Shamanic Use of Tobacco (Power Plant)

My friend was initiated as a tabaquero (Tobacco-using) shaman in Ecuador. I talked to him today.

<<The secret of Tobacco is that the less you use the more powerful it becomes. Smoking on a daily basis accustoms the body to tobacco and we do not perceive the message of the plant as clearly when our brain is be-sotted with 1 pack a day level of nicotine in our bloodstream. Smoking once a day or less, you will feel the connection between here and now and the spirit world when you have that smoke. You will be 100 times more attuned to every flavor and aspect of that one cigarette than if you smoked the rest of the pack. If you learn something about your tobaccos and use a pipe or roll-you-own you will deepen your enjoyment even more. Eventually you may become so sensitive to tobaccos power as to experience it while holding a pinch in your hand, and offering thanks to the four directions. Many who pray with tobacco only touch the pipe to their lips and do not inhale. But they look forward to the time they spend praying and making small prayer bundles with tobacco. The less you use, the more powerful Tobacco becomes.>>

Amazonian Tobacco shamanism is based on the other end of the scale. First, it is good to know about how herbalism in general is learned among Indians of the Upper Amazon. It is learned through what is commonly known as "dieta." The Napo Runa Indians I lived with call it "sasina," which literally means fasting, although it is not usually a complete fast. "Dieta" is a practice used throughout the Upper Amazon. It has many variations, but the core is always the same, which is remarkable considering that these are cultures who are extremely varied in other aspects of their culture. Essentially, dieta involves abstaining from foods with flavor, especially salt and hot peppers, and from sex, even with oneself. A person learning herbalism usually begins with dieta with Ayahuasca, one of whose functions is to teach humans how to communicate with plants (another of her functions is to teach plants how to communicate with humans). Then the person learning herbalism will do dieta with various plants, living alone in the jungle on a semi-fast drinking huge quantites of a single medicinal plant for a week to two weeks, to the point where they become sick from overdosing on that medicine, and then they know that Plant spirit, or really that spirit is like part of them. It is kind of like a vision quest for each medicinal plant.

Tobacco shamanism is learned something in this way -- using Nicotiana rustica, Amazonian wild Tobacco, which is 15 to 18 times as high in nicotine as Nicotiana tabacum. Nicotine can be a deadly poison if ingested into the stomach in sufficient quantity (it would take much less pure nicotine to kill you than arsenic or cyanide). But nicotine also creates a tolerance. Nicotine is a poison, a nerve poison, and that is connected to his power. The Tobacco shaman is basically poisoned, and survives this poisoning and comes out changed, with Tobacco's power connected to his power. My friend who was initiated in Tobacco shamanism compared it to the Sun -- you could get harmed standing out in the sun too long if your body was not used to it, but once your body is adapted, it can take any amount of sunlight. Tobacco shamans can drink quantities of nicotine that would kill a non-initiated person; and no amount of nicotine will kill them, it only keeps increasing their power.


Tobacco is the number one power plant of the world. Tobacco is the Plant of Power. The name he has told me is Power Food. Tobacco is food for the spirits. That is why we offer pinches of Tobacco to herbs when we gather them. Tobacco is nourishment that feeds the spirits and strengthens them. You can use it for protection against negative energies, because if you dedicate it to Protection it will feed the energies of Protection. Like feeding your watchdogs to make them strong. In the same way, it makes prayer-energies more Powerful. If you place prayer intentions and songs in Tobacco when it is growing, it absorbs that energy and acts like a kind of spiritual megaphone for your prayers when you release them. You can enlist the help of elemental-type spirits that don't care about you normally by offering them Tobacco as a kind of payment. The same thing is said among peoples here in Turtle Island and in the Amazon, that the reason humans were placed on Earth was to cultivate Tobacco for the spirits, because they cannot do it themselves.

Tobacco feeds our own spirits when we consume it. We can become addicted to his food, more so if our spirits are starving, then we may crave him and his food. The trouble is, consuming Tobacco unconsciously means that only a little bit of the Power comes in, and, more important, it doesn't reach your Spirit, the depths within you that are crying to be fed. Consuming Tobacco unconsciously is like the unconsciousness of compulsive eating, and it becomes compulsive for the same reasons. Both of these compulsions are manifestations of a starving spirit. (You even see how people who stop smoking often gain weight because they take up overeating instead.)

It also, because it magnifies the power of prayer and intention, magnifies the intention of Tobacco companies to make people addicted and funnel money to them. The commercial Tobacco growers and companies dedicate this intention to the Tobacco they grow -- to feed the spirit of addiction in us. That addiction is intentional and it is because the Tobacco companies put that intention in, both physically (through the hundreds of additive chemicals that can legally constitute 20% of dry weight, not to mention tons of pesticides) and spiritually (through their Intent) dedicate this most sacred of Power Plants to this purpose, of creating addiction. This is a spiritually Powerful plant -- you try to get a lettuce leaf to addict people and place them under your command and intention, well, you might not get much results. You take the most Powerful of Power plants and say, "Addict millions of people and place them under our command so they have to feed us money" -- that Power plant will magnify your intent and give you Powerful results.

Tobacco also shows how when sacred powers are used carelessly and unconsciously, they can cause harm and sickness. There is only one Power, which can be shaped and used in different ways, up to us.

Blaming Tobacco for how he is used is like blaming electricity for how it is used.

And with some sacred things, most sacred things, the power is fragile and must be protected. Tobacco's Power is not fragile. It remains intact no matter how it is used or misused, no matter what other contaminants are also present. This is why ordinary cigarettes can even be used in ceremony. The Intent put in it by the commercial grower and cigarette companies can be cleared by your Intent. (And there are many ways to use Tobacco besides smoking.)

Tobacco is a plant that involves true secrets in its practice. There are things about his practice that are genuine secrets. What I have spoken of is only the public side of the shamanic use of Tobacco, and that is Powerful enough. I don't smoke cigarettes, except under certain circumstances, but I can never say "no" when someone offers me a cigarette, because they are offering me something so sacred, even if they don't know it."