Saving Pachamama: A Beginning

Don Mariano Quispe Flores

Pachamama, mother earth, Santa Madre Tierra, the earth, the planet is obviously in trouble. This should by now be obvious.

The Q'ero of Peru, the descendants of the Incas, live in remote villages that are above 14,000 feet above sea level. They have lived in these areas for hundreds of years. They live above the tree line. They raise llamas, alpacas, vicunas, and other similar animals, and they grow big kernal maiz ("choclo") and hundreds of species of potatoes. And until recently they kept to themselves. They stayed away from the cities. And the Government. And, of course, they kept their understandings of Shamanism and energy medicine to themselves. They certainly didn't tell North Americans about it. But then, relatively recently, they noticed the oddest thing, that the glaciers surrounding them were slowly melting. Slowly becoming smaller. Slowly disappearing. And the spiritual teachers in the lineage decided that Q'ero who were healers, who were powerful Shamans, who knew that it was necessary to heal mother earth and her children, would have to go down the mountain and bring out their teachings and carry them across the world.

I spent this past weekend with Q'ero Shaman Don Mariano Quispe Flores at The Abode in New Lebanon, New York, along with some three dozen other shamans. Don Mariano is 72 years old. He does not know how to write. Or to read. He speaks only Quechua (though he does say a very few words in English and Spanish). His village in Peru is about an 8 hour bus ride and then a 4 hour walk uphill from Cuzco. This trip to the United States (he stopped in California and Washington State and Colorado before journeying to the East) was his first trip to the US, though he has been to Europe. He is a very sweet, gentle, and humble man. And a powerful, traditional healer.

Because Don Mariano speaks Quechua, his translator sometimes translated first into Spanish, and then someone else translated into English. This was an incredible gift: I could hear what Don Mariano was saying three times. No, I didn't understand the first statements in Quechua, but I could feel and hear his tone of voice, and then it was repeated in both Spanish and English, so the content was repeated. I'm not going to try to bring you all of Don Mariano's teachings.

Instead, I bring you this very short essay to tell you something important that you probably already know only too well, just to remind you.

Pachamama, your Mother Earth, Santa Madre Tierra is in trouble and she needs our help and our caring for her. She needs us to honor her. And protect her.

This might involve traditional practices, like making offerings ("despachos") and prayers for the healing of the earth. It also might involve ceremonies, calling in the power of the Twelve Sacred Mountains (the Apus), the six directions, prayers, and healing thoughts. These are all important. But also important, perhaps even more important is our continuing awareness of Pachamama and our actions to take care of her as she takes care of us by feeding us, by giving us water, by providing shelter.

So I have a very simple request. Please pause now, look up from your screen, go outdoors if you can, and see, if you can, the unbelievable, abundant world surrounding use, the world on which we walk. Look at Pachamama. And feel, if you can, in your heart gratitude for all Pachamama provides us. This gratitude is incredibly important. It is the beginning point to help the planet.

An Extremely Beautiful Despacho

In the simplest terms, a despacho is an offering. It contains prayers, prayers for Pachamama, Santa Tierra Madre, Mother Earth. And the prayers are released by burning or by burying the despacho in the earth. In metaphorical terms, a despacho is an entire Universe. It contains the four directions, the sky, the earth, the Apus, everything in our cosmos. And it holds our dreams and our prayers and our intentions for peace, healing, abundance, love, beauty and community.

The making of a despacho is an ancient ceremony from the Andes. Prayers are blown into all of the symbolic objects. And a beautiful universe is slowly constructed from leaves and material and food and all kinds of other materials. In this Universe there is respect and care for Mother Earth, sweetness, and abundance, and wealth, and health, and the mountains, the stars, the forests, the clouds, the sun, the ocean, the entire world, the entire galaxy, and all of us. The completed despacho is sealed and tied and ultimately offered through the fire, releasing the prayers and intentions.

It is a lovely ceremony. These words must trivialize it: a ceremonial despacho is not about words, it's about intention and energy, the unseen, our feelings and intuitions, and spirit. But there is a video, with a beautiful despacho made by Don Mariano, who is a Q'ero from Peru:



I love the video. And the despacho is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. I find myself playing the video over and over and over again. I hope you enjoy it.

A Mythic Hummingbird Flight

[Hummingbird photo removed. Sorry.]


In the Q'ero shamanic tradition, and doubtless others, there's the archetype of the hummingbird, the animal of the winds of the north.

Hummingbirds have impossibly small wings in comparison to the size of their bodies. But every year they take the mythic journey, all the way from South America to the northeastern United States and Canada, and later the round trip. They have enormous courage. They fly alone. They follow only their inner guidance. They eat heavily before the time comes. And when the time comes to fly, they realize that it's time, and they respond without hesitation and with enormous faith and begin the long journey.

During the flight, they lose up to 40% of their body weight. Some cautious ones seem to fly around the Gulf of Mexico so they will fly over land. But many, many fly directly, non stop across the open waters of the Gulf. They fly close to the waves, so that the headwinds will not impede them, but there are predators in the water and the air. They always fly alone. They always follow their guidance. Their unbelievable, heroic flight takes several days.

There are reports from oil rigs in the Gulf of seeing hummingbirds fly past them flying close to the water.

Eventually, the hummingbird arrives at its destination, the distant, perhaps unseen place, for which it first set out. It may be weak, exhausted, a shadow of its former self, but it nevertheless arrives at a destination it may not have seen before, a destination it could only dream existed, a destination that somehow called aloud to it, a destination known to all of its ancestors, and it responded without question.

