In 2002 the ICPNA held an exhibition called;
'Una Ventana hacia el Infinito' (A window into the infinite). This was a display of Shipibo - Conibo art in Lima.
This is a video collage of photos I took at the exhibition.
Soundtrack, Shipibo shaman Enrique Lopez chanting an Ayahuasca Icaro.
Interviewed at Mishana Private Retreat Centre, Amazon Rainforest with Peter Cloudsley and Howard G Charing August 2005.
We interviewed Shipibo maestro Leoncio Garcia, a man in his mid seventies but with the appearance of a man twenty years younger. Again a testimonial to the youth giving qualities of Ayahuasca and the plant medicines of the Amazon Rainforest.
Leoncio Garcia
I didn’t become a shaman until I was 50, I am now 74. I was always so busy working in the chacra, or cutting wood, it was only when I began to get a bit older. Until then I had taken Ayahuasca for all the usual reasons of health, but that was all. After deciding to do the diet I drank Ayahuasca seriously but I didn’t see anything and didn’t think I would learn anything but still I kept on drinking every night and didn’t sleep. With just one day to go before completing three months’ diet, I had a tremendous vision and I began to chant and continued all night until dawn. I saw under the earth, under the water, and into the skies, everything. Probably I was learning from the sprits during the diet but I didn’t understand. After that I could see what the matter was with people. I dieted pinon Colorado and tobacco first and then tried all the other plants.
This was in San Francisco, a Shipibo community on Yarinacocha, Pucullpa where I was born. After this I went to Huancayo for six months to try my medicine. Then I went to Ayacucho and then a Senor took me to Lima to heal his wife. After two months I was taken to Trujillo and then Arequipa, Cusco, Juliaca, Puno. Everything worked out well and I worked with a doctor once who was not very successful and soon there were people queuing outside her consultancy. Eventually I came to Iquitos in 2000 and I haven’t had time to return to my family since then, I just send them money.
When I go round to people blowing tobacco smoke it is to give them arcanas, to protect them so that when things happen around them it doesn’t hurt them or make them ill.
Leoncio tells a Shipibo (cautionary) myth. There was once a wise man called Oni who knew what each and every healing plant could be used for. He knew all their names and one day he saw a liana and recognized it as Ayahuasca and he learned to mix it with Chacruna. One night he tried it and learned so many things that he carried on drinking it. But because he went on drinking so long and often he stopped eating and drinking, and just chanted day and night. Now he had two sons and they said ‘come and have breakfast Papa’, but he carried on drinking Ayahuasca and when they tried to pick him up, he was stuck to the ground and couldn’t be moved. So they left him chanting to all the plants everyday and night and they noticed that Ayahuasca was growing out from his fingers. So the sons went back to their chacras and after a month came back again, to see their father. Everywhere Ayahuasca ropes had tangled around him and still he continued chanting day after day and the forest carried on growing around him. After a few more months, he had merged with the forest itself and that is why its called Ayahuasca, rope of the dead and in Shipibo Oni.
Howard G Charing & Peter Cloudsley interviewed Shipibo Ayahuasca Shaman Benjamin Ochavano in the Amazon Rainforest of Peru, who is in his mid seventies to discuss how Ayahuasca can help those Westerners who are seeking personal growth and who have embarked on the great journey of self discovery and exploration.
The uses of powerful hallucinogenic plants such as Ayahuasca have been developed by indigenous peoples and early civilizations over thousands of years, and their effects are highly dependent upon the context of the ceremony, the chants and the essential personality of the shaman, all of which can vary with surprising results.
Diverse urban uses have emerged recently and a few of these are spreading, while some traditional shamans travel the world, thus Ayahuasca is gaining recognition in Western civilization. But what really is the potential of these ancestral plants, and how can we get the most out of them?
I first started taking ayahuasca at the age of 10, with my father, who was also a shaman. When I was 15, he took me into the selva to do plant diets, nobody would see us for a whole year, we had no contact with women, nothing. We lived in a simple tambo sleeping on leaves with just a sheet over us. We dieted plants: ayauma, puchatekicaspi, pucarobona, huairacaspi, verenaquu.
