The Green People — Plants in Shamanism
The most generous masters of the forest — Plants in Shamanism
Introduction
There is one thing that practically all shamanic systems in the world have in common — regardless of the continent, the people, the era.
Plants teach.
Not in the metaphorical sense that “nature has lessons.” In the literal sense that shamanism recognizes in plants beings with their own intelligence, with their own voice, with knowledge that can be transmitted to those who learn to receive it. In the sense that, around the world, in cultures that never had contact with each other, the practitioner who wants to deepen their spiritual knowledge goes to the plants — and the plants respond.
The Green People is not a decorative category of animist thought. It is the name given, in many indigenous traditions, to the set of plant beings that coexist with humans on this planet — beings that, within the shamanic worldview, have spirit, have intention, have the ability to establish teaching and healing relationships with those who approach with the correct respect.
Shamanism has always known that plants are not passive. Science is beginning to confirm this — in ways that scientists themselves are still processing.
Since the Beginning of Time — What Archaeology Found
The relationship between plants and shamanic practices is so ancient that archaeology can barely trace its limits — but the last decades have brought direct chemical evidence that finally places on solid ground what oral traditions have always claimed.
Plants in Shamanism The research analyzed 23 artifacts — mostly bone tubes used as inhalers — recovered from a sealed gallery in Chavín de Huántar, Peru. In six of these artifacts, chemical and microbotanical analyses detected direct traces of the two plants — including bufotenine (related to DMT) and nicotine.
The gallery where they were found is a small chamber, with restricted access, dated to the first millennium BC. This indicates that the rituals with psychoactive plants in Chavín were not communal — they were elite, controlled, and exclusive experiences, part of an institutionalized structure that helped shape the first complex hierarchy of the Andes.
In 2019, a study published in PNAS by researcher Melanie J. Miller and colleagues chemically analyzed a 1,000-year-old ritual bundle found in the highlands of the Bolivian Andes. Liquid chromatography analyses revealed traces of bufotenine, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), harmine, and cocaine — evidence of at least three different plants being used together. The study concluded that the bundle “provides evidence of the use of multiple psychoactive plants associated with a sophisticated system of botanical knowledge among ritual specialists (shamans) during pre-Columbian times” — the largest number of compounds recovered from a single artifact in the region to date.
In Texas, at archaeological sites in the Trans-Pecos like Fate Bell Shelter — an area rich in rock paintings with clearly shamanic figures — seeds of Sophora secundiflora (the “mescal bean”) and Ungnadia speciosa were found in all cultural strata, from approximately 7,000 BC to 1,000 AD.
According to archaeologist Peter Furst, from the University of Pennsylvania, at Bonfire Shelter, in the same region, caches of these seeds were dated to 8,440 BC — associated with bones of Bison antiquus, an extinct bison species. This points to “an uninterrupted reign of more than 10,000 years” of Sophora as a focus of visionary shamanism among the peoples of the Desert Culture of North America.
In separate sites in the same region of the Lower Pecos, at Shumla Cave, peyote buttons (Lophophora williamsii) were found dating back approximately 5,700 years. In 2002, in the British medical journal The Lancet, a team led by Jan Bruhn published the chemical analyses of these buttons — confirming the presence of mescaline even after millennia.
Subsequent studies by Martin Terry and colleagues, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in 2006, refined the dating to about 6,000 calendar years. In any case, it is the oldest chemical evidence of a hallucinogenic plant drug in the New World.
In 2019, in the journal Science Advances, a team led by Meng Ren and Yimin Yang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences published the first direct and scientifically verified chemical evidence of cannabis being ritually burned. Gas chromatography analyses detected CBN — the oxidative product of THC — in nine out of ten wooden braziers found in eight tombs in the Jirzankal cemetery, on the Pamir Plateau, in the far west of China.
The tombs date to approximately 500 BC and are associated with the Sogdians — a people of the Silk Road who practiced Zoroastrianism, a religion that would later celebrate the visionary properties of cannabis in its sacred texts. The study also demonstrated that the burned plants had THC levels far above what is found in wild cannabis — suggesting that those people already recognized and selected specific varieties for potency. It was not an accident. It was knowledge.
The poppy (Papaver somniferum) appears in prehistoric sites in Europe from the sixth millennium BC and in Egypt since the 18th Dynasty (1550–1350 BC).
