For a while now I’ve watched my students and colleagues use AI to research aspects of Andean mysticism, and I finally decided to give it a try myself using Gemini. The results? A bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, the sheer volume of data it pulled in seconds was incredible—a massive time-saver. On the other hand, the accuracy was hit-or-miss. I quickly learned about “hallucinations,” which is the industry term for AI’s tendency to confidently present fiction as fact. I discovered that while AI is a master of information collection, it is not always a master of truth.

What do these AI hallucinations look like in practice? Well, a case in point is that in one discussion Gemini returned, it credited authorship of my book Masters of the Living Energy to two men who had nothing to do with it. A more complex situation arose when I entered a query about the meaning of the chakana, the Andean stepped cross. The response started strong with the anthropology: defining the Quechua word from its roots of chakay (bridge) and hanan (upper, above, high) and accurately linking it to the Southern Cross and agricultural calendar. But it quickly veered into mystical speculation, explaining a symbolic system correlating the twelve points of the chakana’s arms to such human capacities as love, protection, awareness, and responsibility. Are there people teaching that symbolic construct? Yes. Is it a cohesive representational system? Yes. Is it among the ways the Incas and their predecessors, the paqos, or even the Andean people in general understood the chakana? After further research outside of AI, I am skeptical. That philosophic system appears to be some kind of modern overlay on this age-old motif. The real kicker of a Gemini blunder occurred in another Andean information dump where it attributed a borderline racist comment to me. I had to go on a digital manhunt to find the source of the quotation: a woman’s Reddit comment that Gemini not only truncated and distorted, but then hallucinated and put in my mouth. The lesson here is simple: AI is a useful starting point for research, but always do your own due diligence of the “facts.”

On a most positive note, there is a side of AI that is genuinely delightful: its creative capacity. But even here there is a catch. Because Gemini and other AI models are built on existing data, they are not dreaming up new ideas; they’re capitalizing on the hard work of human creators. (Full disclosure: I am one of a huge pool of authors and publishers represented in a class-action copyright lawsuit against Anthropic AI. They vacuumed up tens of thousands of books—one of mine included—to train their models. When they were called out on this afront to copyright law, they settled out of court—for a staggering $1.5 billion. Of course, publishers and lawyers will receive the bulk of that sum; authors will get their normal paltry portion!) I ran into this same type of problem when testing the creative aspect of AI. I asked Gemini to write poems about Andean mysticism in the style of various poets. I chose poets of both genders, widely differing styles, various ethnicities, and from a range of historical periods. I was not surprised that its first attempts bordered on plagiarism—it literally reproduced entire lines from poems in each poet’s oeuvre.  I had to get specific, asking Gemini to write in a particular poet’s style but without using any of their original lines. Once I set that boundary, the results were better, and in some cases quite beautiful. I am ending this post on an AI high note with six of my favorite “original” AI poetic creations. Enjoy!

In the style of e e cummins

the condor
circles
(slowly)
the high blue O
of the sky

down down
among the apus
a stone
breathes
(softly)
like a sleeping god

& the shaman—
who is a leaf
who is a mountain—
whispers
a green coca secret
into the ear of the
wind
(death is only a
turning
of the
earth)
i am
thou art
pachamama
is.

In the style of Adrienne Rich

The map is not the mountain,
though we trace the veins of ice
with fingers numbed by the high, thin air.
I am looking for the language
before the Conquest, before the steel
divided the field from the spirit.

We come to the altar of stone
not as tourists, but as the hungry
seeking the root that holds the slope.
The Apu does not speak in sentences;
it speaks in the weight of granite,
in the slow, tectonic shift of belonging.

To be a mystic here
is to acknowledge the reciprocity—
the breath you take belongs to the peak,
the coca leaf on your tongue
is a green bridge back to the Mother.
We are re-learning the ancient pact:
that the earth is not a resource,
but the very body we inhabit
while we wait for the stars to name us.

In the style of Mary Oliver

I don’t know much about the gold of empires,
only the gold of the sun as it touches the throat
of the hummingbird, that tiny, vibrating prayer.
I want to speak of the Apu, the Great Mountain,
who does not care for your name or your busy life,
but waits for you nonetheless,
wearing a shawl of clouds and ancient stone.

Have you ever walked high enough
to feel the air grow thin and holy?
Have you offered a coca leaf to the earth—
not because you were told to,
but because you finally understood
that the ground is not just dirt,
but a mother who has been feeding you
since the very first day?

