In an academic context it is always difficult to speak of an aboriginal philosophy. However, this study addresses some aspects of the wichí worldview, where their philosophy rests on the portentous figure of the hayawu ‘shaman’ (or shamaness). In this sense, this being has an enigmatic force known as qopfwayaj, whose power gives him the ability to see, transform and dissolve the limits of “normal”. Likewise, this prodigious individual possesses entheogens as catalytic technologies for the execution of his singular episteme. In addition, a conceptual articulation is made with a rite of mystic-religious character of ancient Greece known as the Mysteries of Eleusis, where the initiates, through the ingestion of narkissos, were revealed the divine vision.

First of all, we will start from a first axis where we will try to explain some aspects as a conceptual anchor, such as the development of the notion of hesek or husék (in this work the word husék will be used before hesek) verbal concept of the Wichís themselves that the anthropologist John Palmer studies and puts into context in his work “The Wichí good will”. There, the author will interpret this aboriginal category as 'spiritual interiority' or will, whose will would have four aspects. (Palmer, 2013).

Already within the husék category, we will address the third aspect of it, proposed by John Palmer, that is, the 'shamanic will' as willpower. The reason why this aspect will be appealed to is simply because the image of the hayawu appears here —we will say hayawu or shaman indistinctly, the same for the question of gender, since it can be male or female— in whose figure would rest the power and all the knowledge of the ethnic community.

Then we will allude to certain characterizations of shamanism at a general level that the anthropologist Michel Harner and the renowned philosopher of religions Mircea Eliade will offer us. All in all, we will arrive at the figure of “our” Wichí or Hayawu shaman at the hands of the aforementioned anthropologist John Palmer and the Argentinean anthropologist María Cristina Dasso.

In this sense, the shaman could be a true philosopher avant la lettre, a model of how to be, but not simply how to be in the ecstatic or thinking state, but how to be in the act of living or how to be in the act of dying. The shaman will also be a theoretician and a medicne-man, that is, the one in charge of curing and administer the techniques of knowledge and all the savoir-faire that the community needs to maintain its ethos and quality of life with dignity. But fundamentally, the shaman will be able to travel to other dimensions defying all possible limits.

In the second axis, we will try to draw a conceptual and meaningful bridge between the shamanic ceremonies of knowledge and an archaic founding myth of the Greek tradition. We are talking specifically about the Hymn to Demeter, which alludes to the construction of the Eleusis temple and its practices of mysterious knowledge, where the sumun bonum was the epopteia, that is, the power to 'see'.

 Finally, we will try a kind of crossover, or an intertwining of these oral traditions, mediated by some Platonic writings, in which the founder of the Athenian Academy will provide us with some hermeneutical tools for a better understanding and assimilation of those philosophies of vision.

Thinking about aboriginal philosophy in academic settings can be perplexing. However, based on certain ancestral techniques and practices, native peoples will gradually build up a corpus of knowledge as the epistemic basis of their own theory of knowledge.

However, someone may interpret this exhibition as something anarchic, confusing and devoid of any academic logic, however, our approach deeply believes that the notion of "anarchic" could successfully contribute to the desired objective —as Paul Feyerabend thought— without losing rigor. of the philosophical-methodological approach.

This essay has been written with the conviction that anarchism, which is perhaps not the most attractive political philosophy, is nonetheless excellent medicine for epistemology and for the philosophy of science. (Feyerabend, 1986)p.1

In this sense, we chose to test this writing from a transdisciplinary understanding and comparison:

The new rationality opts for complementarity and the conjunction of disciplinary knowledge, that is, it takes the path of transdisciplinarity. The old rationality is solely disciplinary. […] The new rationality teaches freedom and creativity in all areas. The old rationality educates for repetition and obedience. (Vilar, 1997) pp. 12-13

From this paradigm, it will be possible to appreciate certain symbolizations and classifications in mythological, chemical, botanical and medical terms, as constitutive elements of their own episteme in indigenous peoples. In this paper we subscribe to the epistemological and epistemic notion proposed by Michel Foucault in the Archeology of Knowledge:

The description of episteme thus presents several essential characteristics: it opens an inexhaustible field and can never be closed; Its purpose is not to reconstitute the system of postulates to which all the knowledge of an era obeys, but rather to cover an indefinite field of relationships (Foucault, 2015)p. 249.

And so, all this knowledge-power, would conform the conditions of possibility of the cognitive scaffolding, since the Wichí philosophy would consist of designing a multiple-will embodied in the person who has been able to cross the threshold of initiation, to finally be chosen as a wisdom referent of the community.

“The first” Wittgenstein was quite right when he said that the limits of language mean the limits of the known world (Wittgenstein, 2009). And it is precisely the difficulty that we face. That is to say, when we run out of language, the world ends, because the worlds of the hayawu wichí go much further than "our limited world". Now, how do we then go about building a “linguistic intelligibility bridge” and accessing those worlds without dislocating them, where limits dissolve and knowledge flourishes?

To overcome this methodological difficulty-force, we will try to mitigate this rudeness, by virtue of a 'linguistic translatability' with the notion of “language games” granting it the greatest sacredness and respect it deserves. For this, we will appeal again to another category of the Austrian thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein, who introduced into philosophy a concept that would be more suited to our aspirations. In this sense, "the second" 

Wittgenstein calls Lebensform to what translates as: ' forms of life' (Wittgenstein, 2009 p. 185). This notion would fulfill the role of "portal" to our hypothesis, and thus cross the appropriate initiation gap and "peek" that other multidimensional and unlimited reality of Wichí shamanism.

Wittgenstein introduces the key concept of language games, with which this new notion bursts in to approach language from a more fluid, diversified and more oriented perspective towards the ways of life of humans. That is to say, to their daily and concrete uses in multiple contexts and appropriate to their “own grammars”.

However, given that our games "fall short" to adapt and have a better understanding and appreciation of shamanic hyperreality, we will try to participate in its own game, that is, of the Wichí life forms. Wittgenstein says: "The expression language game should emphasize here that speaking the language is part of an activity or a way of life." (Wittgenstein, 1988, p. 39) 

Ways of life can be understood as changing and contingent, dependent on culture, context, history, profession, family, neighborhood, etc. Certainly our will is to delve into the Wichí philosophy through a written word, and not oral, but with all the respect and seriousness it deserves, since for them the word would be saturated with being.

This original people, like any other, has always had its own institutions of knowledge, its objects of study and learning, as well as various practices to understand the world and know itself. In this sense, multiple ethnographic and anthropological studies agree that the Wichís share a guiding principle of a metaphysical nature, whose principle will configure the ontological, moral, aesthetic and epistemological foundations. "The Wichí people are a people whose life revolves around their husék, which is very much theirs, the center of their life, their daily activity and the life of the village" (Palmer, 2013, p. 22).

This notion of the Wichís, called husék, will be the conceptual category studied and analyzed by Palmer, and according to him, it will be the Wichí goodwill. Thus, this goodwill would derive from a spiritual dimension that would affect the entire material plane, both individual and social.

