Monday, October 22, 2012

New Mexico Soul Retrieval

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New Mexico Living Magical Traditions

Soul Retrieval refers to forms of shamanic practice that aim to reintegrate various interpretations of the soul that might have become disconnected, trapped or lost through trauma.

The Tibetan people traditionally view the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and space as pervading all of life and as the essential components of our entire worldly existence. The soul (la) is said to be composed of these elements at a very subtle level — and it is believed that a traumatic event or other shock can cause an individual to lose connection with the elements and become dispirited. The ancient shamanic rites of soul retrieval (la gu) and life-force retrieval (tse gu) from the Mother Tantra of the Bon tradition are methods of calling on the living essence of the elements — the elemental spirits — to balance and heal the individual. Just attending the ritual in itself brings a healing effect. Students receiving the teachings additionally learn how to diagnose the need for soul retrieval as well as how to perform it. Through ritual and meditation practice, they learn to overcome negative influences and bring back the positive qualities that are missing or reinforce the qualities that are weakened in themselves or in others. Cultivating these personal qualities, in turn, serves as a foundation for spiritual awakening.

Navajo also use ceremonies used for curing people from curses. Many people often complain of witches and skin-walkers that do harm to their minds, bodies, and even families. Ailments aren't necessarily physical. It can take any form it wishes. The medicine man is often able to break the curses that witches and skin-walkers put on families. Mild cases do not take very long, but for extreme cases, special ceremonies are needed to drive away the evil spirits. In these cases, the medicine man may find curse objects implanted inside the victim's body. These objects are used to cause the person pain and illness. Examples of such objects include bone fragments, rocks and pebbles, bits of string, snake teeth, owl feathers, and even turquoise jewelry. There are said to be approximately fifty-eight to sixty sacred ceremonies. Most of them last four days or more; to be most effective, they require that relatives and friends attend and help out. Outsiders are often discouraged from participating, in case they become a burden on everyone, or violate a taboo. The ceremony must be done in precisely the correct manner to heal the patient, and this includes everyone that is involved.

Maclovia Sanchez de Zamora, the 85-year-old yerbera who prescribes herbs and oils and tinctures for what ails you, might want to brew up a big pot of Saint-John’s-wort tea. B. Ruppe Drugs has been an Albuquerque business since 1883, when Bernard Ruppe, a German who pronounced his name “ROO-pee,” settled by accident in Old Town and began selling medicinals. “His donkey or his cart or something broke, and he decided to stay,” is the story Zamora tells. The tradition of healing with plants has been with us since man and woman started walking on two legs. Its trendiness, like hemlines, comes and goes, but Zamora has been on the bandwagon since she was 10 years old. The curandera tradition came into Zamora’s family when she was a child in Belen. Her stepmother’s mother was a midwife and curandera and carried her black bag of herbs everywhere. Little Maclovia watched and learned. Cota tea to help the kidneys. Peppermint for inflammation. Pine tar to tame an angry boil. “I fell in love. I really fell in love with herbs,” she said.When Zamora began working at Ruppe’s, she had a small table of herbs. In 1985, she bought a share of the business, and over the years has expanded the herbal selection to a dizzying array of roots, grasses, weeds, oils and tree tars.Two-dollar pouches of herbs from A to Z line one wall – catnip, cloves, dandelion, eucalyptus, ginger, ginkgo, flax, laurel, passion flower, yarrow – while baskets and bowls brimming with yerba del manzo (good for wounds) and osha root (coughs, colds) line the counters. At 80, Zamora is still a bundle of energy. She is coming to terms with the end of her role as the mistress of remedios and considering her second act. She lectures about herbal remedies and is considering putting her lifetime of knowledge into a book.

