Song of Vajra by Daniel Mirante

Beauty, Plato suggested, is of the Good and True. But beauty exists not only in beautiful pure lands and lovely and noble creatures. Beauty is found not only in fresh and perfect creation (Brahma), and in balance and preservation (Vishnu), but in destruction (Shiva). The entire cycle is beautiful because it is true.

The inner life contains all phases, as we flow through processes of decay, destruction, darkness, and the dawn of recreation. The buzzing process of cellular death and generation occurs every moment imperceptibly. And our psyche’s too are recreated through interaction with our environment. We never step into the same river twice. Moreover, we are only a current in that greater river of time. All change!

Great art depicts these irrefutable truths of change through the cycles of existence. Such art provides a contemplative mirror and sometimes moreover a guide to accepting reality as it is. By intuitively understanding the movement through these cycles we live more fully, because we can flow with the stream of change rather than multiply suffering through grasping hold of our stories in obstinate resistance and denial. This is one of the meanings of Dharma.

But back to visions and art. In visions and visionary art we often witness a sensibility that is not really a conventional beauty. It may be elegant, enchanting, intricate, but it challenges rather than succours us, it does not key into sentimentalised or strictly culture bound notions of beauty, but touches upon the ‘full cycle’.

We could describe such as beauty as grotesque. This word, ‘grotesque’, derives from ‘grotto’, caves, hollows and orifices of the earth, long suspected to be the birth-centres of the 10,000 creatures. Grotto’s are places of mystery, of both threat and security. They are ambivalent. Their darkness is the Unknown.

During the ice-age, within caves, the ancestors of the civilisations likely developed the intricate cultures and forms of interaction that set the foundation for the modern human. In icy lands, resource scarcity and the necessity to encircle the fire in the shelter of caves, begot stories, myths and cave art.

Caves are also the places of outlanders, wildlings, yogis, sages and spiritual explorers. In the Songs of Milarepa, the yogi describes varieties of beings, from dis-incarnate spirits and demons, to the grace of visitation by tantric dakini’s. In these liminal zones of the unknown, the veil is thin.

Grottos epitomise a kind of beauty which is primordial and ancient. It is a beauty which is pre-human, pre-organic. Grottos of purest water and crystals, containing chasms that fall into the blackness of non-being. Caves are not sentimental places, their stalagmites and stalactites evoke both temples and the maws of giant beings. Caves are the origin of grotesque aesthetics, a beauty beyond opposites.

The richness of these deep crevices, and the richness of their mysteries, help us to comprehend the beauty in the dark and grotesque. In the darkness shimmer crystals and hot springs, precious metals and minerals. We are presented with an unfamiliar world of wonder which shines with its own order of complexity, completely different to that of the surface world. The deeps of the earth reveal in occulted gloom the mysteries of origin, the pre-biomechanical, the pre-biogenic, mineralogical evolution.

In this absence, this deep space, the implicate order, the world implied by imagination, delineates itself. The Dakini’s reveal themselves and teach their wisdom to the brave and firm. The spirits emerge to be heard and so healed. And deep dark ancient things sing and howl as the wind blows through the million hollows, tubes and pipes of the honeycomb mountains like so many flutes and horns, singing the bitter sweet, hauntingly deep, and sometimes unfathomably bizarre and alien song of the earth.

Vision questing, and creating art from this place, reflects a process of revealing. The scientific process, too, has revealed extraordinary domains, which are in a sense objects of faith, since we do not directly perceive them. Such as the nano technological cities of the cell, the Gothic structures of the nucleus and DNA, and similarly the macrocosm of solar systems and galaxies. In some of these images there involves a sense of unease. Who does not feel on some level confronted, by an image of a skull, its absent eyes like caves?

In the same sense, the imperative of the visionary is to understand and reveal. The energies & transformation of perspective embodied in vision quests and in the great art of vision can stir the same unease, as our fragile ego’s are connected to the greater cycles within which they are vulnerably nested, interdependent, and co-originating with all that is… This is the tough love of the ‘Good’… the grotesque beauty of the ‘True’.

There are two kinds of light. The glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. As we exit the cave of mystery we are dazzled by the colours and vibrancy of the world. And we risk to forget the more subtle, silent world of the crystal, transparent, absent inner night.

