Fun fact: the ayahuasca alkaloids glow brightly under black light. I've never done ayahuasca, but I tried making some fluorescent body paint via crushed syrian rue seed "tea". It was extremely effective: glows very bright, soaks into the skin a bit so it stays for a couple days before fading, and is completely invisible under normal light. Kinda fun - could potentially cause minor psychotropic effects if you paint a large surface area, but I didn't notice any.
Black light?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklight
We had one of those at home when I was a child, it was a lot of fun.
That's been my experience with it. For me, the literalness of "plant spirit" is accepted reality. In the circles I hang out with, we don't put the term, plant spirit, in air quotes.
Generally, the two plants that are combined are the Ayahuasca vine, which contains the various MAOI, and Chacruna, which contains DMT. Many plants yield DMT, though only some plants yield a sufficient concentration to be useable.
From an experiential point of view, the plant material of Ayahuasca and Chacruna are the material body. They each have a specific intelligence that is sentient, and conscious, and responsive to the ikaros (the song sung in ceremony).
It does imply that, it should be possible to contact the intelligence named Ayahuasca by ingesting the vine alone, or without ingestion. After all, what is contacting the plant spirit (plant consciousness) is your own spirit (consciousness). That has happened with me as well.
To followup: Marijuana, the plant material, should also house a plant spirit, with its own intelligence, knowledge base, and purpose. Likely, also responsive to songs that are related to it. And indeed, that has also been my experience with it too. I call that spirit by the Sanskrit name, Ganja, and tried it with the Sanskrit mantra.
Your experience with your guide reminds me a bit of Hank Wesselman's experiences, written up in his memoirs.
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&m=694095
> I too can corroborate that shrooms "come with a built-in shaman"
If it's true that the DMT plant has no psychoactive effects when taken alone, maybe someone had already had a routine of taking the MAOI and just eating most plants they came across, to see what would happen.
The effects of smoking it are only ~15 minutes long from what I've heard. Blowing it up each others nose can't be that common recreationally at least given that there's much easier ways to consume it (smoking it).
I've been "joking" with my friends that I want to take a trip to Costa Rica to do Ayahuasca with them.
The "story" of how Ayahuasca came to be is quite fascinating: Ayahuasca, the drink, is actually comprised of two plant-based ingredients. One of the ingredients supplies the "DMT" portion, but the effects would last a very short time (something like 20 seconds to a couple minutes. My numbers might be off).
Then they stumbled on this second ingredient, which grows in a completely different area of the jungle, which prolongs the effects of the first ingredient (I'm guessing this is the MAOI portion, but I'm not 100% sure). Combining these two ingredients into the "Ayahuasca" we know today, the experience went from short 30-second trips to these 6-12 hour "sessions".
The most interesting part is that the shamans claim it was the "plants" or the "plant spirits" that told them to seek out the second ingredient and combine the two.