Ayahuasca Entities: What People Meet in Ceremony and What It Means

Ayahuasca entities are the beings people report meeting in ceremony, including ancestors, people who have died, animal or plant spirits, religious figures, and sometimes something dark or heavy. Whether they are real beings or the mind’s own images is a question nobody can settle from the outside.

In the Kamsá Biyá tradition, these beings always have a relationship with oneself and come to teach something. The most common encounter we hear about is a kind of “cosmic surgery.” Dark presences are more often fears projected outward, and whatever an entity seems to tell you, the decisions afterwards are yours.

In a survey of 2,561 people about entity encounters on DMT, the molecule in the ayahuasca brew, 69% said they received a message.

What People Meet in Ceremony

For Sergio Henao, the beings seen in ceremony always have a relationship with oneself. Sergio is a yagecero with more than 16 years of experience, and I train under him in the Kamsá Biyá tradition.

Sergio says people may meet “spirits of his grandparents, of his ancestors, of people who have already died.” They might also see people who have been part of their life.

Plants and animals are also beings with their own spirit in this worldview. Sergio mentions the spirit of the jaguar, snakes, and deer. I have written separately about animals in ayahuasca visions.

Sergio believes these ayahuasca spirits come through “those portals that medicine opens.” He says these spirits come to teach us something. People also describe Mother Ayahuasca as a spirit teacher.

Of everything people tell me afterwards, I would say the most common entity encounter revolves around cosmic surgery.

Cosmic Surgery in Ceremony

There was one participant who had experienced a cosmic surgery at another retreat centre. When he arrived with us, he asked whether it would continue.

My answer was, “I don’t know. You need to drink the ayahuasca and see what happens.”

He later told me it actually continued, even through different medicines, through different retreat centres. In a way, that was an overarching theme for him. I remember other participants describing similar surgeries, and the feeling afterwards is usually fascination.

Many times, I feel like the people who describe these experiences have had cancer or another persistent health struggle. So usually there is an overlap in the stories people bring to us, but that observation does not show that cosmic surgery treats or cures physical illness.

For Sergio, the medicine moves the spirit and energy. He describes it as “tuning other channels and other networks in which the spirit can orbit better.” These surgeries, in his view, are healing sadness, pain, emotions, and feelings.

He uses the image of an operation. When doctors cut our skin to heal us, they apply anaesthesia. Sergio says the medicine takes us into a different state of consciousness, where we can perceive and process what it is healing and what it is getting rid of.

For him, the experience is “a cleansing, a healing, a process of liberation,” according to each person’s purpose. He says the plant does the operation. The yagecero is only the instrument, measuring the work the plant is doing and keeping everything clean and in order.

The curandero accompanies the person and cleans the energy around them. In Sergio’s words, “the plant is the one who does the miracle.”

Spiritual surgery in an ayahuasca ceremony is felt from inside the experience. Psychic surgery usually refers to a different practice in which healers claim to operate on the body with their bare hands.

Are Ayahuasca Entities Real?

For me, these experiences are deep in the mystery of ayahuasca. I observe Sergio and his teacher, Mama Concha. When I ask how their ceremony was, they usually say muy bien or bien chumado.

If I ask for more details, they are usually very evasive. And in that sense, I think there are certain topics around the medicine that it's better to not talk about. The more you talk about that, the more you lose that connection.

So I tell people that meeting entities on ayahuasca is a very personal experience. However they interpret that is their responsibility, just as it is with other ayahuasca visions.

When the presence feels dark or heavy, I feel like it is more likely to involve imagination and projections of the mind. It’s easier to look at one’s fears through the lens of an externalized entity than it is to look at one’s own fears. Obviously, it also depends on how people talk about it.

Our guide to ayahuasca and the spirit world goes further into this question.

Why People See Familiar or Shared Figures

People often see figures connected to their culture and religion. We have had Hindu guests from India who regularly describe connecting with Hindu figures.

In Colombia, a lot of Christian symbolism is around. If somebody sees the Virgin Mary, I feel like that image is much more likely to appear because it is so much more impregnated on their subconscious mind.

And also, I remember a participant who saw a figure that had no meaning for him during the ceremony. It was outside his cultural heritage and was not something he had been thinking about. He researched it later and found the figure, and for me, cases like that are even more mysterious.

Sergio explains shared figures through the concept of archetypes. Archetypes are images shared across a culture, a society, or even humanity. They are patterns that repeat throughout history.

