Harmalas & Aya Teacher Plants compared

Modern ayahuasca purists might lynch me for this post :)

Syrian Rue: one possible teacher plant for Aya/Loveyhuasca

Syrian rue (also called esfand or harmal in many Arabic grocery stores that sell it, but Latin name is Peganum harmala) seeds make up the “teacher” component (and MAOi activator component) via the harmala alkaloids inside, when using my Soma protocol for ayahuasca or loveyhuasca.

Rue is likely the teacher plant used for Middle Eastern ayahausca for thousands of years (they almost definitely did smoke the seeds, and you can see ayahuasca fractal geometry inside mosques and in their carpets).

Proud Amazonian jungle “purists” will deride anyone who uses Syrian rue instead of their vine, B. caapi. But some of those purist Amazonian shamans are so pure that they don’t even use the most common yellow B. caapi vine (caupuri, knotted caapi) ! The Huni Kuin tribe believes that yellow caapi causes tumors, because it looks sort of like it has tumors itself. Don’t worry, it definitely doesn’t cause tumors, but this shows how marriage to tradition can lead to stupidity.

What is actually in rue and caapi?

There are dozens of different types of B. caapi vine which all produce different effects. Syrian rue seems more uniform, although it will have a 2:1 ratio of harmaline to harmine in the winter and a 1:1 ratio in the summer usually. B. caapi and Syrian rue both have mainly the same harmala alkaloids:

• Harmaline is strong, foggy, dreamy and hypnotic one which people feel is the most “druggy” (maybe a little comparable to an indica THC weed strain). Because it’s so hypnotic, it works the best for canceling fear.

• Harmine (which used to be called “telepathine” because it can make you telepathic, especially with a lil DMT) is the more energizing and less hypnotic one, half the potency by weight as harmaline. Still helps to cancel fear, but not as much as harmaline.

• Tetrahydroharmine (THH): If you boil Syrian rue or B. caapi for a long time (24 hours is traditional), half the harmaline will be chemically “reduced” (gain an electron) to form THH. THH is non-hypnotic, and people especially like to use it in order to have clearer ayahuasca trips (less foggy) with lessons that are easier to remember/integrate afterwards. The downside is that without hypnotic effect, it does not cancel fear like the other harmalas do. One time I used only THH and DMT for my trip and it was the only time I ever really had a freak-out experience where I was screaming.

  • There is some mis-info online about THH where some chemists on the DMT-Nexus have said it is NOT an MAOi, but they were using the L stereoisomer which seems (according to them) to be more like an SSRI antidepressant. The D isomer however, definitely does act as an MAOi, and when you make THH naturally via boiling, you get racemic THH (half D, half L isomers).

• Other Caapi harmalas: Caapi also contains at least 6 other harmalas which are not easily extractable in pure form because they aren’t water soluble. However, it also seems to contain something else which does distinguish it from harmine + harmaline, because I knew one person (only one out of hundreds, mind you) who got a bad headache that lasted days whenever he used rue, or harmine or harmaline or THH, but when he used Caapi, it would actually fix the headache.

• Other Rue harmalas: Rue contains dozens of other harmalas. Vaping the rue seeds or rue seed powder (using any cheap wax vape device) is the only way to feel the proper effects. There’s no one solvent that extracts the right mix of them, so you can’t make a vape cart with the full spectrum rue mix. I tried with various solvents. With DMSO as a solvent, I was getting very bizarre trippy feelings that were not so pleasant. With glycerin or oil as the solvent, I was getting some mix of harmalas that actually felt quite nice but even tho they felt a bit psychedelic (like half my head seemed to disappear), they also had an anti-psychotic effect which reduced the intensity of my DMT trips.

  • Whole rue seeds can be vaped to get a more gentle, relaxing and lovey effect.

  • Rue seed powder can be vaped to get more of an energetic opening of all chakras. You can make the most perfect vapable ayahuasca form with this powder and synthetic pure DMT. I call it Chrunga.

  • Vaping rue seeds can be especially beneficial when you are already high on aya or loveyhuasca, although even by itself, vaping rue is very nice, which is one reason why it’s used as an incense in the Middle East. It also has some anti-pathogen benefits. Literally cleansing and protecting against evil eye/evil spirits, and probably more so than sage.

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Health Benefits of Rue & Harmalas

Syrian rue has a list of benefits that is so long I can’t even put them all here. Some of these benefits are extraordinarily rare and unique (curing Type 1 diabetes for example, thanks to harmine). Even in the Quran it is listed as curing up to 72 different diseases. The scientific research on this plant is never-ending. It has more anti-parasitic benefits than B. caapi or pure harmalas.

B. caapi seems to have less research on it than Syrian rue, but anecdotally some people have reported it helps them more for mood, it may work better for Parkinson’s and neurodegenerative & autoimmune diseases (Grok 4 fast research). On rare occasion, people will get headaches which last days when using rue or pure harmaline, harmine, THH, and the cure for that is B. caapi.

There are so many different strains of B. caapi (which really feel very different and produce different visions) as well as regional alkaloid differences noted in this study. In all the studies, we find almost no harmaline in caapi (10x less than harmine, unlike rue), except for the caapi used by the Shipibo-Conobo tribe which has a 1:1 ratio of harmine to harmaline. Many people believe that caapi has more THH than rue — which on average is true, especially if rue is not boiled much, but many caapi samples also had no THH.

Spiritual Effects of Different Harmala & DMT Ratios Used By Tribes

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