Plants, dreams and metaphors: reflections on Amerindian means of influence

Plantas, sonhos e metáforas: reflexões sobre os meios de influência ameríndios

ABSTRACT

This paper is devoted to the means at amerindians’ disposal to augment personal efficacy, that is, props used to increase influence on others. My argument, in a nutshell, is that dreams, magic plants (and other substances classed together with them), and metaphorical discourse are such means of aiding one’s influence on others or avoiding being the target of others’ influence. The second point is that such props, aids, or intensifying devices must involve the interaction of what are normally translated as ”souls“, ”vital images“, or “doubles“ the immaterial aspects of the person if they are to be effective.

KEYWORDS:
Influence; magic plants; dreams; metaphor; indigenous amerindians

RESUMO

Este artigo é dedicado aos meios à disposição dos povos ameríndios para aumentar a eficácia pessoal, ou seja, meios usados para aumentar a influência sobre os outros. Meu argumento, em poucas palavras, é que os sonhos, as plantas mágicas (e outras substâncias classificadas junto com elas) e o discurso metafórico são esses meios de auxiliar a influência sobre os outros ou evitar ser alvo da influência dos outros. O segundo ponto é que tais meios, auxílios ou dispositivos intensificadores devem envolver a interação do que normalmente se traduz como “almas”, “imagens vitais” ou “duplos” os aspectos imateriais da pessoa para que sejam eficazes.

PALAVRA-CHAVE:
Influência; plantas mágicas; sonhos; metáfora; povos indígenas ameríndios

INTRODUCTION

This paper is the second of a pair dedicated to the examination of a series of recurrent features in the ethnographic literature of Lowland South America (LSA) addressing the topic of action and influence. The first paper (Kelly & Matos, 2019), closely following Strathern’s The Gender of the Gift (1988), was devoted to showing the ethnographic pertinence of the separation of the causes and agents of action, be it in intra-human or inter-specific contexts of relation. An important part of that argument was that the separation of cause and agent structures action as a performance. If, as persons, cause and agent are separate, the effect of their interaction is their relationship (Strathern, 1988: 272). But this outcome is always uncertain. Persons may compel others into acting and from this perspective whether the other ends up acting in the desired way, that is, whether and how the agent takes account of the cause, is a measure of personal efficacy. From another perspective, an agent is one who acts with a specific other (cause) in mind. Actively or passively provoked by this other, his or her expectations may or may not be met, and there are always alternative courses of action to the exclusion of that other. Every act, therefore, involves a selection (Ibid: 277). Uncertain with regard to efficacy and selection, the relationship is actualised or transformed through the circulation of words, food and things.

Uncertainty about personal efficacy and the status of relationships, make the person inherently vulnerable. This paper is devoted to the means at amerindians’ disposal to augment personal efficacy, that is, props used to increase influence on others. My argument, in a nutshell, is that dreams, magic plants (and other substances classed together with them), and metaphorical discourse are such means of aiding one’s influence on others or avoiding being the target of others’ influence. The second point is that such props, aids, or intensifying devices must involve the interaction of what are normally translated as ”souls“, ”vital images“, or “doubles“ the immaterial aspects of the person if they are to be effective.

This argument is the exploration of an insight. In 2017 in a seminar held in Lima, Bianca Hammerschmidt gave a paper about plant magic among the Shipibo, where she described the variety of human situations such aids were put to use. By that time, I had been working for several years on Yanomami ceremonial dialogues, where metaphoric language and dream experiences both play important roles. I was also supervising Hanna Limulja’s work about the dreams of the Yanomami of Thoothootopi (Brazil) that ended in an inspiring thesis (2019). That Lima talk triggered the intuition that plant magic, dreams and metaphorical language could be alternative means of influence. Roy Wagner’s (1967) Daribi ethnography somehow came to mind, specifically when he says: “The ‘causality’ perceived by the Daribi is a recognition of the fact that everything that happens to a person originates with one of these souls.” (42), which is why my hunch linked the efficacy of these three means of amplifying influence to the impingement of the immaterial aspects of the person. What follows is the pursuit of this idea, very much influenced by these three works.

A CANDOSHI THEORY OF ACTION

Thelastpartof Alexandre Surrallés’ethnographyonthe Candoshiofthe Peruvian Amazon is perhaps the best description we have of an indigenous understanding and model for affecting others, be they human or non-human. Surrallés tells us that the structure and objective of the arutam visionary quests, for which the Jívaroan peoples are renowned for, where they acquire a vision that confers on the participant the determination to engage in war against his enemies, is in fact practiced for whole range of activities constituting an “autochthonous theory of action”. The ritual sequence that enables the arutam vision is called magómaama and is summarized by Surrallés as follows:

“Todos estos magómaama poseen efectivamente una estructura secuencial análoga: aislamiento del practicante de su espacio social acompañado de su mentor, y suspensión de todas las actividades habituales, especialmente comer, beber y tener relaciones sexuales, con el fin de modelar el alma con la ayuda de cantos que, a través de conductores como el tabaco, actúan en el corazón del practicante; visión del practicante, en forma de intensidad luminosa, por medio de la cual percibe la incorporación de una fuerza intencional que se manifiesta sobre todo por um agrandamiento del corazón; y por último la reintegración del practicante a la vida social ordinaria respetando, eso sí, dietas alimenticias y otras precauciones que le permitan consolidar el poder adquirido.” (294-5).

What the ritual sequence provides is the capacity for effective action in a range of fields of daily life. The capacities themselves lie in a range of animals primarily the jaguar for war and the anaconda for shamanic cure and attack that the ritual aims to infuse into the heart of the person. The heart is the locus of perception and physical manifestation of vani, a soul that subsumes predatory intentionality.¹ The heart, infused with this extra-human capacity, has then the ability to act upon the world with the heightened efficacy the animal is known for.

The magómaama ritual involves the use of tobacco, and in its shamanic version, other narcotics, but it is also accompanied by special chants or spells Surrallés calls “cantos de imploración”:

“Los cantos mágicos son un asunto serio, por no decir sagrado, abordado con la solemnidad y la prudencia que imponen estos fenómenos cuyas consecuencias no siempre son totalmente manejables. Para los candoshi, como para los demás grupos jíbaro, el buen desarrollo de las actividades de subsistencia, la victoria en la guerra, la buena confección de la cerámica o de las piraguas, el restablecimiento de los enfermos, la eficacia de la acción terapéutica, la reciprocidad en el amor, el apaciguamiento de las disputas conyugales o, en general, la mejora de las relaciones con los afines exigen la eficacia de los cantos mágicos.” (307)

It is important to realize the ontological status of these chants:

“Ni metáforas con un poder indirecto y persuasivo, ni medios para influir en un destino cuyo curso está ya trazado, los encantamientos son para los candoshi vectores que actúan pragmáticamente en una esfera concreta y con un efecto fuera de toda duda. Esta capacidad de actuar sobre la realidad procede del hecho de que el que canta detenta las competencias de una entidad que supuestamente posee cualidades extraordinarias para intervenir en tal o cual ámbito. El procedimiento es el mismo que el empleado en las prácticas de arutam: el corazón del practicante adquiere las capacidades perceptivas del corazón de la entidad que le permite actuar como si fuera ella; los encantamientos procedentes del corazón son el medio más directo para vehicular estas capacidades de percepción y de acción hacia el mundo. (309)

Finally, we are told that dreams are also understood as visions that take place in the heart, the perceptive center of the person. Moreover, they are not ontologically distinguishable from other kinds visions like those of the arutam quest or shamanic ones inasmuch as they imply the affectation of the person by elements beyond itself. As with the magical chants, most dreams involve some metaphorical interpretation to determine their meaning in terms of how the person must act to produce, avoid or adapt to, a given outcome a good hunt, a relative’s illness, or finding a marriage partner (327-333).

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This summary account already exhibits many of the features we shall be discussing: a general procedure of incorporating a alien agency to enhance one’s own influence; the correlation between visions, dreams, and chants credited with pragmatic efficacy; the need for a preparation of the body; the use of substances, like tobacco, as vehicles of the desired extra-human agency. We have yet to discuss plant magic. We shall get to that below and see how it enters into the same field of structural transformations (to speak in Lévi-Straussian terms) with the common end of augmenting personal influence.

