Shamanism at Don Rogelio's
Of cosmic rituals and humble healers – Healing trees (endangered) – A cursed necklace – Don Gregorio’s talent – A placebo effect from disgusting slugs – Forbidden baptism, legitimate baptism – The Catholic influence on ayahuasca shamanism.
Don Rogelio sucks the “bad energies” from Randal on the day of his “baptism.” From then on, he will face two years of dieting to reach his goal.
Text and photos by Carlos Suárez Álvarez
Originally published in issue 256 of Cáñamo magazine, April 2019.
A friend saw it in the tarot cards: that he needed an intense spiritual cleansing. Randal imagined that only in the jungle could he find a traditional maestro and, without knowing much about what he was getting into, he arrived at Don Rogelio’s house, in an indigenous community on the banks of the Colombian Amazon. The first afternoon he learned about ayahuasca; that very night he endured it. Vomiting, diarrhea, spasms, chills… an experience as unpleasant as it was promising. And so, a few months later, Randal returned to spend two years under Don Rogelio’s guidance, to heal his ailments and, while at it, become an ayahuasquero himself. He was then 54 years old and had a history of spiritual searches that included stays in India, Japan, the Philippines, and Mexico, without success. “An anguish, a weight on the karma,” Randal said he endured; and he wanted to lift it by taking ayahuasca.
At 75 years old, Don Rogelio Carihuasari had grown used to receiving foreign visitors eager for medicine. In the final stretch of his life, this humble healer faced a common problem. “My children didn’t want to learn. The knowledge my grandfather left me will disappear when I die.” Don Rogelio welcomed Randal with a mixture of caution and enthusiasm. He listed the difficulties his pupil would face (long diets, isolation, sexual abstinence, frequent ayahuasca sessions) and warned that at 54 acquiring the knowledge would be very difficult. On the other hand, how could he not try to prolong on earth the shamanism inherited from his grandfather?
Using the term shamanism to define the work of Amazonian ayahuasqueros can confuse more than clarify. Loaded with mysterious New Age connotations, “shaman” is a Siberian-origin word with which the West designates the specialist who accesses the “spiritual” reality, the “invisible” world, to obtain the favors of supernatural forces capable of influencing this material world, both with positive goals, healing, and negative ones, illness. What concrete form does shamanism take in the Amazon when ayahuasca is involved? The manifestations are countless, but a first distinction is necessary between social shamanism and what in the Amazon comes to be known as curanderismo, centered on individual health.
Randal and Don Rogelio a few days before the American began his learning period.
the social, the individual
The quintessence of Amazonian ayahuasca shamanism in its social dimension is represented by the Yuruparí, practiced by ethnic groups speaking Eastern Tucano and Arawak languages in the northwestern Amazon. Esoteric and rarely open to Western observation, the Yuruparí is a complex ritual involving all members of the society, where the consumption of ayahuasca is intertwined with dance and music, with the ultimate goal of regenerating life, ensuring the reproduction of animal species necessary to humans, and maintaining the balance of the cosmic society of all physical and spiritual beings, human and non-human alike. Quite something.
Don Rogelio was born near where he lives now, in a time when the inhabitants had already suffered the impact of four centuries of colonization and were integrated into international commercial circuits. Don Rogelio’s community was multiethnic; his four grandparents belonged to different ethnicities and although they spoke their own languages, they communicated among themselves in Spanish. At that time, a vestige of those cosmically oriented rituals still persisted — a modest Yuruparí. “We Cocamas took it to solve problems,” Don Rogelio explained to whoever visited him. “My grandfather would walk around the village and notice problems: husbands and wives fighting, the chagras [family plantations] neglected, no food in the houses. Then he would call a big meeting and prepare his ayahuasca, and everyone would take the remedy, follow a diet, and afterwards they could return to their occupations: fishing, hunting. They’d go out and bring back plenty of food. If there was a problem there, it ended, and then they lived like brothers in peace. With the divine power of this plant, most people feel good, happy, joyful.”
Those large ayahuasca rituals have disappeared from the banks of the Amazon. The last link to the ancient shamanism is embodied by people like Don Rogelio, a “typical” example of an Amazonian ayahuasquero dedicated to individual health. Can he be called a chamán? Yes, because he also enters the intangible spheres of reality to do his work, although in regional Spanish he is simply a “curandero.” I say “typical” in quotes because heterogeneity characterizes curanderos: in societies without hierarchies like the Amazonian ones, there is no Official College of Curanderos that determines orthodoxy and grants permission to those who comply.
Don Rogelio, thirty years gone by.
open consultation
Also known as “médico” or “doctor” among his neighbors, the curandero has a consultation open to the public (Indian or white, neighbor or stranger, relative or not) in which he attends to patients who come with diarrhea, pains, skin problems, neurasthenia… Some of these problems, purely earthly in origin, require little more than the administration of certain plants and, often, a diet that restricts foods, sexual and social relations, exposure to the elements, or heavy work. However, there are illnesses that result from a traumatic interaction with the beyond; it is then that ultraterrestrial techniques become necessary to seek the collaboration of spiritual allies in diagnosis and treatment.
