Cactus of Mystery

by Ross Heaven

  Does that also mean, for example, that if you drink San Pedro and at some point in the future you have a child the effects of San Pedro will be passed on to that child?

  Orellana: Not the chemical effects of course but the unique vibration and teachings of the plant, yes. Then that child will begin life with a special advantage because within them there will be a divine connection that others do not have.

  This connection is a potential but it must still be activated by the child itself so in this way free will is preserved.

  What do you see as the future of San Pedro? There is a lot of interest in ayahuasca these days and perhaps less so in San Pedro. Why do you think that is and do you foresee any change in this?

  Orellana: First I must say that I do not agree with the globalization of these medicines. I believe that every nation and every group must find the roots of its own spirituality and work with their own medicine plants because each tribe has its own wisdom. Globalization destroys individual traditions. Tribal wisdom, however, remains.

  Peru calls to many because our traditions are still alive, and we can therefore offer those who come a shortcut so they can reconnect with their spiritual selves. But they must also rediscover their own traditions in order to be truly whole.

  Fortunately it is possible because on this planet we have thousands of medicine plants that can help people to heal and feel better about themselves so they find peace and freedom within their own culture. This is wisdom that should not be lost or swallowed up by globalization and the modern desire for instant fixes.

  People want shortcuts because they are thinking only in linear time. We need to teach them that they can step outside of this and return to their divine origin wherever they are.

  3

  San Pedro, the “Miracle healer”

  An Interview with La Gringa, an Andean San Pedro Shaman

  Ross Heaven

  Since 2007 I have worked extensively with La Gringa and her San Pedro. They have guided some of my deepest insights and been present during some of the greatest and lowest moments of my life. I fell in love on La Gringa’s San Pedro, I married my wife to it, and I when I lost her I was able to discover and heal a number of things in myself because of it.

  In a sense our lives have become intertwined, La Gringa and I. She began as my shaman, has become a friend over the years, and I now regard her as both of these as well as a mentor. It is clear that she has really done the work with San Pedro and it permeates all that she is and does. Many people remark on her compassion, her empathy, her humility and kindness, and the love that radiates from her. The most frequent word I hear used about her by others is that she is an “angel.” But through our friendship I know her as a woman too, and I know that she has concerns and cares like the rest of us, that she can lack confidence at times or worry that she is not good enough or doing enough for others. It is her honesty about these things that makes her human and an example to others of how we should face our concerns and frailties: with dignity and courage.

  In doing this work (on herself and for others) La Gringa has never lost faith in San Pedro, even when it has shown her things about herself and her life that she would rather not have seen; all of them, as she says, are opportunities for learning, for growth, and for improvement.

  I have spoken many times with her about shamanic and spiritual matters and her guidance has always been insightful—she is helping me to become a better person—but I have only formally interviewed her twice about her ideas and practices. The first time was in 2008 (a longer interview appears in my book The Hummingbird’s Journey to God) and the second in 2011. This article includes both of those interviews and discusses, among other things, her life, her thoughts on ceremony and San Pedro, and her ideas and observations about how San Pedro heals. What she has to say reveals again the influence of this medicine and the impact it can have on our lives.

  PART ONE: THE 2008 INTERVIEW

  How did you come to be involved in shamanism?

  La Gringa: I first drank San Pedro in the 1990s, an experience that overturned everything I thought I knew about reality. During my visions out in the mountains I saw a stairway of light on a nearby hill and I called my shaman over to explain it. “There is nothing to explain,” he shrugged. “It is a stairway of light.”

  “You mean you see it too?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “Take a photograph if you don’t believe it is there.” I thought he was crazy. How could I photograph a vision: something that was just in my head? But I didn’t want to be disrespectful so I took the picture anyway.

  Later I got it developed and there it was: a stairway of light just as I’d seen it, although it had never been there in the mountains before and you may not see it there now. I called my shaman and he came over to look at the picture although he didn’t seem surprised by it. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” he said. “These things are not just in your mind. They exist. San Pedro opens your eyes to what is real!”

  San Pedro had shown me reality as it actually is and it also changed what I thought of as real. I now understood the power that human beings have to manifest anything we choose; we just have to believe we can. San Pedro gives us that belief. It shows us that we are part of everything and that nature in its true form is beautiful. It wakes us up and teaches us to be conscious of the Earth. Before San Pedro I used to walk through life and not notice it. Now I notice everything and I have a new respect for the world.

  That wasn’t the only “miracle” I saw that day though. My shaman was a gentle man and I felt peaceful and protected as I lay in the sun. So when I opened my eyes and saw two children looking down at me, they were so beautiful I thought they were angels. I was in awe of them and it took me some moments to realize that they were real and that they were crying and asking for help. They said their father was sick at home and they had no mother so they didn’t know what to do. They were frightened that he was dying.

  I went to their house with my shaman and when I saw the man I thought he was dying too. But the shaman walked calmly over to him and started to blow on the top of his head through some coca leaves he had with him. He then used a feather, running it over the sick man’s head and body while he said a prayer.

