San Pedro – also known as the Peruvian Torch cactus is used in Peruvian shamanic rituals. They call it a medicine because it’s purpose is to purge negativity from the user – whether that negativity is physical, emotional, or spiritual.  I guess it would be akin to Peyote. Unlike the short intense Ayahuasca journey that makes you puke and crap – or “purge”, San Pedro is a longer but apparently gentler journey. Mike, the shamans apprentice, explained that it opens your seven senses.  The seventh sense being your ability to see into other dimensions. (This guy also nonchalantly believes extraterrestrial human hybrids from Atlantis mixed with the Neanderthals to create todays South American.)

There were seven of us participating in the “opening” ceremony.  We came from many parts of the world. I was the only one who didnt know Spanish so it had some rather confusing moments. Other than the odd translation or instruction from Mike  I was in the dark as to what was supposed to be going on.

We were gathered somewhere in the Sassaywyman archaeological site. According to Mike,  Master Jose Pineda Vargas’s  is registered with their federal government and his ancestral shaman status entitles him to basically do whatever he pleases on any archaeological site in Peru. Despite that, a park warden tried to make us leave the archaeological site.  There was an indignant uproar as Master Jose and his assistants waved their hands at him like they were shooing a fly and chastised him in Spanish. Mike called him crazy. This warden was obviously new and didn’t know who Master Jose  Pineda Vargas was.

After some walki talki chatter, another warden appeared. Upon recognizing the Master, he told us to be careful a dragged the other warden away.

San Pedro is like something you cough up – not something you would ingest. It was a creepy gelatinous green goo  – like a baseball sized booger in a coffee mug. It triggered every gag reflex in me as I struggled to choke it down. I haven’t done a heavy drug in a good decade and was extremely hesitant to do so. However, I had told myself I would do this if I had the chance.  Well the chance had found me – and how can you top San Pedro in an ancient archaeological site with a genuine government certified ancestral shaman?

After we had all ingested the San Pedro, Master Jose made us sit with our eyes closed awhile he began to simultaneously chant in Quechua, whistle, and shake a rattle. After awhile, he made us “dance” in a circle. My body felt heavy as I lurched like a  zombie around the fire.As if on cue storm began to brew. There was thunder and lightning but no rain. The wind whipped the stinky smoke of the Paulo San fire into my face making me nauseous every time I passed it’s plume but this feeling was eclipsed by a feeling of pure elation. I found myself clutching my staff of petrified wood and feeling the storm in me and around me. I had a strong feeling that I was going to be alone,and single for a very long time. I made peace with the idea and resolved I would travel all over the world and do ritual wherever I could.

Every now and then a young girl about 9 yrs old would pour a floral alcohol into our hands which we had to inhale seven times. Each time I did this it felt like I got a little higher and higher.

After what felt like an hour,  we were lead through the ancient caves  lit by candle light. It was now night. I felt like it easily could have been a thousand or more years ago. Once we were through the caves, we were told to dance around another fire for about another hour. I felt ill because  I hadn’t done the recommended diet and cleanse before the ceremony. My body felt like lead. My mind was flying all over the place. I thought of my past. I imagined my future. I thought of my mother. I thought a lot of love.  I re-experienced every heartache and slight I had ever had. Then a voice in my head started saying over and over. “That was not love. That was not love.  Real love is better.”

Eventually he lead us all to separate places.  I was lead to a large flat rock, given a sleeping bag for warmth, and told to keep my eyes closed. Closing the eyes was a good idea because all the rocks looked like creepy faces in the moonlight.

I have no idea how long I laid on that rock curled up in the fetal position under the pale moonlight of my rocky solitude. I understood the point of tripping out alone, but darn I don’t think freezing my ass off was the best way to “open” my seven senses. Quite frankly, I was afraid. Here I was in a foreign country with a bunch of people who communicated best in another language and I had just broken one of the two cardinal rules of travelling. Don’t do anything that will strip you of your control in a foreign country. Okay. Perhaps we can make an exception to the rule if its with a guy who displays 9 human skulls on his window sill altar? (That’s a rhetorical question)

Once my fear about my situation had passed, my brain began to filter through its regular crap. The thoughts were actually my normal regrets, worries, and insecurities – but suddenly I realized most of my daily thoughts are pure garbage. Useless chatter that paralyzes and distracts me from what is really important. The lower mind is really a stupid thing.

