Prof Frédérique Apffel-Marglin and Randy Gonzales – Peruvian Shamanism and the Return of the Anima Mundi
Frédérique writes: “This webinar focuses on my experience and that of my “heart son” in our non-profit centre in the Peruvian Upper Amazon. I have been participating in ayahuasca ceremonies since I first arrived in this region, invited by a Peruvian NGO. My hosts simply told me that to really understand their work I needed to do this. I had never ingested any psychedelic before. I quickly discovered that this practice was a very powerful manner of developing my spiritual soul. I started doing this when I first arrived in this region of the Peruvian Upper Amazon in the fall of 1994 and have not stopped.
I never wanted to write about it, not wanting to make of it an “object of study”. However, a totally unexpected event changed my view on this matter. In June of 2016, a couple from the US was at our centre learning about Amazonian medicinal plants and decided they wanted to participate in an ayahuasca ceremony. We decided to send them to a well-known ‘curandero’ (medicine person) whom I had never visited. It was a fairly long journey by car and then pirogue, and not wanting to do it with persons I did not know well, I asked my ‘heart son’ to accompany me. His name is Randy Chung Gonzales.
He initially did not want to come, having little interest in Amazonian plant medicine. I insisted and at the ceremony he was initiated by discarnate beings who began by trying the kill him. He survived. Although he tried to abandon this path after a year and a half of receiving teachings and powers, he was unable to do so due to the intervention of powerful discarnate beings. This event was so unusual in the region and Randy’s visionary experiences so extraordinary that we both decided we needed to write about it. The webinar is a summary of what we wrote. Ampikuk, meaning “healer” in Quechua.”
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About the speaker:
Prof Frédérique Apffel-Marglin is Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology at Smith College. She founded the Sachamama Centre for Biocultural Regeneration in the Peruvian High Amazon in 2009 where she works with indigenous communities as well as several High Schools in the province, regenerating the most sustainable and climate reducing pre-Columbian anthropogenic soil known as Terra Preta do Indio (black earth of the Indians). Her more recent books are: Subversive Spiritualities: How Rituals Enact the World (2011); Sacred Soil: Biochar and the Regeneration of the Earth with Robert Tindall and David Shearer, (2017); Contemporary Voices from Anima Mundi edited with Stefano Varese, (2020). Her latest book is written with Randy Chung Gonzales who has worked in SCBR for decades: Initiated by the Spirits: Healing Ills of Modernity through Shamanism, Psychedelics and the Power of the Sacred (2022).
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Speaker
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Frédérique Apffel-MarglinProfessor Emerita, WriterProf Frédérique Apffel-Marglin is Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology at Smith College. She founded the Sachamama Centre for Biocultural Regeneration in the Peruvian High Amazon in 2009 where she works with indigenous communities as well as several High Schools in the province, regenerating the most sustainable and climate reducing pre-Columbian anthropogenic soil known as Terra Preta do Indio (black earth of the Indians). Her more recent books are: Subversive Spiritualities: How Rituals Enact the World (2011); Sacred Soil: Biochar and the Regeneration of the Earth with Robert Tindall and David Shearer, (2017); Contemporary Voices from Anima Mundi edited with Stefano Varese, (2020). Her latest book is written with Randy Chung Gonzales who has worked in SCBR for decades: Initiated by the Spirits: Healing Ills of Modernity through Shamanism, Psychedelics and the Power of the Sacred (2022).