Dr Covid
This is the dueño (dwarf, guardian spirit, normally of a plant) of Covid-19, colloquially known in Peru as Dr Covid.
It is interesting that it appears alongside the dueños of traditional Amazonian medicinal plants like Toē (brugmansia suaveolens) and Sangre de Drago (croton lechleri).
The dueño is a telluric spirit who gate-keeps the wisdom and power, of the plant. Anyone may partake of the plant by eating its leaves or flowers or other parts, but its power is only made accessible — and safe — with the permission of the dueño.
The dueño can be circumnavigated, or ignored, but for that of course there are consequences. Hence the formality and ritual precision of Shipibo plant dietas. Without affording the plant and her dueño the proper ritual respect, one risks offence and therefore damage to one’s body. All plants can be toxic or healing, depending.
The bilateral nature of illlness and cure is a characteristic of shamanic and animistic traditions. The work of the Shipibo onaya (normal level ayahuasqero or vegelista) or muraya (master curandero) is generally speaking to cure the illls caused by brujos (witches, warlocks, sorcerers). In order to do that they must understand the brujeria (witchcraft, black magic), much as a mechanic must understand the workings of a motor. It should be no surprise that some curanderos also work as brujos, and that there are shades of grey.
The spiritual or visionary world of Amazonian curanderos and brujos is richly, almost overpoweringly, alive with spirits, each with a specific purpose as well as a specific form or variety of forms (see the work of Pablo Amaringo for example).
It is as complex an ecosystem as that of the rainforest it comes from. The outsider can approach through the outsider lens of anthropology, or undertake the long and difficult journey inwards, attempting to embed oneself meaningfully in Shipibo life — the full 360 of village life, not just the vegetalismo. Even then, one is likely to perceive spirits, in other words to visually interpret energies, differently to local initiates.
In the classic shamanic cosmovision, all is a weave between a Lower World, limited by the apex of darkness, and an Upper World, limited by the apex of light. Humans, jaguars, plants as we commonly see them—and Dr Covid—exist in the Middle World, where the emanations of light and dark apices weave and are woven together. Humans, jaguars, plants and Dr Covid weave as we are woven.
But, arguably a gain-of-function bioweapon, the product of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, surely the SarsCov-2 virus is of another world altogether than the Amazon? In the movie Avatar, wouldn’t SarsCov-2 be from the world of the Sky People? In Star Wars terms, it would be the Deathstar, through whose destructive power The Empire Strikes Back.
It is comforting to think then that Amazonian vegelista tradition might encompass something as alien as the SarsCov-2 virus.
I say this not to advocate Amazonian plants in lieu of anything else, so much as to take heart from the notion that natural trumps unnatural. The Sky People are foiled by inside (disabled) man, Jake Sully. The Empire Strikes Back is succeeded by Return of the Jedi.
As a bilateral aside, it is interesting to note that the destructive Deathstar is destroyed by force—The Force. And that Dr Covid, as painted by Pecon Quena, looks more like a cameo part in the famous Cantina than anything aboard the Deathstar.
There is an innocence in Avatar, the Star Wars trilogy and in the art and face of Pecon Quena (above). And there is power in innocence. If it is childlike it is not ignorant. It is born of living. Shipibo children grow up fast. Pecon Quena’s is a bilateral innocence, born of seeing and living the weave.
It is all a weave. There is light, and there is dark. Which brings us, naturally enough, to the Taoist symbol of the YinYang.
Light and dark embrace each other, like night and day. The dark contains a point of light. The light contains a point of darkness. There are stars in the dead of night. There are black moods on a sunny day. There is life, and there is death.
Star Wars, Avatar and journeys into Amazonian curanderismo are all stories of redemption. The Theory of Everything when it comes to stories, is that all great stories are stories of redemption.
Story is just as important as redemption.
There is no story in she died and went to heaven. We must hear first of the living and dying and in listening entertain the possibility that it might not be alright in the end. Luke Skywalker appears doomed, overpowered by the dark emanations of the Emperor, until in the end it is Darth Vader who saves him, thereby redeeming himself.
https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FX083FOSh0xE
Frodo falters at the Crack of Doom, seduced by the Power of the Ring. It is Gollum who slices it from his finger, and prancing falls, thereby redeeming Middle Earth.
A more foursquare visualisation of the interplay of light and dark is of course the chessboard.
We cannot talk of light and dark and chess without bringing in Alan Watts.
Watts often alluded to life as a game, and our role within it as one of play. He spoke a lot and was fond of word plays. Play, he says, like the Universe itself, which is the Self, is something that happens for its own sake. The Universe is at play, is play, an eternal play of light and dark.
Watts was learned in Vedic philosophy, which gives the game a schedule. Each universe, lasts 4,320,000 years and has four rounds or yugas (ages). Each yuga is one quarter shorter than the last, the fourth and final yuga, the Kali Yuga, lasting 432,000 years. The current Kali Yuga is reckoned to have begun in 3102 BCE. It will therefore to finish in 428, 899 CE.
Dark as current times may seem, we have barely gotten started! Forget Return of the Jedi, we are barely at the opening titles of The Empire Strikes Back. One hopes of course that some error has occurred in going between Vedic and modern time. Forget linear, think exponential, logarithmic or fractal.
Just as fractal patterns repeat at different levels of magnification, so the great cycles must be reflected in the cycles of human life. The same patterns are detectible. There is a game that humans as much as Gods can play.
When it comes to playing games, says Watts, if we play someone who always wins, we will get bored. Equally, we will soon tire of playing someone if we always win.
According to the Law of Redemption, Black—dark, bad, death, destruction—must ultimately lose.
According to the Law of Story, it must give White—light, good, life, creation—a run for its money. Which is to say that Black will lose but there has to be the possibility—ultimately impossibly remote—of Black winning.
In the course of history then, in other words in the course of inevitable and eventual redemption, evil Black proves to be the Good Loser.
Whether we play White or Black, says Watts, there is no difference other than White moves first. Whether we believe that SarsCov-2 is the Deathstar, or that it doesn’t exist. Whether we believe the vaccines are the way forwards or Deathstars in disguise. Whether we take them or not, or wear a mask or not or wear two. Whether we contract Covid or not or die from it or not…
…like the Corona-like drone against which Luke Skywalker plays to sharpen his light-sabre skills, Dr Covid is here to give us a run for our money.
With thanks to Pecon Quena, Xapirixapiri, Lucasfilm, Alan Watts and Wikimedia.
