The Wounded Healer:
A Spiritual Journey to Mount Lemmon
I only seem to get to Mt. Lemmon once in a Blue Moon, so
Saturday, July 31st seemed like the perfect day. It was a Blue
Moon-one of those rare times a full moon happens twice in one
calendar month. Even regular full moons are important to me;
in the Peruvian shamanic tradition, every full moon calls for
a ceremony.
Since a fire ceremony wouldn't be fitting on the mountain that
was devastated by fire last year, a despacho seemed perfect.
An offering to the spirits: to the Creator and to the spirits
of the four directions, Mother Earth and the sun, moon and the
star nations. I love despachos. They are an art form, and for
a ceremony they feel creative, a bit playful, and are
surprisingly beautiful both visually and in spirit.
It was a gift to have my husband Jon drive me and participate
in the whole endeavor. Not only does the mountain need support
in her efforts to heal herself, but so do I. I have a
recurrence of my breast cancer. I've had one surgery, and am
facing another, followed by at least radiation. So the
mountain and I have something in common; we are both wounded
healers.
In the tradition of the Q'ero Indians, the mountains (or "apus"
in Quechua) are the sacred home of the spirits. I have
experienced their healing powers, both in Peru and in my own
"back yard," where the Catalinas rise dramatically above the
Sutherland Valley. We have all felt the healing power of great
mountains; they remind us of the eternal, the solid, the
silent.
Last year's fire touched all Tucsonans, who love the Catalinas
and hated to see them wounded. I watched from our patio as the
fire came up over the ridge like a garland of lights, a
strange paradox of beauty and horror. Like all Tucsonans, I
mourned the losses on the mountain: losses for the forest, for
the animals and for the humans.
The archetype of the wounded healer is grounded in many
traditions, including the mythological one. The Greek hero
Asklepios was the god of medicine and healing; the Romans
turned him into Aesculapius. Garuda, the great golden bird
with an eagle's beak and wings and a human body, was the
Indian symbol of medicine. The Inuit have Eeeyeekalduk, the
god of healing; and Japan and Tibet have the Medicine Buddhas.
The shamanic tradition is built on the archetype of the
wounded healer. On this path, a person doesn't become an
authentic healer out of a desire to build skills and acquire
powers and knowledge. The healer is "gifted" with certain
abilities usually through an experience of suffering. Often
indigenous shamans experience a miraculous healing themselves
from an illness or injury, or they have powerful healing
dreams that clarify a path for themselves or for their
community.
In my case, I was "thrown" on to the shamanic path after
realizing the limits of allopathic medicine to heal me from
breast cancer. My training and the building of my mesa or
medicine bag has consisted of working with stones,
transferring my own wounds to them in ways that invite Spirit
to transform those wounds into medicine.
You too are a wounded healer. In this world, it isn't long
before we start acquiring our own unique package of wounds.
And, it isn't long before we use our experience of being
wounded to help others or understand them, or to develop
strengths we wouldn't have had to develop otherwise. Look back
and see if some of your wounded places haven't become the
source of your greatest strength or power to help others.
Once a healing practitioner, the wounded healer is
traditionally excused from having to be perfect or superhuman
or free of problems or disease. It is not the personality or
the physical aspects of the healer who are "doing" the
healing, but rather Spirit who is the doer. The intermediary
or facilitator continues to be distinctly human, and in fact
often has glaring wounds that make her healing powers appear
to be a bit paradoxical. I'm more thankful than ever for this
notion, since right now I am forced to see clearly that being
a healing practitioner does not make me immune in any way to
imperfections, problems or disease.
A recovering perfectionist, I was temped to "hide" my
recurrence, perhaps out of a fear that clients and would-be
clients might think less of me for having cancer. It is a
strange superstition that supposedly non-contagious diseases
might really be either contagious, a sign of weakness, or a
karmic punishment. Since the length of my treatment would make
it hard to hide what's going on anyway, I decided in favor of
working with the archetype of the wounded healer, since it
seems to have landed right in my lap.
The mountain provided the perfect metaphor. Jon drove us all
the way up to the observatory parking lot, where we hiked the
loop of Mt. Lemmon trail and the Meadow trail. We were in the
midst of black charred trunks rising above a carpet of wild
green ferns and a riot of wildflowers. I allowed myself to
pick just one of each kind of wildflower I found, and I had a
bouquet of over 15. We passed an enormous Douglas fir, and as
we were admiring it, a knowledgeable fellow hiker told us it
is reputed to be either the largest or the oldest fir on the
mountain. Its trunk had been severely singed, but it was
clearly alive. A fellow survivor.
