Cebil

Cebil was the religion of the Atacameños, who farmed oases and herded llamas in the Atacama desert and highlands of what is now northern Chile, north-western Argentina and southern Bolivia. Its heart was the inhaling of cebil, a hallucinogenic snuff laid on carved tablets and drawn in through a tube.

Shamans used it to divine and to reach the gods, and the one who inhaled was thought to take on the power of birds, felines and snakes. The tablets spread under the influence of Tiwanaku between 900 and 1200.

The Atacameños believed in many gods who lived on the volcano Licancabur, and in a life after death. After Topa Inca Yupanqui conquered them in the fifteenth century they adopted the Inca sun cult. Diego de Almagro's Spaniards arrived in 1536.