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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you,

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Speaker 2: Matthew Pallamary Back with us. Author and shamantic explorer. He

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Speaker 2: frequently visits the mountains, deserts, and jungles of north central

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Speaker 2: South America pursuing his studies of shamanism and visionary experiences.

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Speaker 2: He lectures about shamanism and writing throughout the United States

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Speaker 2: as well. One of his most recent books, The Humming

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Speaker 2: Bird Whisperer. Matthew, welcome back. How have you been.

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Speaker 1: I'm doing great?

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Speaker 3: Hush.

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Speaker 2: How did you How did you get involved in shamanism.

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Speaker 3: I've been fascinating with it all my life. When I

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Speaker 3: was a kid, I was ready caught up with dan

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Speaker 3: and talking to the animals. And when I was very young,

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Speaker 3: I remember doctor Doolittle. I was really caught up with that,

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Speaker 3: you know, at a very I think six years old.

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Speaker 3: So that always fascinated me. The natural world always fascinated me.

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Speaker 3: All of the unusual things fascinated me. And then I

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Speaker 3: took an honest course in anthropology and it was called

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Speaker 3: a Forest of symbols, orientation and meaning the South American

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Speaker 3: Indian religions. And one of the things I discovered is

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Speaker 3: that the myth of the flood, as in Noah's Ark

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Speaker 3: in the Bible, is actually a universal myth. There's remote

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Speaker 3: tribes in the Amazon that they have there's similar mythologies

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Speaker 3: of the great flood, and.

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Speaker 4: So that universal commonality fascinated me. And then I found

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Speaker 4: out that shamanism throughout all over the world have a

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Speaker 4: lot of the same customs and traditions and belief systems.

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Speaker 4: So I was totally drawn into it in that way.

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Speaker 2: In your opinion, what is shamanism?

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Speaker 4: Shamanism is the world's oldest spiritual belief system. I had

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Speaker 4: a lot of fun some years back. I was speaking

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Speaker 4: to a group I think it was a rotary club

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Speaker 4: in Solvaan, California, and all the ladies were all excited

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Speaker 4: and all the husbands were like skeptical, And so I

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Speaker 4: got up there in front of the group and I said,

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Speaker 4: thank you for inviting me to come and speak to

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Speaker 4: you about the world's oldest profession. And I let us, yeah,

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Speaker 4: I let us sit for a couple of beats, and

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Speaker 4: then I went, look where your minds went. You should

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Speaker 4: all be ashamed of yourself. And then suddenly I had them,

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Speaker 4: you know, in the palm of my hand. And then

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Speaker 4: I said, look, Shamanism is the world's oldest profession. The

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Speaker 4: very first time somebody had any level of awareness and

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Speaker 4: looked up at the stars and nature and said, what

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Speaker 4: does all of this mean? That's really where it began.

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Speaker 4: And then, of course you can research every single religion

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Speaker 4: in the world. They all have their roots in shamanism.

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Speaker 4: It's the very basis of prehistoric spirituality. And you can

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Speaker 4: find shamanism in every religion. Generally speaking now in modern

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Speaker 4: times so to speak, Buddhism is one of the closest

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Speaker 4: in terms of shamanic police. But they all, every single

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Speaker 4: religion has a lot of shamanic beliefs embedded within them.

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Speaker 2: What about every type of tribe, do they have shamans

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Speaker 2: there too?

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Speaker 4: Primarily?

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I mean, originally the word shaman it was saman and

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Speaker 4: it comes from the Tungusk people of Siberia, and that

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Speaker 4: original meaning of the word is someone who knows so

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Speaker 4: remote tribes. You know, my specialty of South American shamanism,

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Speaker 4: although I studied American Indian shamanism, and I've been all

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Speaker 4: through the Andes, but then the jungles of the Peruvian

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Speaker 4: Amazon is really my specialty. And you have that person

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Speaker 4: in the tribe who sometimes they're the chief, but not

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Speaker 4: always necessarily the chief, but they're the person who knows.

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Speaker 4: They're the person you go to if you need to

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Speaker 4: find out something. And you know, shamans were also the

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Speaker 4: first psychologists, healers, teachers, performing artists, musicians, bart's storytellers. Much

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Speaker 4: of their knowledge has been passed on through actually the

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Speaker 4: myth that are told repeatedly, the oral traditions, and that's

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Speaker 4: something I've always been fascinated with, particularly in preserving them

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Speaker 4: and passing them on, because it was a way of

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Speaker 4: passing on knowledge before you know, all this internet and

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Speaker 4: all this other stuff happened.

