A day in the life of a Peruvian shaman Gabriel Prieto
At the temple of the fisherman,
Quexo, the village shaman,
looks out over the ocean and frowns.
It’s a still morning–
unusually still,
and the lack of wind is the latest
in a series of troubling signs.
The year is 1400 BCE.
Quexo’s village sits in the dusty,
treeless desert
between the towering Andes
and Pacific Ocean.
The villagers live off the sea,
harvesting reeds,
drying them in the sun,
and using them to build fishing boats.
Every day in the summer,
the men set out on these boats
to hunt shark and other fish
while the women harvest
shellfish and sea urchins.
In winter, storms bring powerful waves,
which cross the vast ocean unobstructed
to detonate on these shores.
Most years, Quexo’s village catches
more than enough fish.
But this year, the winds have died
and the fish have dwindled.
Quexo has seen this pattern before:
the fish disappear,
then the violent rains arrive,
causing flash floods that dissolve
mud bricks and wash away settlements.
He needs to stop the bad weather
before the storms come—
his only hope is a special ritual
he’s been planning.
Quexo spends much less time
in the ocean than the other villagers.
He became a shaman after seeing
a sign in the sea one morning—
like his father and grandfather
before him.
This morning,
he walks to the nearby sacred mountain
as the sun rises.
There, he gathers ceremonial cactus
and herbs like “horse tail,”
“stonebreaker," and valerian,
along with the mineral hematite.
Back in the village,
everyone is preparing to leave
for a religious festival
at a large temple inland.
The festival marks the beginning of what
is usually the season of abundance,
but with the signs pointing to storms,
Quexo isn’t feeling too celebratory.
Whole families travel to the festival,
where they camp for a few days.
They’ve packed seaweed, carved bones,
gourd bowls, reed mats,
and other goods to trade
in the market around the temple.
Quexo inspects the goods to make
sure everything is of the finest quality.
He brings the herbs he gathered
to trade for cinnabar,
a mineral that comes
from the highlands in the Andes.
He needs cinnabar for his ritual
to ward off the storms.
Around lunchtime, the sprawling
temple rises out of the desert ahead.
People have come from all along
the coast and the foothills.
The women handle trade transactions—
they’re looking for cotton and ceramics.
Men aren’t usually allowed
to do the trading,
but shamans are an exception.
Though Quexo is a man, during rituals
he becomes half man, half woman,
and this ambiguity makes his role
more flexible outside ceremonies too.
Quexo can’t find any cinnabar
in the market,
so he heads to the main temple,
dodging children playing in the plaza.
He puts on his ceremonial garb:
red face paint, earrings,
and a necklace of shark’s teeth
and vertebrae.
Inside, the ceremonies
are already underway,
and the shamans have drunk
the sacred cactus drink.
Many of them are Quexo’s friends
from festivals over the years,
but he doesn’t see the mountain shamans
who would have cinnabar.
He begins to panic.
If the highland shamans don’t show up,
his only option will be to make
the long walk into the mountains.
It’s a dangerous journey
that takes five days,
precious time he doesn’t have to waste.
But perhaps he has no choice.
He refuses the sacred cactus
and sets off toward the mountains.
As he leaves the settlement behind,
he sees a group approaching.
He recognizes them as highlanders
by their llamas.
He dashes toward their shaman.
Barely pausing to say hello,
he offers him hematite, dried seaweed,
and empty shells to grind up for lime
and chew with coca leaves.
In return, the other shaman
gives him the precious cinnabar.
With the key to his ritual in hand,
Quexo heads home to the temple
of the fisherman
in hopes of turning the tide.