"The Taíno believed it was possible to travel to the supernatural realm during cohoba-induced trances. One of the strongest psychoactive substances used in the pre-Columbian world, cohoba is still taken by shamans in the Amazon Basin of South America. The effects of cohoba make the user see the world in an inverted way: people, animals, and objects appear upside down; movements and gestures are reversed; and perceptions are marked by constantly shifting shapes and kaleidoscopic colors. Everything is the opposite and the inverse of the here and now, intensely colored, and completely mutable. Many Taíno works associated with the cohoba ceremony, especially the vomiting spatulas, are exquisitely carved with fierce animals, upside-down images, and skeletal figures from the otherworld." (El Museo website)

Provenance:
Merton Simpson, New York, 2000
Imbert collection

Publishing History:
illus.: Jesse Walter Fewkes. The Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands. Washington DC. Government Printing Office. It was one of two papers accompanying the Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1903 – 04. Johnson Reprint Corporation,1970: plate LXXXVIII.