Travelers in the Stream of Time
On the Yajé (Ayahuasca) use of the Colombian Cofán .
This long-term ethnographic study (2000-2013) examines the cultural context of the use of the plant Yajé (Ayahuasca), which is regarded as a living being, among the indigenous Cofán (Putumayo, southern Colombia), as well as the associated local ethics.
It also examines, among other things, old and newer shamanic networks of the Cofán, the transfer of their Yajé rituals to urban centers and abroad, the emergence of a new transnational Cofán novice community, and the repercussions of all this at the local level.
The work presents Cofán shamanism as an open system in constant change and is intended as a contribution to the recent discussion on ayahuasca and globalization.
Berlin: LIT-Verlag / Series Ethnologie/Anthropology Vol. 64,
LIT-Verlag Berlin 2016
By far the best book, not only in German, about the traditional use of Yagé Ayahuasca.
I have been dealing with the topic myself for a long time and was rather repelled by the commercialization on the one hand and the pseudo-esoteric idealization of this medicine on the other.
Margrit Jütte is very fortunate to be able to describe the use of Yagé both from within and as an anthropologist. She lived for a long time with the Cofan in the Putumayo region of Colombia and manages to present the shamanism of the Cofan, in which the ritual use of Yagé is the central element, in an understandable way.
The reader is systematically introduced to the spiritual world of the Cofan and gets an idea of the great respect and veneration that the Cofan and other peoples of the Amazon have for this medicine. [...]
Arne S.
