Ancestral Teachings for the Psychedelic Renaissance
Brand new course open for enrollment now
Hi all, just a quick note to share an upcoming offering that I am really excited about! I first met Francisco Rivarola at a Chacruna event in San Francisco a handful of years ago and have been following his journey among Indigenous knowledge and healing realms with admiration ever since. His latest work with Peruvian curandero Alonso del Río, father of the term “Medicine Music,” represents a community effort of six months, more about ceremony and consciousness than specific plants. Nothing I can say could improve upon their own words, so I reproduce below some of the material for their course I have just signed up for and cannot wait to undertake. If financial barriers exist for you, scholarship applications are open until next Wednesday.
You can preview the full course here.
Please share widely and consider joining in!
From the offering site:
“Experience an introduction to the depth of training that a traditional Peruvian curandero goes through and a roadmap for the life-long practices that anyone relating to psychedelic medicine and practices can benefit from. Through 20 hours of recorded classes and three (3) live group calls, Alonso Del Río guides us through some of the pillars of Shipibo, Amazonic, and Mesoamerican ancestral knowledge relating to work with altered states of consciousness and spiritual dimensions. Acutely aware of the unfolding worldwide events regarding entheogens and the scientific paradigm of the psychedelic renaissance, Alonso directs his teachings to modern-western practitioners and guides us to bridge the ancestral and indigenous worlds with our current needs and challenges.
This unique 20-hour course contains teachings that Alonso has never made public before and are likely not found anywhere else online or in written texts. Usually shared through oral tradition, Alonso explains the subtle realities that we interact with through altered states of consciousness, how to protect ourselves and others within these spaces, and the mechanisms for emotional, spiritual, and ideological healing, among many other things. The course was filmed in Alonso’s ceremonial Maloca in the sacred valley of Perú and includes archival footage from his teacher, a renowned Shipibo master, as well as recordings and testimonies from Dieta participants in Alonso’s retreat center in the jungle. Alonso has decided to share this knowledge now because he believes the globalization of these medicines may bring a lot of harm if these teachings are not shared at a similar pace.
This course is a celebration and honoring of the ancestral knowledge that has safeguarded these traditions for millennia and a plea to all scientists, researchers, and professionals to re-examine the blind spots and shortcomings of the modern Western scientific paradigm and its contribution to the many crises that challenge the world today. Alonso warns about approaching the study of psychedelics and healing solely from this paradigm without acknowledging the subtle realities involved in the process of healing, for which neither psychology nor psychiatry yet have comprehensive models or even the tools or framework to evaluate.
Weaving references to the works of psychedelic pioneers with ancient Greek thought, the teachings of his Indigenous masters with neuroscience training that Alonso later undertook, the legacy of Buddhist and Vedic knowledge that he’s well versed in with well-researched critiques to the pharmaceutical-based model of health, and taking an ancestral look to modern societal problems, Alonso models his view on how a healer must approach his work in a broad and integral way, going past what happens during a ceremony and understanding each individual as part of a larger community and society, of which our individual sickness is but a fractal. . .”
What you’ll learn:
Ancestral traditions, Shipibo, and Incan-Peruvian knowledge
Indigenous paradigms, preparation, and self-care for a psychedelic guide
Health through history, healing principles, Western vs Indigenous medicine, ceremony and ritual, healing art, and music
Roles and function of Amazonic “dietas,” shamanism and Brujeria (witchcraft)
Panpsychism and consciousness work, holistic frameworks for dealing with mystical experiences, ancestral principles for ethical work with entheogens
What you will receive:
Twenty (20) Hours of never-before-seen footage of Alonso’s teachings
Two free ebooks written by Alonso that describe in-depth the spiritual, ideological, and cosmogonic basis on which this course is built on - Tawantinsuyo 5.0 and The Four Altars
Three (3) live monthly sessions with Alonso beginning in October 2024, to deepen the learnings of the course and clear doubts as you move through the course’s content (These sessions will be scheduled through a poll with the 1st class cohort to accommodate the availability of most people)
Needless to say, this would make a great holiday gift ;)
Hope to see some of you on the calls and in the other worlds soon.
xx