Icaros ~ The Fruit of Dieta ~  Sonic Invocations for Guardianship, Connection and Healing

*Please note that this is part 3 of a x3 part series. Part 2 is on Plant Dieta and part 1 is on Curanderismo (the traditional animist healing arts).

Writing about icaros is somewhat challenging because it’s an experience that typically takes place in an altered state of consciousness that involves amplified feeling and is expressed within the imaginal, in a way that can be difficult to capture in langauge. It’s also an emergent process… spontaneous and unique every time, so what is written can only ever be a generalisation. Admitting that I can’t really capture what transpires in words somehow frees me up for the challenge of trying anyway. I hope it will be useful or at least interesting to those who choose to come along for the ride of describing the impossible.

My description of this process is informed by my background of tradition hopping around the Amazon for about a year before undergoing a x4 year, full-time apprenticeship with my Shipibo teachers within the Mahua-Lopez lineage, in the Peruvian Amazon. I have then spent another decade honing this craft in my own way. My way of working with icaros has been greatly influenced by my experience within lineage, and yet my work is unmistakably my own in both essence and expression. What I share below is my understanding of what is transpiring based on this specific vantage point.

What are Icaros?

Woven invocation… archetypal melodic dance… journey through the inner mandala of consciousness… devotional prayer and technology of sentient healing resonance

For me, icaros are a kind of woven sonic tapestry that is born out of a deep devotional partnership with the animate force and living intelligence of an ‘other-than-human’ being such as a plant, stone or bone.

“Not only do all medicinal plants have a song, all parts of Earth have a song… every living phenomenon, every ecozone, eco-range, mountain and body of water. The world is sound.” ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner in Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm

This is no ordinary song, the potency of one’s icaros comes not from crafty musicianship, but rather the depth and quality of one’s dietas in combination with one’s skill in invoking the animate forces of those same dieta’s in an attempt to weave a safe energetic ceremonial container, open doorways into spiritual landscapes, call on doctoring/ healing forces and create pathways for participants to journey upon through the inner realms of consciousness.

An icaro in this tradition, typically consists of words that describe the particular energetic work that is being enacted by the practitioner, in combination with very specific rhythms and melodies that arise in direct response to what is being felt or perceived within one’s “mareacion” (a word we use to describe the trance state or altered state of consciousness necessary for icaros to function) or according to the guidance of the animate forces we are partnering with.

While anyone can learn to sing the words and melodies of someone else’s icaros, an icaro isn’t a true icaro without the force of the dieta moving through it. Dieta is what imbues the icaro with a particular resonance and takes it from an ordinary song to a “functional working song” as my teachers describe it.

No relationship (dieta), no icaro.

This also means that students of this tradition must continuously maintain and deepen those dieta relationships to keep their icaros strong and clear of distortion.

This is not to say that ordinary songs aren’t powerful or healing, of course, they can be! It’s simply that icaros are a very specific energetic healing technology that arises at the intersection of the human and the other-than-human. It isn’t always easy to discern the difference between an icaro and regular song in the beginning, it can take time for folks to develop the perceptual sensitivity that allows them to see/feel the particular resonance that comes with true icaros and the effects they are enacting in the ceremonial space.

Being ‘sung’ by the animate forces of nature

“The Dineh understand that all beings, be they star or stone, are condensations of sound, solidified vibration. To connect with their medicine, or power, of lightning and star, one must sound them” – Joan Halifax

The basic idea is that everything in existence, both seen and unseen, has its own unique vibrational resonance that can be expressed through sound. By learning to commune and listen deeply to these beings (the animate forces of the plants, animals, planets, stones, places, deities, faeries etc) we have the opportunity to entrain to those resonances and then invoke their animate essence through certain melodies, rhythms, and words. When we sing an Icaro, we are architecting an energetic design or blueprint into the subtle etheric bodies of the receiver in partnership with the animate being(s) in question. They then use that design as a pathway to travel on to do their work. These song designs also act as keys to certain inner landscapes and mysteries as well as vehicles for the participant to travel on. It is possible to transport your participants into the spiritual “world” or “mandala” of your plant dietas through the correct use of the icaros.

It is the job of the curandero to follow the lead of their dietas and allow the icaros to arise and lead the way whilst maintaining a connection to their central Self. This is a dance or relationship where, at certain times, your consciousness may need to be in the lead, but for the majority of the time, you are following your dieta. This could be considered a type of partial and temporary possession in a sense, usually taking many years of training to master and requiring extraordinary flexibility of consciousness, as well as trust (it can be a very vulnerable process), the ability to draw boundaries and to be able to hold one’s center when very large and powerful forces are moving through.

