Gold, Bats, and Native Colombian Shaman Priests

GOLD

Beautiful, rare, precious gold. It has the power to drive us mad with desire. It drove the Spanish conquistadors to kill off nearly the entire native population of Mexico, Central, and South America.

A visit to our adventuring son and daughter-in-law in  beautiful coastal Colombia made me look a bit more closely at this mystical substance.

The Momas are the Shaman priests of the Kogi, members of the Tairona culture that controlled the Colombian Sierra Nevadas and

the coast of Colombia long before the Spanish arrived. They remain alive and well, despite our best efforts, and have much to teach their “little brothers”. One of their teachings that caught my heart and imagination is about gold.

They know that gold is an excellent conductor—but not just for heat and electricity. The Momas use it to journey between the worlds and bring back both practical and spiritual knowledge for their people. It seems that all the indigenous people of South America understood this and prized gold for this reason—not just because it was rare and valuable.

The bat is another conductor. It is a mysterious winged creature that flies at night, and has the ability to venture between the worlds or dimensions.

So what better conductor or psycho-pomp could there be than a golden bat? And, indeed, Tairona cultural artifacts include great numbers of golden bats.

The vase on the left is one of many native Tairona containers that feature a man turning into a bat. We know that this was done ritually because his cheeks are pooched out by coca leaves. The museum explanations say that the Shaman priests  chew these (even today) to give them the stamina to get through their rituals. This may well be, but I strongly suspect that there is also a spiritually uplifting component in those leaves.

Even in these materialistic times, gold is recognized as more than just a symbol of earthly riches.

One of the modalities I use in my massage therapy practice is Pranic Healing, a system that uses light to clear and energize and, therefore, heal. To set a healing more firmly in the body, we are taught to use gold light to conduct it from the outer dimensions into the physical dimensions.

The conquistadors and the padres may have converted most of Mexico, Central, and South America to Catholicism, but the people of those areas remember their native roots. This holy card of Our Lady of Guadalupe, one of the most beloved manifestations of the Virgin Mary of all time, shows her radiating comforting light to her worshipers.

And what color is that light?

GOLD!