I interpret the term husék as 'will' and not as 'soul', its conventional meaning, for two reasons. In the first place […] the notion of soul has been riddled with confusion in Western philosophy and science. [...] secondly, the three main attributes of the husék wichí are all faculties of what we know as the will. These attributes are vital will, goodwill and willpower. (Palmer, 2013, p. 187)

Now then, from this perspective we can say that the husék is a complex phenomenon, from which several aspects would be derived, such as:

a) The vital will in the plane individual is the metaphysical organ of the body that gives it its conscious, communicative and motivated character; it is a spiritual being that resides in the heart. (Palmer, 2013, p. 188)

b) Goodwill or social will is the product of socialization, whose purpose is to "eliminate aggressiveness" through a non-authoritarian education of the child. She "transforms biological individuals into moral beings with social capacity." (Palmer, 2013, p. 196) 

c) The shamanic will, possessing 'willpower' since it would be the magical power that the will has.

Starting from the premise that the Wichí category of husék is equivalent to the concept of will, the phenomenon of qopfwaya j is extended as 'willpower'. […] In other words, the qopfwayaj is the magical power that the will has -in its shamanic conformation- to achieve objectives that exceed the competence of a physical operation. (Palmer, 2013, p. 208) 

Finally we come to the point that interests us in this chapter, which is the phenomenon of the shamanic will, that is, this peculiar attribute would be an intrinsic force immanent to the husék that operates as a multiple power and would obviously be better known and administered by the hayawu or shaman.

However, this first approximation does not lead directly to an enigmatic entity like the shaman, which in turn triggers a series of questions such as: Who is the shaman? What is shamanism? Is it a set of visions or practices? Is it something old or recent? Does it exist in time and space? Is it a religion with its own set of rites? Is it a natural philosophy of forces beyond human control? What is its nature, what would be its functions?

Answering all these questions will be impossible in this work, and it is not the intention to do so. What we will try to do is give a general definition of shamanism and see how it is related in the Wichí context.

It is fair to say that shamanism is not just a "dark concern" of cultural anthropologists, or of certain folk or New Age groups, since there is plenty of archaeological and anthropological evidence that shamanism is the way religion was practiced until about 3,000 years ago in Eurasia and until about 500 years ago in America. Before there was no other form of religiosity on this planet, nor was there any other way to achieve some kind of access to knowledge. Michael Harner, a renowned North American anthropologist, whose field studies were mostly in Ecuador with the Jíbaros, said in this regard:

Shamanism represents the oldest and most widespread mental and physical healing methodological system known. Archaeological and ethnological evidence seems to indicate that shamanic methods are at least twenty or thirty thousand years old, or even older, since, after all, the first primates with human characteristics to appear on the planet date back more than two or three million years. (Harner, 1987, p. 71)

In other words, shamanism would not only be a manifestation of "magical thought" as it is ordinarily conceived, nor a kind of "pre-rational" experience, but would embody a perspective with its own methodology to reach multiple knowledge. Now, but when we try to deal with all this descriptive data, then what is the experience that the hayawu would be having and what would make him or her a potential philosopher?

The Wichí shaman is the man or woman who has been chosen by powerful beings to develop activities specifically inserted in the transdimensionality of the cosmos, either by dealing with the sick entities of human beings- to change their will and help in the cure- , either by monitoring and protecting your community from possible climatic catastrophes, warfare, epidemics, etc. (Dasso & Barúa, 2006, p. 219)

Well, if hundreds of these shamanic experiences were analyzed, the overwhelming common thread would be, as the Argentinean anthropologist Dasso says, the cure and the transdimensionality of the Cosmos. Therefore, here we will talk about the dissolution of limits, as an essential faculty of the shaman. From this perspective, we will see some experiences of the hayawu wichí. We said that a kind of sub-attributes derive from the notion of husék , from which we take what John Palmer calls 'shamanic will' and that the Wichís themselves call qopfwayaj the immanent force that operates in that shamanic will, and that it would be the true source of power.

Now, but what would be the origin of that peculiar force? It is a very difficult question to answer, and even less in a writing like this, however, we will try to give some answer following the same authors. Palmer says regarding the phenomenon of qopfwayaj :

If we stick to the original meaning of the words, the Wichí concept could be translated as 'charisma' or 'charisma'. But anthropology already has a category to which, broadly speaking, the qopfwayaj corresponds. It 's the classic mana phenomenon. (Palmer, 2013, p. 208)

Here the notion of mana appears, an extremely controversial concept in religion and the field of cultural anthropology, for this reason we will only limit ourselves to following the idea proposed by an expert in the discipline such as John Palmer. “Wichí mana is the origin of the 'force' (qájyayaj) of the shamanic will, as it manifests itself in the healing power of the shaman.” (Palmer, 2013, p. 208) However, it is the shaman who knows, he is the one who has the power to manage that 'force and transforming power', strictly speaking, the shaman is the one who has the ability to dissolve the limits of normality.

When he performs shamanic activities, he follows their precepts and when he does not, he follows the precepts of normal reality. The shaman deliberately moves between two realities and with serious purpose. In either of the two realities, the shaman thinks and acts appropriately to it, and has as his objective the mastery of both activities, the normal and the non-normal. Only he who masters his actions in both fields is a shaman master. (Harner, 1987, p. 78).

At this point, we come across a true ontological and epistemological dilemma, the problem of which could be translated in the best Kantian style as: what is reality? what is normal? what can i know? what are the limits? But why the tension between the limit and the dissolution of the limit? Why the tension between a closed world of neurotic constructions, which we call normal psychological health? Why the tension between that "normal" and a "non-normal" psychological state? Why limit the transformative powers of knowledge?

However, this onto-psychological tension of [normal-non-normal] or limits does not seem to have much place in Wichí thought. "The Wichí cosmology is based on the precept that reality is not reduced to what is immediately perceptible" (Palmer, 2013, p. 66) The hayawu Wichí is capable of coexisting with all possible dimensions, since the limits and the borders will be plastic and interchangeable.

That is to say that the shamanic is noticed through the meticulous monitoring of that set of techniques, knowledge and perspectives that characterize what the Wichí called hiyawú, hayawé, 'iyawu in its intralinguistic variation, which followed anciently prefigured paths to fulfill their profession. complex, based on a transdimensional ability that allowed him to visit other areas of the cosmos and resulted in an ability to "see" the reality of things, concurring in a therapeutic technique.  (Dasso, 2016, p. 93)

Following Dr. Dasso, we can elucidate another quality as important as those of healing and dissolving limits, which is seeing. The hayawu has the ability to see things that most of the "lay people" cannot see. At this point we consider it propitious to appeal to the etymology of see. In this sense, we will highlight two "sides" of this word; on the one hand, we get the notion of sage or wisdom, and on the other hand, the notion of theory.

The first form would come to us from the Proto-Indo-European *weid, passing through the ancient Greek ἰδεῖν [wi⁠'dei̯n] (in Greek the phoneme /w/ was represented by / v/) for this reason the Latin root that comes down to us will be vidêre . Thus, the Greeks associated 'seeing' with 'knowing', since whoever could see knows. Along the same lines, there is the German verb wissen 'to know', as well as the English adjective wise 'wise', all of them from the same root *weid The other form of the verb to see comes from the Greek θεωρία, from theoros 'spectator', formed with the particle thea 'view'. 

