“Yaas”: Awajún’s talent for overcoming difficulties
Young indigenous students are the future leaders of the Amazon. However, they face many obstacles, from having to adapt to a different culture,
In the jungles of Peru, the song or melody used by healers during ritual work is called“ikaro“.
There is no literal translation of this word in Spanish, Quechua or any other language of the region, whereas its meaning at the operational level is much deeper and more important: ikaro or shamanic chanting. is the weapon of healingrepresents wisdom and the vehicle of the healer’s personal energy, the symbol of his power.
The act of “ikarar” involves “charging” an object or potion with the shaman’s power, conferring on it a specific property to be transmitted to the recipient, be it cleansing, protecting, healing, damaging or influencing his or her will. This is done by chanting the ikaro directly onto the object or substance being transmitted. The object, the ingested substance in the case of liquids (potions) or the puffed smoke in the case of tobacco, will then be passed on to the interested party.
Ikaro is a fundamental part of the work of Amazonian healers. It summarizes the shaman’s knowledge, constituting his healing heritage, his working weapon and the legacy he leaves to his apprentice. As the vehicle of its energy, its effectiveness depends to a large extent on its preparation through diet, the ingestion of purgative herbs, lifestyle and the integration of ancient wisdom. A master does not pass on “techniques” or formal instructions to his apprentice, but accompanies and guides him to grasp the knowledge that is predestined for him. As part of this teaching, he transfers “his” ikaros to her.
Each shaman is the owner of his ikaros, just as he is the owner of his experience and wisdom, having received them in turn from his master or directly from nature. It’s common for healers to claim that the things they know, including ikaros, are taught to them through dreams, visions, or given to them by plants. They say that during these states of consciousness induced by the brews of “master plants” they capture the melody, without mediation of will or reason, as it imposes itself, often in an unknown language. When it comes to healing, this usually happens in the same way.
The words or the understanding of the ikaro’s text are not essential, but the melody and the fact that the healer feels and shares the spirit of the ikaro. If he gets along with the ikaro, he’ll know when, how and with whom to use it. The ikaros used by shamans have very simple lyrics, alluding to certain plants, animals and elements of the local landscape that possess power or symbolism. Today, Christian syncretism and biblical allusions can be found in many ikaros. Most of them are written in Spanish, Quechua and other dialects, depending on the origin of the older masters, although some are just monochordal, highly repetitive melodies.
We could say that, like Mantras in Eastern traditions, they act on certain energy centers by means of sound vibrations, thus modulating organic function, and that there is a subconscious knowledge that guides the shaman in choosing the appropriate ikaro for each circumstance.
We could also say that the ikaro is a pretext for the shaman to transmit his energy. Or that the message conveyed in the ikaro has the power to heal.
There’s no precise answer, it could be one or all of the above. Any explanation would be framed in rationalism by a phenomenon that transcends thought, and would therefore only be valid at the level of testimony and subject to experimentation.
Engaged in a process of personal exploration that has led me to experience first-hand certain shamanic “tech- niques”, I would like to testify to the value of ikaro, which I have perceived despite my training as a medical surgeon.
Working in this region of Peru without taking into account the wealth of ancestral medicine is impossible, as each clinical case and each patient brings valuable information. It is necessary, however, to change the vision our culture has given us and learn to see man’s relationship with nature in a different way, accepting that, although we have no rational explanation, there is a medicinal capacity in all human beings, which in some manifests itself spontaneously and can be developed or “unblocked” through work on the body: the healer fundamentally uses his body and energy to heal.
My first contact with ikaro was to see how“curiosas” or grandmothers would blow tobacco smoke or“ikarado” perfume on the energy centers of nervous or frightened children, as well as those with colic, with immediate favorable results. I subsequently learned (and experienced) that this also works with adults, who experience a sense of relaxation and a reduction in vagal symptoms.