If one travailed into the dark, would one find a hidden world? A hollow earth of ancient oceans, and mushroom forests? Or perhaps a sign, a ruin, a secret revealed, that would overthrow everything we think we know?

- Daniel Mirante, Dec 2011, Affalon.
www.lila.info

This beautiful guilded painting by David Hewsen, Mother Earth, is 4 X 8 feet and was installed, on the 9th of January, in the entrance of a heart center for a hospital in the United States.  David Hewsen started it about a year ago, inspired by a doing a native ceremony outside of Cusco, Peru.

David Hewsen’s unique artwork carries within it the heart and beauty of the Amazon Jungle, in which he lives, and its inhabitants: plants, animals, people and  mythological beings alike.

More of his art can be found on his web page amaruspirit.org together with links and information about the other aspects of the jungle… the uglier truths of contaminations, roads buildings, injustices and deaths. Well worth a visit!

From Neurons to Nirvana is about the science of psychedelics — the quest to discover how psychoactive substances affect the neurological system and how those effects are related directly to how we understand the world around us; how they affect consciousness and what that means for our understanding of ourselves, our relationship with others, and our understanding of the world.

Hockenhull is working in partnership with executive producer Mark Achbar (The Corporation) and Betsy Carson, and with European co-producer Oval Filmemacher, Berlin. He has been developing and shooting this film over the last two years, filming extensively in Canada, the USA, and Europe.

You can help to make this film a reality. See how you can contribute here — and how you can get signed DVDs, exclusive downloads during production, music tracks, special imagistic loops for continuous ecstatic play on your monitor, an exclusive audio clip of Aldous Huxley recorded in the 1930s, and even co-production credit. Check it out.

Steve Beyer is the author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. His website and blog is at www.singingtotheplants.com.

As she unveiled work after work I became awed at the depth and extensiveness of her ouvre. Quietly, McGillivray has created a vast body of work. Her older work reaches back to deep and heavy primitivism, and her more recent work shines with the refined vibrancy of a new era, the emergence of a new logos.

The common motif across her vast body of work is the inter-relationship of humanity with the plant realm. The human form is frequently depicted as interpenetrated by root and shoot, vine and leaf. These icon paintings of the deep ecological plant realm are in my view the productions of something like a contemporary ‘vegetalista‘, a plant-shaman.

As a personality Yvonne is no less inspiring than her creations, and induced wonder in me as she poetically describes her experiences in nature and the world of visions, encountering natural languages, patterns, realms and beings that she magically transcribes into her art.

Yvonne kindly agreed to take part in this expose of her work.

Interview with Yvonne McGillivray

Daniel Mirante : Your work indicates a profound connection to the visionary realm of elementals, plant spirits, and spiritual rites of passage. How do you gain the inspiration and insight to be able to paint such mysteries?

Yvonne McGillivray : Living close to nature for many years, I became very aware of the natural cycles, the ways of the birds and animals, the plants, the weather, the seasons. Interacting and communicating with the web of life around me, opened me to receive the messages, signs and symbols that nature constantly provides.

Other inspiration and insights come from dreams and from visions received through meditation, shamanic journeying practises, music and sound.

Listening to certain sounds can open up portals into other realities of magic, mystery and spirit where we can journey and access ancestral memory, future possibilities and present awareness.

A painting unfolds and has its own journey into manifestation so it is often a mystery to me what will appear and what it has to reveal.

Daniel Mirante : What role do you feel sacred art could perform within the industrialized societies of the modern world?

Yvonne McGillivray : During these changing times the sacred, visionary, shamanic art that is being channelled can help to guide the way forward, provide hope, healing, teaching and transformation.

It can guide us back to the ways of spirit, nature, truth and beauty.

It can help to remind, to re-enchant and to reconnect people to the sacredness of all life, to the majesty, mystery and wonder of creation and our connection to all things.

The hearts and minds of the material driven cultures may be opened and the spark of imagination rekindled, and awareness and consciousness expanded.

By remembering our divinity, that which is infinite and eternal and waking up to our true nature, we can remember our place and purpose in this matrix of creation and can move forward on this evolutionary journey.

