Under the Peruvian Sun

I am riding on the back of Inti, a sturdy brown and white mountain pony, across beautiful tan grass plains amongst tall sharp mountain peaks. He is showing me the wonders of the land, and a few other things.


Later that night in the hostel, I am reading my novel to relax and suddenly what I am reading makes me tingle all over: a vampire tells of his human life when his mother was a priestess of INTI, the Sun God, in Cuzco, at the time of the Spanish conquest and invasion. Now in the novel, he acts as the avatar of the Sun for the woman he loves, making love with her to transmit and open her to her full power.

This gets my attention. I am in Cuzco on vacation preparing to make love to the Sun God through a medicine journey in three days. Not only was my horse named INTI today, but there is the little fact that I recently took vows to open myself to a human partner who will channel the Sun God for me.

When the day for the San Pedro journey arrives, I am a little nervous, but also excited. I ready myself for a sacred medicine journey with San Pedro cactus (known to Peruvians as Huachama). The plant is said to assist in traveling to the upper world of the shaman, the place of the soul’s knowledge, and to heal emotional wounds swiftly and surely.

I am in a magickal garden with San Pedro cactus, flowers, and trees growing, sitting with my group of friends on this trip, drinking the cactus down. It is a little bit scary. The cactus drink is thick and syrupy, like Aloe Vera Gel. And it doesn’t taste good. It’s slimy. And brown. Lesley, our guide for the day, tells us to hold our nose and drink it down in one gulp. And to remember that as we take the cactus in, we are taking light into our bodies. That does it for me. I imagine my body absorbing light into every cell as I drink the cactus, and imagine it is filling me with radiance. I crunch a lemon candy after to take away the aftertaste and it is done! I wait for the cactus to take effect, and wonder what will happen.

San Pedro does contain mescaline, but it’s not much of a hallucinogen, at least not for me. I remain aware of everything all day long, but I also become painfully aware of my body’s energy–where it is open, where it is blocked, where it needs some cleanup. A freight train of sunlight starts to run through me, and I get scared. This is like tantra on steroids! Lesley tells me to breathe into each chakra as it opens, that the cactus is clearing them out, getting rid of the sludge, performing powerful healing.

I breathe and explode into tears. As my heart opens waves and waves of sadness come through me. I let go, totally and completely, of EVERYTHING that I’ve been holding. Mother Earth takes it, every bit of it, and it takes hours, I think. She releases me, tells me to walk in the garden, to smell the flowers, to see the beauty. I feel another pull, to the "Ayhahuasca house", the house of death and rebirth where the Ayhahuasca shamans come to do there work on other days. As I enter a painting of Huascar, the Peruvian Lord of Life and Death, greets me. Oh my God, he is SO beautiful, I want to go into his darkness, to be with him forever. He holds me and I find even more tears, release even more. And I start to wonder if it will ever end! I have asked for this journey to show me how to heal my relationships to human men. To show me how to open my heart even more. Apparently it means dumping gallons of tears!

I am happy, I am with Huascar in the underworld, and this is where I long to stay…with death. And I realize that I am not afraid of the dark at all. I am afraid of the light. I want to stay in the dark, where I feel safe. And he shoves me, tells me to go. He tells me I am in a body to live this life, not to stay in the dark with him.

So I go, grumbling all the way. I go out the gate from the garden and into the Sun on the brown grasses of the rolling hills. Down in the valley the grass is green and water runs. Sheep and Llamas graze on the land. And the grass seems to sparkle. The hills seem to be made of sunlight. It is all so beautiful it is hard to take in. How can I deserve this much beauty?

Spirit sends me a man to practice heart connecting with, a man from these lands, whose ancestors were here before the Inca. And as we wander, our connection deepens, and we move energy between our hearts and our bodies, I practice being with a man with no boundaries and no expectations between us except those I want in the moment.

He calls me a princess, he tells me he loves me, he tells me I am beautiful. The sun shines down on us and through his braids and the feather in his hair. He respects my no and keeps on loving me. He keeps me safe as we wander the hills. And I thank the Sun and the San Pedro for sending him to me to heal my heart with, to practice loving him. To practice being loved by an avatar of the sun.

Back at home, my heart is filled with that sun, and the light is pouring forth from me, with everyone I see and everywhere I go. I feel an excitement, like a kid on Christmas morning, that a new life partner is coming for me, who will dance in this light with me. There is no longing for him, no sadness, just a knowing and an eagerness for when I meet him.

Today I feel the sun on my face and I know that something has shifted in me, that I am different. That the Peruvian sun has changed me forever. And I will return. At night, I still dream of Peru, of a land that has changed me forever. I fly over the landscape like an eagle, I wander the beautiful golden hills touched with sparkling sunlight. I am surrounded by a beauty so immense that my heart must open.

Kypris, Dakini and Shamanic Tantra Teacher holds a master’s degree in Biology, as well as a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology, and is an initiated HeartWisdom Tantric Priestess. She is the author of “Journey to Sexual Wholeness, The Six Gateways to Tantric Sexuality”.

Yabyummy is a teaching temple that provides a tantric path to gain sexual wholeness through breathwork, visualization, and tantric massage. We are committed to unifying sexuality with spirituality and spirituality with sexuality for growth minded men, women and couples.