A Journey in the Mazatec Tradition

Few words echoed in my vision ushering the beginning of the journey. Several minutes after ingesting one medium sized gorgeous San Isidro Mushroom, what many would consider a small dose opened up my dieta after a traditional ceremony 24 hours prior.

Another experience on the path of medicine had started. In the southern mountains of Mexico, several leaves of freshly picked Niños Santos (Derrumbes: Landslide and San Isidro Mushrooms) have been served and welcomed with love to accompany me and a dear friend in a medicine space. Another exploration with one intention: medicine to mediate, gentleness to share, truth to expand, love to feel and light to see.    

I silently opened the medicine space and my called upon guides into the room of a hotel. I had started feeling the medicine as soon as I blessed and ingested it. It was still working from the night before and I felt the crescendo in my being.
Eyes shut, the shivers were rippling and sensations accentuating. A shaking I knew. The slow rise and fall of a breath ushering a liminal space where a traditional ceremony adorned by Christian prayers was woven with Mazatecan hymns in time and beyond it.

She appeared again; I heard the words as I felt her Spirit strongly present in the space. I had called upon her guidance as I always did with the intention to learn Medicine. Maria Sabina, one of the main Elders and Medicine Woman of Huautla de Jimenez came along with the Spirit of her Mountain and guide, Nindó Tokoxo – Cerro de la Adoración (The hill or mountain of worship).

I felt right then that I am going on yet another deep dive and I have been preparing for these 5 days way before arriving to Huautla this time. 

My first visit to this part of Mexico was 2 years ago and the calling was essentially to be on the land where Maria Sabina walked, lived and practiced her widely known “veladas”. What she called Niños Santos were her food as she was starving, her guides as she was witnessing unknown sicknesses of close and far ones and they were her mediums to access and express a voice that was beyond her. A voice that came from the divine, as she was chosen to be and become.  

Shortly into the night, weird fluorescent visions started showing with a physical unease as if opening a different kind of gateway; One I was not used to in my journeys so far. I was taken into the world of the Mazatecs who have been the indigenous people of the Southern mountains A.D.
Somehow, I did not want to go there and I was trying to shift the journey but this was the way to learn about the story of this land here and meet the many spirits in this space.
The visions were not nice at all. I was seeing brutal and ferocious energies that were kind of woven in the space of the mushrooms to maybe protect and allow the survival of this group of people over time.
Somehow, along the way, I saw that the people were controlled by some spirits and there was a lot of killing and fighting. The space looked one of “insanity”.
I saw again and again the frequency of fear in creating separation.
Quite familiar in the story of humanity.
What was interesting was the role of the women over time. Their prayers and invocations held the community together and somehow brought a vulnerable sense of sanity back. Harmony held chaos.

It was time to have a Mapacho.
I pulled myself and wrapped my shivering body with the blanket, rolled a Mapacho and sat by the window.

My dear friend was there, gently supporting me as I was sharing my experience. We spoke for hours about life and the layering and transitions of traditions when fear and control take over.

Something we are living and experiencing at this moment.

My dieta finished on a beautiful note with the Derrumbes engulfing my whole being with warmth and love. The medicine was massaging my whole being from the inside as if bringing the pieces together. I was blessed by the medicine of Mountain Spirit who taught me a lot and joined me on my medicine journey with the graceful and deep guidance of Maria Sabina’s Spirit. Bit by bit, learning and growing.

The journey continues…

In Love and Medicine.

Maya Abou Chedid