The Snow Leopard

by Peter Matthiessen

In 1959, in the jungles of Peru, I would experiment with yajé, or ayahuasca, a hallucinogen of morbid effect used by shamans of the Amazon tribes to induce states that we call “supernatural,” not because they transcend the laws of nature but because they still elude the grasp of formal science. (Most hallucinogens are derivatives of wild plants—mushrooms, cactus, a morning glory, many others—used for sacred purposes the world over; the ancients’ soma may have been made from a poisonous mushroom of the genus Amanita.) Though frightening, the experience made clear that this family of chemicals (the phenol alkaloids) might lead to another way of seeing, and not in the slow labor of ascetic discipline but in cool efficiency and speed, as in flight through air. I never saw drugs as a path, far less as a way of life, but for the next ten years, I used them regularly—mostly LSD but also mescaline and psilocybin. The journeys were all scaring, often beautiful, often grotesque, and here and there a blissful passage was attained that in my ignorance I took for religious experience: I was a true believer in my magic carpet, ready to fly as far as it would take me. In