1.0 Portals of power/ Shamanism in South America. Edited by E.Jean Matteson Langdon and Gerhard Baer. University of New Mexico Press, 1992
2.0 Introduction Shamanism and Anthropology, by E.Jean Matteson Langdon
2.1 Eliade’s classic work (1964)...was the first attempt at unifying the favrious ethnographic sources to construct a more precise definition that would permit a historical study of shamanism and the exploration of its essential ideological features. Central to this definition is the technique of ecstasy, in which the soul is believed to leave the body and ascend to the sky or descend to the underworld. The shamanic trance involves a relationship between spirits and the shaman who attempts to control them for a specific purpose. This is distinguished from possession trance in which the individual is controlled by the spirit. other essential elements include training that is both ecstatic (dreams, trances, etc.) and traditional (techniques, identification of spirits, geneology, secret language, etc.)....Initiation involves mystical death and resurrection, indicating a change of personality. Finally, the shaman is the specialist in the human soul, standing apart from the rest of the community by his possession of mystical powers. PP4
2.2 Using Geertz’s definition of religion, South American shamanism is a religious system. It contains ideas and practices about the world and its reproduction, the worldview and reflection of the world. As mentioned earlier, the work of Mary Douglas has demonstrated that magic is not a distinct phenomenon from religious sacraments in complex socieites. Thus the anthropologist no longer focuses on whether beliefs are magical or religious, but rather on the symbolic systems which organize the worldview and society of a culture. PP11
2.2.1 Me, That is why I use the paradigm of shamanism, not only to inspire future to be shamans, but to benefit society from insights that can be gained from holding some of the beliefs about the world that shamanism as worldview/ideology/religion can offer us. However, another issue arises with my treating shamanism as a technology, separate from the realm of religion, which for me is marked by worship and absolute faith, that is, my ‘anchor’ in the ‘One unnamable’. Yet, central to my writting will be the fact, if I can bring it together, that the two are not incompatible, but rather complementary; that the former deals mostly with the immanent world and the appropriate and/or possible relations within it; while the latter deals with the transcendant, that which, even in a cosmosof many heavens, remains forever OUTSIDE our conceptualization, yet can break forth with unpredictable might into the everyday, only to leave its mark.
3.0 Chapter One. Culina Shamanism. Gender, Power and Knowledge. Donald Pollock
3.1 Although shamanism among the Culina promotes especially visible constructions of the principal signs of maleness, it enrolls women in doing so; for a culture in which the focal properties of maleness and femalenesss are viewed as complementary, rather than as hierarchically valued, shamanism offers one of the many contexts in which the outlines of male and female define each other, and emerge more clearly in their intercation. Within this framework, the practice of Culina shamanism emerges as a special form of the social practice of masculinity. PP26
3.1.1 ONE OF MY AIMS SHOULD BE TO EXPLORE THE POSSIBILITY OF ARTICULATING A complementary, positive and harmonious relation between the sexes, and contributing to heal the rift that has been rendering the sexes antagonistic lately.