YANOMAMI ETHNOGRAPHY: A WORLD OF VITAL IMAGES

Reading Davi Kopenawa’s auto-ethnographic account (Kopenawa & Albert, 2010), it is abundantly clear that everything that exists has a vital image (no uhutipi) and that all we can see in the world is an effect of the interaction of these images. For example, the fertility of the land is due to the presence of and interaction between specific spirits; climate patterns reflect the coming and going of other spirit presences; landscape features were made by mythical characters, the contemporary reality of which is attested by shamans as images seen in dreams. Besides this, all that a yanomami shaman does, he does with and to vital images: mystical aggression, curing of disease, visiting distant places or cosmic realms, all this is his vital image interacting with other such images. All the spirits (shapori/hekura) and demons (yai t^he) of the yanomami cosmic pantheon are themselves images, and what remains of the dead either to roam in the forest (pore) or as inhabitants of the sky are also images. Needless to say, the makeup of humans includes a vital image, as does that of animals, plants and objects.

All in all, it would not be far off the mark to say that everything of relevance begins and ends in a vital image. I was tempted to see the world of images as a world of causes, only accessible to those who become themselves images, like shamans when they take hallucinogens or all yanomami when they dream. It is not that the material and normally visible world is false, it is rather a world of effects whose causes lie in the interaction of images, that are “vital” in that they are the principle that allows for affection and affectability. But as we shall see below, things are more complicated than this cause-effect approximation. Be that as it may, vitality is also vulnerability: a vital image makes one vulnerable to others’ intentions and allows to impinge on others’ vulnerability.

An instance of this causal nature of the world of images was apparent during a Yanomami meeting held in Brazil in 2012. A young Yanomami chose to translate several shamanic references to the spirit world to a White audience through the image of a root. In this way, Sun-spirit and Thunder-spirit - the conversation was about climate change - were translated as “the root of the sun” and “the root of thunder.” Upon reflection, it is because everything has a vital image that it can be said that Amazonian knowledge practices are shamanic, in that they seek to convert objects into subjects, and where the ideal of knowledge is personification rather than objectification (Viveiros de Castro, 2004). Nothing can be “found out” to be a subject if it does not have a soul or vital image.

YANOMAMI DREAMS

It was while working on Yanomami ceremonial dialogues that I realized how important dreaming is for the Yanomami. Despite its relevance, the subject remained relatively under-studied until the descriptions offered by Davi Kopenawa (Kopenawa & Albert, 2010) and the more recent doctoral study by Hanna Limulja (2019). I will refer to this study first and then to what I learned through the study of ceremonial dialogues. As for other indigenous people in Lowland South America (see Shiratori, 2013), the Yanomami envision dreaming as a kind of temporary or little death (Albert, 1985: 143). Dreaming involves the experiences of a person’s vital image (no uhutipi), a part of the person that during sleep leaves the body and engages the world of images. Just as for the dead that live on the back of the sky, for whom daytime corresponds to the night of the living, the vital image’s waking life is the sleeping one of the body. The night is the time of vital images (souls, the dead, hekura spirits), which is why shamanic sessions, when the shaman becomes a soul, is normally a daytime activity: it would be redundant during the night, where the shaman may dream, and his vital image/soul continues to work (Limulja, 2019:51-52; 123; 144).²

Upon awakening, the integral person may recall his/her dreams. This recall has two kinds of effects: it can affect the person’s emotions and also call for engaging or avoiding certain activities like hunting or leaving the communal housedepending on the dream, that can have a premonitory character. Most importantly, Limulja’s (2019) ethnography describes how dreams with absent people are “born from a feeling that comes from the other person [seen in the dream], be it a dead person or a temporary absent relative. The object of the dream is the subject of the sentiment, and s/he who dreams wakes up in the same state as s/he who triggered the dream: they awake sad, longing.” (Ibid.: 86). More generally, Yanomami in their dreams are prey to others’ desires and must react accordingly, following or otherwise controlling their soul’s state as they awake (Ibid. 75). This description not only illustrates a further instance of the cause of an action and its agent being different persons the object of the dream and the dreamer but also a recursive interference between the life of the soul and that of the person, for one’s waking emotions are impinged upon by the experiences of one’s vital image, and one’s course of action too. Limulja evokes the möbius strip to describe this enchainment:

“Nesse sentido, tanto as experiências que ocorrem durante o sonho quanto as que se passam durante a vigília se desenrolam à maneira de uma fita de moebius, de modo que o que acontece de um lado vai parar do outro sem interrupção. O que aparenta ter dois lados na verdade tem apenas um…” (54)

We shall return to this figuration in the conclusion.

Now let me turn to what came to light during my Yanomami interlocutors’ discussions of ceremonial dialogues (wayamou) that refers to the acquisition of knowledge and skills. The main abilities that constitute the ideal of male yanomaminess, like hunting, defending and avenging one’s relatives, and shamanism, but also oratory skills, all require“dreamingafar”,thatis, theyalldemandknowledgeacquiredindreams (see also Kopenawa & Albert, 2010; Limulja, 2019). For example, experienced orators in ceremonial dialogues will mention a number of distant places, in what yanomami call “urihi weyei” “naming the forest”. These places are not only those the orator knows by having visited them physically, they are also those known during oneiric journeys. In fact, the naming of distant places is an index, recognized by elders in the Yanomami audience of the dialogue, that the orator is a “dreamer”, a knowledgeable person, “he is a shaman, a hunter or a warrior”, my Yanomami interlocutors would say. It is also the case that those in the audience may themselves dream of the places they have heard of during the dialogue. This dreamt experience provides an additional realness to their knowledge of these places, and a kind of fixation of knowledge that enables them to “name the forest” in turn in future ceremonial dialogues. The verbal skills themselves to engage in wayamou are aided by one’s dreaming with specific birds considered agile speakers. A dream with the specific mythical events where Yanomami first learned the verbal arts of wayamou is another prop.

Dreaming afar also distinguishes shamans and good hunters from ordinary people who may dream, but only about the trivialities of things nearby (Kopenawa & Albert, 2010). In the case of shamans, their dreaming experience may involve a complex space-time reconfiguration. This is particularly the case when they see mythical episodes in real time so-to-speak, and hence know first-hand what happened in the distant past of the ancestors (see also Blanco, 2016). In fact, one of Limulja’s most interesting insights is that, at least for in the case of the Yanomami, myths are first and foremost dreamt (Ibid.: 126).

The anticipatory potential of dreams can also be put to particular use. Visitors approaching a community may literally send a dream to their hosts advising of their prompt arrival. I learned of this practice during a three-day walk with a group of Yanomami. We were walking to a group of communities in the Upper Orinoco to provide medical attention. The night before our arrival, one of our group sitting in his hammock under our tapiris, made a quick gesture with his hand accompanied by a “kushu ha!” an expression intended to augment the potency of substances like poison or hallucinogens during their preparation, I later learned (Lizot, 2004: 185). Taken by surprise I asked what that was about, and he explained he had sent a dream to those we were visiting. It was just a mental recitation that had to have been metaphorically coded, for the scene to be dreamt involved a jaguar tearing the host’s back with its claws!³

Years later, whilst transcribing a ceremonial dialogue that took place in Brazil, when several Yanomami of Venezuela were invited to a meeting of the indigenous organization Hutukara, I came across a sentence that translates to something like “those with whom you have had dreams, one after another’’. I was told this referred to the several telefone contacts that the Yanomami from Venezuela, who had traveled several days by bus to reach Brazil, had made to their hosts in Boa Vista, updating them on the journey’s progress. The dreams were metaphorical references to the phone calls that were letting the folk in Boa Vista know when their visitors would arrive.

An affective quality can also be acquired in dreams. I was told by a yanomami friend that seeing the mara hi trees in dreams the bark of which is used in a love magic substance is enough to be influenced by marayoma, the spirit of this tree: you will awaken attractive to all people, all well disposed towards you.

The final aspect of Yanomami dreaming is the way shamans can control their vital images in dreams in ways that ordinary folk can’t (Limulja, 2019). This not only serves the shaman as a source of knowledge, but also allows for a series of interventions. During my first fieldwork with the Yanomami I was told shamans could send their hekura to visit a patient in the city hospital and act upon him/her on behalf of their concerned relatives and report to them about his/her state of health. Years later working on the translation of a ceremonial dialogue, my interlocutor Alfredo Silva, author of the words we were working on, explained a specific reference he made in his speech to koimãyãriwë, the spirit of a falcon. This spirit can be sent (presumably by a shaman) to people you will encounter and with whom you anticipate danger or enmity. Koimãyãriwë can then blow magic substances on them and induce their amity, calm them down, and make them amenable to your arrival. His example referred to softening policemen in the city of Puerto Ayacucho, where many Yanomami nowadays go frequently (more on magic substances below).⁴

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I sometimes heard of Yanomami that shamans could do this kind of thing “with their thoughts”, which I take as their way of saying shamans have an intentional command over the wanderings and engagements of their vital image. This resonates with the way “thinking” often appears in Lowland South American ethnographies in the context of mythical characters and shamans during curing or dreaming. In both cases “thinking” involves more than contemplation or reflection about the world, but an active doing, an intervention in the state of things in the world. An illustrative account comes from Tukano anthropologist João Rivelino Barreto, whose thesis on Tukano knowledge and dialogue practices is structured as a conversation with his father, a Tukano kumu (shaman).