With roots firmly planted we can fly into realms beyond the imagination, into the multi dimensional worlds and realities that exist, to the source of all things.

______________________________

Article originally appeared in www.lila.info – Contemporary Visionary and Sacred Art
Yvonne McGillivray can create giclee and lithographs of her paintings to order, and has a limited number of originals for sale. Missives to : yvonnemc33@hotmail.com

Sweet, because as Pablo Amaringo came to this veil of tears, this veil of soulmaking, he bequeathed us a rich treasury of visions and encyclopaedic knowledge of the indigenous shamanic plant traditions of the Amazon. Although he has left us physically, his knowledge and skill as a seer and traveller into the spiritual realms of nature remain with humanity in the form of his art. His paintings are something to truly celebrate.

My hope is that the collectors and students of Pablo’s art will bring his work together to be photographed and archived, and that his friends and family can continue the work of decoding the rich plant mythologies and medicinal knowledge embedded in his work. May Pablo continue to inspire and change lives for generations to come.

- Daniel Mirante November 2009

Howard G. Charing & Peter Cloudsley interview the world famous visionary artist.

Pablo Amaringo is one of the world’s greatest visionary artists, and is renowned for his highly complex, colourful and intricate paintings of his visions from drinking the Ayahuasca brew.

He trained as a curandero in the Amazon, healing himself and others from the age of ten, but gave this up in 1977 to become a full-time painter and art teacher at his Usko-Ayar school. His book, Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman, co-authored with Luis Eduardo Luna, brought his work and the rich mythology of the Amazon to a wide audience in the West.

Pablo Amaringo was born Puerto Libertad, in the Peruvian Amazon. He was ten years old when he first took Ayahuasca—a visionary brew used in shamanism, to help him overcome a severe heart disease. The magical cure of this ailment via the healing plants led Pablo toward the life of a vegetalismo in which he worked for many years.

Howard and Peter met with Pablo at the school which he founded (Usko-Ayar school of painting) in Pucullpa where he lives and paints, and interviewed Pablo about his life as a shaman and artist.

What drew you to being a shaman?

It was a spiritual matter for me. I had thought that shamans deceived and lied to people, so I didn’t believe in them. I thought that Ayahuasca healed people because it was medicine, I didn’t believe in magic and spirits. No! Then in 1967 I saw a curandera3 miraculously heal my sister who had been in mortal agony with hepatitis, and could not either eat or speak, but with this single healing from the plants, she was cured in just two hours. That motivated me to start learning the science of vegetalismo

She was given Ayahuasca?

No, the Senora used the knowledge of Ayahuasca and chanted. That was during the day. That same night I drank and received the powers, but I didn’t know what I was being given. I saw many things. I sat like a king and watched! After that I dieted for five days, staying at home, without seeing many people.

After one month I began to feel what everybody else was feeling, it was a very strange thing! And I discovered I could sing the chants without even learning them. They came out beautifully and I wondered how it was possible that I knew them. I realised I had powers in me and I began to be a curandero when I cured a young man with a terrible headache, firstly I felt it and then he was better.

Is it an important part of the cure, to feel what the patient feels?

That was how the powers were given to me, but others say that when they take the Ayahuasca, they can see what the problem is with their patient. I didn’t even have to drink, I felt exactly where their pains were, and their emotions, everything.

What plant did you take on your diet?

Just Ayahuasca, but afterwards I took other plants at the same time as Ayahuasca, to learn more things.

Then you practiced as a curandero in Pucullpa?

Yes, and for many years I travelled to Madre de Dios, Cusco, Lima, Huanuco, Tingo Maria and Alto Ucayali. Wherever I went I cured people.

At that time Pucullpa was much smaller.

Yes, the houses were mostly wooden, with cultivation behind them, there were no high buildings. None of the streets had tarmac, they were of red mud, except for the one central Plaza. The road to Lima was terrible and it took a month or more to get there.

How do you communicate with plant spirits after you take them into you?

When you take any plant other than Ayahuasca, you connect through your dreams. Ajo sacha, Chric Sanango, Bobinsana etc. you learn while you are asleep. But with Ayahuasca no, you are conscious and awake. That is why it is the planta maestra – the eye through which you see the world, the universe. It is miraculous and sacred and you can learn from your studies far more with Ayahuasca than with other plants, but you must obey the ‘statutes’ of this plant, i.e. the rules. If you obey, no knowledge will be withheld from you.

