Spiritual Connections
They achieve this through meditation wherein they communicate with all living things on the planet - humans, animals, plants, rock, etc.
They live in Aluna, an inner world of thought and potential. From Aluna they astral travel or remote view to places both on and off the physical planet. Their sacred lands are perceived as a metaphysical symbol of cosmic forces within the whole world - an oracle of the natural balance and health of the planet.
Shamanic Practices - Coca Plant
Shaman are called Mamas
Kogi Mamas are chosen from birth and spend the first nine years of childhood in a cave in total darkness learning the ancient secrets of the spiritual world or Aluna. They are the priests and judges who control Kogi society.
All major decisions and shamanic work are done by Divination. All is the world of Aluna, so the Mamas see a reflection of the physical world first in the spiritual world. If Aluna is the Mother, then the Kogi listen to the Mother by divining. This lost technique of divination is what keeps the Kogi world in balance and order.
The Mamas - as with other spiritual tribal leaders around the world - are worried that the Younger Brother has not heeded the first warning. If the Sierra Nevada or the Mother dies, the world will also die.
They use the coca bush for many things. Myths reveal that it was the Aluna herself who instituted coca chewing among the Kogi and who gave a lime gourd to her first son, as a symbolic wife. Other myths tell that coca was originally discovered in the flowing hair of a young girl who let her father only participate in its use. An envious and jealous young man transformed himself into a bird and, after watching the girl bathing in the river, seduced her. When he returned home and changed back into human shape, he shook his hair and out of it fell two coca seeds.
Small plantations of coca shrubs are found near all Kogi settlements, and provide the men with tender green leaves, plucked by the women. All adult men chew the slightly toasted leaves, adding to the moist wad small portions of lime. Coca shrubs are planted and tended by the men but the leaves are gathered by women. Periodically the men toast these leaves inside the temple, using for this end a special double-handled pottery vessel. This ritual vessel made by a Kogi priest can be used only for the toasting of coca leaves.
When chewed with coca, lime is a substance which helps the mucous membranes in the mouth absorb the alkaloids in the leaves. The Kogi produce Lime by burning sea shells on a small pyre carefully constructed with chosen splints. The fine white powder is then sifted into a ritual gourd which is carried by all men.
The Lime container consists of a small gourd which is slightly pear-shaped and perforated along the top. While all lime gourds consist of the same raw material, the wood of the stick which is inserted into it, must correspond to the patriline of the owner. Each patriline uses a different wood taken from the trees belonging to certain botanical species. The length of the stick may vary from 20 to 30cms. and, together with the degree of surface polish, these various characteristics identify its owner. An initiated Kogi man will easily recognise the patriline of his companions, simple by looking at their lime sticks.
The symbolic importance of the lime container and its stick is manifold. In one, most important image, the gourd is a woman. During the marriage ceremony the mama gives the bridegroom a gourd with these words: "Now I give you a lime gourd; I give you a woman." He then hands the bridegroom the lime stick and orders him to perforate with it the gourd at its upper end, thus symbolising the act of deflowering the bride.
Both men and women say quite openly that coca chewing has an aphrodisiacal effect upon male sexuality, and newly wed couples are very outspoken about this. Male initiation, marriage, and habitual coca chewing are three elements which coincide at a certain period in a young mans life. Young men sometimes say that they dislike coca chewing but most of them, sooner or later, yield to the pressures exercised by the priests and the older generation, and adopt the habit.
While slowly chewing some twenty or thirty toasted leaves, the man will wet the lower and slightly pointed end of the stick with saliva and will insert it into the gourd. Withdrawing the stick again he will put the adhering lime into his mouth. Immediately he will rub the stick around the top of the gourd in a circular motion. Eventually, this daily repeated action of rubbing the stick on the gourd surface begins to form a thin layered crust of yellowish-white lime that covers the upper part of the container. Some old lime gourds display a disc shaped accretion of up to 10cms. in diameter, carefully fashioned by the gourd's owner.
The many symbolic meanings of coca chewing and of the physical objects involved in this act, form a coherent whole. In macrocosmic perspective, a lime gourd is a model of the universe; the stick when inserted, becomes a world axis, and knowledgeable men will be able to talk at great length, explaining the structure of the universe in terms of levels, rims or directions appearing on the gourd.
On another scale, the gourd can be compared to the Sierra Nevada; the lime-splattered upper part are the snow peaks, and the stick is the world axis. Certain mountain peaks, crowned with white, rocky cliffs, are the Sun's lime containers, and so are all the temples and houses.
The coca plant is an integral part of the Kogi way of life, deeply involved with their traditions, religion, work and medicine. Perhaps the most ancient use of coca in South America is its employment in shamanistic practises and religious rituals. The mild mental excitation induced by chewing the coca leaves enables the shaman to enter more easily into a trance state in which he could communicate with the spiritual forces of nature and summon them to his aid.
Large scale deforestation and clearing of the jungle is posing a massive threat to the natural habitat of the Sierra Nevada and its flora and fauna. In recent years the sinister illusion of the marijuana cultivation practised by settlers from inland and fueled by encouragement by the Columbian and International mafia has destroyed vast areas of the jungle.