“Úró é uma palavra que o senhor [his father] sempre cita, aliás, está sempre presente nas histórias tukano. Quando comecei a ouvir falar de Uró no primeiro momento cheguei a pensar que se trataria de uma expressão, de um canto, mas pelo contrário, com o passar do tempo entendo que se trata do poder que se manifesta da razão de uma pessoa detentora de conhecimentos excepcionais … e que tem a capacidade de controlar ou manipular a razão e o pensamento de outra pessoa. É, portanto, a força da linguagem do pensamento de kumu e yai. [two kinds of shamans]….Nesse tempo, isto é, no tempo do velho Wirsõa e Burtuyari Oakhë [mythical characters] praticamente todos tinham seu Uró, porque, eles eram de outros tempos, viviam cercados de forças ou que eles mesmos eram a força daquilo que os brancos chamam de natureza. Eles sim tinham um grande controle da natureza, das árvores, das águas, do tempo, das chuvas, das trovoadas, aliás, … Isso mostra então que eram diferentes tipos de pessoas em diferentes tipos de tempos e espaços. Todos eles possuíam forças divinas, como é o caso de Uró, uma propriedade tipicamente das forças divinas, mas que nos dias de hoje passou a ser uma propriedade dos detentores de conhecimentos excepcionais…” (101-2)

I dwell on this notion of “thinking” because it seems to convey a shamanic power to manipulate images, which includes other people’s thoughts. I cannot say what these thoughts are, but we could hazard that they are made of images or sound images.

PLANT MAGIC (YANOMAMI AND SHIPIBO)

Throughout Amazonia the use of plants or other substances in what we would recognise as magic is widespread. The Yanomami are no exception. They have a generic term, hëri, that covers the range of substances mostly different parts of plants, insects, animal hair combined and prepared in a variety of ways many times dried in the fire and then reduced to power used to affect others, for good or for bad, when they are blown in their direction, mixed in their food or drink, forcefully inhaled or rubbed against the body of their target. These magical substances are used for a wide range of purposes: the fast and healthy growth of boys and girls (different hëri according to gender); stimulation of courage or calming of aggression; success in hunting specific animals; causing sterility; retaining someone in the house; love magic; and, of course, causing different kinds of physical afflictions or death (see Lizot, 2004: 56; Albert, 1985: 236-283; Albert & Milliken, 2009). In fact, Albert (1985: 242) reports of the Yanomam in Brazil that there is no natural “etat amoureux’’ like there is no “natural disease”, both being induced by magical substances. The knowledge of these substances does not require specialization though there are substances known more by men and those known by women, particularly if the other gender is the target (Albert, Ibid.).

Magical hëri substances are considered “wayu”, a term that connotes substances that have strong effects over the body, like curare poison, tobacco and hallucinogens. It also refers to dangerous things or situations like enemy warriors. Albert also refers to wayu as “le principe pathogène” in relation to magical substances (1985:250). If people fall sick to sorcery (said to be “hëripi” literally “ensorcelled” or “taken by a hëri substance”), they require shamanic treatment. This is already an indication that, although the vehicle of the magic is a substance, its effects have reached the “center” or vital image of the person, if not, shamanism would not be necessary. In fact, it is the hëri substance’s image that inflicts its influence on the vital image of the person, which is the root cause of a number of physical manifestations like body pains, fevers, weakness, vomiting, dysentery, bizarre animal-like behaviours, and also physical attraction and sexual desire. The shamanic description of the cure often involves the “burning” of the hëri substance which itself is often said to “dry the blood” with its heat within the person. All these are, of course, operations done in the realm of images: the hëri that is burnt, for example, is an image, and the spiritual aides the shaman has to do so, like the firefly hekura or the hekura of the yellow-rumped cacique (see Lizot, 2004: 11; 23) are images too. In short, it is the vital image of the magic substance that “does the job”, whereas its material substrate is but a vehicle (see Albert, 1985: 251).

Both spirits (hekura) and the yawari, a subaquatic supernatural people that appear to lone Yanomami in the forest under the appearance of an opposite sex partner to seduce and lure the unfortunate person to their underwater abodes, use hëri substances. In these cases, the use of the hëri effects the overriding of the victim’s awareness or clear mindedness, effectively being captured, radically seduced if you may, by another subjectivity. It is this overpowering that explains the inability to see the yawari for what s/he is. I recall a Yanomami friend’s tale of his encounter with one of these forest beings: he described his state under the influence of hëri as being shi wariprou, a state of confusion associated with a metamorphosis or change in nature (Lizot, 2004: 398). The root of this term appears frequently in mythical episodes of metamorphosis into animals, but it also used to convey the sense of ”being stuck” in place, position, because of some obstacle (Lizot, 2004: 397).

A final characteristic of some hëri substances. Both the bark of mara hi tree (Myroxylon balsamum, Lizot (2004: 204)) that we mentioned above, if seen in dreams, supplied the dreamer with a seductive presence, and the hëri substance kumi used in love magic⁵ sometimes together with the mara bark are recognised as fragrant substances. As Albert and Milliken’s (2009: 139-141) ethnobotanical work shows, a great deal of plants Yanomami use in hëri multi-purpose magic are aromatic (like Cyperus articulatus and Justicia pectoralis)⁶, suggesting that fragrance is connected to the powers attributed to the magic substances.

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A particularly well documented case of use of plants (and a range of other animal and human substances) exists for the Shipibo of the Peruvian Amazon. Among them, the noi rao (literally “love remedies”) are used for a number of situations that seek to harmonize intra and inter community relations (Leclerc, 2004). As their name suggests, love magic is used for intensifying sexual attraction (but also distancing), yet its attractive power serves many another purpose: “Generally, the noi rao are used improve good luck in areas as diverse as love relations, work, authority and productive activities such as hunting and fishing, etc. There are specific remedies used for each field, but certain noi rao are “multifunctional”…” (Leclerc, 2004: 153, my translation). Not unlike the effect of Yanomami dreaming with marayoma or the intervention of koimayariwë, the power of noi rao turns on both its user becoming more likable to others and predisposing others to amenable relations. For example, when in trouble with justice, the noi rao soften the authorities: “To begin with, the justice representatives no longer see the person as a adversary or a hostile patry, but rather like an agreeable and irreproachable person; the problem appears to vanish by itself.”. (Ibid.:154, my translation). In a commercial context, women can also wash their hands with magical substances or drip them on their embroidery to lure more White clients (Hammerschmidt, 2019: 105).

Putting these self-altering and other-affecting potencies to use requires, however, a number of bodily and social precautions that resonate with shamanic bodily conditioning among the Shipibo and throughout Amazonia. Whilst picking and preparing the plant substances, one must fast, refrain from sexual relations, isolate and keep one’s intentions secret, lest the efficacy of the magic diminish (Leclerc, 2004: 155). These rules are followed as part of an implicit negotiation with the spirit owners (ibo) of plants and animals and the spirits of these plants and animals themselves (yoshin) men having privileged relations with animal spirits and women with those of plants (Ibid.: 165-6) for the magic effect is ultimately a matter of drawing out the affective power of these spiritual entities. Beyond these rules, subsumed under the notion of “dieting”, once the substance is prepared, the user will dream with the spirit owner as part of a human-spirit dialogue (Hammerschmidt, 2019: 106).

“O consumo das plantas assume uma espécie de modelo canibalístico: por meio do consumo (e não da partilha) o princípio da agência da planta é incorporado e a partir daí se estabelece uma relação, que deve ser controlada através das dietas. (106-7)…Para os Shipibo, as plantas ensinam às pessoas e as pessoas devem saber ouvi-las. E neste processo, os sonhos funcionam como um mecanismo de aprendizagem fundamental, já que é através deles que se têm acesso ao âmbito e aos conhecimentos dos yoshin (espíritos).” (Ibid.: 107).

Writing on the influence of plant-derived knowledge practices in the work of two indigenous artists, Belaunde (2016) also describes intricate relations between plants and people via spiritual affects, visions and dreams. In her account the piri-piri, of the cyparacea species are powerful due to their having spiritual owners (ibo); their agency being crucial for seeing in visions and/or dreams the intricate kene designs that Sipibo women will then paint on bodies and other surfaces. When on women’s skirts, such designs, men say, are a “hypnotizing” trap (Ibid.: 619).

