THE MAGICIAN FOUND

I have returned to the mountains of the magicians exhausted, barely able to respond to the sweet welcome of my friends in the plaza of Charazani, the small village deep in the Bolivian Andes. More than the tirednes from the five days spent in third world buses to get here, my exhaustion came from inner turmoil. Doubts and fears seemed to form their own entity to chase my travels, to question my quest, to see if I would be pulled off the path. At the hot springs I bathe in ritual absolution, soaking away the stink of my inner battle, the water is hot Mama's embrace.

In the morning at first light I continue climbing the ancient ascent, seeking the magician. To be embraced again in their gentle love I rejoin my Goddaughter and her parents, my Compadres in their tiny traditional village. Granted a days rest I lean over the patio wall, basking in the stupendous views. Above is the glacier clad sacred mountain Aka Mani, down valley begins the rainforest. On a ridge end I see the ruins of Cota Cota where we make magic and offerings.

There is a condor, this one larger than usual which is to say a hugh bird flying. He circles the sacred site, then rapidly flies to me, close and overhead. He dips his wings a few times showing off his white banded back then flies back to Cota Cota and stays above it a long while until disappearing towards Mt. Aka Mani.

I would not be amiss taking this as sign and am deeply moved but what it signifies at this time I don't know.

I am seeking a magician here in the land of the Kallawayas, an ancient line of Andean ceremonial healers. The old master had shed his body the year before so now I seek for another.

>Again at first light the next morning I am out walking, now with my Compadre. We are going to another village to look for a healer we have heard of and have gone only a little way when we meet a man and two burros climbing towards us. My first impression is an attraction, like me he is one of the little people, typical of so many outback Andean elders. Fine featured he is fair to look on and his inner light shines clear.

I delight in seeing people like this so I give a cheery 'Buen dia!' good morning, as I pass by. My Compadre stops to talk with him so I wait drinking in the view of Mt. Aka Mani gold glowing in the sun's first rays, I slipping naturally into prayer.

The conversation goes on, the burros wait and so I rejoin the men and get a hand shake along with the twinkle in his eyes. My Compadre explains that 'he' will not be at home today, that 'he' is going up into the mountains because he is needed for a healing and then will bring cargo down with the burros. He? Who he? Ay, Dios mio, is this he whom we seek? What strange luck is this encounter on the mountain path.

The burros and he have already continued on as my Compadre tells me that the magician, Don Pinto, said that it will be good for us to come to his home another day. Just now he is called to the village of Curva, high in the mountains. It is interesting that this old man, in his mid-seventies, is making a major mountain climb, ascending some six or seven thousand feet then back down today.

Also interesting is that in the past Curva was reputed to have the strongest of magicians but now it seems mostly to sprout scam artists cashing in on the good name the village once had while giving a bad name to the traditional healing arts. So old Don Pinto is who the people call for when they want a true healer. Well then, very well.

So Compadre and I return home and Grandfather comes to visit. Grandfather, Papa Pablo, is also is a Kallawaya healer, he has the alter cloth and I have brought the coca leaves so we can commence my yearly check up.

The Kallawayas diagnose various aspects of life by praying with the coca leaves then casting them to psychically read them. Right off he looks up and says "Siga, no mas". Which means go on as you are, nothing else.

This is good to hear because in the blues that had been chasing me I had wondered if I needed to find another lifestyle. But he says the work we do is good and right and not let anything deter me. Then he suprises me saying that I now have the vision and am empowered to make the magic as they do through traditional ceremony.

This is a most unexpected turn. In this culture there is no self proclaiming, it won't work to take an expensive weekend workshop then announce that you are a shaman. Here the apprentice may study decades while waiting to be struck by lightning or some other strong sign signifying that the power has been turned on in them. Or the master saying "Siga, no mas".

Papa Pablo explained that due to my years of pilgrimage and the sinscerity of my seeking, ceremony and prayer, the spirits of many sacred sites had agreed together to put the power on me. Papa Pablo also names two allies from among these spiritual entities who will aid me in growing into this role, the sacred Mt. Aka Mani and Cota Cota where the magicians work.

