ICAROS

Icaros are the principal tools by which ayahuasqueros guide and direct the ayahuasca experience.

Ayahuasqueros and apprentices learn icaros directly from the plant spirits, primarily through years of isolated dietas and over the course of hundreds of ceremonies. Through this process, an apprentice is said to be ‘gifted’ icaros from the plants in exchange for their sacrifice. They will then be able to express the icaros they’ve learned in order to elicit healing and energetic release, and to guide the movement of an ayahuasca ceremony.

Icaros appear in the form of melodies and can be sung, chanted, or whistled. More than just songs, an icaro directly expresses spirit medicine and serves as a means of communication and connection between practitioner, the medicine, and participants.

In Maestro Alberto’s tradition, icaros are sung in a mixed dialect of Spanish and Northern Quechua. They also include phrases that come directly from plant spirits as well as from regional dialects. The icaros are accompanied by a gentle sounding leaf rattle called a shacapa (pictured above).

Icaros serve a variety of important functions during an ayahuasca ceremony, including:

• Call in mareación (the collective effects of ayahuasca)

• Raise and lower the level of intensity of the ceremonial effects, collectively or individually

• Help and support the process of cleansing, healing, or purging

• Balance and straighten crossed or tangled energy

• Calm the mind; help to “smooth” turbulent thoughts

• Offer strength and protection; be a source of “grounding” to one’s physical body

• Open the heart center; help one connect to, purify, and reestablish balanced emotions

• Take a participant on spiritual journeys

• Invoke and banish different kinds of spirits and energies