I just returned from a magnificent, if challenging, trip to Peru with a wonderful group. During that trip, as always, I learned new information and received refinements of old information about our practice as paqos and the tradition in general from Juan Nuñez del Prado and his son, Ivan. Since I cannot write directly to all my past students, I am hoping to inform them of this information here. Of course, I hope everyone who practices the tradition, former student of mine or not, benefits from this information.

The refinements and corrections mostly involve the chunpis. First, let me say, that this word is commonly spelled two ways: chumpi or chunpi. It depends on what school of academic thought and which dictionary you use. I spell this word with an “n”: chunpi.

The first correction I would like to point out is that Juan insists that we not refer to the three eyes area in any way as a chunpi, not even as a “quasi” violet belt for convenience sake. There are only four belts, and this area is simply an energy center comprising the three eyes. While you pull in violet light here at the end of the Chunpi Away karpay, the color of this belt, as I have always stressed to students, is the color of your physical eyes. Also, there is no cone here, as there are in the other four belts. Instead, there is a seqe (energetic cord) from each of the three eyes that converge in the middle of the head and then curve down as a single seqe to meet the spine at the top of the spinal column.

For the other four belts that do have cones, Juan informed me that the old paqos called the cones “horns.”

As you know, each chunpi is associated with certain colors, elements, energetics, and capacities. While the silver chunpi at the throat is generally about communication, it’s main energetic association is with thought, or yachay. It is when thought and knowledge are put into action as a capacity that we then identify the gift of this belt as rimay (speaking with integrity and personal power). Simply put, rimay is yachay in action.

An interesting tidbit of information about the  Chunpi Away karpay came up that I had not heard before:  The gold and silver energies that are drawn back over the skull with the yanantin mullu khuya are actually fields of energy, one gold (on the right) and one silver (on the left). The fields cover each side of the head, but as you draw the yanantin mullu khuya back over the skull and toward the neck, these fields narrow into cords/seqes. You then cross the gold and silver cords at the middle of the neck and pull them down to the base of the spine.

In addition, another small refinement is that when doing the Chunpi Away karpay, as you move up to the next belt area to weave it, you pull the energy of the belt below it up with you. So, for example, as you finish weaving the yana chunpi (the lower belt at the base of the trunk of the body), you pull the black energy up to the belly and then change to the kinsantin (3) khuya and weave the red belt. Then you would pull this red energy up to the heart and change to the tawantin khuya to make the gold belt, and so on with the remainder of the belts.

Finally, as regards the chunpis, the mulla khuyas (five stones you use to weave the chunpis) are also considered to be a lloq’e misha, a misha of the left side.

Your primary misha also has an alternative name, which is misha qhepi (or, as Ivan spelled it, khepy), which literally means “misha bundle.” Since misha means “sign” or “symbol” the misha qhepi would be, quite literally, the “bundle of signs/symbols” that you are a paqo.

I specifically asked  Juan to discuss the willka energy—black light energy—a bit more, since not much is known about it or taught about it (in my experience). The willka energy is that of the yana chunpi, or black belt. Beyond that, Juan described willka as the highest nature energy, higher than huaca/waka energy (sacred energy). It is, he said, the “most sacred of the sacred.” In addition, it is the most pristine energy of nature, and it persists in nature wherever it is found no matter what happens at that place over time. In fact, willka is the natural sacred energy that infuses places identified as healing sanctuaries (such as Wanka in Peru, or perhaps Lourdes in France, etc.). And, of course, you can produce willka yourself. Whether you experience it in nature or generate it within yourself, when you touch willka energy and work with it, it can trigger visions,  bring to light information you did not previously have, and reveal to you what is inside you (your state of being).

Finally, even though I call the Andean tradition a path of conscious personal evolution, Juan stressed that personal growth is never mandatory. Every human being makes the choice to grow or not. As Ivan said, you can have a perfectly great life at the zero level as a “natural” human being. However, if you do choose to grow and to climb the stairway of the seven levels of human consciousness, then it is important to be able to know when you have achieved the next level. Juan described one way of knowing: You have reached the next level when your three powers (munay, llank’ay and yachay) are all expressed at that level. In other words, if two of your three powers are fourth level, but one is still being expressed within you at the third level, then you are at the third level, not the fourth. Only when all three powers are being expressed at the same level can you say you have achieved that level.