Who we are

Mikis

Mikis Hasson was born in Greece. After spending a life of trying to get acceptance through business, creating a family and various achievements, his cozy life was demolished in 2002 through serious life threatening illness, divorce and financial collapse. After a period of deep, suicidal clinical depression he decided to live and dedicate some time to his growth, disengaged himself from his workaholic business interests and started a sabbatical to explore the world, both inside and outside.

To the surprise of his cynical, analytical mind he suspiciously encountered Shamanism through Dr. Alberto Villoldo and the Four Winds’ Light Body School, a program of workshops designed to teach and familiarize westerners to the wisdom and practices of indigenous Earth traditions and Shamanism in a palatable and understandable way. His sabbatical extended from one year to practically permanent and after completing the Light Body School started travelling extensively through Central and South America delving ever deeper into the ancient practices. He studied with many wise men, shamans and sages, learning tools such as Soul Retrieval, Shamanic ceremony and healing, guided voyages and medicine plants, seeking knowledge and light. In the process he lived amazing, magnificent adventures and healed childhood wounds and family relationships, becoming a very happy man.

He was one of the initial dreamers of the Mythic Voyage (www.mythicvoyage.com) and has been it’s principal organizer. In the process he discovered and developed synaesthesia, an ability to connect and explore people’s subconscious and help them to focus their intention and avoid mind traps in order to achieve maximum benefits from their process.

The idea is not to indoctrinate people, merely to form an open line with their subconscious, hidden truths in order to assist them to achieve their own objectives during the Ayahuasca ceremonies, providing them with a personal map to their interior world. Through daily individual consultations, Argonauts of the Mythic Voyage are helped to bypass false leads so that they can safely navigate themselves through their underworld and thus confront their deepest fears and be liberated from the obstacles to their greatness.

Mikis is also one of the principal organizers of the Festival of Light and Love, a free for all musical event dedicated to the power and beauty of our intention with no sponsorship, no political or religious affiliations of any kind, no corporation or government involved, to take place October 25-29 of 2012 in Cusco, Peru ( www.festival12.com ).

Mikis is one of the founders of TierraMítica and the main guide and leader of the Mythic Voyage. He speaks English, Greek, Spanish, French and Italian.

Don Manuel Portugal Aponty

Don Manuel is a yogi, a shaman and a sage. His residence is the Earth.

After having travelled on his spiritual pilgrimage throughout South America, dwelling in Temples in the Andes and the Amazonia, learning in Ashrams in the Carribean, searching for that we do not know that we have lost, he moved to Cusco abandoning the anonymity of the spiritual voyager in order to share ancient wisdom and to open the veil and the doors of the beacon, the light, the abundance and the art in the aura of the temple of the Moon.

Don Manuel is a master of ancient rituals and ceremonies of the Americas, has worked in research, systematically and scientifically through his work managing two magazines in Lima with Imelda Phumpiu with which he co-founded the "Asociacion conservasionista de Canete" carrying out deep work on cultural identity as well as experientially through his spiritual pilgrimage and mapping of the sacred geography of the Andes and Amazonia.

He is the main inspiration behind both the Mythic Voyage and the Festival of Light and Love. He is also the writer of many publications including the book "The power of the Andes" which offers access to some of the pearls of wisdom scattered among the sages of ancient America, adjusted to be suitable to the modern World. It also provides a map to the sacred geography of the Americas and a guide to the rituals and ceremonies carried out by people of knowledge and light for thousands of years. Through his work he offers a guidebook for our connection to the energy existing in the Andes and Amazonia and their sacred traditions, facilitating our own, personal initiation path.

Don Manuel offers his guidance, protection and wisdom performing ritual purifications of the Argonauts and offering his wisdom throughout the Voyage as well as personal consultations to all participants. He is a master of ceremonies and rituals and a fountain of insights and knowledge.

Don Manuel is our spiritual pillar.

Herbert Quinteros Flores

Herbert Quinteros was born in the city of Tarapoto, Peru. He started his path and his vocation as an Ayahuasquero and healer 15 years ago following a family tradition of many generations. He has been studying about the teacher plants with Amazonian masters of Shipibo, Cocama, Ashaninka as well as Quechua Mestizo ethnic groups and traditions. His own family holds a deep knowledge of the Amazonian medicine plants and through his travels he has enriched and developed his own form of work based on the traditional rituals.

Herbert uses the rich, natural pharmacy of the jungle offering Dieta programs where he uses special alimentation combined with specific medicine plants, teas and roots of the jungle as well as his music filled Ayahuasca ceremonies to heal and cleanse both body and soul, tailor designing each Dieta to the ailments and impediments of each person.