I would take each plant for 2 months before moving on to the next, a whole year without women! The only fish allowed is boquichico – a vegetarian fish and mushed plantains made into a thick drink called pururuco in Shipibo, or chapo without sugar.
Then I had about a year’s rest before going again with my uncle, Jose Sánchez, for another year and 7 months of dieting on the little Rio Pisqui. He taught me alot and gave me chonta, cascabel, hergon, nacanaca, cayucayu. He was a chontero, a kind of shaman who works with darts (in the spiritual world) – so called because real darts and arrows for hunting are made from the black splintery bamboo called chonta. A chontero can send darts with positive effects like knowledge and power too, and he knows how to suck and remove poisoned darts which have caused illness or evil spells.
To finish off he gave me chullachaqui caspi. Then I began living with my wife and working as a curandero in Juancito on the Ucayali. Later I went to Pucallpa where I still live some of the time when I’m not in my community of Paoyhan, where my Ani Sheati project is.
The most important planta maestra is Ayauma chullachaqui. Then Pucalo puno (Quechua) the bark of a tree which grows to 40 or 50 meters. This is one of a number of plants that is consumed together with tobacco and is so strong, you only need to take it two times. It requires a diet of 6 month. You drink it in the morning, then lie down, you are in an altered state for a whole day afterwards.
Another plant is Catahua whose resin is cooked with tabacco. You must be sure that no one sees you while you take it. It puts you into a sleep of powerful dreams.
Ajosquiro is from a tree which grows to 20m, with a penetrating aroma like garlic. It gives you mental strength, it is very healing and makes you strong. It takes away lazy feelings, gives you courage and self esteem, but can be used to explore the negative side as well as the positive. You can be alone in the wilderness yet feel in the company of many. It puts you into the psycho-magical world which we have inherited from our ancestors, the great morayos (=shamans in Shipibo) so you can gain knowledge of how to heal with plants.
The word ‘shaman’ is recent in the Amazon, (coming from Asia via the Western world in the last 10-20 years). My father was known as a moraya or banco, or in Spanish curandero. A curandero could specialize in being a good chontero or a shitanero who does harm to people.
Virjilio Salvan, who is dead now, dead now introduced me to a plant which he said was better than any other plant - Palo Borrador, maestro de todos los palos (master of all plants). You smoke it in a pipe for 8 days, blowing the smoke over your body. On the eighth day a man appears, as real as we are, a Shipibo. He was a chaycuni - an enchanted being in traditional dress… cushma, or woven tunic, chaquira necklace, and so on, and he said to me ‘Benjamin, why have you smoked my tree?’
‘Because I want to learn’ I said. ‘Ever since I was little I wanted to be a Moraya’
‘You must diet and smoke my tree for 3 months, no more’ he said. ‘And you can eat whatever fish you like…it won’t matter’ … and he listed all the fish I could eat. ‘But you must not sleep with any woman other than your wife’ he said. And I’ve followed this advice until today.
Three nights later, sounds could be heard from under the ground and big holes opened up and the wind blew. Then everyone, all the family began to fly. And from that day I was a moraya.
Today I still fast on Sundays .
What do you think about Westerners coming to take plants in the Amazon?
It is a good thing for them to come and learn, for us to share and for there to be an interchange. This is what I would like to do in my community of Paoyhan. But the Ecuadorians stole our outboard motor.
How could the plants of the Amazon help people of the West?
It can open up the mind so we can find ways to help each other. It can help them find more self-realization in life. If a person is very shy for example it can help warm their hearts, give them strength and courage.
You have a different system in your countries, when we travel there we feel underrated just as when you come here you have to get accustomed to being here. When we get to know each other and become like brothers, solutions emerge. To get rid of vices and drug addictions, for example, there are plants which can easily heal people.
Pene de mono is a thick tree, which I have used to cure two foreign women of AIDS. The name means ‘monkey’s penis’. I saw in my ayahuasca vision that they were ill and diagnosed them as having AIDS. I boiled the bark of the tree and made 6 bottles which they took each day until it was finished. They had to go on a diet as well. No fish with teeth, salt, fruit or butter. The fish with teeth eat the plant so it cannot penetrate into the body. After this you get so hot that steam comes off the body. In the selva there is no AIDS, only some cases in the city of Pucullpa.
