Hans Li Has His Cards Read

by Alberta Moraine

It began in the early 1980's in New York City, with a Tarot reading. Hans Li, a young architect working hard for Richard Meier's firm, took a dinner break at the Akbar, an Indian restaurant near the office, got his cards read, and the rest followed from there. He studied with Tarot teacher Carol Schuler, and began his journey. It was to take him to the Nazsca Desert on the Southern coast of Peru, then to the Peruvian Amazon, then on a vision quest to the canyons of the American Southwest, then to Bali, and so on.

Or maybe it began in Hong Kong, years earlier, when as a child he would visit the Chan and Li Medical Factory, his family's herb business for four centuries, and marvel at the sights and smells of the giant cinnamon sticks, healing herbs, and warm honey.

Or maybe it began in Boston, in the art classes of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where he learned drawing, photography, and watercolor after completing his college studies in dance and psychology, civil engineering and physics.

Or maybe it has yet to begin. If we suspend the certainty that time is linear, the possibilities multiply. [However, since the texts of articles like this one are linear by nature, feel free to relax into the conventional, linear-time model unless you are otherwise inclined.]

While still an architect at Meier, Li signed up for a trip to the Andes with Dr. Alberto Villoldo, an anthropologist documenting shamans in Peru. In the Nazsca Desert they met Don Eduardo Calderón, a shaman, who then asked Li to become his apprentice. Li soon found that the job of the apprentice is to take care of everyone else. It became Li's job, for example, to combine tobacco juice and Pisco (Peruvian brandy) into a mixture that, poured from a seashell down your nostrils, is said to make a direct cleansing contact with the nerves to your brain. Each night from nine until after midnight the shaman conducted a ceremony and everyone in attendance would partake. Li remembers the night sky, the chants and songs, and the sense of warmth, calm and peace - he says the shaman became a mother and a father figure to him.

Li's studies with Don Eduardo continued for two years. He would make periodic trips from the New York City architectural office to the high peaks of the Andes. Then, also through Dr. Villoldo, Li met Don Agostin Revis in the Amazon rainforest. There, Li learned about the medicine man tradition - herbs and magic and healing work, using the "vine of the dead," an indigenous plant.

Until 1989, Li continued his slow commute between the office and the wisemen. Whenever he returned to work, he noticed his colleagues were interested in what he could have been doing on his vacation. They wondered what left him so peaceful and glowing when he came back to the office; some even asked to go with him the next time. Li decided to leave the firm in the fall of 1989, more than six years since his first introduction to the Tarot at the Indian restaurant. Li had found that although some of the work had been interesting, success in a major architectural firm meant becoming a bureaucrat, spending more time on the phone than designing. He took an extended trip back to the Amazon, now that time permitted. He commenced a vision quest in the lands of the Cliffdwellers of the Southwestern United States, returning year after year to learn more about the places, the cultures, and spiritual and musical traditions.

Hans Li: Olmec Head, Monument Number 1, La Venta Museum, Villahermosa, Mexico, 1992. Iris photographic black and white print, 36 x 48 inches, edition of 5. Copyright Hans Li 1994. Reproduced with permission.

This head from the Olmec culture (1500BC - AD 200) is the "Ancient One." It represents the ancestor of all Mesoamerican cultures, including the Maya.

On his first several trips to the American Southwest and Mexico, he shot hardly any film - perhaps a roll and a half the first three years. Then, in 1990, Li began in earnest to take photos during his travels. Initially only in black and white, his photographs drew on his formal training in Boston as well as his years of experience visiting the holy places. His first book, The Ancient Ones: Sacred Monuments of the Inka, Maya and Cliffdweller, features 72 black and white photos from his journeys up to 1992: holy sites from the Inka of Peru; the Olmec and Maya of the Yucatan and Guatemala; and the Cliffdwellers of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah.

Later, Li found a camera setup, light enough to travel with, that worked with color film and depended not at all on electricity. He has stayed with that toolkit: a Linhof Technorama 6 by 17 camera with an 8 x 10 Schneider lens. The negative size is 2 1/4 x 6 3/4, widened for panoramic shots. The whole apparatus measures about 8 1/2 inches wide by 4 inches tall, weighing between five to seven pounds, depending on the lens. He also carries a tripod, because many of his exposures last half a second or longer.

Hans Li: Seven Sisters at the Valley of the Gods, Utah, March 2000. Iris photographic print on Crane Watercolor paper, 14.5 x 44 inches, edition of 5. Copyright Hans Li 2000. Reproduced with permission.

