1.0 The Shaman And The Jaguar. AStudy of Narcotic Drugs Among the Indians of Colombia. G.Reichel-Dolmatoff. Temple University Press. 1975.
1.1 Shamanism/vegetation
1.1.1 Man in primitive societies lives in a much closer and more personal association with his ambient vegetation than man in our modern technological cultures. Shamanism depends in great part on the supernatural powers resident in certain plants. These resident divinities are organic chemical constituents that allow mortal man to communicate through visual, auditory and other hallucinations with the spirit world that controls every aspect of man’s earthly existance. PPXIII
1.2 Shaman
1.2.1 The paye [shaman] officiates in the rituals of the life cycle (birth, initiation and burial) and is also active as a curer of diseases. One of his main preocupations, however, is directed towards the relationship between society and the supernatural, above all with the master of game animals, on whom depends success in hunting and fishing and who also commands many pathogenic agents the payé tries to neutralize. pp67.
1.2.2 The concept of spirit possession seems to be completely lacking in Tuakano culture. A payé is always himself; never is he seized or invaded by a spirit; he simply interprets and transmits what this spirit shows him or tells him. He never becomes an instrument of other forces but always remains a translator and interpreter, a shrewd dealer trying to learn as much as possible from the beings that people the world of his visions; he never submits to them as a blind tool of uncontrollable forces. his soul might be wandering, but it is notbeing replaced by the intrusion of any external agency. pp104
1.3 Topography. Sacred places. The imaginary
1.3.1 ...falls and rapids figure prominently in indian myths and traditions...They are the dwelling places of spirits, of dangerous forces that are supposedto inhabit the dark depths of the pools; as a matter of fact they are imagined as ‘houses’ where the water-beings have their abodes, much in the same way as people live on land. To the natives of the Vaupés, then, the rivers and their rapids are not only natural routes of communication but also spots where contact with another, supernatural, sphere is established. pp70
1.3.2 To act ‘as if’ is a common attitude underlying much of Tukano thought and behavioral patterns. Everyone knows that, in this world, a hill is a hill, and fish are just animals that can be caught and eaten; but everyone also knows there is ‘another’ world where the hills appear as if they were houses, and fish behave as if they were people. The conditional as if is explicit in spells and incantations in which nature is perceived as imbued with human motivations and possibilities of action. the hunter approaches his prey as if it were human; lightning strikes as if it had been cast by someone. PP105
1.3.2.1 Me: this as if, is it like a mediated mimesis?, not quite conjunction and immediacy enough to loose oneself, but some distance to kkep disjunction and freedom of action, and yet the capacity for accessing, manipulating and intercting with this determinant ‘other’.
1.3.3 The rocky hills one encounters here and there in the depths of the forest are feared by the Indians, who believe that it is there that the supernatural masters of the game animals have their abodes. these hills, much like the rapids and falls of the rivers, are thought to be ‘malocas’ wherein the animals live under the protection of their master, and near these hills are open and clean spots where they are said to gather to dance and play...These are danger spots to the lonely hunter who may happen upon them; he will fall ill with fever, pierced by the invisibletiny arrows shot at him by the game animals in retaliation for the prey he has killed. pp71.
1.3.3.1 Me: again, suffering fom too much conjunction, accidental , unmediated, encounter with spiritual forces, pollution.
1.3.4 The forest, then, is a dimension full of unforeseeable dangers, many of which are of a supernatural...character. The forest id thought to be inhabited by many more differnt spirit-beings than the river because all mammals-or most of them-have spirit-natures that can be dangerous to people. Although the Indians move with the ease of long experience in the forest environment, they are never competely confident of their dominance. pp72
1.3.5 The only places, then, that offer security are those that have been transformed by actual, present culture: the maloca and its immediate surroundings. pp73
1.3.6 The animals one may encounter in the environment of the garden plots are harmless and friendly; they are macaws and parrots, weaverbirds and hummingbirds, squirrels and mice. They do not ‘shoot arrows’; they are friends. But beyond the fields the forest commences, and with it the danger zone. pp73
1.3.6.1 Me: animals ‘shoot arrows’, what then with the devastatin we have brought onto them?..what does that translATE INTO EXPERIENTIALLY FOR US? WHAT ABOUT THE ‘GUILTY-CONSCIENCE’ OF THE POWERFUL?. Isn’t that nihilism?. What about security? sure we need to transform nature into culture to achieve a sense of security, and so modern society has almost banished nature. But safety in this sense needs to be articulated and balanced with danger...culture with nature...to live at the edge. otherwise, the dangerous ‘other’ manifests by breaking forth through the very seams of our social fabric/ consciousness, wrecking havoc, causing toomuch conjunction, for it is an unmediated and surprising encounter: polluting.
1.3.7 ...the dimension of what -inour culture- would be termed unreality, imagination, the fantastic. To the Indians this ‘other’ dimension is just as real as that of ordinary everyday life, and for the individual to pass from one to the other is an experience shared by all. To accomplish this change, to see beyond the surface of things -through the hills and the waters and the sky- there exist means that can be handled and controlled; there is concentration, abstinence and trance. or sometimes this ‘other’ dimension will manifest itself quite suddenly and unexpectedly, allowing a brief and terrifying glimpse of the dark powers. But more ofen the perception of this dimension will be produced quite consciously by chemical means, by powerful drugs under the influence of which the mind will wander into the hidden world of animals and forest spirits, of divine beings and mythical scenes...pp75
1.3.7.1 If really whAT WE BELIEVE IS WHAT WE SEE AND ALL IMAGININGS ARE REAL, then we can choose the imaginary reality we live. to an extent. Modern society has chosen to move away from nature and isolated the modern individual consciousness into its own vacuity, cutting it off from the onslaught of ‘alien threatening forces’, but also from its sources of meaning, power , freedom and fun. Modern individual has been ‘placed’ and ‘ordered’, organized and disciplined to fit the schemes and needs of centralized power, in which an individual takes his place. The realms of chaos at the periphery are thus exorcized, and the individual subject to normalizing control of the center.
