Homo Luminous: The New Human
he prophesies of
T
the indigenous
Americans speak
of this time in
history as a period
of great transformation. Some
legends tell of an archangel
who saw that humanity would
face enormous tasks at the
beginning of the 21st Century.
These would be difficult times
in a challenging world, and
would require extraordinary
efforts to bring about peace
and healing. “Who would like
to volunteer to be born in this
world?” the archangel asked.
Knowing we could make a
difference, all of us jumped up
and said, “Me!” In this time of
great change we all signed-up
to be healers and angels.
The problems humanity is
facing are huge. It is no longer
a matter of global warming
only, but of the possible
collapse of the entire climate
system—a catastrophe beyond
imagination. At a more local
level, the distribution of water
in the world is a huge
problem. Who owns the rain?
Can private interests own the
water? And how do we
distribute water to villages in
Africa that don’t have it? The
problems we face are vast and
overwhelming. But from the
perspective of the planet, the
problem the Earth is facing is
simple: do away with the “Who would like to volunteer to be born in this step, the forest was full of
parasite infecting it. For
humans have become a world?” the archangel asked. Knowing we could step, and again, everything
parasite that is threatening to make a difference, all of us jumped up and said, “Me!” stopped. Except for the flies,
kill its host. Like the human
body, the Earth has an
immune system that will recognize what is
foreign and toxic and will do what is necessary
to eliminate it.
Unless we make a difference now
Feature
he indigenous peoples of the
T Andes have a prophecy that says
up to two-thirds of humanity may be
become extinct between now and
2012. There is to be a tremendous
culling of humanity because the earth
can no longer sustain the noxious
parasite humanity has become. But
every crisis brings with it a marvelous and topsoil—and passes the costs onto future
opportunity and this is why we stood
up and said, “me, ” and volunteered
32 • FOUR CORNERS MAGAZINE (928) 282-7233
BY ALBERTO VILLOLDO, PH.D.
to be born at this time of change. Our work is
to rediscover a new relationship with the
Earth-to become a new human, homo
luminous. This is what we came here to do.
The main problem facing us today is a
mythic one. It's not a problem of natural
resources: forests and water and earth, but one
that is centered on the human belief (Western-
based) that all the Earth resources were
created for the pleasure and consumption of
humans. This had led to the belief that we
have dominion over all creatures on the earth.
It is a mythology that is predatory, abusive, and that what we call reality are those myths that
reaps the cream of the earth—timber, water,
generations. Our mythology is collapsing all
around us. These greedy, rapacious, beliefs that planet
pose humans as a dominator
over nature are no longer
sustainable.
One day, I was walking
with a medicine woman and
her husband deep in the
Amazon. “Alberto, go across
the clearing,” they said. “Go
back into the rainforest and
see what happens.” So I
turned and went back into
the woods. All around me,
the forest was full of song.
The sounds of the macaws
and the monkeys and the
parrots were as an orchestra,
as I first stepped in, then with
the second step everything
stopped. The shamans came
up to me and said, “See?
They know that you’ve been
kicked out of the garden.
They know that you don’t
belong here.”
Certain that all of the
creatures could smell my
SECRETS OF NIGHT FLIGHT BY PAMELA BECKER
deodorant, my toothpaste,
my athlete’s foot powder, I
looked around for a way to
cover up my scent. By the
edge of the river, I came
upon two Indians cooking a
boa on a spit. I asked them
for the fat they had been
collecting from the snake.
Stripping down to my shorts,
I smeared myself with the
boa fat, thinking this would
conceal my smell. I walked
back into the rainforest. First
song. Second step. Third
hundreds and hundreds of
flies swarmed about me!
It took ten years of apprenticeship with the
indigenous medicine people before I was able
to walk through the rainforest and have it
continue its song. No longer did the forest
recognize me as someone who did not belong.
I belonged in the garden again.
