The Color of Ash

Alejandro is one of my Q'ero teachers. He's fifty six, and radiates the peace, humility and warmth I have seen in other Qero elders. His sister, another one of my teachers, is Maria Apasa Machaca, said to be the only Altomisayoq (high level Andean healer)left in the Qero nation, and definitely the only female Altomisayoq in a long time. To become an Altomisoyoq, you usually have to be hit by lighting three times. Maria seems to have survived it well. She's in her eighties, strong and vigorous. Alejandro tells me his mother had him when she was sixty, and lived to be over a hundred. That's how good the air is in the high Andes.

Alejandro also tells me that in the Qero Nation you have to be at least thirty before you can begin studying to be a pampa misayoq (Qero healer) and not everyone can do it.

We speak in a combination of his limited Spanish and my very limited Quechua. "You have to have luck (suerte) to become a pampa misayoq. Another pampa misayoq will read the coca leaves for you and let you know if you can take that path."

Today I performed a despacho with him, really the first that I undertook on my own, with his supervision. As usual I was impressed with the beauty and elegance of the process, a kind of artful unfolding of petals, coca leaves, seeds, candies and other items, as well as a powerful energetic connection with the forces of nature.

Actually putting the elements into the despachos with my own hands gave me a greater feel for each distinctive energy I was working with the apu masculine energy being quite different from the female pacha mama.

Alejandro and I don't seem to need to say much to acknowledge the energy of this work. "Allinta," he'll say. "It's good."

After making the despachos, we burned them both in the patio, in a small coal burning pot that I use to heat the house. We sat for a long time with the fire, praying, then he left me alone to pray on my own. After the fire burned down the pot had a fine white ash in it.

"VERY good," Alejandro said. "I didn´t expect it to be this good. I expected some black."

I was pleased. If you pay attention, you learn after awhile that what has long been called "superstition" is actually reading the language of nature: in the flight of a hawk or condor, in the visit of a spider, in the color of ash.

More than anything else I feel a deep sense of happiness after ceremony with the Qeros. Having escaped to the high Andes during the Spanish conquest they are carriers of an energy that is amazingly powerful and uncontaminated, a wisdom and innocence combined. It's not a head wisdom, but a heart wisdom. Somewhere I read that the Qero teachings contain an opening of different energy "eyes" that we have in our energetic field. Though none of my teachers have mentioned this, it is something that you simply begin to feel after awhile. Unlike Western teachings there seems to be little need to discuss analyze or evaluate the teachings one receives or experiences energetically.

I'm okay with that.

Hat Story

It's the low season now in Cusco, very quiet, very few tourists, days of rain and tranquility.
My favorite time to be here, though the locals hate it because their income takes a steep dive.

A few months back, during the high season, I made a face and mentioned to a street vendor friend in San Blas that there were far too many tourists in Cusco. Of course, I want to be the only one.

My friend, a Q'ero who sells chunllos, or Andean woven caps, shook his head sadly at my ignorance. He took one of his woven caps and pointed out its elaborate multi-colored texture. "See this hat," he said. "This hat needs all of its colors to be what it is, and all of the colors need each other. "

Well, shut my mouth, I thought.

Besides, without the entire hat, full of its colors and complexity, your head would get pretty damned cold.

With the Q'ero: Emptiness and Laughter

After having talked about it for awhile, I finally hauled myself up the mountains to visit the Q'ero, a remote and traditional nation that live in stone huts at 17,000 feet high. Until the 1950's, the Q'ero were pretty much left alone, except for the criollo hacenderos, or land-owners, who somehow managed to find them, give them Spanish names, cut their hair, and of course, put them to work in less than favorable conditions. The story that I had heard until my visit was that the Q'ero were the "Last of the Incas", untouched by "modern" civilization, but it's not clear to me just how remote they were if the hacenderos managed to get to them.

Recently, the Q'ero have been made famous by books by Alberto Villoldo and other writers, who have described their healing techniques and connected them to Europeans and North Americans. This has had some effect on the communities, with community members competing with each other for the tourist dollar and unqualified people offering "despachos", or ceremonies, to tourists. But despite this, the Q'ero people that I met still have a remarkable depth and openness, very refreshing in the commercialized hustle that Cusco has become. The very thin mountain air was also refreshing, even though three of the four of us who went to the communities from Cusco managed to get sick with some kind of stomach thing.

The trip was two days by car and horse to the first village, and then another day to the second.
While I was suffering from the stomach stuff, a local pampa misoyoq, or curandero , did a despacho for me, but I was too out of it to really see what was going on. The next day I began to feel better. A few days later, two other pampa misoyoq did one despacho each for three of us.
Very powerful work. That night I "dreamed" that the energy of the apu had entered and cleansed me. It was four o'clock in the morning, we're all lying in our sleeping bags in the stone hut of one of the curanderos. The apu told me in the dream to raise my hands to receive the energy, which I did. Afterwards, I had this almost irresistible urge to laugh out loud. This is what it feels like to be healed, I thought: emptiness, happiness, laughter.

Since my return I have managed to hold onto a new feeling of balance and clarity, even amidst the tug and pull of Cusco. Añay, Bernadino. Añay, Modesto, Añay, Lorenzo. Añay los apus.
Thank you.