Spiritual Ecstasy and the Cohoba Ceremony

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Throughout the ancient Americas, rulers and shamans used hallucinogens to connect with the spirits of the otherworld. Only those in touch with the supernatural realm could heal the sick, predict the future, ensure the fertility of the world, and resolve the larger problems of existence. Natural hallucinogens were regarded by pre-Columbian cultures as sacred and endowed with inherent force. Their preparation and ingestion were associated with elaborate rituals, and they were consumed only by people considered to have sufficient power to communicate with the spirits and ancestors who dwelled in the otherworld.

The most important sacred substance for the Taíno was cohoba, a psychoactive powder ground from the seeds of trees native to South America and the Caribbean. The Taíno sometimes mixed cohoba with tobacco to maximize its effect. Taíno shamans took cohoba to cure illnesses for individual patients and to ensure the well being of the community. Caciques took cohoba to communicate with zemies (spirits and ancestors); they acted as the primary intermediaries between people and the supernatural realm. Before ingesting such hallucinogenic mixtures, caciques and shamans fasted and purged themselves with vomiting spatulas of wood and bone in order to consume the "pure foods" of the spirits. Then, they inhaled their concoctions from small vessels and trays, using delicately carved snuffers of wood and bone.

The Taíno believed it was possible to travel to the supernatural realm during cohoba-induced trances. One of the strongest psychoactive substances used in the pre-Columbian world, cohoba is still taken by shamans in the Amazon Basin of South America. The effects of cohoba make the user see the world in an inverted way: people, animals, and objects appear upside down; movements and gestures are reversed; and perceptions are marked by constantly shifting shapes and kaleidoscopic colors. Everything is the opposite and the inverse of the here and now, intensely colored, and completely mutable. Many Taíno works associated with the cohoba ceremony, especially the vomiting spatulas, are exquisitely carved with fierce animals, upside-down images, and skeletal figures from the otherworld. Thus spatulas are unique in the corpus of pre-Columbian art.

Ceramic figures on duhos illustrate stages of the cohoba ritual, from the initial use of the spatula to the aftermath of stupor, fatigue, and spiritual exhaustion. Once the hallucinogen was inhaled through snuffers, the cacique or shaman would sit on his duho, elbows resting on knees, body hunched forward, lost in the thoughts and images that would result from cohoba's swift effect. In this position, caciques and shamans communicated with spirits and ancestors. The duhos themselves probably had inherent supernatural power, which "centered" the user in the fifth direction—in the center of the cosmos—a concept important to pre-Columbian societies.