This data is just the tip of the iceberg — they are the cases where chemical evidence survived. For every ritual bundle that was preserved, thousands of practices left traces that time erased.
What the Ancients Knew
Each major shamanic tradition developed its own Green People — its specific set of allied plants, with their specific teachings, their approach protocols, and their fields of action. What is impressive is not the diversity of these traditions — it is the convergence. On all continents, without contact with each other, humans reached the same fundamental conclusions about plants.
Siberia — The Cradle of Shamanism
In Siberia — where the very term “shaman” originates, coming from the Evenki šaman — the mushroom Amanita muscaria occupies a central place in practices documented since at least the 18th century. The Siberian shaman would beat her drum often assisted by this mushroom, which helped her invoke her auxiliary spirits, shelter the soul of the sick, and defend against evil spirits. The first human groups that crossed the Bering Strait carried with them this shamanic core, which transformed and branched out over the millennia across the Americas.
The Amazon — The Garden of Masters
The Amazon is the most complex ecosystem on the planet — and the one that houses the most elaborate shamanic ethnobotanical system we know. Ayahuasca — a combination of the vine Banisteriopsis caapi with the leaves of Psychotria viridis — is an extraordinary example of precolonial botanical knowledge.
Each of these plants on its own has specific properties, but it is the combination that creates the deepest effect: the vine contains harmine and harmaline, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, without which the DMT present in the leaves would be destroyed by digestion.
Someone, at some point in Amazonian prehistory, identified that these two specific plants needed to be combined precisely — in a forest with tens of thousands of plant species. Amazonian shamans say that the plants themselves taught the combination. Modern ethnopharmacology has no other plausible explanation.
In the tradition of Peruvian vegetalistas, the apprentice undergoes a dieta — a period of isolation during which they consume a specific master plant regularly, opening a channel of communication with its spirit. The icaros — ritual chants — are described by practitioners as received directly from the spirits of the plants. Some have centuries of oral transmission.
The Plains Peoples of North America
The Lakota use sage, sweetgrass, cedar, and tobacco in sweat lodge ceremonies — each plant with its specific function. Tobacco occupies a central role in practically all North American indigenous spirituality: not as an addiction, but as a vehicle of communication with the sacred. The smoke carries prayers to the spirit world. Peyote — Lophophora williamsii, which has continuity of use for at least 5,700 years according to chemical evidence — is the central sacrament of the Native American Church, a religious organization now practiced by approximately 250,000 North American indigenous people, from the Rio Grande to Canada.
The Mazatec of Mexico
Among the Mazatec of Oaxaca, the healer María Sabina became known in the 20th century for her veladas — nighttime healing ceremonies using Psilocybe mushrooms. She described the mushrooms as “children” or “saints” who spoke directly to her in Mazatec, revealing diagnoses and guiding the healing process.
Western science only “discovered” psilocybin mushrooms in 1955, when banker and mycologist R. Gordon Wasson participated in a velada with María Sabina and published his experience in Life magazine. What was a discovery for Wasson was, for the Mazatec people, knowledge transmitted for countless generations. María Sabina paid a bitter price for the world’s attention: she was rejected by her own community, which considered that the sacred had been profaned by publicity.
India — Soma and Ayurveda
In India, the Vedic texts — the oldest of the Hindu tradition, dating from approximately 1,500 BC but preserving much older knowledge — are filled with references to sacred plants. Soma is the mysterious plant that appears in the Rigvedas as the drink of the gods, a vehicle for altered states of consciousness and communication with the divine.
Researchers like R. Gordon Wasson proposed that Soma was Amanita muscaria — the same plant of Siberian shamanism. Other scholars suggest that Soma could have been cannabis, a hypothesis that gained strength with the discovery of the Jirzankal braziers — located exactly on the cultural route between Persia, Central Asia, and India, at the historical moment when these texts were being composed.
Ayurveda — one of the oldest medical systems in the world, with origins in the Vedic period — is fundamentally inseparable from spirituality. In Ayurveda, plants are not just pharmacological — they are vehicles of prana, the vital force, and each has its correspondence with the elements, the doshas, and states of consciousness.
