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Atmosphere and feature ratings above are based on Best Retreats research (October 2026). They will be updated if Ancient Mother submits its own information.

Ancient Mother: An In-Depth Review for Ayahuasca Retreats near Assen, Netherlands

Ancient Mother Healing Center is a small Dutch ayahuasca and San Pedro (huachuma) operation led by Margriet Achtereekte, a self-described Shipibo-trained “ayahuascera.” Since about May 2025 it has run weekend and four-day retreats at Motherland, a rented farmhouse venue in the village of Zeijen, about 6 km north of Assen in Drenthe; before that it ran ceremonies on a houseboat in Broek in Waterland, just north of Amsterdam. Retreats cost €950 for three days and €1,250 for four, with groups of up to about 12 who sleep on mattresses in the ceremony room. Reviews are uniformly excellent, 4.92 from 22 on BookRetreats and 5.00 from 14 on Retreat Guru, and we found no incidents. The core issue is legal: ayahuasca has been prohibited in the Netherlands since a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, and organizers of a retreat where a participant died were convicted in 2022, yet the center offers ayahuasca openly and publishes no legal statement. It also has no medical staff or emergency protocol on record, gives no specific contraindication list, and its own site and booking platforms state three different refund policies. Our earlier profile needs correcting on its location, price, team, legal status and the founder’s biography.

🎯 At a Glance

• Locations: Motherland, a “traditional farmhouse in Zeijen, a small village in Drenthe, close to Assen,” according to the center’s locations page; Zeijen is in the municipality of Tynaarlo. Guests are collected at Assen station, about 15 minutes away. The venue is a separate business that also runs its own retreats. Until early 2025 the center operated from a houseboat on the Broekermeerdijk near Amsterdam.
• Approach: Evening ayahuasca ceremonies of about six hours, a daytime huachuma ceremony on the four-day retreat, sharing and integration circles, meditation, breathwork, nature walks and fire gatherings, guided by a small Dutch team. Couples retreats with coaching are also offered.
• Suitable For: Healthy adults in or near the Netherlands who want a small, communal weekend ceremony with a caring team, and who understand they would be taking part in an activity that is illegal under Dutch law. Not suited to anyone who needs medical cover, privacy or legal certainty.
• Costs: €950 for the three-day ayahuasca retreat, €1,250 for the four-day ayahuasca and huachuma retreat and €2,750 for couples, with deposits of €250 or €350, according to the center’s retreats page. Retreat Guru shows €850 and €1,150, and BookRetreats US$1,066 and US$1,402. Shared accommodation, vegetarian meals, pickup at Assen station and an integration call are included.
• Overall Assessment: A small, highly rated retreat with a health intake, a caring team and follow-up integration, offset by ayahuasca ceremonies that are illegal in the Netherlands, no medical staff or emergency protocol, no specific contraindication list, communal sleeping, and contradictory prices, group sizes and refund policies across its listings. Directory evaluation: C+.

💬 What Guests Are Saying

Here is how Ancient Mother rates across review platforms in October 2026:

The positive picture. Reviewers describe feeling completely safe, caring and wise guides, a high guide-to-guest ratio, beautiful music, healthy food, careful preparation calls and follow-up through a WhatsApp group. Many single out Margriet’s care, and houseboat-era guests remember the setting among water and retired horses.

The negative feedback. No review below four stars appears on any platform; the text of the one four-star review was not shown. Two older reviews mention a pickup miscommunication.

Who is writing the reviews. Every rating is perfect or nearly so, and no independent platform such as Google or Tripadvisor exists to cross-check. The center’s homepage carries a testimonial signed “Marnix,” the same first name as a current guide, which says groups are “never more than six,” a claim our earlier profile repeated. One review on the center’s site nearly repeats another word for word, and parts of the site are unedited template pages, including a “rooms” page advertising ocean water bungalows in US dollars. If you have attended, we encourage you to share your experience through our submission form.

