the huni kuin are an indigenous tribe from the pano family. their territory extend from Peru to Brasil. along with the yawanawa and the shipibo, they are part of the ayahuasca drinking tribe that are the most invest into the project of sharing their medecine with the western world, travelling the planet to do ceremonies and organizing some festival in their territory where westerners are invited to drink ayahuasca. i am going to talk a little bit about some of the conception the huni kuin have about ayahuasca and the spiritual world.
the anthropologist eduardo viveiro de castro named the ontology of amazonian indigenous people perspectivism. the western ontology is based on a distinction between nature and culture. every animal on the planet shares the same basic biological characteristics, their is a unity of body, but only the human being have a soul or consciousness. for amazonian indigenous people, the contrary happens. plants and animal have a consciousness, just like human do, they just have a different body, and the difference in bodies makes for a difference in world view. from the point of view of a vulture for example, a rotten corps looks like a delicious dish of manioc and bananas. we are unable to see a rotten corps that way because we don't have the body of a vulture, we are not sharing it's perspective. jaguar are in their perspective human people, and they live in maloca, in a jaguar village, just like humans do
although different bodies are immersed in different perspective, and are unable to understand each other, the myths refers to an a-historical time, that de castro calls a background of virtual sociability, when form was fluid. in that time, humans transformed intp animals and animals transformed intp humans, and all the different life form of the forest shared a same language. if this time is over, it is reversible, and in special conditions, an animal can still turn into a human, and different species might be able to understand each other. a characteristic moment of reversion is when people use mind altering substance, like ayahuasca.
the shaman is in that perspective a cosmic diplomat, someone who is able to cross the barriers of inter species communication to take an other perspective. it is a process of becoming other, that brings power to the shaman. according to viveiro de castro, amazonian indigenous cosmology is a predatory paradigm, based on a valorisation of alterity . an example of this is the use of the word txai. the word txai is part of the classification terminology of the huni kuin, and is used to talk about someone brother in law. this word is also used to designate the white as ally. the name to designate white in general being nawa. this name comes to be used among white ayahuasqueiro and daimista to designate one an other. the word became, in the mouth of white people a synonym of brotherhood. this is because, in western ontology, we associate with somebody in the name of shared similarities. somebody is our friend because we share the same community, the same hobby. at the extreme, we are all brothers, part of the same human race. for amazonian people at the contrary, difference is the foundation of association. if every community, be it human or non human have a different perspective about the world, one grows by absorbing the point of view of the other.that is why from an huni kuin point of view, the paradigmatic ally is not the brother, but the brother in law, someone who is an ally because he is not my blood.
it is a different conception of culture. that is why for example, when the Jesuit came to convert the indigenous to Christianity, they first thought the task would be easy, because the native were very enthusiastic to accept Jesus, sometime begging for baptism. but what the missionary soon understood was that this conversion didn't meant to the native that they would stop to deal with spirits. they didn't seek to become christian, as we understand religious conversion. they seek to absorb the other point of view, to gain its power. some of the shipibo shamans who turns evangelist have the same perspective. they turn evangelist for a month or so, and then come back to be a shaman. in their perspective, they didn't convert, they are making a diet of the bible, to be able to work with jesus and the saint from a shamanic perspective, to be able to absorb white people point of view into their own shamanic power system.
this ethos of absorption and this valorisation of alterity is predatory in nature. those are societies that have a great affinity with war and hunting. if in western thought the conceptual character that is important is the friend or the brother ( valorisation of sameness), from an amazonian perspective it is that of the enemy or the prey. that is not to say that western culture would be more benevolent, less violent then indigenous culture. in fact, the ideal of sameness is a reason for imperialism, the military based project to transform every culture of the world into a copy of american lifestyle. this predatory nature of relationship in amazonian culture makes of cannibalism an important category. it is by eating the other that ones get to incorporate his world view. for example, in the past, when a great huni kuin shaman would die, his disciple would eat his brain, to incorporate his spiritual knowledge.
for the huni kuin, their are two kinds of spirits. yuxin and yushibu. yushibu are greater spirit then the yushin, because they are the owner of natural things, like the sun or the forest. the first yushibu was the wind, who created everything and then divided himself into every other yushibu, that are copy of himself. that is why the wind is the vital energy that connects everything, and why blowing is such an important part of shamanic knowledge. a shaman is somebody who can blow, someone who can kill or heal with his breath. this because the shaman is in a perpetual process of becoming spirit, turning himself into a yushibu, dialing into this primary form of vital life which is wind.