He makes his photographs to honor the holy places, and to show them to the world. In fact, Li has negotiated with a mountain, with the wind, with an approaching storm, asking them to let the clouds lift, or delay the wind or storm, to give him time to complete a particular photograph for the world to see. One time, at Ausangati, the most sacred mountain in the Andes, Li met some Italian climbers, camped in a snowstorm, waiting for a glimpse of the mountaintop. The Italians left, discouraged, after four days. Li told a shaman of his desire to see and photograph the mountain. The shaman said, "just wait," and that night, with a local holy man, they joined in a ceremony, after which the cloud lifted all at once. The next morning, Li took his photographs and gave thanks to the mountain. In the American Southwest, Li wanted some photographs near sunset of Cliffdweller cave openings, but the lighting was off, due to a storm so close by it had turned the sky purple. He said prayers, and a slit appeared in the sky, permitting light to flow through. It lasted just long enough for Li to take the photograph. Then the sky closed up, and Li left for Colorado, his mission accomplished in 45 minutes.

He says these moments are windows of opportunity; and that, perhaps, the opportunities can be created. He believes a favorable moment can be re-created, because nature is like an ensemble of dancers who can be seduced or coaxed, not commanded. His teacher Don Agostin once negotiated with a rainstorm, saying, "Give us sixty more minutes and then we'll leave." Li warns, though, that if you ask these forces to wait, you had better leave on time, because the storm will be stronger when it does hit.

Hans Li: Machu Pijchu, Qosqo, Peru, March 1999. Iris photographic print on Crane Watercolor paper, 14.5 x 44 inches, edition of 5. Copyright Hans Li 1999. Reproduced with permission.

His understandings of the places - the lay of the land, the changing light from morning to night and from season to season - are all, of course, essential to these photographs. When he arrives to take a photograph, he knows the area well from previous visits and has determined the vantage point, time of day, and time of year most advantageous for the image. He says it feels like a visit to an old friend, a home away from home, when he returns. His preparations, combined with the precision of his camera, can bring astonishing clarity and detail to his color photographs. In Li's words, "To the extent achievable by photography as a medium, I rely on the collaboration of the wind, the suspension of the sun in the clouds, the casting of the shadows, the falling of rain or snow, and the rising of fog to produce images that are forever true."

In the Inka tradition, the word "Despacho" means giving back for all the goodness of life. In thanks for "taking" a photograph, he likes to give back something, with an offering and ritual suitable to the surroundings. You thank the different kingdoms - animals, plants, foodstuffs - for what they bring to life by assembling a folded packet with something from each of the kingdoms in it, and then offering it up to the mountains and valleys by burning or burying it. Li says it's like a house-gift to your host, a way to offer joy. He loves rituals and offerings, because they celebrate the connections, acknowledge the presence of greater forces.

Hans Li: The Serpent Gate, the House of the Sun, Uxmal, Mexico, 1992. Iris photographic black and white print, 36 x 48 inches, edition of 5. Copyright Hans Li 1994. Reproduced with permission.

The buildings of Uxmal often were decorated with serpent motifs. This structure has an arrow-shaped opening thta represents the head of the upturned rattlesnake, flanking S-shaped decorations which symbolize a coiled snake, and a frieze with an undulating motif which illustrates a serpent mimicking the perpetual path of the sun.

In New Mexico you can make your offering whenever you are moved to do so, but when in Bali, you go to the temples to make your offerings, and you go within a day of arriving there. Otherwise, Li says, bad things can happen - a back injury, stormy weather, your vehicle landing in a ditch. But then, if time is not linear, you might just as easily be giving thanks after a successful trip, rather than making an offering of supplication upon your arrival in Bali. (The time-space continuum gets a little slippery here.)

The travel can be demanding, particularly at high altitudes. Li has determined he can carry 35 pounds on his back, a good portion of it photographic gear. And if things go wrong there is no radio, no telephone, no emergency vehicle. Four years ago, he got very sick when he was visiting the Qero Nation high in the Andes at 17,000 feet. He discovered later his lung had collapsed, his lungs and brain had collected fluid, his overtaxed body had a high fever, and things were dire. Without conventional medicine (a doctor had accompanied him, but she had no equipment or methods to communicate to the outside world), Li was attended to by villagers of the five communities who brought in shamans each night. Back in New York, Li made a full recovery after six weeks.

Hans Li: Amaru Wanka, The Sacred Valley, Qusqo, Peru, March 1999. Iris photographic print on Crane Watercolor paper, 14.5 x 44 inches, edition of 5. Copyright Hans Li 1999. Reproduced with permission.

Asked what it's like to live in New York City, between explorations, Li answers, "It's fine and dandy to travel to South America, see exotic people and places, but it's good to learn how to build a bridge to this other world, how to make the extra effort to bring it back with you." He lives across from Central Park, which reminds him that nature is everywhere. He realizes, too, that the concrete, the buses and cars, are also part of nature - different from what our ancestors may have known but part of nature. He is interested in photographing New York - in fact his first panoramic photos were of Central Park - and his architectural training leads him to photograph bridges, walls, and lampposts.

Li exhibits and distributes photographic images of holy places from his travels to share with others the wisdom and beauty he has found. He has also established the Millennium Institute of Holistic Studies, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, but with its main center in Bali. Through Dr. Villoldo, the Institute has been able to assemble meetings among Zen masters, Buddhist masters, shamans, psychologists, master dancers, Brazilians from the two major African religions, Balinese trance dancers, and others from mystical traditions around the world.

