LAST ICAROS OF ROGER LOPEZ
At the end of February 2020 my shipibo diet with Camalonga at the Sui Pino Medicinal Center under the guidance of shaman Roger Lopez ended. Little did I know at that time that it would be my last diet with Roger ever. And that I will be one of the last "passengers" of Sui Pino, to whom Roger will give his last diet and to whom he will sing his last icaros. A few days later, the borders of Peru were closed due to the covid virus pandemic, and a year later, Roger died after covid infection for the second time within a year.
After Roger's death, his family - wife Olga and children Rodrigo, Jon and Carla moved from the village of San Francisco, where they lived until then, to the center of Sui Pino to become the guardians and protectors of this place. I think it was mainly Roger's last will that after his death all those medicinal plants and trees that were helping him in treating patients all these years and with which he had established a relationship at the partner level (in shipibo cosmology they were wives and lovers to him) would be well taken care of. Currently, Sui Pino serves as a medicinal hostel - retreats are sometimes held here with other shamans, or baths, saunas and massages with medicinal plants according to the Shipibo tradition.
I think that not only me, but all of Roger's students were greatly affected by his early and unexpected departure. Regardless of how much all these diets he gave to me has changed me and my life Im living now, not a day goes by when I don't think of him. I keep thinking about how difficult it must be especially for the survivors - his family .... Now in the spring of 2023, I went to see them and when I saw how dedicated they are in the service of Sui Pino, which was left empty after Roger departure... I just couldnt resist.... Maybe that's why I decided to share with you the most valuable thing that I have left from this beautiful journey with Roger. His last icaros.
Why am I sharing his last icaros as an NFT?
An NFT (non-fungible token) is a unique digital identifier, stored on the blockchain, that acts as a certificate of authenticity and confirms that YOU are the owner of that NFT. NFT can be in the form of music, video, documents,... I like this new technology, overall I think NFT & blockchain will play huge part in our lives in a few years to an extent we can't even imagine now. If this technology is new to you, it is through these icaros that you can very gently and non-violently step into its world and begin to master it little by little. The way I'm adopting it now :)
Roger's last icaros, the last master plant dieta with Roger
I myself realize how much value these icaros have. It's Roger's last icaros that were given in Sui Pino. It is my very first dieta with Camalonga, one of the strongest shipibo plants. The icaros Im sharing basically capture the entire proccess of this last diet that took place at Sui Pino, before Roger left this physical world for the spirit world of the plants and his ancestors. I think that it is with the help of NFT that we can grasp the value and uniqueness of this very special moment and setting that took place in this universe of ours.
Support for Sui Pino, Roger's family,
shamans and shipibo tradition
One of the beautiful use-case of NFT technology is the support/development for communities. It can be seen as a crowdfunding for the project/community you feel by the heart that you want to support. In this case, by buying icaro in the form of NFT we can support Roger's family, other shamans who sung icaros in ceremonies, Shipibo tradition and culture, medicinal center Sui Pino with all those medicinal plants, which now form a medicinal shamanic reserve there as well as a piece of my shipibo journey.
HOW IT WORKS
Each icaro (NFT) will only have max 100 owners and will be minted in the rounds. In the first round, 25 pieces for each NFT. In each subsequent round of minting, its price will increase by 0.01 ETH
Money collected from sold NFT will be divided as follows(each entity will have its own Metamask wallet)
30% to support medicinal center Sui Pino, its garden and shamanic medicinal plants reserve
40% will go to the shaman(s), who sang in that audio track. If Roger sang there - the money will go to Olga (Roger's wife) and her children. If more shamans are heard in the audio track - for example Mitsu, Roger, Noe - then it will be divided equally between all three shamans
30% will go to support my shipibo journey and the maintenance of this project
After purchasing an NFT, I will distribute the money to the Metamask wallets of the entities that the given NFT concerns (shamans, Sui Pin, Roger's family, and mine). In the next phase - after agreement with the people who are affected by the contents of these virtual wallets, I will transfer it to their bank account. This will happen once in a certain period, depending on how their wallet will be filled and also to save on fees.
All transactions will be transparently recorded on the blockchain, and I will inform about them on this page as well.
And last but not least, I will try to act as advisor for Sui Pino to help maintain this place. Maybe one of the ideas is to convince Mitsu and his family to return there? :) But first convince Olga and the children that this is a good idea :)
Can the NFTs of these icaros be taken as an investment? When we consider how unique they are, what moment they capture in our space and time, they can definitely be looked at also as an investment. Not to mention that in the last bull market, the price of ETH was three times higher, which is expected that at least one day the price will catch up again with all time high.. Anyway, this is not financial advice or consulting and let everyone take their own responsibility for how they handle their resources. If you want to support Sui Pino, Roger's family, shipibo culture, tradition, shamans this is definitely the way to go. Not to mention that you will become the official owners of a piece of this shipibo history.
through my last diet with Camalonga
Story of Sui Pino
I will probably remember Roger the most thanks to this last diet he gave to me. It was not for nothing that he was the master of Camalonga, in fact the entire lineage of his ancestors specialized in this particular plant. He decided to give me Camalonga only after 12 years of going to him. During that time, I have been to Sui Pino 5 times, always on a 2-3 month diet, I have been dieting various plants with him, but overall today I perceive that all my diets at Sui Pino were leading to "that one final diet" with Camalonga. One of the strongest plants the shipibos have among the plantas de maestros.
Whenever I remember my last diet, I feel only immense gratitude, because the constellation that formed at Sui Pino at that time was really really very special, and to a certain extent I perceive that the place itself decided to give me proper Camalonga ALL INCLUSIVE diet...