3.2 All Culina shamans, dzupinahe, are men, and to be most effective as a village leader any headman must also be a shaman; indeed, it may be impossible to acquire sufficient power within a village to become a headman without also being a shaman...in the past all Culina men were shamans, and even now only a few men deny shamanic ability. Pp26
3.3 ...some overt roles performed by the shaman: ...to detect and treat serious illnesses of mystical origin...;to see the movements of game animals in dreams and...to call game animals forth from the underground world where they live as spirits, sothey may be hunted in the jungle. Shamans also lead rituals at birth and death that protect the community, from the dangers posed by these events...from the Culina point of view, the significance of these processes lies in the fact that they are all ultimately mystical in nature; their occurrence entails participation in and with the supernatural world represented by spirits generically called tokorime. PP27
3.4 Shamans transform themselves into tokorime spirits, and they derive this ability, as well as their ability to control game animals and other processes, from the presence of a substance called dori in their bodies. Dori is said to permeate the flesh of the shamans, where it is formless and insubstantial, though outside the shaman’s body it is said to resemble a small stone. one shaman displayed his jar of pebbles, chips of quartz, and shards that he said were his dori, different colors being different types of dori. PP27
3.5 The process of becoming a shaman is essentially one of acquiring dori...adolescence is the ideal time...because sexual abstinence is imposed on the novice... The process begins with the acquisistion of two other substances, described as types of dori: noma is said to help the novice learn; koronaha is said to help the novice sing well. Noma is also required to prevent the novice from becoming ill from the dori he receives from his instructor shamans during his training. these shamans extract some of their dori and implant it into their novice’s body.There is no loss of dori to these mentor shamans in this process, nor is their dori diminished by extraction for other purposes. PP27
3.6 The Culina concern about the sexual activity of the novice provides an important clue about the nature of dori. Men, in contrast to women, are considered to be ‘wild’...Men for example, are hunters and are ASSOCIATED WITH THE ANTISOCIAL REALM OF THE JUNGLE AND ITS INHABITANTS. ADOLESCENT BOYS ARE ESPECIALLY WILD: THEY HAVE NOT BEEN ‘TAMED’ OR SOCIALIZED BY WIVES AND MARRIAGE RELATIONS. PP28
3.7 Married adult men are tamed by wives through the social relations they enter into as husbands, an aspect of which is the controlled expulsion of semen in licit sexual relations. for adolescents, the loss of semen in illicit sexual encounters would entail the loss of the dori they acquire as novice shamans...Dori thus emerges as a kind of objectification of the wildness of men that is lost in improper adolescent sexual relations; this wildness is controlled by its incorporation into the body of the shaman. Adolescent illicit sexual relations are both improper displays of wild behaviour and improper expulsion of a wild subtance that must be controlled through sexual restraint; the loss of dori is a failure to control one’s wildness. PP28
3.7.1 Me: Control of bodily functions agai. Important topic, how people can regain control of themselves, and not be victims to their appetites anymore. Important in that process is the determination and the patience to undergo change. like with shing-yi, it is a matter of dredging a new channel for the energy to flow into from its dispersion into a positive and constructive concentration(common purpose, one mind, etc). so one has to have the patience to change habits, to know that it takes time and requires courage, but also to know there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that one has to undergo first withdrawal symptoms from habits long entrenched, and to stay put and not take hasty destructive action.
3.7.2 Culina refer to a social ideology in which all men are shamans. ..the novice shaman is nearin the end of adolescence. dori is also an aspect of the gendering of adolescents; it transforms their public wildness into sociability through internalizing the dangerous substance that renders them men, mahi. While it is not necessary to be a shaman to be an adult man, only shamans achieve the ful potential of maleness: as village leaders, as masters of animals, and as protectors of the village. PP28
3.7.2.1 IMPORTANT,this is exactly what Rites of Passage should accomplish. And, Rites of Passage, as well as Mourning Rites and Birth Tites should be discussed in the thesis/book as important markers. The life cycle. Organizing principle in book?
