Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (17 page)

To travel in the jungle, Gow says, "is to pass through an endless succession of small enclosed spaces." 2 Gell speaks the same way of New Guinea.
"I spent fourteen months," he writes, "in visual surroundings limited to tens
of metres.... To this day, I do not know what Umeda village looks like from
a distance."113 Gell proposes that such a primary forest environment imposes
an organization of sensibility that emphasizes both hearing and smell over
vision.114 In the Amazon, the Aguaruna group and classify trees by how they
smell rather than by what they look like.115

Thus, hunting in dense forest "places a premium on hearing as the main
sensory modality for detecting objects and events at a distance, where they
are invariably out of sight.",,' Gell also notes the large class of vocal "sound
effects" with which the Umeda punctuate and illustrate their stories-a phenomenon I had noted among the mestizos, and had puzzled over, until I read
Gell's article."" The mestizo shaman inhabits a sound world in which sound
itself is meaningful and powerful beyond words.

SOUND AND AYAHUASCA

When we reflect on the range of words and sounds spoken by the spirits of plants and animals, and the reflections of those words and sounds in
the songs the spirits teach, it is worth remembering the auditory effects of
ayahuasca. Ayahuasca drinkers often hear inchoate sounds-the sound of
flowing water, loud rushing sounds, the sound of wind rushing, the sound
of rushing water, the roar of rain or waterfall."' These sounds may then become meaningful in a variety of ways-the sound of people singing, sorrowful songs, people speaking in unknown languages, the voice of a recently
deceased friend, Native American chanting, a brass band.119 In psychopharmacologist Rick Strassman's dimethyltryptamine (DIM) experiments, which
we will discuss later, auditory hallucinations were noted in more than half the
subjects, and were described as high-pitched, whining, chattering, crinkling,
or crunching.121 These sounds may then become meaningful as well. Users of
DIM report hearing "alien music" and "alien languages," which may or may
not be comprehensible;"' Terence McKenna speaks of hearing "a language of
alien meaning that is conveying alien information. 11122

NURTURING PHLEGM

Throughout the Upper Amazon, shamanic power is conceptualized as a
physical substance-often a sticky saliva- or phlegm-like substance-that is
stored within the shaman's body, usually in the chest or stomach, or sometimes permeating the shaman's flesh., This substance is used both for attack
and for defense. The virtually universal method of inflicting magical harm in
the Upper Amazon is to project this substance into the body of the victim-either the substance itself or pathogenic projectiles the shaman keeps embedded within it. Chiquitano shamans, for example, kill their enemies by injecting them with a black substance they keep in their stomachs at all times.2 The
virtually universal method of healing such an intrusion is for the healing shaman to suck it out and dispose of it, protected from its contamination by a
defense made of the same substance.

Mestizo shamans use a number of terms for this shamanic phlegm. Most
common is the ordinary Spanish word flema, which refers to the phlegm at its
most corporeal, stored in the shaman's chest; it is in this phlegm that the shaman, whether healer or sorcerer, stores the virotes, magic darts, used for both
attack and defense; in the phlegm of the sorcerer are also toads, scorpions,
snakes, and insects-all sorts of stinging, biting, and poisonous creatures.
The same substance is also called Hausa and yachay. The former is the ordinary
Quechua term for phlegm; the latter is the Quechua word for knowledge. The
term yachay derives from the verb yacha, know, and refers specifically to ritual
knowledge. The Lamista term for shaman is yachay, owner of yachay;3 similarly, the Napo Runa and Canelos Quichua term for shaman is yachay, one who
knows.4

This flema must be distinguished from mariri, which is phlegm rarefied, raised from the chest into the throat, becoming like air, don Roberto saysimmaterial, vibratory, and protective. Don Roberto's raising of the magical
phlegm from his chest into his throat as mariri is accompanied by dramatic
burps and belches. It is this mariri that 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 the shaman sucks out.

The phlegm is the materialization of the shaman's fuerza, power, which
grows and diminishes with the growth and decrease of the phlegm.s As fuerza, the phlegm can become more material and manifest as darts, insects,
stones, and crystals; and it may become more rarefied, raised from chest to
throat, and become mariri. As ethnologist Alfred Metraux notes, "The magical substance, the pathogenic objects, and the spirit allies constitute three aspects of the same magical power. "I

Phlegm grows as a result of smoking mapacho and drinking ayahuasca. Within months of beginning his training with his uncle, don Roberto's
phlegm grew in his chest. He would notice, when smoking mapacho, that
he would burp up mariri, the refined form of phlegm; when flema becomes
mariri, when it moves from chest to throat, don Roberto says, it is just like air,
one does not really feel it. The flema is received from the maestro ayahuasquero, "like planting a seed in your chest." Nurturing one's flema is like raising
a plant until it is the proper size and then maintaining it. "Flema makes you
fearless," don Roberto says. Fearlessness is a constant theme in relation to
phlegm. When you have this protection, dona Maria told me, there is no need
to fear anyone; the medicine grants a corazdn de acero, a heart of steel.

Here we can see a close correspondence between icaro and phlegm. Both
range from the grossly physical and intelligible to the rarefied, refined, airlike; converge in the act of blowing, which can both cure and kill; and unite in
the magical mouth of the shaman, which contains the power and wisdom of
the plant spirits. As we have seen, the term mariri can be used as a synonym
for icaro.7 Both icaro and mariri, sound and power, aspire to the condition of
puro sonido, pure sound, which is the immaterial and wordless language of
the plants.

