Cactus of Mystery

by Ross Heaven

  What saves the shaman-to-be in all of these cases is the spirits themselves. It is they who intervene, bringing him out of decline by magical means against the odds and often in impossible circumstances. This is the “roar” of the spirits—their proof and evidence for the shaman that there is more to the world than consensus reality and that by working with them he will be healthy and empowered. Once he accepts this and agrees to work as the earthly agent of spirit his illness will mysteriously vanish as quickly as it arose, and he will be reborn with new powers of healing and new allies with which to heal.

  Because the shaman has survived his encounter with death he is not only stronger but knows the “theory of disease” as Eliade puts it—the idea that all illness is merely a suggestion or a potential and that if we do not meet it or agree to its presence in our lives then we cannot be touched by it—and is also able to cure illness in others since he has had firsthand experience of it.

  It is for this reason that shamans are also called “wounded healers”—they are not just dealing in concepts but in real experience as they have been hurt or ill themselves. Through this they learn about disease and how to negotiate with its spirit to make others well.

  BECOMING A SHAMAN

  There are many culture-specific variations of shamanism but they are united by a set of common beliefs identified by Eliade as the “shamanic archetype”:

  The belief that spirits exist and play an important role in our individual lives and in the life and health of the community.

  That these spirits can be good (i.e., useful to human beings) or evil (i.e., a dangerous or disturbing force).

  That the shaman can communicate with these spirits and enter their world to take guidance from them, to locate gifts of power and healing, or to do battle with malevolent energies for the good of the human soul.

  That the shaman can treat the sicknesses caused by spirits.

  That to do so the shaman must enter a state of trance at will or with the aid of a plant such as San Pedro. When fully in a state of visionary ecstasy or ekstasis (being outside of the self) he is able to go on “journeys” or “vision quests” where his spirit leaves his physical body to find the answers he needs in the Otherworlds.

  That to assist in his work the shaman is able to evoke beneficent spirits, guides, and helpers, known as allies.

  And that with the aid of these allies the shaman can perform other extraordinary acts (such as divining the future) that those who have not undergone his spiritual initiation cannot.

  The core belief of all shamans operating within this archetype is that the cause of disease is to be found in the spiritual realm. Early anthropologists took a rather simplistic view of this and assumed that shamans were talking solely about possessions by malicious spirits or witchcraft and brujeria (sorcery), but in fact things are more complex than that. To a shaman, anything that is not seen is a spiritual force; this includes beliefs, ideas, and the processes of socialization, all of them intangibles that nevertheless have an impact on the way we approach our lives. Psychoanalysts deal in the same “spiritual realm” and are experts on the ways in which our thoughts and ways of thinking can lead to unhealthy choices and illnesses in the “real” world.

  Sometimes too it is the circumstances of our lives and the moods they evoke in us (again unseen and intangible) that can lead to problems. Stress is a modern example. There is no such thing as “a Stress” of course, in the sense that we can touch one or hold it up for examination, and yet it is the cause of many physical problems that have real and detrimental consequences, such as cancer, hypertension, heart attacks, and strokes. In the shaman’s definition, stress is a spirit (a mood or an atmosphere), and it is this rather than the symptoms of stress that needs to be dealt with during a healing.

  In this way, as La Gringa puts it, all illness is psychosomatic: it is of the body and the mind or soul, never one without the other. This is a notion long recognized by healers and philosophers—including Socrates who even in his day was chiding the reluctance of some physicians to accept this fact: “The cure of the part should not be attempted without treatment of the whole” he wrote. “No attempt should be made to cure the body without the Soul. Let no one persuade you to cure the mind until he has first given you his Spirit. For the great error of our day is that physicians separate the heart from the mind and the mind from the body.”

  SHAMANISM IN PERU

  In the Andes, shamanism is more properly known as curanderismo (from the Spanish curar: to heal). It is a form of folk healing that includes various techniques such as prayer, herbal medicine, healing rituals, spiritualism, and psychic healing.

  As with other forms of shamanism, the curanderos’ knowledge of healing may be passed down from relatives (as is the case with Puma whose grandfather was the highest form of shaman) or learned through apprenticeships (as is the case for La Gringa and Michael Simonato, two of the shamans we will hear from in this section). In other cases healing powers may simply arise spontaneously in a curandero or curandera and be described by the healer as a don, or divine gift. Such was the case with Julia Calderon, the daughter of Eduardo, one of Peru’s most famous healers. While her father was alive Julia never paid much attention to his healing work. On his passing, however, she spontaneously received the don of healing and knew how to cure. She feels that in some way the knowledge or spirit of her father passed into her at his death and she, in turn, has become a well-known healer in Las Delicias and northern Peru.5 However they have learned the arts of healing, all curanderos believe that their ability arises from divine energy being channeled through their bodies.

