Intelligence in Nature - Jeremy Narby [12]
That evening I participated in the ayahuasca session led by Guillermo and his eighty-year-old mother, Maria, in a hut in their backyard. The participants were mainly local people seeking guidance or relief from physical ailments. The mother-and-son shaman team sang melodies that were intricate and interwoven, like the labyrinthine designs of Shipibo artwork. Their voices quavered as they chanted cascades of high-pitched notes in their language. It was like music for charming serpents, hair-raising and hypnotic. And it combined with the neighborhoodâs background noiseâan open-air discotheque, motorbikes passing, insects buzzingâto form a mind-bending envelope of sound. They were keeping traditions alive in a world of change by singing songs of healing in their backyard.
Shipibo shamanism is changing fast, according to Rama Leclerc, a French anthropologist who has studied the acquisition of knowledge among the Shipibo of the Pucallpa area. She told me: âSome young shamans in urbanized communities incorporate Christian prayers into their sessions. And they also consider the spirits of animals and plants from which traditional shamans get their power as subforces created by a superior entity, God. Consequently, âmodern shamans,â as they call themselves, must establish direct contact with the main source of power. In reaction to this, some old shamans say that the younger generation fails to respect the strict rules of apprenticeship, and lacks knowledge about the natural world.â
Shamanism is transforming itself.
From Pucallpa, I caught a plane to Iquitos, the largest town in the Peruvian Amazon. From there I made my way to Zungarococha, Lake Catfish, to visit a teachersâ training program at a bilingual, intercultural school, where young people from fifteen indigenous societies learn to teach their own language and culture, as well as Spanish and science. I had an appointment with three âindigenous specialistsââmen with extensive knowledge about their own language and culture, and who teach at the training program. As these indigenous specialists work hand in hand with Peruvian professionals, such as mathematicians, linguists, and agronomists, they are used to relating indigenous knowledge to science. We met on the verandah of their living quarters, a small wooden house with mosquito screens overlooking the lake. They knew I wanted to interview them about intelligence in nature.
The first specialist, Nahwiri Rafael Chanchari, represented the Shawi people. He had a foxlike face and thick black hair cropped in a bowl. Like his colleagues, he dressed simply, wearing a short-sleeved shirt, pants, and sandals. I started by asking him why he thought scientists had difficulty seeing the spirit side of the natural world. âLook,â he replied, âI believe that science is materialistic. Science wants to see concrete evidence when it tries to answer the questions it asks itself. In the indigenous world, we also believe in the material. Trees exist, as matter, as wood, as firewood. But this material existence is not all there is to it. Deep down, they are also beings. And science recognizes this when it calls insects and trees living beings. We Shawi think that all living beings have souls, which are their own spirits. If they did not, they would not have a reason to live. Take a stone, for example. For science, a stone is inorganic matter, that is what I think they call it, matter which has no life. And it considers earth and water in the same way, as lacking life. But for the Shawi, a stone has its own soul, as does water. And earth also has its mother. For us, everything is alive.â
âDoes each little stone have a soul?â I asked.
âIt depends on the size. A simple little stone does not. But a stone which is ten square meters, or huge rocks