1.4 Shaman.Spirit helpers. tools of the trade.
1.4.1 ...the role of the payé is essentially that of a mediator between superterrestrial forces and society, and between the need for survival of the individual and the forces bent upon his destruction -sickness, hunger, and the ill will of others. In the course of his activities the shaman...must therefore obtain the ASSISTANCE OF A NUMBER of spirit-helpers contact with whom is established through the use of narcotic drugs. Apart from this, the payé must obtain a series of concrete objects of wood, stone, or other substances that contain the essence of certain power concepts and form his instruments of practice. pp76
1.4.1.1 Me: Shaman as example of empowered humanity? Can we in fact aim for a society of equally empowered individuals? No, the medicine chooses the person, not the other way around, and so we can only aim to empower the individual as far as possible to live a happy and effective life.
1.4.2 ...certain psychological and intellectual qualities that mark a person as a potential payé...deep interset in myth and tribal tradition, a good memory for reciting long sequences of names and events, a good singing voice, and the capacity for enduring hours of incantations during sleepless nights preceded by fasting and sexual abstinence. But these are minor qualities; there are others, more important, that develop only in the course of long training and experience...Above all, a payé’s soul should ‘illuminate’; it should shine with a strong inner light rendering visible all that is in darkness, all that is hidden from ordinary knowledge and reasoning. This supernatural luminescence of the payé is said to manifest itself when he speaks or sings, or when he explains his or others’ hallucinatory experiences....This powerful emanation is thought to be directly derived from the sun, and to have a marked seminal character. the sun’s fertilizing energy is transmitted to the payé in the sense that he himself becomes a carrier of a force that containes procreative and fortifying components. Closely related...is the ability of the payé to interpret mythical passages, genealogical recitals, incantatory formulas, dreams, or any signs and portents a person may have observed. The payé’s interpretations thus ‘shed light’ upon these matters...It is of importance, then, that the payé himslef be able to have clear and meaningful hallucinations. pp77
1.4.3 ...a future payé must acquire a number of material objects he will use later on while officiating. The essence of these objects exists in the celestial sphere, in the House of Thunder, and in a drug-induced trance he must visit thunder and ask for his help. It is thunder himself who gives him the essence -or even the material form- of these objects, designated as ‘weapons’, or shows the apprentice where to obtain them. PP78
1.4.3.1 To acquire these ‘weapons’ the master and his pupils go to live for several weeks at an isolated spot in the forest where they build a temporary shelter that contains only the barest commodities such as hammocks, a few cooking utensils...No women are allowed to visit the spot.. During the daytime the men go hunting, fishing, or gathering...but in the evenings they will dance and sing, smoke tobacco, and take narcotic drugs, mainly snuff and different yajé portions. It is during the narcotic trance that the power objects ‘appear’; they ‘fall out of the sky’ and suddenly materialize before the apprentice. pp78
1.4.3.2 Thunder is closely related to the jaguar-spirit and may occasionally appear in the shape of a roaring jaguar. In the celestial sphere the harpy eagles are thunder’s companions and messangers. pp78
1.4.3.3 Tools of the payé: thunder’s ear pendants, which gives the payé the atribute of controlling lightning and cast thunderbolts at his enemies...Another tool is the gourd rattle...small bow and arrow, small paddle... stones...thunder-stones...used as cures for particular ailments, others as lethal weapons against enemies....Another magical tool of the paye, a set of sharp thorns or needle like splinters of the wood of a palm tree. To ‘give’ these weapons to an apprentice, the payé lays these splinters on the inside of the apprentice’s left forearm, then takes the whitish quartz cylinder that hangs from his neck and, placing it upon the splinters, makes the gesture of pressing them into the flesh. A similar gesture is made with the handle of the gourd rattle, and finally the payé puts his clenched fist upon the spot and blows sharply through it to make the splinters ‘enter’ the arm, where they ‘disappear’. from now on these splinters are thought to be like poisoned arrows which can be shot at an enemy with a violent movement of the arm. The payé also places two small splinters upon the tongue of the apprentice...blows with his clenched fist causing them to ‘enter’. These splinters are necessary to the payé, so that he can suck uot the essence of disease from a patient’s body, and they act as a counterpoison. pp80
1.4.3.4 While the future payé is thus being initiated and invested with different powers, he and his master spend long hours singing and pronouncing incantations directed to Vihó-mahse, the supernatural master of the narcotic snuff. During the entire period of the novitiate, different kinds of yajé are consumed almost daily, and snuff is absorbed regularly because the specific details of a future shaman’s knowledge are transmitted to him directly through through the Viho-mahse, who is always present and whose voice accompanies the imagery of the hallucinations.pp80, 81
1.4.3.5 ...an individual cannot become a payé of his own will...All he can do is expose himself to a shamanistic experience and then observe his own reactions. The shamanistic power cannot be acquired; it bestows itself upon the person. The power selects its bearer, and not the reverse. PP81-82
1.4.3.6 Among the many activities of a Tukano shaman, one of the most important refers to his relationships with Vaí-mahse, the supernatural Master of Animals. This spirit-being can manifest itself in many guises, but it is generally...seen...as a red dwarf, a small person in the attire of a hunter armed with bow and arrow. He is the owner and proector of all animals...and success in hunting and fishing depends largely upon his good will. Vaí-mahse is a payé in his own right; he owns all the ‘weapons’ a payé obtains from thunder, excpt the copper ear pendants, and officiates in his realm just as a payé would among his own people...some payés seem to derive their power mainly from Vai-mahse and not from Vihó-mahse. pp83
1.4.3.7 ...[the] small hills, rocky formations with steep walls that rise over the forest like dark islands...are thought to be the dwelling places of Vaí-mahse, in the interior of which he presides over the multitude of animals that are his charge, as if the hill were an enormous maloca...not only the animals inhabit these ‘houses’; also living inside them are the forest spirit boráro; the uahtí, bush spirits that roam at night and frighten people with their uncanny noises and uncouth appearance; and the saarope...sometimes appearin in the forest in human shape, small naked people armed with blowguns...PP83-84.
