuasca, and travelers. In addition to its being the most thorough study of the ayahuasca experience to date, the book lays the theoretical foundations for the psychological study of non-ordinary states of consciousness in general.
Why we think it’s important
Useful reading for anyone interested in the cognitive psychology of psychedelics, especially ayahuasca.
The stories shared here demonstrate the astonishing – mystical, colorful, metaphysical – effects of ayahuasca and traditional Amazonian Plant Medicine. Follow Dr. Tafur through the Amazon jungle as he develops a breakthrough understanding of how psychoactive plants interact with the complex network that connects our minds and hearts to our physical anatomy. What Dr. Tafur presents here is nothing short of a paradigm shift for modern medicine, where sacred plants, used properly in ceremony, take their place as important tools in the doctor’s medicine chest, offering the missing elements of emotional and spiritual healing that have eluded us for so long.
Why we think it’s important
One of the unmissable accounts of a Western healthcare practitioner voyaging into the Amazon to encounter ayahuasca first hand, and realizing its immense healing potential.
Beery shares his experiences with ayahuasca rituals in the Amazon, messages from power animals and plant spirits, dreams that foretold future events, and holographic sightings of past lives and spiritual entities, both evil and benign. He details his shamanic way of “seeing” to diagnose spiritual, emotional, and physical ailments via candle readings and remote viewing. Explaining how we are always surrounded by spirits, he recounts helping people communicate with loved ones who have passed on and shares powerful stories of soul retrieval during shamanic journeys to other worlds.
Why we think it’s important
A much more personal and shamanic exploration of ayahuasca than most ayahuasca texts, The Gift of Shamanism can help fill in some gaps in knowledge that Westerners sometimes have when it comes to the specifics of shamanistic healing.
Famous ethnobotanist Dennis McKenna has this to say about Ayahuasca in My Blood: "Long before ayahuasca tourism became a pastime for rich gringos, Peter Gorman was knocking around Iquitos and the Amazon. He's traveled the rivers and quaffed the brew with the best (and the worst) of them and been way, way beyond the chrysanthemum on many a dark jungle night. This is the intensely personal story of an old-school jungle rat for whom ayahuasca is not just a hobby, but a life-long quest." Ayahuasca In My Blood is an adventure into the forests of the Amazon, filled with horror, joy, and insight.
Why we think it’s important
Peter Gorman is one of the most well-known ethnobotanists in the psychedelic world, and his insights into ayahuasca shamanism are essential reading.
Used for thousands of years by indigenous tribes of the Amazon rainforest, the mystical brew ayahuasca is now becoming increasingly popular in the West. Psychologist Rachel Harris here shares her own healing experiences and draws on her original research (the largest study of ayahuasca use in North America) into the powerful medicine’s effects on depression, addiction, PTSD, and anxiety. In this wide-ranging and personal exploration, Harris details ayahuasca’s risks and benefits, helping readers clarify their intentions and giving psychotherapists a template for transformative care and healing.
Why we think it’s important
Listening to Ayahuasca is a beautiful juxtaposition between the materialism of Western science, and the magic of indigenous ayahuasca shamanism. How can we make sense of the messages we hear when we take ayahuasca?
This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences," leads the reader through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind to the heart of knowledge. In a first-person narrative of scientific discovery that opens new perspectives on biology, anthropology, and the limits of rationalism, The Cosmic Serpent reveals how startlingly different the world around us appears when we open our minds to it.
Why we think it’s important
Jeremy Narby is an anthropologist with an important perspective: that ayahuasca usage by Westerners must be done with reciprocity in mind. His insights are invaluable.
Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar offer an in-depth exploration of how Amerindian epistemology and ontology concerning indigenous shamanic rituals of the Amazon have spread to Western societies, and of how indigenous, mestizo and cosmopolitan cultures have engaged with and transformed these forest traditions. The volume focuses on the use of ayahuasca, a psychoactive drink essential in many indigenous shamanic rituals of the Amazon.
Why we think it’s important
This is a large academic volume, but thorough and influential.
In January 1953, William Burroughs began a seven-month expedition into the jungles of South America, ostensibly to find yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. But Burroughs also cast his anthropological-satiric eye over the local regimes to record trademark vignettes of political and psychic malaise. From the notebooks he kept and the letters he wrote home to poet Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs composed a narrative of his adventures that appeared ten years later as “In Search of Yage” within The Yage Letters.
That book, published by City Lights in 1963, was completed by the addition of Ginsberg’s account of his own experiences with yage as he traveled through South America in 1960, and by the addition of other Burroughs letters and texts.
Why we think it’s important
A vital glimpse into some of the earliest encounters that Western psychedelic pioneers had with ayahuasca – the experiences of Burroughs and Ginsberg’s responses marked the first stages of popular culture’s awareness of ayahuasca.
In this book, internationally respected Peruvian shaman Don José Campos illuminates the practices and benefits of ayahuasca with grace and gentleness and much respect and gratitude for the gifts ayahuasca has bestowed on him throughout the 25 years he has been a practicing shaman. He takes the reader on a journey through his own difficulties in the discovery of other worlds, other dimensions, ‘alien’ entities and ‘plant teachers.’ Among other things, he discusses his difficulties in coping with some of the concepts taught to him by his plant teachers like the discovery that everything has consciousness. But if we accept this, our entire cosmology shifts for the greater benefit of mankind.
Why we think it’s important
The Shaman & Ayahuasca is an indigenous account of ayahuasca shamanism that is a necessary companion to any Western discussion on healing practices.
The Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s Sacred Vine is a panorama of texts translated from nearly a dozen languages on the ayahuasca experience. These include indigenous mythic narratives, testimonies, and religious hymns, as well as stories related by Western travelers, scientists, and writers who have had contact with ayahuasca in different contexts.
In addition to contributions from Wade Davis, Dennis McKenna, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmotoff, and Richard Spruce, the new edition includes essays from Graham Hancock, Alex Grey, Jeremy Narby, Susana Bustos, and a section on ayahuasca art.
Why we think it’s important
Ayahuasca Reader is perhaps the most wide-reaching compendium of different ayahuasca writings that we know of.
The unique path to both health and spiritual illumination offered by the consumption of yajé, a hallucinogenic herb embedded in the indigenous Amazonian cultures of Colombia, Brazil, and Peru, is thoroughly documented in this account of the culture and traditions that have developed around its use. The intensity of yajé-induced trances provoked the author to name them "the new purgatory" and resulted in this text's respectful and hard-earned insights into indigenous ritual and shamanic guidance. A complete survey of yajé ceremonies; recent botanical and anthropological research on yajé; records of scientific and medical studies; its social, psychological, and ethical boundaries; and a look at past attempts to adapt the ancient ceremony to contemporary therapeutic and religious purposes are also provided.
Why we think it’s important
This book is long and thorough, and is a unique addition to any ayahuasca bookshelf.
In The World Ayahuasca Diaspora, leading scholars, including established academics and new voices in anthropology, religious studies, and law fuse case-study ethnographies with evaluations of relevant legal and anthropological knowledge. They explore how the substance has impacted indigenous communities, new urban religiosities, ritual healing, international drug policy, religious persecution, and recreational drug milieus. This unique book presents classic and contemporary issues in social science and the humanities, providing rich material on the bourgeoning expansion of ayahuasca use around the globe.
Why we think it’s important
Three of the world’s leading Western ayahuasca anthropologists have written this comprehensive academic piece.
In The Devil's Yoga, the author explores the shadow side of plant medicine ceremonies, and some of the things all ayahuasca enthusiasts should be aware of when participating in a guided ceremony. The author also states that her intent for this book was for it to serve as a beacon of light for those who are recovering from trauma or abuse. The Devil’s Yoga dives into trust and betrayal, awareness and denial, resistance and persistence, entrapment and freedom, enchantments and breakthroughs, mental programming and decoding, and fear and love.
Why we think it’s important
This is a crucial read for our current times, where abusive shamans and facilitators are everywhere in the plant medicine community.
Singing to the Plants sets forth just what this shamanism is about – what happens at an ayahuasca healing ceremony, how the apprentice shaman forms a spiritual relationship with the healing plant spirits, how sorcerers inflict the harm that the shaman heals, and the ways that plants are used in healing, love magic, and sorcery.
Why we think it’s important
Singing to the Plants not only covers the positive sides of ayahuasca shamanism, but also the entire spectrum of shamanistic sorcery and healing.
The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook provides a practical guide to ayahuasca use, aiding seekers in making right-and safe-decisions about where to go, who to drink with, and what to expect.
Chris Kilham (the "Medicine Hunter") has worked closely with South American shamans for two decades and has sat in ayahuasca ceremonies with at least 20 different shamans. Through his "Ayahuasca Test Pilots" program, Kilham has brought numerous people to the Amazon to engage in ceremonies with maestro ayahuasceros.
Why we think it’s important
A great starter text for anyone interested in taking ayahuasca but wanting clear instructions and guidance.
Amazon Magic tells the life story of Don Agustin Rivas Vasquez, an ayahuasquero, a shaman skilled in the use of ayahuasca, a visionary and healing plant medicine. Told in his own words, Amazon Magic describes incidents from his childhood in a small jungle town beside the Amazon River, and his early and present-day experiences with the plant medicine ayahuasca. The book recounts his days of being lost in the remote depths of the jungle which resulted in his living a year with an Indian tribe. This book provides a fascinating look into the cultural life of the Peruvian Amazon as seen through the eyes of someone who is an integral part of this life, and provides a rare insight into the forces that helped shape the life of a profound healer who is now highly regarded in many parts of the world.
Why we think it’s important
A really personal insight into the kind of life journeys that ayahuasca shamans embark on.
For thousands of years, voyagers of inner space – spiritual seekers, shamans, and psychoactive drug users have returned from their inner imaginal travels reporting encounters with alien intelligence. Inner Paths to Outer Space presents an innovative examination of how we can reach these other dimensions of existence and contact otherworldly beings. Based on their more than 60 combined years of research into the function of the brain, the authors reveal how psychoactive substances such as DMT allow the brain to bypass our five basic senses to unlock a multidimensional realm of existence where otherworldly communication occurs. They contend that our centuries-old search for alien life-forms has been misdirected and that the alien worlds reflected in visionary science fiction actually mirror the inner space world of our minds. The authors show that these “alien” worlds encountered through altered states of human awareness, either through the use of psychedelics or other methods, possess a sense of reality as great as, or greater than, those of the ordinary awareness perceived by our five senses.
Why we think it’s important
From DMT pioneer Rick Strassman, Inner Paths to Outer Space deals with the meaning of the messages we receive from ayahuasca – useful information for any psychonaut.
Read On!
Exploring altered states of consciousness through the use of plant medicines is a journey beyond the mundane and into the extraordinary. As one of the world’s most powerful visionary plant allies, ayahuasca is a topic with seemingly endless depth. Whether you are wanting to work with the plant and understand its traditional roots, curious about the science behind how it works, or if you just like getting your mind blown by reading about some truly astonishing otherworldly visions, ayahuasca is a topic worth exploring.