This teaching of knowledge from plants is reminiscent of the indigenous discourses about ayahuasca, as another collaborator of Belaunde says,: “Piri-piri is like ayahuasca, it makes you see all sorts of things. It gives you intelligence. Knowledge reaches your mind even without studying. Piri-piri is for many things.” (Belaunde, 2015: 16 in Hammerschmidt, 2019:97, my translation).

As with the yanomami hëri magic discussed earlier, there is a specific connection between persons’ bodies and their immaterial components. Here its based on a well developed notion of odor as the perceptible, yet immaterial vehicle of affective qualities:

“As raízes de piri-piri, com seus odores agradáveis, são capazes de atrair tanto os bons espíritos quanto afugentar os maus. Isto porque, para os Shipibo, quando a pessoa passa a consumir o rao, ela perde o seu odor humano e adquire o odor de planta (COLPRON, 2005). Como vimos, para que ela possa aprender com a planta, é necessário investir em dietas e interdições alimentares e sexuais, que capacitam e transformam os seus corpos, os quais passam a exalar os odores benéficos. O cheiro do sangue humano se transforma com a penetração dos pensamentos das plantas, os quais se movimentam através do ar (niwé rao) (AKASHA, 2017, p.60). A pessoa começa a pensar com a planta e a exalar odores capazes de afectar os pensamentos alheios… (Hammerschmidt, 2019: 115).

The process of changing odors so as to change one’s fortunes must be put in the context of a wider Shipibo conception of good and bad olfactory qualities. Niwé was put to Leclerc by one of her collaborators as “air”, “wind”, “odor” and “humor” (in a medical sense) (2003: 64). It is an olfactory and contaminating quality of most, if not all, things, that in the most general sense can be classed as either good or bad (Ibid.).

“Ainsi, chez les Shipibo les odeurs sont bien plus qu’une simple fumée ou qu’une perception invisible. La « saladera » [a kind of bad luck] est comme une sorte de substance internée dans le corps de la personne victime et dégage alors une mauvaise odeur repérable. A l’inverse, la fragrance inin qui a une charge positive, développe son effet dans le corps de la personne. En ce sens, l’inin des noi rao est une odeur pénétrante qui vient se loger dans le corps du destinataire et surtout dans son shinan, sa pensée” (Leclerc, 2003: 281).

In the specific case of love magic, odors create an olfactory memory.“É o cheiro do corpo do outro, que invade os pensamentos da pessoa e faz com que ela perca o prumo. Acometida pela lembrança do amante, passa a sentir uma tristeza/saudade, que dependendo do grau de intensidade, pode até mesmo enlouquecer.” (Hammerschmidt, 2019: 120).

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A variation and complication of this captivating love the capture of prey and of humans being frequently associated in Lowland South America is found among the Toba of the Chaco. This procedure is of interest because it is a limit case, so-to-speak, for the amplification of influence. By placing a part of another’s heart/spirit in one’s own, a person forcibly constitutes him/herself as a cause of another’s action, now left with no selective agency. Tola (2010:1115) tells us that when a person is uncontrollably “in love”, s/he is thought to be under the influence of a shaman.

“Étant donné que le chamane pénètre la pensée d’une personne, réveille ses nnatac [spiritual helpers, non human companions] et capture son lqui’i [spirit, site of emotions and thoughts], il s’ensuit un triple mouvement entre le chamane, la victime de la passion et celui qui désire être aimé. D’abord, une “extension” du corps du chamane - celle de son compagnon non humain - est introduite dans celui de la personne que l’on souhaite conquérir. Conjointement, le chamane capture les émotions-pensées (lqui’i) de l’objet d’amour ; enfin, il les introduit dans le cœur de l’amoureux. Le cœur, qui est l’origine et la destination des composantes manipulées par les actions chamaniques, permet la continuité interpersonnelle entre le chamane, celui qui désire et celui qui est “obligé” d’aimer.” (Tola, 2010: 15).

The shaman’s helper spirits, flowers in Tola’s example, have been inserted close to his/her heart during initiation, by a non-human forest maîtresse. Tola explains that in this kind of overpowering love, one is literally “hors de soi” because part of the person (the lqui’i spirit) is now in the body of s/he who wants to be loved (Ibid.:).

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Thus far we have discussed dreaming and the use of magical substances as means of enhancing one’s capacity to cause the action of others. In fact, both seem to operate as alternative or coupled means of incorporating external potencies, via images or odors, altering the immaterial aspect of one’s or another’s makeup vital images, thoughts, odors not without affecting the body and sometimes using specific materials as vehicles of agency. We now turn to language and metaphor to examine whether here too, similar procedures and effects are at stake.

METAPHORIC LANGUAGE: WAYAMOU, SPELLS, SHAMANISM

A final means of influence that completes a triad alongside plant magic and dreams, is the spoken word. Not any kind of speech, to be sure, but more specifically the metaphorical language we find in shamanic chanting, magical spells, and in certain cases, political discourse. Metaphorical language seems indispensable for achieving certain changes in human and non-human others’ dispositions, and thus results in transforming relations an objective that plant magic and dreams can be put to use.

The idea comes from the importance Yanomami place on the use of tropic language in ceremonial dialogues, wayamou (see Kelly, 2017). These dialogues, as is generally the case for ceremonial dialogues in the region (Urban, 1986), are primarily conflict resolution devices between hostile or otherwise estranged communities. The wayamou ritual is alongside shamanic chanting the apex of Yanomami verbal arts, and as such is the most densely metaphorical form of speech. Yanomami interlocutors insist on the importance of tropic language, its adroit use being the main quality they point to when distinguishing expert from poor performers of wayamou. It is conventional in the wayamou which begins at dusk and lasts until dawn that visitors and hosts first exchange accusations and reprimands on the subjects that divide them. Once all have spoken their minds without restriction, there comes an appeasing phase where interlocutors strive for a viable alliance (see Alès, 2003: 212; Kopenawa & Albert, 2010: 397).

Two additional features compose the conventional structure of the wayamou. At dusk, the first visitor-host pairs are composed of youngsters who are the least experienced and, according to my interlocutors, speak too clearly, without metaphorization, which makes their words worthless. As the night progresses, more expert orators take the stage, ending at dusk with the elders who excel in the art of wayamou. The passage from young to elder performers is then one of increasing metaphorical complexity, understood also as one from “worthless” to “true” or “real” discourse. Finally, my Yanomami interlocutors comment that youngsters are given to screw things up: they may instigate violence or deny exchange and assistance. It is left for the elders, later during the night, to mend their words and push for peace.

From these descriptions I want to stress the link between metaphoric skill and pacifying competence. There is a connection in Yanomami understanding between the metaphorical complexity of wayamou and its effectiveness in turning potential enemies into allies. In a sense, political effectiveness relies on a poetic aesthetic that includes metaphorical language and a complex play of person deictics. On both these accounts, this form of political discourse shares an aesthetic with shamanic discourse. It also shares a socio-cosmological context if we consider that wayamou and shamanic discourse engage critical forms of alterity human potential enemies, in the first case, and non-human spirits in the second.

On the wayamou Kopenawa says it is “le coeur de notre parler” (Kopenawa & Albert 2010: 398), and continues:

“Lorsque nous disons les choses seulement avec la bouche, durant le jour, nous ne nous comprenons pas vraiment. Nous écoutons bien le son des paroles que l’on nous adresse, mais nous les oublions avec facilité. En revanche, durant la nuit, les paroles du wayamu et du yãimou s’accumulent et pénètrent profondément dans notre pensée. Elles se révèlent dans toute leur clarté et peuvent être véritablement entendues. (Ibid.)

It is telling that such a trope-full form of language is what Yanomami use to reveal the “clarity of words” which only then “accumulate and deeply penetrate our thought”. Noting how Kopenawa opposes normal dialogue to the nocturnal wayamou, it is hard not to recall the also penetrating power of dream experiences in affective and knowledge terms described above, even more so when we consider that in mythical time, the origin of the night gives place to the possibility of dreaming (Limulja, 2019: 43) and of the wayamou (Lizot, 1999: 66).⁷ As Limulja reminds us, the night is the time of vital images.