1.4.3.8 When Vaí-mahse is angry he will use his charges to punish people, sending them diseases or poisonous snakes, or perhaps a jaguar or a devouring bush spirit. The game animals, at least certain species, will take men’s weapons and will reta;iate by shooting their arrowsat the hunter, who will then become the victim of a disease. pp84
1.4.3.9 IT is the payés task to maintain good relations with all these creatures, and to obtain from Vaí-mahse the game and fish needed by his people. The payé, lying in his hammock, will absorb the narcotic powder and, in his trance, will ascend to the Milky Way, the abode of Vihó-mahse. With the latter’s help he then enters the hill where the master of animals dwells, and there they begin to bargain for food or medicinal herbs, for vengeance upon enemies or for a successful hunting season. the representatives of the celestial, subterranean and underwater dimmensions thus meet with the payé and, in a trance combined with songs and dances, wil now decide the destiny of men. pp85
1.4.3.10 In exchange for the game animals, the payé must pay a fee, not so much to Vaí-mashe as to Vihó-mahse, the intermediary. The payment consists of living people who now must die so that their spirits may enter Vaí-mahse’s domain. In his hallucinatory trance the payé kills these victims, whom he sees in the shapes of birds (which embody the life-essence of people) sitting on the rafters of the hill-house he visits...The choice of A PERSON WHO HAS TO DIE IS MADE BY VIH´O-MAHSE HIMSELF, AND HE WILL TELL the payé ‘who is paid for’,that is, whose edath corresponds to the kind and amount of game aminamls obtained. pp86
1.4.3.11 Many of the payés activities are concerned with the curing of disease. Tobacco smoke, splashing with water, the sucking out of pathogenic substances, and lengthy incantations are all standard practice...In many of these curing rituals it seems that the recital of incantations is the most important part of the at. The mere administration of herbal medicines, without lengthy spells and songs, is thought to be ineffective and even dangerous. pps 89-91
1.4.3.12 During the treatment the payé often talks at length with his patient, mainly about the latter’s enemies and sexual imbroglios, giving him to understand that the causes of his disease are to be sought more in the quality of his relations with other people than in organic disorders. The payé will explain that tensions in interpersonal relations are very ‘weakening’ and make the person prone to attacks by Vaí-mahse or other spirit beings. pp91
1.4.3.12.1 Me: integrity being the best protection. Role of envy and interpersonal vibes in illness: ‘psychosomatic’ factors?. if so, what about the hurt and poverty we have imposed as a whole on millons of poeple? what kinds of awful diseases does that cause us without our being aware of it?
1.4.3.13 After the heavy rains that fall in October...[is] a propitious time to learn about medicinal and magical herbs...under the guidance of an expert...November is the time for important shamanistic practices. pp97
1.4.3.14 ...rolling thunder anonces Vihó-mahse’s presence and his willingness to guide the men in their quest for supernatural power.The ascent to the milky way is not easily accomplished...For weeks, perhaps a month or more, the men continue taking narcotic drugs, and the payé interprets to them their visions. To the left, the uahtí spirits will appear, threatening from the dark, but to the right there will be brillant lights like hughe torches, and in their radiance will appear the shapes of plants, of earthenware vessels filled with medicinal potions, gourd cups filled with draughts, and other objects, all demonstrating how this or that disease might be cured. And all the time the voice of Vihó-mahse will speak to them, answering the payees questiones; explaining, exhorting, teaching, showing them herbs and poisons and telling them how to use them. pp98
1.4.3.15 From the milky Way the men now descend to Vaí-mahse’s abode in the hills, still in the company of Vihó-mahse. There they learn how to command poisonous snakes to kill their adversaries...PP 98.
1.4.3.16 [there is a] liquid...said to cause madness...[it] is mixed with tobacco, which might then be offered to an unwary enemy or sprinkled on his clothing or hammock. Amore recently developed way is to smear the substance on the back end of an electric torch and, at night, suddenly flash the beam of light on the back of the unsuspecting victim. pp100.
1.4.4 Disease.Aetiology. Therapeutics.
1.4.4.1 There is no ‘natural’ death in Tukano culture; death and disease are always regarded as a consequence of evil magic exrecised by an enemy. pp100
1.4.4.2 ...it seems that these states and experiences do not involve a mystical etiology; hallucinatory trances are used as practical and efficient means of experiencing the presence of what, in native culture, is taken for the metaphysical. However, this supernatural sphere is not the one of divine or godlike beings, but one of morally ambivalent spirits who are sacralized versions of living beings and whose help has to be obtained for very practical ends. As the Tukano see it, there exist supernatural beings -quite apart from the Sun Father -who have absolute knowledge and absolute power. Any illness has a cure, and any social ill can be redressed if only one can find a channel of communication with the forces that ‘know’ the remedies and solutions. Narcotic drugs provide the key to this sphere of absolute knowledge, and the only problem, then, is to understand the language of these spirit-beings. Herein resides the ability of the payé, to interpret their utterings and signs correctly. PP103
1.4.4.3 Drug-induced ecstasy seems to have two main objectives in Tukano shamanism: to find cures for diseases and ways to punish one’s enemies. As illness is not taken to be the natural lot of mankind but is always thought to be caused by the ill will of people or their spirit-helpers, the problem of curing a disease is, in all essence, a process of reestablishing workable relationships with others, even n the event some of these ‘others’ are spirit-beings, who, after all, ‘are people’. The ecsattic emphasis of Tukano shamanism can be seen as a quest for clues and procedures that will allow the user to restore a ‘dis-ease’ produced by tension frought interpersonal relationships. Acting as a spokesman and intermediary, the payé is not a mystic, but a practical specialist in communications. PP103
1.4.4.3.1 Me: careful with his Freudian approach. Parts of it are true, practicality being a priority. But he only seems to have observed informal rather than ceremonial occasions. From Pleiades book it seems like He house has many elements of a religion. Wether or not ‘practical’ ends are supposed to be the goal [and it may be of all religions and of the religious impulse in general], He house aims to reconnect people to a mythical origin, reenacting and reawakening it, consolidating a bond with the ancestors and with the spiritual realm of the eternal and the sacred.
