Catcus of Vision - San Pedro and the shamanic tradition of Northern Peru
Juan Navarro interviewed by Howard G. Charing & Peter Cloudsley
The hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus has been used since ancient times, and in Peru the tradition has been unbroken for over 3,000 years. The earliest depiction of the cactus is a carving showing a mythological being holding a San Pedro, and dates from about 1300 bc. It comes from the Chavín culture (c.1400-400 bce) and was found in a temple at Chavín de Huantar, in the northern highlands of Peru. Later, the Mochica culture, (c.500 ce) used the cactus in their iconography. Even in present day mythology, it is told that God hid the keys to heaven in a secret place and San Pedro used the magical powers of a cactus to discover this place; later the cactus was named after him.
La Mesa Norteña
Juan Navarro was born in the highland village of Somate, department of Piura. He is a descendant of a long lineage of healers and shamans working with the magical powers of the sacred lakes known as Las Huaringas which stand at 4,000 metres and have been revered since earliest Peruvian civilization. At the age of eight, Juan made his first pilgrimage to Las Huaringas, and took San Pedro for the first time. Every month or two it is necessary to return here to accumulate energy and protection to heal his people. As well as locals and Limeños (people from Lima), pilgrims also come from many parts of South America.
During the sessions Juan works untiringly, assisted by his two sons - as is common in this traditions - in an intricate sequence of processes, including invocation, diagnosis, divination, and healing with natural objects, or artes. The artes are initially placed on the maestro's altar or mesa, and picked up when required during the ceremony. These artes are an astonishing and beautiful array of shells, swords, magnets, quartzes, objects resembling sexual organs, rocks which spark when struck together, and stones from animals' stomachs which they have swallowed to aid digestion! The artes are collected from pre-Colombian tombs, and sacred energetic places, particularly Las Huaringas.They bring magical qualities to the ceremony where, under the visionary influence of San Pedro, their invisible powers may be experienced. The maestro's mesa - a weaving placed on the ground on which all the artes are placed, (mesa also means 'table' in Spanish) - is a representation of the forces of nature and the cosmos.Through the mesa the shaman is able to work with and influence these forces to diagnose and heal disease.
The traditional mesa norteña has three areas: on the left is the campo ganadero or 'field of the dark'; on the right is the campo justiciero or the 'field of the light' (justiciero means justice); and in the centre is the campo medio or 'neutral field', which is the place of balance between the forces of light and dark. It is important for us not to look at these forces as positive or negative - it is what we human beings do with these forces which is important. Although the contents and form of the artes varies from tradition to tradition, the mesa rituals serve to remind us that the use and power of symbols extends throughout all cultures.
SAN PEDRO
San Pedro (trichocereus pachanoi) grows on the dry eastern slopes of the Andes, between 2,000 - 3,000 metres above sea level, and commonly reaches six metres or more in height. It is also grown by local shamans in their herb gardens. As can be imagined, early European missionaries held the native practices in considerable contempt, and indeed were very negative when reporting the use of the San Pedro. Yet a Spanish missionary, cited by Christian Rätsch, grudgingly admitted the cactus' medicinal value in the midst of a tirade reviling it: "It is a plant with whose aid the devil is able to strengthen the Indians in their idolatry; those who drink its juice lose their senses and are as if dead; they are almost carried away by the drink and dream a thousand unusual things and believe that they are true. The juice is good against burning of the kidneys and, in small amounts, is also good against high fever, hepatitis, and burning in the bladder." A shaman's account of the cactus is in radical contrast:
"It first ... produces ... drowsiness or a dreamy state and a feeling of lethargy ... a slight dizziness ... then a great 'vision', a clearing of all the faculties ... it produces a light numbness in the body and afterward a tranquillity. And then comes detachment, a type of visual force ... inclusive of all the senses ... including the sixth sense, the telepathic sense of transmitting oneself across time and matter ... like a kind of removal of one's thought to a distant dimension."
