Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (63 page)

Still, Roman Catholicism remains a singularly powerful cultural force. For
example, in Iquitos, people will organize a velada-a ritual celebration in honor of a saint-or will arrange for a misa de honras, a memorial mass, to ask for
protection from tunchis or malignos, the evil spirits of the dead."

Catholicism interacts with shamanism as well. Shipibo shaman don Javier
Arevalo Shahuano says that Christianity and shamanism work together. "But
it has nothing to do with going to church," he adds. "You learn all this in the
wilderness. The spirits there are the angels of each plant to which you add
your will to heal the client. This is the will of Christ.'", In the same way, Cocama shaman don Jose Curitima Sangama says that he works with the help of
God, who after all created all the plants; in his icaros he calls upon La Virgen
de Dolores, the Virgin of Sorrows.13

It is clear that dofia Maria's healing practice-and many of her theories
about her healing practice-were influenced by a folk Catholicism found
widely among Amazonian mestizos. In the Peruvian Amazon, institutional
Catholicism is identified primarily with the cities, which are able to support
ecclesiastical institutions such as cathedrals, priests, masses, and festivals.
Outside the cities, there is folk Catholicism-as political scientist Anthony
Gill puts it, "the Catholic faith in a noninstitutional setting ... a popular form
of religiosity, typically found in areas that receive only sporadic visits from
Catholic priests. 1114

Folk Catholicism manifests itself in many ways. Good luck charms, for example, often containing images of saints, may be carried or placed on small
altars in the home. There are two types-collages, consisting of small items
glued to a cloth-covered piece of cardboard, and vials, discarded vaccine bottles filled with objects suspended in oil and sealed with aluminum and rubber caps. Most are accompanied by small slips of paper listing and explaining
their contents, often with a picture of a saint and a brief prayer.

The items included with such charms may include tiny horseshoes for luck, pieces of pyrite to attract money, lodestones to attract both money and
luck, huayruro seeds for luck, pieces of what is called vuelve vuelve-come
back! come back!-vine for the return of a lost love; pieces of various kinds of
tree bark dyed bright colors, and small figures of saints-St. Anthony, patron
of lovers; St. Cyprian, magician and patron of healers; and St. Francis, patron
of animals. Sometimes a collage will include a god's eye wound on two small
sticks; small saint-card images of Jesus, St. Anthony, or the Virgin Mary; or a
tiny red candle.15

Among mestizo shamans, folk Catholicism manifests itself primarily in
two ways-first, in viewing Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary as particularly
powerful healing and protecting spirits; and second, in using prayer books
and spell books to remove evil and to ensure safety. There is no doubt that
dona Maria was deeply devoted to the Virgin Mary and considered her to be
a powerful and trustworthy friend. This is different, perhaps, in intensity,
but not in kind, from her relations with other spirits. Dona Maria's oraciones, prayer songs, to Jesucristo were almost identical to those to other healing
spirits. She sang to Jesus:

In the same way-and in virtually the same words-she sang to, say, ayahuasca
doctorcito poderoso. She would begin every ayahuasca ritual with numerous repetitions of the avemaria, Hail Mary, as an arcana.

A popular spell book is The Sacred Cross of Caravaca, which provides a number
of lengthy prayers to various saints as well as oraciones curativas, brief prayers
and spells for healing. "Tests repeated a thousand times," says the anonymous
author, "have given us the absolute conviction of their efficacy; thousands of
impartial and careful testimonials agree with us in proclaiming their value in
every case." For example, there is a prayer against burns: "Fire is not cold. Water is not thirsty. Air is not hot. Bread is not hungry. San Lorenzo, cure these burns, by the power God has given you." Against cataracts, one may pray:
"Cataract, cataract, formed of blood and water; in honor and glory of the Holy
Trinity, may it be quickly healed"; and again: "Mother of San Simeon, advocate against cataracts. Clear is the moon; clear is the sun; clear let the vision
be of N., by your intercession." And there is a prayer against a sore throat: "In
Belen are three young girls: one sews, another spins, and another heals sore
throats. One spins, another sews, and another heals sore throats.""

