The Healing Power of Peyote

Warning, the below presented views may be offensive to some and are not necessarily the shared views of the readers and or authors of this website.

So, picture this, you are in a church and it is time to take communion. You wait patiently in line, hands folded, praying you will be worth of such a heavenly gift. It’s your turn, you step up to the priest, he is flanked by two altar boys. You look up into his eyes, he says “This is the body of Christ” and you reply ‘Amen.” He places a thin wafer upon your tongue, you close your mouth step to the side, make the sign of the cross and go back to your seat.  Once you arrive back in the wooden pew you take the serene moment to kneel before God, thanking him for his blessing and asking for his grace. 

Now take this entire scenario, but replace the wafer with a button of cactus or a sip of tea.  I can hear all of the gasps of horror and the shock of what I propose, however the two instances are remarkably similar despite their cultural gaps. To the Christian, the wafer is a gift from God, the body of Christ. According to the Christian Sacrament, ‘When Our Lord said, "This is My body," the entire substance of the bread was changed into His body; and when He said, "This is My blood," the entire substance of the wine was changed into His blood.

Peyote is also regarded as a gift from God. “To us it is a portion of the body of Christ, even as the communion bread is believed to be a portion of Christ's body by other Christian denominations. Christ spoke of a Comforter who was to come. It never came to Indians until it was sent by God in the form of this Holy Medicine." - Albert Hensley, a Winnebago.

Peyote is not eaten to induce visions, it heals and teaches righteousness. It is eaten, or consumed as a tea, according to a formal ritual and offers the opportunity for self-understanding through self-examination. This experience can lead an individual to new understandings about their situation in life and the repercussions of their actions. Road men (Road Man, or Road Chief, is a title given to the leader of the peyote ceremony in the Native American Church) encourage participants to ‘ask the medicine’ or ‘listen to what the medicine tells you’ about a certain problem. They point out how the ‘power of the peyote healing experience can set a person on another course – a life of dedication in a deeper sense’.

Does anyone else see the similarities? Both rituals are meant for self enlightenment and healing. Of course the wafer doesn’t really have the same side-effects. I am sorry as I do not want to offend anyone but can you imagine a congregation of people experiencing the effects of peyote on a Sunday morning? According to the research, the participants could be starting out their week right, as it has been noted that an ‘afterglow’ effect can many times be experienced for 7 to 10 days after ingestion, humming the song ‘Because I’m Happy'...

The peyote cactus contains buttons that can be cut from the root and dried. The buttons can be chewed or soaked in water to produce an digestible liquid. They can also be ground into a powder and smoked in conjunction with the leaves of cannabis or tobacco.

The effects of ingestion of peyote varies from user to user but among the most common are; vivid   heightened sensory experiences (i.e. brighter colors, sharper visual definition, increased hearing acuity, more distinguished taste), difficult focusing, maintaining attention, concentrating, and thinking, loss of sense of reality; melding past experiences with present, preoccupation with trivial thoughts, experiences, or objects,  highly adverse reactions ("bad trip"), including frightening hallucinations, confusion, disorientation, paranoia, agitation, depression, panic, and/or terror. – This last one would totally be my personal reaction to it!  Surprisingly, no physical dependence or psychological dependence has been reported, although it may be possible.

mental images and distorted vision, perception of seeing music or hearing colors, altered space and time perception, joy, exhilaration, panic, extreme anxiety, or terror, a distorted sense of body (users can feel either weighed down or weightless),

Because of the intense psychological effects of the consumption, the use of peyote in spiritual ceremonies has been present in many cultures for over 10,000 years. From the very beginning, ‘modern” society has misunderstood the Native American adoration of peyote. Fear and lack of knowledge has led to denouncing the spiritual journey as diabolic and satanic.

Serious study of its use, however, began 1890 when James Mooney, an anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution, researched Peyote meetings among the Kiowa in Oklahoma. He extended his studies of Peyote rituals to other American reservations as well as its use by the Tarahumara in Mexico. In 1918, Mooney testified in favor of Native American at Congressional hearings in an effort to obtain a legal charter to protect their religious freedom and the use of peyote within those rights. The Native American Church or NAC was officially incorporated in 1918. Currently supporting eighty chapters and members belonging to some seventy Native American Nations. 

In the present day, peyote is very effective is in the treatment of alcoholism. Acceptance into the NAC requires abstinence from alcohol and drugs. The community is also seemingly close knit offering the consistent support a recovering addict will need in recovery. The peyote itself is empowering in its own right. The ceremonies help  the addict mentally have power over the alcohol. During ceremonies, the road man will ask the creator to help the person by speaking to them through the peyote, as it acts as a messenger between the individual and the creator. By absorbing the healing power behind the ritual, and the experience, hope in a transformation and new ways of living becomes much more attainable and sustainable.

