Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (14 page)

The importance of the song is virtually universal in shamanism. Poet Gary Snyder says that the shaman gives song to dreams.9 The shaman, he says, "speaks
for wild animals, the spirits of plants, the spirits of mountains, of watersheds.
He or she sings for them. They sing through him."" Jerome Rothenberg, poet
and pioneer of ethnopoetics, calls the shaman the protopoet.ii For these poets,
the shaman is the healer who sings .12

LEARNING TO SING

It is universally said that each shaman learns his or her own icaros from the
spirits themselves; the poet Cesar Calvo calls them "untransferable magic
songs."13 But there are exceptions. First, icaros can be learned from one's
maestro ayahuasquero.'4 Dona Maria told me that I should first learn the icaros of don Roberto, my teacher; as time passed, and I dieted with the plants,
I would learn icaros of my own. And icaros can be learned from other shamans. There are many stories of shamans traveling long distances to learn
specific icaros. Anthropologist Francoise Barbira Freedman reports that one
of the Lamista shamans with whom she worked went to the Ucayali to learn
an icaro del kapukiri.' Anthropologist Peter Gow tells of how Artemio Fasabi
Gordon, son of a well-known Piro shaman, don Mauricio Roberto Fasabi,
would visit Gow repeatedly to listen to a recording of an icaro from another
village, so that he could learn to sing it when he drank ayahuasca.'6 I was told
the same thing-that when I was back home, I should listen to the recordings
I had made of don Roberto, my maestro ayahuasquero.

Some shamans even visit other shamans incognito in order to steal their
icaros. That is why many shamans mumble their songs, or sing in many different languages; the goal is to make their songs hard to learn, to keep them
from being stolen.'? Dona Maria frequently compared her own openhandedness with the selfishness of other shamans, who do not want to reveal their icaros. "I'm not selfish," dona Maria said to me. "I sing loud because I'm not
afraid to let people know what I know."

Kapukiri

Pablo Amaringo explains kapukiri as a kind of dark brown vapor, which results
from the decomposition of living beings and which rises up and collects in the
atmosphere. The Icapulciri of certain trees-the pucalupuna, ajosquiro, catahua
negra, and huairacaspi-is poisonous and causes sicknesses specific to that
tree. Sorcerers use this Icapulciri to cause harm, and an icaro del kapukiri can be
used to counteract the poison.'

NOTE

1. Luna & Amaringo, 1993, pp. 106-107.

But one's own icaros most frequently come while dieting with the plants
and other substances, in ayahuasca visions, in dreams, in the unheard
rhythms of one's own heart. It is a process that people find hard to describe,
especially when the songs are in strange or incomprehensible languages. It
has something to do, I think, with solitude. "While you are alone with the
sounds of the jungle and its animals," says Cocama shaman don Juan Curico,
"it is a real concert, a choir, that is the silence of the jungle. '118

The icaros arrive in various ways. Don Solon Tello Lozano, a mestizo shaman in Iquitos, says, simply, "The plant talks to you, it teaches you to sing."19
One may hear the icaro as if sung by someone else, or one may hear it inwardly. Both words and melody may come together, or first one and then the
other. One may hear only the words and then complete the melody oneself.
Don Agustin Rivas says that he would make a song for each plant he dieted
with as its power entered him, with the melodies coming first and the words
added later; indeed, the lyrics of some of his icaros were written by Faustino
Espinosa, a professor of Quechua.20 Sometimes, as with don Francisco Montes Shuna, a spirit whistles and sings the melody of the icaro in a dream.21
Sometimes there is simply an overwhelming urge to sing, and the song and
melody come out by themselves.

Three days after Pablo Amaringo had undergone a healing, he was astonished to find himself singing, perfectly, the icaros he had heard there, including the words. "I sang many icaros," he says, "as if the song were in my ears
and on my tongue. "22 The third time dona Maria drank ayahuasca, the spirit of
ayahuasca entered into her, and she began to sing loudly. El doctor ayahuasca was in her body, she says, singing to her, and ayahuasca appeared to her
as two genios, spirits, one male and one female, who stood on either side of
her-a woman dressed in beautiful clothing, wearing jewelry made of huayruro beads, "everything of the selva, the jungle," and an ugly man, with bad teeth.
Everyone in the room became very quiet, she says, as she sang her new icaro
de ayahuasca.

