PeruGloria enhiesta en milenios de historia…

San Pedro, the miracle healer "

San Pedro (Trichocereus pachanoi), the cactus plant sacred and visionary teacher of South America, is mostly associated with shamans and healers (medicine men) of the Peruvian Andes. It has other names among these healers as well, including "The Remedy" The Remedy, which refers to its healing powers and visionaries who, they say, can help us to set aside "the illusions of the world."

Even his name after Hispanics, San Pedro, embodies those qualities, because San Pedro is the holder of the keys to heaven and the name of cactus thus speaks of his ability to "open the door "to another world where those who drink can be cured, to discover his divinity, and find their purpose on Earth.

It is also known as Huachuma and that is how most often referred to by shamans who use it, called huachumeros (male) or huachumeras (Female). Its use as a sacrament and ritual of healing is as old as history itself. The first archaeological evidence so far discovered is a stone carving of a huachumero found Jaguar at the Temple of Chavin in northern Peru, which is almost 3,500 years old. Textiles from the same region and period of history represented cactus with jaguars and hummingbirds, two of his guardian spirits, and with stylized spirals that represent the visionary experience.

Another image, an owl-faced woman holding a cactus, comes from a ceramic vessel of the Chimu culture, dating back to 1200 BC. According to native beliefs, the owl is a guardian spirit and guardian of the herbalists and shamans, as the woman portrayed is most likely a healer (healer) and huachumera.

Cactus ceremonies were held today for the same reasons as always: to cure illnesses of a spiritual, emotional, mental, or physical, to meet the future Through divination, prophetic qualities of the plant to overcome witchcraft or saladera (operation inexplicable "bad luck"), to ensure success in a business, to rekindle the love and enthusiasm for life and experience the world as divine.

The ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes San Pedro wrote in the book of plants of the gods that is "always in tune with the powers of animals and humans who have supernatural powers … The participants [in] ceremonies are "liberated from the matter 'and participate in flight through cosmic regions … transported through time and distance in a fast and safe. "He quotes a Andean shaman describes some of the effects of the plant:" First, a dream state … then great vision, a clearing of all the powers … and then the detachment, a type of visual force that includes the sixth sense, the telepathic transmission status themselves same over time and matter, as the suppression of thoughts to a distant dimension. "

Lesley Myburgh (known in the Andes "La Gringa": "foreign woman") is another of these shamans. She has been with San Pedro ceremonies for nearly 20 years.

"It's a great teacher," he says. "It helps us heal, grow, learn, and waking and helps us achieve higher states of consciousness. I've been very blessed to have experienced many miracles: people are cured of all sorts of diseases just by drinking this sacred plant. We use it to reconnect with the earth and realize that there is no separation between you, me, the earth and sky. We are all one. It is one thing to read, but actually experience this unit is the greatest gift we can give.

"San Pedro teaches us to live in balance and harmony, that teaches us compassion and understanding, and shows how love, respect and acceptance of all things. It also shows us that we are children of light – the precious and special – and see that light within us.

"The experience of each person is unique in that we are all unique, and drinking, San Pedro is a journey of personal discovery of self and the universe. There is one thing in common: The day that you meet San Pedro is one you will never forget – a day filled with light and love that can change your life forever … and always for the better. "

In 2008, during one of my visits to Peru to work with San Pedro, interviewed "La Gringa" about his life and experiences with Huachuma, the cactus of vision. Their responses show that not only the healing potential of this plant, but the light cast on the traditions that surround it and its evolution in the modern world. For those who work as shamanic healers, which "La Gringa" has learned from Huachuma is also of interest because it suggests that the disease may come from and how, therefore, be cured, even by those who do not work with San Pedro itself.

How did you be involved in shamanic practice?

First, drink San Pedro in the 1990s and experience all that aside I thought knew about reality. In my visions, in the mountains, I saw a ladder of light on a nearby hill and called my shaman more to explain.

"There is nothing to explain," he shrugged. "It is a stairway of light."

"You mean you see it too?" I asked.

"Absolutely," he said. "Take a picture, if you do not think is there." I was crazy. How could photograph a vision: something that was just in my head? But I did not want to be disrespectful, so I took the photo anyway.

I have it later developed, and it was: a ladder of light, as I had seen, though I had never seen him there in the mountains before and is likely to I do not see now. I called my shaman and went to look at the picture, but did not seem that surprised by it, like me.

