Medicine for the Soul - Plant Spirit Shamanism of the Amazon Rainforest
by Howard G. Charing
‘Whether the plant is to heal the body or the spirit or whether it is part of an apprenticeship, what makes it work is your good intention towards the plant. They are beings, which have their own forms or they can be like human beings with faces and bodies. When the spirit accepts the person, and the person has the will, the spirit grants them energy. The path to knowledge opens, and the healing takes place’ Guillermo Arevalo – Shipibo MaestroIn the Amazonian tradition working with planta maestras (teacher plants) is known as the Shaman’s Diet. The working can be seen as a conscious body of actions to incorporate the plant spirit into one’s own spirit. From this incorporation or union, the plant spirit informs and teaches the maestro or apprentice. They learn the magical chants (icaros) which invoke the power of the plant, how to use the plant for healing purposes, and how to strengthen the dieter both psychologically and physically. The purpose of the diet is to prepare the body and nervous system for the powerful knowledge and expansion of consciousness given by teacher plants.It offers a significant challenge for the rational Western mind to come to terms with the teacher plants, and a leap of imagination is required to incorporate the ‘other’ consciousness, or spirit of the plant. We also have a ‘linguistic’ limitation (as an analogue the Inuit have over fifty distinct words for snow), in that the word ‘shaman’ is very recent to the Amazon, coming via the Western world in the last 20 – 30 years. There are many words which denote the plant specialisation of the maestro or Vegetalista. Benjamin Ochavano a 70 year old Shipibo Vegetalista says that his father was known as a moraya or banco (healer), in Spanish it was a curandero. A curandero could then further specialise in a particular plant such as chonta (bamboo) and be a chontero. For example a curandero who specialises in smells and perfumes would be a perfumero. Another challenge to our rational mind to enter the magical world to which we are transported by plants is that it is mainly accessible through dream language or an expansion of the imagination. Thus dreams
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