#19 Jez Hughes on British indigeneity

Uncharted Territory

Jez Hughes is a healer, author and founder of shamanic school Second Sight Healing. Since his early teens, he suffered a series of seizures and panic attacks. He believes this was an initiatory illness to connect with the spirit world. He has mostly trained with the Wixarika community of Mexico, who use the psychedelic cactus peyote as their sacrament, following long-held and uninterrupted traditions. However, in his own work, he uses a drum to bring about trance states, as well as the liberty cap mushroom. He says he would never work with a medicine that doesn't grow in his land, because of a lack of ancestral connection.

Jez recalls how an indigenous Mexican marakame visited his late wife in a hospital in Worthing to give her a healing while she was receiving treatment for lung cancer. He imagines a future in which shamanic healings could be available in hospitals, as reiki now is. Jez also reflects on his recent pilgrimage in Mexico to harvest, and sit with, the psychedelic cactus peyote. He made a decade-long commitment to return to the country each year. We also discuss the use of ayahuasca in Brazilian prisons.