3.7.3 The concepts dori, tokorime(spirits), and dzupinahe (shaman) are closely related. The possession of dori is said to make one a tokorime/dzupinahe, and in most contexts the latter terms are..used synonimously. While ‘tokorime’ may refer most narrowly to an insubstantial image, and ‘dzupinahe’ may refer to the appropriate human or nanimal form adopted by tokorime, dori links human men as shamans both to the animals of the jungle -many of which are embodiments of spirits- and to the underground world of disembodied tokorime. And though human shamans may adopt the identities of many animal tokorime spirits, they may also be said to comprise their own category of tokorime, the adzaba tokorime. PP29
3.7.4 Tobacco snuff is the means through which men possessing dori become transformed into shamans/spirits...The use of Tobacco snuff by shamans in ritual has the ...effect of extinguishing human identity and transforming the individual shaman into a tokorime spirit. PP29
3.7.5 Culina recognize a variety of tokorime spirits, most of which are animal tokorime, the spirit forms of jungle animals. In addition, there are several types of tokorime that are human in form, said to be pure tokorime. Tokorime live in the underground worlds called nami budi. Shamans visit the nami budi in dreams or trance, and there they order the tokorime of animals to appear in the jungle for hunting, or to enter the village for curing. PP29
3.7.6 Among the variety of tokorime spirits, two are of particular interest, the hidzama tokorime, or white-lipped peccary spirits, and the dzumahe tokorime, the Jaguar Spirit. These two serve as symbols opposing the qualities of sociability and wildness...In Culina ideology the peccary is a social, gregarious animal, which often appears in myth and ritual representing Culina themselves. The Jaguar is a solitary animal, a dangerous animal and quintessentially wild. Together...[they] define the limits of this critical axis of human life: the herbivorous peccary is associated with sociable women who form the core of households and contribute cultivated garden products to it, while the carnivorous jaguar is associated with the wild men who hunt in the jungle and contribute meat. Although the jaguar is a spirit, it has associations with the heavenly realm of Culina culture heroes. In this regard it also stands in opposition to the peccary of the underground nami budi: the souls of the dead, ifproperly conducted to the nami budi, are eaten by and are transformed into peccaries, but those not properly conducted to the nami budi wander the earth and are ultimately eaten by jaguars. These tokorime thus represent two aspects of a cosmology that is played out in social life by the interaction of men and women...while each shaman calls on and is transformed into a unique set of tokorime spirits in ritual contexts, all shamans call on and become transformed into both the peccary and jaguar spirits. PP30
3.7.7 The gender contrast is preserved ...between tokorime and humans. ..Of any animal species said to be tokorime, it is the male of the species that are referenced. These tokorime are consequently wild and dangerous, especially to women, and in particular to pregnant women whose fetuses may be harmed by an encounter with a tokorime in the jungle. PP30
3.7.8 The shaman’s role in illness is not limited to the treatment of the dori. he also identifies the enemy shaman who is presumed to have caused the illness...normally a shaman from another village. The diagnosis of the dori is a significant public sanction against the hostility that provoked it within the group, but the identification of the hostile shaman in another group also redirects the conflict outside the village and reinforced the basic ideology of absolute harmony among the kin who comprise the village...In [a] second ritual held at night after the curing ritual per se, the entire village dances in a circle and singssongs directed by the headman, songs that have the general theme of proper order and beauty in thevillage. PP32
3.7.8.1 Ideal of total harmony within...yet we always seem to be exorcising the evils by dumoing them onto the next. The psychology of blame or scape-goating. isn’t there a way that the village can extend globally, and a place that evil can be safely exorcised to that does not negatively impact others? Can it be corralled somewhere? or is this anathema to the law of conservation of energy? Cant’ evil energy be transformed/redeemed. The Buddhists send them straight to nirvana. But then, there are still evils in the world. careful not to get caught in black white moralisms either. yet isn’t there a loftier aspiration than this? in Chinese systems, it is about Ying and Yang, opposed and complementary forces, necessary for life. Evil lies rather in the acquired conditioning/false consciousness.
3.7.9 Several aspects of the curing ritual should be highlighted. The nighttime setting and the use of song in the ritual are related, inasmuch as the ritual is conducted largely through oral and aural media, enhanced by the darkness that obscures vision and the potentially false reality it displays. for Culina such oral performance has significant directive qualities. In speech one may order others to act; leaders are judged on their ability to use speech in this compelling manner-their power is indexed by the level of public compliance- and parents conceive of the education of their children as a process in which children hear and understand; knowledge is language and viceversa. Singing is a kind of heightened form of speech, a style that is especially compelling in its elocutionary force. the songs of the tokorime in curing rituals are perhaps the most powerful of Culina verbal performances; they are the maximally compelling medium for the creation of action, and, in this case, in the cure of illness caused by withcraft. Shamans carefully prepare songs for use in curing ritual, and even stage mock curing ceremonies at which village women are taught the necessary refrains that they wil sing with the shaman during the actual curing ritual. PP33
3.7.9.1 Sacred and Profame language/speech ought to have a section/chapter. How language can be used to deceive, be a vehicle of false consciousness, and to harm, as in cursing, or otherwise to heal and help. Witness that sometimes the power lies in the meaning of the words, that is they have an intellectual, cognitive dimension -as in telling a spirit its origin-, and othertimes it is mostly a matter of sound, emotive content, vibration. Remember the Hassidic man saying its good to sing without words for then the heart can freely speak?
