What is rapé?
Rapé is a term used for shamanic snuffs in South America. It comes from the root word in Romance languages meaning “shredded”.
Does rapé contain tobacco?
“Rapé” does not have the same meaning in South America that it does in Europe.
In Europe, rapé is a term used for tobacco products like tobacco snuffs or even pouch tobacco products like snus. While it is true that SOME rapés from South America do contain tobacco, many of them do not. In South America, the indigineous people have been producing snuffs from countless different plants for far beyond recorded history. They have an intimate knowledge of ethnobotany and see the process of insufflation as the mechanism of delivery from the plant to the human.
What are the effects of rapé?
Indigineous peoples of all cultures have a close relationship with nature and the plants around them. Only in the modern world where people are more obsessed about visionary medicines and getting “high” does the attention get drawn towards tobacco or other entheogen products that are mind altering – however in the native cultures there is such more an important on building a relationship with the subtle nuances in feeling you get by putting different plants in your body which can be done by eating, insufflation, or other methods.
Do you notice how you feel different after eating meat compared to eating vegetables? Does eating junk food give you a different state of consciousness than freshly picked vegetables? These are the levels of nuance that we must tune ourselves into as we dive into this topic and many of the other shamanic traditions of the world.
Ceremonies
Many “rapé ceremonies” have started to pop up across urban centers in South & North America, as well as Europe. Generally, people will come to gather for a night where rapé is given to them from a facilitator with a tepi.
Sometimes the facilitator is an indigineous person who travels around the world and offers experiences and ceremonies to those interested, and other times it is simply a local person who uses rapé and wants to build community because they have a deep passion for this or sometimes simply make some money out of it. Sometimes it can be used in conjunction with kambo sessions with sananga too.
In urban centers, in Peru and Brazil especially, there are often many communities centered around shamanic activities so rapé and other ceremonies are present there, where native people (and those from modern society who have trained in their lineage) will facilitate workshops and ceremonies.