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Plants are essential in many ways: they give life to all beings on Earth by producing oxygen, which we need to be active; they create the enormous greenhouse that gives board and lodging to diverse but interrelated guests; they are teachers who show us the holistic importance of conserving life in its due form and necessary conditions.
For me personally, though, they mean even more than this. Plants—in the great living book of nature—have shown me how to study life as an artist and shaman. They can help all of us to know the art of healing and to discover our own creativity, because the beauty of nature moves people to show reverence, fascination, and respect for the extent to which the forests give shelter to our souls.
The consciousness of plants is a constant source of information for medicine, alimentation, and art, and an example of the intelligence and creative imagination of nature. Much of my education I owe to the intelligence of these great teachers. Thus I consider myself to be the “representative” of plants, and for this reason I assert that if they cut down the trees and burn what’s left of the rainforests, it is the same as burning a whole library of books without ever having read them.
People who are not so dedicated to the study and experience of plants may not think this knowledge is so important to their lives—but even they should be conscious of the nutritional, medicinal, and scientific value of the plants they rely on for life.
My most sublime desire, though, is that every human being should begin to put as much attention as he or she can into the knowledge of plants, because they are the greatest healers of all. And all human beings should also put effort into the preservation and conservation of the rainforest, and care for it and the ecosystem, because damage to these not only prejudices the flora and fauna but humanity itself.
Even in the Amazon these days, many see plants as only a resource for building houses and to finance large families. People who have farms and raise animals also clear the forest to produce foodstuffs. Mestizos and native Indians log the largest trees to sell to industrial sawmills for subsistence. They have never heard of the word ecology!
I, Pablo, say to everybody who lives in the Amazon and the other forests of the world, that they must love the plants of their land, and everything that is there!
This expression of love must be a sincere and altruistic interest in the lasting well-being of others. We are not here simply to exist, but to enjoy life together with plants, animals, and loved ones, and to delight in contemplation of the beauty of nature. A shaman has in his mind and heart the attitude of conserving nature because he knows that life is for enjoying the company of this world’s countless delights.
Any painting, or book, or piece of art that spreads this message is to be respected, and every reader who picks up a book on this subject is to be honored.
I invite you to read on, and to learn from the greatest teachers of all—the plants, our sacred brothers and sisters.
Pablo AmaringoPhoto: Pablo Amaringo with Howard G Charing presenting the book. Pucallpa, Peru 2007.
Click to view the original interview with Pablo Amaringo by Howard G Charing and Peter Cloudsley
Click For information on our Ayahuasca and Plant Spirit Shamanism Retreats www.shamanism.co.uk
Since the late 90's Eagle's Wing has conducted Ayahuasca and San Pedro Retreats in Peru. We have our 2008 programme available for viewing, downloading, or printing on this blog.
View or Download our 2008 San Pedro and Ayahuasca Yoga programme in Adobe PDF format
Eugene is a qualified Yoga teacher, trained in India, Shivananda Saraswati School of Yoga. Traditional Hatha and Yoga for Healing. Yoga postures and meditations used to relieve tensions, purify mind/body, and raise vibrations. An instructor in Chi Gong, and Eugene is also a Licensed Massage Therapist - Swedish and Shiatsu.
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My experience working with shamans in preparing Pusangas (which normally is prepared away from their clients so it was a privilege to be invited to participate in the preparation) showed me that far from interfering with the freedom of other individuals or putting a ‘number’ on them, we were altering something within ourselves, which was brought out by the ingredients, the magic of the plants. Whatever it was, it felt wholesome and good. It is what is in oneself… one’s own magic. Asking Javier Arevalo (the shaman) what does the Pusanga actually do, is it inside us or outside of us? His response was “When you pour it onto your skin it begins to penetrate your spirit, and the spirit is what gives you the force to pull the people. The spirit is what pulls”.
