Lila

Maestro Juan Navarro, interviewed by Howard G. Charing & Peter Cloudsley

Shamans from different cultures and traditions have been using psychoactive plants since the dawn of human emergence. These plants have been used traditionally for guidance, divination, healing, maintaining a balance with the spirit or consciousness of the living world.

The use of the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus is ancient and its use has been a continuous tradition in Peru for over 3,000 years. The earliest depiction of the cactus is a carving which shows a mythological being holding the San Pedro. It belongs to the early pre-Colombian civilizations, such as the Chavín culture (c. 1400-400 BC) and was found in an old temple at Chavín de Huantar in the northern highlands of Peru, and dates about 1300 BC, and later to the Mochica, 500AD.

Even in present day mythology, it is told that God hid the keys to heaven in a secret place. San Pedro used the magical powers of a cactus to discover this place, and later the cactus was named after him.

‘La Mesa Norteña’

Juan Navarro was born in the highland village of Somate, department of Piura. He is a descendant of a long lineage of healers and shamans working with the magical powers of Las Huaringas. These Sacred Lakes stand at 3,500 meters and have been revered since earliest Peruvian civilization.

At the age of eight, Juan made his first pilgrimage to Las Huaringas, and took San Pedro for the first time. Every month or two it is necessary to return here to accumulate energy and protection to heal his people. As well as locals and Limeños (people from Lima) , pilgrims also come from many parts of South America. His two sons work as assistants whenever working with groups, which is common in this tradition. . Maestro Juan, however, apprenticed in the region of the Sacred Lakes of Las Huaringas where the tradition is most authentic.

During the sessions Juan works untiringly with his two sons in an intricate sequence of processes, including invocation, diagnosis, divination, and healing with natural objects, or artes. The artes are initially placed on the maestro’s altar or mesa, and are an astonishing and beautiful array of shells, swords, magnets, quartzes, objects resembling sexual organs, rocks which spark when struck together, and stones from animals’ stomachs, which they have swallowed to aid digestion!

The artes are collected from pre-Colombian tombs, and sacred energetic place, particularly Las Huaringas. They bring magical qualities to the ceremony where, under the visionary influence of San Pedro, their invisible powers may be experienced.

The Mesa (which means table in Spanish, but it also means a high plateau where the shaman comes to encounter the divine) of the maestro is also a representation of the forces of nature and the cosmos. Through the Mesa the shaman is able to work with and influence the forces of nature to diagnose and heal disease.

The traditional Mesa Norteña has three areas, on the left is the ‘campo ganadero’ or ‘field of the dark’, on the right is the ‘campo justiciero’ or the ‘field of the light’ (justiciero means justice), and in the centre is the ‘campo medio’ or ‘neutral field’, which is the place of balance between the forces of light and dark. It is important for us not to look at these forces as ‘positive’ or negative’ it is what we human beings do with these forces which is Important.

Although the contents and form of the artes varies from tradition to tradition, the Mesa rituals serve to remind us that the use and power of symbols extends throughout all cultures on our planet.

San Pedro

San Pedro or Trichocereus Pachanoi, grows on the dry eastern slopes of the Andes, between 2,000 - 3,000 meters above sea level, and commonly reaches six meters or more in height. It is also grown by local shamans in their herb gardens.

From earliest times it has been recognized that knowledge goes beyond sensory awareness or the rational way of understanding the world. San Pedro can take us directly to a telepathic experience and show us that there is no such thing as an inanimate object. Everything in the universe is alive and has a spirit.

As can be imagined the early European missionaries held the native practices in considerable contempt, and indeed were very negative when reporting the use of the San Pedro. Yet a Spanish missionary, cited by Christian Rätsch, grudgingly admitted the cactus medicinal value in the midst of a tirade reviling it:

“it is a plant with whose aid the devil is able to strengthen the Indians in their idolatry; those who drink its juice lose their senses and are as if dead; they are almost carried away by the drink and dream a thousand unusual things and believe that they are true. The juice is good against burning of the kidneys and, in small amounts, is also good against high fever, hepatitis, and burning in the bladder.”