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Let me now provide examples of three genres of metaphoric language. The first is a stretch of a Yanomami wayamou, the second a Candoshi incantation or spell, the third a brief discussion of Piaroa shamanic curing. I place them alongside each other in order to show how a common use of metaphor underlies their respective forms of efficacy: instilling amity between Yanomami communities; soothing strained relations between Candoshi affines; and undoing the hold of spiritual attack on a Piaroa patient. The idea is to illustrate the power of metaphor to affect others, allowing us to see these three pieces of discourse as variations of a single “genre of affection” despite the fact that we would normally see them as belonging to different types of action a political speech, a magic spell, and a shamanic chant.

YANOMAMI WAYAMOU

The following is a wayamou segment by a Parima Highlands (Venezuela) Yanomami, Marcelo Borges. It was held in Toototopi in Brazilian Yanomami territory on the first night of the Hutukara indigenous organization’s assembly in 2012. On the occasion, several Yanomami from Venezuela were invited and were interested in learning, from Hutukara’s example, how to constitute an indigenous organization themselves. Pursuing their main interest, Marcelo metaphorises the request for explanations about Whites’ financial assistance for creating and running an indigenous organization through the figure of a woman that Kopenawa, who is president of Hutukara and acted as main host of the assembly, has obtained in marriage from Whites of Caracas. In this context Marcelo impersonates what he wants to hear from his hosts:

1 ai prowëhëwë a pufi hatukëwëweini Some elder (lucid, knowledgeable person among the hosts) 2 “hai! kamiyëni ya nowã ta t^ha sho” [Will say] “hai! I will explain [about Hutukara] at once” 3 “Awei, fei suwë a rë ipirefe” “Yes, that [white Caracas] woman [Kopenawa] has taken/married” 4 “ai shomi shamat ari wamakini” “you (2nd person plural) shamat ari from another community/unknown to us” 5 “ëyëmi yãrimona wama hiki kãi fa kuaaimani” “you have come here with yãrimona hiki love magic substance” 6 “napë wama t^hou fa yãĩ koropoimani” “you have approached us carrying White’s love magic [perfume]” 7 “eha a fiõkasi niya ta yãriyohe” “here they will cover the women’s nose and mouth [with the love magic]” 8 “ya e niya kuu ma mrãõ tëhë ma kui” “even though I was not thinking of saying this” 9 “ei wa e itëtëtou waikia ha” “given that you have already approached us [host community/Hutukara]” 10 “mori a ta wamoru, mori, mori, mori, mori, mori” “make love to one, [only] one, one, one, one” 11 nowã niya t amou kë yaro, ei kë ya, ei, ei, ei Because you will inform us [about Hutukara], here I am, here you have me [ready to listen]

The general idea of this sequence is that the Parima visitors have come with friendly intentions to learn about Hutukara in order to create an organization themselves.⁸ The woman referred to in line 3, is a Caracas woman that stands for Whites’ aid. Line 4 refers to the fact that the Parima visitors are strange to their hosts at the assembly. Lines 5 and 6 mention the visitors have come, first with yãrimona hiki love magic (5) and then perfume (6) which is assimilated to a kind of Whites’ love magic for both substances seek to attract women. Line 7 refers to the way such love magic is applied to reluctant women. From 8-10 the imagined elder says he will indeed explain about Hutukara. Making love to the woman in line 10 is a metaphor for the explanation. Line 11 states this is what Marcelo wants to be informed about.

All this is “alliance talk” among people who consider each other shomi “different, other” and who would not normally visit each other. Indigenous politics has brought them together in the assembly. Marcelo thus evokes both their status as mutual strangers and the visitors’ desire to help each other out. Several subtleties in Marcelo’s words convey this context. It is assumed that Hutukara has not gained the favor of Whites easily and hence the Caracas woman has been obtained by force (ipi-). Whites normally don’t care for Yanomami and their aid doesn’t come about without a lot of convincing. In the same way, visitors’ recourse to love magic to obtain a reluctant woman (the advice and mediation with Whites they expect from Hutukara) conveys the sense that, just as Whites’ aid has not come easy to Kopenawa, neither will it be effortless for the visitors to obtain the favor of their hosts. The impersonated host that changes his mind and accepts to provide the sought explanation, reiterates the hope that friendship struck during the assembly will persuade the hosts into offering advice. Finally, this host’s insistence on making love only to one woman indicates the visitors are not after Hutukara’s money, just their advice.

After our discussion about the effects of magic substances it is interesting to see how Marcelo appeals to the powers of love magic to effect an enduring alliance. It is as if the metaphor of love magic had a redoubling effect, adding magical to metaphorical efficacy, making the words carry the magical capacity to influence the host’s dispositions. The expected effect of his words is actually dramatized when Marcelo stages his imagined interlocutor’s change of mind.

During the same wayamou, another of the Parima visitors, Homero Silva, like Marcelo would do after him, impersonates a host’s words as a way to ask for advice on how to create an indigenous organization. He does so just as a new voice amidst the hosts becomes audible, indicating that a new partner is approaching to engage him in wayamou. This time, the redoubling of metaphor comes by appealing to dream knowledge.

kamiyëni yai

Me and not any other [will explain to you about Hutukara]

kamiyë ya yai totihiwëni Better me [than someone else]

ya prahaai rë totihiowei yani

Me, one that travels far

ya rë mio rë totihiowei yani

Me, one that sleeps a lot

The metaphor in these lines hinges on the analogy between “traveling far” and “sleeping”, that is, dreaming. What Homero is impersonating is that the approaching voice from the hosts’ camp is that of someone who, like a dreamer whose vital image acquires knowledge of distant places and peoples, has physically traveled far beyond Yanomami lands, and hence knows all about Whites’ ways and how to get aid from them. This knowledgeable person would be in a good position to provide the explanation Homero is seeking.

CANDOSHI INCANTATION

I now turn to a Candoshi incantation or spell, of the kind described above, taken from Surrallés’ ethnography. It is sung by an old mother who is interceding for her daughter, whose husband’s relation to her brother his brother in law has become strained. The target of the incantation is this brother-in-law, it is him who the spell aims to appease, and the metaphoric strategy to do so, is to substitute his name for that of his son: “This magical ruse works in such as a way so as when the target finds his brother in law he will experience the same feeling he would when encountering his favorite son.” (2009: 322)

“1 Llama a Vachapa por el nombre de Shimbotka, el flaco

2 Que está casado con Vanika, que vive en casa de los padres de su esposa con la que se casó cuando ella era una jovencita

3 La que habla toma tabaco con la ayuda de un brote de plátano y la cólera desaparece,

4 el tucán canta koria, koria, mientras que el tucán kiro llama canta kiro, kiro. (cantado por Mikaia, mujer del lago Rimachi, septiembre de 1995)

Así, la letra de la primera estrofa se puede traducir: [1] llama a Vachapa por el nombre de Shimbotka, el flaco vatitiasa. El canto indica a continuación que el destinatario está casado con [2] Vanika, la hermana del cuñado; que vive en casa de los padres de su esposa vatsapanish; y que se casó vayaksha cuando su mujer era todavía una jovencita vizanoritssha. El canto sigue precisando que la que habla [3] tsiyatkasha, es decir, la que canta, está tomando tabaco katsapanish con la ayuda de un brote de plátano opadamarish moza, en forma de pipa, de manera que la cólera desaparezca progresivamente vayakatsha. El canto menciona a continuación los buenos sentimientos que deben reinar entre los cuñados, utilizando la metáfora de dos tucanes que se hablan, pues como sabemos este pájaro connota el afecto: el tucán [4] siyagomaru (Ramphastos cuvieri), sentado tovazayaro, canta “koria koria” mientras que el tucán (de menor tamaño) kiro llama (Pteroglossus sp.) canta “kiro kiro””. (Ibid.)

If we recall our opening discussion of the Candoshi material, these incantations are considered to have a concrete and definite effect over the target’s heart, changing their disposition towards others, in this case, the chanter’s son-in-law on behalf of her daughter who is caught between male affinal strife.

PIAROA SHAMANISM

I now turn to Piaroa ethnography where Overing (1990) describes shamans’ curing as the explicit invention of metaphors between “before time” (myth) and “today time”. Whenmythicaltimewascomingtoanend, animals, uptothatmomentinhuman form, lost their status and transformational capacities when Wahari, the cultural hero, stole culture from them. This theft de-humanised animals, giving them motive to take revenge on humans. Today’s disease is precisely this animal revenge. So it is that every disease of today corresponds to a piece of lost culture or transformational capacity. “Each aspect of cultural knowledge, such as the capacity to cultivate and to hunt, and each cultural artefact had its disease counterpart. Every illness was in part caused by the violence of the ‘before time’ culture of the animals attacking the victim in ‘today time’.” (Overing, 1990: 613).