Mythology
his incident revealed to me a great deal
T about our Western mythology. Remember
we haven’t quite seen through yet. Mythology
creates our beliefs and those beliefs inform our
reality. We have the only mythology on the
in which we are kicked out of the
APRIL/MAY 2007
garden. Nobody else was cast out of the
garden. The aborigines were not kicked out;
the sub-Saharan Africans were not kicked out;
indigenous Americans were not cast out. These
peoples were given the garden to be its
stewards and caretakers. We,
on the other hand, were not The Earth People have an animistic relationship and the Sutras and the Koran
only cast out, but as we are
being cast out, a voice says,
with all of life. They believe they can speak to the and
“…. and cursed is the earth rivers and to the trees and to the canyons and to Meade and the advent of
because of you,” pointing to
the woman. And to the man,
God. They believe that everything in creation is experiential
condemning him to a life of alive and sentient.
hard work, “…. with the sweat
of your brow, you will take your fruit from the
earth and the earth shall grow thorns and
thistles for you.” This is the original damnation. been born.
The Bible doesn’t say, “…. and the earth shall
grow strawberries and mangoes and papayas
for you.” It says thorns and thistles. From the
beginning of Western mythology, we have a
hostile relationship with the feminine (with
woman, who is the cause of our problems), and
with Mother Earth itself. And if we look still
deeper, before we were cast out of the garden,
we learn that on the 'seventh day of creation'
that all of the food on the planet was given to
us. The animals and the trees and the flowers
were created for our pleasure and for our
feeding as humans. Instead of putting us in a
position of stewardship to all life on the planet,
it puts us in the position of the consumer. The
assumption is that all of the bounty of the
earth belongs to humans. It doesn’t. The food
on the earth belongs to all living beings on the
earth.
Another element unique to western culture
is that we have the only mythology on the
planet in which the masculine gives birth to
the feminine. Eve is made from the rib of
Adam. Nowhere else, except in later Greek
mythology, does the man become the creative
force. As the ways of the feminine began to be
lost, Zeus became the dominant god in the
Greek Pantheon. In the early Greek
mythologies, the goddess Hera, the “creatrix”
was predominant. Although Zeus took Hera
for his bride, she refused to submit to him.
Thereafter, she was known in
mythology as “the bitch
goddess” because you cannot The main problem facing us today is a mythic one.
repress the feminine without It's not a problem of natural resources: forests and Americas understand that we
ill effect.
The paradigms of the West water and earth, but one that is centered on the that surrounds the physical
are the paradigms of the human belief (Western-based) that all the Earth body. It informs the body in the
masculine. This is at the core
of the problem. We have to resources were created for the pleasure and magnet organize iron filings on
break free from a mythology consumption of humans.
that sees the earth as ours to
consume and sees the feminine as damned.
These beliefs express themselves in our
economic, political, social, and educational
systems. Even our medical practices are, by
their very nature, hostile, masculine, and
aggressive. These paradigms hold that we can
rape, loot, and pillage as we wish, we can spoil
the earth and postpone the price of clean up
to future generations. This mythology
postulates that there is an independent evil
APRIL/MAY 2007
principle in the world, and that we live in a
predatory universe. We have been in the grip
of this mythology for nearly 6,000 years. Today,
our economy, our political system, education,
and even our relationships —all show signs of
collapse. The old mythology has taken us as far
as it can. And our new myths have not yet
Discovering a mythology
of sustainability
ow we must discover a mythology of
N sustainability, of collaborative relationships
with the earth. Fortunately, we have the
traditions of the Earth Peoples to provide us
with a model. The Earth People have an
animistic relationship with all of life. They
believe they can speak to the rivers and to the
trees and to the canyons and to God. They
believe that everything in creation is alive and
sentient. This was our condition before we
were cast out of the garden. We were in
relationship with Spirit and with the natural
world. Spirit is actually talking to us all the time.
But we don’t open our ears to hear. We must
find the self that still walks with beauty on the
earth, and that speaks to the rivers and to the
trees and to God, and to whom the rainforest
still sings to, and the rivers and the trees and
the voice of spirit talks back to. We need a
grand kind of soul retrieval. We need to
discover that self that was lost when we were
cast out of the garden.
I embarked on my study in shamanism more
than 30-years-ago as a result of my frustration
with western psychology and our inability to
discover the workings of the mind. I spent years
immersing myself in the ways of the shaman. I
began to study the techniques, methodologies
and practices of the earth peoples who have
developed a body of knowledge for healing
through the luminous energy field that
envelops the body, for living mindfully, but
outside the visceral grip of the mind.