yushin and yushibo are master of transformation. the external and the internal are highly reversible forms, everything is in a perpetual process of metamorphose. human being is nothing but a sedimentation of a life force that is liquid by essence. shamanism is the art of connecting with the yushin and the yushibu, and joining into the vitalist process of becoming other. this is the roots of magic, but it is also a danger. one must become a meta-morph, a spirit, without loosing his human shape. for example, in peruvian mestiço shamanism, the forest is really a city, guarded by the spirit of the anaconda, which is ayahuasca. by drinking the beverage, the shaman see the forest has it really is. moreover, he starts a process of becoming the forest, becoming the snake, and by doing so, start to gain some paranormal powers. but the danger of the forest, the anti human world by excellence, is to forget how to be a human, loosing one mind.
the name of the effect of ayahuasca in hatcha kuin is dame, which means transformation. ayahusca tea is the most effective method to reverse the background of virtual sociality, that makes someone able to see the animals and plants as spirit, and connect with them. from an huni kuin point of view, we don't have one soul. we are a multiplicity of agent. within us live various yushin, like the yuxin of the eyes, of the body, of the hands... we are a multiplicity, and we are able, through shamanic manipulation, to incorporate different spirit within us. for example, a ritual that aims at becoming a good singer of ayahuasca songs consist in putting strong chilly in the contact of someone tongue, and to sing a song that expel from one tongue the spirit of animals who are not good singers, such as the monkey and the caiman, and invite the spirit of great singing spirits, such as birds. this incorporation of spirits inside ones body is quite often predatory. their is a bird for example, that is named txana. this bird is thought of as a shaman bird, because it is great at imitating other animals. it can take other perspective. to become shaman themselves, people would hunt this bird and eat his brain, becoming good singers themself.
we are a population of yuxin, a multiplicity. what makes us be able to think of ourselves as an individual is called xina, the capacity we have to say i am. this capacity of being one, an unity, is necessary for social life, but must be weaken for shamanic purpose, for example when one drinks ayahuasca.
the ayahuasca is the domain of the boa constrictor, yube. it is the primordial shaman , dua yube, who met a boa constrictor female in the form of a human, and married her. he lived for a few years in the boa constrictor village, where his boa constrictor family would drink ayahuasca. he was not allowed to drink, because his wife taught that as a human, he was to weak to handle it and would get afraid. he never the less managed to convince his wife to let him drink the tea, and she said that if he got scared, her father would get pissed of and try to kill him. when he drinks the ayahuasca in company of his family, he starts to see them in their animal form, as huge snakes, and start to yell ' i am surrounded by snake, they are going to kill me'. pissed at him , the boa family chases him, but he manages to escape, bring back the knowledge ayahuasca to the human village and is killed short after by the snakes. in some version of the myth, his dead body transforms into an ayahuasca vine, and he become a great intermediary between the ayahuasca world and the human world, the archetypal shamanic ancestor, first to have turned yube
ayahuasca is the boa constrictor in a liquid form. when someone drinks ayahuasca, their is an initial period of gastric discomfort. this is the ayahuasca turning back into a snake in ones belly. in the initial period of the trance, one sees geometrical patterns, the kene. yube, the boa constrictor, is the queen of kene, she is the master of fractals. when you see these, you are at the doorstep of the cosmic gate that is yube, and she is deciding if you are worthy of going through the other side, into dame, the transformative state, when one see other life form, such as plant and animal in their true spirit form and is able to communicate with them.
one of the important step of turning into a shaman, as you might have guess, is to hunt a boa constrictor and eat its brain. doing this and conforming to a strict diet for a few month makes the spirit of yube being connected to the shaman, who then turns into the ayahuasca. because a good shaman is yube. being a shaman is a process of turning into spirit, and more specifically turning into a version of the snake.
follow some quote from the article anaconda becoming from lagrou. she talks about yube as being an anaconda but every huni kuin i talked to identify her as a boa constrictor. nixi pae, strong vine, is the name the huni kuin give to ayahuasca.
Those who know how to take nixi pae and how to sing powerfully in a process
of becoming Yube, the spirit of the anaconda water snake, become strong
and angry and can be dangerous for potential enemies. Therefore to take nixi
pae with strangers is a challenge, since you do not know, beforehand, the power
of the song of Yube shamans. One needs a huinti kuxi, a heart that is not easily
frightened, to resist fear once one is under the eff ect of the ingested agency and
hears the voice of Yube coming out of the mouth of one’s rival. It is in this sense
that sorcery can be used in nixi pae. The singer can throw a spell on his rival
and put him to run. Nixi pae is therefore a perfect setting to mutually test the
influence and charisma of strong shamans and to fight out political confl icts
around trust and treachery.
