In Darkness and Secrecy: The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia
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In Darkness and Secrecy: The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia
336eBook
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Overview
These essays, by leading anthropologists of South American shamanism, consider assault sorcery as it is practiced in parts of Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela, and Peru. They analyze the social and political dynamics of witchcraft and sorcery and their relation to cosmology, mythology, ritual, and other forms of symbolic violence and aggression in each society studied. They also discuss the relations of witchcraft and sorcery to interethnic contact and the ways that shamanic power may be co-opted by the state. In Darkness and Secrecy includes reflections on the ethical and practical implications of ethnographic investigation of violent cultural practices.
Contributors. Dominique Buchillet, Carlos Fausto, Michael Heckenberger, Elsje Lagrou, E. Jean Langdon, George Mentore, Donald Pollock, Fernando Santos-Granero, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern, Márnio Teixeira-Pinto, Silvia Vidal, Neil L. Whitehead, Johannes Wilbert, Robin Wright
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822385837 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 06/03/2004 |
| Series: | e-Duke books scholarly collection. |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Neil L. Whitehead is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Among his most recent books are Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death (published by Duke University Press) and Beyond the Visible and the Material: The Amerindianization of Society in the Work of Peter Rivière (coedited with Laura Rival).
Robin Wright is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Research in Indigenous Ethnology at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil. He is the author of Cosmos, Self, and History in Baniwa Religion: For Those Unborn and the editor of several books in Spanish.
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In Darkness and Secrecy
The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in AmazoniaBy Neil L. Whitehead
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2004 Neil L. WhiteheadAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780822333333
Chapter One
The Order of Dark Shamans among the WaraoJohannes Wilbert
According to the Warao of northeastern Venezuela, the universe contains a world ocean encompassed by a chain of soaring mountains. At the cardinal, intercardinal, and solstitial points of sunrise and sunset this range incorporates twelve towering columnar peaks that brace a bell-shaped cosmic vault. Below the dome's zenith, and in the middle of the ocean, there floats a disklike earth comprised of the Orinoco delta, the Warao's traditional swampy homeland. Bundles of twirling energy rising from the center of the ocean floor transpierce the earth-disk and a small discoidal tier close to the summit of the sky, conjoining nadir and zenith as a world axis (figs. 1 and 2).
Populating the peripheral and axial regions of this cosmic landscape are divine powers that interact with humankind in various ways. They either visit earth from time to time or make their earthly presence known by proxy. Although humans originated in the sky world as disembodied beings, after their descent to earth the Lord of Death destined them to be of corporeal existence, unsuited forcelestial life. The cosmic landscape and its powerful constituents, therefore, are inaccessible to common human beings and only reachable by shamans and shamanic artisans capable of ecstatic trance.
The Warao recognize several different orders of shamanism, usually distinguishing between junior, senior, and veteran members. In some instances practices among same-order ranks vary such that outsiders erroneously perceive them as categorically distinct from one another. Still, there exist as many as four different orders of shamanism in Warao society, including priest-shamanism, light shamanism, weather shamanism, and dark shamanism. Whereas in this essay I address primarily dark shamanism, I offer a brief description of the other types to help clarify the difference between Warao shamanism and sorcery as well as to situate both practices within respective cosmological domains. Although shamanism and shamanic crafts are primarily reserved for males, women may also practice these arts, except that of boat building. However, I have known but few practicing female shamans and am aware of none who were ecstatics who were initiated, like male shamans, by resorting to tobacco (nicotine) as a medium of trance.
Priest-Shamanism
The order of priest-shamanism derives its power from "our ancients" (kanobotuma), residing on world mountains at the extreme cardinal points (other than the western) and at the solstitial corners of the universe. Lesser deities by that name live on hills at earth's edge, opposite the southern and the northern mountains, as well as at the zenith and the nadir. The two southern and two northern gods are mirror images of each other, even though the distant members of the pairs rank higher than the near ones. Highest-ranking of all ancients is the god of the far south (see fig. 1).
The name kanobotuma translates also as "our grandfathers," designating the primal forebears of the Warao. Jointly with their retinues of deceased priest-shamans, they constitute a hidden but important segment of the population. By frequenting pathways that connect their cosmic stations, the ancients traffic with each other and with humankind, remaining well disposed toward their mortal kin as long as they provision them with food (tobacco smoke) and with rejuvenating water (sago). Thus, there exists a covenant of compelling mutuality between humans, on the one hand, and ancestral gods and late priest-shamans on the other: protection of terrestrials by celestials depends on propitiation of celestials by the earthbound.
