by Jean-Pierre Chaumeil
Since 1971, Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, a French ethnologist, has made several stays in the Peruvian Amazon, especially among the Yagua of the northeastern region, with whom he lived for more than three years in the company of his wife. His interest centers primarily on the comparative study of shamanism and, more generally, everything surrounding the new forms of religiosity in the Amazon. He is the author of several books, including “Voir, savoir, pouvoir” (Éd. de l’EHESS, Paris, 1983) and “Ñihamwo” (CAAAP, Lima, 1987). A research officer at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), he belongs to its Research Team in Amerindian Anthropology (France).
Across the world, many societies give plants a privileged place in their system of thought. This is particularly the case with Amazonian societies, which, according to J. Barrau (1990: 1293), could be described as “vegetalist.” Several of them even regard certain plants as the source of knowledge and of powers (cosmological, therapeutic, and others). In general, it is as if these societies conceived a continuity, a mystical solidarity between plants and human beings, between plant “growth” and human growth, between the models of plant and human reproduction. This thinking is based in part on the idea that knowledge of the things and beings of the world is rooted not in humans themselves but within the (plant) nature that surrounds them.
This concept of the knowledge-plant (or power-plant, if you like) is widespread in the Upper Amazon and is often rendered in shamanic language as the “spirit” or “mother” of plants (Luna, 1986; Chaumeil, 1983).
So to approach the phenomena of shamanic therapy in the Amazonian world without mentioning hallucinogenic plants would be to strip it of an essential dynamic element. Nevertheless, the use of hallucinogens should not be limited to the therapeutic field either. Numerous Amazonian societies use them within a broader sociocultural context (rites of initiation, hunting and cultivation, divinatory practices, and so on) and once integrated them as trade goods in the great commercial circuits that linked the Amazon jungle with the Andes and the Pacific coast. But in fact, the use of hallucinogens in the Indigenous sphere appears to be essentially tied to shamanic initiation; it is very occasional in cures, where tobacco (smoked, chewed, or drunk) becomes the plant of reference (Wilbert, 1987). According to Indigenous concepts, the mothers of the hallucinogens are above all entities that “teach” rather than act by themselves and for themselves. Gradually, however, hallucinogens entered the classic therapeutic paraphernalia of the mestizo shamans who practice in the cities and, as a consequence, retroactively, this use spread among some Indigenous shamans. The extension of the field of hallucinogens to a strictly therapeutic sphere of application (diagnosis and cure) appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon if one takes into account the data of Indigenous ethnography, which associate them more with a specific mode of learning and knowledge.
Indeed, in numerous societies of the upper Amazon, shamanic initiation involves a novitiate (sometimes lasting several years) that begins with the periodic taking, in an established order, of hallucinogens (and optionally of tobacco juice) under the direction of one or more experienced shamans. No initiation is considered serious without these hallucinogens, which are said to contain extremely powerful spirits, whose mastery is achieved through the visionary journeys induced by the staggered ingestion of those same plants. The operation consists of gradually adding new decoctions, creating increasingly heterogeneous mixtures so as to multiply and diversify the sources of knowledge. These same spirits, or mothers of the hallucinogens, also appear among the shamans’ favorite helpers, as givers of knowledge and providers of magical weapons (see the accounts below).
It bears repeating that taking hallucinogens is not reserved for shamans. Most individuals, men and women, in either an Indigenous or mestizo setting, can have this experience guided by trained shamans. In this case, the sessions are clearly oriented toward self-healing or the pursuit of telepathic effects. In any case, the sessions are never anarchic or indiscriminate. The Yagua of Loreto, for example, have developed a “procedural typology” of hallucinogens: first there are those that “make you see” and those that “make you travel”; those that “teach” the art of healing or of casting spells; then those that “warm” the body or that “sharpen and beautify the voice” in order to seduce; those that “give strength”; those that “burn” souls or “heal” wounds; and finally those that are “exchanged” with invisible entities (Chaumeil, 1983). Let us also remember that, for these same Yagua, the universe of hallucinogens is a component of reality just as much as the immediately visible reality that each person lives in everyday life.
