Donna Quesada: So, then the second rite would be Bands of Power? The Bands of Power of Protection?
Karen Hoza: And what this is… is energetic bands that represent the elements. Elements of earth and water and fire and air and spirit. These are woven into our energy field. They are woven into our luminous field. And we grow them. All the rites are grown. So, we install these bands and then what happens is… things come from the outside and they come into our field. They are stopped by these Bands of Protection. The bands, each one being a different element… They will mulch that energy into food for our field. So, it prevents those things from coming in that are harmful to the physical body. And the Q’ero of Peru say that they can see those luminous belts. They can see them around people who have had them installed. When we have students that come over to Peru, they will see those in them… in their field, which is amazing to me.
DONNA: Many people, I think, are in touch with the fact that negative energy is around us. In different cultures, we have black stones. Little symbols. I’m also thinking of the little hand symbol that keeps evil energies away. What do you think of people that are skeptical of this idea? What exactly are we talking about? This is two questions in one! The skeptics… and what constitutes negative energy that these bands are protecting us from?
KAREN: So, what I would say is that we don’t really have an evil principle… perhaps in a way that we have always thought of it. But what it’s really about is, what is out there? What is unhealed within us? That is what I’m going to say, first. It’s… what is unhealed within us? Because when we have something unhealed, then we are going to be vulnerable to things coming in and affecting us. So, for me, that is part of what it is. Because we have got to have that healed self, so that we are not vulnerable to those things from the outside.
DONNA: I love that. To put it into today’s parlance… something that people can really sink their teeth into… It would be, maybe, people who are manipulative… unhealthy or what they call toxic relationships. People who are taking advantage of our kindness or our empathy. All of this kind of stuff might be what we are calling “negative energies.” And when we are not healed… when we are not in our power, so to speak… we are more vulnerable to that. We are more likely to be a co-dependent part of that dynamic.
KAREN: Absolutely. And I’ll add to that… Alberto has all kinds of stories about this, but there is no difference between the techniques that a shaman uses and the techniques that a sorcerer uses. It is the intentions for which they are used. That also to me, is a reminder for what you are talking about. Our thoughts… You know, those bands of protection work when we have negative thoughts going out towards someone. When we hear someone say, “I just got stabbed in the back.” That’s the energetic piece that is sending negative energy. And so, those Bands of Protection help protect us from those kinds of things.
DONNA: Okay. I love that. Number three?
KAREN: The next one we are coming up to is The Harmony Rite.
DONNA: And it caught my attention because it seems so compatible with Yogic language. It has to do with clearing the chakras. So, now you are speaking my language here…
KAREN: Absolutely, great. So, Harmony Rites are four archetypes, which are organizing. And three archangels installed the seeds in each of the chakras. And as you know, these chakras are part of our energy anatomy. Just like a skeleton is part of our physical anatomy. And as you know, those chakras are where bundles of nerves, glands and systems are in our physical body. And so, these archetypes are installed as seeds in each of the chakras. And when I say “organizing principles,” we install in the first chakra, the serpent. In the second chakra, the jaguar. In the third chakra, the humming bird. And in the fourth chakra, we install the eagle.
DONNA: I love that.
KAREN: And you know, these are ancient ways that referred to the organizing principles in our world by those names. Because they didn’t think of those things as A, G, C and T within our DNA or electro-magnetic forces in gravity. So, they called those organizing principles by those archetypal names. So, we install the energies into each of those chakras. And then at the throat, we install what we call uasca Inca, which is the Keeper of the underworld. And in the third eye, we install Quetzalcoatl, Which is the Keeper of the middle world, where we live. And then in the 7th Chakra, the seeds of Patzaquatl, which are the seeds of the upper world… the place of our becoming… the place of our infinite self. So, each of those seeds that are in there… you grow those over a period of time. And we use fire ceremony to help grow those rites. And they become our allies… those archetypes that are installed. They become our allies and they begin to clean our chakras of the sludge that really accumulates over life… from trauma. Any kind of injury. Grief or sadness. Any of the things that we experience in life can cause those chakras to become hazy or sludgy. Any you know, when you are born, they are in rainbow colors. They vibrate at a certain frequency. They are healthy and they are just vibrating. These archetypes… they begin to clear that sludge… clear all the old, so we can again have what the Q’ero call the Rainbow Body. And that’s those chakras that vibrate at the same frequencies as when we were born.
DONNA: So, just to make sure I’m understanding and that anyone who is listening is understanding… The Harmony Rite clears those energetic centers. And the purpose would be, the way I see it, is… I can’t be a force for upliftment if I’m clogged up, or, if my energy receptors are hazy. I can’t evolve. And I can’t help uplift others.
KAREN: Absolutely. You got it.
DONNA: And so, we move to Number Four.
KAREN: And these are The Seer’s Rites. I love this rite and I pass this one on often to people because I feel like, in this culture, it’s so easy for us to go up into our mind, and forget about our heart. And we know that if everything is in the mind, that we are not embodying things. And so, this rite helps us bring the head and the heart together, installing new neural pathways. New cerebral pathways outside of the brain. Connecting through our third eye to our visual cortex. And from the visual cortex down into our heart.
So, new neural pathways… new pathways that connect the heart to the visual cortex. And these five lines are installed, creating this over the outside of the head. And the visual cortex is that place that it is like a screening room where we take all of the information in, sort it out, and we see what we see. As we connect our head and our heart, what is happening is that we are getting more information than just what we are seeing. So, it is allowing us to let our perception increase… see things about ourselves that me may not have seen in the past. It lets us see things in the world. Hidden things. So, we become able to process and see these things more than just what our eyes will see. So, it helps us to shift perception.
