Learning Session: Workshop

Create your own Despacho/Prayer Offering

With: Mercedes Soler

About This Session:

A Despacho is a traditional Andean (South American) ritual...an offering ceremony that builds a prayer bundle or offering to Pachamama, or Mother Earth, as an expression of gratitude for the gifts she brings us every day. We create a Despacho in exchange for her care of us, to ask for her help, to heal physical and emotional ailments of any kind, to restore balance or harmony where it is off, or when there’s a specific request of the spirit world. In this workshop, you will each create your own Despacho with pure love and intention, which you will ultimately offer back to the Pachamama later that same evening it is built.

Your love bundle can be made with flowers, spices, seeds, candy or any natural item that grows in Mother Earth’s garden (or yours!). Items to bring to this collective workshop:
*one large piece of wrapping paper
*tissue paper,
*nutrient rich, dry spices from your kitchen, preferably some with healing properties, like ginger, turmeric, cinnamon sticks, salt, sugar and seeds,
*dry beans and rice, grains, or dried corn, to “feed” the Pachmama, which will help our prayers germinate and bloom, including bay leaves or other dried leaves
*chocolate or cocoa
*paper symbols of abundance like Monopoly money, or drawings of “fake” money (no coins or metal please),
*a few fresh leaves and colorful flowers from your garden or yard
*white cotton balls or confetti if you have it

OPTIONAL:
*delicious smelling perfume to sprinkle on your despacho before you offer it.
*Rope or twine or ribbon to tie it up before offering this sacred form of spiritual nourishment back to Mother Earth, within a few hours of its creation.

Your Despacho will carry your energy and love as a living prayer request to bring energy shifts and healing in exchange for the continued love and care of Mother Earth.

Please come clear headed - do not drink alcohol or use substances of any kind of the day you will create your Despacho.