The Specialists

10. Onanya, meraya, uwishin

The word “shaman” — which comes from Siberia and was generalised by anthropology — merges roles that the peoples themselves distinguish.

Indicative terms

The distinction that matters most

Among peoples of the northwestern Amazon, two completely different kinds of specialist are distinguished:

• The priest-chanter: keeper of knowledge, of myths, of genealogies, of life-cycle ceremonies. Non-aggressive, respected, safe.
• The jaguar-shaman: one who travels, who fights, who attacks and defends. Dangerous, feared, necessary.

The first does not do the second’s job, and vice versa.

The practical conclusion

When someone presents themselves as “an Amazonian shaman”, the question “which exactly?” is not pedantry.

It is the difference between a keeper of oral tradition, a herbalist, a midwife, and someone whose primary ability is attack.

11. The dieta: how a healer is made

This is the central educational institution of the region, and systematically the first thing omitted in Western versions.

What it is

dieta in Spanish; samá and related terms in indigenous languages.

Isolation in a hut in the forest, for weeks, months or years, with:

• Extremely restricted food — typically plantain, rice, small fish. Without salt, without sugar, without fat, without spice
• Sexual abstinence — strict
• Minimal human contact
• Avoidance of strong smells, sounds, lights
• And ingestion of a specific plant, regularly

The teacher-plants

rao (Shipibo) / plantas maestras (Spanish). Dozens of species, each with its own character and its own teaching.

Indicative names you will meet: ajo sacha, chiric sanango, bobinsana, piñón blanco, chuchuhuasi, ushpawasha sanango, as well as tobacco (chapter 15) and the ayahuasca vine itself.

And there are the dangerous ones, foremost toé (Brugmansia) — on which see chapter 22.

The rule that explains everything

One plant at a time.

You do not combine. You do not do parallel diets. The reason given is clear: plants are subjects with will (chapter 3), and two at the same time conflict — they “cut” each other.

The same applies to salt, sugar, fat and sex: all are considered strong presences that cancel the diet.

The logic — and this is the essential point

The dieta is not a purge and is not an endurance test.

It is the construction of a body.

You do not learn information. You build a body capable of being in relation with the plant.

And it is absolutely consistent with Part A: if the body is what determines what you can see (chapter 4), then the acquisition of a new perceptual capacity requires a change of body — and change of body is done through food, isolation and abstention (chapters 5–7).

It is not mysticism. It is the same theory, applied.

The ending

The dieta closes with ritual, it does not simply stop. The “breaking” of the diet has protocol, and to break it wrongly is considered to cancel or reverse the result.

And the connection with the present

The training of an onanya is measured in years of isolation and deprivation.

This is worth keeping in mind reading chapter 18: what “shaman” means in this tradition has a unit of measure, and it is not the weekend.

12. Ikaro: the song as instrument

First the terminology

ikaro — the term you will meet everywhere. It derives from a verb meaning “to blow smoke, to enchant with blowing”, and belongs mainly to the mestizo tradition of chapter 18.

The Shipibo themselves have their own system of categories — different kinds of song with different names, different functions and different styles: some for healing, some for festival, some for attraction, some for attack.

That all of these were merged internationally into the word “ikaro” is already a sign of what happens when a tradition passes into a market.

How they are acquired

The songs are given by the plants, within the dieta (chapter 11). They are not composed and they are not taught in the ordinary way — they “come”.

A healer has a repertoire, and the repertoire is his biographical résumé: each song corresponds to a diet he has done.

How they are used

• Sung over the patient, often with the mouth close to the head or the chest
• Whistled — and the whistle is often considered stronger than the word
• Blown with tobacco onto the body, the crown, the hands
• Addressed to a specific person, for a specific purpose

The function

And here is the essential point:

The song does not express. It organises.

It is not musical accompaniment to healing. It is the healing. The healer sings order into a body that has become confused — and the categories he uses are aesthetic: clear, bright, straight, dense, tangled, murky.

It is, that is, direction with sound. And it is absolutely addressed — to this body, now, from this person.

13. The aesthetic of healing

Here lies the most famous claim about Shipibo healing, and it needs care.

The claim

As formulated in the 1980s by Angelika Gebhart-Sayer and since become the standard:

The healer, in the working state, sees luminous geometric designs. These designs are the songs — their visual and acoustic form are two faces of the same thing. Illness appears as a design that is tangled or faded, and healing consists of the correct design descending onto the patient and being restored.

The honest note

This claim was enormously influential — it fed the whole international image of the Shipibo and a significant portion of their art market.

And it has been seriously contested, principally by the ethnomusicologist Bernd Brabec de Mori, who argues that:

• The strong “synaesthetic” version is not confirmed by broader fieldwork
• The scheme was co-constructed in the encounter between researchers and informants
• And today it is retroactive: Shipibo artists and healers do indeed speak this way — partly because that is what the literature says and what the market wants

This does not make it false. It makes it datable. It is a living, real practice with a date of formation — as many things in many traditions.

What stands independently

The durable finding is not synaesthesia. It is something more basic and more interesting:

In this system, healing is an aesthetic category.

The terms with which health and illness are described are not energy, flow, blockage or balance. They are: design, cleanliness, brightness, alignment — and opposite: tangle, murk, knot, noise.

The sick body is not a body with damage. It is a body with a damaged design.

14. The darts

And this is the chapter that corrects the greatest Western misunderstanding.

What they are

tsentsak in Jivaroan languages; virote in regional Spanish.

Invisible, microscopic projectiles — described as thorns, needles, insects, small worms — that:

• Reside inside the healer’s body, typically in the chest or throat, in a phlegmy substrate that holds and feeds them
• Are emitted against someone, causing illness
• Are extracted from the patient — usually by sucking by the healer, who then vomits them or shows them
• Are collected and added to the healer’s arsenal

The structural consequence

The same person heals and kills. And not as a deviation — necessarily.

The logic is tight: to extract a dart you have to know what it is, where it came from, who sent it and how it is made. And that knowledge is exactly the capacity to send it.

There is no healer who cannot harm. Such a one would be, in the system’s terms, incompetent.

So illness is often attack

In much of Amazonia, the first question in serious illness is not “what does he have?” but:

“Who did this to him?”

And the therapy is counter-attack: identification, extraction, and often return of the dart to the sender.

The direct assessment

This has real consequences, and they should not be romanticised:

• Healers are feared as much as respected
• Witchcraft accusations are frequent
• And they lead to real violence, including murder — and this holds today, not only historically (chapter 23)

The Western image of the shaman as a benevolent healer who connects with Mother Nature is not a bad translation of this tradition. It is a different thing, constructed elsewhere (chapter 24).