Resources of power

There are different traditions and approaches to working with icaros. In all the Mestizo curandero-led ceremonies I’ve participated in, it seems they mostly have an internal library of icaros, these generally have set melodies and words (although sometimes a word may be changed to meet the situation) and will be repeated ceremony after ceremony. The words are generally simple and repetitive, and each song is individually defined.

The indigenous Shipibo who I studied with, work somewhat differently. Instead of gathering songs with fixed words and melodies, they have what I call an internal  ‘sonic working vocabulary’. Our teachers say that the plants gave to them this language to support them to do this work in ceremony. It is different from their day-to-day vocabulary, although unmistakably still Shipibo.

These words are dense with meaning that is quite specific to the “mareacion” or world of trance, and they describe specific energetic actions that only make sense within that realm. These words are combined with melodies that arise directly from one’s dietas or that are gifted from one’s teachers.
In this tradition, while melodies are repeated ceremony after ceremony, no two icaros are the same because the words that are used describe what is unfolding in real-time. In this tradition, each icaro is a unique, spontaneous, emergent outpouring in response to what is unfolding between the singer, the animate forces of the dieta and the receiver. Songs can go for long periods of time and often flow into one another without stopping. A practitioner may sing for an hour or more without stopping, the end of one icaro flowing seamlessly into the beginning of the next one.

If you understand the language, you can follow along with what is happening within another practitioner’s mareacion, based on the specific words being used

“the process by which these songs emerge can be seen somewhat as “algorithmic.” This being where a set of “procedures” are applied to the infinite database of sonic possibilities, including the speech of the immortals and sounds of the forest; the celestial children’s language, onomatopoetic intonations and glossolalia emerge like a certain unplanned, dynamic computation that most suddenly allows the song to act as a medium through which the spirits can make their phenomenal existence known” -Jonathon Miller-Weisberger & Sonia Gaind-Krishnan

How are they received?

Through Dieta

Typically, icaros are received through a depth relational practice called ‘dieta’ (see part 2 of this series for a more in-depth look at Plant Dieta). The form of dieta can vary depending on the particular tradition and lineage you study but essentially a dieta is a process of retreating into a quiet and wildish place (ideally) for a particular period (most commonly 2-12 weeks), preferably with little or no contact with other people, fasting and/or eating a very bland diet and avoiding pretty much all distractions except the animate relationship you are building and perhaps your teacher who is giving instruction.

Coming into a devotional, one-pointed focus on a particular plant or being that you want to come into relationship with and learn from; you take them in with all your senses; tasting them, smelling them, feeling them, learning their shapes, colours, and textures and essentially bathing in their presence every day, and speak with them in the night through dream and ceremony. Approaching them with the sincere heartfelt intention to come into partnership. A successful dieta will result in you and the plant in question becoming energetically bonded, which results in various gifts and capacities you did not have before (and also comes with many risks and sacrifices explained in Part 2 of this series). These are generally healing, seership, and guardianship powers.

Transmission, inheritance and grace

Icaros can also sometimes be received spontaneously without having been on dieta, perhaps a result of a karmic connection or ancestral gift, although this is rare.

They can be passed down from teacher to student, through a kind of energetic transmission process, sometimes this can happen directly in the moment and sometimes it happens in a more osmotic process by sitting in a ceremony with one’s teacher for years. This will usually take place alongside dietas.

Sometimes they can be carried within families and are passed down through the generations.

How they are used

Here I describe my own experience of using the icaros, yet you may get a vastly different picture if you were to speak to someone else. Though this art was passed onto me by my shipibo teachers, once it takes root, then it grows into its own form.

Altered states of consciousness and spiritual energy

Unlike regular songs, icaros require an altered dreamlike state of consciousness in order to flow. In the Shipibo tradition that I studied within, this happens most commonly through the ingestion of ayahuasca, but I have also experienced them arising during or after other types of consciousness-shifting modalities such as drumming, rattling, dance, shaking, fasting, meditation and breath-work. Within the altered state, you begin to sing before you are necessarily “connected”. The beginning of the ceremony usually involves singing to bring on your “mareacion” (trance) more deeply and to begin invoking your connections with your dietas and gaurdians. If this is successful, there is usually a distinct feeling that accompanies the full opening of the mareacion and the dietas beginning to move through your voice. A power and energy move into your body as the plants begin to partner with you in the creation of the icaro soundscape. Your voice is suddenly able to do things it cannot in normal waking consciousness, and you are able to sing for lengths of time that would usually exhaust you. The melodies and words arise without effort, and you find that you are carried along the lines of the songs you are singing, just as you carry others.

