Plant medicine is a helluva teacher

What Xanga taught me about the cyclical nature of time and the secret joy that hides behind our fears.

The final chapter of my Yucatán journey is a long-awaited ritual with plant medicine. I’ve explored the therapeutic potential of psilocybin mushrooms for some time, and in Mexico, these and other sacred plants like peyote and Xanga are used ceremonially. Increasingly, Westerners are coming to see these not as drugs, but as medicines that can open doors to subtler dimensions of experience.

I’m in Tulum, a beach town on the coast of Quintana Roo that is becoming known for as a destination for New Age healing practices, a rather loose use of plant medicine, yoga retreats, and a western experimentation with spirituality that presents both opportunities and challenges. I briefly stopped by the city in March, before heading back to Europe, and was struck by the chaotic real estate developments, privatized shore, and patchy gentrification, but also the way popular Mexican culture is flourishing in the cracks of narco-capitalist destruction.

In Tulum, public access to nature is severely curtailed as beachfront properties get usurped by drug cartels and sold to foreign developers. Despite the privatization of the shores, popular culture manages to find the cracks in the system.

In Mexican traditional healing, each plant is associated with a distinct spirit: mushrooms are saintly children, peyote is the grandfather, and Xanga (a smokable form of DMT, not traditionally used in Mexico) is considered a feminine energy. Monica, a medicine woman I met in Tulum, offers me a Xanga ceremony in her backyard. She has lit a fire—not strictly needed for this ritual, she says, but today she felt called to it. “Fire is a powerful spirit,” she explains. “It can unite people and transmute energies.”

I have come to work through fears that I am only partly aware of. After cleaning our energies and preparing an altar of ritual offerings, she will share the medicine three times. I’m supposed to inhale thrice in each taking, but I only manage to do it once, as my vision is immediately overtaken by fractals and the garden around me comes to life. The trees have personalities, faces, and eyes. I realize that the palm above me is an old man, and the one beside it a dancing spirit. Time dissolves, and the present expands into eternity. A pain in my chest revealed itself as fear, lodged right where my heart is. Monica guides me through the journey with song and music. When I look at her, I see her not as herself, but as the ancestral presence she embodies.

The second round is deeper, more intense, and visceral. It feels like bungee jumping off a cliff, while being shown the architecture of the universe. The impressions and information are so vast that they overwhelm me. “Thank God this isn’t how we experience reality all the time,” I think. Afterward, we spoke about the fear I have experienced. Monica tells me that when we operate out of fear, we create chaos and encourages me to work with it through the breath.

I am unsure if I should continue, the experience has been intense and unpleasant and I’m still in a mild shock. We set an intention for the last round to be gentler. “Let’s leave you with a good experience,” Monica says. It feels like the medicine agreed. The effects are gentler this time. The energy is humorous and playful. I am transported to an ancient, colourful courtyard, where I’m shown Maya warriors and shifting geometric patterns. When I open my eyes, the spirits in the trees have frozen in goofy poses. I feel them asking: “If we promise to stay still, will it keep you from being scared?” The scene is so bizarre that I immediately start laughing. I can see Monica smiling. “What emerges when you let go of fear?” she asks rhetorically, before answering: “Joy.”

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