My studies led me to study with medicine
men and women of the Amazon rainforest.
The traditions of the Andes and Amazon had
been neglected because they had left no body
of writing. Modern prejudice says that if you
do not learn to read or write, you are illiterate
and therefore, not intelligent. These cultures
were dismissed as ignorant and primitive,
whereas students of religion and anthropology
have been studying other literate traditions,
the ones that left the Vedas
the Bible, for hundreds of
years. Only since Margaret
anthropology
have we begun to discover the
true wealth and beauty of the
indigenous teachings of our
land, of the Americas.
The indigenous mythologies differ radically
from ours. The shaman believes that we live in
a benign universe, not a predatory one. This
universe does not need to be subjugated,
medicated, or controlled. Evil exists, but only in
the human heart. The shaman lives in a
collaborative universe that will actually go out
of its way to conspire on our behalf. But you
have to be in proper relationship with it. For
example, the shaman sees no difference
between being killed by a microbe by a jaguar.
To us, one of these is an illness, and one is an
accident. A bacteria makes you ill and it is called
a disease. A jaguar mauls you and it is an
accident. For the shaman, you have to be in
proper relationship with microbes and with
jaguars, otherwise they both begin to look at
you as lunch. When you’re not in proper
relationship with the cosmos, the universe turns
predatory. It begins to stalk you, and consider
you part of the food chain. Life becomes
adversarial—we hit obstacle after obstacle—
but when we are in proper relationship, the
cosmos go out of its way to conspire on our
behalf. The most unlikely possibilities line up to
make things work for us. This is an essential
aspect of the healing process in the energy
medicine: to come into proper relationship. Not
to medicate, to treat, to intervene, but to come
into proper relationship with all of life. When
we are out of right relationship with creation
no medication works well. When we come back
into right relationship the chemo works, the
Echinacea works, antibiotics
work, and prayer works.
The shamans of the
have a luminous energy field
same way the energy fields of a
a piece of glass. In the
paradigms of the West, we are
intent on shuffling and moving the iron filings
about, trying to change things at the level of
the physical through surgery and medication.
In contrast, energy healing brings about
change at the essential level—moving the
magnet, shifting the energy field—and the
physical body follows. The shaman works at
the core level of reality where everything is
energy and light, and healing happens.
FOUR CORNERS MAGAZINE (928) 282-7233 • 33
 Infinity has always been. The shaman is a map-maker. We need new maps to
navigate our lives with. But these can no longer be mind maps,
he shamans discovered that time runs in figure eights, that it loops
Tin wormholes back into itself. With this understanding they were masculine maps, or predatory maps.
The Archetypes
able to heal events that occurred in the past and influence destiny. They
discovered this by breaking free of the grip of time and experiencing he shaman calls on four great archetypes: the serpent, the jaguar, the
infinity. The core healing practice of the medicine way—the
illumination process—happens outside time, in infinity. It happens when
T hummingbird, and the eagle. These archetypes are representations of
the four organizing principles in the universe. They are known by
we access a self that never different names among the Hopi,
entered the stream of time, that We have to break free from a mythology that sees among the Shoshoni, among the
cannot be affected by disease, the earth as ours to consume and sees the feminine Navaho, the Maya and the Inca.
that cannot be touched by ill The important thing is not what
health. Once we contact infinity, as damned. These beliefs express themselves in our you call them, not whether it’s the
we can re-inform who we are economic, political, social, and educational systems. jaguar in the west or the buffalo,
today. We can grow bodies that the important thing is that when
age differently, that heal differently, that die differently. you call it, it comes. That is the shaman’s agreement with spirit, that when
From the perspective of infinity death ceases to be a problem and you call, spirit responds. Not 60% of the time, not 90% of the time, but
becomes a process of renewal and rebirth. In the course of our lives we 100% of the time.