1.4.4.4 Disease is often interpreted as a kind of magical impregnation with an evil ‘seed’ that has to be extracted and exorcised so that the patient can be: ‘reborn’ and cured. The seminal and, therefore fortifying symbolism of white and yellowish colors..is frequently mentioned in incantations and spells, and the entire hallucinatory sphere is not devoid of sexual connotations, the narcotic snuff itself being the ‘sun’s sperm’.pp102
1.4.4.5 the supernatural Masters of the Game are [often] described as people, as a group of uninvited guests who arraive in their canoes carrying blowguns, darts and hoes, playing their musical instruments , and bearing gifts of food...But these giftbearing visitors are evil; they bring diseases to their hosts, who perceive them in their dreams. They are dream visitors, nightmares, and the dreamers fall ill as soon as they partake of the food offered to them. pp93
1.4.4.6 Apart form the splinters of palm wood, hair is said to be an important pathogenic substance...Many disease are attributed to these fuzzy masses of hair, or also to a kind of tissue or web which is thought to cover the patient and to separate him from his environment or from life itself. The cure consists in penetrating and taking off this tissue...This tissue is called suriró/garnment, covering, and the verb suriri means to cover oneself with something or to wrap oneself into something. the same verb is used to express the idea of getting entangled, for example in vines or branches. The noun suriró can be employed to designate any kind of dress...or anything wrapped around the body. Moreover, the same noun is used to express the idea of being in a state of something, of being invested with something. To be in a state of disease is doremoári surireo, literally, to be ‘dressed in disease’. PP96
1.4.4.6.1 Me: look ino these descriptions of curing gestures more carefully. some implicate a having to appease or pay homage by anointment, handle illness by ‘grasping’, banishing, subsumption (thunder provieds the distannceto identify [diagnose] annd the power to control(cure) them. See what these therapeutic imaginary ‘gestures’ can mean and how do they compare with imaginary willfull gestures in our culture. can w e add to our repertoire of ‘gestures’?. As far as the wrapping, invested in disease, look at it carefully, what kinds of investments do we have to deal with that cause us disease? where are we stuck, what entangles us?
1.4.5 Hunting/ Curing, Amainar. Domesticar, seducir.
1.4.5.1 ...the act of hunting...[is] a kind of courtship during which the animals become enamored and finally submit to the hunter. pp94
1.4.6 Spirit doubles.
1.4.6.1 In the beginning of time, when Pamurí-mahse, the ‘germinator’ ascended the rivers of the Vaupés in his canoe in order to establish mankind on earth, he was accompanied not only by representatives of each exogamic group, but also by a people called vearí-mahsá, human beings who also were to live in this land. But soon the vearí-mashá were at odds with Pamurí-Mahse and began to quarrel with him...[and were] banished...to live forever in the hills and pools of vaí-mahse. There they continue to dwell, but they still represent a great danger to society because they are the exact doubles of all men and women who live on earth; they are the mirror images of mankind...emerging sometimes from their dark abodes, they sow confusion and terror among people. PP84
1.5 Male initiation.Menstruation
1.5.1 It is usual for a fairly large group of boys to be initiated at the same time...The term by which the group of initiates is designated is amóa mahsá/menstrating people, and, as a matter of fact, the boys are compared to girls; it is pointed out to them that they will be in imminent danger of menstruating if they do not follow in detail the requisites demanded from them. PP 86.
1.5.2 The Indians are deeply preoccupied with the concept of reproductive energy as manifested in nature and society by fertility and growth. The existence of plants, animals, and people and of a viable balance among them are thought to depend upon the continuity of this energy, and the payé’s or anybody else’s tasks consists in maintaining the cycle of reproduction and growth and in controlling it so that there will be a balance between society and the natural environment. PP102
