Icaros, sacred Ayahuasca chants
The Icaros are sacred songs that the Amazonian shamans make in the Ayahuasca ceremonies. These magical chants are important when Ayahuasca is ingested, they help lead the visions and teachings of mother Ayahuasca. The Icaros guide the spirit of the participants who live this experience, but they also sing to any object to charge it with energy and thus cleanse and protect it.
Due to their importance for the Peruvian Amazonian peoples, the shamanic Icaros were declared by the Ministry of Culture as intangible cultural heritage. These chants contribute to the living culture of our country.
They are used ancestrally by the Ayahuasquero masters and healers and they are in charge of making the Icaros heard and felt during the spiritual healing ceremonies.
The importance of the Icaros, sacred Ayahuasca chants
The Icaros were formerly sung in Amazonian dialects of South America, however now they are written and chanted in Spanish, Quechua and other languages according to the experience of each Ayahuasquero Master (shaman). These magical and repetitive songs allude to certain plants, animals and elements of the local landscape that possess power or symbolism. On a practical and operational level, they provide more depth to the Ayahuasca ceremonies since they make the participants lose contact with reality and quickly enter the ethereal world. Each shaman or healer has his own Icaros, as he is the owner of his experience and wisdom, and for having received them through his dreams, visions, from his ancestor and teacher or directly from nature.
The Icaros acts and transcends through vibration and sound frequency. The subconscious and conscious knowledge is what guides and orients the Master Ayahuasquero at the moment of choosing the most suitable Icaro for the participants. During the healing rituals, concoctions of plants are used that are ingested by the Shamans. Our Master Ayahuasquero through the Icaros guide healing, shape individual and collective energy, taking care of the integrity of the group. The Icaros allows us to metabolize visions by determining subjective content at different levels of healing, it guides us in work, love, health, well-being and self-exploration and also helps us to contact our divinity, mother earth and the energy of the universe. At the same time, in the real plane, the Master Ayahuasquero detects the patient’s spiritual strength and energy, immerses himself in the participant’s body, sees everything he has inside him and heals through his Icaros.
Physical Effect of the Icaros in an Ayahuasca Retreat
The expulsion of physical, chemical, mental and spiritual toxins through vomiting is the first sensation in an Ayahuasca ceremony. The Icaros or sacred chants make the participant experience a desire to vomit, along with perceptions of buzzing or vibrations. After various physical or mental manifestations, there is a tendency to vomit within the Ayahuasca ceremony, allowing all negative energies and frequencies or spiritual manifestations to be expelled. According to the experience of our Ayahuasquero Masters, it is said that it implies «returning or expelling to restore with different energy what has been absorbed in excess and that does not belong to us » this real mystery is a liberating experience that helps physical detoxification and mental allowing the recovery of the patient.
Therapeutic effect of the Icaros in an Ayahuasca ceremony
At the level of the transcendental, there is an intense structural reorganization, learning, reconnection with spirituality, accompanied by a rational understanding of the subconscious contents that emerge in the visions guided by Ayahuasca. The Ayahuasca mother, through the Icaros, allows the evacuation of deeply repressed affective-emotional contents at subconscious levels, allows liberation, reconciliation and conscious integration. The work with sacred plants such as Ayahuasca is a self-analysis; This capacity emerges from the inner being of each patient in a symbolic way through the visions that will be interpreted the next day by our shaman and understood through the days and weeks by the patients. The results of the Ayahuasca ceremonies are efficient and the rates of depression, stress, self-centeredness, addictions and also other mostly unknown illnesses are healed through therapeutic work with Ayahuasca and other sacred plants. Without a doubt, the Icaros are a fundamental part of healing through mother Ayahuasca.