p.

variety

335

Shamans of different tribes "regularly swap tsentsak and supai, their Quichua equivalents -- ... each of which he designates metaphorically by the name of an animal, a plant, or an object ... :

the electric eel type, for its powerful electric charge;

the candiru` type, named after the tiny barbed fish {lamprey?} reputed to lodge

336

itself in the natural orifices of bathers;

the ray type, for its redoubtable sting;

the spider-money type, for the strength of its prehensile tail;

the humming-bird type, for its pointed beak and its rapid movement;

the harpy-eagle type, for the power of its talons;

the toucan type, for its huge beak;

the leech type ...;

the chonta type, for the long thorns of this species of palm;

the kuichip type, called after a plant with very sharp leaves;

the stramonium type, because the drug ‘brings on madness’;

the mirror type, because of the brilliance of its refracted {read "reflected"} light;

the cold type that freezes one’s bones;

the yellow type".

p. 336

"The transmission of tsentsak ... does not take long.

p. 337

Holding the head of his [compadre], the [donor of tsentsak] blows tobacco smoke on the crown of his head and then into his mouth. He is giving him darts of the ‘lightning’ type, ... to destroy recalcitrant tsentsak in the patient’s body. [Also donated is] the namur corresponding to these tsentsak, which up to this point has been soaking in a bowlful of tobacco juice. It is a ... pebble with a hole in the middle through which one can blow to direct the missiles with greater accuracy."

Then we stayed awake and all night long we played the tsayantar, to please the tsentsak. The first night you must not sleep, or the tsentsak think you are a corpse and they go back to the person who gave them to you. The next day I ate nothing and

p. 338

drank nothing. I couldn’t speak, for the tsentsak would have escaped if I had opened my mouth. ... We drank natem again [during the 2^nd night] and [the donor of tsentsak] sang all his anent; I whistled them, to learn them. ... The next day again I ate and drank nothing. ... In the evening we drank natem again and I began to learn [the donor of tsentsak]’s anent. That night ... the tsentsak were by then used to me. The next day I again fasted. ... On the last day ..., ... I had to eat pimentoes, little yantana pimentoes, the strongest ones. ... Then [the donor of tsentsak] told me that now I would be able to blow my tsentsak. His wife served me ... some tiny boiled fish. ... Then I went home."

"shamans ... subjected to a diet" : "Certain foods that are eaten by the profane are banned for ever for them :

... the sapajou monkey, the squirrel or the moustached tamarin,

whose agitated movements might upset cohabitation with the tsentsak, unstable even at the best of times.

... the armadillo or the wampi fish,

are forbidden because they sport a hard carapace that might make it difficult to reach the tsentsak embedded in the bodies of their patients.

... with sharp teeth, ... husea fish,

are banned because they might sever the tsentsaks’ tele-guiding threads.

... the white-headed saki monkey with its sad, almost human countenance, are themselves said to be shamans,

so eating them would be a kind of cannibalism. ...

... the macaw

because it flies very high, as it were beyond the reach of tsentsak;

the yawa aikiam, a large, spotted cat-fish,

because it evokes the pelt of a jaguar, always associated with shamans; and

palm-tree grubs that make holes in rotten wood,

because tsentsak similarly perforate the bodies of human beings."

"A shaman from the Copataza [a tributary to the Pastaza river (map on p. 32)] ... renewed his supplies of tsentsak in his dreams {apparently dreams similar the type described on p. 303}, often taking tobacco juice just before going to bed. He was visited in his sleep by uwishin now deceased but known personally to him, who supplied him, free of charge, with what others were ... paying very high prices [for]."

p. 344

Panku are believed to possess tsentsak that are invisible to ordinary practitioners and ... obtain them directly from the dead. ... . ... in the Quichua language the word panku designates what the Achuar call a kutank, that is to say the little bench reserved for visitors : the panku would thus become the ‘seat’ of the souls of the dead."

p. 345

[praeternatural voice] "a nasal voice had soon made itself heard ... . ‘I come from the depths of the Tungurahua volcano,’ declared this sepulchral voice,

{Souls of the dead enter a volcano according to the C^amoru of Guahan ("GLCh"); in Flores ("KMTL"); in Luzon ("BHM"); and even in Dante’s Divine Comedy ("VL").}

‘to see the tsentsak hidden in your body. Nothing escapes my clairvoyance, for I am blind in the light and exist only in darkness. . I see metal tsentsak that gleam ... . I see many tsentsak in your legs ... .’ "

p. 367

At this point the Iwianch-wakan undergoes a metamorphosis and becomes an animal. The wakan has no precise seat in the human body [but instead is constantly moving around within the body], so the species whose form it takes depends on the part of the body where it was residing immediately before its departure :"

it will be a __

if it was residing in the __

owl

liver

grosbeak

heart

morpho butterfly

auricles or lungs

deer

flesh

the wakan of women in the females.

However, some people believe that the wakan returns to the placenta of the dead person buried close to the house in which he or she was born and there, throughout all eternity, leads the vegetative life of a foetus,

{"The Toba-Bataks in Northern Sumatra hold ... that in the placenta rests one of the seven souls which a man possesses. This particular soul remains with the buried placenta" ("PL&L", p. 234). According to the people of Achinsk in Siberia, the soul of the placenta can leave to play with the child, an event they believe to have taken place when the child laughs in its sleep." ("PL&L", p. 235) According to the Buganda of Uganda, "the placenta ... has a ghost." (loc. cit.)}

while the various parts of the body become autonomous and change into animals according to the same

{According to the Icelanders, "the child’s guardian spirit resides in the placenta – hence its name "fylgia," ... in the shape of a bear, a wolf, an eagle, an ox, or a wild boar" ("PL&L", p. 236).}

p. 368

rules as those mentioned above.

"As for Iwianch, in their humanoid guise at least, they are believed to be put together in the forest by grosbeaks.

It is also said that a wakan likes to become embodied in an owl or a grosbeak so as to recover the faculty of sight, for it is reputed to become blind as soon as it leaves the body. [p. 345 "I am blind in the light".] These birds are believed to lend their eyes[ight] to the dead".

p. 368

it is sexually frustrated and gropes at

p. 369

It is true that it sometimes appears to women and to children ... . Children ... allow themselves to be lured by this new playmate into long walks in the forest".

p. 380

... green tobacco ... soaking ... into the eyes ...

p. 381

is to stimulate is to stimulate their lucidity so that in the coming night they do not allow themselves to be dragged into bad mesekramprar dreams foretelling their own deaths or, more baneful still, giving the dead woman a chance to appear."

Do not take my soul away! ...’ "

"Death is always designated by the same metaphors, anku anaki or ‘spear of twilight’, ...

{cf. the spear of Tlahuizcalpan-tecuhtli : "Borgia pages 53 and 54 illustrate the Morning Star god Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli spearing a series of deceased persons" ("BGC")}

‘duck spear’ (a fishing haropoon with a lozenge-shaped tip), to the accompaniment of the constantly repeated injunction, ‘Dodge it nimbly!’"

We both are nimble at dodging".

"Show us the slain sloth! ...

my brother has become a midnight-blue anaconda ...

Vanishing into the depths ..., the wamp fish ...

Convulsively opening and closing his talons, my brother the kite".

symbol

its referrent

sloth

"the shrunken head and the emesak that emanates from it"

praedators, swallows, & thrushes

"the group of ‘the tobacco-sated ones’ "

anaconda, felines, & wampi

"arutam mounting guard to keep the emesak at bay."