My visions helped me understand the value of human beings, animals, the plants themselves, and many other things. The plants taught me the function they play in life, and the holistic meaning of all life. We all should give special attention and deference to Mother Nature. She deserves our love. And we should also show a healthy respect for her power!

How did you discover your gift of painting?

I used to make portraits and landscapes when I was 20 years old, but mostly using charcoal. But this didn’t earn me any money so I dedicated myself to other things, agriculture, raising animals and hairdressing, all kinds of things. I was working as secretary to the chief of customs here in the port of Pucullpa. One day my boss told me to paint two armchairs, and as I had never painted, I just slapped on the paint any old how, and it looked awful with lumps everywhere. But the boss didn’t reprimand me; he said how come you are good at everything except painting? I was a little hurt because he was always so impressed by everything I did. This made me think that if I was going to learn to paint, I would learn to do it well.

After three years working there I had a heart problem and returned to doing portraits in pencil beginning with my own portrait.

How did you begin painting visions?

Years passed and I used to say to my mother, when I am older I will paint several pictures of myself so that after I am dead people will know there has been a painter in the family! One day I was asked to accompany a foreign gentleman because I spoke a little English but I did not know that he was the biologist Denis McKenna. After some years he recommended me for a job in Sepagua but I was not able to take it up because my mother fell ill. So when he came back in 1985 I asked him if he would show my pictures in an exhibition he was organizing in Switzerland. They were small pictures, but later he returned with Luis Eduardo Luna who said how beautifully you paint Pablo. I can promote your work; do you want to be a world class painter?

I said no, I don’t want any of those things. I don’t know what a ‘world class’ painter is. I just want you to help me sell my pictures to make a little money. I was portraying the daily realities of people in the Amazon, how they sow and harvest, how they fish and celebrate their fiestas and so on. Luna said how is it I haven’t met you before now? Every year I have been coming for the last eight years, travelling up the Amazon through Brazil and Peru to Panama!

I asked him why he came. What was he looking for? We are interested in the magical plants of Peru from the coast, Sierra and Selva. I know what you are after, I said. I used to be a shaman ten years ago, what a shame you didn’t know me before, but now I have put all that behind me. I could have told you so much about what I had seen, I said. Then I started to think that I could paint for him all the things I had seen in my visions and all the things that were explained to me. But I had to do it in secret because even when people saw photos of what I painted, they said I had gone mad, that I was bedevilled and painting things of the demon!

They worried me with these remarks. I could never have had an exhibition here in Pucullpa. So Luna said paint for me then! And I made two pictures of visions for his next visit, and when he saw those pictures – one of which is in the Museum of Washington DC and the other in the University of Stockholm – they took hundreds of pictures of them. But I said he could take them away. And that’s what they did, wrapped up in a huge box. They sold them and sent me the money. After that they said we don’t want any more landscapes, only visions!

They studied them and said they found language and biology in the pictures so later I began to make explanations of them. But I could never show them to people here. That’s how it all started.

Are people still prejudiced here?

Yes, many are still. Once some religious people came and said that if the name of Jesus was spoken the paintings would explode. And they asked me to say Jesus. I said I can’t say that word, what for? They said to each other, he has got the devil in him, if he says Jesus, he will explode!

You have many amazing paintings here in your studio; can you tell us something about them?

The pictures are a means by which people can cross spiritual boundaries. Some people say they can only believe what they see, but there are thing which exist which cannot be seen. The pictures are for reminding people what we are and where we come from and where we are going. They are for people of any culture in the world although there is much that is taken from indigenous Amazonian culture. For example:

‘A Fines Espirituales’ (Spiritual Endeavour)

In this painting there are horses like humans, humans with tiger’s heads and a papagayo with a human body and so on. Looking at this painting, it reminds us of many of the Amazonian legends in which animals adopt human forms, does this painting relate to these stories?