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Speaker 2: Well, Matthew, what was the primary mission of the shaman?

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Speaker 2: What was his or her role.

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Speaker 4: Primarily there as guides? And one of shamanism. Shamans have

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Speaker 4: a number of different sort of beliefs, and one of

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Speaker 4: the beliefs or the definitions of shamanism is a bridge

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Speaker 4: so for arguments today in South American shamanism, although in

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Speaker 4: all aspects of it throughout the world, shaman is the

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Speaker 4: person who would go to the other worlds or the

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Speaker 4: other realms or the other realities, however you want to

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Speaker 4: characterize them and go find the knowledge. They would do

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Speaker 4: these things, you know, considered soul retrieval, and they would

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Speaker 4: go find the knowledge. So if somebody is within and

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Speaker 4: a lot of it has to do with a particular

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Speaker 4: cultural contact, So somebody is troubled about something and there

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Speaker 4: and there's there's superstition mixed in with it, and some

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Speaker 4: of the superstition is actually based in fact. But they

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Speaker 4: would go to the shaman and say, look, you know,

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Speaker 4: how's my baby going to be? Or or even in

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Speaker 4: more primitive societies, we're going to go to war with

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Speaker 4: this other tribe? Should we do this? How should we

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Speaker 4: do it? They would do it for big things like

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Speaker 4: preceding big hunts, things like that, I can get down

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Speaker 4: a rabbit hole on any one of these things. By

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Speaker 4: the way, you know, you got to wring me in

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Speaker 4: a little bit.

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Speaker 2: We'll put you down on that's for sure, as long

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Speaker 2: as we can pull you back out. Matthew. Yeah, were

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Speaker 2: shaman's primarily set up to talk about the afterlife.

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Speaker 4: That's part of it. In my experience, particularly with Ayahuascar

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Speaker 4: in the Peruvian Amazon. I've confronted depth a number of

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Speaker 4: times now, so I am prepared for it because shaman's

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Speaker 4: generally speaking, are people who look into other realms that

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Speaker 4: we don't know about, and of course, generally speaking, people

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Speaker 4: fear what they don't know. So shaman is a person

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Speaker 4: who will push themselves psychologically, sometimes using visionary plants, sometimes

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Speaker 4: through fasting, extreme diets, other vision quests where they really

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Speaker 4: push their physical being to the limits where you tap

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Speaker 4: into sort of the boundaries between being fully conscious, so

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Speaker 4: to speak, and then all the realms of the subconscious

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Speaker 4: and particularly in terms of dreaming and other realms of

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Speaker 4: perceptions that aren't quote unquote normal within the world. So

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Speaker 4: they're the person that will go to the edge of

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Speaker 4: and push the limits of reality as they know it

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Speaker 4: to go find the hidden knowledge. And as a matter

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Speaker 4: of fact, much of this the roots of the hero's journey.

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Speaker 4: Joseph Campbell's Heroes Journey ties in with this.

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Speaker 2: How did they interact with the tribal leader.

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Speaker 4: It's interesting because in a lot of cultures, the shaman

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Speaker 4: is separate from the tribal leader. Sometimes they are the

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Speaker 4: tribal leaders, but they make the ultimate Typically, I mean

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Speaker 4: there's exceptions to every rule. Obviously, nothing as hard and fast,

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Speaker 4: but they would make the hard decisions though the trial.

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Speaker 4: A leader may be puzzling over some situation that may

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Speaker 4: be threatening the tribe and he wants to know do

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Speaker 4: I want to do the right thing? And then he

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Speaker 4: would go to the shaman and ask his advice. It's

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Speaker 4: not so different in today's society, Western society, so to speak.

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Speaker 4: If somebody's troubled, they may go to the church and

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Speaker 4: speak to the to the priests or their their spiritual confessor,

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Speaker 4: so to speak, and ask them, hey, I'm in this situation,

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Speaker 4: whether it's normal, moral or physical, and what do you think?

