This is an English translation that I produced of the paper Mariage mystique et pouvoir chamanique chez les Shipibo d’Amazonie péruvienne et les Inuit du Nunavut canadien, written by Bernard Saladin d’Anglure and Françoise Morin.

The original paper written in French can be found at https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/as/1998-v22-n2-as805/015537ar/, and here is a full citation to their original paper:

Saladin d’Anglure, B. & Morin, F. (1998). Mariage mystique et pouvoir
chamanique chez les Shipibo d’Amazonie péruvienne et les Inuit du Nunavut
canadien. Anthropologie et Sociétés, 22(2), 49–74.
https://doi.org/10.7202/015537ar

Abstract

Mystical Marriages and Shamanistic Powers among the Shipibo of Amazonia (Peru) and the Inuit from Nunavut (Canada)

The authors adopt a neo-comparatist ethnography approach to study cases of shamanistic mediation in two aboriginal peoples of the Americas. They first look into dream sexuality between spirits and humans, and then into the kinship (by marriage and descent) of shamans with their helping spirits.

These relationships are a source of power. They may engender future shamans or they may sanction the end of the learning period and consecrate the mediating power of great shamans with the spirits. Shamans can cross ail boundaries through androgyny and through transvestism, be it symbolic or concrete (ie, they outward signs can be seen, heard or smelled).

Keywords: Saladin d’Anglure, Morin, shamanism, sex, gender, transvestism, androgyny, dreams, mystical marriage, Amazonia, Shipibo, Arctic, Inuit

MYSTICAL MARRIAGE AND SHAMANIC POWER AMONG THE SHIPIBO OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON AND THE INUIT OF CANADIAN NUNAVUT

Bernard Saladin d’Anglure Françoise Morin

This article presents the results of fieldwork conducted by the two authors between 1993 and 1997. It explores certain little-known aspects of shamanism, such as the marriage of shamans with spirits, a phenomenon often mentioned in the literature, particularly for Siberia, but rarely analyzed exhaustively. Through this ethnographic work, they hope to contribute to the collective effort of those who, since the mid-1980s, have undertaken to renew the social anthropology of shamanism, despite challenges to the very concept of shamanism. Their contribution lies on several levels:

– That of ethnography, through their emphasis on collecting new data directly from shamans still practicing or their relatives.

– That of methodology, through their implementation of a neo-comparative ethnography involving the study of several societies by the same researchers, on a circumscribed theme: this approach runs counter to dominant ethnographic practices that favor the monographic study of a community or ethnic group.

1. A one-month mission (1993) to northern Yakutia (Russian Federation) among a mixed population (Yukagiri, Chukchi, Even) of reindeer herders; two two-month missions (1994 and 1997) among the Shipibo-Conibo of the Peruvian Amazon; and two one-month missions (1994 and 1997) among the Inuit of Igloolik (Nunavut, Canada).

These missions were funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. F. Morin also received a grant from the Lelong Bequest (CNRS, France) in

1997. Some of the data presented here were presented at the Colloquium “The Voice of the Shaman” (Paris, 1994) and at the American Studies Seminar (University of Paris X-Collège de France-CNRS, 1996). at the North Laval Colloquium (Laval University 1996) and at the 4th Congress of the International Society for Shamanistic Research (Chantilly, France, 1997).

2. Bogoras (1904-1914). Czaplicka (1914). Eliade (1968).

3. After Sternberg (1925). Roberte Hamayon (1990) is one of the few to have made it a central theme in her study of Siberian shamanism. See in this regard the recent review by Atkinson (1992). Anthropology and Societies, vol.

22. n²

2. 1998: 49-74 50 BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN

– That of theory, through their use of the findings of several schools of anthropological thought, such as structuralism, gender studies, the anthropology of dreams and the body, studies on ethnicity, and postmodern critique.

– That of ethnohistory, finally, through their re-examination of ancient sources and the discovery of unpublished documents in the vernacular.

The theme of the mystical marriage of shamans with spirits emerged for the authors during a field mission among the Shipibo-Conibo of the Peruvian Amazon in the spring of

1994. They were then conducting an inquiry with shamans of this group on the construction of gender, the socialization of children, and cross-dressing.

The Shipibo-Conibo³, who belong to the Pano language group, currently have about one hundred shamans (onánya) – almost exclusively men, of whom about ten are considered high shamans (meráya) – in a population of nearly twenty-five thousand individuals.

