Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (13 page)

Still, it is often recommended that one following the diet have contact,
where necessary, as when being brought food, only with premenstrual girls or
postmenopausal women.z8 Don Enrique Lopez says, "It is important to avoid
women who are menstruating, or who have made love the previous night; that
is bad with the plants. It clashes, like a mirror smashing; it makes you ill or
goes against you. "29

Thus, during his training, Shuar shaman Alejandro Tsakimp had to remain separate from his wife for eight months. Sex would be very dangerous,
he was told, because the power of the tsentsak, darts, his teacher gave him
"would leave me if I had sex with a woman."3° Cocama shaman don Juan Curico explains the prohibition in medical terms-that ejaculation bothers the
functioning of the brain, weakens the mind, and interferes with the effect of
the medicine.3' Shipibo shaman don Guillermo Arevalo says the same thingthat sex is debilitating, and that the plants, instead of being a medicine when
ingested, become toxic. And then he adds: "Under these circumstances, it is
said that the plant becomes jealous of the human lover and can make you ill
or kill you. That is why the shaman goes into the forest. There is no temptation there.131 Don Enrique Lopez says that, if you are not sexually abstinent,
if you give in just once, "you will fall ill, go mad, fall into the water, or die.
These are the tremendous problems of being a shaman."33 Typically, don Roberto and dona Maria express this understanding in terms of odors: while the
spirits love the sweet smells of tobacco and cologne, they hate the smells of
menstrual blood, semen, and human sexual intercourse.

BREAKING THE DIET

As simple as the diet seems, it is hard to keep. Food without salt or sugar is
bland and boring; I have tried to live on just fish and plantains, and, believe
me, the craving for salt or sugar can become intense. Commenting on a similar diet among Achuar apprentice shamans, limited to plantains, boiled palm
hearts, and small fish, anthropologist Philippe Descola calls it "dauntingly
dull."34

La dieta is a form of self-imposed discipline, self-control, suffering, which
makes the apprentice or shaman worthy of the love of the plants. In order to
be a shaman, one Napo Runa elder says, "one has to suffer much with all this
fasting. 1135 Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has one of his characters describe the
process of becoming a Machiguenga shaman: "You will have to be born again.
Pass all the tests. Purify yourself, have hallucinations, and above all suffer. It
is hard to achieve wisdom.1136 Alonso Andi compares the restricted diet to a
university, where "the body and the mind suffer while learning, and learning
never ends."37

Breaking the diet can, it is said, have terrible consequences. Shipibo shaman Guillermo Arevalo says that sex during la dieta can produce cutipa.38 The
verb cutipar apparently comes from the Quechua kutichiy, return, give back;39
it is commonly used to mean to plant yuca, manioc, in the same garden from
which yuca has been taken-that is, to give back to the garden what was taken
from it.4° Thus, the term cutipar also means to give back in the sense of revenge or retaliation-to infect, contaminate, use sorcery;41 one who is the victim of sorcery is said to be cutipado.42

This is what happens when people quiebran la dieta, break the diet: the plant
with which they were dieting takes revenge, often by marking the body of the
unfaithful one in various ways, with stains, bumps, protuberances, or red
splotches all over the body.43 For example, Shuar shaman Alejandro Tsakimp
was told not to eat pork, because "it could cause bumps to appear on your
skin and they won't heal, and your nose could rot from leprosy. "44

Even more, shamans who master their desires may use their powers to
heal; those who break the diet, by their lack of self-control, become brujos,
sorcerers, followers of the easy path. Secoya shaman Fernando Payaguaje,
speaking of the restricted diet kept when drinking yage, says: "Some people
drink yage only to the point of reaching the power to practice witchcraft;
with these crafts they can kill people. A much greater effort and consumption of yage is required to reach the highest level, where one gains access to
the visions and power of healing. To become a sorcerer is easy and fast."45 As anthropologist Francoise Barbira Freedman puts it, shamans who master
their emotions and aggressive desires use their powers to heal; apprentices
who break the rules of their ascetic training become weak, and therefore become sorcerers.46 As we will see, similar self-control is necessary after the new
shaman has been initiated.

LEARNING THE PLANTS

But to learn the plants, you do not just diet; you diet with a plant-that is, ingest the plant, take it into your body, let it teach you from within while you
keep loyal to it. Depending on the maestro, there are several ways to learn a
plant while keeping the restricted diet. The plant may be ingested just once,
or just a few times, at the start of the diet period, which is usually a few weeks
to a month, or may be taken every day during that period.47 The plant may be
boiled into the ayahuasca drink, and the plant spirit may then appear during
the ayahuasca vision, or in a subsequent dream; or the plant may be ingested
by itself, and the plant spirit may then appear when subsequently drinking
ayahuasca, or in a dream, vision, stream of thought, insight, melody, snatches
of song, or vague stirrings of intention. Certain plants seem traditionally to be
taken alone for the purposes of dieting rather than mixed with ayahuascamapacho and toe, as we might expect, since they are as sacred and powerful
as ayahuasca itself, and also catahua, mucura, chiricsanango, suelda con suelda,
raga balsa, ajo sacha, and oje.48

Some masters prescribe at least an initial sequence of plants for their
apprentices. Don Roberto begins, of course, with ayahuasca; then his disciples work to master four medicines-toe, maricahua, camalonga, and piedras
encantadas, magic stones. After that, the key plants include chiricsanango,
chullachaqui caspi, machimango, ishpingo caspi, chuchuhuasi, and ayahuma. And the
apprentice diets with the plants who call.

