In 2004 we co-funded – along with our native Shipibo friends Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez, Don Leoncio Garcia Sampaya, Ines Ramirez Cairuna, Jose’ Garcia Ventura, Eunice Garcia Ramirez, and Esther Garcia Ramirez Maggs – Ashi Meraya, a unique Shipibo shamanic retreat centre with a great ethnobotanical garden, in the Peruvian Amazon jungle.

The Shipibo family. Right to left: Heberto, Ines, Esther, Eunice, Don Jose’, Ruth and Erica

Photo Credit: Stephen Witte

Shipibo family and guests in Ashi Meraya

Photo Credit: Stephen Witte

In Ashi Meraya, guests may experience in the context of deeply transformative and life changing retreats:

• Shamanic healing
• A very intense schedule of Ayahuasca ceremonies, up to four times a week!!
• Amazonian Sweat Lodge rituals - Unique to Ashi Meraya
• Cleansing ritual herbal baths (baños de limpie)
• Purifying rainforest clay baths (baños de barro)
• Luck-changing ritual flower baths (baños de florecimiento), to attract prosperity and good fortune in business, love and friendship
• Ancestral Shipibo shamanic rituals
• The traditional Shamanic Plant Teachers Diet, for those interested in the initiation into Amazonian shamanism, in the Shipibo tradition, and wish to enter into a more rigorous shamanic apprenticeship.

Overview of the ”Ashi Meraya” shamanic healing and retreat centre in the jungle, near the Allpahuayo Mishana Reserve
Photo Credit: Francesco Sammarco

Shipibo Mythopoesis: Ashi Meraya

Shipibo legends tell the story of Ashi, the primordial Meraya, the very first among all Merayas who shape-shifted himself into a semi-divine being, after having obtained unequaled supernatural powers. Ashi - the Grand Meraya – was the first to discover, identify and give names to the different teacher plants, trees and vines of the Amazon rainforest. He was honored and revered by all the Shipibo people and shamans alike as a semi-divine being blessed by supernatural powers. To honor the memory of Ashi, the greatest of all Shipibo Merayas, we decided to give our shamanic retreat centre in the jungle the name of Ashi Meraya.

”Shipibo Meraya”, Visionary painting by Shipibo Artist Dennis Laurenzio Ramirez Lino

Photo Credit: Laurencio Ramirez Cairuna

Ashi Meraya is first and foremost a Centre for Diffusion and Dissemination of Amazonian Plant Medicine and a School of Traditional Shamanic Apprenticeship. Here you will witness and take part in ancestral indigenous shamanic practices, and experience intense healing in the framework of sacred rituals with Ayahuasca, the visionary “Vine of the Soul” and a dreaming journey with the plant teacher Toe’.

It’s thanks to the inspiring work and unpublished manuscripts left by Shipibo writer – and himself a Meraya – Don Guillermo Ramirez Guimaraes (“Soi Rahua”), to their discovery by Heberto Hiran Garcia Ramirez and to the memories of Don Laurencio Ramirez Cairuna – former Shipibo shaman (who apprenticed, as Don Alfredo, with the last of the Shipibo Bancos), writer and storyteller – that we are able to re-awake the spirit of this myth deeply embedded in the Shipibo-Conibo culture, and in its shamanic traditions.

We have now developed new, exciting additions to our Ayahuasca and Shamanic Plant Diet/Initiation retreat programmes and offer participants a direct exposure to the Merayas’ rituals. Click here to read more about the ancestral shamanic rituals of the Shipibo top-ranking shamans.

For those who are not familiar with the word “Meraya” this is the Shipibo version of the mestizo word “Muraya”, and refers to one of the three topmost category of shamans in the Peruvian Amazon, alongside that of the “Banco” and the “Sumiruna“. One could also be a “Banco Meraya“. That of the “Meraya“, in particular, was the specialization of the Shipibo people of the middle Ucayali.

Learn more about Bancos by clicking the link below:

• Bancos

We invite you to experience – in a supportive, friendly and safe environment – the sheer power and beauty of the Amazonian teachings of Ayahuasca and Plant Teachers, with the native people that for millennia have handed down this knowledge in an impeccable way, developing a most intimate relationship with the jungle.

Our promise to you: to have a genuine, direct and profound exposure to a wealth of rare indigenous rituals and entheogenic shamanic traditions & walk your personal path to vision, knowledge and healing.

In the process your retreat will directly support native people’s economy, and will guarantee and encourage the continuation and transmission of the ancestral Shipibo shamanic practices.

All our retreats are ongoing, with Customized Dates all year round, for individual guests, couples and small groups. On 30th of December 2010, we will be hosting for the first time ever a very rare and unique event focused on the ancestral rituals of the Merayas, performed by different native Shipibo guest shamans. Places are limited.

Details will be posted soon on this site. Email us on info@elmundomagico.org for more details. Watch this space!!