The anthropological term ‘sympathetic magic’ does not give this justice, to illustrate this, the water used in the preparation of an authentic pusanga (which has been specifically made for you) has been collected from a deep trek in the rainforest, sometimes 40 or 50 miles, where there are no people and where clay pools collect and thousands of the most beautiful coloured parrots and macaws gather to drink from them for the mineral content. Now the great leap of imagination required is to bring into yourself the knowledge, the feeling, the sense that the water in the Pusanga has drawn in or attracted thousands of the most brightly coloured creatures on the planet. If you do this, it can generate a shift in consciousness in you.
You can sample this for yourself, just find a quiet moment and space, close your eyes, and with the power of your imagination as the launch pad, draw in the verdant, abundant forest filled with life, colour, and sound. Sense the rich vibrancy of the rainforest as a single breathing rhythmic totality of life force. When you have this image, expand it to include, the humid warmth, the smell of earth, the scent of plants, hear the sound of insects and bird song, allow all your senses to experience this. Then with a conscious decision draw this sensory experience into your being. Whenever you are ready, open your eyes, and check how you are feeling.
Maestros do not invent diets, they are given by the plant spirits themselves, but there is more to it than simply abstaining from certain foods and activities. It involves a state of purification, retreat, commitment, and respect for our connection with everything around us - above all the rain forest. When we listen to our dreams, they become more real, and equally important as everyday life.
Morality, Ethics and Power
This is a subject that is worth looking at as we in the West and particularly those who are engaged in following a perceived spiritual path in which there is an implicit or explicit ethical component, find the use of a pusanga (or equivalent) to attract a specific person an action which takes away and subverts that person’s free will. This is criticised as an immoral and harmful action occurring within a tradition or system without perceived , never mind understood moral values.
This moral view is not shared in other societies and traditions, and there is a profound difficulty experienced by Westerners in assimilating this concept of values surrounding power.
For example the Amazonian (amongst others) tradition portrays a spectrum of existential states, with the highest or most desirable being that of the powerful person, and the lowest or least desirable being that of the powerless person. Power is defined as the ability to do what one wishes, obtain wealth, make others perform desired actions (even against their will), or harm others without being punished or harmed in return. The proof of power is the individual's material wealth, or social and political status, and their ability to offer patronage. These are not received as immoral acts, and I recall with my colleague Peter Cloudsley attempting to relay the Western view to Javier Arevalo without any success. The conversation went as follows;
Howard & Peter: “Something we make a big problem out of in the West, is that a shaman might be a magician to one person and a sorcerer to another. Asking for the pusanga to attract a specific person takes away that person’s choice. We see it as bad. How do you see it?”
Javier: “Take the case of a woman who refuses when you offer her a Coca Cola because she thinks you are lower class and that she is better than you. She might want others to think that she is better than you. That makes you feel like rubbish so you go to a shaman and tell him the name of the girl. He prepares the pusanga. Three days go by without seeing her and she begins to think about you, dreaming about you and begins looking for you”
Howard & Peter: “Yes, we understand, but in our culture we think its wrong to counteract someone’s will.”
Javier: “But its only so that she will want you for the moment, so she’ll go to bed with you and then she can go”.
Howard & Peter: “(laughing) But if it happened to me, and let’s say I originally found her unpleasant and she did it to marry me I’d be outraged! It would be awful if I only discovered after having children and making a home with her! And would I ever know?”
Javier: “You would be hopelessly in love with her, you’d never know. That’s why it’s a secret.”
Howard & Peter: “Can a jealous third party separate a couple or break a happy marriage?”
Javier: “Yes, they can ruin a happy home. They come as if to greet the couple and soon after the couple are arguing and hating each other and the third party is secretly having sex with one of them”.
Howard & Peter: “Is this why the women from Lima are afraid of the girls from Iquitos?”
Javier: “Yes it happens, they think they are dangerous and will break up their homes.”
Howard & Peter: “Does anyone have freedom if everyone is using pusanga?”
Javier: “its normal you get used to it.”
Howard & Peter. “We like to think we are free, this suggests that we are constantly subject to other peoples’ Pusanga.”
Javier: “laughing, but you all want women, and women all want men!”
Eventually we realised that there was no way that we could communicate this Western ‘moral’ viewpoint. Javier did not see that there was a problem. It was a massive cultural divide we could not cross. His people feel free the way they are and can have extramarital sex using magical means of attraction and without attaching our Western guilt to it.