San Pedro, considered the 'maestro of the maestros', enables the shaman to make a bridge between the visible and the invisible world for his people.The Quechua name for it is punku, which means 'doorway'. The doorway connects the patient's body to his spirit; to heal the body we must heal the spirit. San Pedro can show us the psychic causes of illness intuitively or in mythical dream language. The effects of San Pedro work through various stages, beginning with an expanded physical awareness in the body. Soon this is followed by euphoric feelings and then, after several hours, psychic and visionary effects become more noticeable.
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talking with Juan Navarro
What is the relationship of the maestro
with San Pedro?
In the north of Peru the power of San Pedro works in combination with tobacco. Also the sacred lakes Las Huaringas are very important. This is where we go to find the most powerful healing herbs which we use to energize our people. For example we use dominio [linking one's intent with the spirit power of the plants] to give strength and protection from supernatural forces such as sorcery and negative thoughts. It is also put into the seguros - amulet bottles filled with perfume, plants and seeds gathered from Las Huaringas. You keep them in your home for protection and to make your life go well. These plants do not have any secondary effects on the nervous system, nor do they provoke hallucinations. San Pedro has strength and is mildly hallucinatory, but you cannot become addicted. It doesn't do any harm to your body, rather it helps the maestro to see what the problem is with his patient. Of course some people have this gift born in them - as our ancestors used to say, it is in the blood of a shaman.
Is San Pedro a 'teacher plant'?
Of course, but it has a certain mystery.You have to be compatible with it because it doesn't work for everybody.The shaman has a special relationship with it. It circulates in the body of the patient and where it finds abnormality it enables the shaman to detect it. It lets him know the pain they feel and whereabouts it is. So it is the link between patient and maestro. It also purifies the blood of the person who drinks it. It balances the nervous system so people lose their fears, frights and traumas, and it charges people with positive energy. Everyone must drink so that the maestro can connect with them. Only the dose may vary from person to person because not everyone is as strong.
What about the singado? (inhalation of tobacco juice through the nostrils) The tobacco leaf is left for two to three months in contact with honey, and when required for the singado it is macerated with aguardiente, or alcohol. How it functions depends on which nostril is used; when taken in by the left side it is for liberating us of negative energy, including psychosomatic ills, pains in the body, bad influences of other people - or 'envy' as we call it here. As you take it in you must concentrate on the situation which is going badly, or the person which is giving out a negative energy.
When taken through the right nostril it is for rehabilitating and energizing, so that your projects go well. It's not for getting high on. Afterwards you can spit the tobacco out or swallow it, it doesn t matter. It has an interrelation with the san pedro in the body, and intensifies the visionary effects.
Tobacco is an important plant in the ceremonies - can you smoke in the session? No, no, no. It may be the same plant but here another element comes into play, which is fire. As the session is carried out in darkness, the fire in the darkness can perturb, create a negative reflection or vision. It can cause trauma.
You use a chungana (rattle) during the san pedro sessions and I 'see' the sound as a beam of a light penetrating the darkness. Yes, sound and light are interrelated. Chunganas are used to invoke the spirits of the dead, whether of family or of great healers, so that they may feel comfortable with us. the chunganas are to give us 'enchantment' (protection and positive energy) and it has a relaxing effect when taking san pedro.
What is the power of the artes - the objects on the mesa?
They come from Las Huaringas, where a special energy is bestowed on everything, including the healing herbs which grow there and nowhere else. If you bathe in the lakes it takes away all your ills. You bathe with the intention of leaving everything negative behind. People go there to leave their enemies behind, so they can't do them any harm. After bathing, the maestro cleanses you with these artes, swords, bars, chontas (bamboo staffs), saints, and even huacos (the powers from ancient sacred sites). They 'flourish' you - spraying you with agua florida
(perfume) and herb macerations, and giving you sweet things like limes and honey, so your life flourishes. We maestros also need to go to Las Huaringas regularly because we make enemies from healing people, so we need to protect ourselves. The reason for this is that two forces exist: the good and the bad. The bad forces are from the pacts which the brujos (sorcerors with negative
intentions) make with the devil. The brujo is the rival of the curandero or healer. So when the curandero heals, he makes an enemy of the brujo. It's not so much because he sends the bad magic back, as because he does the opposite thing to him, and they want supremacy in the battle. Not far from Las Huaringas is a place called Sondor, which has its own lakes. This is where evil magic is practiced and where they do harm in a variety of ways. I know because as a curandero I must know how sorcery is practiced, in order to defend myself and my patients.
