Lammas 2012: Mama Quilla, Cecile, & the Island of the Moon.
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She was no ordinary passenger. Her long black skirt and shawl gave her an air of modern-day-witch, her sturdy but scruffy leather boots a whiff of the Lone Ranger. Cecile… tall, thin, beautiful, with misty grey eyes, and flowing hair. She handed me a cigarette.
“Do you smoke? You don’t smoke in the city, do you? I only smoke when I’m out here. I can’t breathe in the city”.
I remembered walking through the steep streets of La Paz trying to cross roads between endless vehicles all of which seemed to emit huge clouds of pollution. Indigenous Bolivian women, Cholas, sat on the roadside selling their wares: herbs, oranges, socks, toilet paper… I could barely tolerate a few minutes in the smog. Certainly, I was glad to leave the pollution of the city behind. Here on the island, there was no electricity or wi-fi, the rocks were full of crystal emitting a tremendous power that was further amplified by the vast waters of the lake. It was surely one of the purest places on Earth.
Cecile’s gaze fell away across the bright blue lake. I took the cigarette even though I’d made several recent attempts to stop smoking. A heavy silence hung in the air. What did she mean when she said that she was afraid of the spirits of this place? Once we’d disembarked from the boat, when the rest of the tourist made their way to the island’s only tourist attraction, the Temple of the Virgins of the Sun, I had boldly followed her in the opposite direction to a little patch of earth with a fire pit and rickety adobe shack.
“Is it possible to stay on the island?” I enquired. She smiled a soft, expectant smile.
“Yes, I often stay here, but I am afraid of the spirits. Won’t you stay with me tonight?
She added as an after-thought, “Tomorrow is Womb Healing Day”.
I wasn’t thinking straight. Perhaps it was due to disturbed sleep the night before, where I’d experienced sleep paralysis, but I felt as though I was still in a dream. Something existed between us, almost as a third presence, it was stronger than both of us, and it did not seem strange that a woman whom I’d only just met was asking me to stay with her on a remote island where she was apparently afraid of the spirits. The lake was hypnotic, I very much wanted to go to it, to undress and walk slowly into its depths.
“I am not prepared to stay. I haven’t brought anything with me”.
She looked disappointed.
“But I will come again tomorrow”.
I am not sure she believed me though I felt sure, I knew, I’d be back on the island the following day.
“I’ll go back to Copacabana tonight and come again tomorrow”.
It is said that Lake Titicaca is neither masculine nor feminine but a perfectly harmonized synergy of both. It is said that if a person goes there, he or she will be brought into perfect balance.
I’d first heard about the power of Lake Titicaca through a friend who was making a film about the Rainbow Serpent, an alleged chakra system in the Earth in which powerful telluric currents move through energy lines from Uluru in Australia to Mount Kailash in Tibet. According to the theory, Lake Titicaca is the second or sacral chakra located on the Island of the Sun on Lake Titicaca, a place which, like the Island of the Moon, is imbued with sacred significance and spiritual power. Lake Titicaca is special in that it is one of only two places in the world where two major grids, the Rainbow Serpent and the so-called Plumed Serpent, intersect. The only other place where this phenomenon occurs is Bali. In Incan mythology, Lake Titicaca is revered as the birthplace of the world. It is where the Sun god Inti first emerged.
That night it felt to me as though the lake was also the birthplace of the Moon. As Cecile and I stood side by side, next to the fire we had built, all around us was nothing but blackness and silence, a blackness and a silence such as I’d never experienced. There was a strong sense of anticipation and through the silence a cosmic electricity seemed to crackle. I held my breath, the left side of my body felt like a lightning rod. Out in the blackness something was beginning to stir. In a whisper Cecile said, “what is that?”. I saw her hand in the light of the fire reach and point into the vastness. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, a strange but definite light shone from the depths. Where the line between water and sky had been blurred, I could now see the horizon materialising. The light was rising from the depths of the water. It was the Moon in her fullest glory. Moved to tears we stood watching, sharing the profundity of this moment, as though we were midwifing the Moon ourselves. Up she rose, expanding by the second so that at her fullest she was a giant orb of golden light whose beams illuminated the vast lake. I was speechless. Cecile had no doubt known the majesty and power of this event but had evoked an air of mystery as though she too was experiencing it for the first time. It is a moment I shall never forget; it was more than a visual experience; it was an initiation.