An account of the cactus by a shaman is in radical contrast to this rather contemptuous view:

“it first … produces … drowsiness or a dreamy state and a feeling of lethargy … a slight dizziness … then a great vision , a clearing of all the faculties … it produces a light numbness in the body and afterward a tranquillity. And then comes detachment, a type of visual force … inclusive of all the senses … including the sixth sense, the telepathic sense of transmitting oneself across time and matter … like a kind of removal of one s thought to a distant dimension.”

San Pedro, considered the ‘maestro of the maestros’, enables the shaman to make a bridge between the visible and the invisible world for his people. The Quechua name for it is punku, which means doorway. The doorway connects the patient’s body to his spirit; to heal the body we must heal the spirit. San Pedro can show us the psychic causes of our illness intuitively or in mythical dream language.

The effects of San Pedro work through various stages, beginning with an expanded physical awareness in the body. Soon this is followed by euphoric feelings and then, after several hours, psychic and visionary effects become more noticeable.

The spirit of the cactus is sometimes said to be masculine whereas ayahuasca is feminine, but however this is understood, they are certainly very different or complementary. Frequently people have a clear preference for working with one rather than the other.

Interview with Juan Navarro

What is the relationship of the maestro with San Pedro?

In the North of Peru the power of San Pedro works in combination with tobacco. Also the sacred lakes – Las Huaringas – are very important. This is where we go to find the most powerful healing herbs which we use to energize our people. For example dominio gives strength and protects you from supernatural forces, sorcery etc. It is also put into the seguros, or amulets – bottles filled with perfume, plants and seeds gathered from Las Huaringas. You keep them in your home for protection and to make your life go well.

These plants do not have any secondary effects on the nervous system, nor do they provoke hallucinations. Only San Pedro has strength and is mildly hallucinatory, but you cannot become addicted. It doesn’t do any harm to your body, rather it helps the maestro to see what the problem is with his patient. Of course some people have this gift born in them - as our ancestors used to say, it is in the blood of a shaman.

Is San Pedro a teacher plant?

Of course, but it has a certain mystery. You have to be compatible with it because it doesn’t work for everybody. The shaman has a special relationship with it. It circulates in the body of the patient and where it finds abnormality it enables the shaman to detect it. It lets him know the pain they feel and whereabouts it is. So it is the link between patient and maestro. It also purifies the blood of the person who drinks it. It balances the nervous system so people loose their fears, frights and traumas, and it charges people with positive energy.

Everyone must drink so that the maestro can connect with them. Only the dose may vary from person to person because not everyone is as strong.

What about the singado? (inhalation of tobacco juice through the nostrils)

The tobacco leaf is left for 2-3 months in contact with honey, and when required for the singado it is macerated with aguardiente or alcohol. The function depends on which nostril is used. When taken in by the left side it is for liberating us of negative energy, including psychosomatic ills, pains in the body, bad influences of other people, or envy as we call it here. As you take it in you must concentrate on the situation which is going badly, or the person which is giving out a negative energy.

When taken through the right nostril it is for rehabilitating and energizing so that your projects go well. Its not for getting high on. Afterwards you can spit it out or swallow the tobacco, it doesn’t matter. It has an interrelation with the San Pedro in the body, and intensifies the visionary effects.

Can you smoke in the session?

No, no, no. It may be the same plant but here another element comes into play, which is fire. As the session is carried out in darkness, the fire in the darkness can perturb, create a negative ‘reflection’ (vision). It can cause trauma. As a personal observation, sound and light are interrelated during the San Pedro sessions, as the sound of the maestro’s maraca is experienced as a beam of a light penetrating the darkness.

How does the tobacco work to have these effects?

Tobacco when smoked, has the property of making people tranquil when they are anxious and thinking about their problems or even when they can’t get to sleep. It harmonizes people. This is the property of tobacco.

We have negative associations with tobacco in the West, addiction etc. bad health….

No, no. Here we do it with a healthy end in mind, not to provoke an effect. The next day you get up feeling clear in the head and good psychologically and comforted.

What is the power of the artes – the objects on the mesa?