3.7.10 A recurring theme of curing ritual song is the offering of food to the tokorime spirits that are called to the village to cure....the food offered is koidza, a mildly fermented manioc drink made of premasticated boiled manioc...the quintessential female contribution to huesehold subsistence, a kind of core symbol..PP33
3.7.11 The offering of koidza to the tokorime in curing ritual sets a comparable minimal structure of exchange with several levels of significance. The outcome of the exchange, ideally, will be the taming of the male shaman/witch who has caused the illness...In somewhat different terms it is the wildness provoking the illness that is tamed in the transaction. in this symbolic transaction, dori again emerges as a representation of the maximally wild natures of men, which may be brought under control by the offering and consumption of an appropriate female substance...shamanic practice metaphorically utilize’s women’s koidza to tame illness. PP34
3.7.11.1 Same with a baby, who is considered to be all male when born, and needs to be socialized, tamed through the agency of the fememnine, maternal milk.
3.7.12 A fetus, and thus also the infant at birth, is said to be formed entirely of the father’s semen, which is associated with dori. the newborn baby is consequently only half formed, lacking the corporeal contribution that will be supplied by mother’s milk. The babi is also in a vulnerable state because it lacks a soul, a tabari...[which] is formed over the course of infancy. The tabari carries notions of social competence, and thus develops gradually over this period. Babies, nono, lack a soul, but a child. ehedeni, possesses his tabari, which is derived partly from mother’s milk, a tame female counterpart and complement to semen, and later derived from eating the meat of animals who are the reincarnated spirits of dead Culina. The lack of soul exposes the infant to the danger of the harmful influence of parents who fail to observe food taboos...PP36
3.7.13 The shaman’s role in death is inverted: essentially the shaman must conduct the tabari ofthe deceased to the underground world...so that his disembodied soul will pose no threat to the living members of the village...A ritual is held for it there...at the end of which the soul is consumed by peccary spirits and is itself transformed into a peccary. PP36
3.7.14 A shaman killed by members of a village...his soul remains on the palpable earth, where it wanders for several days...after a few days the soul is said to be eaten by a jaguar spirit, transforming it into a jaguar. PP37
3.7.15 These processes set up cycles of birth and death; in the normal cycle the souls, the tabari, of people are transformed after death into the peccaries that shamans call forth into the jungle for hunting. The consumed peccary meat, in turn, forms the bodies and souls of living people. the cycle is broken for shamans who are killed without proper burial; the jaguar is never eaten by humans, and is thus never retransformed into a culina person when it dies. PP37
3.7.16 If the intrusion of excessive male qualities and substances is dangerous, so too is the intrusion of excessive female qualities, represented in the most extreme and dangerous form as menstrual blood. menstruating women are not secluded, but do avoid cooking for and eating with their household members for fear of contaminating the food. PP37
3.7.17 Shamanism emerges, then, as a means for creating and maintaining proper persons through the control shamans exercise over the fundamental qualities of which these persons are composed, qualities that may become unbalanced at the beginning or end of life, or in relations with others. PP39
4.0 Chptr 2 DAU. Shamanic Power in Siona Religion and Medicine. E. Jean Matteson Langdon
4.1 The Siona universe consists of five levels organized hierarchically. In ascending order they are called ‘beneath the earth,’ ‘first heaven’, ‘second heaven,’’third heaven,’ and ‘little metal heaven.’ These levels are flat discs conceived of as similar to the cassava grill...The first three levels replicate each other in that they are divided into realms belonging to different beings, spirit, human or animal, and that these beings live similar life-styles. Their social organization, material goods, houses, clothing, and customs reflect each other. Countless supernatural forces inhabit all levels. These supernatural forces, embodied in spirits and living as humans do, give life and power to reality. PP42
