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What an incredible privilege it was to speak with Alberto Villoldo of the Four Winds Society. The profound wisdom he has worked with these many years is apparent in his conversation. He has brought Peruvian Shamanism to North America and is claimed as mentor by many great teachers who have studied with him. www.thefourwinds.com ––Joann Turner

A medical anthropologist by training, I had the privilege of being one of the first to work with a group of Inka who had exiled themselves to mountain tops at 18,500 feet. These were the prophesy keepers and high Shaman of the Inka. They have had no contact with the west until forty years ago. What is happening in the Americans is that these people’s spiritual teachings have been dismissed, because they are a tradition based of the feminine and our Western traditions are very patriarchal. In the west, we have only been interested in those religious traditions that have left a written body of knowledge. So, we have studied Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, the Sutras and the Vedas for hundreds of years. But since in the Americas there was no written language, we dismissed them as illiterate, therefore, stupid.

These people were also actively persecuted because they carried the traditions of the Earth people...the feminine...Mother Earth. This is endemic to the West. For example, in the year 1564, there was a gathering of the elders of the church to determine if Indians, animals and women had a soul. It was determined on the very first day that animals and Indians did not, and women were only barely recognized after twenty-two days of deliberation.

After studying sometime with the Native America peoples––all of whom had been in reservations for at least 100 years––I was led to Peru. Peru is the only country in the Americas, where the indigenous peoples have not been put into reservations. What an incredible opportunity to study with Medicine people whose teachings had not been influenced by European cultures. In North America the largest indigenous group are the Navajo and there are only 300,000 of them left. In Peru, there are 26 million people and 25 million of them are Indians. And it is the White people who live in reservations––the cities. I was one of the first people to have contact with the K’ero, the last of the Inka.

Now, to explain about the Condor Society and the Sanctuary...

The K’ero have been the prophesy keepers of the Inka’s. A number of these prophesies have spoken about the extinction of the Condor...about the drying up of the high mountain lagoons. They are living up at 18,500 feet, directly below the ozone hole, so that their llama flocks have been going through an increasing number of birth defects and mutations, as have their children. Also, whatever weather changes we experience here at sea level, at 18,500 feet it is like a whip...it is intensified. Their environment has become non-supportive and increasingly difficult. It is already hard at this altitude. For all of their labor, only very small potatoes grow.

The K’ero have completed their mission, which was to protect the medicine teachings from the church and the state. And now they are beginning to migrate down into lower altitudes, where they can have a future for their children, where they are able to see their families, where they don’t need to live in stark poverty. I got into a lot of trouble with Anthropologists about ten years ago. We were sending clothing and medical supplies up to the villages and they were saying to me, “Look, everytime you send a Western article of clothing, you are destroying the culture. These people make their own clothing.” And I would say, “Yes, but I can not have another baby die, because she doesn’t have a little jumper suit to protect her from the cold. The way that we became close to these people, was by helping them, providing assistance in their villages. We work very closely with their political and spiritual leaders, and with the head of the K’ero nation, who really is supervising the work that we do through the Sanctuary project.

For ten years we have sent medical assistance, clothing, and food up to the villages. Now, they have asked us to help them reintegrate, so that when they come down from their mountains, they don’t have to go into the city of Cuzco and sleep under the bridge, or have to be loading cement trucks––because they don’t have the skills of the 21st century. And, also, they want us to help protect their wisdom and their teachings.

The purpose of the Sanctuary is really two fold. The first one is to protect the Shamans and to create an abode where they can come and land...where these Eagles can come and land from their high mountain tops...and know that they have a place to eat and a place to sleep––that will not cost them anything and knowing they can stay there as long as they want, and for whatever reason they want. For some of them, it will be a journey to reintegrate to lower altitude villages. For others, it will be a simple visit to the old capital of the Inkan Empire.

The second purpose of the Sanctuary is to preserve the Teachings. So, we are creating an on-line archive and a museum to preserve the mythology, the images of village life, the stories, the video clips of ceremonies and rituals––the body of wisdom teachings––to the degree we can. There is a physical museum, already, but the problem is that very few people can come and visit, so it is really a place where we are storing some of the artifacts, but we want to make these available for the world to see.

The Condor Society, that is affiliated with the Sanctuary, offers students and other interested people the opportunity to be part of anthropological research expeditions. When these medicine people are staying at the Sanctuary, our groups, which are limited to twelve people at a time, can spend time interviewing them, asking them about their stories, taking part in their ceremonies, documenting their rites of passage. We have translators who work with us and accompany all of our Condor Society Expeditions. They are fluent in both Spanish and the Inka language.

These expeditions are very undirected, as we ask the medicine people to provide a direction. To these Shaman, teaching is about sitting around a fire, telling stories. And we have been conditioned to think that is just “shooting the breeze.” Whereas, to them it is teaching. Part of this expedition is training our student researchers to be able to derive an understanding both of the teachings and of the methods these medicine people use.

This is what the Condor Society does––it chronicles and documents.

For your readers, who are interested is assisting us, they can participate in one of our research expeditions or they can assist financially through the Sanctuary Project.
A research expedition is usually six days in duration and it happens in the Sacred Valley, right outside the city of Cuzco. It is limited to twelve people and they will meet with anywhere from two to twelve medicine people in a focused theme. For example in June, we are chronicling the Prophesy of the End of Time. We do these on the Solstices and the Equinoxes, so there are four expeditions each year. In September, we are doing the Sacred Alters of the Inkas...visiting sacred temples that are seldom visited by tourists and learning the rites, ceremonies and prayers at each of these sites. We modeled our expeditions after Green Peace expeditions because they worked so well for them.

Also, the Sanctuary is a non-profit, so any financial assistance offered is tax deductible. This makes possible the feeding and housing of these Medicine people.
The K’ero are the wisdom keepers, but they are also the poorest Indians in the Americas. They chose poverty in order to preserve the healing traditions and prophecies of the Inkas. It is one thing to visit a mountain top, but these people have chosen for themselves and their children to live in stark, cold poverty in order to escape the conquest, to preserve a body of prophesy for the entire planet. And, not only a body of information, but to keep the rites of passage, the doorways between the worlds open.

For more info: www.thefourwinds.com