I was in an excellent mood when it was time to leave the center (just 24 hours after cutting my Chiric dieta), despite not having slept at all the previous two nights. I had been consumed with visions and hearing the icaros weaving through the jungle canopy night after night. I had lots of energy, a smile on my face, and everything seemed very bright. Two companions and I boarded the dug-out motorboat downriver to Iquitos, and shortly thereafter boarded a plane to Lima.
On the plane to Lima, I noticed there were icaros coming from the jet engines. I was delighted to hear them. They must be what’s holding the plane up, I thought with a giggle.
Upon arrival to Lima, everything seemed to still be going smoothly– we arrived to an airbnb in Mira Flores, settled in, and then went for a fantastic dinner on the town. As night started to fall, things started to shift– I began hearing icaros coming from the walls and from all the electronics and appliances– even the pattern of water coming out of the shower was a melody. At the time I though this was great, even though it was starting to consume perhaps a little too much of my awareness. I started to feel a little weary of it, however, when it became difficult to focus on conversations with my two companions because the icaros were getting so loud, and there were multiple melodies from all directions coming into my consiousness.
I wonder if it will always be this way now? Ordinary consciousness never to return? Am I okay with that?
That night as I settled in for what I assumed would be a night of solid rest for the first time in several days, my body began vibrating. As I slipped into the liminal space between waking and dreaming, the vibrations became so intense that I wasn’t sure if there might be an earthquake– the mattress was literally shaking like jello.
When I had received the Tobacco dieta just before the Chiric, I had also developed a process of entering dreams or visions where a spiral of Tobacco smoke would swirl into my vision, creating a portal I could look through. As the bed was shaking and my body was vibrating, heart racing, a Tobacco portal presented itself. I peered into it, and what I saw was an obviously drunk, skinny, bald man in the street outside, shaking a plastic bag as if it were a chakapa (traditional leaf bundle rattle) and singing icaros… icaros that I knew! Icaros from our lineage. I realized that I could both hear him “clairaudiently” (with my internal ear), as well as with my physical hearing. Very confusing. Simultaneously, the icaros coming from the walls and the humming of appliances were getting louder and louder. Something felt VERY off about this. I did not feel safe. There was something not right with this guy in the street. Had I somehow attracted him? I felt like he was looking for me, honing in on me somehow.
At the moment this paranoia started to seep in, a tiny humming bird buzzed up to my ear and started blowing into it, vibrating the center of my brain between my brows. I didn’t know where this little spirit creature had come from… part of me said to trust it, but another part of me was terrified that the drunk brujo (sorcerer) in the street had sent it up to find me. I’d always heard about brujeria, but at this point in my journey I had never actually been exposed to it (not the conscious variety, anyway). More and more melodies were spilling into me, and they were becoming louder and louder, along with the icaros of the man outside with the plastic bag.
This was all getting very overwhelming, everything coming to a crescendo and I just was not sure I could take it anymore. I jolted myself out of bed to look out the windows to see if I could lay physical eyes on this person who was psychically tormenting me. I looked out but could not see down into the street.
This whole scenario continued ALL NIGHT… a third night of no sleep.
When daylight finally arrived and my companions awoke, I asked if they heard anything strange outside. One of them confirmed she had heard a man shaking a plastic bag and moaning in the streets during the night. At this moment I could not decide which was worse–my having just hallucinated the whole thing, or this being a real scenario. I felt shaky and stunned.
It was in this moment that the three of us needed to go into town for our covid tests for travel. You can only imagine how surreal the whole scene was stepping into the clinic, having to disinfect feet on a mat and put on guazy medical gowns and masks. I was asked many questions by the clinic staff, but I barely could make or think words in English, let alone Spanish. Mouth noises… none of them mean anything or make any sense. Equally having a swab shoved up my nose was very surreal. I felt like an alien.
Afterwards the three of us rode in stunned silence back to the Airbnb, where we decided to ground out with mapachos (jungle Tobacco) before we went inside.
No sooner had we lit up and taken our first few grounding puffs than I noticed out of the corner of my eye a skinny bald man come around the corner and cross the road towards us diagonally as if pulled by a tractor beam. He was dressed all in black and judging by his dragging gait, did not look to be doing too well.
He stood in the road in front of us and addressed us.
“So you’re healers, huh? Been to Iquitos and done some ceremonies, huh?”
“Yep,” replied one of my companions coolly, taking a long and centered inhale of his mapacho.
“Tell me about your experience,” demanded the man in the street, to which my companion replied appropriately, “There are no words.”
He turned to my second companion. “How many ceremonies you done?”
“About a 100,” she responded.
“Yeah, you look like you done about a hundred.”
Then he hobbled over in front of me. The smoke from my companions’ mapachos drifted over between us, creating a smoke screen I was most grateful for. When he looked me in the eyes, I had zero doubt that he was the man in the street from the night before,
He stared at me for a few seconds before he went off…
“I don’t f*&^ing believe in white magic. The dark path is superior. My father was a feathered serpent!”
The smoke continued to create a barrier between us as he ranted on. After several minutes he realized he was getting a rise out of no one, and continued his rant as he shuffled quickly across the street again.
Once he’d shuffled off and out of sight, we all looked at each other with bulging eyes– I suggested we finish our mapachos and then go upstairs for a good energetic clean up. All agreed.
The next day was our flight out, and I continued to hear the icaros all the way back to the United States, though everything had become far less intrusive.
Until I saw the way Chiric Sanango is served appropriately, I did not realize that my own dieta had been mishandled in a significant way. The roots served are much smaller. The daily doses are usually about a fourth of what was administered to me.
Again, am I mad? No. Though I do sometimes wonder how it would have been if I could have spent those days tucked away in a jungle hut on my own– what magic I could have found in that solitude that is so important for allowing Chiric to fully bloom. However, the conclusions I came to from that experience became very important two years later.
The same practitioner served one of his employees an eight day Chiric Sanango dieta and then sent him immediately out into Iquitos to help transport newly arriviing guests back to the center. I had my own group there with me when he returned with the new guests later that evening. What happened after that was pure madness…
To Be Continued…