As I have shown elsewhere (Lagrou, 2018 ), the initiation in singing implies a
process of other-becoming. Because the powerful singer has become Yube, the
ancestor and spirit owner of the anacondas, his sweat is dangerous for his own
kin, especially for his wife and children who could become ill if he touched
them without taking a bath after the ritual. The agonistic side of the ritual is
responsible for the fact that nixi pae is mostly taken by young hunters accompanied
by older shamans who have already mastered Yube’s voice and song.
When they sing, it is Yube, a multiplicity of Yube, who sing through/with him
in a frightening sound that evokes mimetically all the beings and sounds of the
forest. Yube is the predator par excellence and when he comes, it is to devour
all those he encounters on his path.
Many nixi pae songs refer to parts of this founding myth. In fact, to take
the brew and experience its visions means to actualize, to live again, the
experience of the ancestor: the ancestor-becoming being a Yube-becoming.
The myth explains the complex identity of Yube and of the substance of the
vine. The vine is called the blood or urine of Yube and can be considered to be
both the substance of Yube the anaconda people, and Yube, the ancestor who
became Yube. The experience of other-becoming is an ancestor-becoming, but
it is a becoming ancestor that had already traced the path of other-becoming.
Yube is a name that connects several kinds and levels of being(s). Yube is the
ancestor who became the moon. Yube is how one calls the shaman, specialist in the nixi pae ritual, as well as the ancestor of all anacondas, Yube Xeni, the
old huge anaconda, the most powerful of all spirit beings. Yube hi is the ritual
name given to the lupuna tree, xunu, called the tree of life, the tree of Yube,
where the souls and diff erent kinds of yuxibu live. This aspect of Yube, as that
which connects and transforms into diff erent beings, had not escaped my
attention. I had written about it (Lagrou, 2007 ), but was worried I might have
somehow forced the chain of analogies too much, maybe going further than
my Huni Kuin teachers would have gone.
The “songs to see” take seriously the risk of becoming what one eats, by the
process of being eaten, sexually, by what one has ingested. That is, peccarybecoming,
spider-monkey-becoming, these are virtual destinies due to the
possibility of inversion of the predatory relation, if revenge is not averted (see
Lagrou, 2018 ). Jaguar-becoming and boa-becoming, on the other hand, are
becomings actively sought after by initiating shamans. The ritual is a privileged
instance to reveal the logics of an Amerindian ontology in operation. Nixi
pae is a mimetic, agonistic and highly aesthetic world in constant process of
other-becoming: animal-becoming, women-becoming, child-becoming, plant
and vine-becoming and even becoming-molecular. If Deleuze and Guattari
(1980 ) had had the chance to experience this world they might not even have
written Mille plateaux any more, deciding that the Huni Kuin had already done
so in their songs.
Leoncio explains that what we say in song is not what we see, that these
are the technical names, in the twisted language of the vine, as Townsley (1993)
would say. In vine language you never call the animal spirit or his owner by
his everyday name.26 But what we see is an imagistic description of what these
doubles are doing to the person. The eye soul lost in a world of image-beings
became trapped and the song, a song with a complex enunciator, being both we,
he and you, is coming to its rescue. The eye soul himself doesn’t sing. Thus the
one who sings is the interpreter while the other is having the perceptions. This
dual model of two souls, one having the perceptions, the other interpreting
them, reminds us of the homunculo model of cognition described by Dennett
and cited by Gell (1998 ). Huni Kuin ontology, as it unfolds through the analysis
of the huni ritual, professes a theory of fractal personhood, where every unity is
dual and every duality is a movement in-between. The ritual consists in exploring
to the limit the lines of fl ight of this constant process of other-becoming.
To be devoured by Yube in his monstrous, frightening form of not human
nor animal, but some undefi ned being in-between, is at the same time longed
for and terribly feared. This is the test the strong hearted have to pass in their
adventure of other-becoming. Actually it is the path to initiation in the art
of singing and thus mastering the experience with nixi pae. To sing with the
power of the vine in your voice, you have to engage in a process of becoming
that only the song can trace and undo.
To be swallowed by Yube is necessary to be reborn as Yube. The bloody
scene of being a victim of Yube is yet another instance of inversion of the position
of prey and predator, since one has to swallow Yube’s blood, the brew, to
become visible for him, to be looked at and thus become a candidate prey. Only
those who have had the experience of having been eaten and thrown up by
Yube have become one with him and have the power to make visions come
through song. After this experience one will decide whether to continue or not
with the science of Yube. Leoncio has been swallowed, and is strong. He also
encountered the boa’s yuxin in the forest and asked him for his knowledge.