In my February 11, 2023, blog post, I wrote about the deep structure of Andean mysticism, focusing on the weaving of the chunpis (in the Chunpi Away karpay) and awakening of the ñawis (in the Ñawi K’ichay karpay). The word ñawi means “eye” and in the mystical tradition refers to the mystical eyes or energy perception centers in our body. The word chunpi means “belt” and in the mystical tradition refers to bands of energy we weave into our body to link up the ñawis into a coordinated and connected system. The joint karpay is given by a chunpi paqo. But just what is a chunpi paqo? Is he or she different from a “regular” paqo? If so, how? We will look into these questions in this post.

I’ll start by reminding you that we don’t know much about chunpi paqos. The chunpi energy work is a teaching from the Q’ero, and the only chunpi paqo we know of is the late don Andres Espinosa, who was recognized as a master chunpi paqo both by the Q’ero and by other top non-Q’ero paqos of the time, such as don Benito Qoriwaman. Don Andres ran a month-long “paqo school” in Q’ero Totorani every year until his death in 1981. My primary teacher, don Juan Nuñez del Prado, attended that school in 1980 and learned the chunpi teachings directly from don Andres. It is possible that there are Q’ero elders who know the teachings, but none that we know of are passing on the knowledge as don Andres taught it or working as chunpi paqos. In fact, don Juan and his son, don Ivan, have been teaching the karpays to several Q’ero paqos, in effect helping them recover what appears to be a lost teaching.

There are others who teach about the chunpis and perform the joint karpay, but none that I know of teach it the way that chunpi master don Andes did. For example, the Q’ero paqo don Mariano Quispe Flores teaches about the chunpis and performs a chunpi karpay, but his work is radically different from what was taught by don Andres. Other teachers from outside of Q’eros, or even Peru, who perform the karpay to weave the chunpis, such as Oscar Miro-Quesada and Alberto Villoldo, do so, to the best of my knowledge, in ways that are significantly different from the original teachings of don Andres.

In addition to learning about the chunpis, and the two joint karpays from don Juan Nuñez del Prado, I have had several conversations with him both about these mystical belts of power and about how a chunpi paqo differs from a “regular” paqo. As I said, there is not much information, but the points I make below will, I hope, help you understand what a chunpi paqo is and how he or she differs from a regular paqo. This is, of course, my own understanding of the teaching, and so I do not speak for don Juan.

The chunpis are energy belts that paqos purposefully add to their physical and mystical bodies to help accelerate their conscious personal development. This developmental path, called the qanchispatañan, is a teaching from don Benito Qoriwaman, and I will describe its basic features below. The qanchispatañan is crucial to understanding not only the role of the chunpis, but the special abilities to which a chunpi paqo aspires. While both pampa mesayoqs and alto mesayoqs could receive the joint karpays to weave the belts and awaken their ñawis, traditionally those paqos who actually worked as chunpi paqos were fourth-level alto mesayoqs—and they were considered candidates for the fifth level of human development.

According to don Benito’s teaching about the qanchispatañan, an apu (mountain spirit) was considered a runa micheq, or shepherd of human beings and human communities. Paqos—and specifically alto mesayoqs—developed according to how their own personal power became commensurate with each level of apu. There are three levels of apus: ayllu apus, which oversee a village or small town; llaqta apus, which serve as guardians and teachers for the people of a cluster of villages or a larger town; and suyu apus, whose power covered a wide region. A paqo would progress along the qanchispatañan by working consecutively with the power of each type of apu.

However, apus have power only through the third level (suyu apus), and so they can only help take an alto mesayoq to the third level of development. The first-level paqo is the ayllu paqo, or an ayllu alto mesayoq who has the power to shepherd a small community. A second-level paqo is a llaqta alto mesayoq, able to shepherd an intermediate-size community. A third-level paqo is a suyu alto mesayoq, who can shepherd large communities or the people across wide regions. To move beyond the third level, a paqo had to switch from working with apus to working with the teqse apukuna, or universal spirit beings. There are seven: the divine masculine, which in the Andes after the Conquest was seen as Jesus; the divine feminine, which was seen as Mother Mary; and then the major universal nature spirit beings of Mama Killa (Mother Moon), Tayta Inti (Father Sun), Tayta Wayra (Father Wind), Mama Allpa (Mother Earth), and Mama Unu (Mother Waters). These are considered teqse spirit beings because they reach all of humanity: teqse literally means “universal.” So, a paqo who achieves the fourth level of personal power is one who can (potentially) shepherd all of humanity. A fourth-level paqo was also sometimes called a kuraq paqo, or Great or High Paqo.