In Sanskrit, the name of the sacral chakra is Syadisthana and means ‘Dwelling Place’. It is the centre that regulates emotions, opens the well-spring of creativity, helps humans to have nourishing, solid relationships and good boundaries, as well as providing a strong foundation of self-respect and self-esteem. The sacral chakra supports important bodily functions such as the adrenals, bladder, gall bladder, kidney, intestines, stomach and spleen, as well as the reproductive organs. I had a sense that my sacral chakra and my base chakra were not in good shape. I wondered what Womb Healing Day was and why Cecile had gone to the Island of the Moon to prepare for it. I could barely begin to grasp the depths and wounds of my own womb, and I wondered, hopefully, if Lake Titicaca was a place to heal those wounds.
These were some of the thoughts that occupied my mind as I set sail once again for the Island of the Moon, prepared now with warm clothes, dried food, and an uncanny intuition that told me I was in exactly the right place at the right time.
On arrival I saw Cecile a little way along the beach to the right of the ferry dock, she’d been swimming and was now wrapped in a beautiful woven blanket.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be back”, she said though her eyes were smiling. Her body did not flinch; she had become still with the lake.
It was 2 August 2012, full moon in Aquarius, the Water Bearer, and according to Cecile, Womb Healing Day. It was also not long until the end of the world by the reckoning of others, particularly back in Vilcabamba, where I’d been living for the past year. Some who lived in this beautiful town nestled at the foothills of the Andes based their beliefs on an ancient Mayan prophecy and had interpreted it as the end of the world. Some had sold their fiat currency for gold and silver and headed to the hills and caves with survival manuals; others were organising crisis community resilience meetings and taking drastic measures to protect themselves. I had been involved in setting up a LETS (Local Exchange Trading System). There were gated communities comprising of luxurious homes with guard dogs and new pick up trucks. Bandits were on the rampage… there had been incidents. Some were in various states of psychosis; there were new age healers, writers, artists, scientists, conspiracy theorists, people on the run from the American authorities, and wanderers. There were Peyote and ayahuasca ceremonies. Someone called it the “Twin Peaks of the Andes”. I could see why. Many sought refuge from a Western system they felt was collapsing, and from the fall out of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster (some believed it had affected the whole of the northern hemisphere). To a degree I’d been part of it all, however a few encounters with plant spirit medicine had unravelled me and I was trying to find a way home, not necessarily to a physical location but to an inner space within myself.
At the turn of the year, I’d partied with a crowd of Americans in Monte Suenos (mountain of dreams), home of the late NASA astronaut, Brian O’Leary. The event was hosted by O’Leary’s widow who was an accomplished artist… the house was surreal. Though the party was opulent, and the people beautiful, the mood was subdued and poignant. A few days later I was turning 40 and on the skid row of a relationship, but I did not feel the world was ending, at least not in any literal sense. For sure skins were being shed and the world appeared to be in a state of chaos and crisis however, I thought of it as a kind of cosmic transformation in which old, outmoded attitudes were collapsing and something new, as yet unknown, was emerging… who or what was behind the shift I did not know, through secretly I felt it was the work of the Dark Mother. A few months earlier I’d had a dream where I’d heard the words, “Everyone must face Mama”.
Clearly Cecile did not think the world was ending either. We sat face-to-face, fresh out of the lake, the warmth of the sun penetrating our skin, our breathing slow, rhythmic, and synchronised. Eyes closed, and feeling my own hand reassuringly on my womb, she began-
“On the full moon give an offering to Mama Quilla…”
‘Mama Quilla’ The Moon Mother in Inca Mythology. Goddess of marriage and the menstrual cycle, She is very important for the Inca calendar.
This is an excerpt from a piece of writing about my experiences of visiting the Islands of the Moon and Sun on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. It is an account of my first visit to the Island of the Moon and the woman I met who taught me a powerful lunar meditation. A subsequent trip seven years later would offer a different kind of meeting- with the Spirits of the Island, and a dark event that occurred on the Island of the Sun that closed the island to all visitors.
The astrology of the moment when I landed on the island and talked with Cecile: Uranus had stationed retrograde within 1 arc minute of my natal Mars, and 1° from my natal Chiron; the Moon was conjunct my Sun; Saturn was conjunct natal asteroid Kaali, and natal Dark Moon Lilith (mean and true); the Sun was conjunct my south lunar node, and 3° from my Leo ascendant.
Words and Images (except the Mama Quilla and National Geographic image) by Karen Mullen Smith ©
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