Rather than elaborate, as we already did in the work cited above, on how a specific society thinks about and uses hallucinogens in the shamanic context, we have preferred to give the floor on this subject to several shamans from different traditions who practice in the same region (between Iquitos and the Colombian border). Their accounts, collected between 1984 and 1985, seem to us to illustrate better than any other discourse the importance of the plant element and of hallucinogens in the mode of learning, the systems of thought, and the Amazonian cultures of today.
Accounts of the Shamans
Alberto Proaño (Yagua shaman, Marichín creek, 1976)
“My father was a great Yagua healer, a nëmara. He was also called sandatia, ‘the-one-who-knows.’ He taught me the plant. First the piripiri, which is the plant for preparing the body. The first time I took piripiri, I saw a big fire that turned into a snake, and I heard only the murmur of voices in the distance. The second time I took piripiri with tobacco, which is the ‘path of the souls.’ I saw the fire again, but then two twins appeared (mother of tobacco) who taught me the songs of tobacco and of the magic cigars. The mother of piripiri appeared later in the form of a ghost-animal: she gave me a pill to heal and blew into my mouth a virote (magic dart) to resist diseases.
Before taking ayahuasca mixed with piripiri and tobacco, my late father made me swallow 5 phlegms (which he drew out of his body) to prepare my stomach. When I took the purge, the mother of ayahuasca handed me a lit cigar giving off a perfumed smell that let me see many things. Then she took me up to the sky; we passed through several layers of clouds. There she gave me a garment to change into so that diseases would not enter my body. The mother of ayahuasca frightens you the first time, but afterward she is like your child; you can talk to her by blowing tobacco on her. Whenever you need her, she is with you, she looks after you. Then I took the purge with toé, its mixture.
The toé let me know the world of the people-without-anus (under the earth) and the middle-world where people also live, beyond the world of the vultures. The purge let me know all kinds of people (spirits). One day my late father tested me and told me to cure my sick grandfather. I sucked at his throat and drew out two phlegms. But they were not yet transforming. I devoted myself more and more often to cures until I saw those phlegms transform, first into virotes and then into people. From then on I could know who had sent the illness, I could know the source of the illness. Later I tried many other plants, like naranjillo and venado-caspi, which let me know more. That is how I graduated as a nëmara” (abridged version of the text presented in Chaumeil, 1983:33-43).
Juan Pacaya (healer of Cocama origin, Caballo-cocha lake, 1984)
“My grandfather Bartolomé Pacaya was Omaguino (from the Omagua), just like my grandmother Margarita Iruyara. They came to Caballo-cocha years ago, in the days when rubber was worth something. My father was called Gavino Pacaya Marín; he grew up here but was born among the Omagua. My mother Narcisa Wayunga was from Balsapuerto, she was Cocama. I was born here, in Caballococha, and I am 70 years old. My wife was also Cocama, Artuwari Macuyama, and was born at the mouth of the Nanay River. First I was a fisherman, when I was young. Then I worked rubber tapping for a year, then timber for two years. Now I devote myself to farming. I have 3 brothers here, Bartolo, Miguel, and Rafael (he also knows how to heal). I learned on the Nanay River, at the time of the conflict with Colombia in 1932. So I was a soldier too, but we didn’t fight. The taking of Leticia was done by pure civilians. On the Nanay, among my countrymen, the Cocama. I learned when I was young, before I had my wife. I learned little by little, I have a very soft memory; whatever a countryman sings, I hold onto all of it, I have a good head. That is how I learned with ayahuasca on the Nanay itself during the years I was there. I had two compadres who practiced Cocama healing. I have my cachimbo too, I also draw out chonta. I wanted to learn to be a healer, that is what I was born for. When we came to Iquitos one of my sons fell ill, he wanted to die. I asked my late wife: ‘Where are we going to find a doctor here? Let’s see, I’m going to try.’ I tried on him and he got well. I have healed, brother, not one, I have healed hundreds of boys! Grown folks too, from everywhere. I use Cocama medicine, this rope, the ayahuasca with its mixture. I also use a ‘little saint’ this tiny, called Encanto; it is like a little person, it looks like a little mushroom (callampito). It is medicine too and it sticks where it hurts. When I take the purge (ayahuasca and its mixture), I see all kinds of things, people, animals, hammocks… Up to now I have taken the purge many times, even to heal myself. A year ago I wanted to die, it hurt inside me. I went to the Caballo-cocha hospital to see the doctor: ‘I am sick, doctor,’ I tell him, ‘I have a pain inside, not on top, but inside.’ ‘Let’s see, take off your shirt,’ he says. He touched me, he tapped me here and there: ‘Mr. Pacaya,’ he told me, ‘you’re not sick!’ In anger I went and took the ayahuasca, I took it twice. It purged me, made me vomit. The second day the pain disappeared and I was completely cured! In my mareación I saw two tremendous shadows, two meters (6.5 feet) tall, in little white pants. They watched me while I vomited. Goodbye, swollen belly! Never again to this day. Since then I never go to the hospital. Everything is healed with the purge, everything is purge.”
Rafael Pacaya (healer, brother of Juan Pacaya, 1984)
“My medicine is Mukura, a plant that is taken every green moon, at 12 midnight. This plant has many secrets. The mother comes and teaches you the icaros for healing, but also for sorcery. With ayahuasca, I haven’t seen anything. The mother of mukura is like a dwarf or an old woman with her hair tied up on top of her head. The mother of toé (its mixture) also appears, she is like a person but seems to have no bones. I began to learn at 67, now I am 74. I took mukura for the first time because I was sick, I had malaria. I took it for a year and got well. Mukura is good for malaria. After that I kept on taking mukura as medicine. Mukura is my boss, it has taught me all kinds of sorcery and healing. Mukura makes you know man.”
Alonso Ruiz Ríos (mestizo healer, Iquitos, 1984)
“I was born in the surroundings of Pucallpa. I am 31 years old and have lived in Iquitos since I was 5. My teacher was a mestizo ayahuasquero doctor named Fidel Mozombite. He had me fast in the forest for two years. He came to visit me every 15 days. He taught me the icaros in the Quechua language, both for healing and for the ‘evil of people.’ The fourth time I took the purge, I saw a ‘hospital’ full of medicines. It was like a pharmacy where there were remedies to heal and to harm. The mother of ayahuasca makes you choose. I have been taking the purge for 11 years, ayahuasca mixed with chacruna, with chiricsanango, and with renaco leaves. After two years of fasting, an ‘old woman’ (mother of the purge) appeared and taught me. Then I went off to the timber country on the upper Ucayali, the Tamayo River, where I met an Indigenous healer of the Campa people, Francisco Shumigabi. He gave me a plant similar to culantro and had me fast two more years in an isolated place. He also gave me ayahuasca. After 6 months, the mother of the plant gave me the ‘test.’ Then I saw the Mermaid. I could see under the water and I learned the sad song of the Mermaid (mother of water). This song serves above all to attract women with perfume. Here I also learned the gasoline: that is for your defense. The mother of gasoline is like a wind that protects you, looks after you, it is like a vapor that wraps around you. So first you take the gasoline before taking the purge, to prepare the body. The first teacher taught me the songs in Quechua, the second in the Campa language. Now I sing in Quechua-Campa and nobody can ‘cross’ me. After two years of fasting, the Campa healer blew over my body as if to ‘dispatch’ me, and since then I have devoted myself to healing. The mother of the purge is called ‘master’ and the auxiliary spirits warmicita. When I heal at home, I put ‘soldiers’ in the four corners. With the gasoline, they look after me when I take the purge. My teacher Francisco gave me virotes, gasoline, petroleum, and the rattlesnake, which I all carry in my body. He also gave me an encanto: a little stone, a ‘charapita,’ that ‘sucks.’ It sticks to the parts that hurt and only I can remove it. I have many plant medicines but it is the mother of ayahuasca who taught me everything.”