I thought again of love. Not just romantic love, but family love and even worldly love. This seemed to be the theme for my journey. My exposure to the expressions of love from other countries had me really thinking about what they call love in my world. I began to think of how society and economics separates children from parents in Canada…. I thought of how men treat women and how confusing the  gender roles have become. How confused I have become. I feel that somewhere along the line I have lost touch with the woman in me. My womanhood has been exploited, but hasnt been honoured in so long that I feel I have started to become a man inside… Maybe that is part of the reason why I am single. I don’t feel like a woman anymore.

When women burned their bras, they wanted some choices and freedoms. They didn’t want to be men. But men have become so wrapped up in their careers, addictions, and sports, that they have forgotten how to honour a woman – and they wonder why they cant bring out the best in them. Its crazy. It wasnt so apparent until I came here and saw the way men from (some) other countries treat and honour me. Its not a smarmy thing either. Its hard to explain. I just feel really respected here. I havent at any point in time felt objectified – yet at home I feel it all the time.

I then thought of worldly love. My god there is so much touch deprivation in my world! I don’t mean romantic touching – but general touching.  There was this sparsely toothed woman I bought some coffee from on my first morning in Agua Calientes. Our communication was very simple because of the difference in our languages, but everytime I ran into her after that she emanated pure love towards me. By the next day, we were on a hugging basis. For some reason, embracing this tiny strangers body felt really good. It was so pure and simple. She was a good person. I was a good person. We needed to express it.

People need to walk in other lands and ask questions instead of sitting at home passing judgement then picking up a gun and hopping a plane to kill a culture they don’t understand. One of the final three choices for the new Peruvian Persident is against tourism and wants to start a war with Chile to get back a couple cities that were formerly Peruvian territory. I think somebody needs a hug… War just seems so ludicrous – but I’m a hippy inside…

But nothing compares to the power of Machu Piccu…

Vladamir was with me the first day. We didnt see much of Machupiccu because he insisted on the “short” hike to the Temple of the Moon – which is on the top of the Waynapicchu (The big mountain behind Macchupiccu) . He said his father was a leader of the Quechua people and we were going to do a ritual with the cocoa leaves there. By now I had figured out that all Vladamirs time estimations should be multiplied by 4 to create the actual duration of grueling “arriba”.

The climb to the temple was a similar to the climb to Waynawanna except it was steeper and there was ladders and steel rope in some spots.

A neat sentenial post along the way:

At one point Vladamir saw a wild jaguar run through the bush – but by the time we had finished fumbling through my translation guide so he could communicate what he saw the jaguar was long gone.

I think both Vladamir and I were both starting to get frustrated with the limitations in each others attempts at the opposite language. During our climb we were fortunate enough to meet a wonderful Austrian girl named Liz who knew both languages and to our relief ended up serving as a translator.  Liz equalized things nicely.

When we got to the top of the mountain we then descended to The Temple of The Moon…

If I hadn’t had the clash of Spanglish that connected me with Vladamir I would never have climbed the mountain behind Machupiccu. I would have wandered around the ruins looking for the place I saw in my vision, found nothing, and gone home thinking my vision was a strange flight of fancy. Mike, the shamans aprentice said, “There are no accidents” and indeed this seems to be true in this case. The place I saw in my vision was the Temple of the Moon. Everything was as I saw in my vision – except a little more run down by time. The ledge was gone – but you could still see the layout of the earth was as I saw it.

The unique view of the other mountains were the exact vantage as my vision. The cave had the sloped ceiling. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to photograph it. I video taped it but have to upgrade this account to upload the video.