For example, a certain type of paralysis is called the “loincloths of the wild peccary wrapping itself around you” because in mythical time, animals in human form used loincloths.

“A human peccary of ‘before time’ would send a paralysis to humans through a today time animal that had lost the ability to create and use loincloths. … The peccary would send his piece of ‘lost culture’, its disease, like a loincloth in the form it would appear if it were used in today time, distorted, and because of that crippling its Piaroa victim, forcing him/her to a present peccary form” (Ibid.: 614).

To effect the cure, the Piaroa shaman must have a profound knowledge of the unfolding of every myth and establish unsuspected connections between events of “before time” and “today time”. His highly metaphorical words, his “before talk”, is evidence of the connections:

“a great ruwang [shaman] could often integrate much of the history of a being through one multilayered bit of before-talk, the unraveling of which would take one to several worlds and times of significant history. The ‘unpeeling’ of the complex words of the ruwang that encapsulated the history of beings was a process in which Piaroa audiences constantly engaged.” (Ibid.: 613).

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Though of course not confined to these genres, it seems clear that tropic language is linked to shamanic and magical discourse. The Yanomami wayamou is neither, and yet its expected political effect confirms the special status of tropic speech as containing “true” or “valuable” words, those most able to impinge on others’ hearts, souls or minds. Let us recall that wayamou is held during the night the time of souls as Limulja stresses -; the “truthness” of elders’ metaphoric utterances is reminiscent of the way vital images appear as being at the “root” of the visible world and its events. On both these accounts we can suggest an analogy, in terms of their affecting capacity, between tropic language and vital images.

This raises the question as to the status of language and, more particularly metaphor, among indigenous Amazonian peoples. I will come back to this in the Conclusion. For now I briefly turn to Guarani ethnography. Perhaps none more than the Guarani, among the peoples of the region, acknowledge in culturally elaborated forms, the power of words and metaphor. Their cosmogonic narrative, Ayvu Rapyta collected by Cadogan (1959), introduces the foundation of human language as part of the unfolding of divinities. This divine aspect of language is further linked to the soul, nhe’e, which Cadogan chose to translate as alma-palabra, soul-word, that constitutes the divine aspect of the person this soul is sent by the divinities from their celestial abode and introduces itself in newborns on this terrestrial plane and is tied to the person’s name. Others have chosen a less “Christian” understanding of the nhe’e, seeing it in a more material and agentive fashion as “language affection” (see Macedo in Stutzman, 2017: 333). Be that as it may, language, divinity and affection remain an object of elaborate reflection for Guarani and anthropologists alike. It is no surprise that the “beautiful words” of the divinities and the shamans that communicate with them are highly metaphorical. As Stuztman (Ibid.: 334) observes in a paper discussing classic and recent works on the Guarani:

“Given its simultaneous corporeality and its emphasis on the spiritual realm, the Guarani “beautiful words” pronounced by the karai [shaman] have, as Josely Vianna Baptista puts it, a “quasi-ideogrammatic materiality” and are profuse with metaphors. And, as Pierre Clastres observes, arrow in such a language may be “bow’s flower,” and pipe may be “mist’s skeleton.” Continuing from such reflections on Guarani metaphorization, Daniel Calazans Pierri discusses the obsession with “the true name of things” in Guarani ritual language. On comparing the Guarani and Platonic oppositions between elements in the empirical world and incorruptible models in the divine (nhe’e kwery) world, Pierri concludes that, unlike Plato, for whom words are always deceptive, for the Guarani the metaphorical word is the “true name” of an object or a state of affairs, as well as a “privileged means of overcoming the discontinuity between the celestial world (with its imperishable elements) and the terrestrial world (with its corporeal images).”

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I began this essay with an exposition of Surrallés’ Candoshi ethnography that concentrated in a single case much of what would come in relation to dreams, spells and metaphor. I bookend with a final example that also gathers much of what we have said in a single complex description. It is brought to us by Nadia Farage’s (1997) inspired ethnography of the Wapishana. Let us recall first the creative power of thoughts we discussed as characteristic of mythical times and shamanic discourse. About the Wapishana original world, Farage says:

“Era sobretudo plástico aquele mundo original, e a força de o moldar encontrava-se na palavra: “Antes falava e mudava a coisas. Tudo agora já está feito”. Eficaz, criativa, a palavra provocava transformações contínuas, que deram ao mundo a feição que ainda hoje guarda: cachoeiras, rios, montanhas assim se criaram, em batalhas verbais entre os demiurgos” (1997:57).

Language was then shared by all beings but, similar to what we are told of the Piaroa regarding culture, the end of mythical time removed this capacity from all beings but humans. As a capability, language in post mythical times is the main diacritic of humanity. And yet these original words, with their creative capacity, are available to today’s humans who can learn a repertoire of magical spells called pori.

Magical spells are tied to the use of magical plants, subsumed under the category wapananinao (literally “our plants” mainly cyperaceae and cactuses (Ibid.: 72-73)). These plants of influence are used to increase success in a range of activities like hunting, agriculture, love and “so many other human projects and interests” (Ibid.:74) for ordinary folk. It is understood that shamans have a wider repertoire and can use such plants to a higher potential (Ibid.:75).

The magic influence of these plants is associated with a range of qualities. They are particularly odorous and survive dry. Fragrance and dryness makes these plants immortal in opposition to all that decays and dies, like other vegetables, humans, and animals that need water to survive. Akin to what we saw about odors among the Shipibo, the wapananinao’s fragrant incorruptibility stands in sharp contrast with the rotten stench of blood, mourning and decay “imortais , imputrescíveis, aromáticos, os wapaninao configuram o inverso das coisas deterioráveis e malcheirosas” (Ibid.: 77).

Wapananinao are plants that share with humans their having a soul, and unlike other garden plants that depend on humans to survive, wapananinao, having a volition of their own, remain with who ever treats them well and may leave their human carers and return to where they came from if they feel mistreated (76).⁹

A final quality of the wapananinao is their capacity for speech, or rather, not unlike the connections established by the Guarani peoples, they have soul/speech:

“Por possuírem em comum com os humanos uma alma udorona -, os wapananinao possuem ainda o atributo da fala que dela decorre: “os tajás [alternative gloss for magical plants] são gente, pode-se conversar com eles”. Porém, o verbo possuir não é o que melhor descreve este atributo: para os Wapishana, os wapananinao são alma, que, por sua vez, é a potência da fala em grau eminente, o canto. Em canto os wapananinao se manifestam, e mesmo no interior de um maracá vivem, falam e sobretudo cantam” (76)

As we could expect, wapananinao require special tending, first and foremost, the provision of tobacco, either mixed in an infusion or through blown smoke. Tobacco smoke also accompanies their use.¹⁰ Moreover:

“Tal vínculo estreito ao sopro, à fala e à fumaça do tabaco é expressamente reiterado pelos Wapishana: “Tabaco é caxiri de panakaru [magical plant (Pl.)], sem tabaco eles não trabalham. Para trabalhar, tem que falar com eles, aí eles vêm nos sonhos, contam a doença e o remédio”. A máxima distância do peso e da umidade, sua existência etérea tem por alimento o tabaco” (78).¹¹

In a shamanic context, wapananinao exhibit the dual status of being the shaman’s pets and their children, a kind of relationship that combines the harnessing of an alien potency and the requirement of care, characteristic of the master/pet relation (Fausto, 2008). But all who care for wapananinao must treat them like their own children, in fact, they appear in their owner’s dreams as their own children, demanding care, which normally means asking for water and tobacco. (82). Dreams are also the time for mutual apprenticeship:

“Crianças e plantas mágicas, ambas portadoras de alma, pressupõem a construção de uma relação ativa e recíproca, que envolve ensinamento como forma privilegiada do zelo. Assim, sob meu ponto de vista, se explica ainda o fato de que é preciso ensinar os wapananinao a cantar.

Sim, porque é preciso ensiná-los a cantar. Como crianças, os wapananinao têm o potencial da fala, que deve ser desenvolvido: aquele que passa a cuidar de um pananu [magical plant (Sing.)], o ensina a cantar. Em contrapartida, após seu aprendizado, o panakaru [magical plant (Pl.)] passa a ter, por assim dizer, autonomia de canto: cantará e ensinará, em sonhos, novos cantos ao humano que dele cuida (83-4).

Magic spells, pori, like magical plants are used for a range of purposes all involving the impingement on others’ wills.

