sad news
We were shocked and saddened to learn that Christian Rätsch (1957-2022) died on September 17. He was exceptionally gifted and will be missed by many.
When we first met, shamanism was largely unknown outside of professional circles and, moreover, suspect because it was associated with “drugs”. Three days after his death, the Börsenblatt (the German Financial Times) dedicated an obituary to him — Christian Rätsch’s work and thinking had long become a part of the mainstream. The well-known cultural anthropologist, ethnopharmacologist, author, and speaker leaves behind an extensive body of written and oral work; his books have been translated into several languages, and his lectures and television interviews have been heard and seen by millions.
Together with his lifelong partner Claudia Müller-Ebeling, he has done much to ensure that psychoactive substances are receiving greater recognition, especially in Germany, and that their demonization is giving way to a broader understanding of the achievements of indigenous cultures and their medicinal plants.
As a young anthropologist, Christian spent a total of four years among the Lacandones, a small group of Mayans in the Mexican state of Chiapas, whose language and healing rituals he learned and studied. Shortly before his death, Christian completed The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants – Volume 2 (co-authored by Markus Berger), the second part of the highly anticipated, internationally recognized standard work in the field, and, with it, his life’s work. It encompasses and defines an entire era of psychedelic creativity.
As a person, the long-haired academic fascinated with a mixture of detachment and friendliness. He was sixty-five years old when he died of a neglected stomach ulcer.
We also lost Yatra Barbosa, on 25 July. The Brazilian musician and ayahuasca activist, godmother of the Mãe D’Agua Tribe and co-founder of the so-called Eagle-Condor Festival in Alto Paraíso de Golás worked and lived in Amsterdam for an extended period, before returning to her native land. She died of heart failure at the age of eighty-one.
Yours
Susanne G. Seiler
P.S. You’ll find us at the Gaia Lounge, Hochstrasse 70 in Basel (near Basel SBB main station, Stop Peter Merian) every Thursday afternoon from 14 – 18 h. Welcome!
remember
Sing no sad songs for me;
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Christina Rossetti