  As soon as that was done the man sat up and started to vomit then he immediately looked better. The shaman said he’d be fine after that and when we left the house he was already out of bed and taking care of his children.

  That was my first experience of a shamanic healing and all the shaman had used was a feather and some leaves and, of course, the knowledge given to him by San Pedro. After that I knew that I wanted to work with this plant.

  You trained with other shamans too. Tell us about your present teacher.

  La Gringa: His name is Rubén [see chapter 2]. I met him ten years ago in a church in the Sacred Valley, quite by chance. He is a famous anthropologist who for many years ran the Machu Picchu sacred site, but he is also a shaman so he knows why and how things work from a historical and a spiritual perspective.

  This training was very hard. He was not like my first shamanic teachers who were much gentler. He made me drink San Pedro twice a week for several years. Sometimes I would beg him not to have to! I’d sob and say I was too sick to drink because I just couldn’t face another session. But he would say, “Good! You’re sick! That—and the fact that you can’t face the healing you need—is exactly why you need to drink it! Get your coat and let’s go!”

  At the time it was agony but now I know he was right and that drinking all that San Pedro was the best thing that could have happened to me. I saw all the bad things in my life in a new light and was able to let them go. I cleared whole lifetimes of shit in those years and I learned a lot about San Pedro and healing too.

  He is a more traditional shaman, isn’t he, with lots of ritual as part of his ceremonies—the singado and contrachisa, et cetera. Did he teach you those things too?

  La Gringa: Oh yes. But I neve
r felt comfortable with those rituals and Rubén agreed that I should work differently, especially as I was now healing many Westerners who didn’t understand those rituals anyway. San Pedro guided me and said I should keep things simple. So now I say a prayer to open the ceremony and then as much as possible allow San Pedro to do its work without getting in its way.

  I do sometimes use tobacco in ceremonies, but not the singado,*18 just tobacco smoke. It is good to blow the smoke over people if they are going through a tough time or have stuck energy within them. The smoke frees it up. I also use agua florida†19 to balance people’s energies. Mostly I ask them to sniff it from the bottle and it helps to ground them but sometimes I spray it over them.

  And of course I also use a mesa‡20 although mine is much simpler than many others. In Peru shamans work with many different layouts of mesa but when you have your own you learn to use it in a way that suits you. It is a living thing so you develop a relationship with it. San Pedro teaches you how to use it.

  The objects at the center of my mesa are shells and stones that have meaning and power for me. I arrange them in a straight line, like a spinal column with the stones as the vertebrae. This follows the notion in Peru that spiritual energy is held in the small of the back and as we advance on our paths and the plants guide us it begins to rise up the spine to the head, where it resides when we become fully conscious.§21

  In the Andes we have three sacred animals: the serpent, puma, and condor. The serpent represents the divine energy we hold in our spine, the puma is the body, and the condor is the awakened self: the mind that soars above the world. So my mesa is also a representation of energy flowing through us and bringing us into new consciousness.

  Some shamans use chonta¶22 and swords on their mesas as well, as protections and to change the energies of patients and heal them. I don’t because I have always known that San Pedro protects me and my participants anyway and that there is no greater or more powerful healer than the plant itself. So why would I need to hit participants with sticks—and interrupt their healings by doing so?

  Rubén is a historian and regards my approach as a form of evolution that gives people the healing they need through the correct ceremonies for our times. But it is also devolution because so many rituals and objects have been artificially added to San Pedro mesas and ceremonies through the influence of the Spanish Catholics.

  Before the Spanish came to Peru, Andeans believed in Inti, the god of the sun, and Pachamama, the Earth, so their rituals were simpler and needed fewer symbols, appeasements to God, or ways to keep evil at bay. The idea of guilt and of a God who needed appeasing arrived with the Catholics and it was they who made our ancestors change their rituals. Before this they were more natural and flowing. So what I do may be an evolution as Rubén calls it, but it is also a return to what was always done. It is as if we have evolved backward rather than forward in time.

  Is your decision to hold ceremonies in the day instead of at night part of this “backward evolution” too?

  La Gringa: Rubén holds his ceremonies at night*23 and that is how he taught me, but as I grew in my understanding of San Pedro, ceremonies at night—for practical as well as spiritual reasons—became another thing that did not work for me.

  Perhaps it is to do with the Spanish again and their Catholic notions of guilt and “suffering for our sins” that many San Pedro ceremonies are held at night. I always found it so cold and uncomfortable that I could never really relax enough to receive the blessings of San Pedro. I mentioned this to Rubén and he understood, so he began to hold ceremonies for me during the day. Then I really noticed the difference. In daylight is where all my breakthroughs have come.

  For one thing, with San Pedro you can look around you and see the beauty of the world and notice how connected you are to everything: that you are beautiful and part of a beautiful creation. You can’t do that in darkness.