From this perspective, it can be said that the shaman, that is, our hayawu wichí, in addition to being the sage, is by nature the theoretician of the community, since only he can make visible phenomena that are a priori invisible. For example, when it comes to healing, the shaman will make use of his knowledge and techniques so that his healing intervention is effective and visible.

By means of tobacco smoke, he 'places his hand on the head' (itato zletek hap lӗqapfwayaj) whereupon 'his word emerges' (tájpā zlāmet). That is, the shaman discovers and announces the cause of the problem. In this case, the mana makes the invisible (the cause of the discomfort) become visible in the form of the shamanic diagnosis. (Palmer, 2013, p. 208)

However, for the hayawu, one of its functions will be to make the invisible visible, and following one of the meanings of 'see'; while he ' sees' , he theorizes . Strictly speaking, the shaman is the true theoretician, since he is the only one who can see and the only one who knows . However, this type of theorizing will be unwritten, with which "the letter" will not be reflected on paper, since the shamanic syntax would be inscribed in another linguistic plane, or as Wittgenstein said, in "other language games".

Following the same line of the "game", in computer terms, it can be said that our "Western culture" or ethnocentric, has configured its Operating System with a very rigid language and little tolerant for certain software. However, we believe that it is time to change architecture, or at least upgrade our obsolete hardware to support those programs built with more advanced and superior languages like those of the shaman. In the last chapter we will return to and deepen this notion of 'seeing', which will be essential for the shamanic episteme.

Specifically, the axis mundi means the 'axis of the world', that is, it would be that point of connection between [heaven-earth-underworld] (Eliade, 1976) It is the point where the union occurs, and the proximity between the kingdoms, regions, or worlds " superiors" and inferiors". Consequently, different cultures and traditions have symbolized it in one way or another. Indeed, the tree has been one of the most outstanding symbols of this sort of hierophanic reference, although there will be symbolizations such as oracles, towers, pyramids and the foundation of cities. (imago mundi) In any case, the main function of these hierophanies will be nothing more and nothing less than to cosmicize Chaos.

Therefore, 'cosmize' will mean: «know-to-order-inhabit-control». Within this order of ideas, the origin of the cities can be elucidated. (Eliade, 1981, p. 30). That is to say, when a city is founded, it is being sacralized and, at the same time, cosmicized a territory, since the choice of the place has not been "random", but a certain number of " hierophanic regulations" would be operating, with the desire to emulate the "celestial order". In short, it can be said that it "magically falls to the ground" and whose ceremony will configure the omphalos or 'anthropic center' and future templum . 

According to Wichí mythology, the world had been completely destroyed by fire. Fortunately we can count on the help of a representative of the Wichí people, whose name is Audencio Zamora, better known as "Lecko" and who in one of his written works tells us that nothing was left standing, only desolation, darkness and calamity. This "apocalyptic phenomenon" would have happened because people had begun to disrespect the traditions of the Great Spirit.

The Great Fire came because they did not respect the norms established by the Great Spirit for the environment and its creatures. Then came the deluge of fire, the Great Fire, the “Itaj Pahlha”. In his walk on earth he devoured everything in his path, there was no tree left, nothing green or of any other color. The sadness and the gray of loneliness dressed the earth, only the ashes covered it. (Zamora, 2012, p. 14)

In a poetic way, Lecko begins to tell us about the total destruction of the world. However, not everything had been devastated and annihilated, since there were a number of characters that were saved and thanks to their speed they were able to escape and take refuge in a cave. But who escaped from the Great Fire? Lecko adduces: “There was a man, it was the ikancho man. We Wichí call it Takwajtso. He was the birdman who beat the Great Fire." (Zamora, 2012, p. 15)

According to another story, Tokwaj, Icanchu and Chuña managed to survive.  Then, at the exit of the cave, it will be Icanchu who begins to dig the earth in search of some root or something to eat, and in the midst of his great anguish and melancholy, the Icanchu bird discovered something: 

Until one day he found a coal and took it in his hands. He jumped for joy and very happy said: "This coal is from the Carob tree, it is the seed." He put it in his yika and went back the same way he came, very carefully. After walking in his footsteps without resting, he arrived at his place, the center of the world, the same place that sheltered him from Itaj phalha. There he unhooked the yika from his shoulders, took out the coal and deposited it on the ground, near the cave where he took refuge and was saved. At sunset he began to sing his sacred song with his maraca. He sang all night. Those songs were prayers. That day he began again with his sacred songs and continued like this for several days and times. In his astral dream, from that world he contemplated how the tree magically stretched its trunk, its branches, and its leaves towards the sky. Its shadow expanded and among its roots the wise man sheltered and revitalized himself. Thus grew a Great Tree; It was the Tree of Life, the First Tree, Very Leafy. Very strong and high he swayed among the new clouds that began to arrive attracted by the fragrances of this Great Tree.  (Zamora, 2012, p. 18-19)

Now, in this paragraph that Lecko gives us, we can see that at least two core concepts emerge. On the one hand, it mentions the center of the world, and, on the other hand, the great tree , so that the two symbols will end up linking and merging in the symbol, whose meaning will be the First Tree or the Tree of Life , which in Wichí language, this will be precisely the Ayawú Ute .

The Ayavu Ute, or Tree of Trials, is the Primal Tree to which the auxiliary spirits of shaman apprentices travel during the hallucinogenic trance that accompanies the shamanic initiation ceremony. According to our informants, "what flies" of the shaman is constituted by the soul of the dead. (Barabás & Bartolomé, 1979)p. 127

All in all, it can be said that we already have several elements of this core notion of the Wichí cosmogony. Thus, this phenomenon will later be transferred to his mythology, to then finally be embodied in his literature and philosophy. Strictly speaking, from this premise, as the vertical axis, as a hierophany, the time and space of the sacred will be established. In short, it will be the manifestation of the gods in the world of the profane, and therefore, the foundational mythical manifestation of the known world. "The manifestation of the sacred, ontologically founds the World" (Eliade, 1981, p. 15)

Consequently, this "center", more than with the geographical, is identified with an ontological center, a nucleus that gives existence. There, the Wichí shaman crosses the threshold of the limited and can transcend the mere ordinary architectural construction, to launch himself into a cosmic energy center, into a transdimensional topos in which hopes are renewed, and ultimately, where there is an encounter with the numinous, the most valuable and sacred of existence.

The shamanic technique par excellence consists of passing from one cosmic region to another: from Earth to Heaven, or from Earth to Hell. The shaman knows the mystery of breaking the levels. This communication between cosmic zones has been made possible thanks to the very structure of the Universe. The Universe [...] is conceived, roughly, as consisting of three regions -Heaven, Earth and Hell-, linked together by a central axis. (Eliade, 1976, p. 213)

According to Mircea Eliade, the shamanic technique par excellence is precisely the ability to go beyond cosmic regions, in other words, it is the ability to go beyond all possible limits. Strictly speaking, the hayawu achieves an ouverture, a temporal-spatial rupture as a "cosmic tunnel", with which, its episteme, will reach supersensible states at transdimensional levels, in a continuous cosmization of Chaos. (Eliade, 1981) 

To finish this section of Axis mundi, we will now investigate in a more acute way a fundamental device for the hayawu wichí. This element is known as cebil, however, the Wichí people call it hataj. It is important to link this notion of the hataj with the Ayawú Ute for two reasons. First, because of its origin, and second, because of the role it plays in the shaman's ceremonies.

