Judy Lemon was a professional musician with big dreams of being a rock star in London. After discovering that her trusted husband of many years was cheating on her, her life falls apart in a drastic way, and she hits rock bottom, turning to alcohol to help her cope with the unpleasant life crash. She begins to study various forms of spirituality, such as meditation, ceremonial magick and witchcraft, ultimately finding her way to shamanism. Listening to the voice of her spirit guides, she makes a trip to the Peruvian jungle, where she meets her first teacher, an indigenous ayahuasquero shaman. He asks her to be his student, so she goes to live with him in the jungle to learn his path, completely unaware of the difficulties of what it really means to be a jungle shaman's apprentice, particularly as a non-native White woman.
Along with her teacher, Javier, and their helper, Olaff, Judy dives into the world of jungle magic as she becomes Machete Woman, transforming from an inept klutz who does everything wrong into an accomplished curandera, who is ultimately inducted into the shamanic Amazonian lineage of her teacher. As the trio settles in with various indigenous peoples such as the Jivaro and the Riberenos, Judy shares often humorous tales of the local culture and its practices from which the ayahuasca traditions originate.
In addition to being an entertaining read, Machete Woman is a book for anyone who is contemplating embarking on a spiritual path that involves extreme discomfort and being way out of one's comfort zone. Judy shows that the aspirant will inevitably make a lot of mistakes in their quest for perfection but can eventually reach the end goal if they have a fierce determination to succeed.
Along the way, she shares with readers the spiritual lessons that she learned from her jungle companions that can be used by anyone wanting to walk more consciously in the world.
