PROLOGUE: I’ve attempted to provide readers with the closest verbatim English translation of the prophecy recounted by don Benito Qoriwaman Vargas, as shared in his idiosyncratic mixture of Quechua and Spanish, to the best of my recollection.
A portentously rarefied wind slithered down from venerated Apu Pachatusan’s unmistakably serrated summit, flowing throughout the ancient Inka stone corridors and stair-stepped terraces of nearby Tipón water sanctuary as if searching for a misplaced prophecy. I recall it as an uncommonly bleak, bone-chilling July night in 1983, a winter night so cold even the stars appeared to rub their hands together, coalescing and luminously revealing themselves as the celestial Chaska Mayu—the sacred river of stars (i.e., our Milky Way’s Rift).
My then-mentor in Peru’s southeastern highland altomisayoq shaman-priesthood ways, the famed Kuraq Akulleq (‘master ritual masticator of coca’) from Wasao, don Benito Qoriwaman Vargas—he who walked like a rumor whispered by Qosqomanta’s mountain deities — sat before me, old as prayer, young as lightning. Directly in front of him, lovingly placed upon the hard-packed dirt floor of his one-room adobe abode, lay his tenaciously treasured tattered unkhuña, so worn by age and ritual engagement that the threads themselves were imprinted with the memory of every Haywarikuy k’intu qhaway divination ceremony held upon them.
(NOTE: the unkhuña, or ‘manta de mesa’ as most Spanish-speaking mestizo healers commonly call it, is a ceremonially employed fabric textile customarily woven from prized alpaca hair that serves as a ground cloth upon which coca leaves, old coins, or certain kinds of guinea pig bones are randomly tossed for divination purposes. Akin to don Celso, don Benito’s humility and unassuming presence always reminded me of the vital role played by indigenous wisdom and ritual artistry in ways that benefit planetary and personal healing, inspiring respect and admiration in people from all walks of life).
Gently holding a handful of fresh, unblemished, sweet-tasting coca leaves, he softened his grip and with heartfelt, prayerful, trance-like intention, he allowed the coca leaves to gracefully cascade out of the wrinkled palm of his right hand and onto the unkhuña—carefully observing the coca leaves scatter across this threadbare alpaca cloth woven long before my parents had learned each other’s names. He released the coca leaves with a gesture that felt less like a human motion and more like a spell deciding to reveal itself. The leaves fell, dancing in delight, as though surprised to find themselves alive. This sacred act exemplifies indigenous spiritual practices that connect us to our sentient, living planet earth, each other, and the universal wisdom ways of Spirit, inspiring us to embrace rituals that promote healing, altruistic empathy, and peaceful self-awareness.
And then something impossible happened. The pattern configured itself as an exquisite mandala-like ‘flower of life’—faintly, subtly—as if the leaves were breathing, or better said, trying to crawl back into the story that gave them shape when the world was young. Don Benito’s eyes flashed—two small eclipses shifting into alignment. He leaned in, listening, not to the leaves but to the timelessly vast interstellar-like silence pulsing behind them. “They are speaking to my soul,” he murmured. “They say the world has forgotten how to hush itself and truthfully hear.”
PART II
The Time of the Wounded World
The tale he told rose from his throat like smoke escaping a crater. “There will come an age,” he said, “when pachamamita linda, nuestra santísima madre tierra (our beloved Earth Mother) limps beneath the weight of forgotten promises.” And as he spoke, the shadows in the room thickened—not dark, but full, as if long forgotten mountain spirits had crowded close to see whether we were worthy of the story.
He spoke of rivers turning venom-black, of forests collapsing like exhausted elders, of animals falling mid-stride as though gravity had decided it no longer trusted them. But the magic of the tale was this: even the prophecies of ruin glimmered with strange hope, like cracked mirrors catching firelight.
For he said that before the last tree bowed, before the final fish sank into the dry riverbed silt, transported and safely sheltered within Hanaq pacha hamusqa’s (“that which has come from the heavens”) bountiful belly, the Qallariq Wiñay Amawt’akuna, Willarina Waqaychaykuna, and Yachachakiqkuna (“First Generation Sages, Story Keepers, and Ancient Wisdom Teachers”)—those born from the first dream of Earth—the ancient kin of stone, cloud, and fire—would rise again.