Now, but what is this that the Wichís call hataj ? In principle, it can be said that it is an element of plant origin, specifically a good-sized tree that grows in many places in South America, especially in northwestern Argentina and the entire Puna region. In addition to ' cebil' , specialists assert that this tree can be annealed with various names, for example: huilca , huillca , vilca , villca , wilka , wi´lka , etc.(Schultes, 2000)

However, we said that one of the important aspects was the origin and birth of the cebil in the Wichí people. And this why? As we previously described, one of the survivors of the Great Fire had been Icanchu , the bird that later, dancing and singing, made the only surviving seed sprout, from which the Great Tree or Ayawú Ute would be born . Thus, when the tree had already reached a prominent height, Icanchu observed that it was already beginning to bear fruit.

One morning he saw himself contemplating the Great Tree, and he realized that it gave fruits of various colors because they were diverse fruits. He carefully observed each fruit and began to sing its melodies, which were prodigious because he was very radiant. The first fruit he saw was that of the cebil, the transcendent spiritual provision of the Hayawu, (Shaman), which from that time until today is part of the body left by Tokwaj. (Zamora, 2012, p. 21)

This is how Icanchu observed the first fruit of the Great Tree, the primordial fruit was the cebil, and as Lecko says, "the transcendent spiritual provision" of the hayawu was born. Previously we said that the link between the hataj and the tree was important, firstly because of its origin —which we have seen— secondly, because of its ceremonial function. In this sense, it is necessary to make a clarification, since the word cebil is used both to refer to the tree and its fruit. "The name cebil refers to both a tree (anadenanthera colubrina) and its seeds, which can develop strong psychoactive effects." (Schultes, 2000, p. 120)

Indeed, the scientific name of the cebil 'tree' is anadenanthera colubrina. However, the "spiritual and transcendent" element that Lecko pointed out, are its seeds and, as Evans Schultes indicated, they have a strong psychoactive power. Now then, what will this psychoactive power mean for the hayawu ?

The cebil, hatáh , is the hallucinogen used among the Wichí shamans of the central Chaco. This hallucinogen whose effectiveness is due to the inhalation of the powder of the seeds, is essential for the performance of the hatáh ceremony, in which the shamanic journey takes place. The cebil is deeply associated with the institution of shamanism.  (Dasso & Barúa, 2006, p. 219)

Based on what has been stated, the seeds that the hayawu will use as psychoactive technology in their ceremonies are obtained from the cebil tree. Now, the anthropologist María Cristina Dasso tells us that, through her research and field work, she was able to reach conclusions such as the ones we have just cited. (Dasso & Barúa, 2006)

In this sense, in this brief approach we are interested in delving a little more into some characteristics and functions of the psychoactive substance with which the hayawu operates. First of all, what is a psychoactive? According to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy it means: "Said of a substance : That acts on the nervous system, altering the psychic functions ”. Royal Spanish Academy. (2021). Spanish dictionary. Recovered from: https://dle.rae.es/psicoactivo

This definition that we have just cited has brought with it a series of confusions, ambiguities and interpretations that, most of the time, the notion of 'psychoactive' ends up slipping semantically into the mere notion of 'hallucinogenic'. And perhaps it is for this reason that a high percentage of society ends up censoring, marginalizing and demonizing people who manage to have experiences with substances called "psychoactive", since they directly relate it to any type of synthetic "drugs". However, there is a specific neologism to refer with semantic precision to substances with 'active principles'  capable of generating altered states of consciousness in shamanic ecstasy.

In view of the above, we want to suggest a new word, which could be appropriate to refer to drugs whose ingestion alters the mind and causes states of ecstatic and shamanic possession. In Greek, entheos literally means "god (theos) within," and is a word used to describe the state one is in when inspired and possessed by the god, who has entered his body. [...] In combination with the root gen-, which denotes the action of «becoming», this word composes the term that we are proposing: entheogen. (Wasson, Hoffmann, & Ruck, 1985, p. 235)

From this quote that Wasson and Hoffmann offer us, it could be interpreted that the hayawu, when ingesting the hataj in his ecstatic ceremony, would be inspired and possessed by some deity to guide him and help him perform his healing and cognitive wonders, in addition to accessing trips transdimensional.  Indeed, when people are chosen by the ahot, (metaphysical entities) to be future shamans, they are "kidnapped" in a sort of "sick state" and taken to the mountains, there they will initiate themselves and obtain the knowledge to become hayawu .

In this state, the ahot beings allow themselves to be seen and point to various entities that cause diseases. The candidate observes everything that surrounds him, learns the songs and aromas of what will be his auxiliary spirits, towehei , so that he knows the signs with which, from now on, he will have to recognize them. (Dasso & Barúa, 2006, p. 220)

However, when the hayawu -shaman introduces the entheogen (hataj) he does something more than eat in a physiological sense, since in that “eating” theos manifests itself. and fulfills a pedagogical role. Thus, the hayawu learns to merge with cosmic empathy, that is, it hypostasizes in the midst of an energetic-spiritual contagion led by its daimon or protective spirit, being capable of dissolving the limits of the ordinary and cosmicizing its own Chaos to the sound of the heady icaros . 

To conclude this section, we would like to highlight that these shamanic ecstatic trances where Knowledge is unveiled, are in a phase of extinction (Dasso, 2016) due to the extirpation processes that took place (and continue to take place) in the region. That is to say, it is about persecuting and punishing those who consume and practice this ancient knowledge, with defamations and threats, by the Churches and the State.

In the course of the first chapter, we had said that we would later take up and deepen the idea that for the hayawu episteme, 'seeing' invisible things would be fundamental. Indeed, there the etymological approach was made to the word 'to see' from the Proto-Indo-European * weid, which led us to two Greek words: ἰδεῖν [wi⁠ˈ⁠dei̯n] and θεωρία [theoría]. Thus, from the first came the notion of seeing-knowing, while the second gave the notion of seeing-theorizing. 

Now, but what would this "see the invisible" or " theorize the invisible" be like ? At first it would seem like a flagrant contradiction. However, this type of onto-gnoseological dilemma was already present at the dawn of Greek philosophy, fundamentally, in Platonic thought.

From this perspective, in the ancient Greek tradition, there were some rites and ceremonies of a mystical-religious nature with which we would like to make a point of contact, in order to articulate them conceptually with the notion of 'seeing' of our hayawu . We are talking about the mysteries of Eleusis.  It is said that these archaic mysteries were preserved for more than a millennium and the most famous people of antiquity -such as some Roman emperors- granted special honors to the sanctuary. But it was punishable by death if the mysteries and epiphanies to which the initiates accessed were disclosed.