"That's what I've been trying to say! "He said." These things are not just in your mind. They exist. San Pedro opens his eyes to what already exists! "

San Pedro had shown me the reality as it was, but had changed his mind for real. Now he understood the great power that humans have, and that we can manifest anything to choose, we just believe we can. San Pedro teaches us to believe.

It teaches us that we are part of everything that we are brothers and sisters, and that nature in its true form is beautiful. It wakes us up and shows us how to be aware of the Earth. Before St. Peter used to walk through the world does not notice. Now I see everything and I have a new respect for him.

That was not the only "miracle" I saw that day however. My shaman was a kind man and I felt calm and protected as he lay in the sun. So when I opened my eyes and I saw two children watched, were so beautiful thought they were angels. I was amazed at them and I took a moment to realize that they were real and crying and asking for help.

Them said his father was sick at home and no mother so I did not know what to do. They were afraid he was dying.

I went home with my shaman and when he saw the man thought he was dying too. But the shaman walked calmly towards him and began to blow in the top of his head through some coca leaves he had with him. He then used a pen, running it on the patient's head and body, then said a prayer.

As soon as it was over, the man sat bolt upright and began to vomit as he never would. He immediately looked better. The shaman said he would be well after that and when we left the house he was already out of bed and care for their children.

That was my first experience of a cure shamanic, and all the shaman had used was one of the feathers and leaves of some and, of course, the knowledge that he had given San Pedro. After that I knew I wanted to work more with this plant.

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

His name is Ruben. I met him ten years ago in a church in the Valley, by pure chance. I learned a lot from him since the beginning. He is a famous anthropologist who for years led the sacred site of Machu Picchu, but also a shaman to know why and how things work, both from the historical and spiritual perspective.

His training was very hard. It was not like my shamanic teachers first, they were much more smooth. He made me drink from San Pedro twice a week for several years. Sometimes I would ask you not have to drink! I sigh and say he was too sick to drink, because they simply could not face another session. But he said: "Good! You're sick! That – and the fact that you can not cope with the healing you need – exactly what it takes to drink! Get your coat and let's go! "

At the time of his agony, but now I know I was right and drink all that San Pedro was the best thing happened to me. I saw all the bad things in my life in a new light and was able to let go. I cleared my whole life in those years and learned a lot about San Pedro and healing well.

I continue to work with Ruben and I hope always will. But he has softened a little now and no longer required to drink each week.

He is a "shaman old school ', however, is not it, with lots of rituals as part of their ceremonies – the Singer and contrachisa, etc. Do you teach that?

Oh, yes. But I've never felt comfortable with the rituals and Ruben agreed that should work differently, especially in what was now healing Many Westerners do not really understand the rituals anyway. San Pedro guided me and told me to keep things simple. So I say a prayer to open the ceremony and then in San Pedro may allow to do their job without me stand in his way.

I sometimes snuff consumption in the ceremonies, however, but not the [Sing snuff sheet alcohol marinated in honey and many shamans ask participants to snort in his nostrils to clear negative energies] snuff smoke as well. It is good to blow smoke on people if they are going through a difficult time or are stuck somewhere in the energy within them. The smoke free.

Florida Water also use [a herbal scent with healing properties] to balance the energies of the people. Above all I ask you to smell the bottle or your hands and helps to ground them, but sometimes I spray it on them.

And of course I also use a table [an altar cloth in a] ritual specifically, although mine is much simpler than many others. In Peru, the shamans work with different designs table, but when you have your own you learn to use it in a way that suits you. Is it alive so that developing a relationship with her. San Pedro teaches you how use it well.

The objects in the center of my table are shells and stones that have meaning and power for me. I put them in a straight line as a backbone with stones as the vertebrae. This follows the concept in Peru that spiritual energy is kept in the lower back and as we advance on our roads and plants, the guide will begin to rise up the spine head, where he lives, when we become fully conscious.

In the Andes there are three sacred animals: the snake, puma and the condor, and sometimes statues of the three, one above the other. The snake represents the divine energy we have on our backs, the puma is the body, and the condor is being awakened, the mind which rises above the world. Thus, these statues are also represented energy flowing through us and brings us to the new consciousness. The table I use is.

Some shamans use chonta [sticks Wood is sometimes used to beat the participants to shift their spiritual energies around] and swords at their tables, as well as the protections and to change energy of patients and cure them. Not me, because I've always known that San Pedro participants protects me and I anyway, and there is no greater or more powerful protection plant healer! So why would I need to hit with sticks participants – and interrupt his healing with it?