1.6 Social Function, Political Org. Shamanic trance.
1.6.1 The social functions of Tukano shamanism, therefore, are very important ones, if we look at them in their wider relationship to the particular conditions of the social environment. In its political aspects Tukano society is very loosely organized, there being no institutionalized authorities to settle legal conflicts and personal feuds. There are no chieftains, no councils of elders, no organized means whatsoever for solving conflicts or settling discords arising from the social order, the rules of exogamy and reciprosity, or the personal animosity between individuals. But shaministic trance provides a mechanism for conflict solution. PP103
1.7 Sex, Gender, etc
1.7.1 When inquiring into the reasons for personal enmities between people, one soon sees clearly that malevolence and rancor are caused mainly by women. Adultery, or the suspicion thereof, between a woman and her husband’s brothers is a frequent cause for bitter quarrels, and occasionally a widow of an unmarried girl will become the object of rivalry, jeoulusly and accusations. In a society as controlled...by the strictest exogamic rules, the slightests suspicion of illicit relationships will produce violent reactions, and sexual repression, homosexual attachments, and the laxity of women in obeying the restrictions imposed by the men also lead to open tensions. And then, of course, there is envy and prestige. The young and healthy, the successful hunter, and the hraceful dancer are envied, especially if their prowess makes them appear desirABLE in the eyes of the opposite sex. PP105
1.7.2 In Tukano symbolic thought food and sex are closely related, often identified. Many foods have a male connotation, of seminal. aphrodisiac, or fertilizing significance, while others are essentially female and related to fecundity and growth. Chains of associations referring to details of shape, color, smell or texture make the domain of foodstuffs one of great complexity, always closely related to sex in terms of fertility and fecundity. Some foods, or food preparations -ants, wasps, game, smoking and roasting- are thought to increase virility, and this is desirable in normal circumstances; but in others, when people approach the supernatural sphere on ritual occasions, they are to be avoided because then all energies have to be channeled into the visionary experience. Women are often equated with fish, and the consumption of fish, therefore, is occasionally subjected to the rules of exogamy by which a man might have to avoid eating fish caught on a certain stretch of the river, or fish of a certain species.PP106
1.8 Shamanism...
1.8.1 ...however practical the quest may be, it is dangerous...sometimes leading to utter exhaustion and even death. A payé does not simply ‘turn on’; he has a clear purpose; a passionate interest in learning more...about the powers he perceives in his visions, and if he sometimes does harm to others he does so with the conviction that he is restoring a balance that cannot be achieved by ordinary social controls. PP106 payé
1.8.2 What distinguishes a payé fromothers is that he is an intellectual...he is immensely curious; he is always interested in animals and plants, the weather, the stars, diseases -anything that, to others, is unpredictable. He is a humanist in the sense that he is interested in the...antiquities of his own cultural tradition: in myths of origin, in archaelogical sites, in long-forgotten place names...PP107
1.8.3 A Tukano payé does not receive a sudden call to office, in an overwhelming traumatic experience, but develops his personality slowly and steadily, the driving force being a truly intellectual interset in the unknown; and that not so much for the purpose of acquiring power over his fellowmen as for the personal satisfaction of ‘knowing’ things which others are unable to grasp. PP107
1.8.4 ...most important, he [a payé] has to have the interior luminescence, the illumination that -through him- makes things hidden in nature and in men’s minds visible, so that they can be understood and controlled. PP109
1.8.5 ...a Desana payé said.’He [an apprentice] does not choose his vihó; the vihó chooses him’...not all people are equally affected by the snuff; some only became nauseated and felt ill for days, while others, after an initial spell of headache and izziness, ascended to the milky way and turned into jaguars. Their bodies were lying in their hammocks, but their souls soared up high, or took on animal shape, and so they could roam in the forest unrecognized. PP109
1.9 Spirit doubles
1.9.1 ...vihó snuff can be used for two ends: to turn into a jaguar, or to turn into a ‘double’, a vearí-mahse -that is, one of the anthropomorphic spirits who are the mirror images of mankind. Both forms are used to attack enemies...PP110
1.9.2 In many myths and tales reference is made to this most dangerous category of spirit-beings, whose name is sometimes translated as ‘deceivers’. In reality, the name means ‘big people’ and they are imagined as spirits which take on the physical likeness of relatives and friends, even imitating their voices and gestures, in order to seduce women or kill men. They are said to appear in lonely trails, at the landing, or at dusk near the maloca, and to invite an unsuspecting girl or a lone hunter to accompany them. They then rape or kill their victims who realize their mistake only when it is too late. PP119
1.10 Animals..
1.10.1 ...each species [of animals] has its ‘master’, who is addressed in spells and songs describing the characteristics of the animals and their yearly return PP115-116.
1.11 Garnments...Shamanism
1.12 When speaking of the Jaguar skin or garment our informants employed the term suriró. Although this is the common word used to designate any garment or attire, be it of cloth or bark, it is also used to describe a particular state, in the sense of a person’s being invested with, that is, clad in, certain qualities. The elder informants...insisted that it was in this sense that the transformation had to be understood. In fact, it became clear that many emotional attitudes could be described by this term, it being understood that on these occasions the person was imagined as being covered by a kind of invisible envelope expressing his mood or state [i.e.’ to be in love’;’tobe ill’;’to be under a spell’;’to be enraged’;’to be happy’;and ‘to be’ or ‘to exist’].It seems that the noun suriró/garment is derived from the verb suri/to paint, to anoint, and that it is related to the verb surirí, which means ‘to become entangled’ or ‘to be covered with something’. PP125
2.0 Raw, cooked
2.1 In Tukano thought, the difference between the raw and the cooked is the differnce between prohibition and permission in sexual contacts. Within the Tukano territory all people are considered to be ‘cooked’, a term one can also translate as ‘added’, ‘joined’, ‘forming a unit’. The raw territory is that surrounding the Vaupés and lying beyond the limits of the Tukano habitat. PP126
3.0 amainar, protective spell
3.1 The pattern i s the same; the person hides behind a fence or mat while the spirit-being is disarmed and offered food, slowly being enticed to take a specially prepared trail that leads it away. There is no fight, no threatening confrontation, but gentle manipulation, a sort of enchantment during which the dangerous spirit loses its fierceness and becomes docile and harmless. PP130
4.0 Jaguar,sex
4.1 the jaguar is the antithesis of the organized, patterned way of life; it is everybody’s foe; it is the powerful carnivore amongst the meek and timid herbivores, and thus the jaguar is an outsider...
4.2 For the Jaguar...fire is culture, and man-made fire is the great transformer of raw food into cooked food and, by extension, of forbidden sex into culturally approved sex. What man consumes must be processed first, be it food or women. The jaguar-men’s shying away from the fire seems to express their rejection of exogamic rules, of all rules regulating sex in society. PP131
4.2.1 Me: careful, another freudian reading. Jaguars must be so important for other reasons than to reject exogamic rules in the community.
