Chiric Sanango… The stern grandfather. I have been waiting for some time to write about this exceptional “plant of power”. Because I have stories. Oh do I have stories! But to get there, we have to start somewhere. So we’ll start here:
The Sanangos are a family of plants– generally flowering shrubs. Each variety of Sanango packs a powerful medicinal punch both for physical ailments and for developing oneself in the arts of curanderismo. Much like Ayahuasca is to Ayahuasqueros and Tobacco is to Tabaqueros, one can specialize in serving the different varieties of Sanango by becoming a “Sananguero”. Chiric Sanango, probably the most well-known member of the Sanango family, is a Master Plant– a Maestro– and a milestone in the dieta rolodex of any aspiring curandero. Many lineages know Chiric as a “maestro maker” imparting discipline, discernment and powerful icaros.
I recall in my first ceremonies– in a moment of silence, I would begin to feel extremely cold. The kind of cold that cannot be thwarted by any number of blankets or ponchos because it seems to be coming from inside one’s bones. The cold would come on, and the medicine would start to feel heavy and thick. Visions started to vibrate into form and with them a nausea stirring from deep within my guts. It didn’t take long for me to recognize that this feeling would stir in me right before a very particular icaro was sung in ceremony. I could sense it coming with every cell. I didn’t know it at the time, but that icaro was calling in the medicine and the Spirit of Chiric Sanango.
After inquiring about this experience, I was surprised (and also not surprised) to learn that Chiric Sanango is an expert at liberating cold energy from the body– and that cold energy is associated with conditions of the bones, joints and connective tissues… particularly rheumatoid arthritis. If you are not familiar with my back story, I found Ayahuasca through a journey of healing myself from severe early onset RA– so it’s entirely appropriate that I had a reaction/connection to this particular plant through its icaro.
Upon learning about this plant, I knew that dieting it would be a keystone in my shamanic journey. The only problem? One has to be VERY qualified to serve it. Simply having dieted it does not give any maestro those qualifications. It’s very dangerous to serve, and easy to overdose (with potentially permanent consequences). My teacher at the time was no Sananguero… what’s a girl to do?
So, I planned my first trip down to Peru. I knew two things about this trip– I was going to diet Tobacco, and I was going to diet Chiric Sanango. I had many dietas under my belt at that point, and I had been waiting and preparing for what seemed like forever to receive these diets.
Sure enough, upon arriving at the retreat center in Peru, the practitioner did an energetic reading on me and determined that I should diet… Tobacco and Chric Sanango.
Tobacco came first (and will undoubtedly be its own writing). I had one day off between dietas, and was then served the Chiric dieta. The practitioner proudly showed me the root he’d found for my diet. He held it up– it was not so much smaller than my forearm. He informed me that ants had chewed off all the little rootlets from the main root. He’d only seen that once before and advised me that it would make the medicine of that particular root much more potent. I was excited! After all, I didn’t know anything about Chiric Sanango or how it was served– no information on how to prepare it, how large the root should be, how large the dose should be. All I knew was that I trusted this person and a potent root sounded like just what I needed… and the ants had been my constant, if not slightly irritating, allies on this particular journey. Even the ants were on my side! What could go wrong?
The root was prepared for me, and the practitioner arrived at my jungle hut with a tall glass of milky liquid. He blessed it and instructed me to drink all of it, take a shower, and then meditate.
I did as instructed, and within about 45 minutes my lips and tongue felt “sparkly” and numb. Slowly a very interesting kind of cold seemed to be leaking out into my body from my bones. It felt like someone had given me an IV of icy-hot and then stood me naked in the spray of an arctic water fall. My body went into a cold sweat, completely soaking through the sheets, and I slipped into dreamy, silvery pastel jungle visions.
And the truth is that I recall very little from the dieta after that. There are no journal entries (incredibly unusual for me, as you can imagine). I do recall the practitioner telling me that he had added just bloomed Chiric flowers to my dieta (again, making it more potent). I have a few distinct memories of waking up in sweat soaked sheets, and of trying to move across the floor of my hut and ending up on the wrong side of the room no matter how I was aiming for the bathroom or the door. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, not recalling if I had received medicine that day or not, or if I had even been conscious that day at all. Finally, I recall the practitioner apologizing for “whiting me out” one day, as I had been completely unresponsive when he had come to check on me.
The Tobacco dieta I had received just prior to this was very intense and extremely beautiful, so equally I leaned into the Chiric experience, accepting the cold, the inability to walk in a straight line and the “white outs” all as part of the process. Equally, I accepted the opportunity to sit in ceremony the night before my dieta was to be closed.
And it was a truly amazing ceremony– what I was able to hear was astounding! It seemed that Maestro Chiric Sanango had opened my inner hearing in a way I could not have imagined: Icaros were emerging from the sounds and patterns of the rain drops on the maloca and the crickets singing a chorus of “tobacco, tobacco, tobacco!” I slept in the maloca that night, and on the way back to my tambo (aka jungle hut), I could both see and hear icaros as colorful ribbons of light swirling in the jungle canopy.
What I did not know, and could not have known at the time, was that this synesthesia and clairaudience would continue and build for days…
My dear friends, we can lamely sugar coat this by calling it “whiting out” but this is what’s known as an OVERDOSE. And, that’s just the very beginning of this story– because after watching no fewer than FIVE different practitioners serve Chiric Sanango five different ways, I have learned a few things. Quite a few things. One of them is that it is of the utmost importance to remain in isolation for an equal number of days that one has imbibed Chiric Sanango medicine. For example, I had 5 days and 5 drinks. I should have remained in isolation for 5 days after the last drink before closing the dieta. Instead, I had an Ayahuasca ceremony on the last day of my dieta, a Huachuma ceremony the day after that, and then was turned loose into Iquitos to travel to Lima and then home to the United States in the unforgiving embrace of international travel during COVID times.
In retrospect, this feels something akin to taking a newly blown, delicate piece of glass artwork, still hot from the fire, and tossing it into a busy street.
And what unfolded during those next few days is one of the wildest experiences I have ever had. I could be mad about it… but I’m not.
Sometimes the greatest protection is the wisdom of how not to cross the line.
The direct experience of Chiric Sanango overdose and dieta mishandling has been a true blessing– it has transformed me from someone who knows things “in theory” into someone who’s gone very deep with this medicine and has emerged with a dang good map. I will forever be grateful to the practitioner for sending me there so I could understand–not just for myself, but also for when I was called upon to clean up after another overdose at his hands two years later…
To be continued.
