APU SAGRED - Guardian Spirits

 

 

In ancient traditions, mountains are not simply rocky outcrops that rise up into the sky. For these cultures, they are Sacred Spirits, Guardians of Traditions and Mysteries that populate the cosmology of a people.

 

In Peru, where Mountain Spirits have been worshipped since time immemorial by ancestral cultures: Chavin, Púcara, Huaras, Mochica and, more recently, the Incas, they are called APUS.

 

Even today, the people who live there offer offerings of chicha and coca leaves to the Gods and Goddesses who inhabit them, so that their mythical presence favours a good harvest, protection and health for their community.

 

The mountains that are part of this photographic essay are not in Peru, and do not even reach 6,000 meters of altitude, which is the Peruvian average, they are parts of an ancient mountain range known as Serra do Sincorá situated in the Brazilian state of Bahia, around the city of Mucugê.

 

The aim of evoking this mythical consciousness is precisely to point the gaze towards the non-visible dimensions that usually enchant all those who pass through this mountain range, and that, by the enchantment of the time/space in which one allows oneself to contemplate, it is possible to feel the presence of the Ancestral Spirits that dance through the mountain.

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Dhan Ribeiro