“Sobre a vontade de outrem se exerce pori, e nisto se incluem também os humanos, em particular, na atração amorosa e na vingança. Encantações, vê-se, aplicam-se a toda ação humana, à produção e à reprodução, ao amor, à doença, à vida e à morte. Falam à alma das coisas e das pessoas e assim, intervém na relação com os outros, sejam humanos ou nãohumanos” (227)

The recitation of poetic pori is a matter for elders, normally grandparents, those who can deal with the dangerous powers of spells; who don’t fear getting old by doing so young people fear premature aging -; who can understand the metaphors involved in pori; those who are more soul than body. (Ibid.: 126; 229-30).

The pori are powerful because they are the creative words of those who lived in the original times. They are formulaic and secret lest the potency wither. Farage provides uses for different purposes and notes several common features. In general, the place of enunciator of the spell the “I” of the sentences proffered is an agent, often a magical plant, selected for their qualities and aimed at impinging on another (a spirit causing someone disease, for example) (250). Here lies the main metaphorical link of the spell which also has a connection to a mythical/historical narrative (255).¹²

Another formulaic element is the evocation of creativity:

“”Para criar”: termo indispensável da fórmula, “tominkiz” sintetiza a força criadora da encantação, o que precisamente querem indicar os Wapishana quando o traduzem por “primeiro” ou “do começo”, tempo em que a palavra era criação; indicam, de modo correlato, que o sujeito da encantação é a alma/palavra daqueles entes e coisas que a perderam no advento do tempo humano” (262)

As we have seen, magical spells and plants seem to have similar effects. Farage explains their relation more clearly:

“Como antes anunciei, a enunciação da encantação, embora tal não se trate de norma, se faz acompanhar quase sempre pela defumação das resinas aromáticas nat’aib e maruai, como se a fumaça, perfumada e volátil, pudesse melhor atestar, in pari materia, que a encantação é o campo de manifestação de uma alma sem corpo. Propriedade da alma, o perfume parece desempenhar, com efeito, papel fundamental no fascínio encantatório… Mas, perfume e palavra nos reenviam as plantas wapananinao, cuja articulação às encantações os Wapishana explicitamente apontam: quem usa pori, dizem, não precisa de pananu. Homólogas, ambas feitas só de alma/palavra, são, como se vê, as encantações e as plantas wapananinao” (263)

CONCLUDING REMARKS

This paper began with the intuition that dreams, plant magic and metaphorical language were alternative means of impinging on others and that all involved the interaction between immaterial aspects of persons. Following this intuitive lead a revision of premises and summary of consequences is in order.

First; I now think Limulja’s evocation of the möbius strip is more fitting than my translation of Wagner’s Daribi analysis into an Amerindian idiom. Let us recall, when,speaking of Yanomami dreams, Limulja says:

“…tanto as experiências que ocorrem durante o sonho quanto as que se passam durante a vigília se desenrolam à maneira de uma fita de moebius, de modo que o que acontece de um lado vai parar do outro sem interrupção. O que aparenta ter dois lados na verdade tem apenas um…” (2019: 54).

Dream and vigil are folded but continuous and their sequential mutual affectation evokes the famous image of Escher’s ants walking along the strip. But we can draw more out of this figure. A particular two sided oneness that is a one sided twoness seems apt to describe the relation between the visible material world and that of vital images: their mutual implication yet relative independence think of the body-soul dynamic of dreaming and their ultimate disaggregation upon death (a two-sided oneness) -; the extra-human benefits that can be derived from realizing a unity out of a divided reality as when spiritual agencies are pulled into the interplay of human relations via dreams, spells or plant magic (a one-sided twoness). In the examples we have threshed out, people, both specialists and common folk, can not only walk the strip but momentarily punch holes and connect both apparent sides of the strip to augment their influence upon others. What is true of interpersonal relations is true of the relations that make up the person, particularly that between body and soul(s), the person being an effect of their relation, and their relations with like entities (see Ramo y Affonso (2019) for this description of Guarani personhood).

If the topological truth of the möbius strip is its one-sidedness, despite the two sided appearance, refigured in an amazonian context, the difference between truth and appearance must be discarded and put in terms of equally real perspectives: you can only experience one perspective (side) at a time, even though you must be aware of the other’s. A part of the person the soul may be, as is the body, but the self’s and other’s experiential reality is always a whole person’s. The insight comes from Lima’s description of the Juruna’s perspectival cosmology:

“A visibilidade ou invisibilidade de um corpo não dependem de uma característica própria a ele mas de uma capacidade visual do observador. Se não vejo um espírito é por incapacidade de meus olhos. Se um espírito me vê, só vê aquilo que de mim eu própria não posso ver: minha alma, a qual representa todo o meu corpo para ele, toda a minha pessoa…

A alma é, pois, uma parte do corpo ou um componente da pessoa. Dentre essas partes, porém, e juntamente com a pele, a alma destaca-se como tendo com o corpo uma relação adicional àquela entre parte e todo que a define somente em seu aspecto de princípio vital. Pois é também um duplo da pessoa. Não convém apreender isso como se de um lado estivesse a pessoa e de outro, o seu duplo: este está contido nela, ainda que por sua própria condição dali possa desgarrar-se provisoriamente ou mesmo ser capturado por outras almas, de cujo ponto de vista o duplo, como frisei antes, é a totalidade da pessoa.” (Lima, 2002: 12)

Second; in the introduction I also summarized the argument that the separation of cause and agent structures action as a performance, the outcome of which is always uncertain because it involves the contingent efficacy of the cause and the selection of the agent. I now want to draw attention to how the human relations with vital images are also performances in this very sense. Dream experiences, controlled (as those of shamans) or when the soul is vulnerable to the impingement of alien images; the Candoshi magic spells Surrallés calls “cantos de imploración”; metaphorical words in wayamou uttered in hope of transforming potential enemies into allies; the Shipibo use of magic plants to seduce/prey on others, temper their violence, or make them buy more of your products. These are all performances: people striving to constitute themselves as causes of the agency of vital image persons (spirit entities of all kinds) in the interest of being effective causes of other intra-human or inter-specific relations. The additional influence expected is always uncertain, never guaranteed: hence all the secrecy, the skill that comes with age, the body preparations and precautions. The performance can go wrong in so many ways. Even the qualities of forest places, domains of human and spiritual owners, are the effect of the human-spiritual relations so often invoked in the dangers of opening a forest garden plot (Cabral de Oliveira, 2016); respect for specific forest sites; the successful growth of food plants (Morim de Lima, 2017); and Whites’ blindness of the more-than-human damage of deforestation and mining (Kopenawa & Albert, 2010).

The place of seduction merits an additional reflection for it appears as the main object of magical amplification. Seduction, often slipping into deceit, is present in mythical episodes of perspectival confusion, hunting and fishing techniques, interpersonal relations, be it for sex, marriage, friendship, luring Whites, or even the rearing of children (Maizza, 2014; Ramo y Affonso, 2019: 80). As a form of enhanced attraction, it is a prime means of constituting oneself as the cause of another’s act, which, as we have developed elsewhere, appears to be privileged among Amerindians, as opposed to them occupying the position of agents of history (Kelly & Matos, 2019; Gow, 2001). The complement of seduction is the tempering of anger/rage. Acknowledged as an obstacle of conviviality, the avoidance of rage is often stressed as moral convention (Overing & Passes, 2000: 2), which would explain its widespread presence in the use of plant magic. But considering the structuring of action, for the person overcome by rage, any questions regarding the efficacy of the cause have been settled, all that is left is the determination to act. It is this determination that, in the context of conjugal or affinal strive, the use of plant magic hopes to placate. In short, whereas seduction is action stylised to increase the cause’s efficacy, the tempering of anger is action directed at diminishing the agent’s.

Third; our review suggests an ”vital analogy” so-to-speak, between images, words (specially metaphorical) and odors when considered as vehicles of affective agency and principles of affectation. We could say words and odors are variations of the immaterial presence of vital images, which suggests a reason for their being attributed the power of influence of vital images. Almost as interchangeable means, differently combined or developed among different peoples this vital analogy is vividly present in Farage’s ethnography where magical spells (metaphorical words) and plants (odors) are homologous; in the facility Yanomami may display in metaphorizing the knowledge of Whites as dreaming and persuasive efficacy as the use of plant magic; we have also seen that what Yanomami may do through dreaming the Shipibo may do with plants; the Candoshi link arutam visionary quests with poetic “cantos de imploración”, Shipibo and Wapishana harness the influence of plants with the aid of dreams, and so on. Furthermore, we could suggest that the ethereal quality of these vital analogues allow for the mediation, interference, bridging, and hence effectuation, of the recursive process that implicates bodies and souls.