The onánya heal with the help of plant spirits, particularly those of tobacco and ayahuasca; the meráya call upon the assistance of higher spirits and can travel to other worlds; finally, there are also the yobé, who control the technique of magical darts for offensive or defensive purposes. Names of female shamans appear in genealogies from earlier generations, but they were always in the minority and rarely attained the rank of meráya. Women, on the other hand, were reserved for the role of circumciser (shébiana biai aínbo), which they often combined with that of midwife (báque bihai) and, for those with a good knowledge of medicinal plants, with that of healer (ráomis). Midwives and healers can still be found in most communities today.

Erotic Dreams and Sexual Relations with Spirits:

It was during an interview with a meráya, a Shipibo high shaman, about shamanic destiny, that our attention was drawn to dreams as a privileged means of communication with spirits. We were aware of the importance of dreams among the Inuit in determining the names of newborns and the role the midwife played in this process.

When the Inuit parents of an unborn child dream of a deceased person or a spirit, the newborn must be named after that person or spirit, as this signifies the child’s desire to live within that family. If the birth was difficult, a shamanic midwife was called upon.

5. In fact, one should say the Shipibo-Conibo-Shetebo, since the Pano people of the Ucayali River, commonly known as Shipibo, are actually descended from intermarriages between these three linguistically very similar subgroups. Traditionally, they inhabited the Middle Ucayali, Upper Ucayali, and Lower Ucayali respectively (Morin 1998).

6. A bibliography on the Pano was recently published (Erikson et al. 1994).

7. On Shipibo-Conibo shamanism, see Arevalo (1985), the doctoral theses of Illius (1987), Gebhart-Sayer (1987), and Cardenas Timoteo (1989); Bertrand-Ricoveri’s doctoral thesis (1994) provides a good complement on mythology and cosmology; finally, we should mention Morin’s synthesis (1998). Mystical marriage and shamanic power among the Shipibo and the Inuit 51 propose other names, notably that of one of his auxiliary spirits. We therefore asked questions along these lines to the Shipibo shaman, Questembetsa, without anticipating that they would elicit answers of a much greater scope: here is the transcript of the dialogue:

– Can we say that the shaman is somehow made at birth by the midwife?

– No. It was more a family shaman who determined the child’s destiny: he could quickly see if the child was interested in his activities and tried to pass on his knowledge from a very young age; this could begin two or three days after birth.

The shaman performed rituals for this purpose; he would take a little of the mother’s milk and mix in camalonga seeds before giving it to the child to strengthen its vitality. Camalonga is a hallucinogen […].

– Can dreams experienced by the parents, or by the mother when she is pregnant, or by the shaman, play a role [in the child’s shamanic destiny]?

– Yes.

The mother can have what are called erotic dreams. She dreams that she is having sexual relations with a spirit and she becomes pregnant […].

These children were predestined for shamanism.

This could happen with the invisible spirits called chaíconibo [the true “brothers-in-law”]. It was the shaman who had the power to determine which spirit a child belonged to, who its father was, in a way […]. It was the shaman who determined that a woman had had sexual relations with invisible spirits, because he himself was in contact with them […]. He could know the sex of the fetus, its behavior, and its destiny […].

– Do you know of any shamans who were conceived in this way?

– Yes. My own father is the son of a chaíconi from the forest, and from birth, he was taken in by another shaman. As a child, he picked up on everything. He had intuitions. He understood everything: he prepared himself and experimented on his own with a number of things; but it was a shaman (meráya) who showed him the way, who guided him, who served as his mentor. It was his maternal uncle […].

– Did being born that way result in a category of stronger shamans?

– Yes, high-ranking shamans, meráya […].

– You told us earlier that one had to acquire knowledge of five different worlds to become a shaman: what are the principal spirits of each of them?

– In the world of trees, each species has its own spirit; in the underwater world, it’s the same, they are the spirits of the snakes, the water spirits, the anaconda, the dolphin […].

When a woman dreams of a dolphin [coshóshca], she can have a child with the spirit of the dolphin, but it will be an abnormal child, unlike a child conceived with a spirit cháiconi, who will be normal. In general, the 8 interviews with Questembetsa were conducted in Spanish, a language he spoke fluently.

For the other shamans, we used a local interpreter who, after each interview, provided a literal transcription in Shipibo and an interlinear translation into Spanish. We plan to work with Questembetsa again in the near future, this time in Shipibo, on the same themes, in order to have texts in the vernacular, comparable to the others. 52 BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN: Sexual relations with animal spirits result in abnormal children who will have either a cleft lip, a malformation, or a missing limb […].

These abnormal children did not live long.

