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For at least 25 years, I have worked in the Healing Arts, and for 20 deeply engaged with the “entheogenic” plant centred systems of Curanderismo of Latin America. I’ve also engaged with, befriended, and worked alongside healers from the world’s oldest continuous cultures here on my home continent.

In the course of that career, I’ve witnessed time and time again the spiritual root of illnesses at both an individual and cultural level and the profundity of healing potential afforded in the recognition of and mediation between the unconscious and the conscious, the human and non-human worlds.

Despite the world’s affirmations to me, over decades, of the veracity and authenticity of my observations and cosmovision, I have no definitive model, no ten commandments to fix the profound unwellnesses of our time. What I do have is story and action, and I’d like to share with you some tales of that landscape in the hope of inspiring change within the ontological structures writ large in (and profoundly buggering up) physical, social and geographical bodies.

An ontological shift is profoundly needed, and that shift cannot be mind based alone; in fact, our shift of understanding of our mind and it’s place within our ecosphere is fundamental to healing. This is something that traditional healing structures have known, in the words of a now departed friend, “from ever since”. So in his honour and in recognition of the countless human and non-human wisdoms and experiences which inform and support any “new” discoveries in the realm of art, science, and culture, let me share some stories from the fire.

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Simon Green is a Huachumero and Curandero who has worked for the past two decades in service to a broad community, curing individuals and groups. He works in his daily practice with clients from around the world salving a wide range of ills, and has more specifically spent considerable time working in the amelioration of the deleterious impacts of drug addiction in the Peruvian Amazon.

Simon was a member of the original steering/advisory committee of and remains a Research Associate with the Ayahuasca Treatment Outcome Project and currently sits on the International Advisory Committee for From Research to Reality (R2R): Global Summit on Psychedelic Assisted Therapies and Medicine. He has presented at a range of events including Beyond Psychedelics, Prague 2016 and Psicohabana, La Habana 2018. He collaborated with ANTAC to facilitate Anangu Ngangkari representation at the 2015 Encuentro Intercontinental de Lideres Indigenous Sobre Adiccion y Cultura, Tarapoto, Peru. Simon has also produced a number of features for ABC Radio National on the subject of curing including “Icaros; Magical Songs from Peru”, "This Song is from Ever Since: Songs for Wagilak Country” and “The Doctor Man’s Lair”.

Simon is a fourth-generation Riverine Farmer and has spent a great deal of time herding sheep on the hot, dry and dusty Australian plains. He currently prefers a more tropical climate and keeps way too many bees in his backyard.

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