Whether ingested alone or with ayahuasca, the goal of the diet is to maintain an ongoing connection and dialogue with the plant; to allow the plant to
interact with the body, often in subtle ways; and to wait for its spirit to appear,
as the spirit wishes, to teach and give counsel. The effect of the most powerful plants may be instantaneous, but the effect of others may be gradual:
the plants become your body and give you the power to heal; they becomethrough this lengthy, dreamlike, silent, sacred process-your allies. You learn
the plants in plant time, not in human time.

One does not generally diet a second time with a particular plant-don
Agustin Rivas says that would be like going to university and taking the same course twice-but some shamans may diet again with a plant for a longer period of time or drink the plant again if the visions or effects are weak.49

Amazonian shamans conceptualize this process as learning with the body.
Don Casimiro Izurieta Cevallas puts it this way: "Through the diet, the body
takes on the gift of learning. "51 But we would be wrong to think of this plant
knowledge as being merely cognitive, like learning a recipe. To diet with a
plant is to devote one's attention to the plant, to form a bond with it, to establish a relationship with it-an intimate relationship, taking the plant into your
body, creating mutual love and trust.

All these plants are called doctores, teachers, healers; these are the vegetales que enseflan, plants who teach. They are not necessarily psychoactive; each
healing and protective plant is a teacher of its own secrets, of how it may be used
as medicine. Learning the plants is learning to listen to the plants, who speak a
language ofpuro sonido, pure sound, and learning to sing to them in their own
language. And once you have learned to listen to the plants, the more easily
you can learn each additional plant-what sicknesses it can heal, what song
will summon it, what medicines it enters into, how it should be prepared.

This, too, is how the shamans study the properties of new plants, and the
way they expand the native pharmacopoeia.5' Don Fidel Mosombite, a practitioner from Pucallpa, told anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna that he had
taken a mejoral, aspirin, to study it under the effects of ayahuasca, and that
he had discovered that it contained an "essence of plants," which is why it
worked.51 Don Santiago Murayari, wondering whether he could use the psychoactive mushroom Psilocybe cubensis for medicine, said that he intended to
mix it with ayahuasca in order to study it.53 Such plants are often medicinal,
without psychoactive effects of their own; it is in this category that we find the
most diverse substances added to ayahuasca.

We must remember that the plant spirits are powerful and unpredictable;
the relationship between shaman and plant is complex, paradoxical, multilayered, embodied in a recurrent phrase in Bona Maria's songs, doctorcito poderoso,
powerful little doctor-the diminutive indicating warmth and familial affection, the adjective acknowledging power. The shaman "masters" the plant by
taking the plant inside the body, letting the plant teach its mysteries, giving
the self over to the power of the plant. There is a complex reciprocal interpersonal relationship between shaman and other-than-human person-fear,
awe, passion, surrender, friendship, and love. The shaman is the aprendiz, apprentice, of the plant; in return the plant teaches, and teaches by showing-the
verb enseflar means both.

There are spirits in things other than plants. The term doctor in fact embraces more than plants, and includes such substances as agua de florida cologne, camphor, the commercial mouthwash Timolina, the disinfectant Creolina, and magic stones.54 Perfumero Artidoro Aro Cardenas dieted
with agua de florida, Timolina, and camalonga.55 By putting a few drops of
perfume in the ayahuasca drink, it is possible to learn huarmi icaros to attract
women. It is possible to diet with flint, or steel, by putting the material in water for several days and then drinking the water. It is even possible to diet with
gasoline, by inhaling it rather than by drinking it. Each of the substances has
a spirit, which will appear and teach its magic song-the icaro de pedernal, song
of flint, which is used by sorcerers to destroy with fire; or the icaro de acero,
song of steel, which makes the body strong enough to resist wind and rain. 51
Piedras encantadas, magic stones, may also be kept in water or in a cold aqueous infusion of tobacco, and the liquid may be drunk, to gain their trust and
power.

ICAROS

One of the most striking features ofAmazonian mestizo shamanism is the icaro, the magic song, whispered, whistled, and sung. The term icaro may come
from the Quechua verb ikaray, blow smoke for healing, or perhaps from the
Shipibo term ikarra, shaman song., The icaro is given to the shaman by the
spirits of the plants and animals, and the shaman uses it to call the spirits for
healing, protection, or attack, and for many other purposes as well-to control the visions of another person who has drunk ayahuasca, work love magic,
call the spirits of dead shamans, control the weather, ward off snakes, visit
distant planets, or work sorcery.2 As one mestizo shaman puts it, you cannot
enter the world of spirits while remaining silent.3

Communication between the shaman and the plants through the icaro is
two-way. Francisco Montes Shuna says that the icaro is the language of the
plant. "If you have dieted with the plant and have not learned its icaro," he
says, "then you know nothing." The icaro is the language by which the shaman communicates with the plant, and through the icaro the plant will reply.4

In possessing these songs, the mestizo shaman is not different from shamans found among indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon, for whom
songs are a key element of the healing ritual.5 Anthropologist Jean Matteson
Langdon considers the South American shaman to be distinguished from
the ordinary person in three ways that constitute the shaman's power-the
visionary experience, the acquisition of spirit allies, and the acquisition of
songs.' Among the Arawete, "the most frequent and important activity of
a shaman is Anthropologist Graham Townsley puts it this way:
"What Yaminahua shamans do, above everything else, is sing."8