This testimony highlights, first and foremost, the value of the “erotic dream” as an indicator of sexual relations between humans and spirits. It particularly emphasizes The women’s experience in this area resulted in their conception and birth of spirit children (ininbaque) with unique destinies.

The origin of these children was recognized by their physical marks and non-viability when they were presumed to have an animal spirit as their father, or by their exceptional gifts, signs of a shamanic destiny, when they were attributed a human-type spirit¹, particularly a chaiconil, as their father.

The facts mentioned take on meaning when examined in light of several indigenous theories that combine and reinforce one another here.

The first concerns dreams, particularly their erotic form.

For the Shipibo-Conibo, as for most non-Western peoples, the dream experience is an important part of reality. It is in the dream state that the soul can leave the body of the human with whom it is associated and have all sorts of experiences, especially with spirits; it is also in this state that spirits can visit humans. and establish communication with it. In this conception, the erotic dream is explained by dream sexuality with spirits, as evidenced by the accompanying psychosomatic sensations. Both men and women can have such dreams and wake up disturbed after reaching the peak of pleasure.

A second theory aims to explain somatic malformations and the fatal outcome that often results.

A third theory, less explicit in this interview but present in several other testimonies, concerns the temptation of zoophilic sexuality, particularly for hunters. It is rooted not only in mythology, which evokes such unions with animals transformed into humans, but also in attested marginal practices made possible by the hunter’s intimacy with his game and their anatomical compatibility.¹² It must be said that in Shipibo-Conibo representations,

9.

10.

While most children born with such marks died young, some survived and could also experience a destiny. shamanic. During the summer of 1997, in the Shipibo community of Pahoyan, we met a shaman (onánya) born with a growth on his face.

The shamans consulted at the time claimed that this mark resulted from dreamlike sexual relations his mother had had with an underwater animal spirit.

The child was subsequently operated on successfully at the Amazon Hospital of Pucallpa; he was trained in shamanism by a renowned meráya-yobé and is said to derive his great power from his spirit-father, in this case, a merman-man.

This is the case with our informant’s father. One of his sons, however, is said to have the spirit of Jupiter as his father.

11. We say a cháiconi and cháiconibo.

12. A specific investigation should be carried out on empirical zoophilia among the ShipiboConibo. We were told about this practice with the dolphin of river, renowned for its lust.

This animal is feared, but not considered game.

The monkey is also considered Mystical marriage and shamanic power among the Shipibo and the Inuit 53 humans and animals are not fundamentally different. They are all endowed with souls: many animals are former humans, the myths tell us, and they can all take human form.

But bestiality has harmful consequences, both for those who abuse their prey¹³ and for those who experience it in dreams. Men risk becoming animalistic and being forever drawn to the animal, forest, or underwater world; women risk giving birth to disabled or monstrous children.

But for these theories to be invoked with their full force to explain the unusual and the unfortunate, one must still rely on the clairvoyance and interpretation of shamans who, through other means, can communicate with the invisible, with spirits. With erotic dreams involving chaiconibo spirits, the outcome is very different, since they result in the procreation of children destined for shamanic roles.

Here we enter directly into the realm of religion, which we will explore further.

The distinction made by our shaman informant between animal spirits and invisible human spirits (cháiconibo) struck us all the more because we had already encountered it among the Inuit of Igloolik, but this time in relation to the shamans’ helper spirits.

According to an elderly Inuit informant, daughter and wife of shamans, animal helper spirits were considered powerful, but dangerous and often aggressive; they were used primarily for killing. On the other hand, human-type helper spirits (inurajait) were helpful and easily fell in love with humans, especially those who were suffering.

Here is what Burch (1971) writes about the distinction between animal spirits and human-type spirits; he is one of the very few authors who has explored this theme among the Inuit of northern Alaska: Theoretically. Every empirical animal can have a giant, non-empirical counterpart […].

These creatures are all regarded as very dangerous and are avoided […]. [He then mentions human-like spirits.] The generic term for such creatures is yziraq. A particular type is called nuliayuq.

This is a yziraq woman who marries a normal human husband.

The term also refers to a yziraq woman who copulates with men while remaining invisible to them. Often this occurs while the man is asleep: he thinks he is dreaming and wakes up only when he reaches orgasm. At that moment, the woman disappears […]. Burch 1971: 154-155, our translation as a lustful animal.

According to the myths, it initiated humans into sexuality.

