Full Moon - Wednesday 28th of April

Full Moon – 28th of April
Destination: Wirikuta Desert. Wadley, Real Catorce, San Luis Potozi

The Desert winds of Wirikuta have been calling me. Like most on the Red Road it does. It even talks to backpackers and once in a while to tourists. What talks is not normally the sands, cactus, snakes, or even the Unesco village of Real Catorce, no its something called Abuelito. Grandfather Medicine. The Indians know it as Hikuri. Westerns believe it as a drug. Those who take it know it as medicine, a plant, Peyote. A medicine that opens the door up, your heart expands, and inner wisdom realizes. It teaches you more about yourself, who you are, your path, and about Mother Nature. It can send some with many lessons to learn on dark journeys across unknown, scary night desert land. It can as well do nothing; cause no effects to those who are not ready to take it. Or who are scared of it. Those who are ready for it, will journey. I was defiantly ready this time. I came to the desert for the Full moon. For a 3 day period around the full moon, where the earth energies are higher. It was a Beltane Full Moon as well. There were to be a lot of energy floating around. And I came with a friend, without a plan, only a thought that it would all come together and of course it did. On our way out into the desert, we met a small group from Guadalajara City and were invited to join them on a piece of land a friend owned. And thus our journey began as we climbed down on the roof of a jeep from Real into Estacion Catorce and later in the desert. The day we arrived, the day before the full moon I joined the others and immediately immersed myself into the desert, alone and in search of a small cactus that is constantly disappearing more and more (as more like me, and I like to think more who unconsciously use it, as I was consciously as possible consuming it go out and illegally harvest this hallgenic cactus). Along with my medicine bag in hand, drum, rattle and a bottle of water and the sun still somewhat high, I stumbled in different directions into the Corazon, heart of the desert. I sat down not so far away from our campsite and began my journey in Wirikuta with a ceremony towards Abuelito. I created a small fire, fuegata to ask the Desert for his Medicine to come towards me. I sang him chants and songs of Pacha Mama. Lit candles and sacrificed water, tobacco, flowers, cedar, and copal into the fire. And from there I began my real search of Hikuri. After an hour of anticipation, hunger for it, and nervousness about finally discovering it I was getting tired. I didn’t know if I was looking too hard or not enough. I had consumed it before, yet never harvested it myself. Thus was in general unsure of how it would play out. Finally a bird flew towards my direction. A humble, simple, divine creature and landed on top of a tall cactus tree (Joshua tree). I looked at it, acknowledged it, and read it as a sign in the vast empty desert land. I was to follow it. Yet it was still, and thus I was still and waited, patiently. Until it flew off in another direction. There was a wire fence in that direction that I wasn’t so eager to cross under or over and onto someone else’s land. Yet that is where the bird went and thus I decided to go on. Once under and over and a spin to clear off dirt and focus where I was, I was given Abuelito. He decided it was time. I listened to his totem, watched and heard the desert speak. And thus in return he gave me his gift, Wirikuta gave me Hikuri. My first peyote button. I was joyous. I took out my medicine bag and drum and started singing songs and sacrificing tobacco to the cactus as I cut it. I cleaned it there, as how I was taught, told. And slowly searched on and discovered more and more. Searching for families, so that I could take just one or two from them and leave some behind to continue to grow and flourish into the future. As the sun set I was in a hot spot that hadn’t been touched for a long time. More and more went into my medicine bag. Egos playing with me, saying take more, while my humility said that was enough. And finally as the sun had set, I journeyed back to our camp. Well, after I had eaten a few cloves off of one of the buttons. And at camp I finished cleaning, handling them with thankfulness and as the moon rose I hoped to begin my journey that night, yet had a strong feeling it was not time or place. Thus I went to bed with a headache yet lucid dreams all night.