The priest-shaman, a trance-initiated ecstatic who mediates between the parties, is responsible for humankind's compliance with this pact. Instatement to his office follows weeks of rigorous asceticism, nicotine habituation, and instruction in the knowledge of priest-shamanism, leading to the candidate's empowerment as a "master over pain" (wisiratu; wisimo is the plural form). The mentor hands the candidate a three-foot-long cigar prepared with six wads of tobacco that, on ingestion, enter the pupil's body as his sons, or tutelary "pains," and accommodate themselves, in pairs, on both sides of his throat, chest, and abdomen. On his initiatory journey, the neophyte follows a psychopomp through life-threatening situations and past deadly creatures. He contemplates a pile of bones left by unfortunates who failed to clear a dangerous passage of rapidly opening and closing doors. Only after making it safely through these crushing gates does the apprentice, finally, behold a huge horned viper balancing a bright red ball on its protruding tongue. The enlightened novice finds himself on top of his sponsoring ancient's mountain, where he is assigned a house where he can stay on future visits and then reside forever at the end of his career as a priest-shaman.
From the time of his instatement, the priest-shaman functions as a healer of patients suffering from febrile illnesses (hebu),which, like most diseases, originate ultimately with spirits in the sky who were prevented by primordial Warao from following them to earth. In their anger these spirits transformed themselves into physical disorders and diseases, pledging to afflict their terrestrial kin in perpetuity. Pains are sent by disgruntled ancients, by priest-shamans who request the gods to send them, or by the ancients' proxies in the shaman's body. Priest-shamans take offensive action by blowing pains from their bodies into victims who, by their behavior, threaten the integrity of the covenant with the ancients. Individuals whose misconduct poses a threat to themselves and to the community at large prompt illness caused through intervention of a priest-shaman. Generally speaking, however, priest-shamans do not practice sorcery with evil intent. Of course, the chastisement they mete out will hardly be perceived as particularly benevolent by the patient. But, once aware of their offenses, hebu patients become contrite and, if old enough, confess transgressions as part of the therapeutic process. Most patients seen by a priest-shaman healer are children and adolescents who, particularly during the annual rainy seasons, feel the wrath of the ancients castigating the community for delays in feeding them or for propitiating them insufficiently with sago. A priest-shaman healer expects to be compensated for his efforts by a child's father or by a recovered adult male as long as the patient is not a member of his nuclear family. A man unable to provide compensation mortgages his body by sitting back to back with the shaman, pledging to be his lifelong neburatu (servant).
Whereas, quite evidently, Warao priest-shamanism bears the trademarks of near-universal shamanism, its veteran practitioners also act as priestly leaders in religious rituals on behalf and with support of their congregations. Hierarchically organized like the ancients, priest-shamans of subtribal populations are ranked according to their statuses. Highest ranking among them is the kanoboarima, "father of our ancient one." In early times, distressed by the amount of illness that prevailed among his people, the founder of priest-shamanism visited the supreme spirit of the south in order to negotiate the noted contract of reciprocal assistance. In exchange for a one-time sacrifice of ten persons, he was granted one of the god's own sons in the form of a rock crystal, and he accommodated the idol in a basket within the village shrine. From the time of this inaugural event, priest-shamans are cofathers to the kanobo's son and kinsmen of his father, engaging the paternal spirit as the divine patron of their subtribal communities.
Much of an ordinary priest-shaman's life is spent consulting ancestral spirits about the causes of his patients' illnesses and propitiating the kanobos with tobacco. He makes his inquiries and pleas by plaintive chant, accompanied by a sacred rattle that contains a family of tutelary spirits in the form of quartz pebbles. When applied to a patient's body, these helpers leave the rattle and effect a cure inside the ailing person. However, in addition to his healing functions, the veteran priest-shaman, ranking as the father of the ancient one, as noted, has also important priestly obligations. Intermittently throughout the year, he invites the ancients from around the world (except the western one) to join his people's patron spirit in the shrine. In the course of ceremonial dancing under his auspices, the gods receive an offering of moriche (Mauritia flexuosa) starch, or sago-their rejuvenating water and the Warao's staple food. Symbolically, the Warao recognize ritual sago flour as semen, the fundamental font of human life (Briggs 1992:344). Old Spider Woman placed it in the form of silk into the stem of the primordial palm, after the god of the noon sun had fashioned her from the bleached bones of ancestral Warao. Ever since, seminal moriche starch serves as sacramental food for human participants in the ritual and as the fountain of youth for participating deities, who immerse themselves therein.
