It's a strange feeling to find yourself in a place you never imagined yourself in, about to do something you'd never conceived of doing. I was in the desert of Real de Catorce in Mexico, searching for a peyote button so I could take part in a ceremony with a few of my friends. Dried out, fissured ground interspersed with strange geometric shrubs stretched out beyond us to the horizon. We were encircled by a chain of mountains and there was nobody in sight; a cloud of charged silence enveloped us as we paced through the desert, looking for cactuses.

Words: Dani Redd
Pics: Suzanne Shanklin
We found them embedded in the ground under the scanty shade cast by the shrubs - each button was a few inches wide, with small clumps of hair scattered at regular intervals over a dark green surface. We cut them out of the ground with sharp rocks (it is not good to use a knife, as it severs the connection with the peyote and the earth too brutally) and ate them after a short meditation ritual. The flesh was pulpy and disgustingly bitter, and we retched as we crammed it into our mouths alongside slabs of hot chocolate, intended to disguise the taste. After that, all we could do was wait for the effects to take hold.

It is difficult to describe how I felt and what happened in the hours that followed - hallucinogenic trips do not lend themselves well to linear narrative. At the time I tried to write about what was happening to me, but the book was soon discarded face down on the desert floor as I concentrated on more important matters like talking to the plants. "Write about what?" I wrote. "The world as it shifts and changes before my eyes? The colours, the shapes...the sky pulsates like spider eyes, like milk in blue coffee...the horizon encircles us like chains of eyes." Eyes, I think, because every plant, every stone, everything had its own clearly visible, beautifully palpitating soul. We could see the beauty in everything. The cracks of the desert floor vibrated with intensity, and we could see how everything was connected to everything else by these physical vibrations.

Strangely enough, it was only the two girls in the group that felt this. The boys struggled to put up the tent whilst my friend Suzie and I lay in a loving heap of confused limbs on the floor and watched the sky. We could see beautiful women beckoning to us and dancing among the clouds. Behind these beautiful, feminine shapes lay a faint grid of purple and green fractals, like the strange neon cacti that were scattered round the desert. Afterwards, Suzie told me that she felt that Peyote (who does somehow, maintain a very tangible presence) had made love to every sense in her body. It was true. We made different sounds for hours, 'zzzzzz', 'ooooo', and felt them vibrate in our mouths and echo across the desert. We ate grapes and slid the round globes round our mouths, gasping in awe as we crunched down and the juice ran down our throats - the most sensual eating experience I've ever had. Peyote is like having a full-body orgasm, but one that isn't connected to your sexual self, but to your spirit. It gave me the most heightened sensitivity I have ever experienced.

At one point, after the sun had set in the desert, I walked off alone in the night and almost saw Peyote in the sky; cracks of brilliant light that had nothing to do with the stars. It was if the sky had torn open and someone was trying to show me what was behind it. Peyote was trying to show me something, but it was just beyond my grasp. I'd like to return to the desert, and continue to develop my relationship with Peyote - it's difficult to explain, but unlike any other drug I have tried it seems like it is a person, or a force, with his own personality. Suzie saw a pair of tattooed legs as we were sitting by the fire as the peyote force ebbed away - that was him, perhaps. This idea is discussed in more detail in Carlos Castaneda's anthropological study of peyote, The Teachings of Don Juan:

'Sometimes he is playful, like a child; at other times he is terrible, fearsome... It is impossible to know beforehand what he'll be like with another person.'

Needless to say, different people have different trips, just like all hallucinogenics, but this doesn't seem to be purely due to environmental factors and the mood of the person. To me it seems based upon peyote somehow reading your intention. It is for this reason that it takes years for Castaneda to persuade Don Juan to let him try peyote, because 'you don't know your own heart. If you were an Indian your desire alone would be sufficient'.

Traditionally speaking, peyote is a substance that was used primarily by a few Indian tribes, notably the Huichol Indians. Even the contemporary Huichols still undertake an annual peyote pilgrimage over hundreds of miles to Wirikuta (the original Huichol homeland). Richard Rudgley tells us that purity is believed to be necessary for the pilgrimage: 'Before their arrival in the sacred country the pilgrims must confess their sexual sins, for which they are forgiven.' Indeed, in modern peyote rituals one is encouraged to 'detox' beforehand (i.e no smoking and no food prior to engaging in the practice) in order to be pure for the ritual.

So, there are two 'strands' to this history of peyote - firstly, its usage by traditional Indian peoples for thousands of years in shamanic rituals and ecstatic rites, and secondly its more recent adoption by Western 'truth seekers' such as Castaneda. Other famous peyote eaters include Walt Disney (you've all seen Fantasia) and Antonin Artaud (whose experiences are documented in Peyote Dance). Artaud seemed unable to join in the collective ecstasy of the Tarahumara Indians, with whom he took the peyote, instead he felt that 'With peyote MAN is alone, desperately scraping out the music of his own skeleton, without father, mother, love, god, or society...and one walks from the equinox to the solstice, buckling on one's own humanity'.

Artaud, when he takes peyote, feels entirely alone because of his reliance on the Western idea of the ego being isolated, and the most important idea which is to preserve one's self. Unlike the Indians he can't connect himself with a collective consciousness and feel like he is part of everything. That is why the peyote experience is such an important one - it teaches you to think outside the confines of you versus the world, and to consider yourself as a small part of a greater whole. That sentence sounds awfully like a conclusion, or a summary of what peyote does, but that can't really be reduced to a single neat little phrase. I feel that my initial interaction with Peyote was equivalent to little more than waving at him across a crowded room. I now have to take on the life-long task of getting to know him.