I had to excuse myself and sit alone. Everything I had been taught to believe was only part of the puzzle of existence. My whole belief system had suddenly done a giant shift and I now found myself having to accept a concept that wasn’t native to my mind. Not only was reincarnation possibly real…I also had to come to terms with the idea that it was also also possible to access past life information. Yeah – I cried with emotion. For some reason I cry a lot here in Peru.

Once I was finished processing, Vladamir lead us in a Quechuan/Incan ritual for a safe journey using coca leaves. Cocoa leaves are quite sacred here. Im not entirely convinced there isnt a bit of an addiction involved, yet I would agree with the peruvians ans say it’s a medicine more than a drug.  It sure helped with my adjustment to altitude. I think it’s only a drug when the Columbians  add a wack of other toxic chemicals in a dirty jungle hut. For the curious here’s a link to the making of cocaine:

The next day I went to Machu Piccu by myself. It really is one of those places where you need to be alone to really feel the magesty. I hope all of you can experience this at some point in your life. Be alone there. Go early in the morning before the hoards of tourists arrive  – and pray for the eerie mist I got on my second day. But if you can go, go soon. The weight of milions of tourists feet is causing a negative impact on the area. Some scientist predict it will start sliding in about 6 years. The government is steadily raising the prices of restricting access to decrease harmful traffic but I doubt it will stop people.

So last I wrote I was in Ollataytambo with plans of hitting the hay early to catch the sun rising over the ruins. Um no. That is not what happened…

As it turned out, there was a missing pane of glass in the bathroom window and it happens to be very cold at night in the Andes this time of year. My room did not have heat but luckily I bought a “genuine acrylic baby alpacha touque” in the market and there was an extra bed with a spare 5 lbs of damp smelling blankets. I felt a bit better once I had effectively sealed every possible air pocket around my body… but then the altitude sickness set in.

Thinking I was well acclimated by now, I had left my Diamox in Cusco. Besides I was finding cocoa tea was very effective with staving off altitude sickness. Luckily I bought a bag of cocoa leaves from one of the many lynch mobs when I stepped off the bus in Pisac so I at least had something to work with.  However, finding hot water in Ollaytaytambo at any point past midnight is a challenge – so I munched on them straight. It was like eating dry bay leaves. It wasn’t as effective as ingesting in tea form, but I was able to get about 2 hrs sleep.

Then the¨”tourista” set in. It was not my finest moment. I will spare the gory details, but I have learned to be far more cautious with my culinary choices. Bringing Imodium and antibiotics was a very wise thing – as I have heard some horror stories about people getting sick for days on end in Peru.

The night before, my tour company had told me Machu Piccu was closed due to landslide. In reality, they closed a portion of the trail until they could figure out if a certain rock was going to fall. (Personally I thought dynamite would have created a very quick answer – but who am I to judge. It could have been a special rock. )

As I understood it, we were still going to do a portion of the Inca trail so the next day I caught the train and got off at KM104 – as per the original plan.  I expected to see a guide with a sign bearing my name – however this is not how things went down. There wasn’t anybody waiting for me. That is when I realized my tour company and I had had a unfortunate clash of Spanglish.

So there I was in the middle of the Andes with no guide or pass to the Incan Trail – and my train to Auguas Calientes was gone. I explained my situation in my best Spanglish and Pictionary to the park warden to discovered my tour company hadnt been through that way at all. A nice family from Bogota had offered to let me accompany them and their guide – but the trail authorities wouldn’t let me onto the trail without my pass. My pass was with my tour company – wherever they were.

I didn’t have a clue what to do so I tried bargaining – I even tried tears. I could have one an Oscar for my performance as I was biting my lips and fanning my face with tears welling in my eyes.

Peruvians dont like to see people unhappy so the warden jumped out of the booth and accompanied me back to the train tracks to be sure there was nobody there. Then there was a flurry of walki talkie chatter. After about 10 minutes, he asked if my name was Theresa. I lit up. “Si!” I stood up to approach but he waved me away while more walki talki chatter continued. Finally, he said, “Vamos”,and motioned me to run with him along the trail.  I wasn’t sure what was going on but wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth so I ran into the park with him. He connected me with the nice family from Bogota and their guide. The guide informed me that I had my own guide walking towards me from Aguas Calientes. He will meet me at the second set of ruins.