Now I realize that somewhere in the grim pilgrimage that I had been crawling through to get into these mountains, while being blues tested to see if I would stay on the path or give up in despair, I had made the right choices and passed through a portal allowing initiation. Just the same I must confess that I am taken by surprise by this. I had hung out with all of these Andean magicians, priestesses and shamans for the past seven years just because I was enjoying being around these characters. I had no intention of trying to put on their powers, preferring to leave that to the masters, many of who have been in practice more that fifty years. Still now while I agree to proceed, it is only in great caution. Not wanting any of this to slip into make believe, fantasy or 'wanna be' anything other than I truly am. If I remain sincere in seeking I trust that the path will unfold me as it should.

Down in the town of Charazani I stop in to see Felizia, the daughter of Juan de Dios, the magician who had died earlier. I always leave money for Juan's widow. Even though I must maintain a fairly tight budget, even just four or five dollars translates into a lot of Boliviano pesos and means a great deal to a poor widow in the mountains and Juan had helped me enormously. Felizia with grateful tears in her eyes tells me that she knows that her father is still with me. Now it is my turn to get teary eyed as I know that she is not just making nice words, the simple mountain people know of the truth of these things, she is speaking what she knows. I remember feeling Jaun holding my hand a few months after he had died.

When in Sedona, Arizona I am often in the home of one of the clearest psychics that I know, Ron Elgas. Recently when I was asking him about other matters he pops up saying that there is an Andean shaman around me wanting to pass on the power to carry on with the work. Leaving Feizia I take a quiet moment and chuckle thinking how perhaps poor Juan de Dios had no one else but this sorry gringo to try to pass on his power. At that moment Juan slams in a message override saying "No, not just no one else, you are the right one". A bit startling, both the message and the override.

Returning to the mountains I go to look for Don Pinto in his home, on this day I have seen condor three times, perhaps the magic is ready, am I? With dusk dropping into night by candle light the old magician casts the coca leaves to see who I am. He looks up surprised " You are a sabio, one who knows! You are to work the magic, your allies are to help you, they are here, Aka Mani and especially Cota Cota". He also sees my work in pilgrimage as right and strong. All just as Papa Pablo had said "Siga, no mas".

So the spirit of Cota Cota is to be my strong connection. We build the offering to make it so. At the ceremony's end we burn what was created in offering to the Divine Mother. Don Pinto holds that part of the offering dedicated to Cota Cota to my heart and then over my head praying. I feel a force slam me from heart to forehead. Then the top of my head sets up a tingle itch that goes on for some while. Is this just an emotional reaction or did I just get touched? I had experienced that crown tingle years before when an Apache had introduced me to some teacher beings from another world.

The next day I go to dance and pray at Cota Cota, Cota means lake in the ancient tongue of Aymara. Papa Pablo had told me that was long ago it was a village with lakes on both sides. It now lays in ruins on a knife edged mountain ridge, high and dry. Glacier born steams cascade past both sides of the ridge more that 1,000 ft below. How long ago were there lake up to these heights? How long ago were these lakes peopled?

What cataclysms so changed the land? How many millennia have the magicians been coming here to pray? Is this place then a connection with the highly advanced world culture that was destroyed by the ending of the last ice or crustal shift? Now Cota Cota calls me, what source is this that now taps me? Why me?

Again my thoughts turn to questioning, then to doubting. Is all this just make believe? This whole thing with Papa Pablo and Don Pinto? Right at the moment when I was wondering if Juan de Dios was really holding my hand a condor comes. She circles me three times just a few yards away, so close as to make point driven eye contact. The last time around she opens her beak wide in a silent scream, wind whipped feathers whistling and I in tears. "Come on Alan wake up!"

I have come seeking the magician and am grateful to have met Don Pinto, with him time will tell but what have those condors been telling me? And all the others? I must say that this is a bit hard to swallow, though the seeker has been sincere. It seems that he whom I have sought has been found and God help me, he is me.

Uh, now what?
I dunno.
No doubt the path will unfold the little pilgrim.