Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (21 page)

Pablo Amaringo's Vision

Pablo Amaringo was similarly initiated during an ayahuasca vision. Beautiful women carrying baskets full of sweet-smelling flowers, white and pink,
came to him and crowned him; they gave him the mantle of a Icing, a wide
belt, beautiful shoes, a scepter, books, swords, an elegant throne, and animal
protectors-wolves, a bear, a tiger, a panther, an eagle, and worms. He did
not understand what they were doing, but he felt like a Icing. The queens gave
him the flowers, kissed him, and said, "Now we are coming to be with you,
so that you will be very strong. You will have guardians to your right and left."

Later he understood that the white flowers symbolized the medicine he
was to practice, and the pink flowers symbolized the defenses he was to use.
There were no red or black flowers, which represent sorcery. About a month
later, directed by a woman who appeared to him in a dream, he did his first
healing.34

Francisco Montes Shuna's Dream

Don Francisco Montes Shuha had a dream in which he was initiated as a perfumero. He was shown a hospital "where all the operations were performed
psychically." He looked for the queen of the hospital and found her at the
eighth door he opened. Behind this door was a garden in which people were
working with flowers and scents. When the queen arrived, everyone recognized her; she invited Montes to enter, embraced him, and took him to a long
table on which were placed many bottles of fragrance. She explained the contents of each one and said of the last: "This is yours. With this you will become a great curandero."35

As we have discussed, the power of the mestizo shaman is stored in the physical form of phlegm in the shaman's chest. But the gateway of the shaman's
power is the shaman's mouth, out of which the shaman's power passes in the
form of singing, whistling, whispering, and blowing, and into which the shaman sucks out the sickness, the sorcery, and the magic darts that cause the
patient's suffering.

All across the Amazon, blowing and sucking are the primary and complementary means of manifesting the magical power of the mouth. In the Upper Rio Negro region, the Desana shaman "effects cures by means of blowing
tobacco smoke ... and sucking out pathogenic objects from the body and
spitting them away.", At the other end of the Amazon, in the Middle Xingu of
Brazil, the Arawete shaman fumigates with tobacco and sucks out pathogenic
substances.' The Yagua shaman in eastern Peru and the Tukano shaman in
Colombia both blow tobacco smoke over an afflicted body part and suck out
darts and other intrusive pathogens.3

SUCKING

Not all sucking is physical. I was taught that there are three ways through
which the shaman's mouth can draw out intrusive objects, sickness, darts,
and magical harm from the patient's body-by sucking with the lips directly
on the skin, by using one's cupped hands to make a tube through which the
sickness can be drawn out, and by pulling with the mouth from a distance.
As opposed to chupando, sucking, working at a distance is called jalando, pulling. A shaman may use different techniques under different circumstances.
Don Agustin Rivas used jalando-which he calls "pulling the illness from a distance"-when he sucked AIDS from the forehead of an AIDS patient.4

The sucking or pulling removes the haire, air, and the flemocidades, "phlegmosities," of the sickness. The shaman is protected by his or her own flema,
phlegm, stored in the chest and raised into the throat as mariri, phlegm rarefied, like air, vibratory and protective. The phlegm of the healer contests with
the phlegm of the sickness, the phlegm of the sorcerer, filled with darts and
scorpions.

As the shaman sucks, the sickness comes out into the mouth-sometimes
like cold air, sometimes like a metallic object, sometimes as rotten meat,
darts, toads, scorpions, insects, or razor blades. In fact, dona Maria warned
me, what comes out of the patient's body may have a sweet taste, tempting
one to swallow-a temptation clearly to be resisted. The healer then spits out
what is bad and keeps what will increase the healer's own power. Often what
is sucked out is so vile that the shaman gags and retches dramatically before
spitting it onto the ground. If the object sucked or pulled from the patient is a
powerful pathogenic object like a dart, it enters the mariri to become part of
the shaman's own dart collection; or, if the healer wishes, the dart caught in
the mariri can be projected back onto the one who sent it-the sorcerer, the
sorcerer's client.

Thus, the key to don Roberto's healing is his chupando, sucking, like other
shamans, throughout North and South America, who suck out sickness from
the suffering body. Healing by sucking is widely distributed among the indigenous people of the Amazon.5 The Machigengua shaman sucks out pathogenic objects-thorns, leaves, bones, spines-and shows them to the audience;
the blood he sucks out is said to be black.' The Tukano shaman lays a magic
stone on the place where the thorn or splinter or monkey fur has entered the
body, puts his fist on the stone, thumb up, and sucks through that to remove
the object, which he spits out onto the palm of his hand and shows the patient
before throwing it away.?

The Toba shaman sucks out little stones, sticks, or worms.' Anthropologist Phillipe Descola describes an Achuar shaman sucking out and revealing
"half a dozen pieces of glass, opaque with age."9 Among the Aguaruna and
the Shuar what is sucked out is said to be darts.'° The Yagua shaman sucks
out darts and then vomits them at a special place called pdnjo, place of healing. The shaman there spits up a thread of saliva that, as it hardens, takes on
the appearance of a dart. This is kept to be shown to the relatives of the sick person, who keep their distance, since the dart is charged with electricity, like
lightning.-

The practice of sucking out sickness is old in the Amazon. A report of the
Tupinamba dating to 1613 gives this account: "I see the shaman at work, sucking up the patient's illness, as hard as he can, into his mouth and throat, pretending to hold them full and distended and then quickly spitting outside the
enclosed space. He spits with great force, making a noise like a pistol shot
and says that it is the illness which he has sucked. 1112

