Magical breathing

Nasal inhalation and oral aspiration of powdered cebil tree seeds and tobacco leaves are frequent practices in the South Central Andes. This type of consumption has affinities to breathing, and this breathing causes great modifications to states of consciousness.

Trichocereus Pachanoj (Jill Plugh and Steven F. White©, 2022).

(Foto, Rodrigo Tisi).

The snuffing
complex in
the Andes.
───
Pipes and
smoking
practices in
the Southern
Andes.
───

The snuffing complex in the Andes

Nasal inhalation of psychoactive powders was a widespread practice in South America and the Caribbean and of great antiquity. The first evidence is from three thousand years ago on the coast of Peru, and continues to this day in various indigenous cultures in the Amazon.

The basic kit consists of a small rectangular tablet, an inhalation tube, a spoon or spatula, and leather bags to store the substance. The powder is obtained by grinding the seeds of trees of the Anadenanthera genus (cebil, yopo, or vilca) that have visionary alkaloids among their components.

The largest concentration of snuffing devices of this type is found in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, some of which date back 1,500 years. The iconography carried by these objects is very varied and complex, most of them represent characters and themes related to the ideology and political practices of the Tiwanaku culture of the Lake Titicaca Basing, which spread its influence throughout northern Chile, during the first millennium of the era.

Artifacts to travel in the Atacama Desert

Pipes and smoking practices in the Southern Andes

The oldest pipes in South America date back four thousand years. They come from a hunter-gatherer cave in the Puna de Jujuy, in Argentina and were made from puma bone. Two thousand years later, stone or ceramic pipes became popular in the southern Andes, particularly among the first agricultural communities in northern and central-southern Chile. Chemical analyzes carried out on some of these pipes revealed that they contained different species of tobacco and, in some cases, mixed with cebil or chamico.

Tobacco use is widespread in American shamanism. The existence of at least 64 species of this plant in America is known, but only a few were in widespread use during pre-Columbian times. Tobacco is prepared in various forms, such as a powder to be inhaled through the nose, a leaf to be chewed or smoked, in liquid potions to be applied as an enema, or as an ointment.