It was the Friday night closing ceremony of ‘Wild Freedom’ and 9 of us had gathered to mark a wild week of theosis, friendship, and profound purging.
That day had proved a little challenging for me. Of course, one tends to feel a little wiped after an intensive night with plant medicine , but in this case, I had just undergone a full system reset quite beyond comprehension.
I sat twirling on a hamock, gazing into the jungle. Brain fried & galactically zonked out at the newly dawning reality. A few others were relaxing nearby, among them the wise and very French shaman Remy who had co-led our ceremonies and sung Icaros for us those past nights. I felt in that moment that I had returned to my terrestrial life after an otherworldly journey spanning lifetimes and in many ways beyond all normative time. I felt nobody but God would be able to meet me understand where I was at in the wake of that experience. Then, in a surprising and gentle movement, Remy connected his gaze with mine.
In a single moment a profound depth of understanding was conveyed. Nothing was said but much was understood. He was there with me and brought grounding—a sense that this level of experience could be integrated into one’s day-to-day. Shortly after this I told him that my strongest medicine journeys prior had been a category 3 and that last night was a new category 5. In his very amusing style and accent he opined to me ‘last night you have a category 5, sometimes you will have a category 9’. His voice still brings laughterto mind as I sit with the apporia that his comment provoked.
We all gathered that evening in the Maloku with candles and a DJ deck. It was to be an evening of celebration for wild freedom and week of release and realisation. We drank cacao together and began an ecstatic dance ceremony, during which I soon notice I was feeling off. I had a little cold sickness in my throat in the way that often happens due to stuck emotional energy. The week had certainly stretched me but what I was really suffering was the dissonance between the kingdom-come communion of the night before and my presently limited state of relationality.
I intuited that it would be a good idea to receive Rapé from Stephanie, one of the wonderful medicine women in our circle who was serving. I sat and waited while she served my brother, then took my place on her mat.
If you don’t know Rapé (or Hapé) it’s a form of medicine made of ground tobacco snuff combined and sacred tree ash used widely in ceremony. As far as I've gleaned, tobacco is in fact one of the most widely used and important shamanic plants. Though substantially milder than the other medicines that week, it was sufficient to set off ceremony 5.
When I had taken my seat, she said she felt called to serve me ‘mother mary’ rapé. She served the medicine through an ornate pipe which launched the tobacco up my nasal cavities with a soft 'whoosh' sound. I was immediately hit with it and began to center as she spoke invocations and a kind of sacred language over me. As I set into the experience, I began to gaze deeply at the mother mary candle in front of her mat.
Things began to move in my system quickly and I ‘re-entered’ the medicine space. The process of the last several days was re-activated and I began to re-member how to heal myself. I began rubbing my heart space and felt a deep deep purge anguish emerging from the wellstrings of my heart. It was a somatic healing more than an interrogation of particular memories or thoughts. Even as my heart quivered with pain, I felt myself receiving a profound gift...the medicine of community. My soul family on the journey. I found myself in that moment amidst an incredible group of people devoted to the sacred and to showing up fully for one another’s free expression and healing.
There wasn’t a drop of shame or self-consciousness in me. My heart let out agonising cries and my friends danced around the room, DJing beautiful tracks for my journey. No one sought to rescue me. In fact, they were quite comfortable and acquianted with the process of my purging from the previous nights. Between the music and my purges, an occasional silence was felt. I felt that silence to be pregnant with medicine—filled with a collective trust and unspoken knowing of what was unfolding. As things went on my brother Jordan Pelz approached me. Jordan and I had shared two world changing Bufo ceremonies that week. Crouching down by my side, mid-heart purge and with shining eyes, he placed his hand on my knee said ‘life is so beautiful, let it out’. Ughhh that really set the purge moving in wonderful fashion!
That night profound insights came to the fore. I recognised that as as men in this culture, the healing presence of feminine is confined strictly to our mothers and romantic partners. That night began to realise a third space, freed from this cultural limitation on healing as I received profound sisterly medicine from Stephanie. She dipped in and out of my purge journey speaking profoundly guided words to me. She placed her palm lightly on my chest and I placed mine on hers. I was known and my heart was fully felt in the space.
I hold an enormous gratitude for her and for all the women in that space who were integral to my healing. Through them I recognised the yearning in my heart for women in my life who can truly be sisters in God. I began to see understand the power of Mother Mary in a new way.
During the hardest period of my life in 2022, I had spent many a day praying before the statue of Mary in Germany and England. At Kumankaya it became clearer than ever that she is no historical character; she is an archetypal spirit and divine avatar that can move and move through us.
Coming out of my worldshaking aya journey the night before, I experienced just how profoundly grounding it was to have women in the space. Slowly landing back on earth, my body was fluctuating between waves of deep guttural purge and what can best be described as holy spirit flows with shaking, ecstatic laughter and ridiculous high vibration eruptions. In this wavy place, the presence of my loving sisters so rapidly and effectively grounded me. As I made my way through hours of wild purge and release, another bless’d sister Jewell sat by my side and held my hand through it in unconditional regard—maintaining a wonderfully supportive humour for my purge.
As I lay on my mat, post aya and observed this young medicine woman Stephanie move through the space Florence Nightingale called to the surface from the depths of my psyche. I hadn’t thought of her for decades, probably since early schooling, but here found myself blessing and invoking her name. ‘Nightingale’ had been a volunteer nurse in the Crimean war that famously walked the nights with her candle bringing comfort and healing to the thousands of men injured and dying in hospital beds. I believe Florence Nightingale was animated by that same spirit of Mary. A blessing upon all women animated by that spirit.
The medicine spirit of Mary blasts open a pathological paradigm in which the healing feminine is constricted to our mothers and romantic attachments. She has attained a mastery of her medicine and her healing is for all. In her spirit we recognise the holy magic of the mother which brings calm and peace through presence alone. The mother whose touch, voice and healing bring solace to our hearts.
We can, with Mary, remember the profound healing that women in particular bring to world in and the God given medicine that they bear in their hearts and bodies.
Beautiful recount of that night and synthesis on Mary’s spirit. Gives me goose bumps thinking back to it. What an honor to have gone through it with you
Sounds like an incredible experience, Jacob - thanks for sharing!