What Does “Sacred Medicine” Actually Mean? Explaining This Phrase To Newbies
By: Caiyuda Kiora
Tags: Magic Mushrooms, Sacred Space, Ayahuasca, Psychedelics, Huachuma

When it comes to “medicine”, it’s helpful to first unpack this word from a generalized Western perspective.

When we say the word “medicine” it’s typically associated with some kind of prescription or pharmaceutical drug dispensed by a doctor which someone takes when they’re sick. And when we’re talking about sickness, it’s primarily confined to the world of physical and mental health conditions.

The following is a generalisation of how a great deal of interactions in the medical and health-care paradigm play out…

Someone presents to a doctor with symptoms of some sort, they’re often given a diagnosis within minutes, and then prescribed some sort of “medicine” to help treat the symptoms.

This is an incomplete picture though, because the symptoms are often times just that — surface level symptoms of a multi-layered and much deeper health and wellness issue. Prescribing pharmaceutical “medicine” to treat surface level symptoms is often considered putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.

When we’re considering what health, wellness and illness actually are, we have to look at things from a holistic framework.

It’s only in recent years that the mainstream paradigm has started becoming more attuned to more traditional and indigenous wisdom, which includes not only looking at health and illness from the physical and mental, but from the emotional, energetic and spiritual aspects of being.

From this context, the word “medicine” is not something that just treats surface levels symptoms, but something that helps treat the root cause of an illness and helps bring balance and harmony to all aspects of our human existence.

When you present to a doctor or general practitioner with physical symptoms of some sort, how often do they ask about your diet, your environment, your relationships, your beliefs, your values, your emotional health, or your connection to nature?

These are all pieces of the puzzle when it comes to holistic health and wellness. And from a traditional, alternative, or holistic standpoint, “medicine” is something that helps align and integrate these puzzle pieces for us.

For further clarity in this instance, perhaps we could also make a distinction between “medicine” and “medication”. Medicine being something that gets to the root cause of an illness and helps bring healing, balance and harmony on all levels. Medication being something that from a generalized Western viewpoint, treats surface level symptoms rather than the root cause of an illness.

So when we’re talking about “medicine” in this context of “sacred medicine” we’re talking about working with something that facilitates holistic healing.

And this thing, is typically physical matter or material that we ingest or introduce into our body.

Otherwise known, as a substance.

Physical matter or material sounds very reductionist and mechanistic, but I use this phrase with the understanding that the word substance can carry some stigma around it too. I can’t think of another word that best describes something neutral — without necessarily assigning positivity or negativity to it, that we ingest or introduce into our body.

If we can get around the negative connotations associated with substance, perhaps we can stick with this word.