Light Shamanism
The order of light shamanism is generically known as bahana and its practitioners as bahanarao (bahanarotu is the singular form), meaning those who "smoke" or "suck." Extending from the solstitial sunrise corners to the zenith and the center of the earth, its cosmic center is a two-story ovoid structure, located on the upper-world plain, northeast of the world axis (see figs. 1 and 2). Light shamanism is identified with the plenipotent sun of high noon and the avian God of Origin, residing on the world mountain at equinoctial sunrise. This supreme lord is the father of the swallow-tailed kite (Elanoides forficatus), the Tobacco Spirit, who, in primordial times, emerged from a cave in the mountain. From there he tracked the sun to the brightest region in the sky, where he built the egg-shaped house near the top of the firmament (see figs. 2 and 3). The house connects with the apex of the world axis via a rope bridge that conveys a beam of power down to earth and to the nadir of the universe. The bridge is bordered on both sides by flowering tobacco plants, whose leaves were harvested by the architect of the cosmic egg to convert them into the thickened smoke of which the bridge, the house, its inventory, and its residents are fashioned. In addition to housing the Tobacco Spirit and his consort, the building's upper floor is home to the very first light shaman and his wife, as well as to four insect men and their families. A plumed serpent lives on the structure's lower level. Periodically, the insects gather around a gambling table on which they move specific counters to invade each other's spaces according to an arrow dice cast by the Spirit of Tobacco. On completion of a game, the snake erects itself above the gamblers, jingles the chromatic feathers on its head, and presents an orb of radiant light on its forked tongue. Depending on which gambler wins, someone will live or die on earth. Thus, the stakes are high in the celestial gambling game.
The construction of the cosmic egg, and with it the beginning of light shamanism, occurred in primordial times when plants, animals, and humans, although qualitatively equivalent, became subject, nevertheless, to the fundamental law of mutual predation that governs the zoological world. Bahana shamanism is conditioned by this existential necessity because the natural epiphanies of the Tobacco Spirit and his houseguests are linked in an ecological food chain. In his earthly guise, the building's owner manifests as the swallow-tailed kite. The insects materialize as a honey bee (Trigona capitata), a stingless bee (Trigona hyalinata branneri), a wasp (Stenopolybia fulvofasciata), and a termite (Nasutitermes corniger M.), while the serpent is modeled on a blind snake (Leptotyphlops sp.). By natural design, these species raid or even raze each other's living spaces, decimate each other's progeny, and take each other's lives. Both bees eat the nectar and pollen of the tobacco flowers along the rope bridge; the wasp feeds on the broods of the bees and the termite; the snake eats the larvae of the termite and the wasp; and the kite, at the top of the pyramid, lives on the bees' and wasps' honey and eggs, as well as on the flying insects and the snake. The state of preordained intrusive hazardry pervading the birthplace of light shamanismis what potentiates bahana spirituality. Essentially neither good nor evil, it simply constitutes a baneful element of telluric life.
The first light shaman-now residing in the cosmic egg-was only four years old when he surmised that, compensating for the dark world in the west, there had to be a light world in the east. After fasting for four days he fell asleep, and, with the surging heat of virgin fire beneath his hammock his spirit levitated via the world axis to the zenith. From there, a psychopomp conducted him northeasterly to the oval house of smoke. Inside the house, its owner regaled the youth with bow and arrows, while the four insect men gave him four different gambling-board counters, consisting of a crystal, a ball of hair, quartz pebbles, and a puff of tobacco smoke. The board, the dice, and the four counters are referred to as the bahana game, and the young light shaman became its first full-fledged earthly owner (kotubuarotu). Before leaving the house with his precious gift, the youngster witnessed the snake erect itself over him, its feathers chiming. The boy began manifesting a halo around his head, and the radiance of the serpent's glowing orb filled him with instant knowledge of all things bahana.