They come from Las Huaringas, a group of lakes very high up where a special energy is bestowed on everything there, including the healing herbs which grow there and nowhere else. If you bathe in the lakes it takes away all your ills. You bathe with the intention of leaving everything negative behind. People go there to leave their enemies behind so they can’t do them any harm. After bathing, the maestro cleanses you with these artes – swords, bars, chontas, saints, and even huacos from archaeological sites. They ‘flourish’ you – spraying you with agua florida and herb macerations, a giving you sweet things like limas and honey, so your life flourishes.

We maestros also need to go to Las Huaringas regularly because we make enemies from healing people, so we need to protect ourselves.

The reason for this is that two forces exist: the good and the bad. The bad forces are from the pacts which the brujos make with the devil. The brujo is the rival of the curandero. So when the curandero heals, he makes an enemy of the brujo. Its not so much because he sends the bad magic back, as because he does the opposite thing to him, and they want supremacy in the battle.

Not far from Las Huaringas is a place called Sondor which has its own lakes. This is where evil magic is practiced and where they do harm in a variety of ways. I know because as a curandero I must know how sorcery is practiced, in order to defend myself and my patients.

Do people go there secretly?

Of course no one admits to going there, but they pass through Huancabamba just like the others who are going to Las Huaringas. I know various people who practice bad magic at a distance. They do it using physical means, concentrating, summoning up a persons soul, knowing their characteristics etc. and can make them suffer an accident or make an organ ill or whatever, or making their work go badly wrong. They have the power to get to their spirit so it may not even be necessary to have a piece of their clothing.

But don’t people also do harm unconsciously?

Yes - to themselves even, for example if a person has bad intentions towards another and that person is well protected with an encanto, (amulet) then he will do himself harm.

How does the rastreo work? (Diagnosis through psychic means.) Are you in an altered state?

No, I’m completely normal and lucid. What allows the reading of a person’s past, present or future, is the strength of the San Pedro and tobacco. It is an innate capability, not everybody has the gift, you can’t learn it from someone, it is inherited. The perceptions come through any one of the senses - sound, vision, smell or a feeling inside of what the person is feeling, a weakness, a pain or whatever. Sometimes a bad taste in the mouth may indicate a bad liver.

All the things on the mesa are perfectly normal, natural things: chontas, swords, stones etc. They have just received a treatment - like a radio tuned to a certain frequency - so they can heal particular things, weaknesses or whatever, but always it is necessary to concentrate on the sacred lakes, Las Huaringas.

Is it necessary for the maestro to take San Pedro to have vision?

Of course he must take San Pedro and tobacco. But it is to protect himself from the person’s negativity and illness, not because he needs it to have the vision.

Last night many people seemed closed to the things you were saying. They said ‘no’ but their body language seemed to say something else. Later it turned out that it did mean something to them.

Incredibility on their part – they are not accustomed to the method, a minor fault in their thinking.

So a Peruvian would respond differently?

Certainly. Also its different because we speak different languages, I see something in a flash and it has to be translated.

What is going on when flowers are thrown?

Flowers, perfumes, sweets and limas are part of nature and the power of nature. For a flower to grow in the earth from a seed, it needs water, and it needs fire and air - the four elements of nature. The same is needed for a bee, which makes honey, to live. Its very smell, texture, softness and sweet taste, penetrates the body, cleanses us and makes us flourish. It helps us to make a good impression at work and with our friends or partners, and wherever we go. That is making our luck flourish.

What about the shells on the mesa, for the singado and for drinking San Pedro?

This is a tradition. The shell helps to transmit. Our ancestors used the shells for communicating long distances. So when we drink the San Pedro certain frequencies enter our bodies. The very texture and the fact of it coming from water is healing.

It is not symbolic?

No. Everything has a purpose. It is all complementary.

Chonta has strength, it was used by Indians and Incas to make weapons, its strong and can defend us. Some stones come from archaeological sites, saints are great healers like San Jeronimo, San Cipriano, San Ilarion.

The bells, maracas?

They are to invoke the spirits of the dead, whether of family or of great healers. So that they may feel comfortable with us. Chunganas (maracas) are to give us enchantment, (protection and positive energy), it has a relaxing effect when taking San Pedro.