August: The Offering (First Quarter, Imbolg, Fecundation)

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Winter has waken up from its numbness, Mother Earth is hungry. People prepare to carry out The Offering, in order to thank her, feed her, ask for her protection in coming sowing season, to recognize the intervention in germination still hidden in her womb, to ask for her permission and that of the guardians of Nature for their space will be used.

It’s the first day of August in the Gregorian calendar, in Southern calendars started or it’s starting the month of kuchu (sacrifice), second month of the year for the Andean people according to Luis Soria Lens*,  winds have arrived and will remove Mother Earth’s seeds attracting the rain.

The Offering implies food, blood, life, fire, coca, khoa, llama, alcohol. It’s sacrifice, interaction, reciprocity. Brings invocation, spell, manifest magic to connect with the unseen crossing daily life. Offerings and more offerings will be carried out throughout the month, while heaven and earth remain open during the Fecundation process.

It’s the Fecundation, of Pachamama (Mother Earth) and beyond the name, manifestations speak by themselves about the relationship with fertile earth, whith the origin itself, with procreating womb, with the Wakkas, (vortex) always returning to the point, the black whole, the origin.

There will also be succeeding processions and feasts during the month, in Bolivian territories: Virgen de Copacabana, Virgen de las Nieves, Virgen de Urkupiña, Virgen de la Ascensión or La Asunta.

On August 5, Virgen de Copacabana, the Dark Virgin, carved by Francisco Tito Yupanqui, receives the recognaissance as Nation’s Patron which a day later celebrates the foundation of La Bolivia (August 6). This Virgin is also La Candelaria, celebrated originally on February 2; She is also Q’ota Mama, Lady of the Lake, Goddess of Waters, She who rules in Lake Titicaca, patron of thousands of people.

August 15, Virgen de las Nieves (Snow) coinciding with the snow expected for those days moistening the earth for fecundation; also the Virgen de Urkupiña in Cochabamba who once was the Goddess of Fertility, Kawillaka, and received honors on a competition carried out by llameros (llama caretakers), as is told by  Wilson García Mérida**, there are figures of this Goddess with a child on her arms, wrongly associated with the Ascension Virgin. This Virgin will also have her procession in diverse towns on that day under the cloak of  La Asunta, although the meaning of the feminine figure is far from ascension and rather close to Fecundation.

And throughout the length and breadth of the planet, when  Fecundation, time arrives, She resounds in the wind, going to meet the thousand names calling Her for procreating more life. Before, when god was a woman life turned around her feet and that memory was never forgotten, until nowadays her denied place is restituted everywhere defying somewhow conventions.

Way before that, when gods walked among men, their potencies and forces we carried within and woke them up with procreation magic, without concealment nor denial. But, way way before that, so much ‘before’ that tomorrow almost arrives, He transformed into She and would be She until transforming into He once again… that memory has not waken up yet, though it’s coming…

Shall be when Restitution of Identities is over, when people recover their names and their place as legacy and reproduction of life not of power, when those who stopped being nature and enthroned themselves as her tamer, set aside the whip and retake pick and shovel to let flows run through the veins of life. .

It’s coming, Leonardo da Vinci saw it:  “Many of those who profess the faith of the son just build temples to the mother”.

In order to rush a little the memory, these are writings that with the forces of times may soon abandon words among the ‘learned ones’ and become experience together with the people of the world that perpetuated the memory.

They are not the best nor all of them, just a few that crossed my path:

 

• Dios nació mujer de Pepe Rodríguez
• Celtic Goddesses de Miranda Green
• El Origen de la Familia, la Propiedad Privada y el Estado – Federico Engels

And to Restitute Identities to Pachamama, Ch’alla or Offering that links us to unseen worlds, a look at the sceintific view of Andean rituals:

“The amautas, Andean wisemen, knew the rite for rain to fall. For this they would gather water coming from the open sea, where sea currents concur loaded of iodides and chlorides (cloruro de plata) and then took them up, celebrating special rites, to highlands on the Andean Cordillera that looks towards the sea and the deserts of the coast. There they dropped sea water in places where strong winds converged and with their contribution water evaporated, which turned into humidity and containing chlorides, was transported by wind into the clouds to precipitate rain. All that scientific process, carried out under the appearance of religious-magical rituals, was not understood by the ignorance of idolatry extirpators that considered supernatural to make rain and amautas as sorceress who had a pact with demons”. (Carlos Milla Villena, translation is mine*)

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*Cosmivisión Andina, Taipinquiri, La Paz 1996

** Historia del Milagro, Antología de Urqupiña, Wilson García Mérida y Walter Gonzales Valdivia, Editores Los Tiemposk, Datos y Análisis, Kanata, Cochabamba, Bolivia, 2001
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