DONNA: You know, again, it’s so beautiful to see how all these wisdom traditions all seem to point to similar truths. And pardon me for always going back to my early spiritual teachers. I started in the Zen tradition and my Zen teacher would always say, You are ruminating… you are in your head… You’ve got to get out of your head if you want to have inner peace. And it just seems like it’s always trouble when you’re not listening to your heart brain… and instead, paying too much attention to those thoughts that run through our head. And we ruminate on them. That’s when we get into trouble and it sounds like it’s parallel to what is going on in this Fourth Rite. It’s shaping you energetically to get you more in touch or attuned to the truth that lies within. Because your heart always knows…
KAREN: Absolutely. Your heart always knows. And I love what you said about the heart brain. Because we know that. We know that there are the same kinds of cells in our brains and our hearts. And so, I love to talk about our thinking head and our thinking heart. And when we can bring those two things together, everything can shift for us.
DONNA: And we are not taught to do that in our mainstream education. We’re taught to think it out. So that is why this is so important.
KAREN: It truly is. It really is.
DONNA: Number Five.
KAREN: Number Five. The Day Keepers Rites. So, The Day Keeper Rite connects us to all the stone alters. With Stonehenge and Machu Pichu, Easter Island, all those large stones. These places were the keepers of the cycles. Of the seasons. Of the changes.
DONNA: Let me just stop you, here. This is just so rich. Do the teachers of the Munay-ki hold that all of these special, sacred places at various spots on the globe, are related energetically, and were somehow set up from the same wisdom? Is that too huge, where I am going with this?
KAREN: I like where you are going with that. I’m going to say yes because it’s all universal. These Rites are universal. So, yes.
DONNA: Wow.
KAREN: And so, The Day Keepers. That Rite connects us with these people who were The Keepers of the altars. The Keepers of the watching and the changing. The changing of the seasons. The changing of the cycles. And they were most often women. They were curanderos. They were mid-wives. And these women were the ones who assisted the movement of all of the cycles.
DONNA: Healers?
KAREN: Yes. Healers. And it will connect us with our feminine. So, it’s all about, when we bring in The Day Keeper Rite and we are attuned to that and we bring that right in… we get into balance with our inner feminine. So, we are connected to the earth… to the cycles of the earth. With the Pachamama Gaia… we are connected to her. And we are connected to the feminine, our feminine. And we are balancing that. Of course, it’s only with the balance that we are going to be able to really step out and make change.
DONNA: As a very brief aside. I feel that I would be remiss for not bring this up. Do you think that some of the chaos that’s happening on the planet, in terms of our health… in terms of environmental destruction, is directly related to the fact that we have lost touch with this very feminine aspect?
KAREN: Yes. I would say yes to that. And as we go on to talk about the other rites… it’s also because we are out of balance. Being out of balance. And many of the indigenous cultures… their medicine people come together and vision together. They vision together for a possibility of a future where there is clean water. Where there is clean air. Where people live in peace. And we don’t do that globally, anymore. And so, these rites connect us to the ability to do that.
As we go on, you will see, we also connected to the masculine. And we have to balance that. And to the Keepers of the Earth. We begin to open up our seeing, so that we can envision a possible future outside of time. Because all of these Rites take us into sacred space. They take us outside of linear time into that sacred time. And we know that once we are outside of linear time, that we are not constrained by the past only, but we also have access to the future. And we are able to get out there to the future, and bring that back to the present. So that we too, can be those visionaries like the medicine people.
DONNA: Exciting indeed. Number Six.
KAREN: Wisdom Keeper Rites. And the Wisdom Keeper Rites really connect us with the wisdom… In the lore, it’s said, that when someone passes away, their physical body returns to the earth and all of their wisdom goes up onto the mountain tops where it resides. And it exists up there and it’s available to us all. We just have to call on that. So, this Rite connects us to that wisdom… to that place of our soul’s calling. It connects us also to the masculine and balances that with the masculine within us. That place of learning. That place of wisdom. So, when we connect and attune to that Wisdom Keeper Rite, we are able to go backwards and forwards in time, just like I was mentioning a moment ago. We are able to see that future. We are able to envision that and start to bring that into the here and now. And we’ll see that a little more, as we go into the next rite. It lets us tap into the wisdom that these ancient luminous ones carried. And like I was saying, backwards in time, so we are able to have all that wisdom and they are also in the future. So, we are able to source from the future.
DONNA: So, this particular rite gets us out of the trappings of time?
KAREN: Not only geographically, but energetically. Yes, outside the bounds of time.
Read and Watch Part III Here: Awaken Interviews Karen Hoza – Pt 3 – Only From A Position Of Non-Ego, Can We Truly Be Of Service
See and Read Part I Here: Awaken Interviews Karen Hoza Pt 1 – The Munay-Ki and the Nine Ancient Sacred Rites of Passage
Karen Hoza is an Energy Medicine practitioner and Reike Master, trained by Dr. Alberto Villoldo. She is a graduate of The Four Winds Light Body School and also holds their Master Certification. Karen is currently working as an Alternative and Complementary Health Counselor at The Sanctuary at Sedona, an integrative addiction recovery and trauma healing center. Karen incorporates creativity in all aspects of her healing work, and loves spending time bellydancing and gardening.