Herbert is a consummate and passionate musician and uses the Andean flute called “quena”, the panflute (zamponia) made of feathers of the condor, the Andean guitar “charango”, the guitar and drums to accompany his healing work.

He has learned to speak many languages besides his native Spanish, such as English, German and French in his wish to communicate as directly as possible with all people seeking his help, and through his travels he has a deep understanding of many cultures around the world and the intricacies involved in the assimilation and absorption of the indigenous traditions of the Earth. He is the creator and owner of the Katari jungle healing center( www.kataricenter.com) .

“… with the voice of a grandfather and of a child I express the Ikaros (traditional medicine songs) and medicinal melodies as they manifest themselves to guide us and to center us in our personal work- both internal and external- so that we are perfectly aligned with the universe… so all can heal wounds and drink of the universal wisdom which is talking to us with love” Herbert

Benjamin Swatez

Benjamin has been an integral part of every single one of the Mythic Voyages and has developed into an amazing ceremony leader and guide. He was born in the USA of Danish descent and is a prolific world traveler. He is an artist who gains inspiration for his Art by truly sharing and experiencing the lives of the people he visits. He has spent time painting in the caves of Granada, Spain and living with Romanian, Bulgarian, and Spanish gypsies, has lived with the Garifuna people in Baranco, Belize, a tribe that was brought over on the Spanish slave ships. He has seen firsthand the strength in the eyes of children who survived the war in Sarajevo, Bosnia while filming a documentary called Revival which participated in the International Independent Film Festival of Paris, among other film festivals across Europe and was aired on Bosnian Federal Television.

He has travelled to remote villages in Russia, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru and throughout places too numerous to mention, teaching Art to indigenous children and performing Art Therapy classes and workshops. He uses the art within him and within all human beings as a penetrating, liberating healing tool. Recently he instigated the Bahari project teaching art to a village in India populated by recently liberated caste slaves and is organizing exhibitions worldwide as well as making a documentary to raise awareness of the millions of slaves still existing behind our turned backs.

He has had art exhibitions in both Europe and North America, with mural paintings in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru and is a painter, a writer, a musician, a fire dancer, a teacher, a sculptor and an adventurer finding Art in everything he does.

He is one of the founding members of TierraMítica , offering his help, experience and wisdom generously in every possible way. You can see a little of his art at www.bengadi.com .

Theodosia Paschalidou

Theodosia is a four times Mythic Voyager. After living a life of conformity and superficiality based on societal and family models which suffocated her on a personal and professional level alike and an ultimately infertile spiritual search of many blind paths, she reversed her narrow point of view and a perception of a life devoid of love, trust and happiness by daring to dive into the dark labyrinth of her soul. She finally dared to face head on the Minotaur, her personal beast.

Her voyage does not end here, it merely begins. But now she is able to dream and be her dreams. Her dream is TierraMítica . The dream of the return home, a home full of the familiar smells and the love of the mother. A garden filled by eaglets that twitter merrily ready to fly, a warm nest. Her dream is to fill with this feeling every single corner and every soul of this mythical land.

She is our administrator and our hostess, using the qualities accrued during her business career to maintain and nourish this feeling making TierraMítica a true, open haven and a home. Her chosen role, her Mythic Quest and her deep intention is to assure that everything runs as effortlessly as possible with an efficient but feminine touch, making sure that every detail is soaked in love and care.

Her weapons are her deep gratitude for all the gifts received and her yearning to offer back to the world the teachings of emotional and spiritual bravery, happiness and open heart.

She is our mythical symbol of mother, sister, the capable feminine energy that gifts the safety and embrace to any home.

Our Shipibo Maestras and Maestros

We do not mention here individual names because we are enthusiastically supported by the whole Shipibo community of medicine healers and Ayahuasquero masters who interchange, returning to their villages to cater to their own families and communities every 2-3 months leaving always 8-10 master healers to perform our ceremonies, to offer the wisdom and the healing power of various traditional healing plants, to soothe us with cleansing flower baths and individual treatments and to gift us the magic of their very special, ancient ceremonial traditions.

They prepare the very best medicine with love and respect and according to their customs, they sing in a symphony of Icaros transmitted from mother to child through millennia of experiential wisdom and they shower us with an unbelievable grandmother energy of love. They represent the true, uncontaminated, feminine spirit of the goddess Ayahuasca. The Shipibo ceremonies are performed with communal energy while they sing individual songs of healing for each participant, their voices joining the music of the jungle in an ethereal melody.

They form our direct connection with the cultures and traditions of the Earth and they are the personification of the divine energies in Amazonia.