The first problem Randal brought was physical. A couple of weeks before arriving, he had undergone surgery for an umbilical hernia and the wound had not yet healed. “So that there won’t be any problem, I’m putting you on ninety days without any strain,” ruled Don Rogelio after a thorough examination. And then: “This afternoon we will start healing that. Out there is your doctor,” he said, pointing to the nearby forest. “It’s called renaquillo and tonight you will meet it.” In the afternoon, I accompanied Don Rogelio to the forest in search of the tree. We ran into his son Elisbán, who was carrying a sack of guacapurana bark, a tree with notable therapeutic properties. “I’m going to take it to the city to sell to tourists,” he explained. Elisbán had to walk far; the guacapurana trees near the house were stripped of bark up to three meters high. “Because it’s so good, it’s going to die,” lamented Don Rogelio, “because everyone comes and takes its skin. Uh! It’s no good to be good. Better to be bad; then nobody touches you.”
A few minutes later we found a huge renaquillo tree. Don Rogelio threw a stick at the crown and collected the falling leaves. Then he gave the trunk a superficial machete cut and some sap flowed out, which he stored in a small bottle. With the resin, that very night, Don Rogelio soaked a cotton cloth and, sticky, fixed it on the umbilical area. “It will come off by itself once everything is healed.” With the leaves he made an infusion, which Randal drank like water over the following days.
Don Rogelio and Randal, next to the ayahuasca vine that Randal would consume throughout his stay.
The ethnobotanical knowledge of Indigenous peoples has been well substantiated. Jacques Tournon, who worked for years among the Shipibo of the Upper Ucayali in Peru, studied the ethnobotanical expertise of the raomis, the Shipibo herbalists, and conducted an unequivocal experiment: he selected about fifteen plants most commonly used by the raomis, analyzed them in the laboratory, and found that every single one displayed the biological efficacy claimed by these knowledgeable women. According to the Iquitos-based biologist Elsa Rengifo, the Amazon rainforest contains between 60,000 and 90,000 plant species, of which 2,000 to 3,000 are part of the pharmacopoeia of different Amazonian peoples. In Iquitos—near where don Rogelio lives—around 500 of these plants are used regularly, 150 of which are commonly sold in the Belén market, with 19 of them being exported. Most of the plants sold are wild, and many of them, like ayahuasca, are now facing the usual threats of overharvesting.
Randal's second health issue activated the full shamanic apparatus. When he began his spiritual search in India two decades earlier, he discovered that this path also led through dark territories. One of his colleagues—someone with whom he had a complicated relationship—gave him a necklace. Upon putting it on, Randal felt a malign presence enter his body, manifesting as a persistent tension in his neck. Over the years, he tried both conventional and alternative treatments, but to no avail. Don Rogelio, who had listened carefully, nodded and said, “That was an evil spell placed in your body; it takes root, begins to grow, and you suffer until the day it takes control and you die. That’s a malignant illness, and we’re going to heal it with don Gregorio.”
Don Gregorio, collaborator of Don Rogelio, sucks the evil from Randal’s head —a burden he has carried for two decades, ever since a friend gave him a necklace that, according to Don Rogelio, was cursed.
pieces of grass
Don Gregorio appeared at Don Rogelio’s house puffing and panting. What a sight! His hunchback bore who knows what heavy burden; his glassy eyes wavered between being cross-eyed and wall-eyed; his thin hair was wildly disheveled; his pants and shirt were filthy and tattered; his cracked bare feet bore blackened nails. Don Rogelio warned us not to be fooled by his appearance. “This man who cannot read or write has dedicated himself to taking plant substances and has mastered that knowledge. With such great sacrifice, he is a doctor. All of us doctors are like this—acquiring these things is not easy. Now he will show what he has learned.”
Don Gregorio didn’t seem to listen; he didn’t seem of this world. He sat down with effort in a chair and murmured inaudibly to Don Rogelio, asking for paper and cigarettes. I tried to strike up a conversation with the healer; he responded by pointing at Randal, pointing at himself, and giving a victorious thumbs-up. I think he didn’t understand Spanish. With clumsy, trembling hands, he cut the paper into ten-centimeter squares. He blew a protective melody, the ícaro, over the cigarettes to guarantee their therapeutic power. He stood behind Randal and performed a series of vigorous arm convulsions, as if possessed by a supernatural force. He bent over the ailing neck, palpated it, massaged it. He lit a cigarette, smoked it eagerly, brought his mouth close to the neck, blew smoke on the same spot he then sucked and slurped intensely. He stepped back, visibly dazed; Don Rogelio blew tobacco smoke over his head. Regaining his balance, he slowly, theatrically, extracted a blade of grass from his mouth and held it up triumphantly. He repeated the procedure twenty times. In the end, Randal, dazed, claimed to feel better and generously paid Don Gregorio, who recommended another session to remove the stubborn roots of the affliction. “An illness of many years,” Don Rogelio agreed solemnly, “is not easily removed.”
Don Gregorio shows the piece of grass he extracted from Randal’s neck.
