The Entheogenic Art of Pablo Amaringo

Pablo Amaringo is well known within the entheogen network and among the visionary art lovers. He was 10 when drank ayahuasca (the psychotropic concoction primarily made with the Banisteriopsis caapi vine cooked together with Psychotria viridis leaves) for the first time. Then he repeated the experience at 18, for curing some heart disturbes, but continued to be rather sceptical towards that ancient healing tradition. But when he saw his agonizing sister perfectly healed by an experienced shamaness, who cured her without even touching, he understood that the ayahuasca potion contained something potent, even miraculous indeed. After several sessions, he perceived to have particular healing skills and powers and began his own training to become a vegetalista, a shaman who uses plants to diagnose and heal people. He worked in that way from 1967 to 1977 continuing at the same time to paint the visions he got after drinking the "plant teachers". In 1980 he met the ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna (Terence's brother) and in 1990 Pablo proposed him to find a way to sell his art works; Dennis wrote to his friend Eduardo Luna, an anthropologist particularly interested in traditional uses of visionary plants. From the collaboration between Amaringo and Luna born Ayahuasca Visions, the book which showed the Amaringo's paintings to the public at large for the first time. Currently Amaringo teaches painting in the art school that he has founded in the Peruvian city of Pucallpa.


To see more of his works go here while to read about ayahuasca go here