I also had the opportunity to see how the mothers of two infants with myiasis (fly larvae inside the lacrimal gland and in the skin of the nostril, respectively) whispered a monotonous melody similar to the sound of the adult insect to make the larva show itself in the orifice. In both cases, it worked.
In the town of Chazuta, famous for its shamans, healer Reninger Guerra Flores is famous for healing venomous snakebites: he knows how to soothe intense pain with ikaros.
During healing rituals using herbal beverages, healers guide the ceremony, modulate individual and collective energy and care for the unity of the group. Perceived under an altered state of consciousness, ikaro helps to metabolize visions, removes subjective content at various levels, guides us in the work of self-exploration and at the same time is the link with the real level of the moment. Although there is no precise sequence for these ikaros, the shaman knows or perceives the one that is appropriate for a given moment. The healer’s strength is seen in the effectiveness of his ikaros, which are captured on a physical level by each member of the group.
It was during an Ayahuasca session (a healing ritual in which a psychoactive potion based on Psychotria viridis, Banisteriopsis caapi and Brugmansia sp. is ingested) that, under the effects of the beverage, I began to understand the inner meaning of ikaro. I have to say that, despite a psychoactive effect with a sensation of enlarged perceptions and visions, contact with reality and the memory function are not abandoned.
The description of the visions I had is important in terms of the sequence and explanation of each ikaro I received. The content and words express my personal and cultural baggage because they manifest and act through me, clearing away personal energies and blockages and forming part of an evolutionary process that has fully involved me. It wasn’t a linear process, it took time and I had to go through thematic cycles corresponding to the stimulation of each energy center. There was influence not only from Ayahuasca, but also from other purifying plants, diets, fasts, herbal baths, purges, as well as the exacerbation of dreams.
The first vision (which was repeated several times until I realized it was an ikaro) was a small green vegetable woman, emerging from a bottle containing a potion, guiding me on the path of self-discovery, singing and dancing. The melody she sang was a way of invoking the presence of the plant’s “mother”: Mother Ayahuasca. This “mother” of plants, as healers call her, is equivalent to the soul or spirit of the human being.
It took me a long time to dare sing these ikaros: I didn’t recognize them as mine, and I didn’t feel I could use them. I experienced a strong struggle between denial of my rationality and acceptance of my inner self. As much as I rejected them, the ikaros imposed themselves through the repetition of dreams, physical discomfort and tension. In the end, I accepted these ikaros as a gift from plants and life.
After several sessions with a sensation of visualization and activation of the energy centers – manifested on a physical level as tingling or heat at various points – the vision of geometric figures of different colors was repeated at each point, which in turn corresponded to a natural shape, symbolism and vocal sound. The vowels were not five as in our alphabet, but seven, with the inclusion of the letters “S” and “M”. I understood that each center had an ikaro-key that would be given to me.
For two years, I received six ikaros, at different times, without premeditating the content or order, always unexpectedly, involuntarily, through visions, dreams and semi-dreams favored by diets and ritual work with master plants.
It corresponds to the base chakra (energy center in Hindu tradition), linked to sexuality. It corresponds to the letter “S” and is a small red snake and fire, which begins its ascent (the awakening of the Kundalini?) crawling slowly towards the abdomen and sacral region, in a three-dimensional form as if the body were transparent. It has to do with the vital energy and healing power of the body, the upward force of the earth rising towards the sun. As I listen to the ikaro “S” sung by the little plant-woman in a soft, sibylline voice, sliding the SSS as if emphasizing the snake’s crawl, I see the other participants in the Ayahuasca session with a reddish glow at the base and although the voice comes out of me, I don’t recognize it as my own.
In ascending order, the second chakra, infra-ombilical, corresponds to the letter “M”, which I visualize as solid, firmly rooted in the earth, concrete and material. I feel that sound comes from the womb, the cradle of instinct, fear, life and death.
The sound of these two letters or chakras would activate the first two centers in relation to the most primary impulses.
