silueta de una montaña con nubes encima
Photo Essay

Monuments

Motivated by a feeling of spiritual orphanhood in moments of transformation and grief, Pablo seeks a language of his own towards prayers and rituals that root him to Earth. 

The jtsökolpa or bribri funeral singers sang so that the souls of the dead could return to their place of origin, to the world of Sulà. They sang songs in a language that was spoken long before humans walked this Earth, the language of the universe. Many of the songs were addressed to certain animals and supernatural beings that are guides and protectors of the souls when they embark on this path.

Catholics believe that after death only perfectly purified souls, after their particular judgment, go to heaven. Other souls who die in God's grace and friendship, but who are 'imperfectly purified', pass through purgatory before they can enter heaven. It is through the prayers, indulgences and works of penance of the living that these souls achieve their purification and continue on their way.

In both traditions a ritual is necessary to help these souls return to their creator, in both traditions it is a collective practice: an essential agreement that someone will help your soul reach its destination. A guide.

I recognize that I do not belong to any tradition, but I know that there is an essence in materiality that runs through and animates the world. Through animism I have been able to see beyond the predominant scientific and religious dogmas of this time. But it is inevitable for me to ask myself, where to look for rituals that sustain my spirituality if I do not belong to any tradition?, what ritual practices sustain our spirituality?, where to seek guidance?

I find refuge in the thought that if there are lost souls in this and other planes of existence, there must be languages that can guide them. My soul—today alive—feels familiarity with that feeling of orphanhood.

Fotografia blanco y negro de unos bananos tirados sobre la tierra
I
Initiation

I imagine souls in a junglepurgatoris waiting to hear the songs that will show them the way, longing for the prayers that will cleanse their burden and looking for signs that will indicate that it is time to return.

Self-inflicted promise
of past lives
that satiate my faith
of trails in mountains
residues that I erect
to fray the flaws
of ghosts that confirm
what we have forgotten

Incessant quests
for symbols that sustain
the Order of the Cosmos,
Cactus Flower
Divine Figure,
that does not punish
Origin of life,
that foregoes words
The End of existence
with overflowing eyes

The water that carries
the universal dialect
the spume in my mouth
permission to enter
irreducible experience
animal reverence
a violent chapel
resurfaces endlessly

I don't believe in their Devil
but I do believe in Darkness
who will sing for my soul
when I am no longer in this place?

fotografía blanco y negro de un pájaro viendo a cámara
II
Hermeneutics

In Bribri culture, Duwàlok, the lord of animals, punishes hunters who do not hunt properly and leave the animals wounded. Shulékma is sent by Duwàlok to hunt hunters with his arrows, which are snakes.

Not understanding if I was alive or in the junglepurgatoris, the first of October I was born again. One passed close by, it was a lethal one, a terciopelo. Then I continued to feel its siege. In five days I encountered a solar eclipse and twelve snakes: four poisonous, seven non-dangerous and one dead.

I kept finding snakes. With humility and fear I asked the trail what I was doing wrong. Then I looked at my hands and in them my camera, then I understood that I was a kind of hunter.

I felt that I was under attack by an evil spell, I remembered the guardians and asked for a sign. Minutes later a tamandua appeared and made me cry while she told me that although the signs may say one thing, not every interpretation has to be the search for certainty.

A prayer became an epiphany: I have to speak to the world.

detalle de dedos del pie con ampolladetalle de flores sobre agua

Hierophanies that guide me,
I have no
shortage of wonder,
it frightens me
gratitude through air,
I celebrate it

The face of God,
does not matter to me
Paradise,
travels with me
Death,
Patagonian silence

To the healing smoke
nine vipers on my way
the media drum
tra-worlds
that who waits for me on the other side
I do not recognize

Spiritual specialists
natives of pain
contagious magic
translates my emotion
my tongue is scarce
everyone dances to the song
respect for the awá
I flay the Spanish language
tamandua spell
like a wound in the heel.

III
Healing Ritual

I wished my father was also lost in the junglepurgatoris, but only to meet him and talk about world geopolitics, as we did on Sundays in the corridor with a cup of coffee and his third cigarette of the day at 8am. His soul, possibly, had indeed reached a destination, when he died we performed all the Catholic rituals that were necessary for the dispatch of his soul. Since then I do not go to mass, and we see each other only in dreams.

One day I went out to a garden abandoned to sadness. I planted a tree on top of the remains of my fallen guardians, and I planted the name of each one to invoke them every time I pronounced them.

muro de piedras
arboles con enredadera

You never liked
my tombstones of air
the bones you extracted
belong to the living
the shadow that bothers you
full of sounds
its permanence claims
this evolutionary instant
in landfills of sick soils
the cusingos returned

paisaje natural con envases de plástico
IV
Protection Conjure

Years ago in the junglepurgatoris I met a devil. For a long time we shared a friendship, I remember that I liked to be by his side and be irradiated by the freedom and protection that emanated only with his presence.

With time I could see his power: I asked him for explanations about the origin and he gave them to me, I asked him about deceased beings and he told me their messages, I told him a dream and, without me asking him, days later he explained to me what was the message encrypted in those dreams. I did not doubt his words and his power. I let him enter my house, touch my dogs, share with my family. The friendship grew, and with my lack of rituals, together we created our own rituals.

The day our relationship began to change was when I noticed how everything around him was always on fire...everything except his beautiful form.

Over the years I began to doubt his macaronic language, I found holes in his explanations, I perceived his predilection for frivolous actions. Our friendship drifted apart, little by little, neither of us could stand the presence of the other. But there were rituals that kept us together.

One afternoon the devil came to visit me at home after many years. In a fleeting manner and without warning my dog attacked him. When I tried to stop the violence I saw the inner layers of his being and was frightened, so I let my dog finish running him off the property.

I felt sadness. And amazed by what I had just witnessed, I remembered that friend who had given me company in the junglepurgatoris and who had appeased my anxiety by uttering the words I needed to hear at that time. Then, with uneasiness, I also remembered that it had been I who had longed for him... It had been I who had granted him power over my soul so that he could play with my desires.

I looked at the floor and found his ring.

fotografía abstracta de la luz

Inter-species romance
of multiple millennia
I spoke with your words
and you did not know how to defend yourself
Cosmic Guardian
moves rafts without oars

The ring, out of superstition
I threw it into the bush
with worms and coconuts
a jungle will grow
with guacimos and plastic
that will merge.

V
Prayer for inner landscapes

'Dreams have a place in the world'

Charles Foster.

Under a downpour,
but I don't want to be dry
I choose the relentless fire
that leaves fossilized flowers
where once there was
a ghost to conjure

I can't find those ruins
in my personal cartography
distant myths of black holes
prevent me from contemplating

Perhaps the monuments of the soul
have no place
memory a timeless space
to which we arrive in dreams
in a non-linear way
stripping ourselves of the bodies
that make us vibrate
with the fear of a child
when he sees his mother cry.

When I look beyond the rationality that reigns in the language we use every day, and I turn to words recognizing their incidence in reality, I remember how sacred is the gift of manifesting through language—everyday—other possible worlds. My prayers are a way of speaking to the world, and of remembering that somewhere there are ears that listen and hearts that attend to them.

(1) La función social de la música en el ritual fúnebre bribri. Laura Cervantes Gamboa. 1992.

(2) Origen y destino de las almas después de la muerte en la religión Bribri. Laura Cervantes Gamboa. 1993

CREDITS

Photography & Text
Pablo Franceschi Chinchilla

2024. Costa Rica

Published in December, 2024
Volume 9, Issue 9

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