Looking at this ‘down to earth’, guilt trip free viewpoint, on an earlier occasion when Javier asked the group that I was leading, what they really wanted deep down in their lives, many people gave cosmic, transpersonal, and spiritual sounding answers and were quite mute when he spoke about Pusanga. After a while the participants opened up to their feelings and many admitted they wanted love, apparently behind their desire to put the world to right, resolve planetary issues, and speak to the flowers. It was as though it were not acceptable to wish for love. Javier remarked “These thoughts tangle up their lives. Love solves problems”.
As an observation, if we (and that’s all of us) had more love in our lives, maybe we wouldn’t be worried so much about the state of the world, and be less judgemental, destructive, and just simply be willing to help others and alleviate suffering. It is because people do not have enough of this precious and enriching commodity that we live our lives increasingly bombarded by aggression, with new definitions , ‘road rage’ , ‘air rage’ , ‘safety rage’, ‘word rage’, ‘whatever-you-want rage’ We would also need less material goods, and titles all of which reinforce the boundaries of the ego-mind and separate us from each other and the natural world.
Below is a video of Plants used to prepare Pusanga. The soundtrack is a beautiful Icaro chanted by mestizo shaman Artidoro (recorded on Eagle's Wing Ayahuasca Retreat).
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Iquitos is the largest city in the Peruvian rainforest, with a population of around 400,000. It is the capital of Loreto Region and Maynas Province. It is generally considered the most populous city in the world that cannot be reached by road (except to Nauta 120 Km on the Rio Marañón). The only way to get there is via aeroplane or by river boat. The city in the 19th century was the centre of the Rubber industry but by the early 20th century the rubber trade had moved to the Far East, and the city had fallen into neglect and disrepair. It is now a place without an apparent purpose resplendent in its post-colonial splendour, literally in the middle of nowhere, a true frontier town.
When you stand on the Malecon at the edge of the city (and civilisation) .......you overlook thousands of miles of rainforest, a truly breathtakingly beautiful experience.This is a video clip of imagery of Iquitos. Including Belen market, Puerto Bellevista. Iquitos is the base where we leave for our Ayahuasca Retreats at Mishana.
CONTENT: The View Through the Medicine Wheel is a magnificent reflection how to live creatively with health and happiness. We are all on a great journey - how different would your life be if you had a good map? Native American wisdom teachings of the Medicine Wheel explain how the Cosmos works and our place in it. Our ancestors saw the world in terms of circles and life cycles. The Star Maiden's Circle reflects life through the eight directions. This book of life maps shows you how to avoid pitfalls and master your own self. It presents the circle of the Egoic self - how we create a life of problems and dramas - and the circle of the Authentic self which teaches how to develop away from old habits and addictions. The Medicine Wheel culminates in the Twenty Count which is the Cosmos revealed in all its beauty and complexity. Shamanism is spiritual, ecological and psychological. No other book does full justice to the fabulous medicine wheel teachings.
AUTHOR: Leo Rutherford took an MA in Holistic Psychology in California, and has been a Shamanic practitioner and workshop leader for 25 years. He now lives in Sussex, England.
COVER PAINTING: Howard G. Charing
As our world rapidly moves towards ever greater spiritual, environmental and political challenges there is an urgent need for us to listen to the voices of respected healers, seers, visionaries and shamans whose wisdom, insights and leadership will inspire and guide us to make our planet a healthier, more peaceful and equitable place to live. For over two years, the author met and entered into profound dialogue with such remarkable people.
This unique and important work brings together over 40 of the conversations that took place, revealing that there are many dimensions of existence overlapping and permeating the world as we know it. Every one of us has spirit helpers that can guide, heal and inspire us on our journey through life.
This outstanding and intimate collection includes conversations with renowned teachers Sandra Ingerman, The Barefoot Doctor, R.J Stewart, Robert Moss, Simon Buxton, Denise Linn, Leo Rutherford, Howard G Charing, William Bloom, Philip Carr-Gomm and Llyn Roberts.
