Birth of the Inca Oracle

To behold the jagged spires of the Andes, vast, snowcapped, piercing the heavens, is to return to a feeling of “first:”  first creation, first life, first love.  The exquisiteness of this stark mountain range, its purity, grips something so deep that one can only become silent.  From the silence emerges reverence, from the reverence a primal return to the Divine.

So it was for the authors who fell in love with Andean mysticism quite by accident.  Prior to May, 1995, the Incas and their spiritual practices occupied a page in our history books.  But when, for an adventure, we said “yes” to some unknown call and decided to join Americo Yabar, mystic, poet, and full kuraq akulleq, the highest ordination of shaman in the Andes, Incan spirituality became something else.  

For the two weeks we were initially with him, Americo invited us to enter a state wherein “we didn’t pass time, rather, time passed us.”  He referred to this as a shamanic state of consciousness.  He asked us to shed our socialized selves, like too-tight clothes, and to allow our naked, inner “wild wolf” to lead us.  Americo call this primal, raw, non-domesticated wolf energy salk’a.  We were to become salk’a.  No expectations.  No thoughts.  Only a body of sensory awareness through which the spirits of the mountains,  called Apus, could find us.

So began our journey.  We were first  introduced to Pacha Mama, Mother Earth, who directly connects her goodness to our stomach and blood, she, the heart of light, she the eternal birth-giver.  We then explored the heavenward vistas of the mountains, sought refuge in their caves, solace on their stone beds, learned each Apu’s name and spoke it as a prayer.  Next, across the horizons, north, east, south, and west, we beheld the night sky raining stars on our hands, their glitter dancing us as one of their own.

Our journey led us through the stone-path villages, blue-canopied markets, and windy citadels of the Sacred Valley;  up to the archaeological holy ruins of Machu Picchu; then onto Americo’s 500 year old mountain retreat hacienda with its fragrant eucalyptus groves standing guardian over flowers, guinea pigs, and a river in the wild.  We visited  outdoor shrines where the Andean shaman priests, called paqos, performed ceremonies that left us transfixed by their simple, direct invocation of Source.  We opened to all of life in these places.  We talked to burros, llamas, hummingbirds, eagles, leaves, and trees.  We returned to how things used to be.  Time passed us into eternity.

Throughout our journey the Q’eros, the direct descendants of the Incas, traveled with us side by side. They were the way-showers.  For centuries the Q’ero elders held a prophecy of a time of great transformation, a pachacuti, they called it, literally meaning “the overturn of time and space.”  Once the pachacuti completes itself, an era of harmony will be restored to Pacha Mama and her children.

After half a millennium of isolation, the Q’ero elders have come forward.  The pachacuti is happening now, they say.  Concerned for all people on earth, they feel compelled to share certain aspects of their ancestral wisdom that might help others negotiate these turbulent times. Aligning themselves  initially with Americo, whom they trained, and now with spiritual leaders across the globe, they have collectively constructed a “rainbow bridge” to the Western world over which all are invited to cross.

At some point during the years of crossing this bridge ourselves, the authors heard another call, and said “yes” again.  We offered our assistance to the Q’ero in making some of their powerful, ancient teachings more accessible to the general public.  The present set of twenty-eight card images and Guidebook represents partial fulfillment of that agreement.  Because these mystical practices touch each person uniquely, we chose the vehicle of an Oracle for the project.

When one uses the Inca Oracle  he or she discovers that although each teaching contains a core essence, every Oracle functions as a hologram of all of the others.  The Incas believed that this is because the universe works together as a whole with all of its aspects existing interdependently.  Moreover, they said, our universe contains all other universes.  Thus can a single image illumine the entirety of Creation.

The Q’ero shamans use this illumination as a practical tool in divination and in healing.  To them everything is light, filaments of light, woven on the one cosmic loom of the First Artist.  No separation between light and non-light exists.  To talk to a mountain spirit, for example, one connects his or her filaments of light to those of the mountain.  To eradicate a disease, one asks Pacha Mama to take away any inharmonious filament of energy from a human or an animal or any sentient being and to digest those strands of energy as good fertilizer for her.  In so doing, all acquire more light.

Andean mystics and shamans invite us to step beyond our day-to-day consciousness and to expand our view out to fields of no space and no time that may not have been thought possible, much less visited.  Their world view, their cosmovision, includes experiences in a different vibrational energy than we’re comfortable with, but one which is meant to complement our own beliefs all the while.

As the information from these fields continues to come to us, what we, the authors, find most inspiring is that when we ask the various Spirits of the Andes represented in this project to come talk, help, teach, direct, heal, encourage, empower, illuminate, they do.  This is their work.  This is their legacy.  We have been blessed in every part of our lives by their counsel.

And so we wish to express our gratitude for, and deep love of, these radiant realities that the Q’ero have impeccably preserved from their pre-Incan and Incan heritage.  As their practices, ceremonies, ways of knowing and communing with nature have held our hearts up to the dawn of Creation, so may they impassion others’ hearts as well, and keep them forever in a state of wonder.

Karen Palmer and Chris Donovan    September 3, 2007