Wasiwaska Ethnobotanical Garden in Southern Brazil: A Chronicle

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Bio: Luis Eduardo Luna was born in Florencia, Caquetá, in the Colombian Amazon. After studies of philosophy and theology with the Piarist Fathers in Bogotá and Spain, he left the order to study Latin American Literature at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. In 1971 he met Terence McKenna with whom he took yajé, a psychoactive preparation used by several indigenous ethnic groups of the Amazon. He obtained an interdisciplinary M.A. and then a Ph.D. in Comparative Religion and taught Latin American literature at Oslo University. His dissertation examined the use of  “plant teachers” such as ayahuasca, among the mestizo population of the Peruvian Amazon. Luis Luna was named 2002 Doctor of Humane Letters by St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York. He has published several books and numerous papers on shamanism in the Amazon. In 2011 he retired from the Hanken School of Management in Helsinki and founded the Wasiwaska Research Center for the Study of Psychointegrator Plants, Visionary Art, and Consciousness, Florianópolis, Brazil