A historian and geographer of the second century like Pausanias, asserted that the mysteries were absolutely reserved and it was rigorously forbidden to talk about them, since they were discreetly represented for the initiates through certain purification rites: "What is inside the wall A dream forbade me to describe the sanctuary, and it is evident that it is not lawful for the uninitiated to even know those things that they are forbidden to see. (Pausanias, 1994, p. 187)

According to scholars, the oldest source that refers to the Eleusinian mysteries are the Homeric Hymns. (Torres, 2005). To tell the truth, they are attributed to Homer, however, experts agree that Homer was not the rhapsode author of these hymns. Beyond this philological data, what interests us is the Hymn dedicated to Demeter, in whose verses the supposed genesis of the mysteries appears, since the Eleusinian temple would have been built in favor of the telluric goddess.

The myth tells us that Persephone —daughter of Demeter— was playing with the daughter of Oceanus in a meadow among beautiful flowers, and observing a beautiful Narcissus that was nearby, she went in search of it. In that, the ground suddenly opened up and Pluto (Hades), brother of Zeus and lord of the Underworld, emerged, he snatched and kidnapped Persephone, then put her in his golden chariot and took her against her will. (Torres, 2005, p. 86)

After this episode and countless vicissitudes, Demeter sad and enraged with her brothers (Hades and Zeus) for not giving up her daughter, quickly leaves Olympus and goes down to earth to rest in the kallichoron well where the neighbors of eleusis. There she posed as an old woman and managed to gain access to Céleo's mansion, after her daughters invited her to the house. In that palace he managed to be accommodated as a nurse to Demofoonte, son of Metanira, the wife of Celeus. She raised the child until Metanira found out that she was a goddess. Demeter, enraged by the fact, reprimands everyone for the indiscretion and for the inability to discern the good fate from the bad.

Then, to calm his anger, he demands that the Eleusinians build a temple for his future worship:

I am Demeter the honorable, that the greatest good and joy for immortals and mortals results. But come, that a great temple and an altar in it build me all the people, at the foot of the city and the steep wall, of Calicoro above, on the promontory of the hill: the rites I myself will explain them, so that, henceforth, acting with mercy, appease my person. (Torres, 2005)p.100

To all this, Zeus sent Hermes to the Underworld to persuade Hades and let Persephone return, since her mother prevented the growth of fruits on earth. After such deterrence, Hermes and Persephone quickly head to the brand new temple of Eleusis. At last the long-awaited meeting between mother and daughter takes place, so that the goddess of telluric fertility happily set out to return the lush fertility to the earth. Finally, Demeter will reveal the solemn rites and the secret of the mysteries, to four characters who will be the first 'justice givers' hierophant priests: Triptolemus, Eumolpos, Diocles and Celeus. Here's the downside, it turns out that these sacrosanct mysteries — by order of Demeter — cannot be divulged or revealed, except if they comply with the initiation rites.

Blessed is he of the men who dwell on earth who has seen them; but he who has not been initiated into the rites, he who has not taken part in them, will never have such a fate, after death, under the miry darkness. (Torres, 2005)p.110

The theme of discretion and initiation will be essential for the advent of such knowledge. Now, now that this introduction to the Eleusinian mysteries has been done, we would like to do a kind of crossover between the 'seeing' of the hayawu wichí and the Eleusinian mysteries.

The myth says: "blessed are those who have seen." So only some people are able to 'see', and if so, who? Partially answering this question, we are tempted to think that the hayawu wichí is a happy being capable of 'seeing'. But let's analyze a little more.

From this point of view, it seems that there has always been that epistemological dichotomy between “popular” or superficial knowledge and deep and “reserved” knowledge. This cryptic phenomenon can be observed since human genesis, for example, in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian tablets, the gospels, mystics, shamans, and even in modern philosophers. Following this order of ideas, why did Jesus speak in parables, and not in a direct and plain way? 

Following this line, we could talk about exoteric knowledge and esoteric knowledge. In this sense, we are going to address some aspects of what is considered the philosopher par excellence, we are talking about Plato. According to Hegel, another significant philosopher of Western thought, he revealed this phenomenon in Platonic thought through a quote from Wilhelm Tennemann (a contemporary German philosopher of Hegel).

Another of the difficulties that we encounter here is, according to some, the one that supposes the fact that one distinguishes between an exoteric philosophy and another esoteric one. Tennemann (t. II, p. 220) says: "Plato made use of the right that assists every thinker to communicate only that part of his discoveries that he considered opportune to make known, and also only to those who recognized the necessary capacity to understand them.". Aristotle also had an esoteric and an exoteric philosophy, although with the difference that, in him, the distinction between the two was purely formal, while in Plato it was, at the same time, a material distinction. (Hegel, 1995, p. 144)

Exoteric knowledge would refer to knowledge that is absolutely open to all audiences, regardless of the internal process of the person. While esoteric knowledge would be a type of knowledge or wisdom reserved for a certain number of educated people, or with some specific training in a field, whose purpose would be to quench a kind of spiritual thirst that transcends the merely ordinary. Hegel continues: “To communicate something purely external does not require much, but to convey an idea to another requires skill, and skill is always something esoteric; that is why philosophers are not and can never be simply exoteric. (Hegel, 1995)p.144

According to Plato, the founders of the Eleusinian mysteries were outstanding spirits and divine persons. In his dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus, the latter speaks of the divine visions in which men and women were instructed in limpid and supreme matters, and in whose initiations they prepared for the advent of splendor and bliss.

But we could see the brilliance of beauty then, when with the choir of the blessed we had the divine and blissful vision before us, as we followed the procession of Zeus, and others that of other gods, as initiates that we were in those mysteries, that it is fair to call the most joyful, and that we celebrate in all our fullness and without suffering any of the ills that awaited us in the coming time. Full and pure and serene and happy the visions in which we have been initiated and of which, in their supreme moment, we reached the most limpid brightness, limpid we too without the stigma that is all this tomb that surrounds us and that we call body. (Platón, Díalogos III, 1988)p. 353

Thus, Plato introduces us to that world brimming with joy, brilliance and fundamentally, in the realm of divine vision. And why not think that this paragraph alludes to the journey of the spirit stripped of the ordinary, as the hayawu wichí does in his transdimensional journeys? However, Plato tells us that they entered these mysteries and he speaks to us in the plural, which means that there was more than one. Indeed, according to experts [such as Kerényi] there were two stages in the initiation: "The first rite, the myesis, which took place here on the banks of the Ilissus, and the second and supreme, the epopteia, which took place in Eleusis". (Kerényi, 2004, p. 69) 

From this statement, it can be said that the myesis was a preliminary initiation in Agra, called the 'lesser mysteries' or exoteric, in which the candidates entered a life in search of perfection. However, in these minor mysteries, people of all kinds were admitted, including minors. However, the mystagogues were in charge of not admitting those who had committed crimes. (Kerényi, 2004)

At the same time, the candidate for initiation had to fast for nine days, in order to achieve spiritual expiation and future purification. This first purification consisted of a bath with water in the Iliso river, although the candidates did not submerge in the waters, since this river was shallow, but rather a spray was made on the head of the profane already stripped of their clothing. (Kerényi, 2004, p. 82)

Then came an "aerial purification," in which the candidate sat on a chair, covered his head with a veil, and a priestess blew him with a kind of mystical breath. Then, the candidates had to strip themselves of their goods and finally they met in the sanctuary of Dionysus, at the foot of the Acropolis of Athens, where they received the first initiation into the lesser mysteries. There a mystical ceremony called the Orphic oath was represented, the candidates then swore under penalty of death, not to reveal absolutely nothing of what they had learned. 