4.2 The surface of the earth, called the first heaven, is the dwelling place of humans and animals. In ordinary everyday reality the forces that influence events are hidden, but the siona know of another reality in which the embodied forces are visible. They speak of these two realities as ‘two sides.’ ‘This side’ is that in which we normally operate...When looking upward, this side stretches as far as the eye can ordinarily see, and its boundary is marked by the Sun’s Heaven River that cuts across the sky dividing the first heaven from the second heaven. PP43
4.3 The ‘other side’ is a world of spirits and forces operating in non-ordinary space and time, not only on the earth’s surface, but also on the other levels. All aspects of existence on ‘this side’ are influenced by these forces...Thus, if one wishes to have weather favorable for the crops, to find game in the jungle, and so on, the proper spirits must be contacted and persuaded to cooperate in order that the normal rhythm of life continues. However, these supernatural forces may also cause disruption of the normal routine and present dangers to the security of life. PP43PP43
4.4 ...to live and prosper in this world, to insure one’s security, and to counteract dangers, it is necessary to understand and learn how to influence these ultimate forces. PP44
4.5 Succesful well-being for living organisms is a result of the balance between the living and dying forces that affect them and make up the general cycleof life...Neither living nor dying is a static state, but represents the process of growth or death of the organism. PP44
4.6 The Siona associate the ualities of thinness with old age and sickness, black and dirty objects with rottenness, and heat with sickness and aging. living is a positive state. It is a time of growth and youth, in which one is plump and fresh. When extended tomean good health for the community, it means that there is sufficient food for all. there is success in hunting and fishing. The crops are growing well with proper sun and rain, and everyone is performing their duties and responsibilities. This state of living is contrasted with dying, in which one is old, skinny, and past the peak of growth. For the community that means a scarcity of food or dissention among the people. In other words, wah is associated with the waxing forces of life, those that help maintain good health and growth. Hui, on the other hand, is associated with the waning forces, those of aging, sickness, and destruction. The tendency toward life or death predominates depending upon the disposition of the supernatural forces and the shaman’s ability to control them. PP45-46
4.6.1 As in shurmann from ? natality and mortalitu, two pulls which exert themselves on us at all times. Learning how to deal with theme is another overriding theme which then would subsume the specifics of dealing with the world.
4.7 A medicine may be used to insure that an event or person will mature properly, to insure continuation of a healthy state of being, to prevent danger or disruption of normality, or to return an unsatisfactory situation to its normal state, such as curing illness. Most of these medicines are non-hallucinogenic. However, all classes of medicine derive their meaning, use, and power from the principal medicine, yage. PP46
4.8 Yage as medicine, does not imply a substance with curing powers. More appropiately, it empowers shamans with knowledge, and the knowledge they gain allows them to control and influence events on both sides of reality. The relationship between yage and other medicines demosntrates this quality of empowering through knowledge. The Siona sat that all nonhallucinogenic medicines have been discovered through yage visions. When a shaman has reached a certain level of knowledge, he travels to the house of God, where he is shown a book with all the medicines in it, and it is from this that he begins his career in healing illnesses. Yage empowers in a second way. The knowledge yage gives to a shaman forms a substance that grows in a man as he continues to ingest the drug. This substance, called dau, is the root of the shaman’s power. It is the shaman’s dau that imparts healing capacity to medicines. ideally, the shaman should sing over all medicinal substances, and it is his songs that activate the healing properties of plants and other substances. PP47
4.9 [dau] enables [a man] to travel to different realms of reality in order to contact and influence the spirits. Later, when he becomes a shaman, his accumulated dau gives him power to cure or to cause misfortune to others...without dau, he is ‘only a man’.PP47
4.10 ...a shaman’s dau at least part of it, may leave his body, and when it does it takes a particular material form, most commonly that of a dart, a stone, or a snake’s tooth. other forms include a ‘rotting substance,’ or a ‘black butterfly.’ When a shaman teaches his apprentice his visions and songs, he imparts some of his dau to his through showing the visions he knows. PP48