Back on earth, the youth remained for four days in a trancelike state, ingesting nothing but cigars made of four wads of tobacco. This was to nurture four young insect replicas (the two bees, a wasp, and a termite), that now lodged in his chest. They had become his sons and began opening a lumen in each of his arms, ending in exit holes at the base of each of his fingers (other than his thumbs). At age sixteen-on reaching spermatogenesis-the young man wed a bee girl and, cohabiting with her, introduced her to his spirit wards. Eventually, as noted, the couple took up residence in the Tobacco Spirit's house, where the wife changed into a frigate bird (Fregata magnificens) to become the first white shamaness, specializing, like her human successors, in curing nicotinic seizures. Once the Warao began populating the earth, the first light shaman shot two gambling tokens-the termite's quartz pebbles and the stingless bee's puff of tobacco smoke-into a young man's upper body. He did this to perpetuate light shamanism on earth, albeit in diminished form, based on the weaker pair of insects in the primordial shaman's breast. Although referred to as kotubuarotu (master of the game), just like the first light shaman, modern practitioners proved incapable of retaining the complete set of gamblers in their bodies. Instead, they carry only one tutelary spirit (termite) in their right torso and one (stingless bee) in their left, requiring but a single exit hole in the palm of each hand.
Among his kind of bird spirits, the swallow-tailed kite ranks supreme, while three of his avian peers represent medium-level light shamanism and, three further ones, lower-level light shamanism. A similar hierarchy prevails among contemporary light shamans of the Warao. At their own initiative, and after eight days of isolation, instruction, fasting, sexual abstinence, and heavy smoking, they follow the example of the first light shaman and become enlightened in the Tobacco Spirit's house. Soon after their initiation, they begin practicing within their families and, by accompanying established healers, on nonfamily members. With growing expertise, the shaman takes on cases singly, treating pains of sudden onset, highly contagious diseases, and, particularly, gynecological problems precipitated by a hostile opposite number. He massages the patient's hurting body part and applies oral suction to bring the sickness-causing object to the surface. Depending on which of the two possible pathogens are diagnosed as implicated, he lays on either one of his hands, the right for termite, and the left for stingless bee. The appropriate tutelary spirit travels through the healer's arm and hand, extracts the pathology, and inserts it into an object the shaman keeps ready for this purpose. Should a light shaman's helper spirits be too "young" to overpower those of older counterparts, the healer acknowledges defeat and defers the patient to amore accomplished colleague. However, if one of the two celestial gamblers (not represented in the chest of the light shaman) wins the game, the patient dies. Light shamans expect payment from their patients. Should they be unable to pay their healer, they offer their bodies as remuneration to serve him as a lifelong "son" or "daughter."
Continues...
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Dark Shamanism / Neil L. Whitehead and Robin Wright 1The Order of Dark Shamans among the Warao / Johannes Wilbert 21
Dark Shamans and the Shamanic State: Sorcery and Witchcraft as Political Process in Guyana and the Venezuelan Amazon / Silvia Vidal and Neil L. Whitehead 51
The Wicked and the Wise Men: Witches and Prophets in the History of the Northwest Amazon / Robin Wright 82
Sorcery Beliefs, Transmissions of Shamanic Knowledge, and Therapeutic Practice among the Desana of the Upper Rio Negro Region, Brazil / Dominique Buchillet 109
The Glorious Tyranny of Silence and the Resonance of Shamanic Breath / George Mentore 132
A Blend of Blood and Tobacco: Shamans and Jaguars among the Parakana of Eastern Amazonia / Carlos Fausto 157
The Wars Within: Xinguano Witchcraft and Balance of Power / Michael Heckenberger 179
Siblings and Sorcerers: The Paradox of Kinship among the Kulina / Donald Pollock 202
Being Alone amid Others: Sorcery and Morality among the Arara, Carib, Brazil / Marnio Teixeira-Pinto 215
Sorcery and Shamanism in Cashinahua Discourse and Praxis, Purus River, Brazil / Elsje Lagrou 244
The Enemy Within: Child Sorcery, Revolution, and the Evils of Modernization in Eastern Peru / Fernando Santos-Granero 272
Commentary / E. Jean Langdon 306
Afterword: Substances, Powers, Cosmos, and History / Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart 314
Contributors 321
Index 324