Despite the fact that Plato never specifically speaks of the mysteries of Eleusis —surely complying with the prerogative of not profaning the secrets— he leaves us several passages where he is very eloquent that he knew these initiations firsthand. In addition, he does not stop praising those who instituted them in such cults. It is also curious to see how he paraphrases the Homeric Hymns, when Demeter exhorts that those who "have not seen" will lie in the swamp.

And it may be that those who instituted us in the mystery cults are not individuals of little merit, but rather, in an encrypted way, it has been indicated since ancient times that whoever arrives impure and uninitiated to Hades will lie in the mire, but that whoever arrives there purified and initiated will dwell in the company of the gods. Now, as those of the initiations say, "many are the bearers of thyrsus, but few are bacchantes " And these are, in my opinion, none other than those who have philosophized correctly. (Platón, Díalogos III, 1988)p. fifty

In this paragraph, Plato leaves us a lot of elements and concepts that we have been dealing with with the Eleusinian mysteries and our hayawu. Without being an erudite exegete, it can be interpreted that he speaks of: something encrypted, of arriving impure, of purification and bliss in the Underworld, of false thyrsus bearers and finally he speaks of those who have philosophized correctly.

Pages and pages could be written with all this, however, we will only make some references concerning our topic. In this sense —appealing to our crossover method— we can say that the hayawu wichí must also undergo strict diets before surrendering to shamanic initiation. In the second chapter we talked about the "sickening spirits" that kidnapped the profane and deposited them in the middle of the mountain to initiate and become hayawu.

encrypted knowledge will arrive if the chosen person manages to go through the initiatory vicissitudes. Strictly speaking, these protective spirits or ahot will put you to the test to see if you really deserve such knowledge and not be a "bearer of false tirsos", but that you have truly transfigured yourself into that being capable of "rightly philosophizing".

This is very important, because more and more people call themselves “shamans or shamans” or “philosophers and philosophers”. However, of all of them, only a handful would have gone through the sacrificial initiation rites. For this exact reason, in the Banquet, the priestess Diotima lets Socrates know the adventures and difficulties that he will have to go through if he wishes to initiate himself correctly.

These, then, are the things of love into whose mystery you too, Socrates, could perhaps be initiated. But in the final rites and supreme revelation, for whose sake they exist, if you proceed correctly, I don't know if you would be able to initiate yourself. (Platón, Díalogos III, 1988)p. 261

From this perspective, to access the "greater knowledge", it will be necessary to initiate oneself in the Greater or supreme mysteries; that is to say, in the mysteries of Eleusis proper, where the 'revelation' was given as Diotima said. In this sense, according to Kerényi, the 'greater mysteries' or esoterics, aspired to another hierarchy of ultimate knowledge, however, these practices of the dignitaries, as well as that of the highest initiation, consisted of reaching the epopteia, that is, have the joy of being able to see what others cannot 'see'.

The mysteries, those that imparted the greatest secret, were those of Eleusis. They were celebrated in autumn, in the month of Boedromión. The mistos "initiates" arrived in ritual procession to this festival of "vision" in which the epopteia was reached, the state of "having seen". No one was allowed to enter the enclosure where something other than myesis was celebrated, the first rite. (Kerényi, 2004, p. 70)

With everything, we see how each time we are getting closer to the peculiar and enigmatic science or episteme of the hayawu, that is, to its capacity to dissolve limits and 'see' what others cannot see. In this sense, the hayawu would be accessing that “vision festival”, which the Greeks called epopteia. Let's continue with the major rite.

When initiates stood on the threshold of Persephone's underworld to understand the enigmatic and see the "unseen," they had to launch themselves through a symbolic state of death. That would be the test of the initiates, since they had to learn to defy the darkness in order to rejoice and behold the light.

As said previously, this purification ceremony would be related to Dionysus, since he would fulfill the role of hierophant, called Yaco to "make the epiphanies appear". (Kerényi, 2004, p. 107) It is well known that Dionysus or Bacchus is commonly associated with the "god of wine", and also with "intoxicating frenzy". This reference to the "potion" or taking some narcotic substance will be closely linked to another very intelligent and innovative interpretation that some scholars have made on the subject. In that sense, it will be Plato again who introduces us to the enigma.

For this reason, it is fair that only the mind of the philosopher be winged, since, in his memory and as far as possible, there is what always is and what makes that, by having it before me, the god is divine. The man, then, to make proper use of such reminders, initiated in such perfect ceremonies, only he will be perfect. Pulled apart, Thus, with human needs and devoted to the divine, he is labeled by people as disturbed, without realizing that what he is doing is "excited." (Platón, Díalogos III, 1988)p. 352

This is another formidable paragraph from Plato full of notions that force us to interpret them from the perspective that we have been using. We said that, in the initiation rite of the greater mysteries, there was the hierophant Iacus or Dionysus, that is, "the one who made the sacred appear" now, we also said that the image of Dionysus is related to wine and ecstasy. Certainly, the source texts tell us that in the sacred celebration, the initiates of Eleusis drank a kind of potion called kykeon, as long as they had correctly performed the nine-day fast as the precept mandated. Then yes, they would be able to continue.

Only those who had prepared themselves through special sacrifices and fasting entered. They had fasted for nine days; the tenth, they walked and drank the kykeon along the way. Leaving early in the morning, they reached the threshold of the sanctuary in the dark.  (Kerényi, 2004, p. 106)

In general, this interpretation of the kykeon as a concoction made from mint and different herbs is believed to be evident. There it has also been said that the kykeon could be some kind of "fermented wine", but this hypothesis would be ruled out outright, since it would be in contradiction with Demeter's precept, since when she was mourning her daughter, she rejected a glass of wine. The hypothesis where most would agree is that the drink could have been a kind of "fermented beer", made from barley flour and herbs. (Torres, 2005 p. 96) note 54-55.

Within this framework, we find a "vanishing point" of all classical hermeneutics, which serves as a transition to a new interpretation. In Plato's last quote, he exhorted that ordinary people brand initiates into the "perfect states of the divine" as "disturbed," not realizing that they are only "enthusiastic." Voila! _ Here's the key. Let's review the etymology of the word 'enthusiastic'.

