Cataracas de Pishurayacu: Waterfalls (Spanish) of the Vagina-Waters (Quechua)
In the Peruvian Amazon, the Nectars of the Mysterious Female pour yoni-like into a wide chalice of emerald water. I had made the pilgrimage to Her again, this time alone, to be baptized and reborn through this well-kept secret: how to receive. Like Goddess Tara, She sat resplendent in green, adorned by jungle flowers, ever-resuscitating beings who come seeking her; never weary and forever alive. Named so well by people who weren’t shy about the majesty of Feminine parts – this place so un-mistakably, more than any other place I’d been to – Cataracas de Pishurayacu – was a vagina, a place of rebirth.
From the lower lagoon, I made the ascent into Her upper bowl, the womb, climbing precarious wet wooden steps up to where lava had eons-ago carved out a deep rust-colored cauldron. Enveloped by Her rushing sounds, I immersed myself into cold tourmaline waters, in this home I’d been estranged from my whole life. My heart beat faster with the thrill of being there, in this place of Origin, so far away from the world and its noise. All I could hear was the water’s echo caressing the sloped rock, splashing and gurgling wildly, as it had from the beginnings of life on earth. As it will always, beyond the time of us human beings, and our machines and ideas. How I wished I could have stayed there, somehow lived there.
It was one my most favorite places I’d ever been. And yet, somehow every waterfall, every forest and jungle river, every lagoon and lake, carries its own signature of Her. These days, all my memories of you Water, swirl together – telling your story, which is also my story. And I am at home in each one: I sing and offer myself back to you; I am welcomed and renewed – because I belong to you.
Pooja Prema • she/her • Origin: Kerala, India / Current Residence: New England
Pooja Prema is a first-generation Indian-American multidisciplinary artist, ceremonialist, writer, cultural activist, and founder of The Ritual Theatre and The Rites of Passage Project. For twenty years, her work has centered on visionary eco-feminism, decolonial somatic ritual practice, and ancestral recovery through sound, word and movement.