He says the medicine projects images connected to our universe of references. That includes what we know, what we desire, the traditions around us, and symbols we absorb through advertising, cinema, or circles of interest.

The hero, the saviour, and images of the divine appear across many cultures. Sergio calls this “very Jung-like.”

Our guide to ayahuasca, God and religion goes further into how religious images can appear during ceremony.

Dark Presences and Fear in the Room

Nobody has come to me during ceremony and said exactly, “I’m seeing an entity and I’m super scared.” People do come to us saying, “There is something I feel is following me,” or, “There is a bad energy over there.”

For us, I think, it starts with evaluating the situation and also how afraid the person is. When people really need help, they’re usually not even talking. They are very deep in the experience, and it is obvious that they need support.

In our ceremonies, 4 to 7 people support the group depending on its size. We might bring somebody closer to the fire or outside because a change of space can make a difference. Blowing tobacco can help. I tell them to take a deep breath, to breathe through it, and to concentrate.

Then there are two reminders: that they’re in a safe place, and that they drank ayahuasca.

One participant looked like he was in a very difficult moment. We carried him to the toilet and applied ortiga several times to bring him back. The next day, he said, “I was in heaven.”

From the outside, you would think that person was struggling so much. Internally, he described a blissful state.

For Sergio, the medicine guides the medicine giver during these moments. He says the medicine gives them the songs and energy. The elders teach them to listen to the plant, to feel it, to know when and how to sing, and when to do the soplo.

Our guide to getting through a difficult ceremony explains more about fear and receiving support in the room.

What to Do With a Message From an Entity

If you receive a message for another participant, ask them first if they want to receive it. Other participants are in open, sensitive states too, and there is a fine line between a message from ayahuasca, your subconscious, and your imagination.

The way I like to say it, the ayahuasca is a conversation that you are having with yourself, if you take away all the mysticism. The conclusions you take from the conversation, and how you carry them into daily life, are your responsibility.

You need to be in the driver’s seat. You’re in the car, you’re seeing certain things, and based on what you see, what you feel and the conclusions you’re having, you decide. I wouldn’t recommend that somebody say, “The entity on ayahuasca told me to do X, Y, Z,” and just follow it, as if “I’m just following instructions.” That gives the responsibility over to a third party.

At the end of ceremony, Mama Concha says, Ya salen mi responsabilidad. In English, this means, “Now you leave my responsibility.” The decisions you make from that point on, and how well you take care of yourself, are all up to you, and integration after the retreat can help you work with the experience.

DMT Entities and Ayahuasca

The ayahuasca brew combines the Banisteriopsis caapi vine with Psychotria viridis, or chacruna, leaves. The leaves contain DMT, while the vine allows the compound to work when drunk.

DMT taken on its own is usually inhaled and lasts minutes. An ayahuasca ceremony lasts hours.

In the survey mentioned earlier, published in 2020, 2,561 people described their most memorable entity encounter after inhaling DMT. The most common labels were being, guide, spirit, alien, and helper. Sixty-nine percent said they received a message. Forty-one percent reported fear, although love, kindness, and joy were the most prominent emotions.

More than half of those who were atheist beforehand no longer identified as atheist afterwards. The phrase machine elves also comes from DMT culture through Terence McKenna.

A 2025 survey looked at 415 people who had drunk ayahuasca and reported an entity encounter. Atheism and agnosticism decreased among both men and women, while religious belief increased. The survey had no control group, so it cannot show that the encounters caused those changes.

These surveys, I think, describe what people report. They cannot tell us what the beings are. That is where my “I don’t know” remains, and our guide to ayahuasca vs DMT explains the wider differences between the experiences.

If You Are Afraid of Meeting a Being

Sergio says that if you are afraid of seeing entities, you have them inside and carry them with you. Fear itself can create the expectation.

He believes medicine is taken with a purpose and an intention. The ayahuasca demons or bad spirits somebody fears may be things the imagination puts there. In Sergio’s words, “medicine is only going to show us what we have to heal and what we have in our spirit and in our heart.”

Sergio refers to two lines from C. P. Cavafy’s poem “Ithaca”:

si no los llevas dentro de tu alma, si no es tu alma quien ante ti los pone

The meaning is that you will not meet them unless you carry them inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

So I would say, come with a purpose and an intention. You can read about setting an intention, being afraid of ayahuasca, and who should not drink ayahuasca before making a decision.

If fears or questions about ayahuasca entities are making the decision difficult, bring them to a free consultation call and talk them through with us.

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