Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (18 page)

PROJECTING THE DART

Among mestizos and a number of indigenous peoples, pathogenic projectiles are taken from the phlegm and shot into the victim by blowing with the
mouth, either with or without tobacco smoke. Other sorcerers may project
them through their arms and out an opening in their hands;23 or they may be
carried by an animal or bird controlled by the sorcerer, given in food or drink,
or left on the ground to be stepped on.24 Among the Shuar, darts that enter the
body by being stepped on are believed to cause a fatal, often cancerous, sickness.25 Yagua shamans keep their darts in their stomach-some claim to have
as many as a thousand-and project them by rubbing their arm and shoulder
progressively toward their hand; the dart is extracted by blowing with tobacco
smoke, propelled with the aid of magic gloves, and carried to its destination
by the spirit allies.21

DARTS AND COMMERCE

These darts can be traded or bought and sold. Aguaruna shamans may give
their darts as a gift or sell them for money or trade goods.27 Canelos Quichua
shamans also sell their spirit darts, which include such substances as spiny
palm splinters, small frogs, living hair, small snakes, stinging caterpillars,
spiders, machaca moths, blood-sucking insects, bees, stinging ants, stones,
and "sentient scissors and Gillette razor blades. 1121 After buyer and seller have
both drunk ayahuasca, the shaman coughs up the dart from his stomach. It
moves around in the shaman's hand, proving its genuineness to the purchaser, and the purchaser takes it, swallows it, and then keeps it-along with all
the other spirit helpers he has acquired-in his stomach.29 Similarly, shamans
from different ethnic groups will trade or purchase darts: a Quichua shaman
will visit an Achuar shaman in order to exchange darts,3° or a Shuar will travel
to a Canelos Quichua shaman in order to buy them.3' The language of commerce is found in the spirit world as well. Yagua darts are impregnated with
a poison the shaman purchases from the iguana spirit at the celestial lake.32
Don Rodrigo Andi, a Canelos Quichua shaman, carries a shield of medicine
he bought in a spirit drugstore on the Napo River.33

PHLEGM AS DEFENSE

The darts, and their slimy or sticky carrier, are defensive as well as offensive;
they prevent enemy darts from entering the body or absorb them, acquire their
power, or project them back to the one who sent them. The mariri extracts the
magic darts, the sickness, and the other evils in the patient's body, and at the
same time protects the shaman from the sickness and sorcery being sucked
out. The same darts that are used in attack sorcery are most effective in protection against attack. The Canelos Quichua shaman keeps, in his stomach
and chest, sharp dangerous objects called tsintsaca-or sometimes supai biruti,
spirit virotes-that can be brought up into the throat as a lurira, a shield, to
protect the shaman from the pathogenic objects sucked from the patient. The
shaman sucks out these intrusive objects, noisily and sometimes violently,
and holds them in his mouth, rolling them around. The shaman's own darts,
brought up into the throat, examine the darts the shaman has sucked, diagnose their source, and take away their power, adding it to the shaman's own.
The shaman then disposes of the evil darts by blowing them outward into a
tree or stump or rock, where they stay, or by projecting them at an enemy.34

The Shuar shaman keeps tsentsak, magic darts, in his chest, nurtured by
tobacco juice; when he is ready to suck, the shaman regurgitates two tsentsak
into the sides of his throat and mouth. He holds one in the front and one in
the back of his mouth: the dart in front absorbs the tsentsak he has sucked
out of the patient; the dart in back blocks the throat if the first dart fails. If the
tsentsak did not block the entry of the tsentsak sucked from the patient, the
sickness would pass into the shaman's stomach and kill him. The sickness
dart, dissolved into the shaman's dart, is vomited out and displayed to the patient.35 Among the Achuar, too, drinking tobacco juice forms what anthropologist Philippe Descola calls a "viscous carapace" within the shaman's mouth
and throat. This substance prevents the darts sucked out of the patient's body
from slipping into the shaman's own chest and stomach, where they can do
great damage.36

Don Francisco Montes Shuiia says that the phlegm is so important a protection that it must be nourished by swallowing tobacco smoke every four
hours, even during the night. Indeed, if the mariri is not fed with tobacco
smoke, it may come out of the shaman's mouth of its own accord, where an
enemy sorcerer can cut it off, with fatal results.37

Because the mariri in his throat protects don Roberto from ingesting the
darts and other evil objects he sucks out-the sorcerer's phlegm, the insects and scorpions and toads-the remainder, after spitting out the sickness, becomes flema in his mouth, dissolves into the mariri in his throat, and is swallowed, to be added to his own store of phlegm and thus his fuerza, shamanic
power. When the sorcerer sends the virotes, the sorcerer laughs a vindictive
laugh; when the shaman acquires the sorcerer's dart, don Roberto told me,
the shaman gets to laugh.

Many shamans take these evils and direct them back to the sorcerer who
sent them, to cause the sorcerer harm. Both don Roberto and dona Maria
disclaimed any interest in sending back the darts or other pathogenic projectiles to harm the sorcerer from whom they came; that would be inconsistent
with their practice of pura blancura, the pure white path. Indeed, don Roberto
claims-with what candor I do not know-that he does not even know how
to project magic darts back into an enemy shaman. This is not unusual; very
few mestizo shamans will admit knowing how to cause harm, presumably as
a way of avoiding the accusation of being a sorcerer.38 Instead, don Roberto
uses the materials of the magical attack to increase his own power, his ability
to withstand attacks directed-as they inevitably are-against himself. Dona
Maria, however, left some ambiguity. "We are gentle people," she once told
me, giving me one of her looks. "But sometimes we show our claws."

