Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca, the visionary medicine of the Amazon, is typically used in formal ceremony by the maestro to open and close the dieta.
Tobacco
The Amazonian form of tobacco, smoked as mapacho or ingested as rapé, is often used during dietas for energetic cleansing and connecting with the spirit of the plant or tree being dieted.
Deep Healing
Each master plant or tree is characterized by its ability to offer a special type of healing. Many believe that successful completion of a dedicated plant dieta offers more healing than any other type of healing modality.
Shamanic Apprenticeship
The dieta is the process by which apprentices from the Amazonian tradition of vegatalismo (plant-based shamanism & healing) learn to become curanderos (healers).
Intercultural orgainzation Oni Xobo recognizing Shipibo maestro Benjamin Mahua, for his lifetime of service as a onaya (healer). Benjamin Mahua, together with his brother (the late Pascual Mahua), are widely considered the first Shipibo maestros to begin offering the dieta of Noya Rao, although their method of energetically passing on the dieta was described differently by each of them (Benjamin passed "chipsies" to his dieteros while Pascual gave the "air/wind" of Noya Rao).
Mr Miyagi gets a black belt ;)
So cute
I recently met up with painter Mauro Reategui Perez (an art student of the late Pablo Amaringo) in Pucallpa, who has set up a small ayahuasca center by the Boiling River of Peru (The Boiling River being one of the most energetically powerful places I have ever dieted in). Mauro offers ceremonies together with Shipiba curandera Teolinda Rengifo Sanchez and a young Ashaninka named Miguel Minarez, which makes it a unique blend of the Shipibo, Ashaninka, and Mestizo traditions in one setting.
[Photo is of Miguel, Teolinda, and Mauro]
Beautiful- thank you for sharing 🙏🏽 do they have a website or contact?
Yes, contact info please?
Hello , can you send me more info , thanks 🙏🏻
Photos of Niwe Rao. It was the first plant dieta of the late Shipiba Maestra Olivia Arevalo. She used to call to its spirit to open her ceremonies and thereafter, clean and guide her students and pasajeros (passengers, or people not on dieta and attending ceremony). According to her apprentice, it is the medicine of the wind that connects you to the world of medicine, allowing a dietero to discover the cities that exist within this world that are filled with rivers and flowers. And after a strong dieta, when these visions open as a grace for the dedicated dietero, Maestra Olivia stated that the merayas (the legendary/mythical shamans of times now past) would arrive to teach one how to heal and become an onaya (curandero).
Missing my friend and teacher Shipiba curandera Luzmila Mori. She washed me, bathed me, healed me, and taught me, while always speaking with such honesty about her own vulnerabilities and limitations within the medicine world. I realize now how rare this is and have grown to appreciate what she imparted, whether knowingly or not, even more today.
I feel blessed that I had the opportunity to meet her 🙏
"Your next dieta will be Ishpingo. It will teach you about divine things." - Maestro Juan Flores of Mayantuyacu[Photo is of the Ishpingo tree growing in the jungle between the Ucayali River and the Cordillera El Sira mountain range, around 6-7 hours by fast boat from Pucallpa]
El jardín botánico
Este lugar es del centro de sanación wasan yaka
Ayahuasca vine growing at the base of the El Sira Cordillera mountain range and the Ucayali River, about 4 hours by boat from the Boiling River
Bellaco caspi tree growing near the Shipibo village of Puerto Nuevo and the Ashaninka village of Juancito in the Peruvian Amazon | Curandero Michael Sonn dieted this tree and once mentioned that it is the inner bark which is dieted; and that the tree offers "a tremendous amount of protection" and seems to teach how to extract virotes ("magical darts" sent by witchcraft) from patients.
For those of you who expressed interest in going deeper into the language of Shipibo medicine songs, official sign-ups are now open (see link below) with the 3 month course beginning at the end of July:forms.gle/mCXSP4yz8bvCjTuA9
"The world looks at the Amazon by satellite, and can only see the greenery and the rivers, but not the people who live here. To protect the trees and the rivers, you have to take care of the people who protect the trees and the rivers". - Vanda Witoto
Cuánta verdad
đź’›.
Selected excerpts from an article about Peru's indigenous communities in fear of rising violence from drug traffickers | Photo of indigenous land defenders taken near the Shipibo-Conibo community of Flor de Ucayali_____________
"One evening last November, hooded and masked men wielding automatic rifles walked onto the village green in the middle of Flor de Ucayali, an indigenous Amazon community in Peru."
"Firing in the air, they demanded to know the whereabouts of the village's leaders."
"Just months earlier, a young indigenous mother with her infant daughter had been surprised at her homestead by armed men who knocked her down, and threatened her. The woman was so scared that she left the community to live in a nearby city, neighbours said."