Upwards, the orange light column in the second chakra becomes greenish, taking on the shape of a tree that opens generously at chest height. I become aware of my breathing with a pleasant fullness. This corresponds to the letter “A”, the opening of the mouth that projects and allows us to breathe, to expand, to widen, to stretch the respiratory tree, to open consciousness, as well as memories and the soul.
The energy circulating between these two points (infra and supra umbilical) forms a luminous arc which, rotated in a horizontal plane, gives rise to a yellow sun-turnsol corresponding to the solar plexus. This center is then activated with its protective mechanisms and the ability to access pro- grounded self-knowledge, with sadness and joy, emotion, healing and wordless communication of deep con- tenus, as deep as the sound of the letter “U”.
Overcoming this point, we arrive at the letter “O”, a line without beginning or end, representing the eternal and fundamental cycle, the Ouroboros, the point of the heart. This is where the maximum healing power lies, which is Love, represented as a violet sun, and where intuition resides. The letter “O” is a circle carrying all the symbolism associated with this figure.
The letter “E” corresponds to the frontal chakra. This would give us the opportunity to “listen”; not just to capture the sound clearly, but to “understand” the message our body or nature is giving us and take full advantage of it.
Finally, we reach the upper chakra, linked to the letter “I” for Infinity, Immensity, Innermost, Enlightenment… The corresponding ikaro would help us in our ability to “see” inside forms, with greater intensity and light, and above all to discern, to see the importance of integrating the image into the whole, with a universal vision. See in another dimension, with other eyes, with more transcendence, and live each moment to the full.
I haven’t finished receiving all the ikaros yet, so I don’t know if I’m going to get the full series, or when that’s going to happen, or what’s going to happen next. I also don’t know what subconscious mechanisms might have fostered this, or whether it actually works. I don’t find it easy to get out of the rational scheme, and I have to admit that there are a number of interesting riddles that have no explanation. There is a knowledge of life hidden deep within each of us, removed from our awareness by excessive external stimuli and misuse of our bodies. If we put ourselves in the right conditions, this knowledge can emerge unexpectedly, illuminating a path we hadn’t seen before.
“S “3 Introdúceme en tu cuerpo, desde allí yo te hablaré.
Introdúceme en tu mente, desde allí te alumbraré.
Introdúceme en tu corazón, desde allí te daré calor.
Oirás mi voz de serpiente deslizarse en tu oído.
Verás mi luz sin verla a través de los sentidos…
y mi calor te seguirá más allá del frío frío
Y seré parte de ti, tierra lanzada al infinito…
Mi voz te susurrará cosas que crees no saber.
Dentro de ti vas a encontrar la respuesta a tu ser
Ocho (8), doble círculo fecundo
dos serpientes enroscadas, que te hablan sin decir…
que te dicen sin hablar…
NADA
Soy la energía en ti dormida, despiértame ya.
Quiero ascender, reptar de una vez,
Cruzar el cero (O) ya, cerrar el círculo aquel,
donde la flor duerme en la cruz…
Cuando el azul llegue a tu cara y la luna a tu cabeza,
a su encuentro yo iré, serpiente roja, desde la base, a fundirme con el sol…
Y mi voz te guiará a través del agua con el color del amor…
Lying on the ground, with my whole body in contact with mother earth, curled up on top of myself, feeling my skin against my skin… crawling, feeling the grass, the humidity, the textures pressing on every corner of my surface, listening to the distant murmur of the earth’s entrails for centuries, the voice of the skin’s desires, long, stretched out, cold, protective and sensitive, stimulating and awakening embryonic sensations, recalling snake-like memories of other times and places.
Neither rejection nor abomination, it was not then the cursed persecuted, blamed for all evils… unveiled in me and in Me, it was recognized and respected… in crowns and thrones, in the arms and feet of gods and mortals, in poems and songs… wrapped in the Caduceus of Hermes, where the winged sun crowned me. A solar knowledge that recognizes the moon that enlightens me and reflects the healing capacity of my power; on the head of the goddesses who hold the moon, which in turn confers a dark force upon them… waking up in the east, red with fire, hissing irritated a sensation of being the conductor of the red water of life, ascending to the sun of consciousness…. dragging me silently and slowly in its sinuous and feminine ascent, secret, to sleep at the center of the eternal flower… in search of the specular image, unfolded from itself, allowing it the complementary union that can transform me into infinity.
