Ceremony in the Andes
In my recent visits of ceremonial places in the Andes, together with a master of ceremony, a Pampamisayoq, I have learned about their deep connection with Mother Earth, about their love of live and how they show their gratefulness for all they have in their life.
There is this area at lake Titicaca with the most beautiful rock formations. You start walking on a formation called the ‘Puma’. It is a long reddish rock maybe 6-10 meters high and 50-60 meters long. Walking on the spine of the ‘Puma’ connects you to your deepest emotions and lays open your blockages and fears. From there you walk uphill towards the rock you can already see.
I take my time and might need one hour to get to the formation on the top. Andean geese accompany us, the vegetation is scarce and those strong and beautiful rocks are laying around everywhere. I can describe the scenery and give you some images, but I cannot transport the smell of herbs, the feeling of the land, the unity with the land. Walking uphill, I get one with the land, my body starts to melt into the scenery and those blockages and fears start to move.
On top we look for a good place to make a ‘Despacho’, an offering. Through this you say ‘thank you’ for whatever you are grateful for at the time. For anything you might want to let go at the time. During my last visit in Peru I worked on a huge family subject during all my trip and the Despacho there was my last ceremony to let go and lay the subject to rest. Now, almost 2 years later, I can say I did it.
All the time we see and look at the high mountains of Bolivia. They invite me and one day I will go to visit them. When I walk on a land that is so responsive to my thoughts and talks back, because for thousands of years people talk with the land and all beings, it became just natural to feel one with everything there is.
During the Despacho I forget where I am and fully immerse in the process, in the ceremony. At the beginning I connect with the subject and then I just listen to my heart, to my inspiration and to my emotional state. We do the Despacho there because of the sacredness of the place, but during the process I do not see the rock formations nor the Andean Geese. The process takes me to those places within myself, which need clearing and cleaning and letting go.
Later we walk down to a strange place of very old, Amaru Muru. It is a gateway and I have just an inkling where it leads. In any case it is closed now, you can admire its beauty but you cannot enter. I like to think that it will open when humans reach a much higher awareness. Since it becomes more and more known to the world and it is just there in the landscape, without guards, it is awfully littered. In just a few years between my visits, the energy got much weaker.
Even talking now about it, a deep sadness comes down on me. Maybe the pandemic cleared away that energetic and physic litter from too many careless visitors.
Chino, the Pampamisayoq I was walking with so many times, prepares for a sacred fire and burns the Despacho. The fire will transform and transcend all we put into it swiftly and directly. Even now, just remembering and writing about that day, brings joy and the feeling of accomplishment to me.
Lake Titicaca has many ceremonial places of old where people still go today to connect with the universe, with god or the mountain deities called Apus in Quechua.
The Q’ero people in the high Andes at one end of the Sacred Valley are said to have saved themselves from the Spanish conquistadors by retreating so high up in the mountains that they were never discovered by the intruders. It is only very recent that the Q’ero have contact with the wider world. Their language is called Quechua and slowly the western world learns about their live and especially about their mystics, their healers, called Paqos. We often say they are shamans, but they themselves understand their role in their society as Paqos, healers.
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