The all day walk
San Pedro ceremonies in Arizona
A whole day given to Huachuma, on foot and outdoors.
A San Pedro ceremony is a day of prayer with Huachuma, the cactus of the Andes that also goes by San Pedro and a good many other names. In Arizona it is held outdoors and on foot. Four altars are opened over the day, each turned to one of the four directions, and the walking happens between them.
How it begins
The day begins out on the land, at the mesa, a cloth laid out on the Earth. The first altar is opened there before anyone walks. It faces the East, and the call is to the sun and to the energy of fire; its prayer is gratitude. That prayer opens a doorway, and the walking begins inside it.
The sacrament is Huachuma, received at the mesa in the open air. It comes on slowly, and it loves to walk: as the walking goes on, things start to open.
What is on the mesa
Every object on the cloth has a purpose. Huachuma sits at the center. Sage is lit first. It filters whatever comes to the altar, and its smoke is the bridge: when it dissolves into the air it has gone somewhere you cannot follow it, and that is the door opening.
Feathers lie on it, each said to carry its own kind of light: the condor's for cleansing; the eagle's for sending a prayer to where it is meant to go; the macaw's for color and playfulness.
The staff is for the masculine and the rattle for the feminine, both hung with horse hair. Antlers may be set beside it, for the meeting of heaven and Earth. The crystals are conductors, and they move the prayers. Cedar is there for consciousness, and tobacco, the oldest of the plants and so the most sacred; both send the prayers.
People walk around the mesa in one direction only, and the cup is always held in two hands.
The four altars
Four altars are opened in the course of the day, one to each direction, always in the same order: East first, then West, then North, then South. Each has its element and its prayer, and once one is open the walk goes on inside it until the next.
the mesa
East
West
North
South
East
Fire and the sun, with gratitude for the prayer that opens the day.
West
Water, with clarity for its prayer.
North
Air and wind, with unity for its prayer, which here turns outward to all relations.
South
The Earth, with love for its prayer; the day closes at this altar.
Each prayer is said to bring its shadow with it: anger with gratitude, confusion with clarity, the feeling of being apart with unity, and forgetting with love, and both sides of each are part of the day.
The walking
The walking is ordinary walking, spread over a whole day, with stops that run as long as they need to. Much of it leaves the trails, and the way is found as the day goes, by reading the land and how it flows. In Arizona that can be red rock above Sedona, pine forest near Prescott or saguaro desert around Phoenix.
Most of the walk is made in silence, since whoever is walking is walking with the prayer. Outside the shared songs and the times when someone is invited to speak, the day is quiet.
Prayers are made at each altar and carried on foot between them. At each altar a rattle goes around the circle with the staff, and whoever is holding them sings. A drum goes along, and a flute, though most of the songs are sung with the rattle alone.
Why it is outdoors
In the tradition this comes from, the land is the place of prayer, and the plant and the land are the teachers. Huachuma is a plant of the daytime; it loves the sun and wants to be outside, so the day stays outdoors rain or shine.
San Pedro and Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca is a brew made from a vine of the Amazon, and its ceremonies are usually held at night, with everyone seated in one room. Huachuma is a cactus of the Andes, the mountains above that rainforest, and a ceremony with it takes a whole day, outdoors and on foot.
The end of it, and the fire
It ends at the fourth altar, the altar of the Earth in the South, with the prayer of love. Then the walk back down.
On some occasions the gathering is a fire instead of a walk, tended through the night until morning.