🚩 Incident Report

We searched review platforms, Dutch and English-language news, court records and forums for reports involving Ancient Mother, Margriet Achtereekte, the houseboat location and the Motherland venue.

• Deaths and serious injuries: None found involving this center. Other Dutch ayahuasca operators have been linked to deaths, including in Eersel and IJzendijke in 2019 and Haarlem in November 2019.
• Sexual misconduct: No allegations found.
• Theft and crime: No reports found.
• Legal action: No police action, raids or prosecutions found involving the center or its people, and no ayahuasca enforcement found in Drenthe.

If you have experienced or witnessed an incident at Ancient Mother, please report it confidentially.

🔍 Critical Notes

Ayahuasca is illegal in the Netherlands. On October 1, 2019, the Supreme Court upheld a conviction for importing ayahuasca tea, ruling that the ban on DMT is a permitted restriction on religious freedom, as the Hoge Raad announced. In 2022 a Dutch court sentenced two organizers of a Haarlem retreat where a participant died to community service for supplying ayahuasca, according to the judiciary. A regional newspaper reported in October 2026 that banned ayahuasca ceremonies remain openly bookable in the Netherlands while local authorities say they know nothing about them. Ancient Mother’s current site makes no legal statement. Our earlier profile described a “legal gray area” and said the center’s psilohuasca with magic truffles was legal; ayahuasca is plainly prohibited, and while fresh truffles are legal, psilocybin in processed form is not, so a brewed truffle preparation is legally doubtful. Huachuma is made from a cactus that is legal to own as a plant, while extracted mescaline is not.

Three refund policies. The center’s FAQ says “Deposits are non-refundable,” with a transfer to another date sometimes possible. BookRetreats offers a full deposit refund 30 or more days out, 50% from 15 to 29 days and nothing inside 14 days. Retreat Guru shows the deposit as “fully refundable until 1 day prior.” Prices and group sizes also differ: the official site says groups are “usually 7 to 12” with a capacity of 12, BookRetreats says “no more than 11,” and past listings gave 6 or 10. Book through the channel whose terms you can rely on.

Who is the company? The center is registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce as Ancient Mother Healing Center (KvK 83807756), founded in August 2021 and still registered at its Amsterdam-area address, with a change of management recorded in April 2026, according to registry data on Oozo. A directory copy of its registered activity lists yoga, meditation and “Psylohuasca ceremonies,” not ayahuasca. Margriet’s earlier sole proprietorship, registered in 2020, is no longer active.

Corrections to our earlier profile. The venue is in Zeijen, about 6 km north of Assen, not in Assen itself. The price is €950 to €1,250 (about €313 to €317 a day), not around €362 a day or 400. The biography our earlier profile gave Margriet, as a former advertising creative, singer-songwriter, author and coach, belongs to Marnix Pauwels, one of the center’s guides; Margriet’s own background is Kashmir yoga, rebalancing and Shipibo training. The current team is Margriet, Susanne, Pita, Emmeline, Ilco and Marnix, not “Margriet, Susan and Harold.” Retreats begin by 1 p.m., not at 3 p.m., and pickup is at Assen station, not Rotterdam Central. The center does describe a health questionnaire and preparation guidelines, which our earlier profile said were not public. We found no source for the farmhouse being 400 years old, which remains unverified.

🆘 Screening & Mental Health Risks

Guests complete a health questionnaire and intake form covering health, medication and previous experience, and a place remains “subject to review” even after payment, according to the FAQ. The current site says only that ayahuasca “may be unsuitable” for some medical or psychiatric conditions and tells guests not to stop medication without their prescriber; the center’s older website warned against combining MAOIs with SSRIs, said to wait at least a month after stopping SSRIs, and ruled out high blood pressure and heart problems. No medical staff are named, no facilitator lists a medical or psychological credential, and no emergency protocol is published; the FAQ says guides “take distress seriously” and can sit with guests and help with breathing. Guests sleep on mattresses in the shared ceremony space. The nearest emergency department is at Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis Assen, roughly 10 to 15 minutes by car. Integration includes a closing talk, an individual call two to three weeks later and a WhatsApp group. ICEERS notes that ayahuasca’s MAOI component makes combinations with SSRIs and other serotonergic medications contraindicated, and that ayahuasca is contraindicated for people prone to psychosis. Erowid warns of extreme, possibly fatal reactions with some prescription drugs. Never stop a psychiatric medication to qualify for a retreat without your prescriber’s guidance.

