Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon Read Online Free PDF Page A

might not become a healer; it is not
uncommon among mestizo shamans to follow the ayahuasca path as a personal
quest for learning and understanding., Indeed, mestizo shamans may periodically gather just to share their visions, trade magical knowledge, and renew
their strength.
    NOTES
    i. See Luna, 1986c, p. 51.
    2. Luna, 1986c, p. 142; Luna & Amaringo, 1993, p. 43 n. 69.
    THE MESA
    Don Roberto leaves and then returns, dressed for the ceremony. He is now
wearing a white shirt painted with Shipibo Indian designs, a crown of feathers, and beads. He smiles, makes a joke, and then spreads a piece of Shipibo
cloth on the ground, to form his mesa, table., On the cloth he places his ceremonial instruments:
    • a bottle containing the hallucinogenic ayahuasca that will be drunk
during the ceremony;
    • a gourd cup from which the ayahuasca will be drunk;
    • a bottle of camalonga, a mixture of the seeds of the yellow oleander,
white onion, camphor, and distilled fermented sugarcane juice,
which he may drink during the ceremony;

    • bottles of sweet-smelling ethanol-based cologne-almost always
commercially prepared agua de florida, but also including colonia de rosas and aqua de kananga-which he will use to anoint the participants
and which he also may drink during the ceremony;
    • mapacho, tobacco, in the form of thick round cigarettes hand-rolled
in white paper, distinguished from finos, thinner and considerably
weaker commercial cigarettes;
    • his shacapa, a bundle of leaves from the shacapa bush, tied together at
the stem with fibers from the chambira or fiber palm, which he shakes
as a rattle during the ceremony; and
    • his piedritas encantadas, magical stones, which he may use during the
ceremony to help locate and drain the area of sickness in the patient's body.
    PROTECTION
    Don Roberto then goes around the room, putting agua de florida in cross patterns on the forehead, chest, and back of each participant; whistling a special icaro of protection called an arcana; and blowing mapacho smoke into the
crown of the head and over the entire body of each participant. Don Roberto
usually sings the same protective icaro at each ceremony. The song has no
special name; don Roberto simply calls it la arcana.
    The goal is to cleanse and protect, on several levels. The arcana calls in the
protective genios, the spirits of thorny plants and fierce animals, and the spirits of birds-hawks, owls, trumpeters, screamers, macaws-which are used
in sorcery and thus the ones who best protect against it. Moreover, the good
spirits like-and evil spirits hate-the strong sweet smell of agua de florida
and mapacho, which thus both cleanse and protect the body of the participant. The goal, as don Roberto puts it, is to erect a wall of protection "a thousand feet high and a thousand feet below the earth."
    PREPARING THE AYAHUASCA
    Don Roberto sits quietly on a low bench behind his mesa, lights another mapacho cigarette, picks up the bottle of ayahuasca, and blows mapacho smoke
over the liquid. He begins to whistle a tune-a soft breathy whistle, hardly
more than a whisper-as he opens the bottle of ayahuasca and blows tobacco
smoke into it. The ayahuasca, don Roberto says, tells him-in the resonating sound of his breath whistling in the bottle-which icaro he should sing, and
he "follows the medicine." The initially almost tuneless whistling takes on
musical shape, becomes a softly whistled tune, and becomes the whispered
words of an icaro, which may be different at different ceremonies.

    FIGURE 4. Don Roberto blowing tobacco smoke over the ayahuasca.
    When the icaro is finished, he whispers into the bottle the names of everyone present, adding "... and all the other brothers and sisters" if there are people present whose names he does not know or remember. Finally, he
whistles softly once more into the bottle, the breathy whistle fading into his
whispered song, his icaro de ayahuasca. He is jalando la medicina, calling