Sitting in myself, in a stable position, I feel I can connect earth and sky.my strength comes from below, the earth sustains me, but I can go to the top and look down through the timeless, crystalline blue eye, where the serpents of all time are contained; and all the visible and invisible serpents, land, sea and winged dragons, communicate with man and man with himself, urging him to access the sacred and the deepest, the transcendent and impersonal.
Suddenly, in the middle of the night, rational defenses fell away, the mirror showed me my snake aspect: neither good nor bad, aggressive and gentle, present and material vision… my snake aspect. And that forces me to look at it, to understand it, to feel it stripped of moralistic polarization, where there is no evil or good, only a nature with double valorization, with an undifferentiated duality of forces, without responsibility but not irresponsible, only existing… sometimes white, sometimes black… with astonishingly innocent eyes in such a figure, with a vital breath and an involuntary destiny… I suddenly understand the reason for the snake’s fear, why the repulsion, the fear, the need to load it with negativity and locate it far, far away… very different from us.
I feel that I fear him because he knows things that are buried deep inside me.because the sensations of its skin are mine, without inhibitions, because its materiality is such that my mind complains, fearing that it will prevent it from reaching the heights with its flight… And the first is more fearsome, the sea serpent that springs suddenly from the waters of the unconscious, water clear on its surface if I don’t stir it, but dark if it shakes it to get out, the mythical Leviathan, which can transform the apparent calm of my rationality into chaos; I’m afraid he’ll pull me into his depths, I’m afraid of diving in and discovering all that my censorship has hidden from me; the first serpent, asleep for centuries in the primeval waters of my material body, associated with instincts, primordial fears, my first water demon…. the fact that I can’t see you doesn’t mean you cease to exist… I fear you every time the inner wind blows your voice…
Snake that has to hide to avoid being attacked under the pretext of being dangerous (self-defence myth…). He who kills the Self as I know it, not with the poison of his fangs, but with the power of his symbol, which reminds us that even if our rationality and technology advance, there is a natural force that we cannot dominate or predict, which reminds us that the force of life and death is an uninterrupted succession, symbolized by the Ouroboros, the snake that bites its tail, male and female, active and passive, dying and being reborn with all its esoteric content, enclosing everything and all time and advancing again and again on itself, forward, without beginning or end, with point O, the non-existent zero, in its mouth…
And that little snake that sleeps until life awakens it in the base chakra, a linear representation of life and the healing power of man’s energy, so simple in its line that is the force of nature; I’m afraid of you too, because you take me out of abstraction by reminding me that I have a body limited in time by my individuality while you, undifferentiated line, persist in all the snakes I don’t yet know. Because I felt your struggle to climb, I felt your strength, unlocking my body with every step, without my having decided to, without my knowing how. Because I recognize in you my pleasure in opening my mouth and imprisoning life, time, knowledge… and because that same mouth can put an end to all efforts. Because I’d also like, like you, to be glued to the earth, to feel that my warmth is that which it gives me, and to emerge from its bowels one night in a moonlit bath… To watch values change in the world, from inside my motionless, ophidian blue eye, physical eyes closed, “seeing” as only animals stripped of the rigid-rational envelope of the brain can see : forwards and backwards, beyond time and distance, also extending the ear and discovering the voice of the serpent mother, as Eva heard it, speaking from within oneself, without words, directly to the cells…. defying even the gods…
I had to find my snake-being and wake it up so that it could wake me up. Discovering him in my body and mind and feeling my body and mind; learning to hear the voice of the serpent who wants to tell me simple things about the time when man’s foot walked on the earth, looked up to the sky, used to speak with his gods, with himself and with other beings and knew how to listen… to accept the snake hidden in me with everything, with good and evil, being unity in it and with my phases of darkness and light… to begin to be.