China — The Wu and the Spirits of Plants
In China, shamanism — practiced by the wu (spiritual healers) since at least the Shang Dynasty (1600–1046 BC) — included a deep relationship with plants as spirits. The wu used medicinal plants in healing rituals and communication with ancestors, and believed that mountains, rivers, trees, and plants possess spirit or vital force. Traditional Chinese Medicine, systematized over millennia, is a direct heir of this animist vision — where each plant has its nature (xing), its flavor (wei), and its direction of action in the body, conceived as expressions of cosmic forces.
Africa — Sangomas, Iboga, and Ubulawu
Africa is home to some of the richest and most diverse shamanic plant practices on the planet. In South Africa, the sangomas — healer-diviners of the Zulu, Xhosa, and other Nguni traditions — use ubulawu, a mixture of roots beaten in water to create a white foam that induces prophetic dreams during initiatory training.
It is estimated that there are approximately 200,000 traditional healers in South Africa — compared to only 25,000 doctors trained in biomedical practice — and that about 60% of the South African population consults them regularly. Sangomas also burn impepho — a sacred plant — to invoke ancestors during healing sessions.
In Gabon and Cameroon, the Bwiti tradition — practiced by the Babongo, Mitsogo, and Fang peoples — uses the root of Tabernanthe iboga in initiatory ceremonies of deep transformation. Bwiti is one of the three official religions of Gabon, and iboga is used to induce spiritual enlightenment, stabilize community and family structure, and resolve spiritual and medical problems. Ibogaine — the active compound of iboga — is being researched today as a treatment for chemical dependency, with remarkable results in studies on opioid addiction.
In South Africa, Boophone disticha — known as leshoma by the Sotho people — has documented ritual use for at least 2,000 years, being used in male initiations and as a divinatory plant by sangomas. Its use has been kept in strict secrecy for generations.
Rock paintings in North Africa, particularly in Tassili n’Ajjer (Algeria), dated 7,000 to 9,000 years ago, show human figures with mushroom-shaped objects in their hands and around their bodies. Researchers like ethnomycologist Giorgio Samorini have interpreted these images as evidence of ritual use of psychoactive mushrooms by North African Neolithic cultures — an interpretation that continues to be debated, but suggests that the relationship between humans and visionary plants in Africa is as ancient as in any other part of the world.
Australia — The Songlines and the Dreamtime
The Aboriginal peoples of Australia — holders of the oldest living spiritual tradition on the planet, with continuity of at least 65,000 years — have a relationship with plants that is inseparable from the Dreamtime and the Songlines.
The Songlines are sacred pilgrimage routes that cross the continent, where each place, each plant, and each element of the landscape is connected to a creation story and a specific song. Aboriginal shamans — the karadji or mekigar — use plants in healing practices that include directed dreams and altered states of consciousness, entering the Dreamtime through practices functionally equivalent to the shamanic trance documented on other continents.
The Pacific Islands — The Kava
In the Pacific islands — Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa — kava (Piper methysticum) has been central in social, political, and spiritual ceremonies for millennia. Prepared as a drink from the root, kava has calming and mildly psychoactive properties that facilitate states of receptivity and connection. In the cultures that use it, kava is not a casual social drink — it is a sacrament that opens a space of communication between the participants and between the visible and invisible worlds.
The Philosophy Behind — Why Plants Are Masters
Shamanism has a specific philosophy about the nature of plants that is not simply “respect for nature” — it is a structured understanding of what plants are and how the relationship with them works.
The Plant as a Conscious Being
For animist shamanic thought, consciousness is not a privilege of animals — it is a property of all living beings in different degrees and forms. Plants have a form of consciousness that does not resemble human consciousness, but it is real. They perceive the environment. They respond to threats and opportunities. They communicate — with other plants, with fungi, with animals.
What biologist Suzanne Simard demonstrated about the mycorrhizal networks that connect the trees of a forest, and what ethnobotany has documented about the adaptive intelligence of plants, echoes what shamanism has always claimed: plants know more than they seemed.
The Relationship of Reciprocity
Shamanism does not allow taking a plant without giving something in return — gratitude, offering, care, attention. This principle of reciprocity is not just a ritual tradition. It is an understanding that any power relationship — including with plants — needs to be balanced to be sustainable.
