To begin with, if you are considering attending a ceremony with this group, it’s not a bad decision — especially if you have experience with the medicine. If it’s your first time, you won’t regret coming here. It’s not the best group I’ve seen, but it’s safe and you’ll get a lot of benefit from it.

Please forgive my harshness and know that I would not be writing this review if the medicine did not ask me to. I deeply respect the mission of AYA and I appreciate their hard work, so I want my experience to be a source of constructive criticism.

First, the good stuff:

I like Scott (the lead facilitator). He has great energy, and he seems to have a deeply careful, respectful, and professional attitude. I also really appreciate the legal/logistical work of AYA. I think they’re doing great things for the community at large. And as others have said, the maloca and the area around it are incredibly beautiful.

One of the facilitators (Maxine? I’m not good with names) was lovely. It seemed like she was the smoothest facilitator in the ceremony. I didn’t get any bad vibes off of her and she was very gentle with everyone.

Now, the bad stuff:

I would appreciate a higher degree of discipline and seriousness from the facilitators. It bothers me when people take this stuff for granted. The medicine is a gateway for an ancient, timeless, powerful benevolent spirit. These ceremonies exist in the context of a universe which can deliver terrors beyond human comprehension, and it is through the benevolence of the medicine that we are able to do these ceremonies safely and easily. I think these facts should impart a sense of gravity into the ceremony, but I did not feel that gravity and that makes me upset.

The facilitators are disorganized and they don’t seem to like each other. I can hear it in the music. When they sing the icaros together, they create discord and have trouble agreeing on the rhythm. That is extremely distracting for the participants, and it prevents the medicine from working at its full power.

Let me say that a different way, and address the facilitators directly: Your egos are making her job harder. She is not all-powerful. I understand that you are all on your own healing journey, and that’s fantastic — I wish you the best of luck — but you need to set that aside and surrender during the ceremony.

Before the ceremony, I witnessed an interaction between two of the facilitators where one of them appeared to be trying to dominate the other. That is not a good vibe. I almost wanted to step in and scold them for it, but it’s not my community and it’s not my place to interfere in their personal problems.

Finally, I believe a stronger theoretical understanding of magic would be beneficial for the facilitators. They should understand that the icaros are a type of technology and that there are mechanical systems to explain why/how they work. Understanding magic from a scientific perspective doesn’t strip it of its power. And if you choose to write your own songs for the ceremony, having an analytical framework for the technology of poetry will make those songs more powerful.