Rubén Greetings is a historian and my approach as a form of evolution that gives people who need healing through ceremonies right for our time. But is a de-evolution because many rituals and objects were added artificially to San Pedro tables and ceremonies through the influence of Catholics Spanish.

Before the Spanish came to Peru, Andean believed in the Inti, the sun god and the Pachamama, the Earth, so its rituals were simpler and required fewer symbols, appease God, or ways to keep evil at bay. The idea of guilt and a need to appease God that came with the Catholics and it was they who did our ancestors change their rituals or die. Before this, they were more natural and fluid.

So what I do can be an evolution, as he called Reuben, but also a return to what is done forever. It is as if we evolved backwards rather than forwards in time!

Is your decision to hold ceremonies in the day instead of part of tonight 'reverse evolution' too?

Ruben has its ceremonies at night and that's how he taught me, but as I grew in my understanding of San Pedro, ceremonies of the night – for practical reasons as well as spiritual reasons – became something else that does not really work for me.

Maybe he is to do with the Spanish and their new Catholic notions of guilt and "suffering for our sins" that most of San Pedro ceremonies are held at night! Always I felt so cold and uncomfortable that I could never relax enough to receive the healing of San Pedro. I mentioned to Reuben and he understood exactly what he meant, so he began to hold ceremonies to me during the day. Then I really noticed the difference. During the day is where all my progress have come.

On the one hand, San Pedro, you can look around and see the beauty of the world and see how you're connected to everything that you beautiful, beautiful part of creation. You can not do that in the dark.

What people have to understand is that San Pedro is not a hallucinogen ayahuasca, for what will never see the images and photographs, and makes no sense, therefore, a lie in the dark waiting for something to happen. Pedro teaching San is visionary however, the revelations about the natural brings no – the spirit – world, and the light of day you can see more clearly. That's why we have our ceremonies in the sunlight: San Pedro because you feel like it and that's as in the first place.

How How to prepare your home in San Pedro?

Most shamans peel and cut the cactus, then boil for four to eight hours. You can also add alcohol and sometimes plants or ingredients. I cook mine for twenty hours, however, so it is much stronger and it also means that people are less likely vomit when they drink. Other beers San Pedro feels weak to me now and rarely give the same visions.

Some shamans say they do not really need visions of healing to take place in San Pedro. They have a point, but I still think they are important because the cure and people need to know who have been cured. When the visions come to sit, then they get is real and pay attention to what is shown … about how to protect yourself and stay well, or place in the world and the beauty of their lives. No visions can not know.

There are some other things to consider in the preparation of San Pedro. I only work with cactus thorns have seven or nine because they produce softer wines and beautiful. Those with six or eight spines are not as strong, as can be onces and trecenas very intense, but also dark at times. Never use one with patients.

Those with four spines only ever used for exorcisms and healer and the patient should drink as much. You do not ever want to deal with a San Pedro as well, however. It's horrible and visions will take you directly to Hell.

While the cactus is to cook often to sing songs and offer our prayers to produce good healing. Each time you offer a new prayer removed and that perhaps two sentences in each bottle.

Sometimes the spirit of San Pedro appears as you are cooking also in the patterns on the surface of water that has been telling us to drink and why. I have seen patterns in the shape of the ovaries, for example, complete in every detail, enclosed by circles or hearts. Then the next day a woman has come to help with a fertility problem and brought with her a man whose heart was closed to her dreams. Thus, San Pedro can show us what people need even before you arrive.

What have you seen San Pedro healing ceremonies?

One that meant a lot to me was for a woman who had always said they never drink San Pedro, so his story shows in a way that even need to believe in the plant to heal him – although it is better if you do.

This woman's husband had died some years. He was a man strong, but his illness meant he had lost and disappear. It took a year to die while she cared for him. Then, just three months later, his son was killed, murdered in South Africa, stoned to death and left to die. It was only 26.

The woman was shattered. She turned like the living dead. Shortly after she had a stroke that paralyzed his arm and, from the shock of what had happened, she also suffers from diabetes.

Finally, despite all reservations before, I asked if she could drink from San Pedro. I gave him the slightest amount, but was perfect for her, as San Pedro always is, and then she was in my arms and cried her heart for five hours.

That's a good expression of what really happened, because of drinking too much and San Pedro through his eyes I saw strands of energy from your heart and circling the chest and arm as a tourniquet. I started pulling them out of it and throw it away.

