What is the difference between ayahuasca and yagé?

If you've been reading about plant medicine, you've probably seen both words: ayahuasca and yagé. Sometimes they're used as if they mean the same thing… and sometimes as if they're two completely different medicines.

The short answer? They come from the same plant. 🌿

The longer answer says a lot about where the medicine comes from, and how it's held.

One vine, many names

At the heart of the brew is a woody jungle vine, Banisteriopsis caapi. It grows across the Amazon basin, from Peru and Ecuador to Brazil and Colombia, and indigenous peoples have worked with it for centuries.

And each people has its own name for it. Ayahuasca comes from Quechua, the language of the Andes, and is usually translated as "vine of the soul" or "vine of the spirits." It's the word used in Peru and Ecuador, and the one most of the world has learned.

Yagé (also written yajé) is the name used by the peoples of the Colombian Amazon and its foothills, like the Kamëntšá, Inga, Siona and Cofán. Here in Putumayo, the medicine is called yagé, and the healers who work with it are called taitas.

The other plants in the pot

The vine is almost never prepared alone. It's cooked with the leaves of other plants, and this is where regional traditions start to differ.

In much of Peru, the vine is combined with chacruna (Psychotria viridis). In Colombia, many taitas use chagropanga (Diplopterys cabrerana), whose leaves are said to give the medicine a different character. Every family has its own recipes, and some keep them close. (I'm still learning which is which 🙈)

Different ways of preparing

How long the medicine is cooked, how much water is used, whether it's reduced to a thick brew or kept fresh… all of it changes the experience.

Taita Miguel Mavisoy and Taita Leonardo Jacanamejoy work with yagé crudo, prepared from freshly harvested vine. It takes time and a lot of care, and the exact methods belong to the families who make it.

Different ways of holding ceremony

Often, the biggest difference isn't the brew at all. It's the ceremony around it.

Ceremonies vary between countries, communities, families, and even individual healers. Where I work in Putumayo, music is a big part of the night: singing and instruments accompany the ceremony around the fire. 🔥 Other traditions have their own ways.

One isn't better than the other. They're different expressions of the same old relationship between people and a plant.

So which word is right?

Both! If you search online, you'll find more under "ayahuasca." I use both words on this site, and I say yagé when I'm talking about the medicine and traditions here in Putumayo.

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