Not with weapons.
Not with sermons.
But with memory.
They would stand as the Intikillaruna Kawsaypa Yachayshaspakurkuy (“living body of solar-lunar human consciousness”), the prophesied predecessors of our existing K’uychipa Aylluy Pachamamam (“Mother Earth’s Rainbow Tribe”)—cosmic progeny of the Sun and Moon, woven from the colors hidden in sorrow, summoned by the planet herself to remind humanity how to love a world that keeps giving despite everything.
Eyes-of-Light, Daughter of Stars
She arrived long before any of us,” he said, his voice thinning to a thread pulled through heaven. “Her name is K’anchay Ñawin” (‘Eyes of Light’). “She is the fifth Achulla Ususi” (‘Venerable Daughter’) sent to us by Hatun Willka Illa T’eqsimuyu Wiracochan Pachayachachic” (‘Sublimely Great Divine Creator-Creatrix of All Worldly Dimensions’). She came to help restore Pachamama’s habitable land after the last Ununuyuy Pachakuti” (‘Great Flood World Reversal’). Once he uttered the words Ununuyuy Pachakuti, don Benito’s weary body seemed to defy gravity as he closed his eyes and reclined gracefully on a barely recognizable Llama-hair blanket, lovingly sewn by the calloused hands of his wife, Nate (short for Natalia), in a storied prelude to their wedding. Their tiny bedroom also housed a fireplace that served as an open-stove kitchen, guinea pig sanctuary, and a designated space for coca leaf divination and despacho formulations, all permeated with the pungent aroma of palo santo and wira-wira incense.
As don Benito lay completely still with peacefully closed eyes, as though he was fast asleep, I viscerally intuited and then experienced in vista (‘shamanic sight’) that he was reliving his countless pilgrimages to the village of Charazani in the Bolivian Altiplano, where K’anchay Ñawin has been revered and paid ceremonial obeisance by the famed Kallawaya hampikamayoqkuna (‘healers’) at the legendary temple complex of Tiwanaku since its rising from the Pacific coastline during the Late Pleistocene epoch. Suddenly, I felt my inner vision become highly somatized, as if growing a distinctly separate body…a body not of blood, bone, tissue, flesh, skin, or hair, but a newly discovered transmutational human form comprised of wave, particle, vibration, frequency, rhythmic pulse, and stellar or solar radiation — I was thoroughly stunned!
Unsurprisingly, at the exact moment of my having what I’d call an unsolicited experience of photonic transmogrification, or better said, an unexpected bestowal of cosmic apotheosis, don Benito abruptly sat up from his once reclining position, widely opened his otherworldly eyes, intently gazed into mine, and without missing a beat, continued with his mythic tale about K’anchay Ñawin. “From the Huchuy Cruz (‘Southern Cross’) she descended—not falling but choosing. Lake Titicaca received her like a chalice receiving its first sip of eternity. Where her feet touched the water, moonlight thickened into silver vines that curled around her ankles as though greeting an old friend. Her eyes—those legendary Eyes-of-Light—saw through time the way river stones see through water.”
“She saw the greed that would one day spread like frost across the human heart. She saw the fish vanishing, the birds dropping like forgotten prayers, the forests unraveling into shadow.”
“And still she smiled.”
“Because she also saw the ones who would return. The ones who would remember — the Yuyaykuykuna. The ones who would stand in the ruins singing creation back into coherence. The K’uychipa Aylluy Pachamamam–The Rainbow-Born.”
PART III
The Re-Membering
Don Benito’s mythic truth continued to unfold, as mountains tend to reveal themselves only to those who climb reverently and far enough to risk life-changing communion with an Apu-Guia. He spoke of the Story Keepers—the Willarina Waqaychaykuna, “those peculiar souls who carry a flicker of the original fire in their marrow. Those who do not age like ordinary beings…they organically deepen.”