The next morning was like a miracle. His arm, which had been completely paralyzed, had recovered all of its movement. When he got home he saw a specialist who tested his diabetes and had also gone too. Now she has no problem at all.

I asked him about his experience in San Pedro later and she said she had a lot of pain in his heart, which is where I also had seen the power of the penalty that tied. So, as well as heal their physical problems, San Pedro showed him why they had: because of the emotional distress that he had been unable to set aside earlier.

What I learned from San Pedro is that the disease is never a "thing" that is within us, is not "diabetes" or "a" stroke. It is a belief that we dedicate ourselves to: that we must we mourn the lost, for example, or for ourselves, through pain or disability that causes our suffering and "real visible." So disease is a thought, a negative pattern we cling to and reproduce. San Pedro not only heals, but we show this pattern of thought. So, the next time arises, we know and can make a conscious choice to think and act differently.

The woman had described it appears that a "psychosomatic" problem, a term that has lost much of its power in the West today. Can you tell us?

Any condition that we have comes from our minds and souls. Another woman came to me after she was diagnosed with cancer and had been undergoing chemotherapy. He looked so bad which led me to come and spent the next seven days with me, constant vomiting. By the end of it he realized that his doctors were not helping her and decided working with plants in place.

She phoned her doctor to cancel her appointments and was very angry. He said he could not do this, that she was stupid and dying as a result of its decision – which, incidentally, is a curse.

Anyway, stuck his decision and now, through San Pedro, you are cured. The plant showed again why he had cancer – you can not make the medicine West – And he said he had a choice: she could honestly die or change their mind and live the life they wanted. I know it sounds too easy, but what really is as simple as that. She decided not to have cancer anymore because your account of that life was too precious a time she had seen with Eye of San Pedro.

I also worked with women who have been sexually abused as children and carry the energy in their bodies, and generally a sense of guilt or shame, then, as if it were somehow his fault. This energy is also a way of thinking and they are doing wrong and, at times, suicidal.

San Pedro need to drink three times. The first is terrible, even for me to see. Only found in a fetal position and screams. The second time is more relaxed, but there is much weeping. I usually drink San Pedro with them so they can connect to what is happening and the plant can teach me what they need to heal.

The third time everything changes and drink is an experience of total joy. After they are so different that even your friends will recognize you! San Pedro shows them another way, a new belief about themselves and helps them reconnect with the love and beauty of life has been missing for much time on their own.

That sounds like soul retrieval, but instead of doing the shaman her intelligence plant does it all.

That's right. This is the recovery of the soul or rather, the recovery of life. We have our negative beliefs about ourselves and the tensions in our body. If the end did not release them, they harden 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 to stay buried. San Pedro away our negative beliefs for positive shine through. Therefore, it is a form of soul retrieval, one where we return ourselves.

Can you say more about the negative beliefs that affect us?

bad ideas in the Andes, shamans speak of "good" and "" and these are in some way, what I mean ways of thinking. When someone says, for example, which has "good ideas" does not mean that you are a genius creative! They mean you have good thoughts or spiritual or that is in harmony with truth and goodness in the world.

Sometimes we talk about a "good" or "bad wind" as well. These "winds" are a cluster of thoughts or energies that are attracted to each other and share a common affinity. The positive energy of many people with positive and uplifting thoughts can create a good wind but, for the same reason, thoughts negative can come together to create a bad wind. In both cases, it is a subtle force that circulates in the world.

Thoughts like these have physical effects. I recently took a ride with a friend, for example, to visit the Q'ero of the Andes and, in some way on our trip, miles from anywhere and help care, my friend passed out and fell off his horse. She lay on the ground shaking and not of this world at all.

Luckily, we had a shaman us who knew what had happened and, drawing his coca leaf, placed on it and blew through them in his crown. She immediately stopped shaking and then began to arrive throughout the year.

When I asked what had happened, he shrugged and said "an evil wind." She had been hit by a pattern of thought that had, in a sense, possessed. It had burned a different energy in it to remove it and fill your with light.

But imagine: If the lost thoughts can do this much damage, how much stronger are our own ideas? Our beliefs about ourselves, our diseases and our strengths or weaknesses are not random, after all, are personal to us and may have been with us for years. Therefore, it is literally true that our thoughts can kill or cure us. We must be careful, then, about what we think. San Pedro helps us cure, showing us how to do that.

Is there anyone who does not hold a ceremony?