But wouldn’t all wild animals be so in the minds of indigenous peoples? (See Reichel-Dolmatoff [1968] for the Desana of the Amazon and Hamayon [1990] for Siberia.) And what about domestic or captive-bred animals?

13.

Among the Inuit of Igloolik, where hunters sexually abusing their game was not uncommon (Rasmussen 1929), it was the shamans’ responsibility to make the guilty confess. If the latter refused to admit the facts, they risked death as revenge from the spirits of the outraged animals (Saladin d’Anglure 1980). 54 BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN The same belief prevails among the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic, where we have noted the cases of several men or women who not only had the reputation of having maintained amorous relations with invisible spirits, but had invisible offspring from them; Erotic dreams are also invoked as evidence of these relationships.

In the Igloolik region, these spirits are designated by the same term as in northern Alaska: ijiraq (the invisible one) (Rasmussen 1929; Saladin d’Anglure 1983). In Arctic Quebec, the male spirit (incubus) is called uirsaq and the female spirit (succubus) nuliaqsaq (Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk 1997; Fletcher and Kirmayer 1997; Saladin d’Anglure 1997a)14. In East Greenland, they are referred to as uizerq (Gessain 1975; Victor and Robert-Lamblin 1993), a kind of androgynous spirit that kills its victims after sexually possessing them.

While dreams have, in recent years, become the object of renewed interest among anthropologists, as evidenced by the number of publications devoted to them, they remain for many a phantasmatic object, an imaginary and unfinished reality, even if it is generally accepted that they reflect the dreamer’s lived experience, desires, and culture.

The new anthropology of dreams has clearly highlighted their cognitive, narrative, social, and aesthetic dimensions and has given rise to several insightful analyses;15 but some areas of uncertainty still remain, particularly concerning the relationship between dreams and sexuality, for which a Freudian interpretation still latently prevails, and with religion, towards which Christianity today displays a very reserved attitude.16 It is therefore understandable why erotic dreams have not received the attention they deserve from researchers who have recently focused on the relationship between dreams and shamanism. Thus, Perrin (1992, 1994), who devoted several publications to these relationships, does not explicitly address them.

While he clearly demonstrates the close links between sexuality and shamanism among the Guajiro he studied, he only alludes to (1992: 132) the “mystical” aspect, as Sternberg (1925) and Hamayon (1990) have already shown.

Among the Shipibo-Conibo, this type of marriage is more likely the culmination of a long process of preparation and learning. It characterizes, in fact,

17.

These plants, of which Arevalo (1985: 5) lists nearly twenty species, were added to yellow ayahuasca and chacruna; see notes 19 and 20 below. Chaumeil (1983) considers hallucinogen-induced dreams to be one of the essential components of Yagua shamanism. Mystical Marriage and Shamanic Power among the Shipibo and Inuit 57 access to the rank of meráya (high shaman).

But while many aspire to reach this level, few succeed and, above all, maintain it.18 There are almost as many cases of shamanic vocation as there are life stories of Shipibo shamans. We mentioned earlier the case of children predestined for shamanism and subjected from birth to rituals to develop the qualities necessary for their future role. For many others, training begins at the age of five or seven, often in the mosquito net of an ancestor, a father, or a shamanic uncle. For still others, it is in adulthood. Such was the case of the meráya whose testimony we presented, and whom we questioned on this point:

– Were there many shamans in your family?

– Yes, almost all of them were shamans.

When I was a child, I had no idea I would become a shaman. I was an only child and quite peaceful, but I dreamed a lot. I could sense where the animals were, where we could find the most fish that would come to visit us […]. It was at the age of twenty-four that the idea of becoming a shaman came to me. I then set out in search of knowledge about traditional medicine. I trained myself, without a guide […].

– How can one train oneself?

– For a while, I visited six Shipibo shamans in different regions to learn the rules I had to follow. I lived with them for a time. They were all meráya. I tried to synthesize the knowledge that was passed on to me, because each one had their own unique perspective. One had a good knowledge of plants, another of the world of water, another of the world of fire, another of the world of earth, and finally, of space […]. Some were friends. Others were relatives, close friends.

This made my learning easier […]. I didn’t take ayahuasca with them […].

This lasted two years. I stayed in each community for two or three months […]. Only then did I take ayahuasca¹ on my own […]. I asked Isco Nihua, a shaman, to prepare yellow ayahuasca² for me, because I didn’t know how to prepare it myself. I took it once, but nothing happened. So I thought that the spirit [yoshín] of the ayahuasca didn’t like me […]. After four days, I took it again. Then the trance [níshicon paení] began […]: then I took it again. Then came the visions. I heard a male voice saying to me, “What are you looking for with ayahuasca?” I replied that I wanted to learn.