Transmitting embedded meanings through rivers of song

What ushers forth is like an encoded communication, a pure expression that is laden with meaning but is beyond language… rather, it is communicated through vibration and resonance of the voice directly to the energetic and feeling bodies of the patient(s). Similar to the songs of birds, whales, and dolphins, the meanings in the icaros are held within the gestalt experience, which includes melody and rhythm, as opposed to the individual words. While the words used are still important, you can never understand the full meaning of an icaro by transcribing the words and reading them. There is an imaginal-feeling dimension to icaro’s that can not be captured on a page or really be understood outside of the context of that particular moment within the mareacion. In fact, sometimes reading the words of an no Icaro can sound silly and one-dimensional. An example of this could be an Icaro that invokes the animate force of the local river into your patients kidneys, or the force of lightning into the heart of someone who has lost feeling for life or the transmission of being held like a newborn baby to the breast of the great mother power. The icaro may describe the actions being taken in much the same way as I have written them here, but you can not know what that is until its being experienced.

“When we consider that the frequencies are energetic alignments, through invocations and frequency-based intonations, the stubborn body is allowed to align to a more organized energetic patterning. Merging with these frequencies allows for healing. When we consider organized patterning as a sign of health, healing becomes the process of disorder moving to order. We can begin to see how sound acts as a catalyst for transformation and organization. By allowing the body the opportunity for alignment with higher spiritual forces, healing occurs.” ~Jonathon Miller-Weisberger

These actions being undertaken through the song arise spontaneously through the partnership between the singer and dieta, as an emergent response to what is being felt/seen in the patient at that moment, or as a creative expression of a specific intention (such as protection or healing). Another example would be an Icaro intended to shake up and purge the inner darkness from within the patient’s psyche. This kind of Icaro would obviously feel vastly different from the one intended to communicate unconditional love.

The most successful doctors have a “living medicine” in their bodies which enables them to doctor more effectively than others. “He saw that when a certain man sang, a snake came out of his mouth and into the sick person. Then it turned into a vapour and emanated from the entire body of the sick person taking the disease with it.”  – Sturtevant about Mikasuki Seminole medical beliefs and practices via Stephen Harrod Buhner in Sacred Plant Medicine

Communicating and invoking the essence of being within consciousness

Icaros can invoke the resonance of certain elements such as fire or water; of feelings such as love or safety; of certain plants like rose or oak trees; of animals like lions or anacondas; of places in nature like a specific meadow, mountain or river; of certain ancestors; of stars and planets, of wind or lightning, of deities like Kuan Yin, Tara, Jesus or Shiva, other-worldly beings like faeries, sirenas or various nature spirits, different times in history and different dimensional spaces… even certain energetic states can be sung, like a state of inner liberation or radiant compassion… one can sing an entire lifetime into the subconscious in one Icaro, time and volume of ‘meaning’ are not linear when it comes to icaros.

Sometimes not even the singer knows what is being sung- especially when the sense of ‘self’ is far on the periphery, they are totally in the flow of the moment and have transformed into something other than what they were. In the Shipibo tradition, one of the primary goals of the training is learning to ‘energetically transform’ into the being doing the singing, to have the sense that you ARE your dieta.

“Everything has a song, and that song is a communicatory description of the livingness of that self-organized entity. It is a sonic representation of the non-linearity of every life form, of the form and behavior that is altering itself continuously. Among many of the ancient indigenous peoples of America, when a medicine person was invoking the plant for healing, its song would be sung and that would help focus the medicinal qualities of the plant on a sonic level just as the body of the plant does on a physical level. Importantly, as the song was sung once more, the singer would drop down into the reality of the song, let It speak through him. He would synchronise with the song, just as a group of musicians do who are playing together. He would take on the reality of that song, once more be in a state of deep perception, the state of being that was in place when the song was first experienced.
As with any song, there has to be a certain kind of feeling to it for the song to come alive. It has to be real, to be genuine. And as the reality of that song came once more into the world, the person hearing it during the healing would in fact begin to experience the healing of the plant on a sonic level. The captured oscillations of the plant from that moment in time would be re-expressed as a living communication and the ill person’s field would synchronize with it, would use that other field as a template around which to reform itself. The song IS medicine.” ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner in Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm

Trust and surrender, the art of receiving an Icaro

As a patient/participant, receiving an Icaro is not a passive process- when the curandero focuses on a particular person in the ceremony, they must be met with receptivity and trust so that a kind of energetic feedback loop/ relationship can be created between them. What then ensues is a kind of dancing, flowing healing journey through the imaginal realms within consciousness.

