body and soul, in fact, the brew made me physically sick! I later discovered that the potion I was given was very weak and the shaman lacked the power and intent to make San Pedro work. Still, there was something about the plant that interested me and during other trips to Peru I have been drawn back to it again until I finally found a shaman who knew how to make its true power and genius shine.
This is the shaman I now work with when I take groups to the Andes for my Cactus of Vision programme to explore methods of Andean healing. Her name is La Gringa, which means “the outsider woman”.
But first things first. What is San Pedro?
Physically, it is a tall mescaline cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi) which grows at high altitudes in Peru. It has other names too, including “El Remedio”: The Remedy, which refers to its healing and visionary powers which the shamans believe enable us let go of “the illusions of the world”. For ‘visionary’ we might also say ‘hallucinogenic’, although I am not fond of the word as it implies that what we see is imagined not real. There is an example later in this article, however, which suggests that what San Pedro shows us is absolutely real.
The name San Pedro also embodies these qualities because the Biblical Saint Peter is the holder of the keys to Heaven and he – and the cactus – both open a gateway for us into another dimension where we experience the world as divine.
The earliest archaeological evidence for its use as a healing sacrament is a stone carving of a San Pedro shaman found at the Jaguar Temple in northern Peru, which is almost 3,500 years old and proves that, despite its name, San Pedro has been around longer than the