Rites of Purification and Dignity

Abuela Maria Valdivia

Feb 19-23rd, 2026

María Valdivia forms part of the Fuego Sagrado de Itzachilatlan for nearly three decades now and is recognized as a spiritual leader of this tradition. María Valdivia is a Sundancer, Spirit and Stars dancer. She is a carrier of the Chanupa (Sacred Pipe) and of Master Medicines. María is a renowned Temazcalera, walking the prayer of Love and Respect to Mother Earth.

María was born in a small town called San Felipe, at the foot of the Andean Mountains in Chile. Daughter to people working the land, she grew up surrounded by the knowledge of plants and natural remedies that her mother, with Mapuche blood, taught her.

It was at the age of twenty seven when she traveled through Peru and had her first encounter with the medicine of San Pedro, a master cactus widely used by the native peoples of the Andes. For nine years she traveled through South America, meeting wisdom carriers of the native traditions and original cultures who taught her the use of several plants. In her late thirties she decided to move to Europe with her family and began to deeply devote herself to the work of shamanic practices. She was instructed by a great medicine woman from Ecuador with whom she traveled for many years through different places in South America receiving the teaching and blessings of healers who showed her the way of the sacred altars. 

Today María Valdivia lives in Ibiza where she holds Vision Quests, runs medicine ceremonies, sweat lodges and does personal treatments, mostly with plants of her own garden. This October she will hold the 9th Vision Quest on the island.

María is now 71 years young and walks with joy, commitment and responsibility, supporting emotional processes and health problems with her ceremonial work and natural medicines, including songs, stones, plants and feathers.