Similarly, in North America, the Chippewa Indians make use of a "sucking doctor. 1113 Anthropologist John Lee Maddox listed many Native American
peoples among whom the doctor sucks the affected part and exhibits some
foreign body. He describes how the Californian Karok doctor sucks the patient and then vomits up a frog, and how the Cumana suck disease from the
patient and then vomit a hard black ball.14 Extraction by suction among the
Paiute is described by anthropologist Beatrice Whiting: "Sucking is part of
nearly every ceremony. The doctor often sucks out some foreign object and
thus effects a cure. He spits the object out of his mouth and shows it to the
people. He then mixes it with dirt in his hands, rubs his hands together, and
the object disappears. Sometimes he vomits the object into a pan of earth to
make it disappear." s

There are different styles of sucking as well. Some draw up their phlegm
into their throat silently; others, such as don Roberto, make dramatic sounds
of belching or burping. Don Agustin Rivas remembers, as a child, laughing with his sister about the gurgling sounds that don Pancho Oroma made
when healing their mother.16 Dona Maria, although she was taught chupando
by don Roberto, had previously used jalando, pulling, and she continued to
use that same technique throughout her life. Some shamans suck gently; don
Roberto sucks vigorously, placing his mouth full on the place where he has
detected an embedded pathogenic object and drawing the skin fully into his
mouth. As in all aspects of his shamanic performance, the patient knows that
serious chupando is taking place.

Don Agustin Rivas tells of what it was like to suck a pathogenic object out
of the brain of a patient. He drank ayahuasca to locate the object-it looked
like a leaf with a serrated edge, he says-and then drank more ayahuasca to
help raise his phlegm. He vomited this phlegm onto the patient's head and
then sucked it back into his mouth, along with something not a leaf but, rather, similar to a clock battery, which he could feel with his tongue-round,
cold, making a clicking noise between his teeth. This pathogenic object he swallowed; but ten minutes later he vomited it onto the ground, feeling it click
against his teeth. He searched for the object in the small puddle of vomit, but,
though he could feel it there, he could see nothing.'? Otomi healer don Antonio sucks out rotten meat.i8 Peter Gorman, a student of don Julio Jerena, describes an experience of sucking out objects like balls of thick phlegm; when
one slipped down his throat, he immediately began to vomit and choke.19

Here is another account, from the patient's side. The patient is Pablo Amaringo, and the shaman is don Pascual Pichiri:

He then took his pipe, swallowed the smoke, and began to wake up
his mariri. When the mariri was in his mouth, he came towards me and
began to suck the place where the virote was nested. He barely touched
my skin. After some time, the virote came out, he broke its tip with his
teeth, and showed it to me: it was a thorn of cumaceba, thin like a needle. "Now let's take out the yausa," he said. When he finished, I felt a
tremendous relief. I felt no pain, and the fever was gone .20

Sucking out a disease is risky, dramatic, and unpredictable. To suck out
a sickness means committing to deal with something that is disgusting and
dangerous. It is also a direct and personal challenge to the sorcerer who sent
the sickness, and thus risks creating a powerful enemy. No wonder some shamans keep silent about their knowledge and abilities.

BLOWING

Blowing is a common Amazonian means of both healing and harming; blowing, singing, and whistling-the movement of breath out into the world, the
projection of sound-are all modes that may be used for both attack and defense, and the less conceptual, the more abstract and refined the sound, the
less tied to mere human intelligibility, the more powerful it is. The Wai distinguish two kinds of blowing, which have in common that they are used to
kill an enemy by sending a fluidlike substance into the victim; the death of a
person is almost always considered to be due to magical blowing by an enemy, and revenge blowing by a relative is considered an obligation of honor .21
Among the Yagua, to use sorcery is called to blow; one says I will cast a curse on
you by saying I will blow on you.22 Similarly, among the Piro, whenever a death
or serious illness is mentioned, the question is quickly asked, Who blew?23
The Canelos Quichua word shitana means both sorcery and blowing-"a dangerous blowing of unseen tangibility. 1114 To learn to blow, among the Shuar, means to become a shaman.15 How powerful is blowing? In 1886, before
attacking a Pangoa River settlement, an Ashdninka shaman told his warriors
to blow against the white man's bullets, which would turn them into leaves.26

Among the Akawaio, ritual blowing, taling, used to sicken or harm a person, is performed by blowing tobacco smoke on an object that is then thrown
in the direction of the victim. The spirit of the object enters into the victim
and makes the victim sick. The most powerful sickening objects are spirit
stones-quartz crystals, possessed by shamans, which contain powerful
spirits.27

But blowing-especially the blowing of tobacco-can be creative and life
giving as well. In Ywalapiti myths, a demiurge named Kwamuty transforms
large logs into living beings by blowing tobacco smoke on them. Among the
Xingu, in the important female initiation rite, the girls are transformed into
human beings by being blown on with tobacco smoke .21 A Tukano creation
myth has the creator, Yepd Huake, give life to humans by blowing on them;
when humans decline to bathe in the waters of immortality, thus becoming
mortal, he compensates them by giving them shamans, who will also blow
on them when they become sick.19 Among the Machiguenga, the shaman's
breath is charged with sacred energy that is enhanced by tobacco smoke.3°
The Yagua shaman summons his spirit allies by blowing tobacco smoke,
and sends them forth and directs them by blowing smoke. Blowing tobacco
smoke allows the extraction of darts by heating them, like a ripening abscess;
blowing smoke drives out evil from the bodies of the sick; blowing smoke on
an object reveals its true nature.31 Ethnologist Alfred Metraux puts it somewhat differently. Breath and smoke are together the healing power of the Amazonian shaman, he says; it is the tobacco smoke that materializes the breath.32