Any I once thought so. A few years ago, some young men traveling in South America called for a ceremony. When I said what concerned me not to worry, they had taken a lot of drugs in the past and had heard of San Pedro and wanted to try "a new drug experience." I must admit that I judged a bad light because they were trivialization of San Pedro and saw it as "just another drug" – that is not. It is a powerful spiritual medicine.

It was St. Peter who told me to relax. He reminded me that can handle things on its own and make their own decisions about who can drink it, and remember that I was the guide, not the healer! So after that I do not judge and I answered them in San Pedro.

Then came talk to me about your experience drug "and said that his meeting with San Pedro was more the humiliation of his life. San Pedro had told them directly, they said," No I'm on LSD! I AM SAN PEDRO! "They learned from that and some changed their lives. They do not take drugs at all.

So now I am very humble because I know that St. Peter always give people what they need – even if it is not what they thought they would get. I like the expression use: that with the work of the plant must have intentions but no expectations. That seems a good approach. But in any case, I hope and I know St. Peter will be working with wholeness for all, so now I do not discriminate.

There is a diet that goes with San Pedro, and is not that the ayahuasca. But San Pedro is easier. Can you say something about it?

All plants require some precautions teachers rituals before and during the ceremony. Namely what we call the diet. It does not refer only to restrictions regarding food and drink, as its name might suggest, but other behaviors as well so we approach the plant with a pure intention. So when we speak of the "diet" is actually the Greek understanding of "Diet": a change in lifestyle, not just what we eat.

few days before the ayahuasca requires preparation, including food taboos of conduct, sexual abstinence, fasting and meditation, but San Pedro is not asking such major changes. However, for a day before you drink, food and beverages should be as neutral as possible and contain no alcohol, meat, oils or fats, spices, citrus fruits or juices, and there should be no sex.

For nearly twelve hours before the ceremony, there should be no food. This means a day of fasting, if you're drinking from San Pedro at night or no food around 20:00 the night before if you're drinking the next day. For a few hours before the ritual also suggest a period of reflection in silence for you to think about what you want to heal or learn about yourself.

That's really all dietary needs, although there are some conditions recommending specific consultation with your doctor before shaman and drinking in San Pedro. These include problems with the colon, high blood pressure, diseases of heart disease, diabetes or mental illness. None of these necessarily prevent him from drinking and that the condition itself may be the same thing you want from San Pedro to heal, but the shaman and the doctor should know.

A general rule of plant work is: the purest of his body and spirit more powerful than the drug and its teachings. The diet helps with this.

I heard that the "procedures" (personal and social environment) participate in the ceremonies can contribute to the effects, the shaman acts as a kind of therapist, for example, and offers suggestions for curing the patient, while containing the ritual practices such as meditation, which are relaxing and healing. What do you think of that?

Sometimes I wonder things like that, where Most scientists and academics. They want to know what the "make up" of San Pedro is, what their "active ingredients" are, and 'how it works. " I tell them do not know and do not care! For me, there is "San Pedro mescaline content" or "properties" that are important, a healing spirit that produces miracles that I saw with my own eyes. So I really do not know or care how it works. I can not explain a miracle that I can ask about! But I do know this: if you need a miracle because his life was in that much pain, and if – by the grace of God and San Pedro – has hit one, would not mind how it worked fine!

Part of the disease, I think, is trying to understand the world in terms of its "mechanisms" where your nuts and bolts does not really matter at all. It is the beauty of the world that should attract, engage and inspire us! When we drink of San Pedro which is one of the first things to learn – and then our questions will become irrelevant anyway. So real answer for those who want to know the hows and whys of San Pedro, is simple: drink and then you will see!

The "what" San Pedro is recovering life. Let the sleepless nights of the whys and hows to academics for whom such things seem to matter.

 

The Author

Ross Heaven is the author of over 10 books on shamanism and shamanic healing including plants Spirit Shamanism, Plant Spirit Wisdom and Confessions Last of the sin eater. He runs workshops on these subjects, such as travel to Peru to work with shamans, healers and plant spirit medicine (ayahuasca and San Pedro) of the Amazon and the Andes. For more details on these events and a free pack information visit www.thefourgates.com or email ross@thefourgates.com .

About the Author

Ross Heaven is a therapist, workshop leader, and the author of several books on shamanism and healing, including Darkness Visible, the best-selling Plant Spirit Shamanism, and Love’s Simple Truths. His website is http://www.thefourgates.com where you can also read how to join his sacred journeys to the shamans and healers of the Amazon.

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