Cumala Virola is an intoxicating, narcotic & hallucinogenic snuff. The first detailed description and specific identification of Virola used in this fashion, however, was published in 1954 when its preparation and use among medicine men of Colombian Indians was described. Virola is taken mainly by shamans among the Barasan, Makuna, Tukano, Kabuyare, Kuripako, Puinave, and other tribes in eastern Colombia, Virola was used ritualistically for diagnosis and treatment of disease, prophecy, divination, and other magico-religious purposes. At that time, V. calophylla and V. calophylloidea were indicated as the species most valued, but later work in Brazil and elsewhere has established the primacy of Virola theiodora.
Recent field studies have shown that the Virola snuff is used among many Indian groups in Amazonian Colombia, the uppermost Orinoco basin of Colombia and Venezuela, the Rio Negro, and other areas of the western Amazon of Brazil.
The Virola snuff is apparently most highly prized and most deeply involved in aboriginal life among the sundry Indian trives collectively called Waika in the upper Orinoco of Venezuela and the northern affluents of the Rio Negro of Brazil. These groups are variously named, but are most commonly known to anthropologists as the Kirishana, Shiriana, Karauetare, Karime, Parahure, Surara, Pakidai, and Yanomama. They generally refer to the Virola snuff as Epana, Ebená, Nyakwana, or some variant of these terms. In northwestern Brazil, this Cumala snuff and others are often generically known as Parica.
Unlike the Colombian Indians, among whom the use of the Cumala snuff is usually restricted to shamans, these tribes may often take the Cumala snuff in daily life. All male members of the group above the age of thirteen or fourteen may participate. The hallucinogen is often snuffed in frighteningly excessive amounts and, in at least one annual ceremony, constantely over a two-or three-day period.Among the Colombian Indians, the Cumala bark is stripped from the trees in the early morning and the soft, inner layers are scraped for use. The Cumala shavings are kneaded in cold water for twenty minutes. The brownish liquid is then filtered and boiled down to a thick syrup which, when dried, is pulverized and mixed with ashes of the bark of a wild cacao tree.
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