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"What
distinguishes a payé [shaman] from others is that he is an
intellectual...He is a humanist, in the sense that he is interested in the
'pagan' antiquities of his own cultural tradition: in myths of origin, in
archaeological sites, in long forgotten place names, and in stories of
legendary migrations."
Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff |
Don Pedro Leon: The Maestro
We are honoured to
have the special opportunity of working with Don Pedro Leon,
a highly renowned Peruvian maestro, a master shaman of high class, gifted
in the conduction of healing ceremonies with
Huachuma
(San Pedro) and Ayahuasca. Don Pedro
- who works as well with Ibogaine and other plant teachers also found in
Europe, like Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria),
Floripondio (Datura sp.), Deadly Nightshade (Atropa Belladonna) and Mandrake (Atropa mandragora) - is a rather
special figure in the panorama of contemporary Peruvian shamanism. Native of Chocope,
he descended from a lineage of sorcerers (brujos) which was interrupted
only by his mother, the first to embrace white magic (magia blanca) in the line of
maestros that continues to our own days with him.
Don Pedro
has conducted special researches amid the Shipibo communities of the lower
Huallaga (Tiruntan,
El Pisque), exchanging his knowledge with other master shamans
there and further investigating the indigenous use of ayahuasca. He
has taken part in the Archaeological Project "El Brujo" (Magdalena de
Cao,
La Libertad) working as ethnobotanical researcher in the years
1985-1992. He operates in the Peruvian North Coast with other
curanderos, promoting the experience, knowledge and practical use of
the San Pedro
and Ayahuasca medicine.
Photo: Monica Sebastia
- Copyright © Monica Sebastia
The Mesa
The mesa (ritual
space with ceremonial objects) of maestro Pedro Leon has a
distinctive telluric character, and embodies elements of the cult of water
("Pacchas") and to the "Apus" (Mountain Spirits). A San Pedro cactus
from the coast, chonta wooden staffs from the Amazon, bronze
and steel daggers, shells, rattles, perfumes, Ayahuasca and flowers, each has its own
place in the mesa and serve the specific function of balancing or
activating, shamanically, a particular energetic area or elemental force,
to achieve the desired results in the healing of a patient, via the
re-establishment of a condition of spiritual, emotional, mental and
physical health. Don Pedro has partaken to many pilgrimages in several
sacred places and centres of power of the Andean region, like Tihuanaco,
the Titicaca Lake, Cuzco,
Bajo Huallaga,
Marcahuasi,
Pachacamac,
Islas Ballestas,
Sechin, Cumbemayo, Huaca El Brujo, San Jose de
Moro,
Salas, Penachí, Cerro el Encanto de Órganos,
Amotape, and
Manglares de Tumbe, to quote a few.
Ritual offerings, Huachuma and
Ayahuasca ceremonies in Ancient Power Places
The Oracle Site at Chavín
We shall have the privilege of
participating with Don Pedro Leon to ritual offerings to the enchanted, sacred lagoons of
Llanganuco,
and to healing ceremonies with San Pedro
held in the ancient oracular complex of
Chavín de Huántar, the Delphi of
the Peruvian highlands, a vast pilgrimage centre dedicated to the cult of the
Jaguar-God.
Chavín de Huántar, the
climax of our expedition, the mesa of all mesas,
what scholars like Tello (Tello
1960) believed - along with many others - to have been the centre and
matrix of all civilizations of ancient pre-Hispanic Peru
(see also Note 1).
In the Circular ceremonial Plaza
of Chavín, a low relief slab shows an anthropomorphic mythological being with
harp eagle claws, serpent belt, and feline fangs, holding the four-ribbed, most
sacred San Pedro cactus. This is the
earliest representation of the San Pedro plant known to our days. A
similar fanged anthropomorphic deity - found on a stone engraving from a cornice
fragment at Chavín - carries in his hand a Spondylus shell, in a hieratic,
ritual fashion. Twenty finely engraved and heavily use-polished Strombus shell
trumpets were also found recently in the Caracolas Gallery, ritual and sacred
items that must have been used by the priests of the Chavín Temple.
In the mysterious subterranean
chambers of Chavín, the priest-oracle of the Jaguar-God - Lord of the night, of
vision and of the dead - gave his responses, possibly inebriated by the juice of
the sacred San Pedro cactus, emerging from the depths of the earth.
At the
meeting point of four chambers in the network of tunnels that run below the
surface of the pyramidal complex, is the Holy of Holies of Chavín, the El Lanzón monolith
bearing the terrible image of the Jaguar-God, with feline head and
anthropomorphic body. The Lanzón - which literally means "Lance", is a
five-meters monolith of white granite, resembling a huge sacrificial knife
sunken into the viscera of the earth, with its handle emerging from the temple
floor. Like an Axis-Mundi, a cosmic axis that unites - in the words of
anthropologist Mario Polia - "the dark world of the dead to the region of the
living"
(Polia,
1997:19).
