I am drinking ayahuasca. Suddenly I find myself standing in the entry hallway of a large house in the suburbs, facing the front door. The floor of the hallway is tiled, like many places in the ayahuasca world. There is a large staircase behind me, leading to the second floor; there are large ceramic pots on either side of the entrance way. I open the front door and look out at a typical suburban street — cars parked at the curb, traffic going by, a front lawn, trees along the curb. Standing at the door is a dark woman, perhaps in her forties, her raven hair piled on her head, thin and elegant, beautiful, dressed in a red shift with a black diamond pattern. She silently holds out her right hand to me. On her hand is a white cylinder, about three inches long, which she is offering to me. I do not know what the white substance is.

I was concerned about this vision, because the red-and-black dress might indicate that the dark woman was a bruja, a sorceress. But my maestro ayahuasquero immediately and unhesitatingly identified her as maricahua, whom he also calls toé negro, the black datura. This plant is ingested by splitting the stem and eating a piece of the white inner pith about three inches long; he told me that the figure in the vision was handing me just such a piece of maricahua stem. I was unaware of this method of preparing maricahua prior to this vision.

Ayahausca teaches many things — what is wrong or broken in a life, what medicine to take for healing. I want to be taught, I want to see, I want ayahuasca to open the door to wonder and surprise. La diosa has shown me what I need. I need to open my front door, look out onto a bland suburban street, and see standing there the Dark Lady, the black datura — thin and dark, raven hair piled on her head, elegant and beautiful, silently holding out to me a stem of maricahua — and follow her into her dark and luminous world.