The Gift of Shamanism by Itzhak Beery

The Gift of Shamanism by Itzhak Beery

Author:Itzhak Beery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spirituality/Shamanism
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Company
Published: 2015-02-12T16:00:00+00:00


TWO GUYS IN THE OTAVALO MARKET

It was a beautiful, crisp March Saturday in 1997. Our group had just completed the sumptuous breakfast at the old Spanish Hosteria Guachala and we climbed on the waiting bus to Carabuela, a small community not far from Otavalo, the capital of the Imbabura region, to visit the shaman Don Esteban Tamayo and his two sons. My friend Samuel turned to me and said mischievously, “Why don’t we do something different, like shamanic shopping, instead?” Samuel maintained we had both already had our share of healings with the shaman a few days earlier, so we could just skip it and explore the famous Otavalo market. Otavalo’s Saturday open market is the largest and most famous in all of Latin America. I readily agreed as I appreciated Samuel’s enthusiastic and sharp-eyed shopping skills. Besides, we had both had some heavy-duty experiences, which we needed to digest apart from the group. So we got into a taxi, paid a few cucras, and went looking for special shirts, pants, belts, fabrics, rugs, ponchos, sculptures, gifts, and big, colorful bags in which to put all these marvelous treasures.

After all the hard work of crisscrossing the long cobblestone streets and visiting hundreds of bodegas and small stores on the side streets, we sat down on a sidewalk to rest next to two young guys who were selling their handmade jewelry. After a short time we got involved in a very interesting philosophical and personal conversation. The tall, long-haired, blond guy was a farm boy from Nebraska. He was traveling with his tent, hitchhiking all over South America trying to find a partner and to find himself. Instead he had found an eccentric revolutionary poet, a younger fellow from Venezuela who was traveling to the North by selling his handmade jewelry. They couldn’t stand each other, but traveling life had forced them to share what each had to offer: a tent in return for jewelry, security in return for companionship. Since we were talking about his life’s direction, I offered to read the Nebraskan’s palm. Immediately we drew a small crowd and others suddenly wanted their hands read. We sat there until sundown, talking, eating, and having fun. The two young men said they were planning to continue hitchhiking across the Amazon east through Brazil. Then they would go north to New York. Quite an arduous journey, judging from the travel map they showed us.

As the sun started to go down we needed to go back and join our waiting group at Hacienda Pinsaqui. We exchanged small gifts and promised to meet them one day, maybe in New York. We called a taxi and headed back to our beautiful hacienda. While in the taxi I closed my eyes, called on my power animal, the white dove, and asked her if we would ever meet these guys again. Flying in the blue sky she said, “You’ll meet them again, when the sun is in the middle of the sky, in a city square.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.