That is correct, spirits cannot materialize easily, if they cannot take human form, they take animal form. They are made from the spirits of animals, but if they appear human, then they can reproduce with women in order that they can be incarnate in us. This is what you can discover through the visions of Ayahuasca and other plants like toé, chric sanango, ajo sacha etc. assuming you do the diet correctly, then the invisible world can become manifest to us. It is part of our mystic evolution. Everyone has a role to play inspiring, creating, evolving their minds to preserve the world. The spirits are working untiringly to protect Mother Nature – everything from the plants and animals to the circles of the planets.

You touch on an important point about protecting nature; there is an increasing amount of damage that people are causing to the natural world, what is your view why humans do so much damage?

It is our lack of ingenuity, and above all imagination. We think we are the only ones here on earth, unique! We should all work like scientists, teachers, composers so that we can fully and creatively engage in the world, so in that way the world continues. If we play a part in the functioning of the universe we will not die. When I am old and about to die and cannot see well enough to paint, I will be talking other things instead, but I can still paint now and I am 68.

The plants in the painting are ishanga, maromara, pinon blanco, pinon colorado and pinon negro, lengua de perro, verbena. The ethnic elements are Shipibo5, Conibo, Shetebo, Amahuaca, and you can see the spells and spaceships.

‘Hondas de la Ayahuasca’ (Ayahuasca waves)

Here is represented the different grades of shaman. A suniruma is the highest expert sitting here, with dominion of the sky, then banco puma or banco sumi who has dominion of the land, finally the muraya who has dominion over the water.

You can see waves just like the effects of Ayahuasca – the mareacion. It comes strongly and it seems as if it is passing and then another one comes, like waves from a stone in the water. This is the sachamama6 which comes in different colours in the mareacion and protects the vegetation. It is a semi-mythological animal because it actually exists, a huge serpent which lives on the land but doesn’t move, so plants grow on top of it. You can be chopping a path with your machete and strike it unknowingly, until blood appears! If it sees you, it draws you into its mouth with its power, you cannot escape. You can see here the seven rays of the rainbow which portray this power.

You can also see angel serpents or sarafs who protect the sachamama.

El Principio de la Vida. (The Principle or beginning of life)

This painting is about the mystical beginning of life which can be accessed through drinking Ayahuasca. The first cell which divided for the first time was with the help of extra-terrestrial beings, spirits, and angels which enlisted sub atomic particles. The cells have taken millions of years to develop and evolve, and after making cells they created marine animals, fish, and large snakes to live amongst the plants.

They made the plants grow and finally terrestrial animals, lions and tigers and large flying animals. These inventions gave them the practice they needed for creating more, four legged animals, and domestic animals.

Wild plants were made for changing the environment while domestic plants, especially flowers, are for altering the heart, mind and spirit of people. In your garden its best to grown domestic plants, to put on your table to make you happy and give you love. We don’t understand plants and we look down on them but they are our fuel, our medicine, they give us health and life. All this has taken many thousands of years of work by the spirits.

Before a person is born, while still in the womb, we recapitulate evolution and pass through a snake-like phase, at another phase you can see horns. At this stage we are like a book in which you can read everything that will happen in your life, how many years you will live and so on. I was very astonished when I saw these things. It is very emotional. There are things you don’t see but it is not because they don’t exist. We just need the potential to see, but if we could see everything we would go mad. So we must be trained to learn and survive the big shock. For this you need to diet7.

Elsewhere they are drinking Ayahuasca in colourful clothes coming from the wisdom they are getting. All this is according to the “book” we spoke about. Much depends of what the mother eats when she is pregnant – she should eat natural food so the child will be strong, otherwise they are weak.

Bottom right corner, is the beginning of the blood, the spark of life, the spirit which enters when the mother is asleep while pregnant. You can see the uterus there and the waves which give the child his emotions and characteristics. That’s why this is called the beginning of life: just like waves which go into a TV to make a picture. With this you can deal with all the problems of life. Tinguna is the first cells of life to be formed. People don’t understand these things yet.

‘Yacaruna Huasi’ (The yacaruna’s house.)

The yacaruna are people that live in under the river in tunnels which are pictured here, and they lead to another world as you see. They play musical instruments to enchant people at midnight when all is silent under the moonlight. You can see dolphins, manatee (sea-cow), electric eel and charapa mama which are marine turtles. Then there are muraya (Shipibo shamans), water dogs, water horses and fish which fly when it rains very hard and fall out of the sky.