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Speaker 4: What did your advice on how to do it? And then,

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Speaker 4: of course a shaman would give them a perspective that's,

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Speaker 4: for lack of better words, kind of outside the box,

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Speaker 4: you know, a little bit of objectivity to the situation

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Speaker 4: from a whole different perspective.

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Speaker 2: Were they healers primarily.

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Speaker 4: Yes, but but not even physically in terms of health

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Speaker 4: and all that. Yes, majorly psychologically speaking. They were also

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Speaker 4: the first therapists, and they would give advice and in

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Speaker 4: the jungle, the traditions that I work and the knowledge

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Speaker 4: of the plants is literally prehistoric, and they have generations

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Speaker 4: of knowledge that have been passed on about which particular

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Speaker 4: plants can heal which particular situations and maladies. Years ago,

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Speaker 4: I worked with a mentor who was the mentor to

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Speaker 4: the shamans I was working with. He was very old,

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Speaker 4: and I remember him saying, I am a plant man,

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Speaker 4: and my father was a plant man, and his father

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Speaker 4: was a plant man before him, and I come from

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Speaker 4: a long line of plant men that goes way back

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Speaker 4: in my lineage from as far as I can remember.

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Speaker 4: And incidentally, they don't refer to themselves as shamans. They

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Speaker 4: use different words in the Amazon. Primarily they'll call themselves vegetilistas,

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Speaker 4: which are specialist in the plant. If they're working with ayahuasca,

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Speaker 4: they could be called iahwuas guiros as I mentioned a

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Speaker 4: little bit ago. The word shaman actually comes from Siberia.

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Speaker 4: That word simon one who knows.

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Speaker 2: Were they like the staff doctors.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, they could be like the chief of staff doctors.

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Speaker 4: Because some people it could be genetics, so to speak,

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Speaker 4: or within the family where somebody comes to shaman, or

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Speaker 4: people can have different situations like many situations where in

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Speaker 4: Western society we would treat as mental illness. In many

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Speaker 4: shamanic societies, they would see that as a sign that

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Speaker 4: this person was chosen to do this work. And there

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Speaker 4: are a number of things like in many cultures, if

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Speaker 4: somebody is struck by lightning and they survive, they say

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Speaker 4: that's one way of being chosen to be a shaman.

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Speaker 4: So there's a number of different ways that it can happen,

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Speaker 4: but there's usually some sort of sign. And shamans and

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Speaker 4: particularly indigenous people, they watch they observed nature very very

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Speaker 4: very closely, because nature gives them everything that they need

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Speaker 4: and gives them all the signs and things that they need.

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Speaker 4: That's why you know they are familiar as in uh

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Speaker 4: totem spirits and stuff like that. If you're if you're

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Speaker 4: in the middle of nature, particularly in the jungle, and

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Speaker 4: you're listening to all the sounds of the different animals,

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Speaker 4: the animals and the bugs and everything else. They're all

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Speaker 4: listening to each other. So one bird may give out

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Speaker 4: a particular cry and everybody else went out, oh there's

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Speaker 4: a jaguar around, we better be careful, and others. You know,

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Speaker 4: there is so cross uh cross species communication. The caason

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Speaker 4: it's very complex.

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Speaker 2: Were most of the shamans righteous or any of them evil?

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Speaker 4: There's there are there are evil ones, but particularly and shaman,

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Speaker 4: you don't, I mean, there's the whole concept of evil,

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Speaker 4: but in a broader perspective. Generally speaking, they don't think

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Speaker 4: of it necessarily as evil, but they think of it

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Speaker 4: as degrees of awareness or degrees of consciousness. If they're

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Speaker 4: doing this work and they're spending their consciousness, they won't

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Speaker 4: really do evil. But I was shown there's a plant,

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Speaker 4: there's a small palm thing. I can't remember the name

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Speaker 4: of it. I've got it in my notes, and all spikes,

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Speaker 4: all spikes coming out of it, and nothing grows near it,

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Speaker 4: near it. The whole area around it is blank. And

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Speaker 4: I was told by a shaman that that's the dark

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Speaker 4: magic plant. And if you vibe of that plant, you

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Speaker 4: go to the dark side. And once you do that,

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Speaker 4: there's no turning back. You commit to it. But anyone

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Speaker 4: who continues to do this work, if they're following the

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Speaker 4: path to become a man of power or a woman

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Speaker 4: of power, or a mineralment of knowledge, their awareness expands

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Speaker 4: and they know better than to partake an evil because

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Speaker 4: evil thrives on fear, and fear comes from not knowing

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Speaker 4: the lack of awareness.

