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 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 lack of sleep the night before, but I felt as though I were 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 the 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 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 depth of pain in 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 according to others who based their apocalyptic beliefs on an ancient Mayan prophecy.
I’d been living in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, a small town at the foothill of the Andes, where many ex-pats had sold up their lot in the States and travelled south in the hope of finding an idyll, protected from the fall out of Fukoshima which they believed had polluted the whole of the northern hemisphere. They also sought refuge from a western system they felt sure was collapsing. Many had traded their property and fiat currency for gold and silver; some had bought land in the hope of forming sustainable communities. To a degree I’d been part of it all however a few encounters with plant spirit medicine had unraveled me and I was trying to find a way home, not necessarily to a physical location but to an inner space… to 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 were beautiful, the mood was subdued and poignant. I was turning 40 and on the skid side 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 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…”
This is an excerpt from a piece of writing about my experiences of visiting the Island of the Moon on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. It is an account of my first visit to the island and the woman I met who taught me a powerful lunar mediation.
The astrology of the moment when I landed on the island and talked with Cecile: Uranus had stationed retrograde exactly (within 1 arc minute) of my natal Mars, and 1 degree from my natal Chiron; the Moon was conjunct my Sun; Saturn was conjunct asteroid Kaali, and Dark Moon Lilith (mean and true) in my natal chart; and the Sun was conjunct my south lunar node, and 3 degrees from my Leo ascendant.
Words and Images (except the Mama Quilla image) property of Karen Mullen Smith ©
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