Applying his own growing experience with the bearers of living traditions, Li has begun to discern similarities among the different mystical types. He has come to believe that some things are universal to humanity - that one tradition overlaps the next. He has found that a song in Kechua, the ancient language of the Inka, can affect city dwellers here and now. He has learned from Michael Hardner, a scholar who brought Siberian shamanism to the US in the mid-Twentieth Century, that drumming can be a universal language of recovery as well. He finds the songs can be exported from their context - that moments and ceremonies come back to him when he hears a song associated with them. He has found that music, power objects, and smells are benchmarks - the keys to building the bridge between the worlds.

Can he distribute music beyond the culture of its origin? He is interested in the possibilities. A composer of piano music himself, he believes the sacred songs can assist people on their journeys as the shamans do - not protecting them, but helping them along the path they must traverse, providing a kind of empowerment. Li's books are his gift of gratitude for the help he has received in his own journey.

Hans Li: Fountain of the Princess, Ollantaytambu, the Sacred Valley, Qusqo, Peru, 1994. Iris photographic black and white print, 36 x 48 inches, edition of 5. Copyright Hans Li 1994. Reproduced with permission.

Legend tells that this fountain was created by General Ollantay to honor the princess Smiling Star, who was the daughter of King Pachakteq. The general, who was not of royal blood, was in love with the princess but was not allowed to marry her because she had been banished by her father to the House of the Chosen Women.

His next book project is developing slowly. To be called Salk'a (a Kechua word translated as "wildness of the heart"), the first chapter will be illustrated with the large color photographs he brought back from his travels to South America and the American Southwest. He will name this chapter The Language of Stones in the Native Americas. Stones have particular importance to the shamans in the high Andes, Li says. Because very little can grow at altitudes between 12,000 and 17,000 feet, the herbs used in other shamanic traditions must be imported, and so are scarce. Instead, the Andean mystics use rocks - meteorites, river rocks, rocks from deep lakes, rocks of different colors, rocks passed on from teacher to student over generations.

This notion of Salk'a - the chaos at the time of creation when possibilities were limitless - is a gripping one. Americo Yabar, a mystic from the Andes, introduced Li to it, and he has been living with and seeking it for years:

I went looking for Salk'a everywhere, with my Linhof Technorama 6 by 17 camera, hoping to find him in shadows and in light; diving into the Goldwater Library in New York, I tried to trace him in ancient texts; travelling all over the Americas, attempting to rediscover him in sacred temples. I found him under the altar stone, behind the canvas, between the lines and resting comfortably in the absence of words. I tried to hear him in sacred chants but I found him singing to the music of silence. I tried to detect his movements but I found him dancing in stillness; I tried to locate him in the high mountains but I found him in a place of not being. I tried to think of him in my meditations but I found him without a thought. I tried to find an answer in him but I found him without a question. I tried to discover him in the great mysteries but I found him in dreams untold. [From Li's catalogue essay for the exhibition at Onisaburo Gallery (see Resources, below). Ed.]

As a student visiting the Renaissance monuments in Europe, or as a seeker holding a compass in the center of a random stone formation in the Andes, Li perceives Salk'a as a spirit that weaves through all things - like shakti, a kind of life force. He believes you can try to see the wildness, to put your will consciously toward seeing things. "You can recognize it in the joint of two architectural elements, the way a corner of a building resolves, the way a branch is on a tree. The crazy, the wild part, is everywhere. You don't have to go to Paris or the Amazon - you can learn to see it in your own neighborhood."

And to think all this began with a Tarot card reading in a midtown restaurant. [That is, if that moment has happened yet.] Join Hans Li somewhere at a bend in the space-time continuum. I will if you will.

About the Author:

Alberta Moraine writes frequently for the Newsletter. With Nancy K. Ford, Moraine co-authored The Dance of the String Quartets, an interview with Alexander Technique master teacher Jane Kosminsky, found in the April Newsletter.

Resources:

An exhibition of Hans Li's large format color and black and white photographs will remain at Onisaburo Gallery through 28 July. A catalogue is available for $ 10.00 from Onisaburo Gallery, The Interfaith Center of New York, 40 East 30 Street, New York, NY 10016. tel 212 / 685 4242; fax 212 / 685 4222; http://www.interfaithcenter.org

Hans Li's book, The Ancient Ones: Sacred Monuments of the Inka, Maya and Cliffdweller (City of Light Books, 1994, ISBN: 0963955608) includes 72 photographs, and recounts in detail the ancient stories of the early gods and heroes. The book is now out of print. Check libraries and online used booksellers for copies.

Hans Li's photographs may be purchased through the Eleanor Barefoot Gallery, New York City. tel 212 / 625 8899; email on1foot@aol.com