It's run by Amaru Li, who says he is a Peruvian shaman from a long lineage of healers. So he's not claiming to be NDN. Says he has a degree in pyschology and is a masseuse, and then went from academia into ceremony selling.
I'm not sure what to make of his name. Amaru was partly the name of the last Inca emperor Tupac Amaru, and his descendant who led a revolt vs Spain. Li, is that Chinese? His name shows up on yoga sites and I wonder if he took it because of the influence of it.
Some of the ceremonies are widely done healing in Peru, like despacho. But the "Inka medicine wheel" is pure Nuage garbled knockoff, combining Plains NDN with supposed "Inka." And there's the usual Nuage confusion about chakras and pwer animals. Li also talks of the "new Aquarian frequency."
Here's an account by someone who went thru one of his sessions, minus all the self indulgent rambling.
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http://zuki-san.dreamwidth.org/22163.html?thread=62867There's a Peruvian shaman named Amaru Li who is well-known in the Baltimore area--apparently he comes around about once or twice a year to teach classes, check up on some students, fundraise for a foundation to get clean water to villages in the Andean highlands, etc. Today, he was giving his introductory mini-workshop at Mystickal Voyage, the metaphysics shop/community center that I like to frequent. Does it surprise anyone that I was super-excited about attending that? I wasn't sure what to expect, really--I actually checked out two ethnographies on Peruvian shamans and curanderos and read up on the beliefs and practices beforehand. I'll admit that I partially did that because I'd never heard of Amaru Li before and I didn't no his reputation. For all I knew, he could have been a fraud with South American trappings. Ayahuasca is pretty popularized in some circles, etc, etc.
Suffice to say, Amaru Li was not a fraud. It was for the most part a two-hour question-and-answer session, with him telling stories from his life and explaining his worldview. It was pretty light on cultural-specific content (except in the cases of a story or two), but because I'd done some reading I could tell he wasn't namedropping for the flavor of it, but rather streamlining things. He was more interested in conveying a general 'shamanic' worldview. It was a pretty newbie workshop in some ways, and it was clear he had some more modern and academic ideas integrated into his practice and beliefs--but I wasn't expecting something exactly out of a book where the fieldwork had been done in the early nineties at the absolute latest....
One thing that amused me and gave food-for-thought for later was his brief description of 'compacting', that is, making a compact or connection with the local land spirits, one's magical and healing tools, one's guides and spiritual allies....