Whether you are receiving holy communion or looking for spiritual enlightenment through a ritual of faith, in the end, we are all looking for answers to the greater questions. Thus we are all the same. Methodology of enlightenment should not matter, as the intent of enlightenment is the growth of one’s own soul.

The Ghost Dance Eclipse

January 1, 1889 a man stands in the darkness, experiencing the solar eclipse in the night sky has a vision from God. A message from the heavens to be shared by all.

The man stood before God in heaven and saw many of his ancestors engaged in their favorite pastimes. God showed the man a beautiful land filled with wild game and instructed him to return home to tell his people that they must love each other, not fight, and live in peace with the whites. 

God also stated that the people must work, not steal or lie, and that they must not engage in the old practices of war or the traditional self-mutilation practices connected with mourning the dead. God said that if his people abide by these rules, they would be united with their friends and family in the other world. Where in God's presence, there would be no sickness, disease, or old age.

Jack Wilson

This beautiful vision was described by a man named Jack Wilson aka Wovoka. The son of a ‘weather doctor’, Wilson was known as a gifted and naturally talented leader amongst the Paiutes living is Mason Valley (now currently known as Nevada). However, Wilson was not the first to have this powerful vision. Hawthorne Wodziwob, a Paiute man, organized a series of community dances to announce his vision. He spoke of a journey to the land of the dead and of promises made to him by the souls of the recently deceased. They promised to return to their loved ones within a period of three to four years. Wodziwob’s vision was coming off of a devastating typhoid epidemic, killing approximately one-tenth of the Paiute populace. 

Amongst the widespread psychological and emotional trauma, Wodziwob’s words of healing were embraced. He, along with a ‘weather doctor’ named Tavibo urged the use of a common circle dance in celebration of life. Referred to as the "round dance", this ritual form, characteristically includes a circular community dance held around an individual who leads the ceremony. It was used in many community rituals. Often accompanying the ritual are intermissions of trance, exhortations and prophesying.

Coming full circle, years later Jack Wilson was given the Ghost Dance in his vision and commanded to take it back to his people.He preached that if the five-day dance was performed in the proper intervals, the performers would secure their happiness and hasten the reunion of the living and deceased. Wilson said that God gave him powers over the weather and that he would be the deputy in charge of affairs in the western United States, leaving current President Harrison as God's deputy in the East. Jack claims that he was then told to return home and preach God's message.

Jack Wilson claimed to have left the presence of God convinced that if every Indian in the West danced the new dance to "hasten the event", all evil in the world would be swept away, leaving a renewed Earth filled with food, love, and faith.

Such a promising vision created hard times for the Native America nation as a whole. It’s

Chief Kicking Bear

rampant spread throughout the countries Native American population made the European settlers suspicious. To the point of causing the loss of many lives. 

In February 1890, the United States government broke a Lakota treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota. Breaking it up into five smaller reservations, the Native American’s were expected to adopt the European-American culture of farming the land. 

Unfortunately South Dakota was in the throws of an intense heat wave, and coupled with minimal rainfall made the land barren and unable to produce any substantial yields. Bison had become virtually extinct in the area and the Sioux quickly reached the brink of starvation. 

In the wake of desperation the Sioux looked to their God for assistance, taking up the ritual of the Ghost dance. The dance, however, alarmed the European-American agents sent to supervise the transition. Even with the extraction of Chief Kicking Bear, the dance continued. 

The European-American agents requested additional troops, claiming Sitting Bull was the real leader of the movement. Despite several protests, thousands of US Army troops were deployed to the reservations. 

On December 15th 1890 Sitting Bull was killed in a misunderstanding when one of Sitting Bull's men, Catch the Bear, fired at Lieutenant "Bull Head," striking his right side. He instantly wheeled and shot Sitting Bull.

The Wounded Knee Massacre marked the end of the Ghost Dance when 153 Sioux men, women and children, and 25 US soldiers were needlessly killed because of a weapon’s discharge. Following the massacre,and the official surrender of Chief Kicking Bear, interest and participation in the Ghost Dance movement dropped dramatically for fear of continued violence against practitioners of the religion.

 In an interesting twist, as I was researching this article I realized the ‘weather doctor’ was also the father of Jack Wilson. Coincidence? Probably not, however I am not going to let this connection sway me (and I hope it will not for you) from the core peaceful message the Ghost Dance sought to reinforce. It is so sad to think if that message would have been somehow communicated to the European settlers the fate of the Native American Nation as a whole could have been much different. 

All we can do now is retell the story and hope we will learn from our ancestors mistakes.