  In addition to curanderos, the shamans who often (though not always) work with San Pedro to affect their cures, there are various specialist healers within this field. Yerberos are herbalists, parteras are midwives, and sobadors or sobadoras use massage, bone manipulation, and acupressure to treat physical ailments.

  Curanderismo in Peru is usually the first point of call for anyone suffering from an illness or problem. It has proven effective for thousands of years and there is still some suspicion of orthodox medicine, precisely because its physicians refuse to treat the whole person or to acknowledge the existence of God and the soul.

  Curanderismo, by contrast, can be used to treat a wide range of social, spiritual, psychological, and physical problems—everything from headaches, gastrointestinal problems, back pain and fever to anxiety, irritability, fatigue, depression, “bad luck” (mal suerte), marital discord, and illnesses caused by susto (fright or soul loss). In contrast again to orthodox medicine, treatments typically involve spiritual, emotional, and mental approaches as well as more physical means.

  Some of the more common causes of illness in the Andes in fact are almost entirely spiritual in nature, such as mal de ojo (the evil eye), susto, and empacho (a blockage of the digestive tract caused by envidia: “jealousy”) and since medical science cannot treat these it is another reason why a healer rather than a doctor might be sought.

  In all of the cases above the curandero may perform limpias or barridas (ritual cleansings) to rebalance the body and soul of the sick person, or else recommend them to a San Pedro ceremony where the spirit of the plant will perform the healing for them.

  THE ANDEAN COSMOLOGY

  If all things, including ill health and well-being, stem ultimately from the world of spirit, what then is the Andean view of the spiritual universe? What does this realm look like and where are the spirits to be found?

  As a way of depicting the Andean spiritual belief system it is helpful to imagine the universe as like a series of eggs nested one inside the other (the egg in Andean healing also stands as a metaphor for the soul).

  The first of these “eggs”—and the purest form of reality—is Jatun: “the great force of life.” It is a dimension so mysterious and unmanifest that it can only really be known by God, and it is here that all of his plans for—and the true reality of—everything resides.

  In this dime
nsion everything that happens (or does not happen) to us—whether “good” or “bad” in our terms and whether embraced and accepted by us or wholly and completely rejected—has a healing and evolutionary purpose. This purpose may elude us completely because it is so beyond our understanding, but it nevertheless flows through all things as an energy that stands for what is ultimately right, even if it manifests as unwelcome fates that befall us as individuals.

  If we are wise, therefore, we accept our lives for what they are, expressions of the divine, and renounce our need to comprehend and control everything around us. By letting go we find peace. If we are not so wise (and, therefore, more or less like every other being on the planet!) we may rail against God for our “misfortunes” or against the world in general and refuse to accept anything but our own position or point of view. Such actions are futile because human beings are not God, and we are bound to fail if we try to do battle with a force so powerful that we cannot even comprehend it and that in the whole scheme of things has our best interests at heart in any case.

  As La Gringa puts it:

  Every “bad” thing that happens to us is a gift from God because it is an opportunity for learning and growth. If we accept it as that we transmute it and it becomes a force for good; it is only if we cling to what we have lost or what can never be that we begin to engage with misfortune. The answer is often a case of simple gratitude. In situations of loss for example be thankful for what you had, be thankful for what was lost and be thankful for what remains. In this way we do not stand in God’s way and His work for us can be done.

  To be healthy, that is, we must abandon our fears and let go so that the plan of the universe can unfold and carry us with it. San Pedro is our ally in this because it allows us—even if it is fleeting and ever so distant—to understand the will of God and remove ourselves from the fight.

  Within the egg of Jatun is another called Wirococha, which is described by some as a lake of memory and wisdom, similar to the collective unconscious imagined by Jung. It contains the spirit-essence or soul of every being on Earth and it is to this place most commonly that San Pedro takes us to draw from the knowledge and experiences of those who have walked our path before us: the ancestors, the “soul of the world,” and the spirit allies to be found there.

  More subtly, within the Wirococha is another egg: Pachamama, the world as we perceive it. Pachamama is the most tangible of energies because it is the one we belong to, the one we recognize, and the one most manifest. It is soul in its bluntest form: physical reality and its spiritual or energetic shadow. This reality is the point at which we enter San Pedro ceremonies so we can be blasted free of form and enter the next level of being: the realms where our healing takes place.

  Andean healing practices are addressed first to Pachamama in the hope that they will make their way through the power of prayer and vision to the ultimate realms of the intangible, where true blessings are found.

  In fact, since Andean healing does not really embrace the concepts of duality and separation, its philosophy of healing is even simpler than this because a change at the individual level of Pachamama also changes, in some small way, the nature of Wirococha and Jatun. As our energies become clearer and more pure, God is better able to recognize us, or perhaps we become more “God-like” ourselves, in a way similar to that proposed by the religious philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, where we evolve through our actions until we merge once again with “the Godhead.”

  Within Pachamama there are three levels that broadly correspond to the shamanic cosmology of the “three worlds” (upper, middle, and lower) that provide a means of understanding the universe for many traditional cultures.