“From them would rise the new-old tribe, the luminous assembly of those who dream in fractalized rainbow-spectral color even when the world sleeps in grayscale…the K’uychipa Aylluy Pachamaman.”
“They would teach humankind…
how to kneel correctly before a river,
how to greet a tree without lying,
how to pray in a language made of breath, water, unhidden shadow, and unhindered gratitude.”
“They would remind us…
That peace is not a treaty—it is a skill.
A discipline.
A way of arranging one’s inner weather so the storms do not spill outward.”
The Return of Beauty
And then—dear ones, the room again changed. The fire cracked with sudden joy. The smoke twisted into forms that might have been flesh-and-blood animals, ancestral tutelary guardians, or interspecies tribal memories disguised as animals. As was commonly the case during such Kuntur-mediated paqokuna seances, don Benito’s voice became wayra’s persona — the wind’s voice:
“One day the whole Earth will heal,” he affirmed, upon which even the flower-of-life patterned coca leaves seemed to lean closer.
He spoke of clear rivers snaking through reborn valleys.
He saw forests rising again like green laughter.
He saw children playing without bargaining with the future.
He saw communities choosing leaders not for loudness or lineage but for the rare and precious skill of putting the collective heart above their own.
He saw a world remembering how to be a world.
The Final Revelation
At the end, his voice softened until it sounded like the inside of a shell. “The day approaches when all nations will know they were kept alive by the stubborn hope of those who refused to abandon ceremony.” He spoke of rituals as medicines, songs as technologies, and stories as calibration tools for realigning the human spirit with the pulse of creation.
And then—in that cold, trembling room—I saw it:
A great womb of light,
cosmic and tender,
opening like dawn through stone.
We were being called home.
Not to place.
Not to doctrine.
But to the center of our Cosmic Mother’s heart
where all things
remember why they exist.
The Choice of the Rainbow-Born
Here is the truth hidden within our mythic life: The prophecy waits within every living ribcage, pacing like a wild animal, hoping someone will unlatch the door. We are not spectators. We are participants—co-authors of the age to come. The K’uychipa Aylluy Pachamamam, the Rainbow-Born, are not arriving. They are awakening—in us, through us, as us.
The backstrap loom is humming.
The threads glow faintly.
The pattern is paradoxically incomplete and overflowing with unimaginable possibilities.
Whether it finishes as a shortsighted tragedy
or transcendent renewal
depends on the hands
that dare to weave it.
So choose.
Choose with courage.
Choose with stubborn devotion.
Choose with the outrageous love of a species finally growing up.
Walk not merely in beauty—
walk as beauty incarnate,
as our re-membered future…
…as the Taripaypacha prophecy choosing a body.
Remember this…experience it…BE IT–Hinayá!
ADDENDUM
The above K’uychipa Aylluy Pachamaman tale, recounted by don Benito, is the inspirational basis for what many of you have heard me describe as the Self-Selected Rainbow Tribe: Prophecy, Fantasy, or Reality…It’s YOUR Choice! It is also the raison d’être for my dedication to honor and safeguard the mythic culture and ancestral shamanic wisdom of Heart Island’s aboriginal and mestizo peoples. I know that the day K’anchay Ñawin spoke about is upon us. I pray our seven generations shall be prepared to accept such a task. The task of again becoming co-creative luminous strands in the tapestry of life-beautifying sacred relationships comprising our ancestrally prophesied Rainbow Tribe, all of us capable of beneficent human evolution as an intergalactic species committed to anchoring a veritable Cosmic Culture on Earth–a LOVE imbued humankind capable of regenerative species-wide evolutionary partnership with our elder relatives from the stars. Such is my vision of the K’uychipa Ayllukuna Pachamamam. I urge all of us to continue dreaming it into blissful manifestation nurtured in thought, word, and action–Aho Mitakuye Oyasin!
Allin ruwaykuna paqarisqa munaymanta, nunamanta, yachaymanta, huñunákun! –don Oscar
(‘Right Action, Borne of Compassionate Spiritual Wisdom, Unites!)
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