"Bless Me, Ultima" is a coming-of-age novel that centers on Tony’s quest for personal and cultural identity. Perhaps the most prominent theme is that of Tony’s emerging spiritualism, which becomes an essential part of both his personal and cultural self. Anaya entrusts Tony’s spiritualism to Ultima, a wise healer, or curandera, who comes to live with Tony and his family. Upon meeting Ultima, Tony is overwhelmed by her powers. Revelation through dreams is one of the ways Anaya illustrates Tony’s metamorphosis. According to tradition, curanderas often attend laboring mothers, and Ultima had attended Tony’s mother during the birth of her children. In further keeping with tradition, she had buried the placenta after Tony’s birth, and with it the key to his destiny. Tony says “there was a nobility to her walk that lent a grace to the small figure.” It seemed to him as if she were part of the landscape, one with the spirit of the earth. He says that when he imitated her walk, he was no longer lost in the enormous landscape of hills and sky. “[He] was a very important part of the teeming life of the llano and the river.“ Ultima is confident, and she seems to possess an inner peace; she commands respect and she emanates power. Many people in the Chicano culture know the powers of curanderismo and consider them magical. But Tony can feel the magic. He is captivated by Ultima, and he speaks of the “clear bright power in her eyes [that] held [him] spellbound.” When he first shakes hands with Ultima he says that he “felt the power of a whirlwind sweep around [him].”

One of the major themes that emerges in Bless Me, Ultima is that of spirituality and healing. Ultima is a kind of shaman, a spiritual guide that helps Tony come to an understanding of God and nature and helps him use that understanding to recognize spirit in his world. In many traditional cultures, folk healing is tied to a belief in the sacredness of nature. Curanderismo is an ancient system of Mexican American folk healing; it relies on the use of rituals and the power of herbs that arise from the land. Curanderas reputedly can heal both body and soul. To Tony it seems that they know earth magic. Anaya tells us that “for Ultima, even the plants had a spirit,” and everything in nature is a manifestation of life force. Ultima teaches Tony a respect for nature. She teaches him that spirit exists everywhere, and that his spirit “[shares] in the spirit of all things.”

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

October 2012

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Phowo Sridgyal: Tibetan Lhapa

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John Vincent Bellezza is widely recognized as one of the foremost specialists in the archaeology and cultural history of Upper Tibet. He has lived in the high Himalaya for over a quarter of a century. Explore these pages for information about his work:

http://www.tibetarchaeology.com/december-2009/

Phowo Sridgyal as the mountain god Namra

Special cords (srung-mdud) are braided for a variety of apotropaic and healing purposes. Like barleycorn, these cords are believed to be magically empowered by the deities of the trance once Phowo Sridgyal blows on them. Braided cords of white wool are thought by Phowo Sridgyal to be useful in a variety of diseases and for preventing obstructions to a patient’s long life and well being. Cords of black and white wool braided together are considered effective against arthritis and other body pains. Cords of black wool are used for diseases of the planets (gza’), which are primarily psychological and neurological in nature. Cords braided from the hair of a hare are said to be effective against livestock epidemics and are hung around the necks of animals. Phowo Sridgyal observes that cords made of brown bear hair are efficacious in life-threatening diseases and when all other remedies have failed. He keeps a small supply of brown bear hair for this purpose.

Phowo Sridgyal claims that the downy white feathers from an owl’s chest are efficacious in virtually all ailments. The small white feathers from the wings of the lammergeyer are used to increase the good luck potential (rlung-rta) and innate capability (dbang-thang) of patients. Feathers are also empowered while Phowo Sridgyal is possessed by the deities.

During one the of trance ceremonies I had the privilege to attend, the presiding deity was the ferocious Tsen-gö Namra. This mountain god announced his appearance through Pho-wo Sridgyal in poetic and somewhat cryptic language (as befits a supernatural being):

Listen to me carefully with the ears on the upper part of your body!
A kho re (an exclamation and lyrical phrase that draws attention to the spirit-medium and his utterances),
If you do not recognize me the btsan {like this}, yeah, the country residence of Handsome Body (gZugs mchor-po), yeah,
The country to which I bTsan mchor-po reside, yeah,
It is in the upper plain of {Ba ga thug = Bar-tha} in the east,
In the lower plain of {Ba ga thug} in the east.
On the 18 great secret paths [paths] in the east,
And on the pass of the adamantine lotus btsan,
And on the plain that is like a lotus,
And in the palace of the adamantine three peaks mountain,
And on the lotus ridgeline serchen flower,
There is the yellow btsan self-arising father god.
There is the spontaneously self-arising arched lotus rainbow.