This gigantic journey links it directly to all of its ancestors, and it connects each of us directly to ours.

Where, after all, does the hummingbird receive the knowledge about where to go and how to go there? How does it know so perfectly how to do the seemingly impossible?

And where did we get the ideas we have about justice, quality, compassion, honesty, courage, and perseverance? How do we know so well what these are?

Since the election, I've been seeing Barack Obama's journey as a fulfillment of the mythic hummingbird journey. Starting in near insignificance, he set out on a long, heroic, testing journey, keeping his eyes and heart on the destination, flying bravely and alone, finding help where he could, and at last arriving. A magical hummingbird journey.

It's an unbelievably old archetype. The Nazca lines in Peru, made more than 2500 years ago, have a hummingbird. It's there, I like to think, to remind us of our ability to achieve the seemingly impossible, that with our impossibly small wings, we are capable of the most epic flights.

I am astounded and humbled. My gratitude for being alive to witness this overwhelms me.

Dreaming The World Into Being

Q'ero Shamans Don Francisco (l) and Don Humberto (r)

A Q'ero shaman from high in the Peruvian Andes will visit my home in early October to share the wisdom that the Inka Elders have kept alive for thousands of years. I'm really excited again to welcome to my home my Q'ero spiritual brother, Don Francisco, and Shaman friends from across the US.

Until 1949 the Q'ero remained largely isolated in villages high up on Ausangate Mountain above 16,000 feet. Since that time they have come down from the mountain to share their knowledge with the West. Their mission is to prepare people in their country and in the world for this time that they consider a time of great change and potential peace, which they call a pachacuti (a turning over).

I just returned from 8 days with two Q'ero Shamans, Don Francisco and Don Humberto in Oregon, where with my spouse and about 30 of our Shaman friends we spent the time just before the Autumn Solstice making prayers and offerings, and immersing ourselves in the path of the heart. How did this look?


The Sand Painting

We made a giant sand painting on the beach in Yachats, much like a mandala, putting into it our dreams, prayers and symbolism. We made the sand painting at low tide. The prayers and objects and offerings were taken into the world by the Pacific Ocean (the Mamaqocha) and spread out when the tide returned. The center of the sand painting was a circle of flowers and items from nature. Around it were sand drawings, constructions of items from nature, and other symbolic representations of the universe, the stars, the sun, and animals.


The Vigil Fire

And, of course, we held a 3-day vigil fire. A group of more than 30 people joined together to tend the fire, to feed it and make offerings to it, to dream a New Global Tapestry of cooperation and sufficiency and self sustainability, to dream into being a new world of peace and justice. We brought together all our hearts' desires and visions of what the world can be. We joined each other at the fire and we made our offerings to Universe to invite it to inspire us and to create with us a new world.

It is a prophecy of the Hopi that when there are vigil fires across the entire world, when there are millions of vigil fires, there will be peace. In 2007 at the Autumn Equinox we were aware of about 50 fires; this year, 100. And next year, we hope for many, many more.

And of course we made despachos. A despacho is a traditional prayer bundle that gathers together individual and community prayers as an offering to bring us into AYNI - right relation - with Mother Earth, the Mountains, the Stars, the Animals, the Oceans, all living things. The prayer bundle often includes herbs, flowers, llama wool, foods, each with prayers blown in. In addition, people can blow their dreams and prayers and wishes into the leaves of a kintu (three leaves representing the alignment of heart and mind in action) and place it into the despacho. The despacho is a Q'ero ceremony to honor community and the interconnection of all things. The prayers in the despacho are sent to spirit, are released by burning it, or by burying it.

In early October, at my home, we will repeat some of these rituals. The main public event, “Weaving a New Global Tapestry,” will be a despacho done on behalf of the world, especially powerful at this moment of transition on our planet. The despacho ceremony will take place on October 1st at the Hawthorne Valley School on Route 21C in Ghent, Columbia County, New York from 7-10 pm.

Everyone is welcome at this despacho ceremony. This is an opportunity for everyone to put in their heartfelt prayers and to receive a blessing from the Q'ero.

Special thanks and h/t to Bob Aldrich for the photos, to Wake and Kinlen Wheeler for their hospitality and planning for both events, to the Yachats

The Yachats Gathering Of Shaman

Don Francisco and Don Umberto

The Second Annual Gathering of Shaman: Global Vigil Fire was held over Autumn Solstice Weekend on the coast of Oregon in Yachats. Co-created by Wake and Kinlen Wheeler and the Global Ayllu of trained Shaman, including Don Francisco, and Don Humberto of the Q’ero, the group of more than 30 people joined together to continue to weave the New Global Tapestry, to dream a world of peace and justice into being. We brought together all our hearts' desires and visions of what the world can be. We joined each other in the fire and offered our weaving of visionary threads to the Universe to invite it to co-create with us a new world.

It was especially enjoyable to meet and participate in ceremonies with Don Humberto and Don Francisco of the Q'ero, the descendants of the Inca. As important, the presence of the Q'ero fulfills their own prophecy, to reach down from the high Andes to bring the rest of the world a message of joyful peace and respect for the earth.

Last year there were over 50 fires connected in this beautiful dream. This year there were more than 100.

Between 4 and 6 am on September 21 I found myself with a group of lovely Shaman from as far away as Ireland at the fire. I was aware of the Hopi prophecy that when there are a million fires all around the world, there will be peace. I also perceive that sitting quietly, or singing, or joking, or talking while tending the fire is a step toward universal peace. How? By focusing ourselves on how we would like the world to be, on how to walk in beauty on the earth.

I offer my gratitude to all of those who made this fire possible.