It all increased by waves... the cramps filled me entirely... my head was locked in a vice... tightness clenched my neck and face and skull... arms hot, legs cold. I watched the shapes on the ceiling... like light projected upward... strange tribal patterns... abstracted deer and jaguars and lizards. The music rang on about the spirit of Jesus. Everything was rushing falling away... my vision rippled at the edges... blistered... shed its skin amid purple flames. The changes were rapid... body then no body... confusion then clarity... despair then euphoria. Everything melted away... fell apart like burning paper. There appeared a great column of light... human figures bowed down in reverance... sublime and shimmering angels... grotesque and otherworly creatures... hideous entities... silvery skin... jaws... swallowed up... unfolding like flowers... figures purely strange... dripping pink like paint... slender, waif like giants. Then gone. Everything impossible to catch. In the quiet between the waves I tried to find myself... hopelessly fractured... awareness splintered... personalities multiple... neither here nor there nor anywhere. Ines came out of the darkness... her face all criss crossing with lines... rapidly shifting. She rubbed tobacco on my arms and head and belly... covered me up with blankets... left me alone with my unconscious phantoms... my self and divided selves. I let the visions come and go... neither wanting nor caring... endlessly contemplative... Why this? How this? What this? The answers rang out and evaporated... new questions swept in. How utterly futile... bereft of meaning save that which I imposed. I refused it all... pure deception, pure illusion. My skin is white and my mind is west... the mushrooms would not speak my language... on the contrary!.. they spoke it perfectly... with hopelessly disconnected and nonsensical imagery. I am a child of empty culture... an alien even to that... godless... hopeless... far from nature and drowning in an ocean of signs. What we gracious whites have lost in our quest for dominance can never be recovered... not by playing with ritual... never by assuming the symbols of another culture. Everything was futile. A shallow celebration of projected unconscious... beyond interpretation and meaning... I refused it entirely... identification is madness. And so the visions moved in and out... I observed them and I forgot them... enjoying it where I could... the night progressing in that manner.
After some hours my head had slowed. Ines had retired with her cough and Katriona and I were alone in the candlelight. The walls and the floor were all lumpy... like dripping wax... tiny and grotesque animal hides were pinned up everywhere... Katriona said the shadows were full of faces. We were cold and groggy and so we decided to sneak out. We crept to the backdoor past sleeping bodies... everything was wobbly... mushrooms still going strong. We made it out under enormous night sky... giggling some... we followed the empty streets back to our hotel... the passages inside oddly angled... everything squashed into letterbox vision. We stayed up another hour talking and toward 4am mundane reality returned. My guts were raw and my head was stuffed... I crawled under the covers and slept.
The next day marked the festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe. We paid for one more night at the hotel and then went out to eat. The rest of the day was spent on top of the roof... looking down on the town... watching the traffic and occasional exploding fireworks... too, too exhuasted to move. When we visited Ines to say ‘thank you’, she told us that we hadn’t completed the ceremony... we needed to drink some sweet wine... eat a cacao bean. And so we closed the ritual rather tardily... said ‘thank you’ again and took a photo. Ines gave us a bundle of copal and a bundle of caco to take with us... a package of healthy looking shrooms as well.
During the preceding days in Huautla, we’d witnessed processions at random... taken in altars about the town... the Virgin under a parasol... swaythed in fairy lights... flanked by flowers and offerings. The 12th December brought the most impressive parade yet... traditional Mazatec costumes with bright bands of magenta and cyan... the national flag sweeping by... brass bands with crooning saxophones. The Virgin was carried aloft upon dark red cushions... or else in a glass case... or else as an icon. Some of the people carried candles, some of them carried flowers. The procession was extensive... followed by brightly decorated pick up trucks. A musician took up the rear... bashing a big bass drum all painted up with mushrooms. We joined the procession and followed it.... at a square with a tall pink tower they all filed into the church... carrying their Virgins to set down by the altar.
We exited Huautla early the next day... 4am by mini bus. I’m unsure as to the real value of my experiences but glad to have made the trip in any case. I have been thoroughly reassured of certain impossibilities... for my kind at least... the impossibility of finding enlightenment through substances. I maintain a position of agnosticism... suspended belief. You see, I do not know the language... it all falls on deaf ears. Of this I’m sure: There is no quick fix... no highway to God... no escape... no retreat... no answer... despite what the adverts tell us... there is no magic pill. It is maybe more sensible to limit ourselves to recreational intents. There is nothing more dull than a head who believes his own illusions... nothing more crazy either.