Sometimes there is a lot of heaviness or energetic ‘static’ that needs to be purged before this connection can take place and is really just a matter of time.

In other cases, there may be a conscious or subconscious dislike or distrust of the curandero/facilitator that can then block this process happening. We have also noticed that those who struggle to receive in daily life- that could be love, help, guidance and those who struggle to ‘let go of the reins’ of control may also find it takes longer to receive the icaros and healing from the plants and spirits. Of course, there are many who are also fearful of what they may feel if they allow the medicine in and so consciously or unconsciously block it off.

Energetic tools, deep listening, and healing guidance

Our Shipibo teachers often described how the icaros weave designs into the psycho-spiritual body of the patient so that the vibrational medicine of the plants may enter and begin travelling on the many subtle and not-so-subtle energetic levels of the person in question. These sound sequences emerge of their own accord and come alive within the patient’s body and psyche. If the receiver’s heart-mind is open, then the meanings held within the songs may be felt, understood or even seen within the visionary landscape.

Like a bat using sonar, the resonance of the icaros moves the practitioner out of our habitual patterns of perception and opens up a kind of organ of perception. The icaro is then used to ‘see into’ or ‘listen into’ the patient. The practitioner-dieta then responds to what is being perceived by making tiny adjustments in the tone, rhythm, frequency, word, and vibration of the icaro in order to to enact whatever energetic doctoring actions are required in that moment. As a result of this ‘sensing into’ the patient, the practitioner may also start receiving insight and guidance on how to craft a treatment plan for their patient outside of the ceremonial space to compliment and deepen the healing already taking place within ceremony.

The many waves of flow and disconnect

No matter how experienced and skilled the curandero, there will be times when the Icaros seem to have less power or impact than at other times. When you sit with a teacher over long periods you will most likely experience the many shades of connection; from full-power flow to complete disconnect and everything in-between… and this can even happen all in one ceremony!

One of the reasons we may see interference in the delivery of an icaro or notice weakness in the songs is that the practitioner’s dieta’s need attention. Perhaps they need to be renewed through another period of isolation and fasting, or they require another skilled practitioner to sing to “straighten them”, “clean them” or weave them together in a more coherent way (sometimes different dietas don’t mix well and cause trouble).

Other reasons include fatigue, illness, strong emotional disturbance’s before or during ceremony, over-eating, not eating enough, spiritual attacks, loud or shocking noises, the need to purge, being ‘crossed’ (a term used frequently by the shipibo to describe when someone or something has caused your energy lines to be crossed or blocked), self-judgement while singing and sometimes, for no discernible reason at all. This is generally recognized as a normal part of the process and many will prepare for this by working in teams or by having capable students or assistants to take over if necessary.

 Functions of Icaros

There are stories of icaros being used to call the spirits of prey animals when hunting or to increase the yields of certain crops, to call forth the healing potency when making medicines, and even to shift weather patterns. There are myriads of uses for icaros but the primary function we have experienced and that is discussed here is the icaros that are used in ceremonial healing work.

The functions of icaros are many and varied and again they will differ from tradition to tradition, person to person. Though it may appear linear below and often does follow some kind of sequence, this process is alive and always shifting. The icaros are designed to serve whatever function is necessary at any moment, and sometimes multiple functions at once. The information below is to give you somewhat of an idea of what may be happening when you are listening to icaros. Here is an example of a typical Icaro progression followed by our shipibo teachers :