MAGIC

This folk Catholicism easily shades over into magia, magic. The term has traditionally referred specifically to the magical power of white people, in distinction to the power of indigenous Amazonian shamans: It was their magic
that allowed the whites to come and steal the land.'? This magic is found in
books, particularly in grimorios, such as the Book of San Cipriano or the Great
Grimoire ofPope Honorius, and in Spanish translations of the texts of nineteenthcentury European occultism. This means that books on magia can be purchased at the market and learned by oneself, without needing a maestro for
protection and guidance and without undergoing the training and suffering
of sexual abstinence and the restricted diet. All you need do is buy the book
and find the right spell.

But there is a price to pay. Some people say that the magic of the whites requires a pact with the devil. The prayers and spells in the books of magia can
conjure up evil spirits who then harm the conjurer.,' Dona Maria warned me
that magic makes people cruzado, confused, burdened, tormented, because
they have no guidance from a maestro. Buying magia in a bookstore requires
no self-control; it is like dieting only long enough to become a sorcerer. To receive initiation from a shaman, one must undergo severe dietary, sexual, and
other restrictions; but to become a magician you just to have to read the books
on magic and follow their instructions. Being a magician is considered to involve less suffering than being a shaman; nor does it demand a great deal of
self-control to become a magician.19

Here is an example of a magic spell from one version-there are manyof the Book of St. Cyprian, telling how a woman can make a man fall in love
with her. The woman should get from the chosen man a coin, medal, pin, or
other object, or part of an object, made of silver, which he has had with him
for a period of twenty-four hours. She should approach the man holding the
object in her right hand and with the other hand offer him a cup of wine, in
which she has dissolved a pill, the size of a grain of millet, with the following composition-the head of an eel, a thimbleful of hemp seeds, two drops of
laudanum, and six drops of her own blood, taken from her menstruation in
the same month. As soon as the individual has drunk the cup ofwine with this
mixture, he will helplessly love the woman who gave it to him.20

THEISTIC SYNCRETISM

When dona Maria spoke of her life and work, she frequently put her palms together in a gesture of prayer and exclaimed, iGracias a Dios! Thanks to God!especially when describing her narrow escapes from sorcerers. Her monotheism emerged in many of her theoretical constructs. For example, dona Maria
learned from don Roberto that there are three Fuentes de la medicina, sources
of medicine-tierra, earth; agua, water; and haire, air. This is a typically Amazonian threefold cosmology, lacking the element offire found in the fourfold
European cosmologies derived from Greek thought. But Maria added her own
theistic interpretation. "Many shamans do not know this," she told me. "One
poder, power, comes through threefuentes."

Her explicit threefold cosmology was subsumed under an implicit vertical
duality-that between arriba, above, and tierra, earth, below. The use of the
term tierra instead of the more correlative term abajo, below, may be another
instance ofAmazonian synecdoche: here below are the three sources ofinedicine, of which tierra is one. This duality pervaded dona Maria's discourse.
Arriba was explicitly identified with cielo, heaven, and tierra with infrerno, hell.
Similar implicit oppositions recurred frequently: below are the genios, plant
spirits, and above are the santos, saints; below are the icaros, plant spirit songs,
and above are oraciones, prayers. Similarly, dona Maria used two different
words for the general concept of power: on the one hand wasfuerza, which is
the power of the shaman, related to tierra, earth; on the other was poder, which
is the power of God, related to arriba, heaven. It is this divine poder, rather
than the shamanic fuerza, which, dona Maria said, is manifested through las
tresfuentes de la medicina.

Similarly, dona Maria considered herself to have had three types of teacher
in her life-her earthly teacher, her heavenly teacher, and her spirit teacher.
Her only human teacher had been don Roberto, who is of tierra, the earth.
Somewhere between earthly and heavenly teachers was her spirit teacher, her
spirit ally-Oscar Rosindo Pisarro, the deceased Iquitos Rosicrucian who
entered her body and worked through her when she underwent transcorporacion. But her true teacher was arriba, heaven above-the Virgin Mary and
Jesus Christ, the threefold Padre, Jesucristo, and Espiritu Santo.