Would you like to add anything more about the importance of plants?

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. Mestizos8 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.

Authors Bio:

Howard G. Charing: has worked some of the most respected and extraordinary shamans & healers in the Andes, the Amazon Rainforest, and the Philippines. With Peter Cloudsley he organises specialist retreats to the Amazon Rainforest at the dedicated centre located in the Mishana nature reserve. He has also co-authored Plant Spirit Shamanism published by Destiny Books (USA)

Peter Cloudsley: Since 1980, Peter has been researching Peruvian fiesta music. He has built up a documented archive of traditional music and interviews, and has collected for the British Museum. Throughout this time he has travelled extensively in Latin America, especially Peru, studying the wealth of music and diversity of popular religions. Peter has taught courses at the City Lit and elsewhere (on music and popular culture in Latin America).

For more information about our Amazon and Andean work, contact Eagle’s Wing Centre for Contemporary Shamanism. www.shamanism.co.uk
Email: eagleswing@shamanism.co.uk

Eagle’s Wing

The Magical Art of the Shipibo People of the Upper Amazon

Underlying the intricate geometric patterns of great complexity displayed in the art of the Shipibo people is a concept of an all pervading magical reality which can challenge the Western linguistic heritage and rational mind.

These patterns are more than an expression of the one-ness of creation, the inter-changeability of light and sound, the union or fusion of perceived opposites, it is an ongoing dialogue or communion with the spiritual world and powers of the Rainforest. The visionary art of the Shipibo brings this paradigm into a physical form. The Ethnologist Angelika Gebhart-Sayer, calls this “visual music”.

The Shipibo are one of the largest ethnic groups in the Peruvian Amazon. These ethnic groups each have their own languages, traditions and culture. The Shipibo which currently number about 20,000 are spread out in communities through the Pucallpa / Ucayali river region. They are highly regarded in the Amazon as being masters of Ayahuasca, and many aspiring shamans and Ayahuasqueros from the region study with the Shipibo to learn their language, chants, and plant medicine knowledge.

All the textile painting, embroidery, and artisan craft is carried out by the women. From a young age the Shipibo females are initiated by their mothers and grandmothers into this practice. Teresa a Shipiba who works with us on our Amazon Retreats tells that “when I was a young girl, my mother squeezed drops of the Piripiri (a species of Cyperus sp.) berries into my eyes so that I would have the vision for the designs; this is only done once and lasts a lifetime”.

The intricate Shipibo designs have their origin in the non-manifest and ineffable world in the spirit of the Rainforest and all who live there. The designs are a representation of the Cosmic Serpent, the Anaconda, the great Mother, creator of the universe called Ronin Kene. For the Shipibo the skin of Ronin Kene has a radiating, electrifying vibration of light, colour, sound, movement and is the embodiment of all possible patterns and designs past, present, and future. The designs that the Shipibo paint are channels or conduits for this multi-sensorial vibrational fusion of form, light and sound. Although in our cultural paradigm we perceive that the geometric patterns are bound within the border of the textile or ceramic vessel, to the Shipibo the patterns extend far beyond these borders and permeate the entire world.

One of the challenges for the Western mind is to acknowledge the relationship between the Shipibo designs and music. For the Shipibo can “listen” to a song or chant by looking at the designs, and inversely paint a pattern by listening to a song or music.

As an astonishing demonstration of this I witnessed two Shipiba paint a large ceremonial ceramic pot known as a Mahuetá. The pot was nearly five feet high and had a diameter of about three feet, each of the Shipiba couldn’t see what the other was painting, yet both were whistling the same song, and when they had finished both sides of the complex geometric pattern were identical and matched each side perfectly.

The Shipibo designs are traditionally carried out on natural un-dyed cotton (which they often grow themselves) or on cotton dyed in mahogany bark (usually three or four times) which gives the distinctive brown colour. They paint either using a pointed piece of chonta (bamboo) or an iron nail with the juice of the crushed Huito (Genipa americana) berry fruits which turns into a blue- brown-black dye once exposed to air.