  What people need to understand is that San Pedro is not a hallucinogen like ayahuasca, so they will never see images and pictures, and there is no point, therefore, in lying in the dark waiting for something to happen. San Pedro’s teaching is visionary instead, in the revelations it brings about the natural world, and in daylight you can see that more clearly. That is why we hold our ceremonies in sunlight: because San Pedro wants it that way and that is how it was first done.

  How do you prepare your San Pedro?

  La Gringa: Most shamans peel and cut the cactus then boil it for between four and eight hours. They may also add alcohol and sometimes other plants or ingredients such as tobacco. I cook mine for twenty hours, so it is much stronger and also means that people are less likely to vomit when they drink it. Other San Pedro brews feel weak to me now and rarely give the same visions.

  Some shamans say you don’t really need visions for a healing to take place with San Pedro, but I think they are important because as well as the healing people receive they also need to know they have been healed. When the visions come they can feel it, then they understand it is real and pay attention to what they are shown. Without the visions they can’t know this.

  There are other things to consider when preparing San Pedro too. I only work with cactuses that have seven or nine spines because they produce the most gentle and beautiful brews. Those with six or eight spines are not so strong, while elevens and thirteens can be very intense and dark. I never use either with patients. Those with four spines are only ever used for exorcisms and the patient and healer must both drink. You don’t ever want to try a San Pedro like this though. It is horrible and the visions take you straight to hell.

  While the cactus is cooking we sing to it or offer prayers that it will produce good healings. Every time we stir it we offer a new prayer so maybe twenty prayers go into each bottle.

  Sometimes the spirit of San Pedro shows up while we are cooking it, in patterns on the surface of the water that tell us who will be coming to drink it and why. I have seen patterns in the form of ovaries, for example, complete in every detail, or hearts enclosed by circles. Then the next day a woman has arrived for help with a fertility problem and brought with her a man whose heart was closed to her dreams. In this way San Pedro can show us what people need before they even arrive.

  What healings have you witnessed?

  La Gringa: One that meant a lot to me was for a woman who had always said she would never drink San Pedro and did not believe in it, so her story shows in a way that you don’t even need to have faith in the plant for it to heal you—although it is better if you do.

  This woman’s husband had died a few years ago. He was a strong man but his disease meant that he wasted away to nothing. It took him a year to die while the woman nursed him. Then just three months later her son was murdered. He was just twenty-six. The woman was shattered. She became like the walking dead. Soon afterward she had a stroke that paralyzed her arm and from the shock of all she had been through she got diabetes as well.

  Finally, despite all her reservations, she asked me if she could drink San Pedro. I gave her the tiniest amount and she lay in my arms and cried her heart out for five hours. That is a good expression for what happened actually because I had drunk San Pedro too and through its eyes I saw strands of energy coming from her heart and circling her chest and arm like a tourniquet. I began pulling them out of her and throwing them away.

  The next morning was like a miracle. Her arm, which had been totally paralyzed, had regained its movement. Then when she got home she saw a specialist who tested her diabetes and that had gone too.

  I asked her later about her San Pedro experience and she said she had felt a lot of pain in her heart, which is where I had also seen the energy of grief that was binding her. So as well as curing her physical problems San Pedro showed her why she had them: because of the emotional distress she had been unable to let go of.

  What I have learned from San Pedro is that illness is never a “thing” that is in us; it is not “diabetes” or “a stroke.” It is a belief that we c
arry: that we must mourn for the ones we have lost, for example, or for ourselves through a pain or disability that makes our suffering visible and “real.” So illness is a thoughtform: a negative pattern we hold on to and reproduce. San Pedro not only heals us but shows us this thoughtform. Then the next time it arises we know it and can make a conscious decision to think and act differently.

  The woman you described sounds like she had a “psychosomatic” [mind-body] problem, a term that has lost much of its power in the West today, so that such illnesses are often dismissed as imaginary and not real. Can you elaborate?

  La Gringa: Every illness we have is psychosomatic. It may affect the body but it arises from our minds and our souls. Another woman came to me after she was diagnosed with cancer and had been receiving chemotherapy. She looked so ill that I took her in and she spent the next seven days with me. She vomited constantly. At the end of the week she realized that her doctors were not helping her and she decided to work with the plants instead. Now, through San Pedro, she is healed.

  The plant again showed her why she had cancer—which no Western medicine can do—and told her she had a choice: in blunt terms that she could die or change her mind and live the life she wanted. I know that sounds easy but it really can be as simple as that. She decided not to have cancer anymore because she realized through San Pedro that life was just too precious to lose.

  That sounds like soul retrieval in a way, but instead of the shaman performing it the plant does it for them.

  La Gringa: That’s right. It is soul retrieval or, rather, life retrieval. We hold our negative beliefs about ourselves as tensions in our bodies. If we don’t release them they become hardened there and manifest as physical or emotional problems. At the same time our good energies are blocked so that the fullness of our souls is not expressed and parts of us stay buried. San Pedro removes our negative beliefs so the positive ones can shine. So it is a form of soul retrieval, one where we return ourselves from ourselves.