While all human beings have ñawis—or mystical eyes for perceiving energy—the purpose of the Chunpi Away and Ñawi K’ichay karpays for paqos is to create energetic belts that connect these separate mystical perceptual centers into a fully integrated system. The rest of this paragraph is information directly from don Juan and don Ivan. While it has been edited and contains paraphrase, I will put it in quotation marks: “The chunpis are made of Mother Earth’s sami, so there is no hucha. The belts are connectors of the ñawis, and energy flows through them. Once they are in place and the ñawis are activated, they can collect your hucha. Once they are in place, they interact with two sources of sami: from the cosmos and from the earth. This flow helps bring resolution to our hucha. The chunpis are like big wires that help energy flow, especially when connected with our heart and Inka Seed. All of these are sources of light living energy inside of us, and so we can develop heightened perception. That’s what the work of the ñawis and chunpis is about: being able to integrate information within. Then we can reflect that understanding through the quality of our own actions, feelings, affections, and thoughts. Every one of these energies helps us improve all the aspects of ourselves and our power. Once all the ñawis are connected into a system [by weaving the belts], if we have hucha in one center [ñawi], the other centers can help clear it; they can compensate for each other. Then, when something causes us a lot of heaviness, we are stronger. We can deal with it better. The chunpis help improve our personal power. Instead of separate ñawis, now they are all connected through the belts. The ñawis are natural, everyone has them. The chunpis are not natural, but are an energetic addition that improves us.”

Even after receiving these karpays, having a capacity for heightened perception does not automatically lift fourth-level paqos to the fifth level. Instead, it prepares them to be able to develop more easily to that level. What is this fifth level? It is the domain of the Inka Mallku or Tukuy Hampeq—the fully developed healer. Although paqos have to do their personal inner work to prepare for this new level of power, no teacher or spirit being can lift them to it. The doorway to the fifth level is opened when a paqo, especially a chunpi paqo, receives a very special karpay—the Mosoq Karpay, which simply means “new karpay.” It is a karpay that is given only by Taytanchis/God. The paqo is touched by the energy of God, either directly or through the mediator spirit of the hummingbird. So, truly developed chunpi paqos—those who are also tukuy hampeqs—are not only a special kind of paqo, but they are rare.

The particular power, or gift, of all chunpi paqos is healing. However, if they achieve the fifth level of development and receive the Mosoq Karpay, they are considered to have powers that go beyond the usual kinds of healing abilities—they are tukuy hampeqs, or “total healers,” meaning infallible healers. They can heal any disease or malady every time. Don Ivan Nuñez del Prado has made an interesting point, and to my mind a crucially important one, about the difference between the fourth and fifth levels of personal power. He said that it is as if the Andean mystical system has baked into itself a safeguard, so there can be no imposters to the fifth level. While paqos of all levels of development can perform healings, tukuy hampeqs experience no failures of healing. They can heal anything with just a touch—from cancer to the regrowth of an amputated limb to the resolution of emotional and mental ailments, even neurobiological ones such as schizophrenia. There certainly are instances where fourth-level paqos have facilitated almost miraculous healings, but these are rare occurrences. As don Juan says, healing at the fourth and lower levels is hit and miss. In contrast, at the fifth level, complete and total healing is the guarantee. So, while there may be “imposters” to the lower levels of development, there can be no faking being a fifth-level paqo.

Being able to tune energy seems to be crucial to achieving the infallibility of the chunpi paqos as tukuy hampeqs. In the part of the training in Andean mysticism where we weave the chunpis and awaken our ñawis, we learn to tune and move energy. Tuning energy means raising the frequency of sami (the light living energy) up the spectrum, first to munay (love and will) and then, by incorporating two other kinds of energy into the munay, to hampi munay (healing love). From there we can raise the vibration of hampi munay to willka energy, the most powerful restructuring and creational energy on the healing spectrum. There is still another level of tuning, where we move from willka energy to tawantin energy, which again requires a specific protocol for merging different kinds of energy to create this pinnacle energy of wholeness and unity. However, the doorway to all healing is munay, for this energy of love and will allows us to connect deeply with the person who seeks healing. Through this munay connection, we touch their hucha directly. Without being willing and able to touch the other’s hucha, it is unlikely that there will be any lasting healing. Not surprisingly, then, in don Andres’s paqo school, most of the month-long training was about learning to generate munay, tune it to these healing frequencies, and use it. You could say, therefore, that a chunpi paqo is a master of munay.

At the fourth and lower levels, healing mostly is accomplished by sending sami or munay (or one of the other tunings of munay) to the other person to activate that person’s self-healing capacity. The paqo usually does not heal directly—he or she actually is creating temporary conditions in their clients’ energy body and physical body so that they can marshal their own energy for healing. Thus, healing can be a challenge—and hit or miss, as don Juan says. While people might improve for a while, the chances are that they will revert back to their old ways, beliefs, and states of energy. But at the fifth level, the fully developed chunpi paqo—the tukuy hampeq—can transmit power through intention or touch and absolutely, without fail directly heal the other person. They have the power to restructure the body and soul.

From the little information we have or can surmise about chunpi paqos, I trust you can now better understand why (in the previous generation of paqos) the joint karpay to weave the belts and awaken the mystical eyes was freely available, but that working as and being recognized as a chunpi paqo was relatively uncommon—and that becoming a tukuy hampeq was a rarity. The prophecies tell us, however, that we are living in a time when the fifth level of personal power will be much easier to achieve. That is why many paqos—including you and me and other non-Peruvian and non-indigenous people who are trained in the tradition—are actively working to develop ourselves and aspiring to reach this heightened expression of our Inka Seed.