Jon, whose intuition has earned him my nickname for him (Radar
Man), found the perfect spot off the trail, on a ridge
overlooking Tucson. We found a flat rock, a perfect "table"
where I laid out a Peruvian shaman's cloth and started
unpacking the ingredients for the despacho, which Jon had now
been carrying longer than we had hoped. Since a despacho is
quite a detailed creation with seven layers of objects on
different colors of tissue paper, I had packed the ingredients
for each layer in a zip lock. I laid out a symbolic candle we
were afraid to light, my mesa or medicine bag, and my rattle
and Peruvian Florida water. Before we began the ceremony we
did a breathing meditation. To create sacred space, we stood
as I "called in the four directions," asking the spirits to be
present.
The despacho is a living prayer, and the prayers are blown
into trios of leaves called "kintus" in Quechua. In Peru they
use coca leaves, but we had to settle for bay. The first layer
is black, and since I had run out of black tissue paper I used
a dark purple with a black piece of construction paper on top.
This layer is for the lower world, the unmanifest, that which
is potential. I sprinkled sugar,in the four directions, in the
form of the Southern Cross. On top we put our first set of
kintus, followed by seeds to represent that which is
potential. I "fed" the prayers with a sprinkling of red wine
and flower petals.
The second layer was red for Pachamama, or Mother Earth. She
likes fine dark chocolate, which I purchased at Trader Joe's,
covered in foil to look like coins for the richness of the
earth. Then we offered incense and herbs, featuring whole
cloves.
The third layer, green, represented this world, the middle
world we live in, the kayapachu. We blew our prayers into
another set of kintus, and covered those with sundried
tomatoes and prunes to represent the ancient ones.
Heart-shaped pasta represented all the people we love. Some
papers with words written on them honored language. Peanuts
for nourishment. Little symbols to represent some pleasures:
sunglasses, fish, a shopping bag ("Not too many of those," Jon
warned), and a cinnamon stick for all the wonderful flavors of
life.
The fourth layer, blue, was the sky world. Sugar was placed
again in the four directions, covered by cotton clouds, white
popcorn for the thunder, feathers for birds and flight, and
angels and stars. We blessed this world with white wine
splatters.
The fifth layer, on purple, was the rainbow layer. A shell in
the center represented our strong, true intent. Colored
ribbons honored the rainbow and the rainbow bridge that
connects this world to the next. A crown of stars, and rainbow
colored flowers, along with more stars and confetti for all
the joy we hold. Sparkles and more incense.
The sixth layer, gold, got the last set of kintus. These were
our deepest prayers for all we want to come into alignment
with, our highest vision for who we might become as
individuals and as a species. Incense carries all our dreams.
Gold honors Inti, or God, who the Q'eros see in the sun, and
silver honors Mamakiya, the moon. Feathers for the songs of
the birds and the music they inspire. Stars again for our star
brothers and sisters. Seeds represented balance: as above, so
below.
The final layer, which I did not photograph, is a piece of
white tissue paper unadorned. It represents the All and the
Nothing. On it we placed one last kintu to hold any forgotten
prayers.
The whole creation got folded into a package and tied with a
ribbon. Now we needed a place to bury it, to offer it to the
mountain.
Radar Man suggested we use a "tree grave," our rather grim
name for the huge holes where trees used to be rooted. Some of
these had smaller holes within them where the roots had burned
from heat that must have been incredibly intense. Most of the
trees had simply disappeared; we chose one that had a charred
fragment of the stump. We placed the despacho in one of the
root holes and covered it with stones. We sprinkled the rest
of the ceremonial red and white wine on top, and then
ceremonially "closed the four directions," thanking the
spirits for being present to hear our thank you's and prayers,
and for helping us honor the mountain and honor life.
As soon as our ceremony was complete I began to have waves of
emotion come over me, and burst into tears repeatedly. On our
way to the car, a rainstorm approached, and on the way down
the mountain we found a vista where we could view an entire
mountainside devastated by the fire, with nearby trees that
somehow survived. It raised mysteries to the surface. Why were
some spared? Was it random chaos, or was there some larger
reason? The mountain did not answer, but it did share with me
its solidity, its sense of fundamental safety despite injury
to its surface. We celebrated by sipping wine and watching the
rain gather.
The wounded healer remains partly mystery, partly paradox. And
yet, through the angst that is a theme of this new journey of
mine, I feel the mountain and am sustained. Hopefully I'll
only have to come here under circumstances like this once in a
Blue Moon.