Only then did the serpent speak… He gave me the snake’s ikaro and I accepted it, just as I accepted my snake-being.
And I was a giant cobra, standing on a group of little knotted snakes, all living inside me. I danced, stretching and shrinking in front of my eyes, fixed on hers, frontal, blue and black, a deep well from which emerged bifid tongues, also blue, which penetrated our foreheads, letting us hear her voice from within: it’s the tongue mariri4 the red snake that sleeps and sometimes wakes, that can do anything, that heals everything if the hand that guides it is sound…
He asked me to invoke him in song , and I knew I had to… As the snake sings from somewhere inside me, I feel sick, in another life, in a medieval bed. I invoked the Virgin’s help, then a beautiful, robust woman appeared, dressed in black and with a large cleavage that revealed the breast… she approached me and held me by the right arm with force, causing me pain and fear…. when she let go of me, I saw that she had left a metal chandelier ring on my arm, which was a two-headed snake; it was embedded in my skin so that I couldn’t remove it without hurting myself, as if it were carved into it. It’s not easy to accept the snake, and even harder to live with it, but impossible to get rid of its power. You have to choose which of the two heads should look the way, or which path to follow, that of light or that of darkness. I am the Black Madonna, I am the mother and daughter of the serpent, I am wisdom. I’m the black virgin, not a virgin in the sense that you think: I’m a mother. Mother Nature and Mother Wisdom in nature, she who feeds the serpent from her womb and she who feeds the spirit.. The black virgin, serpent elevated above serpents, with the arbiter at my feet, but serpent… the virgin mother, π, indispensable feminine complement to materialize the Word, for the synthesis of α and Ω, necessary to conjugate the principle and end of knowledge, earth and spirit, at the maximum distance and beyond, as far as the spirit cannot reach; element Toi essential for the line to lose its rational squareness and become a circle, conjugation of the four elements, earthly matter, spirit of air, energy of fire, consciousness of water, like the serpent of Ouroboros, beginning-ending-less which is life, God… And these are the wings of the spirit, of the new rediscovered spirit, the ones that will awaken the flower-serpent-dragon-eagle-unicorn-light-Nothing…
Superimposed on the trained cobra – so quickly that the mind has no control – are ancient goddesses in surprising metamorphosis, snake-wisdom asleep in the depths of universal memory, a fundamental archetype that transcends cultural diversity into the night; the matriarchal power of mother-earth primed by the cult of an immaterial-materiophobic spirit or empty materialism. A long succession of natural goddesses, evolving with man; the serpent, the Moon, Tanith, Isis, Ishtar, Astarte, Minerva, Cibeles, Demeter, the Virgin Mary for Christianity, all goddesses related to fertility (including the Virgin Mary whose mission was “to incarnate Christ”), mediating goddesses between the voice of serpent-matter and the solar spirit, who bear attributes of the serpent. However, we mustn’t forget either that the serpent is essence, a double archetype, opposites in one, and that it also has a masculine-feminine sexual aspect associated with the image of Python, Apophis, Typhoon, Satan, the Chinese or medieval dragon, charged with aggression but at the same time winged, with the ability to soar, and the feathered serpent of the Mayans and Incas.
So why does the Christian Virgin walk on the serpent’s head, when ancient goddesses placed her in a privileged place (Isis’ crown, Ishtar’s arms, Athena’s bosom)? Should the religion of the spirit crush matter, the telluric?
