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"And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the
earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the
earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree."
(Revelation, 6:1)
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San
Pedro: The Magical Cactus of the "Cuatro Vientos"
Trichocereus Pachanoi B.R. is the
botanical name of the night blooming and mescaline-bearing columnar cactus once
known as "Achuma" and currently known in the Andean and coastal communities
of Peru as "San
Pedro", "Wachuma", "Huachuma" or Gigantón. Botanists N. L. Britton and N. J. Rose
were the first to classify the plant in 1920. It is found in Andean Ecuador,
Peru and Bolivia; in Peru, it also grows in many places along the northern
coast.
Local curanderos maintain
that there are seven different species of San Pedro, all distinguished by the
number of longitudinal ribs. The one they most commonly use is a seven-ribbed
cactus. The rarest and most revered one, has four ribs.
This is the sacred cactus of the Four Winds, the San
Pedro of the cuatro vientos.
Those who find it
are thought to be very lucky (Sharon, 1978:39), great shamans or about to become such (Polia 1997:19).
This cactus is also reputed to have special healing powers, in lieu of the
magical link with the number four - and its correspondence with the "Four Winds"
and the "Four Roads" - the supernatural powers associated to the cardinal
directions, invoked during the San Pedro healing ceremonies (Sharon,
1978:39).
The great Peruvian curandero don Eduardo
Calderón - explained (Sharon, 1978:65) that the Four Winds
correspond to the four cardinal directions of the compass. North - the place of
Power, a positive direction, a place of strong magnetism, because of the
position of the equator and the North Pole; South - the place of Action, because
it's opposite to the forces of the North, and the strong winds come from the
South; West - the place of Death, where the Sun dies into the sea; and
East - a positive direction, the place of Rebirth, where the Sun emerge again,
rising form darkness.
In Andean cosmology
four is a special number: four were the
regions of the earth into which the
Tahuantinsuyu (in Quechua Tahuantin suyu means literally "the four
regions between") - the Inca Empire - was divided. The Incas built four roads,
departing from Cuzco, each running through the four divisions of their empire.
Conversely, the four quarters converged in Cusco (Qosqo), centre and navel of the world,
very much like Delphi was for ancient Greece.
The tall cactus resembles thus an axis mundi, a cosmic axis linking the different worlds through which the
shaman travels in vision and trance.
The Origins of the Cult:
Las Aldas and Chavín
The sacramental use of the plant goes back in history to at least 2,000 B.C. -
i.e. to at least 4,000 years ago - as it is
shown by the remains of the cactus (in form of cigars) in the ceremonial complexes of Las Aldas, in
the province of Casma, in Peru, excavated by Peruvian archaeologist Rosa Fung (Polia 1997:18,
Sharon 1978:42).
Around 1,300 B.C., i.e. 3,300
years ago, the
priests of the Jaguar Temple at Chavin de Huántar - an oracular-shrine which was
probably the focus and the origin of the most important pan-Andean religious
cult ever - could have been using the sacred cactus in their rituals.
A stone frieze that lined the upper register of the
sunken Circular Plaza in the Old Temple at Chavin features a mythical being, a fanged
feline-anthropomorphic being, holding in his outstretched right hand the stalk of a four
ribbed San Pedro cactus. Jaguar's claws project from his feet, feline fangs
protrude from his mouth, harp-eagle claws extend from his hand, snakes come out of his head,
a two-headed serpent comes out from
his ceremonial belt and wings extends from his back, possibly indicating the
shamanic capacity to fly.
It's
possible that the whole of the Chavin culture rotated around an oracular complex
and that the great Temple was like an Andean Delphi, a centre of the
world, an oracular centre ruled by an absolute theocracy and focused on the cult
of the jaguar (Polia 1997:18, 260), dios atrigado. In South
America this is the shamanic animal par excellence, the most powerful on
earth, capable to see through the darkness of the night. From the subterranean depths and obscure meanders of the Temple,
a priest-oracle - intoxicated by the ritual sacrificial blood - gave in trance
his responses with the voice of the Jaguar-God, lord of the dead, of night and
vision.
Chavin textiles from the south
coast of Peru, dating to the first millennium B.C. show again the cactus in
association with the jaguar and what could be a hummingbird. Other depictions of
the Huachuma cactus appear on ceramic manufacts of the Chavin period,
where the plant is in association with a deer (like in a ceramic bottle from the
northern coast, dating from 1000-700 B.C.), and with a spotted jaguar (in five
instances, on vessels dated from 700-500 B.C.).
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Hummingbird, deer and jaguar are not alien animals in the shamanic world.
Contemporary curanderos report how the hummingbird represents the
shamanic capacity of sucking the magically-induced illness out of a
patient affected by witchcraft. The deer represent swiftness and
elusiveness, in counteracting the attacks of hostile entities
(Sharon 1978:40-41).
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Nazca mummy bundles, the seed of life
and San Pedro
The use of San Pedro continued
after the decline of the Chavin culture, as shown by five ceramic urns of the
Nazca period (100 B.C. - 500 A.D.) - all in the Museo Nacional in Lima - which
were made in shape of mummy bundles from whose shoulders protruded stylized and
clearly identifiable four-ribbed Huachuma cactus stalks.
In a subtle and touching
association, Sharon (1978:41) wonders at the possible analogy between
death and rebirth, hinted by the presence of the night-blooming cactus raising
from the shoulders of the dead. Like the San Pedro which blooms every spring at
around midnight, so the spirit of the dead may be re-born and "bloom" in the
spring of the afterlife. In Inca times the term mallqui referred to royal
mummies, meant also
" seed" (Sharon
1978:41). A touching and subtle equation
is set between the
seed-mummy, buried in the dark belly of the earth, and its re-birth in the
afterlife, as the flower of the night-blooming San Pedro comes to life every
spring, from the darkness of the night.
San Pedro in the Salinar Culture
Depictions of the Huachuma cactus are also present in manufacts of the
Salinar culture (400-200 B.C.), which all show a four-ribbed
representation of San Pedro stalks, which again may point at a subtle and
explicit association to the "Four Winds", the "Four Regions" and the
''Four Roads''
that lead to them.
San Pedro views....during the
Conquest
Like St. Peter held the keys of the Christian
paradise, the cactus opens the doors of perception and makes one enter the
Spirit world, accessing a paradisiacal condition of communion with the divine.
Needless to say, the Spaniards - along with their religious Catholic counterpart
- who entered and conquered the New Continent held a completely different view
of the traditional indigenous use of the plant.
Anello Oliva, a Neapolitan Jesuit monk, condemns
in 1630 the
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"devilish superstition which still endure and is still much used by those
people and their rulers. It consists in drinking, to know the good or bad
intentions of the others, a potion that they call achuma, which is
a water they make mixed with the sap of certain smooth and large thistles
that are born in the tropical valleys. They drink it with great ceremonies
and chants and, since it is much strong, those who have drunk it remain
deprived of their senses and reason, and see visions [...]" |
[English translation
by F. Sammarco, after: Historia del Reino y Provincias del
Peru (1631), Imprenta y Libreria de San Pedro, Lima 1895:135, in Polia 1997:12, 253-254]
"Achuma" become later "Huachuma", and this is now
more commonly known in Andean South America as San Pedro or San Pedrito.
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