Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (24 page)

Pablo Amaringo has painted several pictures of various plant spirits as they
have appeared to him. In one ayahuasca vision, for example, the spirit of the
pucalupuna tree appeared as a dark woman with cat's eyes and a gold chain
around her neck; in another vision, the spirit of pucalupuna appeared as a
dark man with many heads, covered with snakes, and holding a knife and a
skull. Similarly, the spirit of the ajosquiro tree appeared in one vision as a very
small curly-haired man wearing a red cape and red clothes, and in another as
a blue-skinned man with red hair, surrounded by birds.53

There is sometimes a correlation between the nature of the plant and the
appearance of its spirit. A striking example is the ayahuma tree. Huma is the
ordinary Quechua word for head; thus ayahuma means spirit head or head of
a dead person. The tree's large, hard, globular fruit falls to the ground and
cracks open with a loud sound; once cracked open, the inner pulp rots and
smells like decaying flesh. The spirit of the ayahuma thus often appears as a
woman without a head.

Testing the Autonomy of the Spirits

Marko Rodriguez, at the Computer Science Department of the University of
California at Santa Cruz, has come up with an idea to see whether the spirits
seen after ingesting dimethyltryptamine (DMT)-which would include drinking ayahuasca-are autonomous, persistent, intelligent entities. The idea is to
ask these entities to calculate a prime factor of a five-digit non-prime number,
such as 12,233, and then tell you the answer, which you did not know, or tell the
answer to someone else who has also ingested DMT either simultaneously or
subsequently.'

While the idea is clever, it has some obvious drawbacks. First of all, you have
to remember to aslcthe question, which may not be easy after drinking ayahuasca, when there is often a lot going on at once and it is easy to be distracted. Second, it is not clear how the spirits would respond. In fact, James Kent, the former
editor of Entheogen Review and Trip magazine, has tried the experiment. He
asked a DMTeIf for a prime factor of 23,788, and the entity reportedly presented
the visual response of undulating Twinkie on rotating lotus, squirting, which is
not obviously an answer to the question.

I am not sure whether the plant spirits know mathematics, or whether it matters. Maybe some do and some do not. Maybe even those who do still think that
there are better questions to ask.

NOTES

1. Rodriguez, 2007.

2. Kent, 2007b.

There is also some internal consistency in the identification of spirits. For
example, the spirits of hardwood trees often appeared to doh a Maria as strong
or large men-the spirit of the remocaspi tree as a very muscular man dressed
as a doctor, the spirit of the machimango tree as a tall gringo man wearing a
white shirt. The spirit of the capinuri palm, the ends of whose fallen branches
look remarkably like erect penises, has appeared to her as a large heavy pale
gringo, like a weight lifter, wearing the white clothes of a doctor.

The spirits of other plants often appeared to her as doctors wearing surgical scrubs-ishpingo caspi, chullachaqui caspi, cafla brava. The bright red
latex of the sangre de grado tree is used to treat wounds, ulcers, and skin infections; the spirit of this tree has appeared to doiia Maria both as a man whose
whole body was blood red, and as a doctor, male or female, carrying a tray of
medicines.

THE OMNIPRESENCE OF THE SPIRITS

Ayahuasca lets the shaman see these spirits in their own form-the form in
which they choose to appear.

I once asked don Romulo Magin about his awareness of the spirits when
not drinking ayahuasca. Don Romulo said that he is constantly aware of being surrounded by the spirits but that he sees them roughly, vaguely; drinking
ayahuasca, he said, is "like putting on glasses." Dona Maria agrees; ayahuasca
makes the spirits bien claro, really clear. When don Roberto smokes mapacho
and concentrates, he says, he sees the plant spirits; he sees them now because
he has seen them before, when drinking ayahuasca, but he does not see them
as clearly. Most important, though, he hears them, clearly, speaking in his ear,
instructing him-heal like this, they say, suck there, sing this icaro, make
such and such a medicine-just as if they were standing next to him, just as,
he says, you and I are talking right now. When he drinks ayahuasca, he both
hears and sees the spirits clearly. Campa toero Cesar Zevallos Chinchuya says
the same thing: tobacco allows the healer to speak with the spirits; one has to
drink toe to see or meet them.54

And, just as some shamans say that the spirits are always present but are
brought into focus by ayahuasca, some say that the songs of the plant spirits
are always present and that ayahuasca brings them into audibility. Don Carlos Perez Shuma says that the icaros are like radio waves: "Once you turn on
the radio, you can pick them up." Or the songs are like prerecorded tapes.
"It's like a tape recorder," don Carlos says. "You put it there, you turn it on,
and already it starts singing.... You start singing along with it. "55 A Shipibo shaman made the same point. "I am not the one creating the song," he told
anthropologist Angelika Gebhart-Sayer. "It passes through me as if I were a
radio.i56 One Shuar shaman described his whistling as like tuning a radio,
beginning with tuneless whistling, which was like moving between stations,
until he could lock on and tune into a spirit and its song.57 Sometimes this is
expressed as singing along with the spirits. Among the Piro, the spirits sing,
and the shaman joins in-the word is gipxaleta, accompanies-their singing.58
Cocama shaman Jose Curitima Sangama uses the same term: "It's the mother
of the plant who cures," he says. "She tells us which song to sing, and which
music we should use to cure the patient. We accompany the mother of the
plant. "59

So we are always surrounded by the spirits and their music. We see them
sometimes, at the edges of our vision. Ayahuasca teaches us to hear them.
Their music is puro sonido, pure sound, the language of the plants, reflected
in the silbando, the whispered singing of the shaman, and in the susurration
of the shacapa, the leaf-bundle rattle. We can learn to listen for their music,
wherever we are.

