Small Antique Mesa Cloth #48

The Mesa is the Ancient Andean tradition of the ‘Portable Altar’, central to Ritual and Ceremony.

The cloths are used to house Sacred items… stones, crystals, shells and metals that are worked with in powerful healing rituals. They may also be used as Altar cloths for your home altar or within your own Ceremonies.

Traditionally woven from hand-grown, hand-spun and hand-dyed Alpaca wool, each cloth carries the weaving of a story. Ancient symbols of the lineages of different High Andean communities call forth the guidance, protection and wisdom of the Ancestors, our Apus (Mountains), Pachamama (Mother Earth) and her powerful ally spirits and elemental forces, and the Celestial and Cosmic realms.

This particular Mesa cloth is exceptionally rare.

Shared with us through María and José Luis and their family, who live in the High Andean community of Paccanta in the region of Apu Ausangate, this antique cloth comes directly from the personal collection of María’s mother, an elder of their family and community.

It is rare for an elder to open her personal collection of antique Mesa cloths in this way. This is not a newly woven piece, but an old ceremonial cloth with a life and history of its own… potentially carrying close to a century of history, Ceremony and prayer.

A Mesa cloth is already alive with the stories, symbols and prayers woven into its threads, but an antique cloth carries another layer entirely. These pieces have been held, worked with and tended within the ceremonial life of the Andes over many decades. They carry not only the medicine inherent within their weaving, but the accumulated presence of prayer, offering, Ceremony and relationship with the Sacred that has moved through them across their long lives.

Their age can also be felt in their unique character. These antique pieces often carry vibrant colours, unexpected details and embellishments that distinguish them from newly woven Mesa cloths, each one bearing the marks of its own time, place and story.

To receive one is not simply to receive a Sacred weaving… it is to become the next custodian of a ceremonial piece that has already lived a life before reaching your hands, carrying its medicine and story forward into your own MESA, Ceremony and lineage.

These rare antique cloths are Sacred pieces to cherish and carry with you throughout your life, and perhaps one day pass forward as a gift of your own lineage.

Dimensions: 35 x 32cm