Celso Rojas (mestizo healer, Iquitos, 1985)
“I am Celso Rojas Ucachiua. I was born in Moyobamba in 1905. I grew up in those highlands (upper Tapiche) in the time of jebe and caucho (wild rubber), and I came to Iquitos with my parents in 1918. Afterward I joined the FAP (air force) for a year. From there, they transferred me to Moyobamba again, a year and a half before I returned to Iquitos, where my parents died. Soon after I fell ill; my left leg rotted down to the bone. I could not heal.
I went and checked into the Santa Rosa hospital for 4 months, but with no improvement. Before they cut off my leg, I went back out to the upper Tapiche where I took ayahuasca for the first time, in 1933. I dieted for three years without eating salt or sweets, or seeing anyone. That way I got well and learned the little that I know. I have had no teacher apart from the purge itself (ayahuasca). I prepared it, cooked it, and drank it. I did meet a Capanahua Indigenous man, a certain Pedro Nahuatupe, who showed me how to prepare the purge, but it didn’t suit me. At home I changed the preparation, but all that time maggots filled my ruined leg. Suddenly in my mareación a little woodpecker came, brown, with a little red head, and stuck itself to my knee. It ate that whole maggot nest. I felt it, I saw it (in my mareación), the woodpecker eating all those maggots. Then the woodpecker fell into the pot of the purge and disappeared there forever.
Then I began to heal. In 6 months I was perfectly well. Shortly before completing three years of the diet, I took the purge again. An immense boa came, its eyes like car headlights. It came straight at the pot to stir the purge with its tongue. Then it began to lick me, it put its tongue in my ear, in my eyes, in my nose, everywhere, and with its tongue it gathered my feet together nice and neat and began to swallow me. And that, the boa said, was to graduate me as sumé, that is, to walk under the water and come out the day I please and wherever I want. But I did not manage to graduate: when I was halfway into its mouth I got scared, and the boa vomited me up. Sumé is the highest degree, the first degree is the banco, the second is the muraya. The sumé can live in the water and come out where he wants, he lives in glass towns inside the water. The banco hangs up his mosquito net and lies down, and on top of him the spirits of the forest sit, which is why he is called banco (bench), it is the first degree. The muraya heals with plants; that is as far as I have graduated.
The mothers of ayahuasca are many, in different forms. They appear as a lizard, a viper, an alligator, or dwarf people. All of them teach. They taught me in Inca (Quechua). From the Capanahua I know just some little parts, which Pedro Nahuatupe taught me. I started taking it at 25. Before ayahuasca, I took chiricsanango, uchusanango, and ojé with my father. But only with ayahuasca did I really ‘see,’ and I got used to it, now I like it, I drink it with pleasure, it is like gelatin. I take ayahuasca mixed with different kinds of plants. I have even tried it with the shoot of the huicungo palm, the chambira, with chullachaqui-caspi, with the bark of ayahuman, huaira-caspi, garabato-casha, zarza, villorenaquillo (male and female), sanango, and I am trying toé too. Chiricsanango takes away the strength of ayahuasca, it is only taken to draw out the cold and strengthen the body. Chullachaqui-caspi is no good, pure evil, chambira and huicungo likewise. Chuchuhuasi is half good and half bad. Garabato-casha and zarza are all medicine. I have taken it with urcu-huasca, with wayusa, with ojé resin, with creolin, camphor, agua florida—I have tried everything. The ones that served me, I kept, and the ones I didn’t like I dropped. Since 1933, I have gone on as a purguero and healed many sick people.”
Alejandro Vásquez Zárate (mestizo healer, Iquitos, 1985)
“I am 65 years old, I was born here in Iquitos but I learned in Puca Barranco (a hamlet on the Napo River) with an Indigenous man captured by rubber tappers in a raid, around 1940. One day this man called me over and said that in his dream he had heard the mother of ayahuasca, who wanted to meet me and teach me the purge. At 17 I took ayahuasca and its spirit taught me in Quechua. Everything I know is in Quechua, my icaros, my cures. I had to diet for two years, since to know well it takes two years. After the ayahuasca, I took tobacco through the nose, in the beak of the pinsha (toucan).