The voice then asked me:

18.

According to several onánya, the importance of fasting and sexual abstinence to reach the level of meráya certainly explains their current scarcity.

The globalization of information and trade has broken the isolation of small indigenous communities and introduced all sorts of temptations and distractions that are not conducive to shamanic asceticism. Schooling has also sparked new aspirations among young people, and shamanic vocations are becoming rare even among onánya.

19.

This term of Quechua origin commonly refers to a decoction made from a mixture of several plants with a base plant, Banisteriopsis sp. (true ayahuasca, níshicon or ónicon in Shipibo), to which chacruna, Psychotria viridis (cáhua in Shipibo), is added (Arevalo 1985; Morin 1998).

20.

This is the yellow variety of banisteriopsis. (panshín óni in Shipibo, which distinguishes it from the white and dark brown varieties). 58 BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN What domain? Do you want to do good or bad things?

21. I answered that I wanted to do good things, seek peace, help people […].

This voice explained to me what I should and should not do, eat and should not eat, drink and should not drink, all in Shipibo.

When I took ayahuasca again, my visions became clearer, I was accepted by the spirits [yo-shín]

22. They began to cleanse the spiritual part, then the psychological part, then my whole body, because it was contaminated by the material world. Afterwards, they showed me the direction to take […]. They gave me a spiritual garment [tári] and all the necessary [invisible] attributes23 […].

– After this purification phase, how did you undertake your first shamanic journey?

– It was initially a psychological journey, for training. Consciousness then takes on different rhythms. I communicated with deceased shamans from my family; I called upon them to ask them about a number of things […]. Then, I undertook a more spiritual journey, without taking ayahuasca, to the world of water where I had contact with the jene chaíconibo [the underwater chaíconibo], the invisible and benevolent spirits of the water, who are distinct from boas and anacondas, unconscious spirits, and also from dolphins, malevolent spirits […]. For this, I used only tobacco and a decoction of marosa24.

– Could you give us some details about your encounter with the Jene Chaíconibo?

– I was in my dugout canoe on a lake when another canoe approached with two young girls on board, dressed like Shipibo women and perfumed with huáste (piri pirí25). They approached me and told me they lived underwater and had come to get me, […] that I shouldn’t be afraid. They helped me into their canoe. They had their pipes, and one of the girls blew tobacco smoke on me. Then it was as if the canoe sank, went down into the water. It was as if we had entered a huge hut. We felt nothing, we couldn’t breathe, the atmosphere was cold, […] there was no sun, […] it was like a rainy day with many clouds, […] we came across a path that led to a village, where we went. I was received in one of the huts; three people approached and said they wished to make contact with me. They affirmed they meant no harm to anyone and wished me only well. They invited me

21.

According to the informant, the good path was that of the onánya, who uses the magical power of plants to heal the sick; the bad path was that of the yobé, who specialized in the use and extraction of magical darts (Arevalo 1985: 7).

22. Yellow ayahuasca (panshín óni) is associated with animal spirit masters such as the boa, the grasshopper, and the chicua bird.

The song of the latter, through its variations, announces good or bad fortune (Arevalo 1985: 2).

23.

These attributes are usually: the crown of light (máiti), the breast necklace (páoti), the bouquet of fragrant herbs (móe), the magic stone (incánto), the tobacco pipe (shinítapon), the bow, arrows and magic thorns (canóti, pía, and huanín), the blowgun (tépi) and the flute (réhue) (Arevalo 1985; Gebhart-Sayer 1987).

24. Pfaffia iresinoides (Tournon et al. 1986: 116).

This plant is one of the shamanic plants onanyati rao and merayati rao used by the onanyati to learn healing, in the case of the former, and by the merayati rao to obtain special powers such as invisibility, animal transformation, etc., in the case of the latter (Tournon et al. 1986: 112).

25. Generic term for the species cyperus, of which our informant knows about thirty varieties used for curative or hallucinogenic purposes (Arevalo 1994; Chaumeil 1983). Mystical marriage and shamanic power among the Shipibo and the Inuit. It was mid-afternoon, but time had seemed very short […]. I was able to observe what was around me.

The huts were large boas, the boats too, the animals had the shape of fish.

The seats… in the huts. were water turtles […].

The two young chaíconibo girls wanted to have a closer relationship with me, but for that I needed to undergo another apprenticeship. It was actually a friendship […].