The day of the full moon I woke up feeling that I needed to start journing. My plan was to journey 3 days, the highest power days, the full moon. Yet I didn’t feel right in the campground we were at or with my friend. I felt this needed to be an individual journey alone and more dissolute. Thus I walked from our campsite to a distant (still in view) tree where I decided there I was going to build a Rainbow Medicine Wheel. This was my second time building a sacred circle of meditation. The first was my first few weeks here in Mexico on the beach with my two sister Goddesses. Yet here I was to do it alone and quickly. I rushed thro the Ancient Native American tradition, speeding it up yet still putting love and energy into each rock I painted with different lessons and medicines. Around the tree I created a circle of 4 directions and there I was to sit and sleep, in the east, in Spirit. And that afternoon I began my own Vision Quest. One that I could carry out with my own rules and my own special place. I went out into the desert to journey and vision, with the help of medicine, yet without food, yet with water. And there I was for 2 days, fasting, eating peyote, and becoming one with the Earth. I journeyed two days, eating more than I should have (recommended to eat around 12 cloves or 2 buttons (button should have 8 cloves, yet some are misformed and some babies to grandfathers in size) and I thought that meant to journey well you should eat around 4 buttons. And that’s how it began, the second day with 5 buttons. Which equaled more like 30 to 40 cloves…And that’s how much the Huichol Indians eat, who have been doing it for decades) and thus my stomach refusing so much and vomiting it up. Yet the hole time I sunk deeper and deeper within. With in to the dirt, into the earth. I became one with the tree, flies, insects, dirt, desert. My skin changed color; I became camoploged with Pacha Mama. And I smiled and rested. Never leaving my Medicine Circle, for I thought a true peyote ceremony should be within, and in a sacred place and not lost out in the desert, roaming and encountering extra terrials or dark creatures. There I fasted, yet drank water and ate one after another. Becoming more and more disgusted with the flavor truthfully. And to be honest, my visions were not as expected. Yet when are they? Why have expectations… And thus my idea that the journey would be quit like Ayahuasca and the same in my dear relationship with her, I was quit misguided. For my idea of Peyote being Earthy and feminine I am told are wrong. Those go along with Ayahuasca and Peyote is Masculine and Airy. My teachings were less that I thought, my visions were not vibrant hullinations, yet subtle messages that I can see more clearly now. And with this 2 day journey I became more earthy and more one with our mama earth. More than I already was. I accepted the bugs and insects as brothers and sisters. I sank down into the heart of the desert, into Pacha Mama…
Yet my journey ended quit quickly late afternoon, the second day in (I was planning on coming back to earth from space that early evening) and I was woken up from my dreams as I lay flat face into the earth in my medicine circle, back to reality. A reality that I chose to ignore. I create my own bubble of reality within the reality of the rest of the world. The world of danger, of darkness, of a duality. My positive forest, nature girl outlook on life was being tested. A test to wake up to the darkness that exists as well. That there cant just be light, there must be darkness as well, a balance. A police man approached me, woke me up, startled me from slumber and in a daze I slowly became aware of the situation and tried to hid the last peyote button that I couldn’t finish in the mortar and pestle and cover it up with a scarf. He was quick; he was there for a reason. He didn’t see my medicine circle, he didn’t see my sacred fire in front of me, my crystals, my drum, my vision quest that I was on. He saw a gringo, he saw money and he saw the law that it was illegal to cut peyote. Thus the new journey, lesson began. He knew what I was there for and found the peyote in the mortar and found my hidden stash in a crevice of the tree I sat at. He entered my sacred circle without permission and brought an end to the sacred energies there. He woke me up from my visions and asked me questions. I lied, I stumbled, I lied, and in the end I told the truth. And they said I had to come with them. I was like ok; this is a new experience, jail for a few days. A lesson of Abuelito, interesting. Yet he said, years if I was lucky. My Spanish was off at the point; language didn’t exist where I was journing. After what felt like and hour of harassment towards our group, they left with a bribe from each of us. I gave them the rest of the money I had, it was a lot I felt. My friend gave them a bit, even though they found nothing on him, and our Mexican friends forgot to hide their tea… Thus our journeys turned and a lesson from Wirikuta. My fast ended when the cops left, and my journey lessened and the next day as the sun just began to rise we all left the cactus behind and back into a reality of what human kind has created and want all to believe is the unique and only one reality that exists and that is possible. Yet I know, even with abuelitos teachings, that my reality is possible. I can live in what I create and manifest, I can live apart, yet I do need to realize duality and the balance of darkness and light.