"Following that assault, Saul Martinez - the Apu or leader of the Shipibo-Konibo community of 265 people - imposed a three-month curfew, ordering the women and children to sleep in the village hall and the men to perform guard duty at night."
"Shipibo-Konibo leaders also reported ongoing invasions of their land to the prosecutor's office in Ucayali last November, but the armed men "keep appearing," Martinez said."
"They sent messages that if we did not desist (from reporting the incursions), they would take out those responsible, the leaders," he said, noting that images of dismembered bodies were sent to his mobile phone."
"Flor de Ucayali is among at least 100 indigenous communities in the central Amazon region of Ucayali that have been threatened in recent years by invading coca farmers, who grow the crop used to make cocaine for drug trafficking gangs."
__________
"Martinez, of Flor de Ucayali, said he had requested state protection for his community but was told by police to "take care of yourselves" as they did not have budget to make the boat journey from the regional capital Pucallpa, under three hours away."
"Are we living in the Peruvian state or somewhere else?," Martinez asked."
"Coca growing is a major driver of deforestation in Peru, which lost a record 2,000 sq km of forest in 2020, almost four times higher than the 2019 total."
"The environmental damage does not end there. Jungle cocaine laboratories also release toxic chemicals such as sulphuric acid, acetone and gasoline into the subsoil, streams and rivers."
_________
"While the invaders threatening Flor de Ucayali's territory are violent and better armed, the young men and women of the community are unbowed."
"Equipped with five donated bulletproof vests and a couple of shotguns, as well as bows and arrows, they patrol forest that extends to the border with Brazil."
"We'll keep on defending ourselves even if we must die," said Christian Tangui, 30, leader of the village's self-titled surveillance committee and the father of a young family."
"Tangui said he could not bear to see his children scared anymore by intruders - even if patrolling to try to stop them meant serious danger for guards."
"The community investigates newly-deforested spots with the help of state-run Programa Bosques, which updates a satellite map of their land monthly."
"Drones help them have a broader view of their land - but drug traffickers use the technology as well, to avoid military raids."
"During one recent patrol, indigenous defenders said they were forced to flee into the forest when intruders fired shots."
___________
"Robert Guimaraes, a longtime indigenous leader regionally and nationally, said that he had not seen such a level of organized crime in Ucayali before the pandemic."
"The situation is very serious because there are authorities colluding with drug trafficking," he said, citing the alleged involvement of regional officials, judges and prosecutors."
"Ucayali’s governor, Francisco Pezo Torres, is in preventive detention facing trial for allegedly leading a criminal organization in the regional government."
___________
"We are facing a whole apparatus of organized crime, of organized assassination," he said. "Our community is titled, however it does not have the protection of the state."
"As the Shipibo-Konibo people fear for their land and their lives, the Kakataibo indigenous group represent a chilling illustration of the potential dangers ahead."
"Arbildo Melendez, a Kakataibo leader, was shot dead in April 2020 in the Unipacuyacu community - 150 km from Flor de Ucayali - after having reported the presence of drug gangs to the authorities."
"His community remains under siege from coca farmers who have cleared swathes of forest. Unipacuyacu's 86 families have retreated to just 1% of its 230-sq-km territory, and Melendez's widow and four children are in hiding, fearing more violence."
"Herlin Odicio, leader of the Kakataibo federation, also has been forced into hiding in another town after death threats mounted, and his relatives have been attacked by armed men."
"Despite this, Odicio has been elected as a town councillor and has helped to get state approval to create two new indigenous reserves for his people, who want to live in isolation in their new 1,500 sq km territory."
"Unfortunately this (death threat) is for life and this persecution will continue," he said. "I will always defend my people, the struggle of my people. I will not remain silent."
___________
[Full article here: news.trust.org/item/20220628080457-otmur]
A younger & healthier Benjamin Mahua, who together with his brother Pascual Mahua, were considered the trunk of Noya Rao by some, prepares medicine in the year 2002 | Photo by Howard G Charing
Curanderos Eduardo Calderón Palomino (decd. 1996, curanderismo norteño) and Agustin Rivas Vasquez circa late 1980s / early 1990s
Excerpts from a refreshing conversation between Hector Marquez and anthropologist & author Jeremy Narby:[Rough translation from Spanish into English by me from the complete interview: canamo.net/.../el-hombre-que-llevo-los-chamanes...]
[Photo is of Jeremy Narby with the Ashaninka community of Quirishari, in the Pichis Valley, Peru, in 1986, with whom he lived for two years]
____________
Jeremy Narby: "A psychedelic reveals the psyche. So it depends on what is inside the psyche of each person."
"For this reason, as Luis Eduardo Luna rightly said, the greatest danger of ayahuasca is the inflation of the ego."
