I grew up in south america. My girlfriend's mom at the time was invited to participate in a series of shamanic cleansing rituals that involved entheogens such as mescaline and ayahuasca. She invited us to join her. It was pretty cool because the first night was set at a local bohemian's house who was probably in his 50s but everyone would call him "el arquitecto" or "el arqui" as he specialized in building acoustic buildings for concerts. He's the older guy that's at all the raves and everyone knows him.

My gf's mom is old school and catholic so she only wanted to be a part of the experience but didn't want to take any ayahuasca and she kept telling us to not even try it. By then I had already been pretty experienced with a lot of different psychedelics used without shamanic guidance so I was planning to do it.

We started with a brief fast, no lunch or dinner and then went to arqui's home. The shaman conducting the event told us that he came from the Tucano tribe in Colombia (famous for their DMT culture) and that he now lived in a self sustaining eco-village. He had two younger, male and female apprentices. The apprentices built a small earthwork with the shape of a crescent moon covered with flowers, there was some astrologial meaning to the event but I can't remember what it was. They started a fire on this earthwork and we sat around it in a circle.

They then gave us two hits of tobacco snuff, one into each nostril by blowing it out of a hollow bird bone. A small chunk of mescaline cactus (its commonly called San Pedro and grows everywhere) and a wad of coca leaves to chew on as the shaman beat his drum. Eventually they brought the dark ayahuasca brew.

I only tried a little bit since I have always been super sensitive. I'm a big guy but I only need really small doses of a psychedelic to get an effect. The shaman kept singing, banging his drum and telling stories from his people.

For an hour or so I was just thinking about my own internal struggles with my eyes closed. No discomfort or anything. I then opened my eyes and my vision was kinda blurry. There was a weird spot next to the shaman and the more I looked at this blur, the more colorful it got.

The spot became a circle and it was almost metallic, super shiny and colors coming in and out like a kaleidoscope. I started to make out various eyes coming in and out of this ball so I kinda starting picturing it like an owl. I then started to see 2 spheres, one on each side of the shaman, and this whole time they stayed in the same spot so even if I rubbed my eyes or moved my head they would not move. I rubbed and rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

As the spheres grew bigger they stopped looking like an owl and kept getting more and more abstract, like wheels upon wheels full of eyes with a kaleidoscope of metallic colors. I think only CGI could do it justice.

Once things slowed down the shaman asked everyone what they experienced and I didn't think mine was particularly significant. However, when I told everyone about the spheres the apprentices looked at each other and the shaman grabbed my arm with his eyes closed: "do you still see them" he asked. By then they were gone so I said no but went on to describe them as best I could.

The shaman, who was not limited to the stories of his tribe - he had even been in North America and shared shamanic techniques with tribes from here told me "maybe you saw a trono". This totally threw me off and I laughed because a "trono" was slang for someone who was high on marijuana, the verb is "tronar". So I said what? And he said yeah "trono like an angel".

It literally took me years until I was on 9gag or whatever and someone posted a meme about biblically accurate angels, one of which are called "thrones" and that's pretty much what I saw. None of the artists can replicate the metallic, transluscent colors but the wheels and eyes are accurate. Coming and going almost like a breathing surface. I didn't see any feathers though. Anyways I was surprised years later to finally understand what he meant by "trono" and I was blown away.

How could I have seen something so accurately depicted by others yet I had never seen it before? How did this image gain access to my imagination? So weird that this same spiritual being is what appeared to people in the bible as they were having mystical experiences. It is said that Moses and the burning bush visions come from an acacia tree that contains DMT. Could it be possible that these beings legit exist? Why am I always the one having amazing experiences with entheogens?

I think about that shaman and going to visit them in the eco-village all the time now.