Overview of the Mesa and Kuyas

Your mesa is made up of 13 kuyas. Kuyas are stones with spirits in them. That’s what makes a stone a kuya. While making your mesa, you will be making 13 kuyas:

• 3 in each direction: South, West, North, East 

• 1 lineage stone in the centre, linked to ApuAsengate, the lineage mountain

In Q’ero cosmology, kuyas are sacred stones or objects that hold living relationship with specific energies, spirits, and directions. They are not merely tools; they are relationship anchors—physical bodies for spiritual allies.

 

Creating Kuyas

When you are making your kuyas, you will be doing different ceremonies which each focus on trauma removal, and support for healing. The spirit that comes in to your stone, in each ceremony, is a spirit that has your best intentions at heart, and wants to help you with your personal journey and evolution. 

 

Weekly Mesa Practice

Once a week, on Sunday night, it is traditional to open up your mesa, so that your kuyas can mingle with all the other kuyas, well ancestors, and other people that have been on this path, both from the past, and from the future.

 

When you later go to meditate with your mesa, or use it for a healing ceremony, it will be carrying new, updated information for your journey, specially curated to benefit your life force energy. You can do this before you have a full mesa, in fact it is good to start doing this as soon as you start to build your mesa.

 

Journaling Practice

It will help you connect with the energies of the kuyas if you journal after you make each kuya, so you can really focus on each energy specifically. This will really help you in your final “graduation” ceremony where you go from student to mesa carrier. 

 

South

In the South, your kuyas are made either through 3 illumination healing ceremonies, or through a 3 part sand painting. If you are making your kuyas through the illumination healing ceremonies, the spirit that comes into your stone during the ceremony to assist you in your healing. You would do 3 illumination healing ceremonies. If you did the 3 part sand painting, each stone would hold a prayer for a part of you that needs healing, and placed into your sand painting, each stone in a separate part of your sand painting. You would feed your sand painting, and rearrange your sandpainting until you feel complete or finished. At that point, you would put your sandpainting into the bushes, to compost (not in a garden). Your stones are now kuyas, and are placed in your mesa.

 

West

In the West, you make your kuyas by doing 3 past life journeys. One to the life where you experienced the most harm, one where you did the most harm, and one where you did your best, and helped the world in a good way. The lore is that when you deal with these 3 lives, that on an energetic level, the ties around your past lives are loosened, and have less hold on you. As you do ceremonies, your past lives are dealt with, so you don’t have to go through them life by life. The spirits that come into your stones for each life are here to help you integrate the lessons you learned in these lives. 

 

North

In the North, you shed your roles and identities. Making a list of all your roles, identities and things that you have connected with that informed your existence. You make a fire ceremony, with your 3 kuyas in it.. You collect a bunch of sticks. You blow each role or identity or connecting experience into each stick, one at a time. By doing this, you are shedding all the things you identify with, so that you can just identify with your spirit. In doing this, you are releasing all the dreams and goals joined with these roles, identities, and connecting experiences. Take a moment and really let those dreams go. Then know that you will get a new dream or goal that is aligned with where you are now, according to your highest good, and according to where you are now. Then give that dream back and ask for something better. You will feel a new dream coming to you, specifically updated for where you are now, and according to your highest good. You can still do your roles, but after your ceremony you are not your roles. Make sure you use river stones or stones that will not break in the fire.

 

East

In the East, you make your kuyas with the use of the huaca. A huaca is a healing ceremony that you do to solve problems. You pick a problem, and you do a ceremony to give this problem to Spirit. The risk is that Spirit is going to do whatever it needs to do to bring the energy into harmony with all of creation, and you have to be ready for rapid change, as sometimes that can happen. For example, you pray for your relationship, but ultimately you are not supposed to be together, so the huaca will break you up. Your kuyas made from the huaca are steeped in the energy of calling a timeline in that is aligned, in harmony with the cosmos, your higher self, and your true energy. 

 

Lineage Stone

For the lineage stone, you do a rite that connects that stone to the lineage mountain of ApuAsengate. The spirit that comes into that stone is one that will connect you to the sacred mountain, the Q’uero elders, the shamans and healers that have gone before us, and those that will come after us. 

 

Meditation Practice

Meditating with your mesa will bond you with your kuyas, and help you internalize those lessons, and what the spirits are holding for you. You should have a strong connection with your kuyas by the end of the program. If you do not spend enough time meditating with your mesa, then it will be really difficult to do this next part, the final part of becoming a shaman.

 

Final Ceremony

When you have finished making your mesa, you will go through a final ceremony that removes all the spirits from your kuyas, turning them back into stones. Then it is up to you to journey to all the worlds to trace and track your spirits. This should be fairly easy if you have a strong relationship with your kuyas. This is your graduation ceremony from being a student, and shows that you are a proper mesa carrier.

 

Open your mesa, and start in a direction. I always start in the South, and work my way through the directions, South, West. North, East, Lineage Stone. You can start wherever you are led or drawn to as well. It would serve you to bring out your journal where you wrote what the energy was of each kuya as you made them, to help you connect with each kuya individually, so you can find them, call them back to you, and put them back in your stones, making them kuyas again.

 

Choose a stone to work with, and hold it in your right hand. Connect with the energy of the spirit you are, you find them, open up your left hand, and wait for the spirit to nestle in your hand. Then take your stone in your right hand, and make a circle with your left hand with the spirit in it. You do this by bringing the tips of your fingers to your thumb. Place that open circle hand on top of your stone, and then bring your mouth to the circle, and blow the spirit back into your stone. Do this 3x. 

 

The length of time of this ceremony will vary person to person, I’ve done it in half an hour (granted I’m a professional), but the first time I did it, it took me 2 hours, which was considered fast, but I’ve always been good at trace and tracking, it’s a natural skill of mine that I have really developed. Other students that I worked with took a few days, doing it for a few hours per day for a few days in a row, until all their kuyas were collected, and re-installed into their stones.