Do people go there secretly?
Of course no one admits to going there, but they pass through Huancabamba just like the others who are going to Las Huaringas. I know various people who practice bad magic at a distance.They do it using physical means, concentrating, summoning up a person's soul, knowing their characteristics etc. and can make them suffer an accident, or make an organ ill or whatever, or make their work go badly wrong.They have the power to get to their spirit. And people can even do harm to themselves. For example, if a person has bad intentions towards another and that person is well protected with an encanto, (amulet) then he will do himself harm.
How does the 'rastreo' (diagnosis through psychic means) work? Are you in an altered state? No, I'm completely normal and lucid. What allows the reading of a person's past, present or future, is the strength of the san pedro and tobacco. It is an innate capability -not everybody has the gift, you can't learn it from someone, it is inherited. The perceptions come through any one of the senses - sound, vision, smell, or a feeling inside of what the person is feeling, a weakness, a pain or whatever. Sometimes, for instance, a bad taste in the mouth may indicate a bad liver. All the things on the mesa are perfectly normal, natural things: chontas, swords, stones etc. They have just received a treatment - like a radio tuned to a certain frequency - so they can heal particular things, weaknesses or whatever. But always it is necessary to concentrate on the sacred lakes, Las Huaringas.
Is it necessary for the maestro to take San Pedro to have vision? Of course, he must take San Pedro and tobacco. But it is to protect himself from the person's negativity and illness, not because he needs it to have the vision.
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In conclusion, we must acknowledge that we, as humans, have realised from earliest times that knowledge goes beyond sensory awareness or the rational way of understanding the world. San pedro can take us directly to a telepathic communion and show us that there is no such thing as an inanimate object. Everything in the universe is alive and has a spirit. This is the gift of the plants which offer us a doorway into the infinite.
Juan Navarro was born in the highland village of Somate, department of Piura. He is a descendant of a long lineage of healers and shamans working with the magical powers of Las Huaringas.
Howard G. Charing is a co-director of Eagle's Wing Centre for Contemporary Shamanism, and a major part of his work and interest is encountering and studying with the shamans and healers of the Andes, Amazon Rainforest, and the Philippines with their work on Plant Spirit Medicine. He has been initiated in the lineage of the Maestros of the Rio Napo community in the Upper Amazon and has been baptised into the Shipibo tribe. Howard organises journeys to meet and work with these maestros.
Details are on the web at http://www.shamanism.co.uk
The Final Embrace-Death and Rebirth into the One-Rebalancing the One Unified Field
A call for action in Unity
Imagine ...
And the world would be One...
To all:
This message seeks to unite. In that capacity it means to transcends all restricted understandings of our spiritual heritage and applications of it. It has all to do about the One Spirit that Unites us all, whether we are aware of It, or not. It seeks to bring us soon into a gentler, kinder, probable future.
Recent Remote viewing sessions from teams of Remote Viewers from the Academy have shown a proximate probable future that we feel should be communicated. It is not our habit to spoon-feed a constant litany of horrific end-of-times scenarios as many remote viewers have done. We see no need to add to the general addiction to fear which has grappled mankind lately. If you feel that this message is about fear, then please read it again and again. This is not about events, judgment, but about the panacea to erase fear, and suffering. You all carry this Infinite Force within. NOW is the time to manifest it.
