The Chavin Huachuma Mesa

Huachuma (San Pedro) cactus growing on a hillside above Chavin de Huantar.

Maestro Martin Loarte blows mapacho tabacco smoke over the distinctive Chavin mesa.

This mesa or altar holds different sacred objects set up in the ancient manner of the shamans of antiquity.  In those far off days the color black was considered masculine and placed on the left whereas the feminine was viewed as white and placed on the right.  This older configuration is the opposite way round to the post-colonial San Pedro shamanism still practiced on the northern coast of Peru.
Don Howard Lawler first explained to me the Chavin mesa back in 2005 and said that the ancient configuaration of the mesa and of the black/white stairway derived from the way that the first shamans of Chavin viewed the world and the cosmos.

This photo shows a detail from the right side of the black/white stairway at Chavin.  The white rock was bought from a long distance away and was carefully worked into an L shape to make the bottom tread and riser, a technically difficult job for even today's stone masons with modern tools.
On the left side the treads and risers are just individual stones quarried nearby and much easier to make.  This seems to suggest that the builders at Chavin were putting much more effort into the feminine side of the stairs.  Perhaps a reflection of pre-patriarchal attitudes?