(Image taken from: https://bit.ly/3GgIlxY)
The shaman petrifies me with his gaze. His pupils, black as ebony, enclose an unfathomable wisdom, a timeless understanding of the nature that surrounds us. We are deep in Cusco, in a forest near Pisac where the mountains stir and raise guttural sounds into the air, something I can now perceive clearly.
Folk medicine harbors a fascinating technology that our western minds cannot grasp. Never before have I experienced such a profound process: here the shamans possess the key to materializing ideas, to transforming the spirit into matter and proceeding to its healing. It is the perfect alchemy, a movement capable of healing broken souls and repairing mental links with reality.
The shaman takes his pipe with both hands and offers a silent prayer, bordering on trance. After pouring a handful of ground tobacco in his right palm, he executes the ritual gestures and movements. He adds sounds, like hoarse whistles, which complete his preparation work. He scans me with his pipe, looking for the evil I want to exorcise. I concentrate, closing my eyes. I visualize my demons as he points the mouthpiece at my heart and repeats the sacred words.
I have been struggling with a dark idea all afternoon. I can't get rid of its grip, which torments my soul. When I think I’ve defeated it, when I meditate and concentrate on my breathing, I seem to tame it for a few seconds before it returns. Its viperous head waits for me behind every corner to sink its teeth into me again.
The wisdom and vision of rapé are the only remedies I have left. In the distance, I can hear the chants and instruments floating, hypnotic, inside the temple where the others are. Out here, there is only the shaman and me, my insecurities and phobias and a pipe that is ready, like St. George's spear, to pierce the dragon in my mind.
I open my eyes and see it pointing at me. I accept the invitation: I bring my left nostril closer and insert the end of the wooden pipe into my nose. The shaman's puff is slow, but sustained; I inhale nervously and feel the tobacco rise up my pituitary and reach the back of my skull. I withdraw the pipe. My head spins, I take a deep breath through my nose and wipe it with a piece of paper before offering the other nostril to complete the ritual.
I grit my teeth as I inhale the second cloud of tobacco. It's a grayish steam that completely surrounds me, blurring my vision. I get to my feet and, groping, stagger in the dark to a small opening in the moonlight. There I wait for the rapé to take effect.
I sit down and wrap the blanket around me, since the cold is approaching zero degrees. I get the impression of having absorbed the blow of the rapé; I breathe calmly and supervise my body in the calm of the night. Have I got used to the effect of the rapé? Could it be that my body already knows how to negotiate the vital jolt that the plant represents?
I meditate on my situation and visualize the problem. Something gurgles in my guts, I approach the bucket and hang my face over its edge like a gargoyle at the top of a gothic cathedral.
A storm invades me: I start coughing violently before opening my windpipe to let it all out. The purge is phenomenal, a river taking its natural course. I expel once, twice, three times; I don't remember if I made it to a fourth. I fall exhausted on the grass and study the moon that hangs overflowing in all its silver splendor above us.
A few minutes later, I notice the effect of this ancestral magic: the ideas have disappeared, the rapé has killed them. When they try to reappear, they have no strength, they cannot pull me to the dark side.
I thank nature, the tobacco and its immense gnostic wisdom, the shaman for being the bridge and the catalyst of an energy that our weak western minds will never understand. Little by little, I take the road back to the temple. Now I am healed, my mental nemeses will not return. I will be able to enjoy the incredible freedom of being myself in the midst of this plush vegetation, cradle of an extremely advanced yet archaic civilization.
That night I fall asleep thinking that the Incas had no trinkets or technological gadgets because they had understood how to talk to nature.
(05/2022)