🧪 Brew Substance

The center does not publish its recipe; its team includes a “Master Brewer,” which suggests the brew is prepared in-house. Traditional ayahuasca combines the Banisteriopsis caapi vine with a DMT-containing leaf such as chacruna, as Erowid explains. The three-day retreat has two evening ayahuasca ceremonies of about six hours each; the four-day adds a daytime huachuma (San Pedro) ceremony, described as “two nights inward, one day outward.” An older page offers a psilohuasca retreat with magic truffles, which no longer appears in the current menus. No kambo, rapé or bufo is offered. Ask exactly what is in each cup and how doses are set.

📍 Location, Setting & Style

• Setting: A farmhouse with a large garden among fields and woods in rural Drenthe, flat and cool, with deer as frequent visitors, according to the center’s listing.
• Rooms: No private bedrooms; guests sleep on mattresses in the shared ceremony room and share bathrooms, and campervan sleeping can be arranged.
• Style: Small and personal, with fire, music, sharing circles and breathwork. Meals are vegetarian, with fruit after ceremonies and soup or a hot meal from a private cook. Retreats are “mainly in English,” with Dutch available one-on-one.

Practical guidance: Take the train to Assen, about two hours from Amsterdam or Schiphol; the center collects guests at the station. No airport transfer is offered.

Should You Book?

Ancient Mother may suit you if you live in or near the Netherlands, want a small, warmly run ceremony weekend and fully understand that ayahuasca use is illegal there. The trade-offs: legal risk, no medical staff or emergency protocol, no specific contraindication list, communal sleeping, and refund terms that depend on where you book. If you go, get the group size, medication exclusions, emergency plan and refund terms in writing, and read our guide to verifying retreat facilitators.

The Team & Story

Margriet Achtereekte, listed as owner and head guide, describes training in Kashmir yoga and rebalancing, then the Shipibo tradition in the Peruvian Amazon, including a dieta and initiation “as an Ayahuascera” under a maestro she names as Don Enrique Lopez; we could not identify that maestro. Her experience is given as “more than 2,000” ceremonies on one platform and “more than 200” ayahuasca journeys on another. The current team page lists Susanne as a second head guide, Pita and Emmeline as guides, Ilco as “Master Brewer & Guide” and Marnix as guide and integration coach. Marnix Pauwels, an author and coach whose first book was about drinking and anxiety, says on his own site that he has guided at the center for a few years. Emmeline also runs the Motherland venue. We did not independently verify anyone’s credentials.

Prep & Integration Tips

Before you go: Complete the health questionnaire honestly, disclose every medication and condition, and talk with your own doctor well before the retreat. Eat lightly and avoid alcohol and drugs in the week before, as the center advises. After you return: An individual integration call and a WhatsApp group are included. Arrange support from a qualified therapist at home as well. Our guide on how to research ayahuasca incidents can help you check any center.

Pros & Cons

Book Your Ceremony

Bookings are made through ancientmother.nl, its Retreat Guru pages and BookRetreats. Upcoming 2026 dates include a three-day retreat on November 6 to 8, a four-day retreat on November 19 to 22 and another on December 10 to 13; other dates are fully booked. Before paying, confirm in writing the group size, the medication exclusions, the emergency arrangements and the refund terms for your booking channel, and consider the legal risk. Best Retreats does not take bookings; learn more about our mission.

Last reviewed October 2026.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Consult a qualified medical professional.