USES OF ICAROS

There are thousands of icaros, and shamans assert their prestige depending
on how many they have in their repertoire; an experienced shaman will have
scores of icaros, perhaps more than a hundred. The uses of these songs are as varied as the needs of shamans. When the icaro arrives, one may know its use
immediately, or its use may become clear as one continues to sing it. There
are icaros for calling, for protection, for learning, for exchanging knowledge,
and for healing. There are icaros to stun a snake '23 cure snakebite,24 make a
distant loved one return home,25 make a person into a good hunter,26 call the
soul back to the body,27 give strength to the ayahuasca drink '21 enhance the
ayahuasca visions,29 bless the participants in a healing ceremony,3° protect
from lightning and thunder,3' protect before sex,32 cure mat aire,33 make a sorcerer fall asleep,34 drive away chullachaquis,35 call in the great boas,36 ease childbirth,37 call the protective spirits of the water,38 swallow darts extracted from
snakes and scorpions,39 call the spirits ofmapacho, ajo sacha, chiricsanango,
and the magic stones,4° cleanse the body,41 make the body strong enough to
resist wind and rain,42 protect against sorcery,43 call the spirit of a dead shaman,44 attract the paiche fish,45 visit distant planets,46 call the rainbow,47 see the
problems from which the patient suffers,48 cause to vomit and faint,49 cause
destruction by fire,5° kill.5'

Sometimes the connection between song and purpose is highly metaphorical. Don Emilio Andrade, for example, has an icaro del ninacuru, the song of the
ninacuru, an insect whose eyes are said to resemble the headlights of a car. By
singing this song, he can project lights out of his eyes and locate a person who
has been abducted by the yacuruna, the people of the waters. Again, the toucan is said to sing a sad and beautiful song in the evening to attract females.
By singing the icaro de la pinsha, song of the toucan, one can similarly make a
woman cry and win her love.52 Cocama shaman don Jose Curitima Sangama
will sing a song invoking a stone to strengthen a weak patient, or invoking a
condor or peccary for one with a weak stomach, since these are animals who
can eat rotten things and never have stomach problems.53 Don Daniel Morlaconcha, a skilled ayahuasquero, gave dona Maria an icaro that calls the sajino, the collared peccary, and the boa negra, the black boa; it tells of a colpa,
a small lake in the jungle where all the animals come to drink and bathe in
harmony. The purpose is to attract clients.

Thus, icaros can be used for just about any purpose, any contingency encountered by a shaman. But three primary functions are to call spirits, to
"cure" objects and endow them with magical power, and to modulate the visions induced by ayahuasca.

Calling

Icaros may be used to call the spirit of a plant or animal; the icaro is taught
to the shaman by the particular plant or animal as a means of calling it for healing, protection, or attack. Such icaros call both healing and protective
spirits; a protective icaro is often called an arcana or an icaro arcana. We will discuss arcanas when we talk about protective spirits and defense against sorcery.

Even the spirit of a human being can be called by an icaro. The shaman
uses the appropriate song to summon a lost or stolen soul, or to call the soul
of a man or woman for purposes of pusangueria, love magic. "With one of
those icaros, Maestro Ximu made me come with his calling," writes poet Cesar Calvo. "He made me come as if I were a protective spirit."54 A powerful shaman can even call the souls of sorcerers. Pascual Pichiri was the grandfather
of Pablo Amaringo the artist; when Amaringo was stricken by a Shipibo sorcerer, Pichiri cried out, "You will see how I will send your own virote back to
you! But don't think that I am doing that because I am a brujo myself, but only
because you deserve a lesson! Don't you know that there is no brujo capable of
doing any harm to me?" Then Pichiri summoned before him the spirits of one
brujo and then another, until the second one admitted his guilt and asked for
forgiveness.55

Curing

The verb icarar means to sing or whistle an icaro over a person, object, or preparation to give it power;56 water over which an icaro has been sung or whistled
and tobacco smoke has been blown, for example, is called agua icarada.57 Another term for the same process is curar, cure; that which has been sung over is
said to be curado, cured, in the sense that fish or cement is cured, made ready
for use. "To cure any object," says poet Cesar Calvo, "is to provide it with powers, to give it strengths, to endow it with purposes previously ignored by the
object, which would not have been placed there originally by habits or from
birth."58 And again: "That is why we work so hard at fasting, and why we are
so careful about curing plants, stone or water or wood plants, charging them
with suitable powers, gathering from the air the suitable icaros, and giving
power to those remedies."59 Manuel Cordova Rios, a mestizo shaman, puts
it this way: "What good do you think my remedies would be if I didn't sing to
them?s6o