are challenged to face many little deaths; a relationship ending, the Each of the four archetypes is the embodiment of organizing
loss of a loved one, a career coming to an end, a cherished time in our principles of life, described in an animistic fashion. For example, physics
lives finishing. During transitions, we have the opportunity to reinvent has also discovered four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism,
ourselves. When we don’t, a deadening happens. If we go through the weak and strong nuclear force) and biology has discovered that the
these little deaths elegantly, they become opportunities for new life. DNA code is composed of an alphabet with only four letters in it. These
Instead of being wounded by transitions we become inspired by them forces are the same as the one’s the shaman calls upon through each of
if we have the prerequisite courage. How we respond to adversity the archetypes. Each one of the archetypes represents one of the four
turns us into courageous individuals. Courage can come out of great pillars of knowledge. The shaman differentiates between
frustration, illness, from many information and knowledge.
sources, sparked by adversity or The shamans of the Americas understand that we Information is what we are
by the divine. flooded in every day. Knowledge
I remember when my have a luminous energy field that surrounds the is wisdom. Information knows
daughter was thrown from a physical body. It informs the body in the same way that water is H2O. Knowledge is
horse at age six. The horse being able to make it rain.
stepped on her and ruptured her the energy fields of a magnet organize iron filings Mastery of the energies of the
liver. She was very close to death on a piece of glass. archetypes allowed the shaman to
for three days. I was in the participate actively in creation
Amazon at the time. It was the longest journey of my life coming back to itself, by ‘dreaming the world into being.”
upstate NY. When I arrived at the hospital, she was in pediatric ICU, The greatest act of dreaming that we are called to today is to help
hooked up to tubes and IV’s. We didn’t know if she was going to make it. birth the new human who is emerging on the earth. I call this new
I sat beside her, praying to God that she heal, when an immense clarity human homo luminous. Shamans understand that evolution can happen
came over me. My sadness disappeared and I spoke to her soul. Although within generations. In the West, we
she was unconscious, I said to her, “Sweetheart, I love you, and you have believe evolution happens only in
to make a choice if it's time for you to go or not. It’s your choice. I love between generations: that maybe
you, your soul knows if your journey is done.” Three minutes later, she our children will be smarter and
regained consciousness. She chose yes to live. more handsome, that maybe the
The Way of the Hero indigo children will climb to the
next rung on the evolutionary
o go from being a victim to becoming a hero requires that we go
Tinto a deep exploration of the ways of the feminine, of the ways of ladder. The shaman, on the other
hand, understands that evolution is
mother earth. As a psychologist I’ve come to understand that this also possible for us, for you and I. It is
means healing all of your unresolved mother issues. But as a shaman I up to us to take the quantum leap
know that exploring the ways of the feminine is much more than that. It into who we are becoming. We
means honoring the feminine within you; it means power with instead can evolve into homo luminous in
of power over; it means intimacy instead of domination; stewardship of our lifetime. This is our greatest
the earth instead of exploitation, and much more. If we do not embrace task. As we take that quantum
these attributes we remain victims and bullies, and miss the path of the leap individually, we do it for the
hero. The hero understands that our personal journey embraces the entire planet. Each and every one
greater journey of the planet: that as we heal, the earth heals. The of us, when we choose truth, when
heroic tales always involve accepting the call to a destiny that is greater we choose beauty, when we
than our individual personal stories. A destiny is something you make choose light, we are transforming
yourself available to by saying "yes" to life, "yes" to God, and "yes" to the world. ALBERTO VILLOLDO, PH.D.
your own growth. It requires the courage to say "yes".
The medicine way is the way of the hero. It is as contemporary today
as it was 50,000-years-ago. My mentor believed that the new shamans
Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D. is a psychologist, medical anthropologist and the
would come from the West. We are the ones who can bring healing and
author of more than ten books on shamanism and mind-body healing,
transformation to our families, to our communities, and to the earth.
including Shaman, Healer, Sage; Mending the Past and Healing the
This is a critical time in history, a time for a reawakening of the way of
Future with Soul Retrieval; The Four Insights; and Yoga, Power, and
the feminine. It is a time of tremendous transformation. All the old
Spirit. He provides us with a scientific framework through which we can
models are being shredded and torn apart. We have to reinvent every
learn the ancient art of energy medicine and luminous healing.
facet of society. And we are the agents of change. That is what a shaman
888.437.4077 • www.thefourwinds.com
34 • FOUR CORNERS MAGAZINE (928) 282-7233 APRIL/MAY 2007