Echinopsis pachanoi (Trichocereus pachanoi)
Perhaps the most compelling new research on the ritual use of Wachuma, the San Pedro cactus, is by Argentine Leonardo Feldman.
He points out that San Pedro is one of the plants of power that is best represented in pre-Incan iconography, appearing in the art of a variety of Indigenous cultures such as that of Chavín (with its utterly riveting anthropomorphic feline Bearer of San Pedro), Nazca, Moche, Paracas and Chimú.
For Feldman, it was exhilarating to see the cactus growing freely and abundantly among the ruins of the ritual center of the Templo del Lanzón in Chavín de Huántar.
The traditional use of this cactus, which contains significant amounts of mescaline, extends to northern Chile, northwestern Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.
Even so, he says, the pre-Hispanic uses of the cactus (as a sacrament that facilitated communing with the divine spirits of nature) are still particularly well-conserved in northern Peru in the mountains of Piura (Huancabamba and Ayabaca), where the Complex of Las Huaringas Lagoons (a UNESCO World Heritage Centre) with its páramo ecosystem is located.
Feldman analyzes the social function of San Pedro as a means of diagnosing illness and healing as well as conflict resolution or achieving prosperity in diverse forms.
It is also employed in rituals for predicting the weather, doing astronomical observation, and extracting the mamayacu, (the mother of the sacred waters of the lakes).
Even in the present day, Feldman affirms, the traditional use of San Pedro “represents a factor of social cohesion and regional cultural identity, while at the same time preserving a centuries-old religious system.”
In the pre-Hispanic past, the Wachuma cactus may well have served as the basis for a pan-Andean religious and political lingua franca that enabled people from different ethnic groups to communicate, to mediate their differences and to coexist by means of a shared ritual exchange.
A team of academic researchers in Media, Social Anthropology and Journalism from Ecuador and Spain led by Ángel Torres-Toukoumidis investigated the ancestral healing rituals associated with the cactus aguacolla (Echinopsis pachanoi) in relation to “touristic, historical, and patrimonial repercussions” in rituals conducted in the community of Ilincho in the Andes of southern Ecuador. The ceremonies are led by members of the Saraguro ethnic group, who speak Runashimi (a Kichwa dialect) as well as Spanish. As a companion to the descriptive and explanatory article published in 2022 in Sustainability, there is a 28-minute highly-informative and poetic documentary called “Aguacoya” (2021) directed by Isidro Marín available on YouTube.
For the researchers, “the audiovisual medium allows those brief moments of intimacy and recollection to be captured” between healers and visitors in terms of “cognitive processes that are not verbal.” The ceremony filmed by the researchers at the Health and New Life Foundation at the Yachak Center in Ilincho was conducted by Yachak Polibio Japón and lasted approximately ten hours. Yachak is a Kichwa word meaning “wise”. The researchers distinguish between four categories of medicinal knowledge used by the Saraguros: 1) wachakhampiYachak (midwives who work with pregnant women and babies, 2) yurakhampiYachak (someone who uses plants to cure diseases such as headaches or fevers, 3) kakuyampiYachak (a person who treats bone and joint problems and 4) rikuyhampiYachak (a healer “who uses entheogenic plants to cure supernatural diseases in night sessions called mesadas.” In their conclusion, the authors, state that the “aguacolla is the main element in the mesada [altar]” and resembles “a central cosmic tree that commands the place of the ceremony.”
A series of fourteen lagoons in a zone of stark beauty in Northern Peru called Las Huaringas is the setting for healing ceremonies based on the ancestral knowledge of sacred plants, including the cactus Echinopsis pachanoi (huachuma). A team of researchers led by Peruvian Miguel Ruiz published a 2024 book chapter that examines the parameters of what they characterize as an increasingly popular “mystical tourism” industry in this high Andean region of Piura near Huancabamba. Their goals included interviewing shamans and tourists in order to present a fuller comprehension of how these services benefit national and international visitors with a wide variety of ailments and desire for spiritual experiences as well as the area’s economy. They also examine the perspective of local residents, especially those who are concerned with “the distortion of shamanic practice with the presence of fraudulent healers who take advantage of tourists’ needs.” Their study, conducted in December of 2023, focused on Laguna Negra and Laguna Shimbe and, in terms of methodology, “adopted a phenomenological design because it aimed to collect information during or shortly after participants completed ritual experiences.” The researchers found that participants did indeed experience “cultural authenticity, which, for the residents, means a cultural heritage passed down from generation to generation.” The efficacy of the shaman, who invokes in the ceremonies both a Christian God and ancestral Incan deities, depends on the trust and faith of the participants. The magnitude and natural beauty of the landscape also “highlight the mystical environment of the area,” making it an ideal place for the “blooming baths” and healing rituals with “potions that induced altered states of consciousness.” In terms of planning for future research, the authors point out that “some shamans may seek ways to integrate their practices with Western medicine or spiritual tourism, while others may choose to maintain a more traditional approach and resist external influence.”