Ayahuasca has a father, a little man with a little hat, his body covered in ropes, like a tamshi trunk. He called me ‘son’ and taught me. First he taught me to whistle nicely; from the whistle you learn the icaro, and from there, little by little, the voice of the icaro comes. Of ayahuasca there is the male and the female. The male is stronger. There is also the sky-ayahuasca or lightning-ayahuasca, which lets you see the whole sky, and the earth ayahuasca. The father of ayahuasca gave me a phlegm, the yachay, through the mouth. It is as if you plant something in your body, it grows little by little and the body gets stronger and stronger. That is why you diet. You have to know all the icaros that exist to be a true master, so you can heal any illness (each illness has its own icaro). The supreme master is called tronco (trunk). I have my defense, my genies, I have my bombs, my airplanes. I can send a bombardment, with the lightning all the enemies are burned, it is the best defense. The father of ayahuasca is the one who does everything.”
Clotilda de Rengifo Marín (healer of Brazilian origin, Iquitos, 1985)
“My mother was Brazilian. At 15 she came to learn the plant in Caballo-cocha. She began learning from the vegetation at 14. At 15 she mastered the purge, the ‘science.’ The purge is the first plant that God put on earth to water the vegetation. That is how I began to learn directly from my mother the ‘science’; I have no icaros. The one who taught my mother was a master from Lamas.
I take pure ayahuasca, I am a vegetalista 100 percent. My first teacher was Cocama, his name was Juan Martín Yawarkani. I took the purge with him for 5 years, I dieted for 8 years, and I have been healing for 10 years. I am the queen of the vegetation. I am the general command. To advance you have to diet, you have to throw away the body, you have to be left skin and bones. The more you commit to the diet, the further you advance in the science. The rainbow of space teaches us: it has 7 blazing colors, 4 are medicines and 3 are harmful. That the doctor does not cure. The good colors are: blue and pinkish, the bad one is yellow.”
Julia Navas Nibeira (mestiza healer, Iquitos, 1985)
“I learned like this: I suffered an illness many years ago. I came to a teacher who was a Chama Indigenous man. He taught me to take ayahuasca. From the first cup, I got well but he made me diet for 6 months. I sang 7 songs the first night. I kept dieting for 3 years along the Ucayali. My teacher knew a lot because he would go into the water and come out 4 hours later completely dry; he was a sumé. I have dieted on several plants: ayahuasca mainly, murcuhuasca, always adding chacruna, which is also essential for the vision. Ayahuasca only makes you dizzy. Toé also serves for seeing. My teacher taught me in his Chama language (Conibo), he gave me the llausa mariri, it is a defense we have in the stomach and with which we draw out virotes. He passed this mariri on to me by means of winds. The genie of ayahuasca, the king of medicine, is satitucuy, a little old man the color of rusty bronze, tiny in size, with a stone hat, stone shoes, a stone cane; he too comes from a stone hill. The duendes (goblins) are the disciples of the little old man, his helpers. They are the guardians of our body: the arcanas, so that nobody can cross us. They snap arrows, they are like Indians. My protector animal is an eagle that I always place on the roof for anything that falls from above, he catches it, everything bad. We also place a defense on the 4 sides: the shitaneros, as we call them. They are the ballisteros, the pucuneros, the warriors, they don’t let anyone pass. They are Indians, for example a Huambiza if we take the ayahuasca with yagé, since yagé comes from the Huambiza. Ayahuasca is the teacher of all of us, we cannot surpass it, we are its disciples. There are many kinds of ayahuasca: sky-ayahuasca, thunder-ayahuasca, encanto-ayahuasca, lightning-ayahuasca, boa-ayahuasca, and many more, each has its secrets.”