The timing was perfect. My guide hit the second set of ruins at the same time as I. His name was Vladamir. This is him with my bag of cocoa leaves. He taught me how to chew them properly with the catalyst – which is a mixture of ash and a couple other things to activate them. I was not convinced the catalyst wasn’t llama poo. My cheek went numb. Big deal. I was happy to give him the bag and he was happy to have it.

Vladamir knew slightly more English than I knew of Spanish, so somehow we were able to communicate. I actually got to relax and try my hand at conversational Spanish. In retrospect it was more like pointing at things and speaking spanish nouns. He also taught me a bit of Quechua – the ancient Incan language.

He told me were going to climb to see Wynawanna and dragged me up this crazy high mountain.

I busted my butt in the gym for several months before this trip – but there is no amount of gym or cardio training that could ever prepare you for the Andes. I believe Andes is the Spanish word for Stairmaster. That’s what these people and their ancestors do best. The climb stairs and move rocks.

Now let me explain the way Incans build trails. First they make a 20-50 foot rising at about a 45 degree angle. Then they suddenly switch directions and send another in the other direction. They repeat this until they reach the top. There are no nice long flat meanderings anywhere. If you find a flat stretch anywhere it is only about 5 feet long. Its called a direction change. The Incans were crazy people. They would cut massive stone bricks from one mountain then haul these things to a different mountain on these crazy trails to build a city. If only you could see the porters out here. They average man is about 5’4  looks like they weight about 100 lbs soaking wet  – yet they RUN with loads twice their size up and down this mountain for about $2 a day. They are SO fit. Crazy stuff. I could barely carry myself much less some of those loads. Like check this out:

They haul these loads up mountains! There was one guy running with two full sized metal propane tanks on his back but the pic didn’t turn out as he was moving too fast.

Anyways back to my climb. Vladimir basically said (In Spanish) “Let’s go. Twenty more minutes.” to me for the next three hours until my soft gringa ass made it to the top of the mountain. This is me part way up:

I was clearly still optimistic about being almost there.

This is the Urabamba (Sacred River) as seen from where I started:

This is the Urabamba from where I ended up:

When I arrived at the top of the mountain saturated in a combination of sweat and persistent Andean rain, my reward awaited. The ruins of Wynawanna were completely devoid of human presence. It was beautiful and eerie. Magic. The only sound was the pouring rain and the song of exotic songbirds.

After spending some time wandering the ruins we climbed back down the mountain and walked to Auguas Calientes – which took about another three and a half hours.

It seems that each ruin I see becomes increasingly more impressive as a draw closer to Machu Piccu…

My friend Leonard is a shaman who does psychic readings, guided meditations, and past life regression. Though I believe in the afterlife and possibility of reincarnation, I have always been skeptical of peoples ability to actually see their past lives. Today I am confused because I tried a regression session that revealed an unexpected vision . The goal was to go back into my childhood – however once I was under hypnosis I had some visions which were too detailed for my imagination or knowledge base.

This is what I saw….

Vision One – The Incan Sacrifice:

The rains had recently stopped and beautiful rays of light were cutting through the dispersing clouds. I saw brilliant golden splashes of light all over the great rugged mountainsides that surrounded me. I could see myself dancing on the edge of a ledge at a place I determined was Machu Piccu. I was beautiful. My tiny body was clad in a filmy white robe and my amazingly long dark gold hair was adorned with flowers and feathers.

I must have been stoned to the hilt on some sort of powerful hallucinogen as I euphorically twirled in my own world.  Four men stood watching me. Waiting for me to tire of dancing? Eventually I was lead to an altar inside a cave with a sloped ceiling. The cave was lit by fire as time had passed and it was now dusk.

They anointed me with a floral scented water. I couldn’t understand what they were chanting. It was a bit eerie, but I wasn’t afraid. I was more aroused than anything from all their stroking.

