The Fabled Fire Ceremony

For several years I had been tantalized by my friend Jorge Luis with stories of a Shamanic fire ceremony, but each time I had scheduled it for one of my tours something occurred to prevent our celebrating it.

So several years ago, I virtually demanded it, and so it was arranged that our guide on an excursion to the caves in a remote and very beautiful area called Ciudad Encantera would perform the fabled ceremony. Andreas warned us that he was not a shaman, but his father had taught him this ritual, and he would share it with us. The setting was magnificent, and when he finally lit the fire and had us offer up for cleansing in the fire our negative habits, beliefs and limitations, we found it quite moving and not unlike some New Age rituals we had performed back in the United States.

So, I had participated in a Fire Ceremony, and yet a bit of a question and a hunger remained. Was that a real genuine Fire Ceremony? Or was there more?

Next year I again led a tour and we were on Amantani Island in Lake Titicaca, and the local tour people I work with mentioned that in the village lived a Paco (medicine man or healer) who specialized in performing the fabled Fire Ceremony. Was my group interested? Is the pope Catholic? Do fish swim? Of course we were. It was arranged for that afternoon, and we diligently made the 90 minute hike up to the Pacha Tata shrine only to find no Paco, and of course, no ceremony. Since the lake is at about 13,000 ft and we had climbed perhaps another 1000 ft, we were not too pleased with our local translator who had assured us he had arranged this fiasco, but the view was superb, the site itself had much power, and besides homicide was not really our style, so we gave Ernesto some extremely dirty looks and left it at that. He swore great and holy vows that he would re arrange the ceremony for the following afternoon.

We visited Pacha Mama the following morning as planned, had a picnic lunch at "Eat your lunch monument" and trouped over to Pacha Tata for our rendezvous with the Paco. Just before sunset, he arrived, resplendent in his ancient garb. As the sun lowered, the winds picked up and the air grew colder, we bundled up and eagerly awaited redemption, enlightenment, and everything else a genuine Fire Ceremony might bring. Needless to say, it fell short of our expectations, but how short was still a surprise.

The Paco was quite a showman, and began to fashion offerings from coca leaves, flowers, and alpaca grease, all bound together with alpaca wool. It was quite colorful. Each time he made an offering he told us which shrine or spirit the offering was for. Part of the offering included sprinkling pure alcohol on the offering from a bottle he had brought. The other part consisted of passing the bottle for a sacred nip. I'm not into alcohol but in the interest of a healing I took a nip. The ceremony continued..........and continued...........and continued. Our holy Paco blessed or conjured up the spirits of every shrine on that island, and I even recognized the names of some areas I knew to be across the lake on the mainland. It grew darker, and colder, and we were still blessing and toasting shrines near and far. I stopped drinking after the first nip, the rest of my party soon thereafter, but the Paco and Ernesto continued to honor each shrine with a sacred nip.

So, this was the great Fire Ceremony. The sun set, the sky grew dark, the wind whistled, the temperature dropped and still we went on.....and on. It was hard to stay serious, especially when it became apparent that neither the Paco or Ernesto was immune to the effects of pure grain alcohol. The penultimate blow was when Earnesto interrupted the ceremony to ask one of our party for a cigarette. One effect of nicotine is to dull your senses to the flow of energy, so I perked up, hoping that Ernesto was trying to avoid feeling something, so perhaps there was finally something to feel, but either that too was a false alarm or my mood by then was too jaundiced, as the only thing I felt was pissed off at having been taken for a sucker, and essentially ripped off.

The almost sacred fire ceremony

The final bit was quite theatrical. The Paco made an elaborate hollow pile of dried llama dung chips, set it off with borrowed (of course) cigarette lighter, and, glory to the Gods, it blazed merrily away. Turns out that dried animal dung makes a sweet smelling, clean burning, really excellent fire. So I did learn something from the ceremony.

Our holy man then had us invest our offerings with our thoughts, fears, and aspirations, then consign them to the fire, to transmute the energy. This part was similar to Andreas' ceremony of last year, although Andreas, dressed in conventional western garb, and having no pretext of being a holy man, took us much deeper.

So we consigned our bundles of alpaca wool, coca leaves and alpaca grease to the fire and burnt our offerings. We uttered the sacred mantra: "Praise be to god, we can get out of this wind and cold now and go home".

Its' always an adventure to walk down the mountain in the dark from Pacha Tata to the village. Its a peculiar feature of the clear Andean lake air that no matter the phase of the moon, I always find it light enough by stars or moon to let the eyes in my feet guide me and I never seem to need a flashlight. I assume I see by stars or the moon. Perhaps its the energy of Pacha Tata that lights my way home.

What did I learn from my two fire ceremonies? Once again, to not be misled by the outer trappings. Costume and ritual do not always indicate authenticity. You can feel what is genuine and what is show for the tourist.