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Speaker 2: What are they called spike plants?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a name. It's not there's a name for it.

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Speaker 4: You by Cassa, I think it was. And it's really

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Speaker 4: ugly looking. It's got these big spikes all sticking out

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Speaker 4: of it, you know, like you can see a cactus

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Speaker 4: with a lot of spikes. You don't want to go

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Speaker 4: near that thing. You're going to get stabbed. And this plant,

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Speaker 4: just by looking at it, you go, oh, I don't

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Speaker 4: even want to go anywhere near that thing because it's

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Speaker 4: it's like a bunch of banets all sticking out of

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Speaker 4: it all around it.

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Speaker 2: Are the principles of shamanism still around?

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Speaker 1: Oh?

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Speaker 4: Absolutely yeah. One of the things about shamanism is it

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Speaker 4: adapts with the times, Like going back when all the

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Speaker 4: knowledge was passed on through oral traditions, repeating the myths

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Speaker 4: with each successive generation. The present generation at the time

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Speaker 4: of the telling would take the knowledge that was passed

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Speaker 4: on through the myths from their predecessors and they would

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Speaker 4: alter it a little bit to explain what's going on

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Speaker 4: in time. Because times change, things evolve, situations change, so

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Speaker 4: they would modify the myths a little bit each time

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Speaker 4: in order to keep it present so that it has

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Speaker 4: practical knowledge, because myths have practical knowledge within them. I mean,

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Speaker 4: even a lot of the stories in the Bible, whether

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Speaker 4: their myths or not, much of it are morality tales.

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Speaker 4: You know, the prodigal Sun or you know, all of

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Speaker 4: those things where it's guidance for the culture. So its

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Speaker 4: myths have primarily been a cultural teaching tool to keep

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Speaker 4: the culture relevant.

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Speaker 2: I guess they would also be not only the doctor,

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Speaker 2: as we talked about, but the pharmacist.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely. Oh, the pharmacology in the jungle is fascinating, and

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Speaker 4: a lot of times they'll.

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Speaker 2: Tell, matter of fact, that's where modern pharmacy came from.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely. In fact, there's a thing that goes on now.

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Speaker 4: There are a lot of traditions that the indigenous people

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Speaker 4: are worried about because the pharmaceutical company is something that

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Speaker 4: they've been given away, that's been for free all this time.

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Speaker 4: Pharmaceutical companies will come in and try to patented or

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Speaker 4: get this particular component within this particular plant and isolate

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Speaker 4: it and use that. One of the for lack of

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Speaker 4: better words, the biggest violations of that is cocaine. In

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Speaker 4: the Andes, the coca plant is sacred and it's considered

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Speaker 4: the mother plants of the Andes. And as a matter

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Speaker 4: of fact, when the Spanish took over the Incas and

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Speaker 4: they took the coca away, the anchors could no longer

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Speaker 4: perform because one of the things that the coca plant

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Speaker 4: does is that oxygenates your blood and it allowed them

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Speaker 4: to function at higher altitudes. So when the Spanish put

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Speaker 4: them into slavery and took their cocoa away, then they

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Speaker 4: could no longer function. Now, what they say in the

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Speaker 4: traditions in the Andes is with you have all the problems,

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Speaker 4: you have crack cocaine and heart attacks and you know,

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Speaker 4: mental dysfunction, all these things that happen. What they say

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Speaker 4: in the Andes is that that is what you get

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Speaker 4: for disrespecting the spirit of the plant. Because when you're

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Speaker 4: isolating cocaine from it and doing all the things that

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Speaker 4: go on, and you know all the you know, the

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Speaker 4: drug cartels and the murders and the deaths and all

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Speaker 4: the physiological horror things that happened. They think that's what

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Speaker 4: happens when you disrespect the spirit of the plant. But

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Speaker 4: when you use it in the sacred way, in the

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Speaker 4: way that they've been doing it for, you know, one

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Speaker 4: hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. It's actually a

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Speaker 4: very healthy planet. It's high envitamin CE, potassium, calcium, it's

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Speaker 4: one of the nature's most.

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