BApTISMAL placebos
Pieces of herbs, fish scales, spiders, slugs—these are some of the objects most frequently extracted by spiritual healers from the bodies of the sick, serving as proof of their victory over harmful sorcery. Can these specialists actually remove foreign objects from a patient’s body? If you ask Amazonian villagers, there’s no doubt; nor is there a shortage of Westerners who support this hypothesis. I am more inclined to believe it’s a form of spectacular therapy that operates within the symbolic realm. That beliefs have an actual effect on health has already been confirmed by Western medicine. Numerous studies have demonstrated the undeniable placebo effect: patients show improvement in symptoms even when taking an inert substance. The placebo effect isn’t limited to the ingestion of a supposed drug: the charisma of the doctor, the sophistication of the equipment used in treatment, the omnipresent white color, the smell of chemicals, etc… A medical treatment in a hospital is a ritual whose healing power we trust.
Another Western ritual, in this case a religious one, came between Randal and his teacher in the early days: the nocebo effect. It happened when, in Don Rogelio’s absence, a neighbor visited the apprentice and asked him to be the godfather of her baby. When Don Rogelio returned and found out through his daughter—who had helped facilitate the arrangement—that Randal would have to attend the Catholic church, he nearly flew into a rage. “Catholicism has committed many murders and done many terrible things to gain power over humanity,” the old man explained. “They say that those of us who work with plants are satanic, but it’s a lie. With plants, we’ve discovered divine power to heal, to do good.” Randal listened to the tirade looking downcast. “When someone is studying this science and gets involved in that Catholic stuff, it lowers their energy. Randal cannot go back to church while he’s involved with the plants.”
Despite the opposition Don Rogelio sketched out, ayahuasca curanderismo has deep roots connecting it to the Catholic Church. A few days after Randal’s slip-up, the first ceremony in his ayahuasca apprenticeship turned out to be… a baptism!
Don Rogelio shakes his chacapa, a rattle made from leaves used in the ayahuasca ceremonies of many indigenous and mestizo peoples.
CATholic AYAHUASQUERO
It was a new moon night. Sitting in the shadows around a candle, in the small house built apart for Randal to follow his strict diet, Don Rogelio spoke about God, divine power, and money. “The material part is learned quickly. You grab the plant, cook it, prepare it. That’s it, friend, come on, you want to take it, give me the money. There are plenty of people like that. No. I want to teach the divine part. It’s not so much to get rich but to live sharing healing. And that divine power I cannot give you, that power is gained by dieting, but it’s difficult, you have to be patient, it’s very hard work.” Randal answered seriously, “I have no intention of selling the remedy.”
Something in the atmosphere changed when Don Rogelio lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the ayahuasca jug and over the chacapa (the leaf fan/rattle). Then he whistled a soft melody and cleansed his pupil, sweeping around him with the chacapa and blowing smoke over his crown. After this, they went out into the dark night. He seated Randal next to an ayahuasca plant near the little house and, chanting a monotonous icaro from which only a few Quechua words were distinguishable, asked Randal to make a vow of respect to the plant. “Thank you for the help you have given me in my healing process,” he said gravely. “I will serve you as best as I can, with the powers granted to me, to do good in the world.” Back inside, Don Rogelio served a little of the remedy to each of those present (family and neighbors), and it was not long before the only candle went out, the ritual music began, and the purge was unleashed, dramatic in Randal’s case, who through vomiting and diarrhea took the first steps on his shamanic path.
Ceremonies like this are common throughout the Upper Amazon, a region that includes territories of Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil. The Cocama, Shipibo, Inga, or Napo-Runa peoples, among many others, as well as mestizo riverside populations, share a supraethnic medical system that, everything seems to indicate, was shaped starting in the 17th century in the Jesuit missions of Maynas. From the early 17th century until 1767, the year of their expulsion from America, the Jesuits founded dozens of reductions—mission towns—along the Alto Amazonas, Napo, Marañón, Huallaga, and Ucayali rivers (an ayahuasca heartland), where indigenous people of different ethnicities were brought through gifts or violence for evangelization. Although the reductions, small and unstable, failed to instill Christian morality, their influence in the region was decisive. The human concentration became fertile ground for epidemics of smallpox, flu, or measles, deadly to the natives; when they fled back to their territories, they carried the virus, becoming vectors of its spread. Tribes disappeared or were decimated, forced displacements, productive and ritual activities disrupted. Reductions, concentration of ethnic groups, interculturality, epidemics, and dispersion—a vicious spiral that led to a reconfiguration of interethnic relations and health systems. The great ethnic and personal mobility, along with indiscriminate mortality, disarticulated societies and made large shamanic rituals impossible. Yet the health situation worsened.
In this context, the emergence of the professional healer figure seems plausible: knowledgeable people visited by all kinds of people, related or not, family or not, tribe or not. Furthermore, the ritual ayahuasca vocabulary in regional Spanish draws from Quechua terms, the lingua franca that Jesuit fathers used to facilitate intertribal communication. It is not surprising that ayahuasca is a Quechua word whose etymological meaning has been fixed as “rope of the dead,” “vine of the soul,” or “bitter vine,” three different interpretations that deserve a small analysis. But that is another story and, therefore, will be told another time.