Each of the designs are unique, even the very small pieces, and they cannot be commercially or mass produced. In Lima I met with a woman who had set up a government funded community project which amongst other matters established a collective for the Shipibo to sell their artisan work and paintings. She tells that a major USA corporation (Pier 1 Imports), enamoured by these designs ordered via the project twenty thousand textiles with the same design, this order could never be fulfilled, the Shipibo could simply not comprehend the concept of replicating identical designs.

The Shipibo believe that our state of health (which includes physical and psychological) is dependent on the balanced union between mind, spirit and body. If an imbalance in this occurs such as through emotions of envy, hate, anger, this will generate a negative effect on the health of that person. The shaman will re-establish the balance by chanting the icaros which are the geometric patterns of harmony made manifest in sound into the body of the person. The shaman in effect transforms the visual code into an acoustic code.

A key element in this magical dialogue with the energy which permeates creation and is embedded in the Shipibo designs is the work with ayahuasca by the Shipibo shamans or muraya. In the deep ayahuasca trance, the ayahuasca reveals to the shaman the luminous geometric patterns of energy. These filaments drift towards the mouth of the shaman where it metamorphoses into a chant or icaro. The icaro is a conduit for the patterns of creation which then permeate the body of the shaman’s patient bringing harmony in the form of the geometric patterns which re-balances the patient’s body. The vocal range of the Shipibo shaman’s when they chant the icaros is astonishing, they can range from the highest falsetto one moment to a sound which resembles a thumping pile driver, and then to a gentle soothing melodic lullaby. Speaking personally of my experience with this, is a feeling that every cell in my body is floating and embraced in a nurturing all-encompassing vibration, even the air around me is vibrating in acoustic resonance with the icaro of the maestro. The shaman knows when the healing is complete as the design is clearly distinct in the patient’s body. It make take a few sessions to complete this, and when completed the geometric healing designs are embedded in the patient’s body, this is called an Arkana. This internal patterning is deemed to be permanent and to protect a person’s spirit.

Angelika Gebhart-Sayer, Professor of Ethnology, University of Marburg writes that “Essentially, Shipibo-Conibo therapy is a matter of visionary design application in connection with aura restoration, the shaman heals his patient through the application of a visionary design, every person feels spiritually permeated and saturated with designs. The shaman heals his patient through the application of the song-design, which saturates the patients’ body and is believed to untangle distorted physical and psycho-spiritual energies, restoring harmony to the somatic, psychic and spiritual systems of the patient. The designs are permanent and remain with a person’s spirit even after death.”.

Whilst it is not easy for Westerner’s to enter and engage with the world view of the Shipibo which has been developed far away from our linguistic structures and psychological models, there is an underlying sophisticated and complex symbolic language embedded in these geometric patterns. The main figures in the Shipibo designs are the square, the rhombus, the octagon, and the cross. The symmetry of the patterns emanating from the centre (which is our world) is a representation of the outer and inner worlds, a map of the cosmos. The cross represents the Southern Cross constellation which dominates the night sky and divides the cosmos into four quadrants, the intersection of the arms of the cross is the centre of the universe, and becomes the cosmic cross. The cosmic cross represents the eternal spirit of a person and the union of the masculine and feminine principles the very cycle of life and death which reminds us of the great act of procreation of not only the universe, but also of humanity, and our individual selves.

The smaller flowing patterns within the geometric forms are the radiating power of the Cosmic Serpent which turns this way and that, betwixt and between constantly creating the universe as it moves. The circles are often a direct representation of the Cosmic Anaconda, and within the circle itself is the central point of creation.

In the Western tradition, from the Pythagoreans, and Plato through the Renaissance music was used to heal the body and to elevate the soul. It was also believed that earthly music was no more than a faint echo of the universal ‘harmony of the spheres’. This view of the harmony of the universe was held both by artists and scientists until the mechanistic universe of Newton.

Joseph Campbell the foremost scholar of mythology suggests that there is a universe of harmonic vibrations which the human collective unconscious has always been in communion with. Our beings beat to the ancient rhythms of the cosmos. The traditional ways of the Shipibo and other indigenous peoples still reflect the primal rhythm, and their perception of the universal forces made physical is truly a communion with the infinite.

Article Source: Communion With The Infinite – The Visual Music of the Shipibo tribe of the Amazon