Hapé Ceremonies

Hapé—also known as rapé or hapeh—is a legal mixture of dried Amazonian plants, typically sacred tobacco (mapacho) combined with ashes from specific trees, vines, or flowers. Most of the hapé I offer are made with ashes from the bark of the medicinal Tsunu tree, known for its stabilizing and protective properties.

This medicine has long been used by Indigenous peoples across South America within ceremonial, medicinal, and spiritual contexts—as a way of clearing spiritual and energetic burdens, reconnecting with the Earth, cultivating spiritual clarity and balance, and strengthening prayer and inward listening. It is sometimes described as a masculine, benevolent, and wise teacher. Unlike the more fantastical, vision-producing plant medicines, hapé is not a psychedelic. 

Being served hapé is a deeply embodied experience; you are unlikely to experience the kind of immersive visionary states associated with psychedelic medicines. Instead, hapé is oriented toward grounding awareness in the physical body in a deeply earthly and present way—though if you naturally have a proclivity toward rich visions and out-of-body experiences, those can still arise. 

That said, hapé can work with surprising force. The Yawanawá of Amazonian Brazil regard hapé as a master plant—just as powerful as ayahuasca, though in a different way. They use hapé during ayahuasca ceremonies to restore balance and grounding, and to help participants avoid getting lost internally. They also frequently use hapé on its own.

During a ceremony, it is common to experience sweating, tears, a tingling in the limbs, or purging. Within many Amazonian traditions, these responses are understood as part of a process of cleansing, release, grounding, or spiritual reorientation. Some participants describe becoming aware of emotions, memories, fears, or patterns that feel ready to be relinquished—for instance, self-hate, old attachments, anxiety, doubt, or unresolved emotional pain.

On some occasions, a person may not feel much at all. I've witnessed people sleep through entire ayahuasca ceremonies (while others around them were hanging on for their dear lives.) The same is true with hapé. As a curandero once told me: the medicine meets each person differently.