"It must be said that Westerners already have a more inflated ego than indigenous people, which does not mean that the desire for power and the inflation of the ego are absent in Amazonian shamanism. Not at all, and there are many cases that prove it."
"But that is precisely what he is talking about as the latent danger of ayahuasca. The reason why it is even more dangerous for Westerners."
"It is interesting in the indigenous world how the concept of witchcraft operates. In our world, the equivalent would be individual psychology: the theme of Western personal development, the quest to "increase one's own power."
"So, although ayahuasca can make the ego disappear during the experience and the immediate days afterwards, it is also common that the ego become swollen disproportionately. It does not happen to everyone or always. But it happens way too often."
"And that is why you need to tread carefully. It may be interesting to see how your ego swells, but it is dangerous to let the swollen ego control your decisions."
__________
Hector Marquez: "Let us talk about the importance of community. Westerners are constantly looking for the self. However, ayahuasca arises within a setting of community where the human being is part of a much larger ecosystem, not above it or trying to subdue it."
Jeremy Narby: "Let us think about the definition of "shaman." It is a word of Siberian origin, which European intellectuals took from. The word "shaman" then went through Russian, French, German, English, and finally arrived to Spanish. We are talking about during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And then came the 20th century, where attempts were made to define this non-European cross-cultural Siberian concept throughout the world."
"In the book on shamans that Francis Huxley and I wrote, we looked for an adequate definition that would serve to unite this changing concept between different times and cultures."
"The clearest to us seemed to be that of the French anthropologist Alfred MĂ©traux in the 1940s: "An individual who as a profession and on behalf of the community maintains a link and occasional trade with the spirits of nature."
"So the community is a fundamental part of this concept. It is not by chance. The community is to the shaman what Houston is to the astronaut. That is to say: the shaman goes to “other worlds” to seek knowledge and power, which he must put at the service of the community."
"And that suits us as a community, but at the same time, we have to be careful that his actions do not lead to his own benefit, which can be dangerous."
"And that is the function of the community in the traditional indigenous context. Traditional, meaning how it was before the arrival of all the ayahuasca drinkers."
"Now that shamanism has become neoshamanism and there are are individuals working not with members of their own community but with clients, there are no longer communities. There is no longer Houston. There is no longer an ethics committee."
"And this is a danger. If shamanism, either with a drum or with ayahuasca, allows you to reach a place of knowledge and power and allows you to increase both, you need a counterpower."
"And if not, you get the inflation of the ego, the drunkenness of power."
"You have to learn to diet power. And, brother, people in the Western world do not know how to do that."
"It does not mean that we have to live like native Amazonians. But we can take inspiration from them, recognize the problem we have and create new solutions adapted to our culture."
___________
Hector Marquez: "In several North American native Indian communities there was the figure of the heyoka, the counter-shaman. But that figure is not so common in the Amazonian context, right?"
Jeremy Narby: "Among the Asháninka, for example, what was widely used was the use of ridicule. They mocked the shaman a lot when they wanted to tell him something important."
__________
Hector Marquez: "You always talk about the Asháninka, but what relationship do you have with the Shipibo-Konibo, the Amazonian people who have capitalized the most on ayahuasca culture internationally?"
Jeremy Narby: "In Peru alone there are more than fifty different Amazonian ethnic groups, and you cannot know them all well. Yes, I have collaborated with some Shipibos throughout my time in Peru. But the Shipibos were not part of the AIDESEP organization, which is the federation of indigenous organizations with which I worked."
"Historically, the Shipibos worked with the religious workers of their communities in bilingual education."
"I have worked with Kokamas, Kokamillas, Awajún, Matziguengas, Aorashawis… In the days when I did fieldwork with the Asháninka, there was a rivalry with the Shipibos."
"There was admiration, respect and fear at the same time. From afar, all indigenous people look alike, but up close, there are many differences."
"For example, Shipiba crafts are very rich, complex, full of color. That of the Asháninka is a bit rough and lacks color."
"The Shipibos, for their part, they feared the wild side of the Ashaninka. And the Ashaninka feared the Shipibos for the sophisticated level of their brujeria (witchcraft)."
"There is a bit of caricature in both but it happens everywhere that when you live with someone, they do not speak very well of their neighbors."
"I have not integrated these prejudices by the way. On the contrary, the young ayahuasquero who intiated me with the medicine had completed his apprenticeship with a Shipibo maestro."
___________
Hector Marquez: "I would like to know your opinion about the importance of icaros – the songs of the ayahuasca rituals. I believe the icaros are the ones that really end up doing the final job for which the plant prepares you, that work like the surgeon's scalpel, if you will use the metaphor. The icaros allows integration of the full power of the plants in a precise way within the patient."
Jeremy Narby: "Well, my opinion is the same: it is exactly like that. [laughs]
This is very interesting thank you for sharing with me Cady
Which one is jeremy.
Excellent ….