Now that Tsen-gö Namra has made his presence known, he precedes to call on his army of warrior spirits (dgra-lha). The dgra-lha are invoked to aid and protect those attending the trance ceremony. These spirit warriors belong to Namra’s large retinue of divine helpers. Usually it is people that petition the dgra-lha, but here it is their divine leader that officiates over their invocation. So powerful is Namra perceived to be that in the observed trance ceremony he fulfilled the wishes of his minions with just one sacred word: bswo (pronounced so). The propitiation of the dgra-lha by oracles and diviners is an integral part of the first system or vehicle of Bon teaching known as Cha Shen (Phya gshen). Phowo Sridgyal, an illiterate Buddhist, has unwittingly preserved this ancient religious practice through an oral tradition of indeterminate but substantial age. For the first time ever, the cult of the dgra-lha in spirit-mediumship is presented in a translation of the actual words spoken. As they are intended to do, may these words benefit readers, wherever you go:

There are the young men, bswo, bswo, bswo (word of invocation)!
The mother and father territorial protectors of the dgra-lha,
The support of the good men, the males,
Eliminate the sudden onset misfortunes and obstacles of life,
And defeat the types of diseases of the demonic ’byung-po.
They defeat the diseases and demonic influences of the sudden onset obstructions.
Be the support of the men with the one span [long] body.
bSwo! bSwo! The sparkling snow mountain of sunrise,
The dgra-lha who is like the white lioness;
I praise you white lioness with the turquoise mane.
Realize their wishes whatever place they go.
I bswo (word of praise and offering) you, be the good guide whatever country they stay in.
Yeah, I praise the protector who looks like the white vulture in the good white vulture nest on the high red rock,
Your downy lammergeyer wings di ri ri (conveys a loud swooshing sound).
I bswo you flying flocks of birds khro lo lo (conveys a raucous chattering).
I bswo you, be the dgra-lha of males whatever place they go.
I bswo the tiger in Nepal in the sparkling forest.
I bswo the body god who is like the good red tiger.
I bswo you good red tiger with the six converging whorls.
You must be the good guide whatever place they go.
Be the protector of the good man, the one span [long] body.

Phowo Sridgyal is undoubtedly one of Upper Tibet’s greatest contemporary spirit-mediums or lhapa. He is locally renowned for his kindness and great skill as a healer and oracle. It is not often that one meets an individual who emanates the holiness of Phowo Sridgyal. I had the good fortune to spend time with him on several occasions in the mid-2000s. Born in 1927, Phowo Sridgyal learned how to effectively channel the deities from Pönkya Gönpo Wanggyal, Namru’s senior-most spirit-medium in the mid-20th century. Pönkya Gönpo Wanggyal was the father of the late Phowo Lhawang (see Calling Down the Gods for biographical information on these noble healers). Phowo Sridgyal’s paternal uncle was also a spirit-medium, but he passed away when Phowo Sridgyal was still in his early teens.

In his early 20s, after becoming involuntarily possessed by the gods, Phowo Sridgyal experienced severe bodily pains. He sought help from Pönkya Gönpo Wanggyal, who lived less that one day’s ride away. Pönkya Gönpo Wanggyal cautioned Phowo Sridgyal not to attempt to be a lhapa until he had mastered all the basic techniques and traditions. Pönkya Gönpo Wanggyal counseled that a lhapa or lhamo practiced their vocation solely to help sentient beings and that their power must not be misused. The elder lhapa taught Phowo Sridgyal the various curative rituals needed in the practice of spirit-mediumship.

For several years, Pönkya Gönpo Wanggyal tutored the fledging lhapa, and performed the tsago (rtsa-sgo) rite for him. This entailed tying a cord around the ring finger of the left hand to regulate access to the subtle channels of Phowo Sridgyal’s body. It is believed that this was necessary to prevent demons from trespassing in his body. Pönkya Gönpo Wanggyal and Phowo Sridgyal would go into trance together on the first, eighth and fifteenth day of each lunar month. During these occasions, the entranced youth was made to describe the many visions that appeared in the ritual mirror (gling). Pönkya Gönpo Wanggyal let Phowo Sridgyal use some of his ritual equipment and later gave him many esoteric implements. Phowo Sridgyal’s initiation was completed when he reached 25 years of age. He married when he was around 29 and had four children with his wife, none of which practice as spirit-mediums.

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

October 2012

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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