| news | interviews |media | reviews | profiles | countries & landscapes | |
| SHAMANISM: A Trip to the Beyond | Spanish |
During pre-Hispanic times, the natives of the Amazonian pluvial river basins were animistic, thus equipped with a soul to all the manifestations of creation. In these ethnic groups there were individuals recognised by its societies like possessors of magical powers, able to communicate with the souls of the Gods and the deceased. These are known by anthropologists as shamans or men of medicine.
We all have conflicts in life, something that always pulls in one direction and something that pulls in the opposite one, and conflict produces tension, maintained tension produces stress, stress produces disease. Then, what the shaman does in a very particular way is to release tensions, conflicts, blockades that occur between the body and the mind; the spirit and the mind; the emotions and the mind, he knows how the human being works so he looks for and orients the person so that he/she gets harmonically integrated.
The human being can, probably, understand itself from a wider perspective when knowing his primary responses to pain, disease and death. This knowledge can contribute to his well-being and health, in the measure in which it provides a better practical and natural understanding of the connection of the person with the totality of himself, including his surroundings, the ecosystem of reference. The shaman is a survivor, who has passed in one way or another through pain, disease and death. But what is the meaning of the word “shaman”? It refers to someone that knows, a knowledgeable one, a wise person.
A shaman is a person, a man or a woman, who has learned to use techniques of a particular philosophy and their mission is to heal, to obtain harmony between people, with themselves, with others, with their environment and nature. They have resources, techniques, concepts and methods to obtain that harmony. They could be described as indigenous healers who alter their conscience deliberately in order to obtain knowledge and power, originating from the world of the spirits, to help cure other members of their tribe.
Generally speaking, their task consists of recovering health, cleaning, purifying, repairing and improving the relations of the individual with its group and to give sense to what is happening, specifying it. What specifically differentiates shamans from priests, magicians or healers is that the shaman uses for the development of his activity modified states of conscience - sometimes identified with the critical moment or travel - in which they can enter voluntarily.
A modified state of consciousness is a period of transition between two habitual states of consciousness. But in addition the modified states are developed ordinarily in three periods: Transition to the state, modified state itself and transition to the habitual state. These are entered not only by the healer but also by those being taken care of and frequently any other participants.
An important part of the ritual of the shamans consists, according to the beliefs, in their capacity to leave their physical body and fly with the wings of a bird on supernatural journeys that take them to paradise, to the world of the dead or the sacred places where the Gods and auxiliary spirits inhabit. This flight of shamans is obtained in the Antilles and the tropical forests by means of a combination of fasting, ingestion of smoke and tobacco juice, vomits and snorting of the hallucinogenic dust of cohoba.
Its use in the forests of the north and centre of South America has identified like vilca or huilca of the south of Peru and the cébil of the north of Argentina. According to the expert in ethnic botany Evans Schulte, the alkaloids responsible for their action within the central nervous system are derived tryptamine. It is known that some Amazonian tribes are intoxicated with their hallucinogenic use, and they are used, in addition, as a means of guessing or interpreting creation, and takes shamans to levels of ecstasies that are manifest as visions. These are perceived as real by the Indians in general, where they ingest small amounts of the poison of frogs and toads to induce ecstasy trances.
TRAINING AND INITIATION OF A SHAMAN.
A training and instruction can last up to two years, in which they must pass periods of retirement in which they keep fasting and abstinence, mainly from eating meat. The candidates settle in a special hut and must do manual work like planting seeds, carving their bench in the shape of caiman and to make their magical maracas and magic canes. The initiation intends to lead the soul of the beginner to the beyond, where it will be with its familiar spirits and, in addition, he will know his future supernatural adversaries. The basis of the shamanist experience coincides with the power that makes the soul able to leave the body and this is learnt during the initiation.
The initiation ceremony consists, basically, of intense fasting, wild dances and massive absorption of juice and tobacco smoke. The initiatory trip begins while the beginner is seated on his bench, blinded by a great amount of sharp red pepper that they have rubbed over his eyes. The instructor, by means of mythical initiatory narrations, takes the beginner to the country of the spirits, where he is received by a protective spirit who becomes his mentor, inviting him to rise to the heavens by the revolving steps of the Great Father Vulture.
The power over pain, life and death turn the shaman into a kind of magical illusionist who causes admiration, fear and respect between the people.
According to Romanian investigator Mircea Eliade, during the celebration of consecration of Araucano shamans, the teachers and the neophytes walk on fire without burning themselves and without their clothes catching fire. They were also seen removing their nose or eyes. The initiator made the profane believe that he was tearing off his tongue and eyes to change them for those of the beginner. He would also cross himself with a wand that, entering him through the belly, left through the spine without bleeding or causing pain.
According to indigenous beliefs there are good and bad shamans, practising white and black magic. According to their benevolent or malevolent inclination they use their hebus or auxiliary spirits to cure the diseases or to do damage to their enemies.
The dark shaman has as a must to offer meat and human blood to the deities of the underworld, thus he uses mortal epidemics and diseases to obtain the food for his Gods, whose favourite delight are small children. It is thought that his malevolent work is necessary to create a balance between the forces of day and night. Dark shamans get one of his victims ill by shooting spiritual darts at them that come out from his clothes.
In contrast, shamans of light use their power on the animals to cure their ailments. The Gods of shamans of light feed themselves on offerings of smoke of tobacco, incense and some fruit and vegetables; this way they do not need offerings of human meat or blood.
THE LAST JOURNEY
When a shaman of light dies his soul crosses for the last time the footpath of tobacco smoke that marks the crossroads between life and death and ascends to paradise, located in the Zenith. A pleasant life waits for him there between his late teachers and their protective Gods. A dark shaman, on the other hand, descends to the Nadir in the underworld, and there he delights sleeping in its hammock of woven putrid human muscle. Its hut is constructed of bones and human remains from the cannibal banquets of their teachers and ancestors. The stench that emanates from the decomposing corpses is like perfume for their noses. It is the law of nature since the beginning of time. So, in this way the flesh of the corpse becomes the Earth’s nourishment, and from the night and death the seed of life is reborn.