If the Virgin is an intermediary between heaven and man, wouldn’t it be that she uses the serpent as a support, accessing ancient, elevated and transcendent knowledge through contact with the serpent’s head? It’s not the struggle of God against the Devil, of Good against Evil, it’s the struggle of man against himself, of man’s spirit against man-matter, against his most instinctive tendencies not to be able to accept his material essence. The serpent is not evil, there is an error in the abuse of its power, of its strength, in trying to be pure spirit without cleansing the physical burdens, in forgetting the body-serpent and wanting to obtain its knowledge outside the rite, the sacred essence, the respect that such fundamental and ancient knowledge deserves…. only then will the true spirit shine forth and the serpent have wings to ascend towards the sun, dragon-serpent since the days of alchemy and the Orient, relegated to darkness since the Age of Enlightenment, in which true light was replaced by false, cold suns.
I’m now one of many little snakes. I warm my body in the sun, enjoying the warmth and smell of the earth, until a shadow eclipses the sun; my sisters flee in terror, hiding under the stones… I’m also afraid of the approaching bird, but the curiosity of seeing it up close is a major factor. I know he’s seen me and I wait for him, paralyzed with fear-anxiety, with my eyes closed.
The sensation of my body suspended in the air, with the wind all around me, flight offsets all fear and risk… I see the earth from where no snake has seen it… but… but I’m no longer a snake! In mid-flight I see that I am a dragon embryo inside an opalescent egg that reverberates with the sunlight, closer and closer… I feel my earthly memory in the distance and the fullness of freedom fills me, there is nothing more than light, peace and beauty in the sunflower solar field I see below, nothing to desire now… except, of course, not to fall…. I regain my body again, and the soft song of the wind is interrupted by a growing noise: sunflowers shake uprooted by turbulent waters from which emerges the head of a phallic stone snake, frightening me into a fetal position. I feel the great force of this stony serpent, strong, timeless, awakening from its sleep in the depths of the earth, of my subconscious. and removes fears, eliminating the little suns and standing before the solar spirit as a manifestation that although sub-merged can emerge at any moment, and it now has its place, not in opposition to the sun, but with it. A cactus blooms on its surface and the landscape becomes calm again. I, little dragon, already know how to fly and can follow the eagle’s flight.
It’s time to take up the snake’s voice, to be a winged serpent, to return to our human essence and accept the duality of the snake, to face our snake aspect and use it to heal ourselves and then to heal. In this whole process, the battle between instinct and reason is polarized. The snake is on both sides, and we need to know how to see it and learn to place the meeting point in the house of the spirit, in the heart. Let’s not forget that Medusa was a head crowned with snakes, and that she became petrified when she saw herself in a mirror. Reason cannot accept instinct, the irrational, if it renounces unification in the true spirit, that which understands the oneness-tridimensionality of the Whole, which goes beyond Aristotelian thought and restructures being instead of turning it against itself, giving it transcendence and space in the cosmos.
It’s been almost five years since the night of an Ayahuasca session when I first came into contact with the sleeping serpent inside me. During this time, through dreams, visions (during Ayahuasca sessions, music therapy and diets with other master plants) and physical perception during the waking state, I deepened and understood the symbolism of the Serpent. Sometimes unpleasant, sometimes surprising, and always exciting is the path of self-discovery, a path that never ends.
I think this is an evolution in which we’re getting in touch with deep content in the subconscious and that it’s not just interesting, quaint or esoteric, but a means of accessing real, coherent and healing knowledge from the moment we consciously recognize ourselves as holders of all aspects of our innermost being. It is precisely the discovery of our darker phases, those hidden from us by rational censorship, that gives us the opportunity to accept ourselves in our true dimension and to work on ourselves to purify or enhance our energy body and be able to use it correctly.
In the distance, I can see the brick wall of the maloka (a one-room oval house with a palm-tree roof, typical of the Amazon), where tonight’s Ayahuasca session is taking place. The telluric force of the Jungle shakes theshacapa5 and the participants, and the energy can be felt in the environment… I’m no longer outside the circle, but inside, participating with the other Takiwasi members in the collective session.