After Chavin,
we shall move up to the Northern jungle near Tarapoto, where our second ritual
will be with the Ayahuasca medicine, after having witnessed the
spectacular beauty of the
Awashiyacu
waterfalls. Our third ritual will be again with mother Ayahuasca, and
will be held in Chachapoyas, "the land of the Cloud People", near the ruins of
Kuelap, the "Machu Picchu of the North". Our final ceremony with power plants
will be with the San Pedro, near the site of Sipan, on the Northern Coast.
Tucume, Sipan and Trujillo
Our journey to the coast begins
with
Chiclayo, and then Túcume, the second capital of the Lambayeque civilization,
which succeeded to the Moche and was founded by a mythical man-god, Naymlap.
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"Túcume...sublime
and beautiful, green with luxuriant growth and plantations, and
furthermore with great edifices, which although destroyed and in ruins,
testify of its greatness in the past." |
These were the wondrous
impressions of the first European to visit Túcume,
the Spanish soldier and chronicler Pedro Cieza de León, who landed with some
Conquistadores on the northern coast of Peru and arrived in the Lambayeque
Valley, after crossing the harsh deserts of the coast.
Built in the 11th century, Tucume
hosts a vast complex of 26 huge adobe pyramids with one of them, the Huaca
Larga, been the world's longest adobe structure. Another one, the Huaca
Las Balsas, is one of the most important structures ever discovered on the
site. It has extraordinary friezes of crouching birdmen with
half-moon headdresses holding round objects (a motive dominant in the religious
art of Easter Island), birdmen on reed rafts, mythical birds wearing a
half Moon headdress (Balsas Frieze), descendants of the Moche moon
animal, and the Frieze of the Rite, showing a ritual connected with the moon or
the sea. The interpretation of these birdmen as an allegory of the shamanic
flight is too strong to resist. "Huaca" means "Sacred site" in local Indian
dialect.
Túcume is located near Chiclayo,
in the Lambayeque Valley, and is an important centre of San Pedro
mesa shamanism.
Invocations to the power of
Tucume and La Raya Mountain are often presents in the rituals performed at night
by local shamans in the area.
Here, on the coast, we shall see
the spectacular and
amazing pre-Inca adobe pyramids and Chan Chan, an enormous adobe city in the Moche
Valley, the largest structure of this kind in the whole of pre-Columbian
America, built by the Chimú people who flourished in Peru around 1000 and
1470 CE. We shall Visit the
Huacas del Sol y de la Luna
- two mighty adobe pyramids which were at the heart of the warrior-like Moche
civilization, around 100-500 CE and learn about the mysterious Lord of Sipan, a
Moche Warrior-Priest and ruler who left this earth one thousand and seven
hundred years ago accompanied by eight concubines, servants and warriors who
were buried with him to join the Lord in his journey to eternity...
The Moche
The Moche were amid the most
enigmatic among the ancient pre-Inca people that occupied the Northern Coast of
Peru, and - along with the Chimú - they were most influenced by the shamanic
culture of their predecessors, the Chavín people, who established around 1300
B.C. a shrine-Temple and oracle at the site of Chavin de Huántar, centred on
the cult of a Jaguar-God.
Hieratic, enigmatic, cheerful and
harsh, the Moche -
as many other South and Central American civilizations engaged in the practice
of propitiatory human
sacrifices - possibly to
celebrate/favour the arrival of rain in their desertic environment and may be
attempt to control/placate the El Niño phenomenon - through the enactment of
ritual combats
with ceremonial blood drinking.
The mysterious Ulluchu
fruit - a kind of wild papaya - is thought to have played a crucial role in
these practices.
Its
use has also been attested in the province of Huancabamba, and confirms that the
practice of ritual sacrifices spread
outside the boundaries of the Moche culture.
The Incas themselves were prone to the practice of human sacrifices in times of
great upheavals, known as pachacutis.
A unique and intriguing shamanic
journey, with a sophisticated maestro, on the footsteps of the
ancient civilizations of pre-Columbian Peru!
Itinerary:
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Dates:
Tailor Made for Groups of 10+
ONLY
A special shamanic
adventure, a journey back into time, for serious researchers of consciousness, that requires - above
all - a great love for knowledge! Participants MUST be in good physical,
emotional and mental conditions to join this trip.
Cost & Payment:
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Please
contact us if you are interested in attending this or similar journeys.
This programme is ONLY suited to groups of 10 or more people travelling
together.
Book This Journey:
Serious Inquires Only
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El Mundo Magico
Flat 5, 8 Queens Road, Lexden, Colchester
CO3 3NP, Essex,
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Tel/Fax: 01206 710 615
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Mundo Magico (info@elmundomagico.org)
NOTES
Note (1)
F or
an alternative view on the origins of Chavín, see:
Rodriguez Kembel
Silvia and Rick John, 2004
Note (2)
Quotation from:
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo: The Shaman and The Jaguar, Philadelphia, Temple University Press,
1975: 107, in: Sharon, Douglas: Wizard of the
Four Winds, The Free Press, New York - London, 1978: 154
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