First of all, Roger's mother Ida started appearing again at the ceremonies. I experienced Ida only during my first diets, in 2010-2013. In the following years, I did not see her again there. When I asked Roger why she doesn't go to ceremonies with him anymore, I always got the same answer: Ida is sick and can't do ceremonies anymore. Dieteros who have been dieting in Sui Pino for a long time (6 months or more) have also told me same. Ida has not participated at ceremonies in Sui Pino anymore.
More surprised and delighted I was when I suddenly began to regularly hear her singing and clensing people again at ceremonies right during my diet with Camalonga. She was in great form, her icaros were from another world, she was able to take you into the most beautiful and truest fairy tale about true-yourself, together with Roger, the ceremonies took on a completely different depth and dimension.
And they had some icaros that they sang together!!!, once when I asked Roger what kind of icaros they were, he just laughed and told me that they were very special icaros which his grandfather taught him.
There is this saying: you can say by the student how good his teacher really was. I always saw Mitsu as a solid part of Sui Pino. He came to Roger sometime around 2008 and never left. For 12 full years he was dieting with Roger, all kind of plants of his ancestors in all possible ways. Once I asked Mitsu what is his favorite plant - he answered without hesitation: Camalonga. She's like my girlfriend. Mitsu dieted Camalonga for 3 years without a break.
Proper dieting of plants is an art, and if anyone knows how to penetrate into this art, it is Mitsu. His house in Sui Pino was an oasis of peace for all dieteros who came to him for advice, support, when they wanted to talk about their processes, or just to be in silence with him.
Once I asked Mitsu, how to diet properly. He answered: When you listen to silence, silence starts to speak loudly. And that's exactly what diet is about and what you can feel when you are with Mitsu: peace, tranquility and the depth of silence and presence.
When I told Mitsu at the end of 2019 that at the beginning of the year I would go for another diet to Sui Pino (I had no idea that time, that I would be on a diet with Camalonga), he told me that he probably wouldn't be there, because he wants to travel. At the end, however, he didn't go anywhere and waited for me in his house. He probably knew that it would be an important diet for me and he wanted to be there and possibly support me. I think that if he wasn't there, I would go through the diet much more painfully and maybe at one point I would even give it up.
During this camalonga diet, except Mitsu and Ida, also Roger's brother Noe and the shaman Herman used to attend the ceremonies. It's always a reality check of how well you are connected through medicine and diet after what happens at the ceremonies. There can be such a level of connection, where you choose a singing line of one of the shamans and that line is a guide for you in your process. The other chants of the shamans may seem distracting to you, or that it is all so chaotic. Alternatively, one of the shamans come to you and sing and cleanse you, and in this case there is no question, you are guided by an icaro of shaman who is currently singing to you.
And then there is a level where you suddenly start to hear that all the shamans are actually singing one beautiful icaro together, different lines of it, each in a one corner of the room, twisting the space and shaping it, and together with their icaro they create one beautiful infinite multidimensional space and melody. As I have heard and felt it in this following icaro.
The Camalonga diet was completely different from all of the diets I did with Roger before. I felt the plant very intensely from the first day - my own energy began to pour out of me throughout the house, literally flowed out of me, and gradually throughout the diet I really began to become a part of everything. The nature around me came into life and I began to see and feel all the living beings that are part of it and that gradually began to show me in various ways and stories how this Earth was created and developed (sometimes it was throughout the movie screen in the nature, on which they played me movies about the Earth, its structure, depth, pain, emotions). I will never forget that feeling when, after one of the ceremonies, I was returning to my house and as I was stepping on the ground, I literally dug into it like half a meter of snow, and I felt that my feet were like roots that go deep into the center of the earth and with which I am thus connected to everything and nourished.
At night, in the whistling of the wind, at one moment I heard the melody of a song. It was very far away for me, sometimes it came closer to me, and the more I tried to focus on it, the more it disappeared until one moment, completely out of the blue, there was the whistling of the wind next to me, around me, until it started to change into a very intense melody.....For the first time on a diet it happened to me that the spirits of the jungle brought the melody of icaro to me in such a powerful way. My senses became more and more clear and sensitive. I often knew in advance that someone would pass by my house... It even happened a few times that I heard Mitsu's ikaro like a whistle in the wind and a few minutes later Mitsu passed by.
To this day, I will never forget how Roger himself was transformed in one very powerful ceremony into Camalonga. At one point I just heard Roger say my name and suddenly I felt him sit in front of me. I opened my eyes, everything was out of focus, blurred, just bubbles and energy fractals everywhere. Only in front of me was Camalonga tree in all its glory mixed with Roger's essence. She cleaned and hugged me with her branches and leaves. At that time, Roger and the other shamans raised the vibrations in the maloka so much that one guy couldn't handle it anymore and started slapping himself on the ground (you can hear it in the second part of the icaro).
There were many stories that happened to me during this diet. However, one of them will forever have a special place in my heart. It happened at my penultimate ceremony. Until then, I sat next to Roger at ceremonies because I wanted to have the best possible connection with him. Since I knew that my diet was coming to the end and I had already experienced almost everything :) I decided to sit next to Mitsu this time so that I could also feel his energy, his icaros, his singing at the ceremony... He is after all my good friend and I said to myself that I want to enjoy him at least a little at the last two ceremonies.
But.....at one moment, when Mitsu started singing to me, in the middle of his icaro, I heard "Pffffff" and then felt an exhaled cloud of smoke from mapacho mixed with aqua florida on me. Mitsu immediately stopped singing. I looked around and Roger was standing next to us, with very serious look in his face. He sat down next to me, called his ikaro by wistle, started cleaning me and singing it to me.
Ive never felt so strong connection between us before, it was first time, when I truly realized that I am his student and that he takes me seriously as his student. And that no other shaman has the right to sing icaro to me in his maloka, unless he allows it.
Thank you Roger for this beautiful journey <3