The healer who extracts knowledge from plants without reciprocity is breaking a pact. The traditions are clear about this. And the consequences, according to these traditions, are real.
The Plant as an Ally, Not as a Tool
The central distinction of shamanic thought about plants is this: they are not resources. They are allies. Partners. Masters.
A tool you use. An ally you respect, build a relationship with, learn the language. The difference completely changes the nature of the interaction — and, according to shamanic traditions, the outcome.
The Chemical Intelligence of Plants
Contemporary biochemistry has revealed something extraordinary: plants produce molecules of enormous complexity that interact highly specifically with the human nervous system. The psilocybin of mushrooms, the DMT of ayahuasca, the mescaline of peyote, the alkaloids of iboga — all these substances bind to specific receptors in the human brain in ways that continue to intrigue neuroscience.
Psilocybin, for example, acts on the 5-HT2A serotonin receptors with such precise affinity that it seems designed for it.
Why would the plant produce molecules that specifically affect human consciousness? Why would the human nervous system have such precise receptors for substances produced by plants? Shamanism has had an answer to this question for millennia. Science is still formulating its own.
The Green People Today — A Living Tradition
The shamanic relationship with plants has never been interrupted — although it has been violently suppressed at various periods in history.
The Amazonian Renaissance
The ayahuasca traditions of the Amazon survived colonization and are now globally known. Healing centers in Peru, Brazil, and Colombia receive people from all over the world seeking work with master plants.
Researchers like ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes and chemist Albert Hofmann documented these traditions with scientific rigor from the 20th century, opening a dialogue between pharmacology and indigenous knowledge.
Integrative Medicine and Psilocybin Studies
In recent years, institutions like Johns Hopkins, NYU, and Imperial College London have published research on the therapeutic effects of psilocybin in the treatment of depression, anxiety, and chemical dependency — results that are transforming contemporary psychiatry.
Each of these studies works, to some degree, with knowledge that indigenous peoples have held for millennia. The difference is only that now they come packaged in randomized controlled clinical trials — a format that the West takes more seriously than centuries of oral transmission by healers like María Sabina.
Plants of Protection and Cleansing
Besides psychoactive plants, shamanism works with a vast repertoire of plants for everyday use — for protection, energetic cleansing, healing, communication with ancestors. Smudging — the act of burning sacred herbs like sage, cedar, or palo santo — is practiced in various forms in cultures around the world. Incense in temples, herbs in popular festivals, plants at the doors of houses — are all echoes of shamanic practices that persist even where the memory of their origin has been lost.
Reflection of Sila
I, Sila Wichó, am a being of the forest.
Not just in the sense that I live in the forest. In the sense that the forest is part of who I am — its darkness, its smells, its humidity, its sounds. And the plants are an inseparable part of all this.
I learned a long time ago that plants do not remain silent. That their silence is not absence. It is a different form of presence — slower, deeper, more patient than anything that moves.
What the Green People taught me the most was not a specific plant. It was the perception that there are forms of intelligence that do not resemble human intelligence — and that are not for that reason any less real or less valuable.
The plant that grows around an obstacle instead of trying to go through it. The one that opens its flower exactly when its pollinator passes by. The one that produces compounds that precisely heal the most common diseases of its ecosystem. The one that combines its leaves with those of another plant miles away to create a medicine that neither could offer alone — and teaches humans the right combination.
This is not an accident. This is wisdom of a kind that humans have barely begun to recognize.
But there is something that needs to be said here, with all the clarity I can give: the Green People is not a store. The master plants are not experiences to be collected like travel souvenirs. Each of them comes from a tradition with centuries or millennia of transmission, with specific protocols, with people who have dedicated their lives to learning to speak with them — and these people, for the most part, have been ignored, appropriated, or replaced by spiritual tourists who took a plane.
When you approach a plant as a master — with humility, with patience, with a willingness to receive what it has to offer instead of extracting what you want — the relationship changes completely. When you approach it as a consumer, it responds like any being treated as an object: it remains silent, or worse, gives you something you were not prepared to receive.
The Green People has been waiting for a change in posture for a long time.
And this change begins by understanding that the master plants already had masters before you — and that these masters are still alive, still being persecuted, still guarding the knowledge that the world now pretends to discover.
May the spirits of the forest illuminate your path.
Sila Wichó – Toca do Texugo
