osgone

The hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus features been used since ancient times, and even in Peru the particular tradition have been unbroken for over three or more, 000 years. The first depiction of typically the cactus is a new carving showing some sort of mythological being keeping a San Pedro, and dates through about 1300 bc. It comes in the Chav�n culture (c. 1400-400 bce) in addition to was found throughout a temple at Chav�n de Huantar, inside the northern highlands of Peru. After, the Mochica culture, (c. 500 ce) used the cactus throughout their iconography. Perhaps in present day mythology, it is usually told that Our god hid the take some time to heaven in a secret spot and San Pedro used the marvelous powers of the cactus to find out this specific place; later typically the cactus was named after him.

La Mesa Norte�a

Juan Navarro was delivered within the highland community of Somate, section of Piura. They are a descendent of a lengthy lineage of healers and shamans working with the magical power of the sacred lakes known as Las Huaringas which in turn stand at four, 000 metres in addition to have been revered since earliest Peruvian civilization. At the particular age of ten, Juan made their first pilgrimage to Las Huaringas, in addition to took San Pedro initially. Every calendar month or two it is necessary to return here to accumulate energy and protection to treat his people. Mainly because well as people and Lime�os (people from Lima), pilgrims also come through many parts of Southwest America.

During the particular sessions Juan works untiringly, assisted by simply his two sons – as is usually common in this traditions – in a complex sequence of processes, including invocation, prognosis, divination, and recovery with natural things, or artes. The artes are in the beginning placed on typically the maestro’s altar or mesa, and indexed when required through the ceremony. These artes are an astonishing and beautiful variety of shells, swords, magnets, quartzes, things resembling sexual internal organs, rocks which spark when struck jointly, and stones by animals’ stomachs which in turn they have ingested to aid food digestion! The artes are collected from pre-Colombian tombs, and almost holy energetic places, especially Las Huaringas. These people bring magical attributes for the ceremony exactly where, under the visionary effect of San Pedro, their invisible capabilities might be experienced. The particular maestro’s mesa : a weaving positioned on the earth about which all the artes are put, (mesa does mean ‘table’ in Spanish) – is a representation of the makes of nature in addition to the cosmos. By means of the mesa typically the shaman is able to work together with in addition to influence these makes to diagnose and even heal disease.

The particular traditional mesa norte�a has three regions: on the still left is the sector ganadero or ‘field of the dark’; around the right is definitely the campo imparcial or the ‘field of the light’ (justiciero means justice); and the centre will be the campo centro or ‘neutral field’, which can be the location of balance involving the forces of light and dark. It is necessary for us certainly not to take a look at these kinds of forces as optimistic or negative — it is that which we human beings do with one of these forces which in turn is important. Though the contents plus form of typically the artes varies coming from tradition to tradition, the mesa traditions serve to point out to us that the particular use and energy of symbols runs throughout all ethnicities.

SAN PEDRO

San Pedro (trichocereus pachanoi) grows for the dried eastern slopes regarding the Andes, between 2, 000 instructions 3, 000 metres above sea level, and commonly extends to six metres or more in height. That is also developed by local shamans in their herb gardens. As can be imagined, early European missionaries organised the native practices in considerable scorn, and indeed were very negative when reporting the work with of the San Pedro. Yet a new Spanish missionary, offered by Christian R�tsch, grudgingly admitted typically the cactus’ medicinal benefit in the center of a tirade reviling it: “It is a flower with whose support the devil is able to strengthen the Indians in their idolatry; those who drink its juice lose their senses and even are as though deceased; they are nearly carried away simply by the drink plus dream a thousand uncommon things and feel that they happen to be true. The juice excellent against burning up in the kidneys and, in small sums, is also great against high fever, hepatitis, and burning in the urinary. ” A shaman’s account of the particular cactus is radical contrast:

“It first… produces… drowsiness or even a dreamy condition and a feeling of lethargy… a new slight dizziness… then the great ‘vision’, the clearing of all the faculties… this produces a light source numbness in the particular body and after a tranquillity. And even then comes distance, a type involving visual force… comprehensive of all the particular senses… including typically the sixth sense, the telepathic sense of transmitting oneself around time and issue… like a kind of associated with your thought to some sort of distant dimension. “

San Pedro, considered as the ‘maestro of the particular maestros’, enables the particular shaman to help make a bridge between the visible and the invisible world intended for his people. The particular Quechua name with regard to it is punku, which means ‘doorway’. The doorway connects the patient’s entire body to his soul; to heal your body we must recover the spirit. San Pedro can display us the psychic causes of condition intuitively or inside of mythical dream vocabulary. The effects of San Pedro job through various portions, beginning with an expanded physical awareness in the body. Soon this is accompanied by optimistic feelings then, after several hours, free psychic question and visionary outcomes become more visible.

talking with Juan Navarro

What is usually the relationship of the maestro with San Pedro?

In the particular north of Peru the strength of San Pedro works in blend with tobacco. Also the sacred lakes Las Huaringas are extremely important. This is definitely where we get to find the particular best healing herbs which we work with to energize the people. For example many of us use dominio [linking one’s intent with the nature power of the plants] to be able to give strength in addition to protection from great forces such because sorcery and negative thoughts. It is additionally place into the seguros – amulet baby bottles filled with scent, plants and seed gathered from Algunas Huaringas. You always keep them in your home for protection and to help make it your life go properly. These plants carry out not have any secondary effects within the nervous system, neither do these cards provoke hallucinations. San Pedro has strength and is mildly hallucinatory, nevertheless you cannot come to be addicted. It does not go harm to your body, quite it helps the particular maestro to observe what the issue is with his sufferer. Of course some men and women have this present born in them – as our own ancestors used in order to say, it really is inside of the blood of a shaman.

Is San Pedro a ‘teacher plant’?

Of program, nonetheless it has a certain mystery. A person have to end up being compatible with that because it doesn’t work for all of us. The shaman includes a specific relationship by it. This circulates within the body of the patient and where it finds abnormality it allows the shaman to be able to detect it. It lets him know the pain they look and whereabouts it will be. It is therefore the link between patient and even maestro. In addition, it purifies the blood in the person who beverages it. It balances the nervous system so people lose their fears, frights and traumas, and even it charges people who have positive energy. Every person must drink so that the maestro can connect to them. Only the dose may fluctuate from person to be able to person because not everyone is because strong. Trichocereus pachanoi