Join Karen Sawyer as she also talks with Elena Avilla, the 'Curandera' or curer from Mexico - Uncle Angaangaq, an Eskimo-Kalaallit Elder from Greenland - Icelandic Druid Jörmundur Ingi - Sami shaman Ailo Gaup from Norway - Rabbi Gershon Winkler, Aboriginal Jewish shaman - Tiokasin Ghosthorse, a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota - Egyptian Sufi, Master Ali Rafea - Andras Corban Arthen, 'Cunningman' of the Glenshire witches in Scotland and many, many more.
This treasure trove of spiritual wisdom will inspire you in your own quest for spirit guide contact with practical 'how to' advice. Learn how to recognise the signs and talk with the spirit beings guiding your life.
John Matthews: author of `Walkers Between Worlds'
"Soul Companions is a stunning book. It assembles an amazing collection of interviews with some of the finest and most unusual people from the worlds of alternative thinking and teaching. For anyone interested in the future of human growth and development this is an absolute `must read'."
John Perkins: New York Times bestselling author of `Confessions of an Economic Hit Man' and `The Secret History of the American Empire'.
"Soul Companions is an amazing and enlightening anthology of profound experiences shared between some of the world's most revered wisdom keepers and their spirit guides. Inspiring and empowering, it lights a path for all of us to follow."
For a full list of contributors and more about this book visit the Soul Companions Website
Visit Eagle's Wing website for details about Leo Rutherford and Howard G Charing
A reader review posted on Amazon re Leo's Book;
By Karen S. Blair-imrie (Scotland) - See all my reviews
Shamanic Path Workbook by Leo Rutherford.
Publishers: Arima Books.
Pages: 249.
I've looked forward to this book ever since reading Principles of Shamanism by the same author (now renamed The Way of Shamanism). Leo Rutherford founded Eagle's Wing Centre for Contemporary Shamanism in 1987 after training with such respected teachers as Hyemeyohsts Storm, Harley Swiftdeer, Prem Das, Gabrielle Roth, and Joan Halifax. More recently he has trained with Don Eduardo Calderon, an Inca shaman in Peru. His teachings are rooted in Native American (North, Central, and South) traditions, with particular emphasis on the medicine wheel of the ancient Mayans.
Although there is much ancient wisdom here, Leo believes that, to act effectively and with integrity (as a shaman must), a person must first heal the wounds suffered in the past "so the present and future can be free of ancestral burdens, shame, guilt," etc.. To this end, his teaching begins with the self. "How we see ourselves is the root of how we experience our world." Much of this book is about uncovering and putting into perspective key events in life's great journey - "chaos, catastrophe, magic moments, love and loss, successes and surprises". Traditional methods such as the vision quest, sweat lodge, trance dance, and of course the shamanic journey are employed to help the student reach inner truth and harmony, and, by so doing, "contact the timeless reality that exists parallel to and just out of sight of the world we so mistakenly call the `real world'. It is here in the everyday that we experience the reflections of who we are, of our actions, our deepest beliefs, our `dreams', but it is in the non-manifest world of the spirit that the hidden causal interactions take place. Hidden, that is, until we begin to open the doors and `see'. That is the ultimate purpose of the path of shamanism."
Leo describes the non-ordinary realities of the shaman, the upper, lower (or under) and middle worlds to which he/she journeys. He gives examples of how shamans heal. The use of illusion, ceremony and ritual, how to journey, the similarity of the medicine wheel to stone circles and how to work with one are also covered. Each chapter has exercises that anyone can do, although I can tell you from my own experience with these exercises that you get out of them what you put in! In fact, that is one of the most important messages in the book. To grow and change, to understand and face the truths about ourselves, takes tremendous courage. We have to want it, for otherwise nothing happens.
But this isn't a dry DIY manual for trainee shamans, although it holds a wealth of information. Leo Rutherford writes from the heart. His own personal struggle to reach these truths has given him the knowledge to guide others. This is not just a book about what shamans do, or how they do it. It is a book about how to open ourselves, and, by so doing, to open to the universe - to other people and other realities -, to the magical child within us all. And, as Leo says, "The magical child can only use power for the good of all, and would not know a manipulation if it fell over one." What a recipe for life.
Cover painting by Howard G Charing