5.0 Origins, uterine. Mythical time/space. Creation
5.1 Our Desana text began with the words ‘in the beginning of time,’ and the meaning of this expression -neo gorare- is of interest. The root go expresses a uterine concept, the idea of origin and birth; goró is vagina, gobé is a cavity or hole, and gorá expresses the idea of a vital force emerging from somewhere. Gorosiri means ‘place of origin,’ but also place of death and of return, and the same term goró is also used to designate a burial place. It is from the uterus, the maternal womb from which life is born and to which -in the form of tomb and paradise- it returns. It is not surprising then to find that this concept of birth should be related to that of legitimacy; both gorare and gora mean true, authentic, legitimate, pure, and gorata means truly, in reality; gorege is true, real. The initial expression neo gorare -in the beginning of time- contains therefore the idea of truthfulness, of the true and legitimate origins. PP138
5.2 This phisiological aspect of origins is complemented by the Sun Father’s attitude, described as ‘the yellow intention’. When the sun had the yellow intention he decided to create mankind in an act, or a series of acts...In the first place, the Sun Father began to travel upriver in his canoe, in search for a propitious spot for the creative act.PP138
5.3 To [the Tukano] the origin and the true force of a river are at its mouth, and from there these qualities ascend, ever diminishing, until they reach the headwaters, the end. All rivers are imagined as snakes...their tail ends lying in remote and isolated regions, while their powerful bodies develop into fierce heads at the river mouths. The ripples on the skins of these winding snakes are the falls and rapids; it is there that the river flexzes its muscles and where dark powers are thought to reside...the anacondas...represent a female principle, devouring and entwining, a powerful force which atrcts and seduces. PP138-139
5.4 The mouth of a large water snake is sometimes compared to a female sexual organ, and the ascent of a river is symbolically related to a sexual act...In Desana metaphor ‘the river opens like a flower’ before the traveler, who, if he is of a supernatural character, now takes the ‘yellow path’ that leads along the bottom of the riverand is the route of communication of all spirit-beings associated with water. A synonim is dia Koré maa/’river-vagina-path,’ an expression underscoring the fertilizing aspect of the voyage, and in several myths it is stated that it was this path the Sun Father took when he was about to create mankind. PP139
5.5 The rapids and the falls also have a sexual character; they are female elements, uterine whirlpools to be overcome with great effort, not devoid of dangers. The deep pools at the foot of these falls are thought to be dwelling places, not only of the supernatural Master of Fish, but also of monstrous man devouring snakes. These falls and pools are designated as ‘traps,’ as female organs into which the man is being sucked and drowned. ..But the rapids and their pools are also important way-stations on the road to mankind’s dispersal. They are ‘houses,’ malocas, designated by specific names that refer to creative acts that took place there...The designation ‘house of the waters’ thus includes a number of specific spots mentioned one by one in relating a particular myth. PP139
5.6 It was at these roaring and foaming falls that the Sun Father was searching for the precise spot to create mankind. The tool he carried with him...was the stick-rattle...the tool of fertility...The Sun Father occasionally stopped and thrust the pointed end of his stick rattle in to the river bank as if to test the soil, but he proceeded on his way as soon as hehad observed that the staff stood obliquely. He knew that on the spot he was searching for the stick would eventually stand vertically. PP140
5.7 ...the concept of finding the ‘center,’ or of centering an object -generally related to creative acts- plays an important role in Tukano myth and ritual. The center...is associated with a female principle and is also the place where an axis mundi can be placed, a connecting link between this earth and other cosmic levels that may lie above or below it. The object itself - a staff, a house beam, a tree..-then becomes a means of communication and, in another sense, one of fertilization. The phallic axis which penetrates the earth and the precise point at which this happens are complementary elemments, and the heavenly penetration must find its true counterpart. The staff stands erect only when it joins the female complement, its partner in terms of exogamic law. PP141
5.8 Two of these spots are of special importance to the Vaupés Indians: the rocks of Ipanoré on the lower Vaupés river, in the Brazilian territory, and the rock of NYí, near the Meyú falls on the pira-paraná, in Colombia. It so happens that both spots lie almost exactly on the equatorial line...It is on the equator that the sun’s rays fall vertically upon the earth, that is, that the fallic stick rattle stands upright....In fact, to one stanfding on the equatorial line and looking eastward or westward, all constellations appear to rise or to set vertically. The equator, then, is a zone of verticality. PP141
5.9 When the Sun Father’s staff at last stood upright, without casting a shadow, drops of sperm flowed down from it upon the earth, which received them and brought forth the first men. PP142
5.10 When the Sun Father had thrust his stickrattle into the ground, its pointed end penetrated far beyond the earth, down into the land of ahpikondiá. With this term (derived from ahpilon/milk, and dia/river), the Indians designate paradise, the underworld abode of the Sun Father and the source from which all life springs and to which the souls of the virtuous return after the body’s death. This paradise, presided over by the sun, has a uterine character; it is a land where there is neither hunger nor fear, bathed eternally inthe yellow-greenish light the color of tender coca leaves. PP145
5.11 How yajé is related to sexual experiences...The term in use is miriri, and its nearest translation is ‘to drown’. However the word has several meanings ...in the sense of ‘drowning,’ the word miriri can be used of persons, animals, or an inanimate object which falls, plunges, or sinks into the water. It can also be used in the sense of a patient’s sinking into unconsciousness or coma, or of a person’s having hallucinations. In a somewhat different sense, miriri means ‘todilute, to mix, to confound oneself,’ and and in this sense the word can be used..in describing what happens when a drop of water falls into a pool or when...the Sun Father’s sperm is diluted in the cosmic womb. A thrid meaning is that of overpowering, overwhelming, and dominating. This does not imply physical force, but rather the influence of a state of mind; of alcohol, poison, or a drug. Another mesning of miriri is to ‘throw into disorder, to perplex’; and ‘ to saturate, to overflow’. all these are used in describing the physiology of sex. PP147
