THE ANDEAN SHAMANISM.

Shamanism exhibits particular characteristics in the Andes of South America that are distinct to varying degrees from what occurs in other parts of the world. The purpose is to gain true knowledge from the unseen supernatural condition of existence that surpass the information processed by the 5 senses of the human body from the physical world. The most powerful shamans in Peru are those who have been struck by lightning 3 times.
The human experience of passage from one realm to another brings all realms of time and space  into a relationship with one another. The origins of this are related in part to being able to anticipate or predict future events and to interpret the past using "true knowledge." The shaman master this process of mystical transition, which essentially constitutes human nature of life and its relationship with the unseen world.
Shamanism is understood as a kind of religious manifestation in which the powerful specialist provide gifts and offerings as well as veneration and respect to the spiritual entities that manifest themselves in return for their advice.
Ethnographic evidence from Northern highlands of Peru indicates the contemporary shamanism use the lakes, ponds, and lagoons near Huancabamba and Catequil of Huamchuco as places in which they reside and work. Locals commonly refers to these places as sites holding the primordial heat, the life force, the spiritual or animate essence that permeates all things -that is, the manifestation of the spiritual realm in whatever form it chooses to take.
The worship of the natural world underscore the fact that the sacred can certainly appear in many forms and the vocation or the calling for shamans is drawn from these type of manifestation. Thus it is properly defined as a divine calling in which the soul of the individual is called in order to acquire true knowledge and it possesses some extraordinary capacity or sensitivity to altered states and is able to interpret symbolic images in which the invisible is made manifest in dreams, visions, states of altered consciousness, meditation, sounds, and ecstatic flight.
The communication between the invisible to the visible world is achieved through "Huacas"(energy centers), by sensing or identifying primordial heat. Those areas of the Andes where metal ore deposits are located and where there is the most evidence of metal-crafting and metallurgical arts in general are the preference in terms of habitat for those individuals with the capacity to deal with these type of energies.
Control of Fire (energy) as a technique for spiritual transformation is considered by scholars of comparative religions to have been the first skill that shamans of mythical times developed. Other important associations included an ability to transform into a variety of forms, some meteorological, in the context of soul travel or ecstatic flight, that evokes a strong celestial association.
Contemporary shamans perform ecstatic flight as a result of spirit possession usually a condor or raptor, which imparts "true insight knowledge" or increased intelligence that surpass the boundaries of the five senses, since the astral experience is not caught by the boundaries of the physical world. Also they can take the form of a beam of light, lightning, clouds, or a breeze.
Shamans have close association to raptors, reptiles, and felines,particularly jaguar and puma.