Visions from vine-only brews are shadowy, monochromatic, like silhouettes, or curling smoke, or clouds moving across the night sky. It is because their visions are usually monochromatic that vines are classified by the color of vision they produce: white, black, blue, red (in my experience, dark maroon).

Names and Classes of Ayahuasca Vine

It is not only in Quechua-speaking groups that the brew is named for the vine. This is consistent in nearly all indigenous groups: caapi, or similar words among Tupi speakers, yajé, kaji, or similar words among Tucanoan speakers, natem, or similar words, among Jivaroan speakers, shuri, or similar words, among Panoan speakers, kamalampi, or similar words, among Arawakan speakers: All are names used for both vine and brew.

The importance of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine in Amazonian Ayahuasca cultures is shown in traditional mythologies, in customs such as the use of the vine as an amulet and a motif for decorating ritual space and garments (Weiskopf 2005:125), and in the fine distinctions made among B. caapi varieties. The Tukano have at least six varieties, with names like Suana-kahi-ma (Kahi of the red jaguar) and Kahi-vai Bucura-rijoma(Kahi of the monkey head) (Schultes 1986). Junquera (1989) recorded 22 classes of B. caapi differentiated by the Harakmbet (Mashco) Indians, such as Boyanhe (green, unripe) which “produces visions of hunting, fishing, searching for property, migrations, visions, etc.”; Sisi (flesh of ancestors) which produces “visions of heaven, here understood as the universe of the past to the present”; Kemeti (flesh of the tapir) which produces “signs which aim at recreating the mythical universe”; Wakeregn (white) which produces “white images which show the journey to Seronhai, a place where the dead stay”; and eighteen other classes. Reichel-Dolmatoff (1975:155) describes a Barasana shaman who identified pieces of vine as “guamo yagé,” “mammal yagé” and “head yagé” by chewing them. The Kaxinawa of Brazil distinguish red, blue, white, and black varieties (Lagrou 2000). Mestizo ayahuasqueros in Iquitos recognize white, black, red, yellow, cielo (heaven), trueno (thunder), and boa caapi. Langdon (1985) recorded the following classifications of B. caapi vine among the Sionas: yai-yajé, nea-yajé, horo-yajé, weki-yajé, wai-yajé or wahi-yaj,; wati-yajé, weko-yajé, hamo-weko-yajé, beji-yajé, kwi-ku-yajé, kwaku-yajé, aso-yajé, kido-yajé, usebo-yajé, ga-tokama-yai-yajé, zi-simi-yajé, bi’-ã-yajé, sia-sewi-yajé, sese-yajé or sise-yajé (“wild pig yajé,” used for hunting), and so’-om-wa-wa’i-yajé (“long-vine yajé”).

Langdon writes that among the Siona, shamans often trade varieties of caapi, and that “if a shaman finds a wild liana in the forest, he will prepare a drink to ascertain its worth for inclusion in his own repertoire, especially in regard to what visions it can induce.” Wade Davis quotes Jorge Fuerbringer, an old German colonist long settled in the Putumayo (quoted in Weiskopf 2005:125): “When a [yagé] plant is passed on in trade, so is its specific vision. A Siona cannot classify a plant without knowing its trading history. Every plant thus has a lineage that links it through all time to every other.”