I became aware of who I was in this life. I belonged to a temple. When men came to me they were traumatized by their lives – be it war, a bad hunt, or the death of a loved one. I would perform rituals and do anything that needed to be done to get their negativity out of them, Sometimes they’d cry and scream. Sometimes they’d come. Sometimes they would pee. They came to me for understanding, love, and release.

Upon Leonard suggestion I called that part of my soul back into me. There was negative energy inside me. It was like thick black roots that started at my heart and worked their way down through my body to form a hook around my reproductive organs. It took awhile to break them down and pull them out of my body but Leonard pulled them out one by one and blew them away. I had to help a bit by bearing down on my stomach with my own hands. My hands felt heavy and didn’t feel like they were mine.

After the negative energy had been pulled out of me the shamans in my vision began to move around me in a circle chanting. Their caressing continued. I was beginning to feel aroused… Suddenly the last thing I expected happened: A knife painlessly entered my chest and I was suddenly happily out of my body and looking down on it. I wondered what was so beautiful about my body to begin with – then realized it was my soul that made it beautiful.

I have no idea why they killed me. I do not know anything about the Incans. I think they had to sacrifice something precious for some reason. Perhaps this death is the reason why I’m so obsessed with Machu Piccu? It could be a connection to this past life. Or this whole vision I had was just a wicked imagination that surprised me with an unexpected twist. I’ll know when I go there. If the scenery and especially the ledge match my vision I will know there is some truth in there somewhere.

Vision Two – The Witch

It was a grey day in what felt like somewhere in the UK. There was a heavy mist in the air  – or perhaps it was a slight drizzle. I was laying on my back and was tightly bound by something like barbed wire. Every time I moved or drew a breath the barbed wire cut deeper into my flesh.

The villagers had gathered around me and were hatefully shouting obscenities, throwing animal dung, and spitting on me. The women were the worst. They really despised me – especially the one with the missing teeth and the matted hair. Her eyes were wild with unquenchable hatred. Oddly, she looked like my mother in this life.

The mob was attacking everything about my body that pertained to beauty or sexuality. They had shorn my hair. They were cutting my breasts and impaling my nipples with large needles. They repetitively thrust a hot fire poker in my vagina.

There was a man beside me. As I understood the situation, the man was my lover – but I think he was married or betrothed to someone else. We met when he was passing through my village during a May Day celebration. We saw each other from a distance and felt instant attraction. We both participated in the May Pole dance and thanks to a quick last minute maneuver ended up facing each other. I became pregnant with his child and our affair continued in secret. There was a cabin in the woods that we would meet at.

He lived in the christian world and had naively made a confession to someone who didn’t keep our union secret. I was a celt – another priestess or healer of some sort. They feared my religion and abhorred my cultures’ customs. They hunted me because they thought I was an evil witch/whore. He was guilty for consorting with me.

They were torturing him too. They cut off his penis and threw it at me. I don’t know what else they did to him because I was caught up in my own horror. In the real world, I cried and writhed in horror as my vision progressed to the point where the villagers were cutting my stomach open to pull out my insides. I was pregnant. I couldn’t feel the pain in my vision, but I could feel a sickening sensation that was long lines of intestines being pulled out of my body.

There was a large black bird – maybe a raven – perched in a tree above me. I don’t know why I was conscious of it but it scared me. I was afraid it was going to eat my eyeballs when the villagers left me alone to bleed to death.

Fleeting Visions and Passing Revelations:

After my brutal torture and death as a supposed witch, it seemed like it was a long time before my soul returned to earth. Christianity had killed the last remaining matriarical religion so my soul was at odds as to where to go next. It seems like my soul repetitively had a healing purpose but with the spread of Christianity, there were less places for me to go to fulfill my role. There weren’t any cultures left which could raise and train me properly for my purpose.

I get the feeling that there was a more recent life where I worked in a brothel in the late 1800s but it was a much cruder version of my souls previous function. All the sacredness and ritual was removed. I died of syphilus.

I later had a fleeting vision of being a first nations child in what felt like the west coast of Canada. It was a breif glimpse with no story around it.