The 4 Main Areas of the Body Where Shamans Perform Blessings

Excerpt from a private lecture given by Maestro Manuel Rufino

Participant: I was going around doing blessings with my fan, and I was being guided to open the energy by blessing people’s knees. Blessing their knees first. You know, Capricorn rules the knees. And so I was like wow, if I do the knees and the whole energy opens, I was like, is that because I’m a Capricorn? Is that my way to do the blessing, or is it because we are in the month of Capricorn. Do we bless people’s body parts according to astrology, for example the sign that rules each body part. Have you ever felt that before?

Maestro: Well, in the tradition you notice, they bless the entire system, but there are four main parts that you bless. First is feet, so that anywhere that they go they’re protected and there is a prayer that that the feet may guide you to go to good places, that when you are directing your feet to go somewhere that you think twice, before you do it, to know if that is going to bring you to good things or not. Then we bless the abdomen, because this is where all your sustaining organs are, that they are healthy, good and so on. Then we bless your heart, that it is protected against negativity, protected against your own self-inflicted hate and anger, that it is purified, and we guide you there because your path is the path of your heart, or we say the heart is the path, whichever way you want to say it. Then we bless the head, to bring good thoughts to your mind because your mind needs to be protected. Why does it need to be protected? Because whether you want it or not, we are open satellites. Our thoughts begin to be invaded, which happens very often, understanding the difference between an obsession and when something comes in because it has influenced your mind. Those are two different thoughts. Two different waves. Two different knowledges. We are being continuously being bombarded by thoughts: people send you all kinds of stuff, sometimes good, sometimes bad. You need to learn which thoughts are yours and which thoughts are not yours. So for that there is a protection on your head. The biggest protection given to you from a shaman in general is done here (asks to be handed a mapacho). So, that’s why the limpia is a series of prayers. (Maestro lights the mapacho and blows the smoke on top of participant’s head.) That is to protect your mind, against external thoughts that are traveling to you that are not good for you. We know schizophrenia, it’s like wow, a very difficult condition. The person is open, they are receiving stuff, but they are not able to control that. That’s why for a period to the psychiatric movement, psychologists, they all said that shamans were schizophrenic. They were right about it: we are deeply schizophrenic. But we are in control of that. That’s why they eventually removed us from some books where they list shamanism as some kind of sickness, because they realized we are in control of that. We can see it, we can listen to it, we can smell it… just if we want to. We make that decision. A schizophrenic person cannot make that decision. They are just open to it. But then you need to learn to protect your mind. They wear a red band here (points to forehead), or other colors. This has magnetic properties that do not allow other people to penetrate your thoughts. That is not used for fashion. That thing has a special property. Eventually science will discover that this thing protects. That’s why there is a hat and there is a yarmulke, there is a covenant to make sure that only Divine present thoughts come to you. That is very transcendental. This is a science–it’s the shamanic science–this thing is very deep. It’s been around for thousands of years so it must be worth something.