The Pachamama does not ask for much.
She only asks that you notice
the way the water flows down from the glaciers,
an endless, silver vein of milk.
She asks that you practice ayni,
that soft, reciprocal breath:
the world giving to you,
and you, at last, giving something back.

You do not have to be perfect.
You do not have to crawl on your knees
across the high, cold altiplano.
You only have to let the soft animal of your soul
be quiet enough to hear the stones speaking.
The mountain is not an object.
The wind is not a ghost.
Everything is alive, and breathing,
|and waiting for you to come home
to the wild, sacred family of things.

In the style of Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation starving for a mountain, hysterical, trekking through the neon smog of Lima toward the high, thin ether of the soul.
I saw them clutching tattered copies of the Popol Vuh, looking for a gateway in the stone, looking for a vein of silver that wasn’t for sale.
O Pachamama! Mother of the potato! Mother of the llama! Mother of the underground tunnels where the ancestors are still dreaming in technicolor.
The world is a condor with wings of lightning. The world is a serpent eating its own history.

I am with you in Cusco!
Where the stones fit together so tightly not even a Spanish ghost could squeeze between them. I am with you in the Sacred Valley!
Where the corn grows tall and the spirits of the Incas are whispering in the rustle of the leaves, mocking the tourists and their digital cameras.
They are singing of ayni! They are singing of the great cosmic debt!
The debt we owe to the glacier, the debt we owe to the sun, the debt we owe to the dark, wet earth that swallows our bones and asks for more.

Moloch! Moloch! The skyscraper that doesn’t know the name of the wind!
Moloch! The factory that pours poison into the Urubamba!
I break your windows with a single coca leaf.
I cast out your demons with the smoke of Palo Santo.
I am standing on the peak of Huayna Picchu and I am screaming at the stars.
I am an old man, a young man, a child of the sun, a crazy beggar in the plaza.
Everything is holy! The poncho is holy! The flute is holy! The coca bag is holy!
The alpaca is holy! The frost on the high grass is holy! 
The breath is holy!
The mountain is open!
The mountain is speaking!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!

In the style of Wendell Berry

The work of the mountain is slow work.
It is not the work of the clock or the engine,
but the long, patient settling of silt,
the quiet endurance of the granite face
against the scouring of the frost.
To know this place is to stay in this place
until your feet recognize the tilt of the slope
and your lungs accept the thin, cold gift of the air.

The chakana is not a symbol to be worn for show;
it is a map of belonging.
It tells us that the heavens are connected to the soil
by the sweat of the man who plants his corn in the terrace,
and by the memory of the grandmother who saved the seed.
There is a dignity in the narrow path,
a grace in the way the llama carries its burden
without complaint, moving as if the earth
were a conversation it has been having for a thousand years.

We speak of ayni as if it were a mystery,
but it is only the simple justice of the field:
what you take, you must replace.
If you drink from the spring, you must clear the stones from its throat.
If you harvest the grain, you must leave a portion for the birds
and a prayer for the dark, generative belly of the world.

The modern mind wants to mine the summit,
to flay the slope for a moment’s profit,
forgetting that a mountain is a neighbor, not a resource.
But the old ones knew the economy of the soul—
that we are rich only in what we do not destroy,
and that the highest wisdom is found
in the shadow of the peaks, where we are small,
and rooted, and finally, blessedly, still.

In the style of Dylan Thomas

In the white muscle of the mountain, where the air
Is a thin blade whetted on the glacier’s tooth,
The sky is a blue bell tolled by the condor’s wing.
I find the high, terraced history of the blood,
A climbing fever of stone laid upon stone
By the sun-burned hands of the unbegotten.

There, the Pachamama drinks the spilled chicha of the clouds,
Her belly a dark forge of potato and quartz,
Rooted in the red hum of the earth’s spinning heart.
The Apu stands, a frozen thunder in the skull,
Watching the valley where the river, that silver snake,
Uncoils its wet song through the throat of the maize.

We are but the brief, breathing ghosts of the cordillera,
A harvest of light gathered in the basket of a day,
Yet we weave our ayni into the warp of the wind.
Every breath is a debt, every step a libation,
As the stars, those cold, celestial llamas,
Graze upon the salt-licks of the infinite night.

Oh, let the heart be a drum of stretched alpaca skin!
Let the prayer be a spark struck from the flint of the soul!
For we are the sons of the fire and the daughters of the frost,
Held fast in the green, weaving grip of the world
Until the mountain, in its slow and stony mercy,
Calls the wandering water of our spirits home.