The ikaros and the shacapa envelop us in its sound, similar to the fluttering of wild birds, while the maloka becomes a red snake, enclosing us in a protected space. With slow, crawling movements, one of its two heads, the caudal, sinks its forked tongue into the earth, absorbing a light that passes through its body. We are one with the snake in a sensation of movement and, with its frontal head, we rise to the higher plane, the brilliant blue ring that formed its tongue-mariri. It’s the energy of the earth that, as it passes through her body, becomes wisdom and lifts us up, merging with her own the blue tongues that project themselves onto our foreheads. We lose the sensation of the individual self to become a transcendent self, and at the same time we make contact with our animal aspect, with the most similar animal spirit of each; I see that one of them has the height and vision of the eagle, but also its aggressiveness; the second has the strength and laziness of the bear; another has the sympathy and curiosity of the monkey; the fourth has the flight, power and spirit of the dragon and I have the double aspect of the snake… When the collective vertigo reaches its peak, the bottle containing the potion vibrates, and a small green woman, Mother Ayahuasca, climbs with acrobatic, elegant movements through a beam of yellow light that projects towards the moon, inviting us to climb with her. She dances with the moon in its various phases, at the same time demonstrating the movements of Tantra Yoga. Its movements create a luminous white flower with numerous petals that rise even higher in the cavity that houses it, in the lotus position, after the ray of light penetrates through a vulva-shaped opening.
Under the glow of the full moon, a tall, stony, ice-covered mountain has its base submerged in water and is surrounded by the body of a large, menacing-looking black snake. As the moon wanes and the sun rises, the snake vomits up several small snakes that hide in the mountain’s crevices. Finally, as if vomiting to himself, he opens his jaw and lets out his skin, from his inner face, clean, calm and shiny…
The sun is already out, giving everything a reddish glow. The Moon in the mountain’s bowels shines through it, and its translucence reveals overlapping figures of goddesses from different eras. The Virgin Mary is at the top. The great serpent sleeping beneath the waters of the subconscious comprises the basis of our visible world, which can seem cold and hard to us. The serpent must reveal all its aspects, showing itself for what it is: a dual, lunar goddess hidden in the depths; an attribute of lunar goddesses of all times and possessing positive aspects, still under the light of the spirit. The cyclical evolution of time and knowledge, the passage from the reign of the Moon and the serpent, of instinctive and esoteric knowledge, of the influence of natural forces with their telluric gods, which is displaced by the emergence of the new God-spirit-reason into the depths of the collective subconscious, where he hopes to resurface in a new cycle… If in the darkness of night it’s instinct that guides us and not our eyes, then, dazzled by the brightness of the sun, we lose the ability to “see” and “see ourselves”, letting ourselves be guided not by the sensations of our whole body, but by our sensory awareness, which allows us to see only what we “must” see rationally…
1 Article originally published in Spanish in Revista Takiwasi, Nº 2, Takiwasi, Peru, October 1993 p. 7-27.
2 Co-founder of Centro Takiwasi and Head of Medical Follow-up.
3 Ikaro received in Ayahuasca rituals.
4 Phlegm, representing materialized shamanic wisdom. It can be transmitted by ingestion, through which the shaman “inherits” his knowledge.
5 Fan made from the leaves of the “shacapa” palm, used in healing sessions.
Young indigenous students are the future leaders of the Amazon. However, they face many obstacles, from having to adapt to a different culture,
Les jeunes étudiants indigènes sont les futurs leaders de l’Amazonie. Cependant, ils sont confrontés à de nombreux obstacles, qu’il s’agisse de devoir s’adapter à une culture différente,
It’s important to understand what “restraint” means.
Il est important de comprendre ce que signifie le terme “contention”.
To mark the 30th anniversary of the Takiwasi Center, we are releasing this documentary which looks back over three decades of intense clinical and research work on traditional Amazonian medicines.
A l’occasion du 30ème anniversaire du Centre Takiwasi, nous vous relayons ce documentaire qui offre une rétrospective des trois décennies d’intense travail clinique et de recherche sur les médecines traditionnelles amazoniennes