The enthusiasm that sometimes seizes us is an 'exaltation of spirit', an 'inner fervor' that seems to come from outside, from some force superior to ours. The word, which existed in late Latin ' enthusiasmus ', comes from the Greek 'ενϑouσιασμος' – enthousiasmos 'divine inspiration', 'rapture', 'ecstasy'. A voice formed from ' entheos ' or ' enthous ' (carrying a god within: en + theos).  Recovered from: http://etimologias.dechile.net/?entusiasmo 

Here you can appreciate the depth and semantic density of the word enthusiasm. It would have very little to do with the meaning that is given to the word on a daily basis, which is basically that of 'feeling motivated'. Now, this "semantic finding" leads us directly to the notion proposed by Wasson & company, about psychoactive substances of plant or fungal origin that they called 'entheogens'. On the previous page we said that we had found a “vanishing point” in the classical interpretation of the kykeon , a potion taken by the initiates in Eleusis. Indeed, the interpretation with which we will conclude the taking of the kykeon is exactly what Wasson & Hoffmann & Ruck offer us:

The Greeks themselves, however, believed that the narkissos bore that name because of its narcotic properties, obviously because such was the essential symbolism of the Persephone flower. Marital abduction, that is, the kidnapping of maidens while picking flowers, is also a frequent theme in Greek myths, and Plato records a rationalized version of such stories in which the kidnapped girl's companion is called Pharmaceia, or, according to the meaning of that word, the "use of drugs". The specific myth that Plato is rationalizing is concerned with tracing the origin of the priesthood at Eleusis. There is no doubt that the abduction of Persephone was caused by drugs. (Wasson, Hoffmann, & Ruck, 1985, p. 58)

Now, but what would these authors be relying on to make such a statement? According to them, this trio of researchers decided to find a solution to the mystery of Eleusis. Wasson (ethnomycologist), Hoffmann (chemist) and Ruck (philologist) embark on the journey to the enigma. Their final thesis was that the origin of the Visions and divine Ecstasy was due to the ingestion of ergonovine, ergotamine and ergotoxin, active fungal ingredients. These alkaloids were found in a type of fungus called: 'ergot' (Claviceps purpurea).

With the techniques and equipment available in antiquity it was thus simple to prepare an entheogenic extract from the appropriate types of ergot. What were those appropriate types of ergot that the ancient Greeks could dispose of? In his land there was no rye, although there was wheat and barley, and Claviceps purpurea thrives on both. We analyzed wheat and barley ergot in our laboratory and found that they basically contain the same alkaloids as rye, that is, ergonovine and those of the ergotoxin and ergotamine group, and sometimes also traces of ergot. lysergic acid amide. (Wasson, Hoffmann, & Ruck, 1985, p. 48)

In this quote, Dr. Hoffmann highlights the laboratory studies carried out on the ergots that existed in the Mediterranean area where the temple of Eleusis was located. In this sense, we are no longer in a mere philological interpretation, but these statements come from "hard data" from chemistry. Which does not mean that the exegesis on ancient documents are cancelled. Absolutely. What we mean is that all the hypotheses of these authors will be based on a scientific basis, consequently, their statements will enjoy extra value. At the end of his exposition, Hoffmann responds to Wasson:

In ancient Greece there may have been a species of ergot containing mainly entheogenic alkaloids such as we have found in Paspalum ergot . In conclusion, I now answer Wasson's question: the answer is yes; primitive man in ancient Greece may have obtained an entheogen from ergot. He could have extracted it from the ergot of wheat or barley. A simpler procedure would have been to use the common grass Paspalum ergot. This is supported by the assumption that the herbalists of ancient Greece were as intelligent and skilled as those of pre-Hispanic Mexico. (Wasson, Hoffmann, & Ruck, 1985, p. 52)

As we can see, Hoffmann's conclusion is categorical. From the data obtained in the laboratory and the scholarly study of the documents, "the loop closes." With these arguments we can be more certain that the kykeon would be composed of entheogenic substances. To tell the truth, this hypothesis makes much more sense with the thesis of our approach, that is, it articulates perfectly with the Platonic notion of 'enthusiasm' and the hataj, the instrument where what we consider to be the shamanic episteme of hayawu is based.

Strictly speaking, when the hayawu prepares to carry out the sacred Knowledge ceremonies, he is carried away by divine enthusiasm, by virtue of his 'heavenly food', the hataj. That is to say, the entheogen is 'saturated with being', since it contains the deity, which for the Wichís will be the 'guiding and protective spirits' that 'make appear' the ineffable. And it is precisely there where the mana collapses and all ordinary vision disappears, to make way for the clairvoyance of the shamanic spirit in full epopteia. The wichí hayawu —helped by the theos or qopfwaya j— dissolves all temporal-spatial limits and finally manages to 'see' what the profane cannot see.

The perception of two realities is typical of shamanism, although some Western salon philosophers have been denying the legitimacy of this dual division that primitive peoples make between the normal world and a hidden world, apparently arguing that they are incapable of distinguishing between both worlds. (Harner, 1987, p. 78)

Now to conclude this chapter, we would like to make an interpretation of some elements that appear in the hymn to Demeter that are directly linked to what has been developed up to here. These elements are simply three names that appear in the hymn, they are: Narciso, Pluto (Hades) and Persephone.

The first term we will analyze is 'daffodil', since Persephone was “gathering these flowers” when she was suddenly abducted by Hades (Pluto). This word generates some discrepancy among etymologists, since it would have a pre-Hellenic origin. According to Carl Ruck, the philologist member of the Road to Eleusis with Hoffmann and Wasson says:

All Greek words ending in -issos come from the language spoken by the agricultural cultures that inhabited the territory of Greece before the arrival of the Indo-European Greek settlers. The Greeks themselves, however, believed that the narkissos bore that name because of its narcotic properties, obviously because such was the essential symbolism of the Persephone flower. (Wasson, Hoffmann, & Ruck, 1985, p. 59)

On the other hand, the word narcissus would come from the Latin 'narcissus', and this from the Greek [nárkissos], but it seems that here “the trail is lost”. It seems —as Ruck says— that the narcissus was a plant from the pre-Indo-European era, from the Amaryllidaceae family, botanically called narcissus serotinus, or narcissus poeticus. The similarity of the names [nárkissos] 'narcissus' and [nárkê] 'stunning', 'drowsiness', which would give 'narcotics' and 'narco', has led many etymologists and philologists to relate them. Retrieved from: http://etimologias.dechile.net/?narciso 

The other name we want to review is that of Persephone. This is another word of ambiguous etymology. However, Pierre Chantrine says that according to the roots: «on est tenté à relier le signifié de ' tueuse '» (he is tempted to link it with the meaning of 'the one who kills'). However, he gives another possibility and says « celle Qui rapporte beaucoup ».   (Chantrine, P, 1999) p. 889. This can be interpreted as: 'the one that reports or informs a lot', or also, as 'the one that shows a lot or 'communicates'. However, we want to bring up the interpretation that Plato himself gave about Persephone.

But this means that the goddess is wise, because since things move, what touches them, palpates them and can accompany them with wisdom. Thus, the goddess would be accurately called Pherépapha , by virtue of her wisdom and her "contact with what moves" ( epaphén toû pheroménou ) or something like that (which is why Hades, who is wise, lives with her) . (Platón, Díalogos II, 1987)p. 401

Finally, we are going to see the meaning of Hades-Pluto. This god was always interpreted as the ruler of the Underworld, so its connotation is always negative, since it is closely linked to death. Now, on this occasion we will stay with the definition that once again comes to us from Plato, since it unifies the two meanings, that of Pluto and that of Hades.