SOURCES OF PHLEGM

The shaman's phlegm may be received from either of two sources. An apprentice may receive phlegm from the mouth of the maestro ayahuasquero;
or phlegm may be received from the plant spirits themselves, by drinking
ayahuasca, smoking mapacho, and ingesting substances with strong sweet
smells. Dona Maria had nourished her phlegm-and thus the fuerza, power,
of her oraciones, prayers-for years before meeting don Roberto and drinking ayahuasca or smoking mapacho. She had done this by drinking commercial cologne, mouthwash, camphor dissolved in alcohol, and yellow oleander
seeds dissolved in alcohol with white onion.

The maestro ayahuasquero can also transfer some of his or her own
phlegm-and the fuerza it manifests-into the apprentice, as part of the apprentice's coronacion, crowning or initiation, by regurgitating the phlegm
and putting it into the apprentice's body. The mariri can be transferred to
the apprentice through the corona, through the mouth, or both; the stream
of mariri entering the apprentice is often envisioned as a shining stream
of light or as a great snake. Other shamans maintain that it is a dangerous practice to give phlegm to an apprentice who might break the dieta, with disastrous repercussions for the master; these shamans say that they received
their phlegm directly from the spirits.39 We turn to this process of initiation in
the next chapter.

MOTIVES AND QUALITIES

People become shamans in the Upper Amazon for many reasons. Among the
Shuar, a primary motive is revenge for earlier harms, or the desire to protect
oneself and one's family from attacks by enemy shamans., An Achuar told anthropologist Philippe Descola why he had become an uwishin, a shaman:

I decided to become an uwishin after my marriage. My father-in-law
had died from a spell, followed by my brother-in-law. Then my son died
too, while still a suckling babe. A bad uwishin had sent tsentsak into the
breasts of my wife Najari, and the baby died very quickly from suckling
at the tsentsak. What could I do? ... Do you really think that I should
have waited for us all to be exterminated? So off I went to Sharian so that
I too could learn.2

Other motives include a wish to heal one's family, obtain prestige and influence, and gain economic advantages.3 Among the Aguaruna and Canelos Quichua, shamanic power may be purchased for money or trade goods.4

Among mestizo shamans, a typical story tells of finding a healing vocation
when being healed by another. At the age of fifteen, for example, don Francisco Montes Shuna got an incurable pain in his heart. When he drank ayahuasca for the first time, he saw that he had been accidentally hit by the virote,
magic dart, of a sorcerer. The shaman then cut him open, took out his heart,
healed it, and put it back with the ability to cure. After that, don Francisco
went to the Campa tribe and met don Pasqual Yumpiri, who became his maestro ayahuasquero.s

Don Jose Coral More first took ayahuasca because of a great pain in his stomach; the twentieth time he drank, spirits he calls murayas appeared, removed the dart, and stayed with him thereafter. Don Celso Rojas suffered
from an intractable infection in his leg, which the doctors wanted to amputate; he drank ayahuasca and undertook la dieta for three years, whereupon
a bird appeared, ate the maggots that had been infecting his leg, and disappeared into the ayahuasca pot. After that, the spirits of the plants began to
appear in his visions and teach him medicine.'

These stories are often not particularly dramatic. The future shaman drinks
ayahuasca, as often from curiosity as from sickness; a spirit will appear in the
ayahuasca vision, offer an icaro, magical song, and prescribe a dieta of a particular sort and duration. There seem to be few cases of what has been called
shamanic illness. Rather, the sicknesses are quite ordinary-unexplained pains
and infections, caused by darts, undoubtedly, and in one case inadvertently,
sent by a sorcerer.

Indeed, dona Maria simply appears to have been born with a visionary gift.
When she was seven years old, she had her first dream of the Virgin MaryMaria calls her hermana virgen, sister virgin-who began to teach her how
to heal with plants. From that time on, she frequently had dreams in which
either the Virgin Mary or an angel appeared to her. The Virgin would appear
as a young and very beautiful woman, show her the healing plants, especially
those for protection against malignos, evil spirits, and teach her the plants to
cure specific diseases. The angel would appear and tell her where in the area
there was a child who was sick and who needed her help. She then went to the
house of the child and told the family what plant would cure the illness and
how to prepare it. In one dream, she was told that she must heal one hundred
babies of mal de ojo, the evil eye.

Don Roberto apprenticed with his uncle, Jose Acho Aguilar, an ayahuasquero, at the age of fourteen. He became a shaman, he says, because, when
he first drank ayahuasca, he saw things, which he enjoyed, and he wanted to
learn more. Interestingly, neither don Roberto nor doh a Maria reports that an
illness or other crisis led them to become shamans.

According to Shuar shaman Alejandro Tsakim Suanua, to become a shaman one must have a desire to be strong; one must be decisive, courageous,
and determined.? Tukano shamans, says anthropologist Gerardo ReichelDolmatoff, are driven by curiosity, always interested in animals and plants,
the weather, the stars, sicknesses-anything, he says, that to others is unpredictable.' And, as we note repeatedly, self-control is critical to becoming a
healer, although less self-control is required to be a sorcerer; to be a sorcerer
is to give oneself over to aggression, lust, and vengeance. The Amazonian shamans I have known have been characterized, I believe, not only by courage
and self-control but also by intellectual curiosity and, often, a flair for performance. They have all been highly regarded as mitayeros, competent hunters
and fishers, unlikely to get lost; indeed, a term often used for great shamans
of the past is trailmakers.