However, because of the imbalance between fear and love, man and nature, humankind and its Creator, male and female energies, great corrections are taking place on very High energy planes and very sub-conscious planes. These are attempts to rebalance The ALL that need to happen. The One is the Fulcrum or vertical pole of the Tree of Life symbolized by the Cross, the Ankh and so many other powerful symbols. Nothing can remain eternally in a state of imbalance, for the One Unified Field of Energy brings automatically all back to perfect balance and then inverts the movement so that Creation as a unbalancing act can happen again and again within Eternity.
This message is different from prior ones. Because of the scope of events which we are seeing in our global probable future lens, I am going to ask you to do a very simple thing. So simple, yet so powerful and important, that it carries in it the seed to change this whole planet's consciousness.
I am going to ask you, I would like you to enter, morning and evening all around this planet, in a state of total communion with the One Unified Field which we all represent and are parts of.
This will become our answer to 9/11 and to the fear cloud which has since engulfed much of our awareness and dulled our hearts and minds.
I will ask you to open your heart in perfect abandon and trust, and invite within your being a force of pure unrestricted love which lies now deeply entombed within it. It has never left you, but you have, for the most part and for eons, not been aware of its presence. Please, call upon It to pervade your awareness, your total being, and chase away all illusions of fear. Bathe in its loving embrace. It is only through opening your heart to its magnificent presence that you will experience within and project then without the Divine Feminine force which has been called so often the Holy Spirit, Christ (anointed one in ancient Greek), bindu point, The Great Spirit, Shakti, Ruach Hakodesh, Cosmic Consciousness, Shekinah, Sakinah etc... You do not need to name It unless you feel more comfortable doing so. This is the Real Power of total unconditional Love. It is the quality of total acceptance of who we are and have become, and the Divine aspect totally void of judgment.
If you stop only for a small moment your daily activities, and accept unconditionally the Messiah within, the savior within, you will then totally perceive and feel that the Messiah (savior) is within each and every one of you. You are each connected to the savior, as it is you, deep within your heart: your soul. It is the loving Self of Oneness waiting to be recognized and invited.
In the time of our exile from our inner Divine Self we thought that we could not be the Divine Savior, that only one Savior could have been or be it. We waited for It on the outside, and the pain of separation became evermore greater. There is no one external Savior. We are all It. We are all the Divine Sons of The One (Father/Spirit Source of ALL Life) - each and every one of us. It is only by unconditionally inviting this realization within and touching that vibration of Divinity within our hearts that we become aware of being the Divine Son, and that the Divine Child and the Divine Source (Divine Father) are but One. All you need is to open your heart to the Savior within and invite it in. It will answer your call. It has been in exile from yourself, and you from It, far too long. The separation has been too painful and the suffering is now so extreme that only by dulling our awareness have we been able to survive, one day at a time. Our hearts have lost their softness and have hardened. We long for the memory of what our souls have once known, Love, Peace, brotherhood, in Divine Oneness. The Messiah has died in utter suffering billions of times nailed to the Tree of Life which has embraced fear and separation. As the Divine Unconditional Loving Eternal One Source hiding in each soul, sHe died over and over again as so many human beings lived and then departed in pain and exile from the realization and experience of Oneness in the Kingdom of One. sHe can but only be reborn in Its full Glory as your Savior in the womb of your Loving Hearts, as you feel and live the way of One.
The only sin there can be is in the perception of separation and fear. It is that perception which kills the awakening of the Oneness within.
We have searched for real Love and real Peace outside of ourselves, but have found naught but sorrow and insecurity.
How we have forgotten that we carried Its seed and Holy presence within!
How barren our souls have become, how silent our awareness!
We have witnessed the effects of separating from this Divine One Heart within, disconnecting from one another, all of us, brothers and sisters, children of the same One Godly Energy, and begat a dark cloud of fear - a stone-like dark clouded energy covering our Inner Self and not allowing for the Light of The Divine presence to shine through and forth.
As this cloud of fear overcame us, we have tended to deny our Divine Origin and brotherhood, our undeniable right to all be happy and free from any fear and anxiety. We forgot that were born out of Love, and that we all can only but come back to It, sooner or later, without exception.
