Meet Hachumak

Several years ago I coined the expression "Spiritual Minimalism" to propose a special way to relate to the spiritual and invisible world by an individual.

The concept of Spiritual Minimalism is about focusing on the real bridges that a human being can use to connect and actuate with the invisible, such as the force of life, the capacity of projecting the internal medicine forces, the dialogue with the spirits of plants, animals and others, the ability to roam through the stretched time and space of the invisible, without the accessory and excessive use of props and ritualistic wrapping.  

You are who you are. Without looking for it, the tides of life brought me to connect with lineages of Sinchi Yachak (warrior sages in quechua) which matched my personal approach to life. 

It’s about being and not looking alike, there is an immense power in discretion. 

So we don’t try to wear attire and accessories that will identify us as professionals of traditional healing, nor do we try to impress the mind of the clients into blind trust or induced respect or fear.

Our covenants are deep personal, with our dignity, with life, our lineages and the Great Spirit. 

For the outside world our engagements are about accomplishments, about getting results in our work against suffering and about protecting the beauty of creation.

Nowadays, with the explosion of commercial spirituality and shamanism, as well as with the rediscovery of the medicines of the ancient Americas, the ancient arts are presented with a lot of attention put on their peripheral aspects and often neglecting the core: the presence of the invisible medicine forces.

Furthermore many brave originary nations from the Americas fight to keep their ways, rituals and customs, but their ways are often copied out of context, recombined between different ethnicities, and even sometimes members of these traditional communities, caught by the commercial hype, borrow many foreign elements of new age eclectic spirituality.

Often the “product” that is offered to sincere seekers from foreign countries is an overwrapped package of excessive, and sometimes contradictory elements.

It is easy to fake the lack of substance by flashing the mind with props and ritualistic shows.

Ritual has its place and somehow it is always present in life, in daily and ceremonial matters.

Ritual is powerful for helping thoughts and emotions to align and focus, but it becomes fully functional when it is moving forces in the invisible.

The same goes about the use of props, their use is precise and a lot can be done with a few.  

Over attention put on decoration and material tools brings the risk of making them become only a psychological shell.

Spiritual Minimalism strips down the healing and spiritual techniques from the non indispensable elements.

In the simple archaic times when the direct perception of the medicine forces was the foundation of the knowledge there was no doubt of the reality of the invisible world and the spiritual experience was tangible and relatable.

In the modern world when communication flies and the availability of information, true, tinted or false, is huge, we risk of drowning the last remaining fragments of the ancient spirituality in a sea of artificial beliefs and distracting accessories.

I see my country, Peru, as one of the continental countries. By that I mean it has contained many different nations through the ages into the present, and therefore contains many different ways of answering the great existential questions.

Classical Peru has been strongly identified with the Incas and the Tahuantinsuyo empire. As a pan-territorial empire the incas lasted around two hundred years before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. But the Incas are only the last layer in a long succession of important and diverse cultures. 

On the north coast very advanced cultures like the Chimu empire were conquered by the Incas only some decades before the latter fell under the Spanish, so the northern provinces still keep their strong cultural personality and traditions.

On another hand the amazonian rainforest constitutes the majority of the Peruvian territory, around 61 %, containing more than sixty different indigenous nations. Most of them with their own traditions, language and ways. And some like the Awajun, the Wampis and others were never conquered by the Incas nor by the Spanish.

Therefore it is not correct to assume that there is only one precolumbian Peruvian spirituality or healing tradition. Same as with food or music, regional differences can be very distinct.

I speak about fragments of ancient Peruvian healing because of two main reasons :

One is because the violent social and cultural mechanisms imposed during the three hundred years of colonial control have been quite efficient to dismantle most of the old religious and healing practices. Except in a few cases, most of the spirituality that is presented nowadays as unadulterated ancient Peruvian is not, and in some cases has been patched with well-intended cultural loans or blatant fabrications. 

Secondly because along with the colonial influences from Europe, and despite the vigilance of the official church, also came a strong underground current of popular moorish and medieval magic, healing and divination practices, as well as superstition, trickery and charlatanry. It is not so difficult for the eye of the informed observer to detect the presence of the above merged in much of the "shamanism" offered all over the country.

We are the children of our land and our history. Most of Peruvian population is mestizo and in popular culture, as well as in discreet chains of transmission, powerful fragments have survived. That's why in natural medicine we speak of Lineages instead of Traditions.

Traditions are related to ethnical communities and should be preserved by them, they are their identity and cultural treasures. 

Lineages happen when an individual with a fair level of proficiency and knowledge recognizes another individual with aspirations and talents, and through training and moral testing transmits experiences, technique, shares a portion of his own medicine force, and gives clues and keys for the pursuit of deeper knowledge by the apprentice.

Because what we have today after the historical and cultural filters are mainly fragments, it is somehow useless to embark in claims of purity or to force mythologies and beliefs into the minds of the participants. As Medicine men we want people to become spiritual adults and wake up to the reality of the invisible aspect of creation, not to give them new forms of mental constructs to keep them asleep.

Another reflection I want to share is for the ones who have the sincere calling of becoming healers and happen to connect with what can be a true traditional ethnical lineage. 

It is important to point that many of the rituals and aspects that come with the ethnical instruction have a deep meaning for the members born and raised in that community and tradition in a way most outsiders will not be able to grasp. There is a genetical memory and feeling embedded in the generations that created, understood and lived through those identity elements.

Not that eventually someone might blend and connect deeply with those elements, but many times I have seen sincere apprentices running after an unreachable goal because their attention is on the wrapping instead of the substance. Trying to become a persona that they will never be they struggle to connect with their inner power.

That’s why it is crucial to try to understand deeply what happens in the healing processes, to trust the wisdom of our soul consciousness and the voices of own ancestry to see through the ethnical wrapping.

This is not disrespecting the teacher or the instruction, as it needs to come through the form it has. Any real mentor will want the student to develop its potential and its wings, that’s why it is the Art of Healing.

That way the deep substance of the healing force can be acquired and become true knowledge that can be expressed through the identity of the practitioner.

As Truth is the seed from where the tree of Medicine grows, 

Genuineness is behind the power of the Healing a person can provide.