5.12 ...in explaining the origin of yajé the myth explains the origin of sex, and in linking the two it links the law of exogamy to the religious sphere. PP148
5.13 [when yajé woman enters the maloca of the first people with her bloodied newborn]...there is an element of confusion, of indesicion, accompanied by deviant behavior. Some of the beasts...begin to eat their tails...whenever we referred to this state of confusion and asked about its nature and significance, we received the answer
5.14 ‘there were no rules yet; people behaved like animals.’...it appears that sex itself did not yet exist, that it was introduced, together with yajé, in a kind of initiation right...Moreover, all our informants insisted that the law of exogamy was introduced simultaneously with yajé. Now men and animals were separated, and each group of men was assigned certain animals...and plants, and in this manner the origin of yajé became closely linked to the mythical origins of social organization. PP149
5.15 Why the Sun Father should have created yajé[?]...Here follow the words of a Desana Payé, in answer to this inquiry: ‘It was the yellow light. People were like animals; they did not know how to use the yellow light. The Sun Father had to teach them how to use it. He acted in the form of an oropendola bird when he created yajé. He took the great heat of the Universe and put it into the Yajé Woman. The oropendola bird traveled upriver and during four days he created yajé. The Sun Father was traveling in his canoe, alone, at the beginning of time, ascending the river...he was trying to find the spot for yajé. When he found the spot, the Sun Father returned to the House of the Waters. He returned out of shame, because of the purity of the color, the yellow color of the sun,the power of the sun. The color was ashamed. Now he sat for three days thinking and thinking of how to use the color in the right way, without doing harm. First he thought that the color of the heat of the universe was similar to the color of the caimo fruit; but this was not true...he thought and thought until he found the right color which the people should use when they choose their women. He gave the color to the people; he gave them the yellow light. He gave them yajé. And by giving them yajé, he gave them their life; he gave them the rules by which they should live. Once they had yajé, they had found their fields, their conversations. Now they had yajé and so many things besides with which to reciprocate: conversations, songs, food, and also evil things. Now they had found their place, even if it was in the midst of troubles and errors. Sitting there, in the House of the Waters, they had found their way of life.’ PP156
5.16 The red color represents the complementary opposite and stands for female sex and fecundity. It is the color of fire, of heat, of the womb, of menstrual blood. Yellow and white are designated as ‘cold’ colors, while red is ‘hot’, complementing the male/female opposition; together they represent a benefic principle.Another fundamental color is blue, and of it people say that it is sexually neutral and morally ambivalent. The blue color represents above all a principle of communication. Tobacco smoke blown ritually over a person or an object, or in a certain direction, produces a contact in that it conveys a thought, a wish. Songs and spells are imagined to be ‘blue’. PP176
5.17 Now as the message transmitted by that color may be benefic or malefic, the intrinsic value of blue depends to a high degree on its combination with other colors, that is, with yellow, or white, or red.For example, a combination of blue and yellow in approximately equal parts indicates a state of reciprosity and complementarity. A combination of red and blue indicates an opposition of male and female principles, say, of two exogamic groups or a single couple. But should the red shade predominate, this balanced opposition becomes a struggle, an evil influence of the female principle over the male; and should blue prodominate, it might also mean that an evil component is present. PP176
5.18
5.19 When speaking of hallucinations and the terms employed in describing them, the Indians repeatedly pointed out that the same words would be used to describe a sexual experience. During coitus the person ‘drowns’ and ‘sees visions’; the act is described as a state of intoxication, of drunkenness, a state of rapture in which anxiety and bliss combine and transport the male into another dimension of physical and spiritual consciousness. PP148
5.20 the symbolism connected with the maloca...A maloca is said to be a womb, the ‘uterus of the sib,’ and the entrance door is imagined as a vagina. This, then is a danger spot, a zone of transition between two diffrent spheres where things are being transformed while passing from one to the other. The maloca is fertilized through the door, that is, the sibs continuity is guaranteed, but gestation takes place in the center of the dwelling. Hearth and womb, according to the Tukano, are the two geat transformers, the crucibles wherein nature becomes culturally sanctioned, wherein the raw turns into the cooked, the sperm gives birth to a new member of the household. PP148
5.21 The second stage of the yajé experience is interpreted, in all essence, as a return to the maternal womb. It is a visit to the place of creation, the fons et origio of everything that exists, and the viewer thus becomes an eyewitness and a participant in the creation story and the moral concepts it contains. The yajé vessel is said to be a female body, the maternal body, and by drinking its contents the individual is enabled to enter it through the ‘door’, the vagina one often sees depicted at the base of the container. There is a kind of struggle, a contest, between the vessel and the consumer...The men are afraid, it is said, and they bolster their courage by challanging the danger. They know they’ll be soon overwhelmed by its contents...The ‘danger’ is that of incest...the return to the maternal womb is imagined as consisting of two steps: first the individual enters the vessel’s vagina as a phallus, and then he assumes an embryonic state which, eventually, leads to his rebirth. In other words, he commits incest and then, becoming his own progenitor, is reborn...The return to the womb implies a direct and intentional modification of time. When the individual becomes an embryo, it is a reversal of time, but-it was said- ‘when one drinks yajé one dies,’ and this means an acceleration of time. Return and rebirth take place outside the normal biological timescale, and this state of standing outside the empirical universe is produced by the drug. PP180-181.