Finally; the implication of metaphor with “truth” among the Guarani, rings with the quality of elders’ speech in wayamou that “really penetrates our thoughts”; the “causal” or “root” status of Yanomami vital images; the creative power of the words of the original Wapishana world now encapsulated in humans’ magical pori spells Farage (1997) sees as poetry; the Piaroa shamans’ curing chants about which Overing says: “a ruwang gifted in the work of curing was called k’adak’a menye or ‘one who can cure everything (through chanting)’. K’adak’a was the word for the taproot of a tree, it was used metaphorically in chant language to signify the ‘first idea of’ or ‘the first time created’.” (1990: 612).

Even if metaphoric language is a frequent tool of persuasion the world over, we cannot assume that persuasive or perlocutionary effects are indigenously understood to operate by equivalent means to ours. The vital analogy between metaphoric language, plant magic and dreams already hints at this distinction.

It has been said about animism that personification would be its associated knowledge practice, and objectification would correspond to a scientific epistemology (Viveiros de Castro, 2004). In the latter, Wagner (2014: 10) says metaphors are “heuristic” and “artificial”. So what would be their status in a personifying one? One could equally ask: if perlocutionary and persuasive effects describe the power of words in an objectivist epistemology, what is their status in a personifying one?

The short answer we can take from Wagner (1972) and Strathern (1988) is that metaphor is a form of power. Throughout this paper we have seen how the equation between magic plants, dreams and metaphorical language involves the incorporation of alien capacities to alter the self’s and others’ dispositions. Involving analogy and contrast (a two sided oneness), and a pulling together of two conventionally distinct contexts (a unity from a divided reality, the world vital images and that of humans), this is how Wagner characterizes metaphor. Metaphor thus considered Wagner writes:

“In the context of Daribi culture, the distinction between magical power and expressive power is illusory; the facility acquired by the incantation of a spell, the potential realized through a skilful dream-interpretation, and the plaintive effect of bamboo flutes are all additions to the ordinary stock of human capabilities, created through the felicitous use of metaphor. The skill of doing and the facility of saying have metaphor as a common vehicle.” (Wagner, 1972: 79).

Strathern (1988: 174) in her analysis of Melanesian sociality is led to see a ”Melanesian theory of social action” where the anthropologist would conventionally think of a “theory of symbolic construction”. In reference to this kind of theoretical shift she continues:

“Indeed, Wagner’s is the most elegant formulation of this theoretical position, for it encapsulates both Western and Melanesian proclivities, the idea of a symbol both as a conventional, artificial expression of something already (invented) existing in itself, and as the inventive desire to draw out of relations and persons the innate (conventionalized) capacities that lie within them. Where the one rests on a linking notion of arbitrariness (culture), the other rests on a notion of uncertainty (and thus of power), of a state not being a state in any fixed sense”. (Ibid.: 174; emphasis added).

This notion of power is not that associated with coercion and control of others as objects, but rather a microphysics of influence involving interdependent subjects as compelling causes and selective agents (Kelly & Matos, 2019). This notion of metaphor is not an extension of a linguistic procedure but rather one that allows us to see all forms of augmented influence as vital analogues, to think of words as fragrances, for example.

REVERSE EPIGRAPH (FROM PEDRO PITARCH, LA PALABRA FRAGANTE, 2013 )

Tzeltal shamanic chants, executed to cure different ailments, are deposited in dreams by spirits in the form of a “thick book” in a potential future shaman’s heart when s/he is still a child. The shaman’s chanting is thus understood as the reading of a text, of words that come from the pre-solar original world of flux and transformation, but that pervades current human affairs as the other-side the side of dreams, night and death always leaking into the solar, shadow-bearing side, challenging its stability. Given their origin, chants cannot be learned, only dreamt, in fact, “No son los humanos que hablan este lenguaje, sino que son éstos que son “hablados” por él” (19). Furthermore, “los cantos no son sólo un medio de comunicación con los espíritus, sino ellos mismos son espíritu. El lenguaje del otro lado, es el otro lado del lenguaje” (Ibid.) There is a genre of disease caused by pathogenic words, written texts lodged

into a specific part of the patient’s body. The shaman’s chants, his/her own other-side text, is uttered to extirpate the intrusive pathogenic text. Curing is thus a textual battle. Another class of disease requires the shaman’s words to persuade body-encompassing ailment-words, that treated as an interlocutor, are compelled to leave the patient’s body. Several rhetorical or poetic techniques are used, less for embellishment, and more to pragmatically increase the persuasive force of the curing words. And yet Tzeltal recognise beauty in the chants and are moved by them, but their beauty, we are told, is not visual or sonorous. “…sino olfativa y gustativa. Los cantos, se dice, son bujts’an: fragantes, como lo son las flores, el incienso del copal, el tabaco o el licor que se ofrenda a los espíritus en las ceremonias… la belleza fragante de los cantos forman parte de su eficacia terapéutica” (24-25). A third category of disease is soul theft, one of the chants presented by Pitarch was aimed to recover one such soul caught by spirits and locked in a snake’s rattle; the thieves are not interested in the soul but its ransom payment: “Los espíritus se alimentan de la fragancia de las flores, del vapor del aguardiente, del humo del tabaco, del olor de la sangre de un pollo sacrificado…Pero sin duda, la parte más importante de la ofrenda son las palabras fragantes de los cantos que pronuncia el chamán” (100-1).

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• 1
  Vani is only partially a spiritual principle, sum of psychic capacities or vital moral principle (2009: 84). It nonetheless has an imagetic aspect: the reflection of oneself on a surface, the shadow, and mental images are vani. (Ibid.: 85). Vani also provides beings with the ability to communicate, be it verbally, in dreams or visions (87). But we are also told vani is a predatory intentionality, and hence less a noun than an adjective. What and who “has vani” is not really decidable until an entity’s (animals, spirits) intentionality has been perceived, determined, made meaningful for someone (85).
• 2
  When needed for a curing session, shamans of course respond at any time of the day, but in my experience in Ocamo (Upper Orinoco), daily shamanic sessions that didn’t involve curing a patient were held around midday or early afternoon. It is also true, as Limulja (2019) explains, that shamans’ visionary experience with hallucinogens and their dream activity feed into one another and can be seen as equivalent oneiric experiences in that both are the experiences of vital images (123).
• 3
  Enemies approaching can also be foreseen in dreams; a raid may be curtailed if someone in the party has a dream interpreted as a bad omen. Limulja (2019: 83) also reports, from hosts’ perspective: “When visitors or house residents are about to arrive at the communal house, people either can’t sleep or dream with them, which means they are close.”
• 4
  Kopenawa makes a number of references to the spirit koimari in Kopenawa e Albert (2010), but here it is generally characterized as an evil and aggressive spirit.
• 5
  Fuentes (1980: 74) and Lizot (2004: 182) describe it as made from the interaction of a beetle with the kumi thotho liana. A certain dust/excrement of the insect results from its carving of the inside of this fragrant liana. This dust is later used as love magic.
• 6
  The third species mentioned among those most used is Caladium bicolor, but no mention is made of fragrance.
• 7
  The myth of the origin of the night not only provides the conditions of possibility for wayamou. In the myth, night is incarnated by Currassow (Titiri), who perched in the forest, is surrounded by darkness. The Yanomami ancestors learn of its presence because it is calling out the names of forest features like rivers, water falls, mountains, etc. that is, Curassow is “naming the forest” which is an essential part of wayamou. Lizot (1999) highlights that the plumage, calls, and mating period of the curassow are features very apt to symbolize the characteristics of wayamou.
• 8
  All the interpretations of these lines were given by Marcelo and other Yanomami collaborators.
• 9
  See Morim de Lima (2017) for a similar description of sweet potatos having soul and volition, and leaving the gardens of Krahô women if they don’t take care of them well.
• 10
  Things here are in fact more complicated. The power of these magical plants is related to their virtual animality which must be tamed. However, this potential can escape control if plants are fed hunted meat and blood, in which case they can eat humans and turn on their owners (Farage, 1997:86)
• 11
  Farage delves further into all the connected qualities that oppose magical plants to the rest of living beings: non deterioration, dryness (i.e. lack of blood or sap); being soul/ song; lightness; immortality; association with tobacco. The resemblance with Guarani discourse about the human condition (associated with decay and imperfection) and its transcendence to divinity (light, incorruptible, immortal) is notable.
• 12
  These narratives refer to events of the times of those now dead and of whom no individualized memory remains (Farage. 1997: 186; 193-4).

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  21 Nov 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  14 Dec 2021
• Accepted
  14 July 2022