(Madrid) It promised an “improvement in physical and emotional health” within “centers of inner evolution”: the Spanish police announced Wednesday that they had dismantled a shamanic organization which gave its followers hallucinogenic substances, such as ayahuasca.
In total, 18 people were arrested from July and the following months in several cities in Spain for having promoted or organized paid retreats, where participants consumed psychotropic substances such as ayahuasca, peyote or secretions kambo frog or toad, under the aegis of a doctor and another member pretending to be a doctor.
These retreats could take place in Spain or in other centers that the organization had in France, Italy, Ireland, Finland, Romania, Malta, Mexico, Colombia and Turkey, explains the police in a communicated.
Those arrested, mostly Latin American or Spanish, are being prosecuted for belonging to a criminal organization, crimes against public health, human trafficking, illegal exercise of a profession or violation of immigration law among other charges. .
As for the leader of the organization, a “spiritual master or guru” who died during the investigation, he was accused of crimes against freedom and sexual integrity.
The investigation began when the police spotted campaigns on social networks and certain websites “celebrating neo-shamanic rituals” in which “an improvement in the physical and emotional health of participants through the consumption of different psychoactive substances”.
The group had a center in Colombia where the “ayahuasca brew” was produced, a hallucinogenic decoction traditionally prepared from the “Banisteriopsis caapi” vine by the peoples of the western Amazon basin.
The product was then sent to Spain using “mules” (passengers carrying narcotics in their luggage or by ingesting them), or by hiding it among other imported products.
The searches notably made it possible to get their hands on 24,000 euros (35,000 Canadian dollars), a kilo of mescaline and more than 60 kg of ayahuasca.
“This type of substances are generally used during ceremonies practiced by new age sects, during neo-shamanic rituals” and are “an instrument used by the shaman” to exercise “coercive control of the group”, details the police.