In the hells we created, we tried to burn the fire of Love. But no water nor fire can burn our inner Essence for It will always resurge from the deeper recesses of our souls, as It is our Eternal Self, the part that never changes nor dies: The Fulcrum of the swinging polarities.
It is only through inviting and embracing the Unconditional Divine Feminine Love dwelling within us that we can rejoin the Father of Divine Light within the heavens of our Sub-conscious realms: the inner Kingdom. And, as we enter the Divine Feminine Presence of the Loving energy, we can then bring down the magnificent powerful Light of the Father in our common Heavens in a final Union of Oneness, as we all realize that we were, are, and will always remain the Eternal One Energy of loving embrace and Oneness.
In order to do so, we have to crucify our pain of separateness and die in the notion of fear and separation, by embracing the totality of the Tree of Creation, which is the tree of Life.
As we are voluntarily nailed to the Tree of Creation, we must invite the death of its imbalanced state of being when fear rules over love. It is only by OUR decision to kill ourselves from this old painful perception of fear/separation, that we can then be Divinely reborn into the new Creation: The New Earth (outside reality) and the New Heaven (inside reality). The key is to STOP, go within, and unconditionally embrace Love over separation, and accept that the ones that are not ready yet are still ALL The One and should be forgiven for they "do not know what they are doing."
It is only through the active decision to unconditionally embrace the Divine Feminine aspect of annointed Unconditional Love, who we all carry inside, that we can, each and every one, go through the realization that we are each the Fulcrum, the balancing Zero point, and that we can then invert the polarities in the Final rebirth of Love, after having died in and killed the old world system of fear.
Within the irony of time, we are running out of time to awaken and apply this universal Divine Gift which we all carry, equally so, adults, children, rich, poor, people of all colors, all creed or not, all magnificent individuation of The One.
Within the irony of timed manifestations, dis-eases and imbalance always starts at the level of the outer energetic bodies and inner recesses of our sub-conscious realms before it finally expresses itself in painful manifestation in the physical and sensory conscious realm. Much major rebalancing and restructuring, is already occurring in the energetically and sub-conscious Higher worlds, for the Fulcrum of One needs to keep balancing the imbalances if they become too acute. We all have the power to help this process of redemption, before it touches the boundary of our physical and conscious reality. We all have the power to save our world.
As the Asian tsunami and the latest earth-movements and energy releases have hinted lately, the "ring of fire" in the Pacific rim is being activated, and the tectonic plates of our Mother Earth are being restructured. We have remote viewed probable futures which strongly pointed out that if we do not accept our Loving Unity soon, much fracture will be shown manifesting our dis-connected state from the state of Union in Oneness. Tremendous rumblings will be felt throughout the One Unified Field. Please let us avoid such painful re-alignment!
All we need to do is so simple: Re-member all the pieces that we form in the Unity of the Being of The One. Do it not out of fear, for it will negate it, but out of a deep yearning for Limitless and Unconditional Love. Cry and laugh all you can at the same time.
I hope that you realize how important this is and ask for your help in helping save your selves by spreading this message quickly and inviting Love within.
I would like to finish by quoting an excerpt from a book by Goldie Knight "The unseen World" (2003), which a student sent me a couple of days ago:
What is the Christ? (Christ is the English translation of the Greek word Χριστός (Christos), which literally means The Anointed One)
The (real) Christos (anointed one) is a place in consciousness where you become aware of who and what you are. When you become aware of the presence within, you awaken from a deep sleep. You become aware of the beauty around you. Things that once seemed a burden are no longer a burden. You become aware that nothing is yours and yours alone. You are aware that all things and all people belong to God. You know you are his child and you see that if you are a child of God, all others are children of God.