  In the Andes they are known as Ukupacha (lower world), Hanaqpacha (upper or divine world), and Kaypacha (the middle world). The latter includes physical reality as we know it and its spiritual counterpart so that every material thing has its energetic parallel or, as science now tells us, is made up of energy and has very little that is actually solid about it.

  In Andean psychology these three realms are also planes or states of consciousness, in some ways similar to Freud’s notion of the makeup of the psyche. The first, Ukupacha, in Freudian terms, would correspond to the id, the place of primal experience and the shadow self where our instincts, intuitions, and fears hold sway. The second, Hanaqpacha, is the superego, the moral or divine self that drives us to act in an ethical and compassionate way toward ourselves and the world we live in. The last, Kaypacha, is the ego, the moderator between the two that enables us to make choices so we can operate effectively in the world.

  During San Pedro ceremonies, within this model of understanding, the shaman and/or the spirit of the plant leads the patient from Kaypacha (ego)—a situation that is not working for him because of his unbalanced interactions with the spiritual and material forces in his life—to Hanaqpacha (superego), the transcendent plane where the human spirit meets the more universal forces and subtle energies that surround him. These energies can then be experienced, directed, and integrated so they play a more central role in his life, and he can move from denser ego-led concerns to a lighter and more expansive way of being.

  In order to reach this state, however, it is often necessary for the patient to descend into the more shadowy world of Ukupacha (the id), because it is here that he can unveil and best explore the hidden forces of his unconscious and see the beliefs, patterns, and complexes that are driving his behavior and leading to unhealthy outcomes.

  You will see this journey described in most of the accounts in this book by those people who have been healed by San Pedro. In one way or another all of them were led by the spirit of the cactus out of the mundane world to a deeper understanding of their thoughts, beliefs, life stories, causes, and effects until they arrived in a new world, which was touched by God. At the end of it they felt healed and at peace.

  A similar journey taken by a more conventional Western route might have meant years of psychotherapy or spiritual study to arrive at the same place: the knowledge that pain, fear, anger, and sadness all stem from a feeling of being alone and that our salvation comes from opening our hearts and reaching out to the people and the spirit around us, because they are we; I am That.

  This understanding of the human condition is fundamental to Andean shamanism, which is sometimes called “the path of the heart” and is guided by the desire to find beauty in life moment by moment. The principles on which it is based are as follows:

  Munay: “Doing the little things” with compassionate and loving intent so that every day is infused with a sense of beauty and when we close our eyes at night we can rest in the knowledge that as far as we were able and aware we hurt no one by our actions, including ourselves.

  Yachay: An informed wisdom that is greater and deeper than simple “knowledge.” The former is provided by spirit while the latter is a function of the more limited rational mind that is led by ego, habit, and shadow. Yachay is one of the gifts of San Pedro that helps us to understand the truths of our lives at a more soulful level and—if we choose—to live in beauty.

  Llankay: Taking appropriate, wise, and compassionate actions so we build a soul that is powerful and light. In this way we also become good ancestors and helpful spirits when we move on from this world, and the energy we leave behind is healing in itself—a “good wind”—even if it is only a beautiful memory for our lovers and the knowledge that they were loved. In this way the world becomes less fearful and more loving for us all.

  Kawsay: Respect for all life in the awareness that we are connected, one, and part of the whole or, in the words of Henri Michaux, that we are all just “a passage in time.” Knowing this, we understand the fragility of our condition and the need for love and forgiveness because whatever we do in the world or to others we also do to ourselves.

  Ayni: Perhaps the best-known and most important of Andean principles, ayni is the way of reciprocity, a form of giving without the desire to receive in return but in the awa
reness that we will be rewarded for our actions as the energy they create continues to circulate. Again, in the words of Michaux, it is the realization that “one is nothing but oneself ” and at the same time, everything: part of a shared fate.

  THE ORIGIN OF DISEASE IS SPIRITUAL

  In this way, according to curanderismo, disease is not just caused by physical processes but by social, psychological, emotional, and spiritual factors too. Thus, “there is a natural form of diabetes and a form caused by a supernatural agent, such as a brujo (witch or sorcerer). The same is true for alcoholism, cancer, and so on.” Curanderos therefore “manipulate the supernatural world as well as the physical world” to effect their cures and “on the spiritual level, illness can be caused, diagnosed, and cured by spiritual forces called corrientes espirituales (spiritual currents).”6

  Bilis (rage) is one example of a disease that is both physical and spiritual in nature. It arises from emotional causes and is common in people who feel themselves wronged by another and so excluded from justice that they carry their anger like an energy within them, which is strong enough to lead to stomach upsets or ulcers unless it is released. Their burning desire is for the wrongs they have suffered to be recompensed and while they are not, a churning acidity is felt in their guts—an impotent or repressed anger at wrongs that go unavenged.