5.22 Amainar. Forest Spirits
5.22.1 The boráro is imagined as a monstrous manlike being, covered with shaggy black hair, with huge pointed fangs protruding from his mouth. He has big, pointed ears and a large penis. His feet are twisted so that his toes face backwards...during the day he is often accompanied by huge blue Morpho butterflies and by that colorful bird...the cock of the rock. PP183
5.22.2 The boráro carries a hoe...[he] grabs his victim with the hooked hoe. He wears a crown of all sorts of feathers. They [the payés] give his the essence of milk and of vahsú fruit, and while he is eating they take away his headress and his hoe, and so he is left powerless. They give him the designs and the colors of the sieves, and the yellow and red colors of edible ants, and this makes him see the firmament. They make him sit on a mat of the same design and coloring...The boráro is fierce when he wears the red heADRESS. THEY GIVE HIM THE ESSENCE OF MILK and sweet berries. Everything is put on the sieve which contains the essence of milk and honey. The boráro is fierce only when he wears these things. This spell is made with tobacco smoke’. PP188
5.23 Spirit doubles
5.23.1 The idea of the double, the mirror image, is fundamental to many Tukano concepts. Inside the hills, the Master of Game ANIMALS IS, in essence, the double of the payé, and the animals themselves are the doubles of those found in the forest. Within the hills these spirit-beings lead an existance identical with that of human society: they have their dances, their music, their food and drink, and they take narcotic drugs. The same happens in the underwater ‘houses’ in the deep pools where the Masters of Fish lead their existence. There is then, ‘another world’ matching in detail our world of empirical reality, and between these two ‘worlds’ there is thought to exists a thin shell, an invisible wall which can be penetrated only in a hallucinatory trance. Under the influence of Vihó or yajé people say they have visited this other dimension and have seen its inhabitants dancing, hunting, fishing, or otherwise behaving just like ordinary people in this world. The payés claim to know in detail the interior of the ‘houses’ of the masters of animals. PP192
5.23.2 Apart from this collective sphere, of human and animal like spirit-beings in the ‘houses’ of the hills and the waters, the idea of the double is found in other contexts. The shadow a person casts on the ground is a double, related to the mirror image one sees when standing at the water’s edge...In both cases, the person is connected with his double by his feet, a reversal which, according to the Indian proves the existence of this complementary world....Large mirrors are the payment given to a payé by his apprentices...Of course, the entire complex of ‘turning into’ or of ‘entering into’ another dimension by the use of narcotic drugs is a proces of dédoublement. PP192
5.23.3 The concept of the double can be observed also in certain aspects of the social organization, especially in the opposition of two complementary exogamic groups. The embers of one’s complementary unit are called ‘conversation-people’...the people with whom one sustains a dialoge. They are called the ‘echo-people0, because between two such units there is an ‘eco,’ an exchange. PP193
5.23.4 This preocupation with symmetry and reciprocity seems to pervade many aspects of Tukano culture, and...the concept of doubles -the veari-mahsá- appears to represent something more than a mere alter ego, more than a simple projection of one’s ‘other’ personality into another sphere. On one level, one’s veari-mahse is one’s self, devoid of all cultural restrictions, incestuous and aggressive. A person is never confronted with himself, but with his close kin; and this is the fearful thing. Bot on another level, one’s double is simply part of a great collectivity of doubles, of ‘the other half’ as the Desana say, of creation. PP193
5.24 Disease etiology
5.24.1 ...there seems to be a paranoid streak in some aspects of the Tukano personality. In speaking of shamanistic cures we have mentioned several syndromes that are recognized as such by the payés: the fear of being attacked by large, armed, anonymous crowds; the sensation of the sky’s descending upon the earth and enfolding the persaon in darkness; and the feeling that the universe is steadely diminishing until the person is left perched upon a tiny remaining spot, in imminent danger of slipping off and falling into the void...PP197
5.25 Ritual
5.25.1 The direct ingestion of psychoactive substances...is only part of the entire complex of the intentional control of body chemistry. A number of other practices are likely to produce endogenously certain substances of no less importance in leading to altered states of consciousness. Prolonged fasting, dietary restrictions, sexual abstinence, physical exertion, intentional deprivation of sleep, breath control, [bloodletting], and concentrated thought are practiced by many people, apparently quite consciously, in order to produce desirable states of mind. Many of these procedures are prerequisites on ritual occasions, or precede certain activities such as hunting and fishing. In these cases nothing is ingested, nothing is added to the organism, but the latter is deprived of certain gratifications, and the ritualization of these deprivations is thought to produce the state of mind necessary to the successful achievement of a balance, whenever individual or social survival is threatened. PP201.
5.25.1.1 Me; witness attempts by whole froups of people to enter into another dimension, or bring about redemption and/or liberation from injustice, such as the ghost dance, or the occasional jungle poeople who destry it all and leave to meet primordial mythical time.
5.25.2 ...The quest is highly ritualized,but with the exception of the collective consumption of yajé [He House] it can ahrdly be said to have religious ends...More often, drugs are taken for very practical purposes, and even if so-called supernatural personifications(VVaí-mahse, Vihó-mahse) are thought to be instrumental in them these spirit-beings are used and handled in a very practical way. The concept of offerings, of a cult, or of an imploring attitude before ‘divine’ forces is entirely lacking; the narcotic drug constitutes a practical mechanism for the curing of disease, the obtaining of food,the correct application of marriage rules, and the settlement of personal animosities. The shaman, as we have said before, is not a mystic, and the mechanisms he employs are bot sacred. PP202
5.25.2.1 Is that really so, or is he projecting his chrisatian pietude to other ‘pagan religions, assuming that offerings and the like are given with the kind of attitude he describes? What about anointing and giving honey and colours and a mat to sit on, to appease beings, etc.? Also, even if some beings are handled in a non surrendering way, nonetheless the Primal Sun, the Sun Father is not, How do they relate to him? What emotional charge, whar cognitive space does that concept fill for them?