A shaman can cure objects ofjust about any sort-a seed necklace, a bracelet of snakeskin, a wristlet made from the labia of a dolphin, a ring, a lock
of hair, a handkerchief. Most important is a medicine; the shaman sings the
icaro of the spirits that infuse the healing mixture. The song is what Calvo
calls the charge; the object, the medicine, operates, he says, "according to the
intensity and intention of the charge, to grant life, love, youth, forgetfulness,
sexual plenitude, evil spells, or death. The same object, once cured, is capable of resuscitating, healing, making sick, or killing, according to the length of
the fast and the direction of the charge."',

Pablo Amaringo gives several examples of healing with a variety of cured
medicines. In one case, a patient's eyes had been harmed by a sorcerer shining
a magic flashlight at him. The shaman cured this person by giving him a drink
of water over which he had sung icaros and blown tobacco smoke.62 Similarly,
a menstruating woman had left her wet underwear in a canoe by the riverside;
a boa had excreted something living into her underwear and thus implanted
the larvae of boas into her womb. The shaman treated her by taking a fruit of
the huito, cutting it in half, and scraping some into warm water for the woman
to eat. He prepared this medicine-in fact, considered an abortifacient-"by
singing many icaros, blowing on it, and putting in it arcanas." The icaros
called all the spirits that would cause the medicine to work-the great serpent corimachaco, the multicolored rainbow, the precious stones, the mud of
the waters, the laughing falcon, and the tiger; with his icaro he summoned
the spirits of the pucunucho, pepper, and of the rocoto, hairy pepper-both hot
pepper plants with which to stun the boa who, with its own spirit helpers, was
supporting the pregnancy.63

Anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna tells of how don Williams Vdsquez
deals with difficult childbirth, singing icaros of slimy fish, demulcent and
mucilaginous trees, the slippery boa, and the ray, which can give birth in any
position. He sings these songs over a glass of water, which is given to the
woman to drink.64 And again: A man had been poisoned by a woman he had
spurned by being given the blood of a black dog. Pablo Amaringo, directed by
a spirit who gave him instructions in a dream, put some leaves of lengua sacha
in a bowl of water, and added three drops of camphor water, three drops of
perfume, and three drops of Timolina; he sang an icaro, blew on the medicine, and then gave it to the young man to drink from the same side of the
bowl that Amaringo blew on.6

A common way to create pusangas, love charms, is by blowing on an object-soap, perfume, cloth-which is then given, now imbued with power, to
the person one desires, causing the person to fall madly in love. A shaman
can also blow on a photograph of the one desired.66 A shaman once blew his
icaros into some perfume, a drop of which was then put on each of several
sculptures don Agustin Rivas had made and which he was exhibiting in Lima.
"This is for you to sell your art work," the shaman said. Don Agustin sold
nearly all his sculptures, while other artists sold nothing.67

Such cured objects can be used for countersorcery as well. Don Emilio Andrade fills a dried toad with tobacco, patiquina, and camphor; sings over
it; and places it in the house of a person persecuted by sorcery, to catch the
magic darts directed at the owner.68

Controlling Visions

Icaros also have the ability to modulate the effects of ayahuasca and other psychoactive plants, both for the shaman who is singing the icaro and for a patient or apprentice to whom the shaman has given the medicine. Songs can
subir mareacidn, bring on the vision, or Ilamar mareacidn, call the vision; they can
also sacar mareacion, take away the vision. 19 The latter can be used benevolently,
in order to alleviate frightening visions in a patient, or malevolently, as when
don X used his magic to take away dona Maria's ayahuasca visions. A shaman
more powerful than the attacking sorcerer can then use countericaros to restore the visions.7°

Songs can also modulate the contents of the visions of a patient or apprentice.71 When dona Maria tired of my incessant questions, she would tell me, "I
will show you," which meant that I should expect my next ayahuasca visions
to give me the answers I was looking for. Cesar Calvo, in his novel about the
life of Manuel Cordova Rios, tells how the shaman Ximu controlled the visions of his young apprentice, "calibrating the hallucinogenic apparitions in
the mind of the young man.... The slightest gesture of the old man developed in his consciousness the caresses of an order. Whatever Ximu thought
was seen and heard by the boy. They understood each other through flashes
of lightning and through shadows, amid slow visions and colors, and Ximu
began to confide his patience and his strength. 1171