• Firstly, the practitioner will sing to call the ‘mareacion’ or ‘trance effects’ to themselves and invoke their dietas to join them. They will then sing to call the mareacion to each of the participants. The curandero will work to open the ‘energetic lines’ of the participants in the ceremony that connect them to the worlds of the spirit. They will often do this by ‘magnetizing’ the lines in order to attract the plants to them. They may also transport the spirits of their participants to the spirit worlds on large boats or on the backs of an anaconda. Some other images invoked for helping someone connect to the spirit world would be to place them in the branches of a tall tree, put an antenna or “reception towers” on their head, give them keys to doors, open windows, see them ascending or descending staircases etc. These icaros are typically faster and more rhythmic and will serve to alter one’s state of consciousness, even in the absence of ayahuasca. In a similar category are those icaros used to level the mareacion, meaning that they stabilize the container so that the energetic/spirit work can begin.
• Next, icaros are used to weave energetic protection (sometimes protection is done first) around the ceremonial space, the curandero, and each participant in turn. How this looks and sounds will be different for each curandero. Typically, it involves icaros that invoke the protective qualities of certain plant dietas and guardian spirits around the space; we typically invoke guardians for each of the x4 directions, up and down. We then place special types of energetic armour gifted to us by our plant dietas on ourselves and all participants and even surrounding the space with shields that prevent others from being able to ‘look into’ the ceremony. An example would be to sing about placing the ceremonial space in a valley surrounded mountains and rivers that are hard to get past, then asking your guardians to patrol throughout the night, placing the sharp spines of the ‘catahua tree’ on the energy bodies of your participants and then gathering all your spiritual weapons in the event of an energetic attack.
• Then, the curandero begins calling in the spiritual doctors to the ceremony. Here, the intention is to invoke as much medicine into the ceremony as possible. Your dietas are usually already active by now, but if they aren’t, then you spend more time calling them in. You then focus on invoking the various doctoring beings that are associated with your specific dietas. This usually looks like plant doctor spirits, animal protectors and messengers, helpful and well ancestors, deities, celestial presences, and whatever else is necessary to get the healing done.
• Then begins the cleaning icaros. Ideally, at this point, the animate forces that you invoked in the previous icaros are now fully working through your voice, and there is much less of ‘you’ present. These icaros can be very intense in nature and sometimes unpleasant to listen to, even dissonant at times. They are designed to shake up whatever is not serving to the surface. It is very common to feel discomfort and nausea during these types of icaros, to experience emotions of anger or resentment (sometimes projected onto the ones singing), or to see disturbing images such as dismemberment, insect infestations, or ghastly faces and the end result can often be physical purging. These icaros are intended to extract harmful or misplaced forces and to unblock stagnant energies/emotions. The words used describe actions of sweeping, washing, scrubbing, tying things up and and throwing things away amongst many others.
• Then comes the diagnostic and healing icaros which can be sublimely beautiful, especially if celestial and divine forces are being invoked. If your dietas are strong, they should be able to help you “see” into your patient, and then the dietas immediately start acting to bring balance to the situation. An example of this would be to look into your patient and see a cowering wounded child in their place… immediately, you begin to invoke the resonance of a soothing embrace in the arms of the Mother, or you begin spontaneously invoking the active compassion of Tara or Mary into the space. It’s common to bathe bodies in luminous waters (my teachers even bathe patients in the blood of Jesus). You might see stars illuminate places of pain or particular flowers blooming in their sick organs. As this happens, you sing about what you are seeing and how the healing is actively and spontaneously unfolding.
• Less frequently used (or so we hope) are defensive and fighting icaros. In the Amazon, those who learn to work with plants in order to help and heal others are known as ‘curanderos’. Those who work with plants in order to harm, cause trouble and in some cases even kill, are known as ‘brujos’, and there are some who do both depending on what they are being paid for. There is also what we might call “level 1 brujeria” which is black magic enacted unintentionally through the shitana of their dietas (explained more in part 2). Occasionally during a ceremony, a curandero will feel like he is being ‘attacked’ energetically by a Brujo, or he will attempt to remove black magic from one of his patients and then get attacked by those energies during the process. In this case, a defensive Icaro will be used. The curandero whips out the energetic ‘big guns’ and calls on the spirits of substances such as bleach or gasoline… trees such as toe, ayahuma, chullachaqui, or catahua… animal protectors such as black panthers, lions, snakes or gorillas… weapons such as swords with flaming tips and machine guns and various other defences. An energetic battle then ensues. It is a pretty epic thing to behold and is taken very seriously.
• Also, less common are warmi icaros, which function as a kind of ‘love spell’. These icaros can be very beautiful and have positive influences but can also have a somewhat sinister intention behind them. Some curanderos use them to help their patients find love, friendship, and abundance by creating an attractive, energetic aura about the person. But Brujo’s and pusangueros can be paid to use warmi icaros and other rituals to cast spells on your behalf and force someone to fall in love with you against their will. Often, it causes the victim great distress and even madness.
• An important category of Icaro is called an Arkana. This is a very potent form of energetic protection. Essentially the Icaro weaves a design into the energy body of the receiver that is then used to seal in the essence of the healing and plants you have received during your treatment or dieta. This design stays in the energy for some time and serves as a kind of shield from influences that may disturb the stability of the dieta or healing that has been received once leaving the container that is under the guardianship of the curandero
• Lastly, there are closing icaros. Songs that help to close off or protect various energy centres so that we do not leave the healing space wide open and vulnerable. Loose ends are tied up, doors are closed, windows are shut, and portals are narrowed. This is an important step to maintain ‘energetic hygiene’ after the ceremony.