MATERIALIZED POWER IN THE AMAZON

Sometimes the shamanic substance permeates the shaman's body, and becomes a pathogenic object-a dart or stone-only when projected into a victim. The substance is often described as poisonous or bitter or caustic. Culina
shamans keep a substance called dori in their bodies, which permeates their flesh, where it is formless and insubstantial; yet, outside the shaman's body,
it resembles a small stone. Different colors of stone represent different types
of dori. This substance is caustic and dangerous; it would be poisonous to its
possessor if it were not acquired in the context of ritual training. Dori gives
the shaman the power to heal, but its poisonous property makes it also the
shaman's weapon, which can be hurled into the body of a victim, where it becomes a stone that grows until it kills, unless sucked out by another shaman.'

Among the Siona, drinking ayahuasca causes a substance called dau to
grow inside the drinker; when sufficient dau has been accumulated, the person has the power to cure and to harm. As with the Culina dori, the Siona dau
is dispersed throughout the shaman's body; but, when projected outside, it
may take the form of a dart, or a stone, or a snake's tooth, or a rotting substance, or a black butterfly.9

Most often the shamanic substance is localized in the chest or stomach,
and the pathogenic objects are embedded within it. Among the Shuar, the
substance is called tsentsak, and the term refers equally to the substance and
to its contents-spirit helpers in the form of darts, which are at the same time
jaguars, monkeys, or giant butterflies. This tsentsak is a living substance that
functions both for attack, in the form of darts, and for defense, to protect
from the darts of others. Shuar shamans keep their tsentsak in their stomach,
so that the darts can be vomited up at will.'° Among the Shipibo-Conibo, the
shaman's power substance is called quenyon-a sticky substance, sometimes
a paste or dough-and it is materialized in phlegm, which the shaman keeps
in his or her chest.-

Among the Achuar, each type of tsentsak, magic dart, exists in its own
maen, mother-saliva, a sticky substance in which it develops as a fetus does
in its amniotic fluid, and which a shaman can draw up from his chest into
his mouth when he needs to. An apprentice shaman will spend a lot of time
mastering the regurgitation of tsentsalc saliva that the master has injected into
him mixed with manioc beer and tobacco.I2

Aguaruna shamans also possess tsentsak darts, which are held in the shaman's upper torso, embedded in a saliva-like substance called kaag, and which
they propel into the bodies of their victims to cause illness; healing shamans
use their own tsentsak to find and remove the darts of sorcerers.13

VI ROTES

Very often the shaman's pathogenic projectiles, embedded in the phlegm,
are conceptualized as a kind of dart, which mestizo shamans call a virote. Originally the term denoted a crossbow bolt, brought to South America by the
conquistadors; the Spanish term was then applied to the darts shot by Indians
with a blowgun. These darts were made primarily from two sources-from
the spines of any of the spiny Bactris orAstrocaryum palms or from any of several
Euterpe palms, whose very hard wood is used to make both bows and arrows.14
My jungle survival instructor, Gerineldo Moises Chavez, whittled a usable dart
from the wood of a Euterpe palm with his machete in about a minute.

Both Euterpe and Bactris species are known as chonta, and the term chonta
is often used as a synonym for virote.15 The verb chontear means to cast magic
darts at a victim;" a chontero is a sorcerer who inflicts harm with magic darts.
The Shuar term uwishin, shaman, may derive from uwi, the spiny Bactris palm,
which they also know as chonta. Thus the Shuar use the term chonta as a synonym for tsentsak, magic dart, and the Napo Quichua use the term chontapala
as a synonym for biruti, from the Spanish virote.17 Euterpe and Bactris species,
too, are a primary source of edible palm hearts, also generically called chonta,
which make a delicious salad.

The intrusion of such darts causes acute and painful sickness, which can
kill within a few days.,' To understand the power of the virote, we can turn to
poet Cesar Calvo, who writes that it is a "very small poisoned dart, capable of
abandoning and resuming its material shape in order to traverse any distance;
any time; any wall, shield, or protection; to nail itself in enemy flesh and to
reach the target selected by the sorcerer who gave it form and then animated
that form, endowing it with destiny and transcendence.-9

But these pathogenic projectiles can also be-varying in different cultures
and under different circumstances-the thorns of spiny palm trees, tufts of
hair, tiny stones, quartz crystals, pieces of cotton, fur, insects, beetles, scorpions, snake fangs, stingray stings, monkey hair, the beaks of certain birds,
porcupine quills, bats, toads, snakes, gnawing grubs, monkey teeth, sharppointed bones, a piece of a knife, a bead, stinging caterpillars, crystal arrows,
or razor blades.20 A Cashinahua claimed to have seen the muka, the bitter
shamanic substance, within the body of a shaman-a small ball of poison, a
small piece of a knife, a small wood splinter, a bead.21 A painting by Pablo Amaringo shows the phlegm of two sorcerers-a Shipibo chontero, who inflicts
harm with darts made from the thorns of spiny palms, the fangs of snakes,
the beaks of birds, and porcupine quills; and a Cocama sorcerer, whose mariri
contains snakes, scorpions, bats, rays, and toads, which he sends to inflict
harm.22

The projectiles are also in some sense autonomous, alive, spirits, sometimes with their own needs and desires, including a need for nourishment, often supplied by tobacco, or a need to consume human flesh. As we will see,
a crucial part of shamanic initiation is learning to control the aggressive desires of one's own darts.