VULNERABILITY

Once you begin la dieta, once you drink ayahuasca and start to learn the plant
teachers with your body, the world becomes a more dangerous place.

Sorcerers resentful of your presumption will shoot magical pathogenic
darts into your body, or send fierce animals to attack you, or fill your body
with scorpions and razor blades-especially while you are still a beginner,
before you gain your full powers., Even experienced shamans under the influence of ayahuasca are vulnerable to attack by envious or vengeful sorcerers.
Poet Cesar Calvo says that drinking ayahuasca makes one into "a crystal ex 12
to all the spirits, to the evil ones and the true ones that inhabit the air.
Such transparency is perilous.

This is also true when the shaman is drunk or asleep. Elder shamans may
sleep surrounded by apprentices, to be protected from such attacks.3 Very often these struggles take place in dreams; shamans who lose this dream battle may never wake up.4 Dona Maria was attacked this way during her sleep,
when magic darts were shot deep into her throat and chest, so that she could
not sing her protective songs.

TYPES OF PROTECTION

So there is a need for constant protection. Anything that protects from an attack-animal protectors, magical birds, spiny palms, fierce Indians, suits of
armor, fighter jets-is called an arcana, probably from the Quechua arkay,
block, bar, rather than from the Latin arcana, secrets, or the Spanish arcano,
mystery, secret.5 And that is why, at the start of every healing ceremony, don
Roberto, with greater or less elaboration, constructs a wall of arcana around the site-"a thousand feet high," he says, "and a thousand feet below the
earth"-to protect himself, his students, and all who are in attendance.

A shaman has many means of protection from the intrusion of pathogenic
objects hurled by enemy sorcerers. First among these is the shaman's mariri,
the ratified phlegm that rises from the shaman's chest into the throat, nourished by ayahuasca and mapacho, and which serves to absorb the darts, the
sickness, the phlegmosity, and the scorpions and toads that the shaman sucks
from the patient's body, and whose power is then assimilated by the shaman
or projected back upon the one who sent them.

Similarly, tobacco-the paradigmatic strong sweet smell-protects the
shaman and the shaman's patients. Mapacho, tobacco, is the essential protector, warding off the pathogenic projectiles, the animal surrogates, the detestable breath or tobacco smoke of the sorcerer. This is the protection the
shaman gives to patients, after extracting a dart, by blowing tobacco smoke
over and into their bodies-"a pliable steel shirt," says don Emilio Andrade.'
A shaman must constantly maintain these defenses. Don Francisco Montes
Shui a says that a shaman must blow tobacco smoke in three directionsfront, right, and left-every four hours, even during the night.? At the very
least, the shaman must have songs and tobacco ready to be deployed in case
of a sudden attack. Don Juan Flores Salazar tells of how his father, a shaman,
forgot his tobacco bag one day when going out to heal a sickness caused by an
opposing shaman, and was killed that same day by a falling tree.'

Shamans also acquire protective spirits, powerful plants and animals, often the same as those that carry out the destructive will of the sorcerer, since
those things that are used to inflict sorcery are the things that best protect
from it. Shamans accumulate a large number of these protectors, who are
called in at the beginning of the ayahuasca ceremony but who also accompany
the shaman, ready to leap into action if an attack is imminent. All these protective spirits are summoned or activated by singing their icaros, called icaros
arcanas or just arcanas; the spirits may be given by one's teacher, or appear
to one in an ayahuasca vision or a dream. Some may be kept in the shaman's
chest, embedded in the magical phlegm.

Particularly valued as protector plants-because often used in sorcery-are
the spiny or thorny palms, whose spines are used by brujos as their virotes,
magic darts. Of these palms, used as both weapons and arcana, doiia Maria
and don Roberto refer frequently to four-the chambira, huicungo, pijuayo, and
huiririma palms. Other spiny palms invoked for sorcery and protection-and
portrayed in a painting by Pablo Amaringo-include the inchaui, pona, inayuga, and huasai.9 The term chonta is applied, somewhat indiscriminately, to spiny
palms in the genera Astrocaryum, Euterpe, and Bactris.

Birds frequently function as animal protectors. Such birds are often predators, such as gavildn, hawks, and buhos, owls, or are notable for plumage
or particularly piercing or unusual cries-for example, the manshaco, wood
stork; cushuri, cormorant; camungo, horned screamer; jabiru, jabiru; sharara,
anhinga; guacamayo, macaw; trompetero, trumpeter; or chajd, crested screamer.
A sorcerer can send these birds-and other animals as well-as spies, and can
talk to birds in their own language; that is why a healer must know their language. Don Romulo Magin, for example, is fluent in the language of buhos,
owls, who are powerful sorcerer birds; their language, I am told, sounds like
this: oootutututu kakakaka hahahahaha. These same birds can be used to remove
sorcery, just as the plants most closely associated with brujeria are the plants
that offer the most protection. Since brujo birds can be used to send virotes,
they are powerful arcana as well.

The birds are used like this. The sorcerer talks to the bird and puts his
own soul into it; then the bird carries the sorcery to the victim, shooting darts
from its beak. When sorcery is conveyed by one of these birds, I was told, the
victim's hair falls out, the skin roughens, and the victim begins to look like
the bird. Such an attack is particularly dangerous: even if a healer succeeds
in sucking out the darts projected by the bird, the sorcerer can send the bird
more darts to project into the victim and keep the victim continually sick. One
should be careful any time one sees one of the birds associated with such sorcery, for one might well be the target of a magical attack.'°