So beautiful are, it seems, the stories that Hades knows how to tell! […] He, who sends so many goods to those here: so numerous are those left over there! So, because of this, it received the name of Ploùtôn. At the same time, not wanting to live with men while they have a body; Living together when the soul is purified of all the ills and appetites of the body, don't you think it is typical of a philosopher and of someone who has well thought that, in this way, he will be able to retain them by chaining them with the desire for virtue, because, as long as you have the bewilderment and madness of the body, not even Cronos, his father, could retain them by tying them with the ligatures that the legend attributes to him? Herm. — It is possible that you say something serious, Socrates. Soc.— So the name of Háidés, Hermogenes, was by no means received from the "invisible" {aidoûs}: Rather, by the fact of "knowing" (eidénai) all that is beautiful, he was called Haidés by the legislator. (Platón, Díalogos II, 1987) p. 400

First, Paton calls him by the name of Ploùtôn (Pluto) so that this name will be linked to the meaning of wealth and abundance, hence 'plutocracy' [the government of the rich] that is why Plato says: «he who so many goods He sends, because what is left over is numerous. Then he goes on to say that he cannot live with bodily souls, since "they are stunned and turned to the appetites of the body." Finally, he alludes to the name Háidés (Hades), not in the sense of "invisible", but to refer that "know the beautiful"

If we take Carl Ruck's interpretation of narcissus as a narcotic and, on the other hand, Plato's interpretation of Persephone, which 'shows and communicates', we are tempted to say the following:

The hymn says that Persephone, the one who "kills" to "communicate and show", was gathering flowers with her companions, when suddenly she was captivated and ecstatic, by a narkissos and in full ecstasy, suddenly the earth opens up and she is abducted and snatched by Ploùtôn, symbol of "wealth and abundance" since "treasures fortune underground", in addition, he is the one who "knows the Beautiful". Then, already in the other dimension, the eternal alliance between Fortune and the Knowledge of the Beautiful is gestated. In short, every time someone is ecstatic with the divine narcotic, the earth will open and in an instant, the divine spark illuminates the abysmal darkness to 'see' the ineffable riches of Perennial Knowledge.

But how far is it possible to "philosophize" and write about this type of knowledge and wisdom that implies a dispossession of oneself to surrender to the will of the unlimited? Was Heraclitus right? when he said: "Nature likes to play hide and seek".  Or when he said “Gold prospectors dig a lot of land and find little”.  It is very likely that Heraclitus was right, because we write more and more and find less and less, which would give the impression that we search too much in sterile places.

Perhaps that is why Plato could not write much about mysteries either, since, according to him, there are subjects he never wrote about, but he did see, know and experience.

Of course, there is not and never will be a work of mine that deals with these issues; Indeed, they cannot be specified as is done with other sciences, but rather after a long coexistence with the problem and after having become intimate with it, suddenly, like the light that jumps from the spark, the truth emerges in the soul and grows spontaneously. (Platón, Díalogos VII, 1989)p. 513

In the same way, the hayawu sees and knows many things in his episteme, however, he does not write them on paper, but lives them. On his entheogenic journey, he learns about the mental patterns and laws of the universe through the Great Vision and contemplation. To the sound of his icaros he 'cosmizes the chaotic' and with his alchemy he operates on the transfiguration of the ontic, to reach higher consciousness. Traveling to the darkest regions, it exceeds the cosmic and energetic levels, to collapse in the game of Becoming.

Finally, through the analysis of the previous arguments, one could think that in the figure of the hayawu we can discover a very peculiar type of episteme, embodied in a set of knowledge, techniques and practices as noble and specific as the academic ones, but as he said, in “other language games”.

For this reason, in this exhibition we have addressed different topics of the Wichí worldview, such as the core concept of husék in the first chapter. There we start from this central category to later arrive at one of its manifestations such as shamanic willpower or qopfwayaj . Thus, we saw that, thanks to this qopfwayaj , the hayawu is able to perform its greatest wonders in the field of medicine, and manage to dissolve the ordinary limits of knowledge to move plastically in an interdimensional plane.

Likewise, we were able to carefully analyze its omphalos or Axis mundi, as the genesis of all existence, from the destruction and regeneration of the world, a cosmogonic myth that revealed the vicissitudes of Icanchu and Tokwaj, but finally they managed to survive the Great Fire and contemplate the regeneration of life from what will be his Axis mundi, that is, the Ayawú Ute.

However, we arrive at the heavenly food of the hayawu, which is the hataj, that is, the seeds of the 'cebil tree', used by the shaman in his ceremonies to abandon the exoteric and surrender to the divine will of the entheogen.

Already in the last chapter, we tried to draw a conceptual bridge with Greek mythology, from the Eleusinian mysteries. That is, we study some aspects of initiation in the secret rites of Eleusis, prefigured in the Homeric hymn to Demeter. Within the hymn, we analyze in some detail the names of the deities such as: Persephone, Pluto-Hades, Demeter and the notion of 'narcissus', in relation to the concept of entheogen proposed by Wasson & company.

In the same way, we venture into several Platonic paragraphs in order to analogously mediate and compare the figure and practices of our hayawu with the initiation rites of Eleusis, so that our final considerations are:

That the shaman or hayawu is in possession of an episteme that implies certain knowledge about the 'teacher plants', about animals, about healing, about human psychology, about local geography, and about himself, because at the moment of interacting with all this, the hayawu 'solemnly asks for permission' from the protective spirits and then he is prepared for the « dialogue», but this is a dialogue configured in another “linguistic system”. There are no “manuals”, as you will experience it with your own self.

Indeed, its "operating system" dissolves ordinary realities, ordinary cultural values and all limits, through an interaction and symbiosis with "the hypertext" of the Cosmos. His language would be inscribed in his own flesh that transcends him and collapses him in every manifestation of Being.

Strictly speaking, the hayawu could be interpreted as a kind of conceptual vector, whose task will be to close the ontological loop and that of moral responsibility, and by doing so, it becomes an authentic source of knowledge for the people of a society that will become the virtue of his wisdom.

Now, it is worth wondering if the scope of this "peculiar" episteme would have some kind of application in a society that would give the sensation that it has "postponed" or directly canceled all notions of sacredness, but not in the dogmatic and limiting sense of our aptitudes. and powers -as they end up being in the case of ecclesiastical and “official” religions- but rather the sacred as intra-human coherence, that is, “get excited” and be able to 'hear' the call to the true transformation of consciousness and improvement.

Of course, this may sound like something idyllic or too romantic in a hyper materialistic world, where what prevails is the 'image' and the 'competition' where we look like caterpillars that the only thing we know how to do is devour and engulf everything. different and does not conform to our categories of thoughts, legitimized in canons and laws by "prestigious and neat" institutions that teach us to 'compete' with theories, because we do not dare to take the "quantum leap" and spread the wings of the sacred and sublime "immanent to the world" that lies within ourselves, and thus strip us of the larval state, which only aspires to "consume".

Finally, we can say that we are convinced that one can speak of a philosophy own, embodied in the wisdom of a prodigious, but trivialized figure, like that of the hayawu wichí; but in addition to this assertion we believe that it would be worth learning more about it, since in many aspects it would be worthy of imitation.