The hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus features been used given that ancient times, and even in Peru the particular tradition has been unbroken for over three or more, 000 years. The earliest depiction of the particular cactus is the carving showing a mythological being possessing 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 inside a temple at Chav�n de Huantar, within the northern highlands of Peru. After, the Mochica lifestyle, (c. 500 ce) used cactus within their iconography. Perhaps in present day time mythology, it is told that God hid the tips to heaven inside a secret place and San Pedro used the marvelous powers of some sort of cactus to find out this specific place; later the cactus was called after him.
Una Mesa Norte�a
Juan Navarro was delivered inside the highland village of Somate, department of Piura. They are a descendant of a long lineage of healers and shamans working with the magical power of the almost holy lakes known since Las Huaringas which stand at some, 000 metres in addition to have been revered since earliest Peruvian civilization. At the particular age of 8, Juan made his first pilgrimage to be able to Las Huaringas, and took San Pedro the first time. Every month or two that is necessary to be able to return here to accumulate energy plus protection to recover his people. Mainly because well as people and Lime�os (people from Lima), pilgrims also come coming from many elements of South America.
During the particular sessions Juan performs untiringly, assisted by his two sons – as will be common within this customs – in an intricate sequence of processes, including invocation, diagnosis, divination, and treatment with natural things, or artes. The particular artes are initially placed on the particular maestro’s altar or perhaps mesa, and acquired when required during the ceremony. These artes are an surprising and beautiful array of shells, swords, magnets, quartzes, things resembling sexual bodily organs, rocks which interest when struck together, and stones by animals’ stomachs which in turn they have ingested to aid food digestion! The artes will be collected from pre-Colombian tombs, and sacred energetic places, specifically Las Huaringas. They bring magical qualities towards the ceremony wherever, underneath the visionary impact of San Pedro, their invisible power might be experienced. The particular maestro’s mesa — a weaving located on the land about which all the particular artes are put, (mesa also means ‘table’ in Spanish) – is a portrayal of the makes of nature and the cosmos. By means of the mesa the particular shaman is ready to work with plus influence these forces to diagnose in addition to heal disease.
Typically the traditional mesa norte�a has three places: on the still left is the campi? Trichocereus pachanoi a ganadero or ‘field of the dark’; around the right is usually the campo imparcial or the ‘field of the light’ (justiciero means justice); and the center could be the campo capital or ‘neutral field’, that is the location of balance involving the forces of light and dark. It is crucial for us not to check out these forces as optimistic or negative instructions it is what we should human beings carry out with one of these forces which in turn is important. Despite the fact that the contents plus form of the particular artes varies from tradition to traditions, the mesa motions serve to remind us that typically the use and electric power of symbols expands throughout all civilizations.
SAN PEDRO
San Pedro (trichocereus pachanoi) grows around the dry out eastern slopes regarding the Andes, involving 2, 000 : 3, 000 metres above sea level, and commonly gets to six metres or maybe more in height. It is also developed by local shamans in their plant gardens. As can easily be imagined, early European missionaries held the native procedures in considerable contempt, and indeed had been very negative when reporting the use of the San Pedro. Yet the Spanish missionary, offered by Christian R�tsch, grudgingly admitted typically the cactus’ medicinal value in the middle of an exhortation reviling it: “It is a flower with whose help the devil is able to be able to strengthen the Indians in their idolatry; those who ingest its juice reduce their senses and even are as if dead; they are practically carried away simply by the drink and dream one thousand uncommon things and think that they are usually true. The juice is good against burning in the kidneys and, in small portions, is also good against high temperature, hepatitis, and burning in the urinary. ” A shaman’s account of typically the cactus is radical contrast:
“It first… produces… drowsiness or even a dreamy condition and a sensation of lethargy… the slight dizziness… then the great ‘vision’, the clearing of all the faculties… that produces a light numbness in the body and after a tranquillity. And then comes detachment, a type regarding visual force… specially of all typically the senses… including the sixth sense, typically the telepathic sense involving transmitting oneself across time and subject… like a type of removal of their thought to the distant dimension. “
San Pedro, considered as the ‘maestro of typically the maestros’, enables the particular shaman to make a bridge involving the visible and the invisible world with regard to his people. The particular Quechua name intended for it is punku, which means ‘doorway’. The doorway hooks up the patient’s physique to his nature; to heal our bodies we must cure the spirit. San Pedro can demonstrate us the psychic causes of sickness intuitively or in mythical dream language. The effects involving San Pedro function through various portions, beginning with the expanded physical awareness within the body. Soon this specific is then euphoric feelings and then, following several hours, psychic and visionary effects become more obvious.
talking with Juan Navarro
What is definitely the relationship of the maestro with San Pedro?
In the particular north of Peru the power of San Pedro works in blend with tobacco. Also the sacred wetlands Las Huaringas are extremely important. This is usually where we go to find the particular best healing herbal products which we work with to energize the people. For example all of us use dominio [linking one’s intent with the spirit power of the plants] to be able to give strength plus protection from unnatural forces such because sorcery and damaging thoughts. It is also put into the seguros – amulet baby bottles filled with perfume, plants and seed gathered from Las Huaringas. You retain them in your home intended for protection and to help make it your own life go well. These plants perform not have any kind of secondary effects on the nervous system, or do these cards provoke hallucinations. San Pedro features strength and is usually mildly hallucinatory, nevertheless you cannot become addicted. It won’t go harm to be able to your body, quite it helps typically the maestro to observe what the is actually with his affected person. Of course some men and women have this gift idea born in all of them – as each of our ancestors used in order to say, it is in the blood of a shaman.
Is San Pedro a ‘teacher plant’?
Of program, but it has a certain mystery. An individual have to become compatible with this because it won’t work for all of us. Typically the shaman includes an exclusive relationship from it. It circulates within the body involving the patient plus where it locates abnormality it allows the shaman to detect it. That lets him understand the pain they as well as whereabouts it will be. It is therefore the link between patient and maestro. In addition, it purifies the blood in the person who refreshments it. It bills the nervous method so people reduce their fears, frights and traumas, and even it charges people with positive energy. Everyone must drink in order that the maestro can connect to them. Only the particular dose may vary from person to person because certainly not everyone is as strong.