The Cave of the Great Turtle, Guaca del BÖ (Bohique) Cidra, Puerto Rico

 

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The Cave of the Great Turtle, Guaca del BÖ (Bohique) Cidra, Puerto Rico

Victor. Arturo. Cabello. Reyes.

Ancient oral traditions tell that back in a distant time immemorial or in the primordial sleep of the year time of the guácaras, the wise old Bohíques, sang in their ceremonial areitos the traditions and antiquities of the grandparents of the island of the turtle.

Guaca, he is the brother of God! the venerable old man Bo-guay wisely said to the bloodthirsty conquerors, who could not understand in the least the underhanded language to which the old man referred.

He pointed to the sacred and fearsome power of the sublime energy of the Guaycán.

That is why one of the names of the Divine Mother, or mother of the Taino sky god, is Guacar.

Ulloa, he calls him Guaca.

(Fray Ramón Pané in his Relación sobre las antigüedades de los indios, 1498)

Some researchers go so far as to relate Waka-iri from wa = our and kairi = moon, in natural association with the uterus, the moon and menstrual cycles.

Possibly associated with the tide and misunderstood female menstruation.

Evidently, the Guaca turns out to be a cave or natural womb of the divine mother Earth = the Atabex.

According to Zayas.

"Atabei had another son named Guaca..."

According to Zayas.

(p.50-edition of 1914 from Indigenismos, Tejera, p.100)

A sacred wrapping can be known as = guacal or huacal.

There are places in the world which are charged with great power and sacredness. The stony evidence on them and the artifacts, both lithic and archaeological, show that this was the case for our indigenous ancestors.

These places are special, because through the centuries they have served as portals and dissemination centers of a kind of salutary energy, and at the same time, fearsome for certain energetic particularities.

They contain and retain in themselves the guacán, the powerful energy field of the feared power of the witch doctor = El Bo.

Bohíque is an herbalist and, at the same time, embodies the enigmatic guay-way-huay; which is a master of mystery and physical transformation; depository of the tradition of the Toa = Sacred Frog.

Faithful bearer of the staff or scepter of the powerful lightning = thunder Hurakán Guacán.

Every house or Bohío should have its ritual blessing among the tribe.

Some of them were known = Kanei or Caney, because the power of the Khan resided there.

The Bohíque was also = a shaman, priest, doctor or powerful sorcerer.

He possessed specific knowledge of plants and all kinds of herbalism and practical and experienced intermediary between the tribe and divinities.

The Bohíques possess wide domains of the power of certain stones -some of celestial origin-, called lightning or the mysterious and unknown source of the guacán where that same power is deposited.

The wise Bohíques made continuous offerings and strong alliances with the powers of winds, birds and certain animals considered sacred.

All this on the way to propitiate their healings and also facilitate security in their shamanic journey.

Powerful sorcerers according to Fray Ramón Pané: "One day the relatives of the dead meet and wait for the aforementioned behique, and they give him so many blows that they break his legs and arms and head, grinding everything, and leave him like this believing that they have killed him. (that is, if the Bohíque failed in its medicine). And at night they say that many snakes of various kinds, white, black, and green, and of many other colors, come, which lick the face and the whole body of the said doctor who was left for dead, as we have said. Who stays like this for two or three days, and while he is like this they say that the bones of the legs and arms are reunited and welded, and that he gets up and walks little and goes home."

( Pané in José Juan Arrom, pp. 30, 31).

All this is part of the MYSTERIOUS power of the Bohíque and its Guacán.

From the end of the sixties, and at the end of 1969, we undertook the task of beginning to search and search in those sacred places that our ancestors left hidden; many of them between mountains, mountain ranges or near the main rivers of our island.

(El Toa, Arroyata or La Plata).

When studying chroniclers and friars, we clearly realized that through the rigorous and comparative study of indigenous etymologies it was possible to access certain knowledge that would form a substantial part of the spiritual legacy of our indigenous ancestors.

The name of the rivers, the name of the mountains or the caciques, gradually opened up in us a sea of possibilities that today come to give us their best fruits.

The Waka of the Bohíque hill is one of those sacred places that was visited by indigenous people from all over America.

In it there is a large Hollow stone = (Waka) three differentiated stone sets -all millenary with their menhirs and dolmens-, and seven heterogeneous finds with the potential to be even more possible finds.

(see: Archaeoconsultation Cidra-Cayey Connector Project, by Jaime Vélez, archaeologist pp.10-80)

Ceramic evidence found in survey tastings yields approximate dates between 300 and 1200 A.D.

Around the Cerro area and in the Toíta neighborhood.

"The preceding dataset... It shows ceramic styles revealing the presence of pre-Columbian agro-pottery aborigines in the region from the late Saladoid phase to the chicoid phase (circa 400-1500).''

(See: Investigative study by Dr. Roberto Martínez Torres, in Report of the Highway Authority p.16)

There is a millenary stone formation that is located in Cidra, Puerto Rico and that our indigenous people of America associate it with old Ancestral Legends of the mythical Island of La Tortuga.

In it resides a certain magical-religious power known as Guacán.

It translates into something mysterious, energetic, sacred, power and, the incomprehensible since it is related to the power of the Bo-Bohíque.

For the North American Indians – many have visited the Cerro – the Hollow Stone resides in it, the power of the Great Spirit of the Turtle, Guaraguao and Owl.

In 1998, indigenous people from all over the Americas gathered there for evening ceremonies during the celebration of the First Indigenous Congress of the Americas; held at the botanical garden of the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras Campus.

It has the active participation of indigenous leaders from all over the Americas.

In the year 2000 and during the Meeting of the Third Indigenous Congress of the Americas held in Caguas Puerto Rico, the place was named by the delegations of the U.S., Peru, Ecuador, California U.S., Chile, Guatemala and Mexico, as Cerro del Bohíque.

In subsequent Indigenous Encounters, this powerful Ceremonial Center was used by them in 2004 on April 26, the indigenous leader of Lakota's David Bald Eagle, is kind enough to officially consecrate it = Cerro del Bohíque.

It is here where Taínos, Lakota's, Mayas and other tribal groups have performed ceremonies, for having been the Caribbean Ceremonial Center.

In September 2010, a beautiful ceremony was held to commemorate ten years of continuous and uninterrupted ceremonial work and thus expand the protection of such a sacred place.

Our vision is to achieve the dissemination of ''Ancient Indigenous Traditions'' and the preservation of the ancestral legacy.

Activities aimed at the knowledge and appreciation of the most beautiful customs of our ancestors were carried out there.

Thus, respecting in the medicine wheel all spiritual lines and lineages and also the peculiarities of sacred directions and winds, guardians and protectors.

In healthy civic social interaction and spiritual ritual fraternization, all beliefs are complementarily fused, respecting in them the wheel of medicine and ancestral teachings.

Currently the place is no longer used in a sacred way because economic and lucrative interests led to the closure of the site.

Nothing can be done in a sacred way in it.

The grandparents... flew from the site!

The Cave of the Great Turtle, Guaca del BÖ (Bohique) Cidra, Puerto Rico

Victor. Arturo. Cabello. Reyes.