You know in your heart that even your children are not yours. If you are a child of God so are the ones you have called yours. Then you begin to release your hold on them and give them back to God. You trust God to take care of them, whereas in the past you have tried to mold them to your way, or tried to take over their responsibilities. You realize that instead of helping them you have retarded them. You also realize that they too must see their mistakes. Instead of taking over, you speak to the Christ within them and you pour out impersonal love; this is true Christ love. You become aware of why your love must become impersonal. You realize that it is not possible to love all people in a personal way; you love all because all are One.
You begin to speak to God as you would to your dearest friend. You speak to him knowing he is within and not in a far off place You feel warmth from within that you have not felt before. You tell him you have given up the struggle. You feel your troubles take wings and fly away. At last you are free. You have come to that place in consciousness where the anointed (Christos) dwells, that heavenly place that belongs to all, and you know that at long last you have come home. You stand serene and look back over the far country that you have roamed and struggled and wonder why it took you so long to come home. Then you will know the meaning of the words: "You cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven except through the Christ."
In Love of Oneness
Gerald O'Donnell
In my Soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church where I kneel.
Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.
Is there not a region of Love, where the Sovereignty is illuminated nothing, Where ecstasy gets poured into itself and becomes lost,
Where the wing is fully alive but has no mind or body?
In my Soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church that dissolves, that dissolves in God.
Rabia of Basra (c.717-801) most popular and influential female Islamic saint and central figure in the Sufi tradition
Christianity and World Religion
Over the past centuries many religious beliefs have been criticized by many philosophers and critics. Christian faith has never been saved from these criticisms. In fact it has received one of the major blows of disparagement. This criticism of the Christian faith has caused damage to the Christian believers. Due to the criticism of Christianity, Christian believers were also criticized and were questioned by their fellow human beings. And because of these, Christian believers were caught unaware and did not know what to do. Furthermore, this also caused believers to have weak faith in Christianity. There were even others who lost their faith because of these attacks.
The existence of the New Testament has caused more damage to the Christian faith since the teaching found in the New Testament were in contrary to the beliefs of the heretics, criticizers and rebel Christians. In addition, the New Testament insists of Bible alone, Christ Alone, Grace Alone, and faith alone which further provoked the doubtful believers. These non believers were also afraid that Christianity would spread very fast that they tried to stop it by destroying or saying things against the Bible, Jesus Christ and Christianity even though, based on Personalism: Thomas Merton: The mainstream that Christianity had maintained is that God is free and all creation is loved into being.
The Roman Catholic Church at this time (fourth century to the 14th century) indulged in a great struggle for ecclesiastical as well as temporal power that they tend to silenced, torture, and killed millions of dissenting people. This has arrived to a point when instead of relatedness, one was left in detached relation, until it reduced a person and its personality which some view it as more ralted to an object. When the dictatorial rule of the Catholic Church was over, Christianity was rejected by many people since they didn’t understand the difference between Roman Catholic Church, the true church of Christ, and the Christ of the Bible. This was coupled with the rise of a lot of anti-Christian thinkers, philosophies and movements. A lot of anti-Christianity group arise during the 19th century and there common goal is to oppose to the Bible and to Christianity as well. Christ is the word of God and people are called to follow what he had said. Bible alone, Grace alone, Faith alone, Christ alone, to God alone be Glory. Christian apologetics shall always stand in favor of truth, total truth and truth alone. The truth will always be the truth and should always be separated from error.
A human’s journey in life is a journey traveled with God. Such a character rarely seen nowadays, and as I remember the works of St. Therese, which is known as the little flower of Jesus, she is such a Great example of a person who truly exudes an aura of personalism. She is so young, became the youngest nun at 12 years old, her life was so dependent to God, so dependent that she had served nothing but God. Even watering the plans is done because of God. Although self as a creature is a self without an established place, and dependence is a burden to the inflated ego, St. Therese had looked at sins as unfaithful and prone to be susceptible and vulnerable. She died young knowing that her dependence to God is her door to gratitude and now, after being made as a saint, ST. Therese had truly taught people the personalism that is so hard, esp. of today’s technology and antichrist rooming around, that life with God is as beautiful as her flowers.
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