4.11 While the accumulation of dau means knowledge, and consequently power, it also means that the recipient must now be alert to protect himself against influences that could damage his dau. Dau is very sensitive or vulnerable, and can easily be ‘damaged,’ which results in loss of knowledge. For this reason, the Siona often employ the term ‘delicate’ to indicate that a man has reached the level of ‘one who leaves’. PP48
4.12 Siona men have unsolicited spirit encounters...when walking in the jungle not under the influence of drugs. The jungle changes from this familiar reality to that of the spirit realm on the other side. menacing spirits appear and try to trick the individual into eating rotting honey or drinking native beer so that he will never return to ordinary reality. Such occasions are described as extremely threatening to one’s health and life. PP49
4.13 Dau not only give the shaman the ability to contactthe spirits for beneficial purposes, but also the power to do the opposite, to injure people. The shaman’s dau enables him to ‘think ugly’ of someone, causing some misfortune to befallthe individual. This is due to the fact that the dau...has an existence somewhat independent of the intent and will of its possesor...This is the double-edged aspect of dau that makes its possessor both respected and feared..Dau may sometimes be so independent that it turns on its owner and strikes him....because of this independent quality of dau, when a shaman dies it remains potent and continues to cause harm. Therefore, the dau should be removed from his body and sealed in a treehole with beeswax, so that it does not remain at large, dangerous to the living. PP50
4.14 [with an illness], the term dau refers to a specific malevolent substance within the individual. The dau may come from a spirit or from a shaman. In both cases, it is believed that the dau is eating the victim, causing rottenness inside. The dau, as a physical substance, must be removed from the patient if he is to be cured. Not every shaman can remove all kinds of dau. It is required that he possess sufficient dau to be able to see the mystical cause of the sickness dau and to overcome...If it is a spirit, he must know the spirit’s song and vision in order to bargain with him. if it is a shaman, he must possess more dau than the aggressor. PP51
4.15 The various uses of the term indicate that dau is a key simbol for an important general conception of energy or power. The conception lying with the meanings of dau implies the potential energy source that powers the dynamic states of being, living and dying. it is manifested in the shaman, in sorcery objects, or in sickness, and activated by yage. The manner in which it becomes manifest and operative depends on various circumstantial factors such as the knowledge, experience, and intentions of the shamans, the intentions of the spirits, and the complience or noncomplience with mores involving pollution and purity. PP52
4.16 The Quest for Knowledge-Subtitle.-The knowledge gained by the drug [yage] is not definite and circumscribed. nor a single stage of enlightment...it is more like the aims of our educATIONAL SYSTEM,WITH A SERIES OF SUBJECTS ONE MAY MASTER, PERHAPS SPECIALIZING IN ONE OR MORE.For the Siona shaman the subject matter to be mastered embraces visions, designs and songs. All the spirits have their own design, as well as songs, which they teach to the drinker once he sees them. Each apprentice attempts to know as many visions and songs as possible...PP53
4.17 Along the scaleof knowledge, three classes ofmen are recognized: ‘only a man,’ ‘one who has left,’ and ‘seer’.PP53
4.18 The culturally anticipated visions do not come automatically, nor without suffering. the serious novice must devote several months of preparation in order to chnage his status from only a man’ to ‘one who has left’.PP55
4.19 The diet consists of green plantains, small fish, and the meat of certain birds...the novice takes emetics daily, for a month or more. the Siona use yage leaves as their principal emetic. One purpose of the emetics is to cleanse the body so that when one finally drinks yage, he ‘leaves’ immediately and sees visions...Also, one eliminates contaminating substances that attract the wrong spirits when drinking yage. PP56
4.20 The Siona [like the youngest brother of the pleiades in preancestral times when the stars walked the earth as men] must also cry out, vomit, fall out of their hammocks, and soil themselves if they wish to learn from yage. PP56