When they brought me back and I woke up, it was eleven o’clock in the morning the next day […]. Time was much shorter underwater than here.

– Do you have a guardian spirit of the opposite sex?

– Yes. She’s a chaíconi from space-6.

– Is it possible to have an emotional relationship with one’s guardian spirit?

– Yes, even a romantic one. There are several meráya who have spirit children with their spirit wives.

– How did you establish such a bond?

– When my apprenticeship as an onánya was already well advanced, I left my family and went alone, very far from everyone. For four months, I consumed only fruit and liquids. Two weeks after this new way of life began, a young man appeared to me: he looked exactly like a Shipibo, with his dugout canoe and fish-throwing arrows. I saw him several times before he told me where he came from, who he was, and what he wanted from me. He wanted us to be friends. Little by little, I grew accustomed to his presence. One day he came, accompanied by his sister. He told me they were just out for a walk, and that day I barely saw her, because they left quickly. They came back several times together, and one day they offered me something special to drink. After several encounters with the sister, they made it clear that they liked me, that they appreciated me. And since I liked them too, the brother told me he wanted me to marry his sister. I accepted. To prepare me for this marriage, they brought me huátse [piri-piri] plants and other very aromatic leaves, which I used for bathing.

This is how one must cleanse their body to approach the spirits. Without this cleansing, one cannot succeed, for our body is, as it were, contaminated by all sorts of things. Then he went to speak to his parents, and they agreed that I could marry the young woman. Both parents, the father and the mother, then came to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her, if she loved me […]. We reached an agreement, and they took me to their village […].

– This experience, did you only do it once, or with each spirit?

– I only did it once. One only does it once.

But if one continues one’s search with other worlds, one can also marry other spirits. After the first spiritual marriage, the spirit woman’s father prepares the shaman to have contact with other spirits so that he may acquire broader knowledge. Besides the chaíconibo, there are other spirits for whom there is another training, if one wishes to meet them. Only then can the shaman truly go out freely with the girl, have sexual relations with her, and acquire knowledge.

Questembetsa uses the expression “del espacio” or “del monte” interchangeably when referring to them.

These chaíconibo are in fact distinct from their underwater counterparts. They live in the open air, in the forest, on the shores of lakes or lagoons. They are also found in the celestial realm, close to that of the great cosmic spirits. 60 BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN new knowledge related to fishing, hunting, the home, social order, respect for the environment […].

This can last three months […]. There, it’s exactly like in our world, it’s as if I had a second family, in which I am husband, brother-in-law, son-in-law, with this difference that I could listen from very far away, see from very far away, receive communications from very far away. I could understand what a bird sang, its language, as well as that of dogs when they bark.

These were not visions; the chaíconibo are living, real people, true humans, who use plants to make themselves invisible when they wish […].

– So a powerful meráya can have several mystical wives?

– Yes, but one must be careful, because there are jealousies among spirits. There can be rivalry. That’s why it’s my spiritual father-in-law’s responsibility to open me up to other worlds, to choose other spiritual wives for me, in order to avoid conflicts […]. It’s important for great shamans to have at least one spiritual wife, because, as in ordinary life, she cares for him, guides him, and protects him.

– What is the relationship between your spiritual wife and your human wife?

– There’s jealousy, especially on the part of my spiritual wife, because she sees everything, unlike my human wife.

The latter is currently undergoing shamanic training, so I tell her about the relationship I have with my spiritual wife and I told her that she herself will have a relationship with a spiritual husband, and therefore there will be balance.

This long interview clearly illustrates the change in the mode of communication with spirits that the shamanic experience brings about. Indeed, we move from the chance dream, accessible to all27, to the induced dream28, specific to the shaman (with the help of plants and hallucinogens), to trance, to singing in a very high register, to bathing in aromatic plants; all actions which have in common the aim of pleasing the chaiconibo, of attracting them, of developing or reactivating their relations with humans. They constitute a kind of prerequisite for those spirits who wish to express their love for the shamans, their desire to establish a matrimonial alliance with them. It seems evident that this alliance takes on its broadest meaning in a cosmological perspective of the circulation of vital flows involving humans, plants, animals and cosmic forces, as Reichel-Dolmatoff (1968) or Descola (1996) have tried to show for the Amazon, Hamayon (1990) for Siberia, Fienup-Riordan (1994) or Oosten (1995) for the Inuit; But reducing the mystical marriage of shamans to a metaphor and shamanism to a position or an artificial construct, as some have attempted (Atkinson 1992), is far too simplistic and deprives us of a whole aspect of the social and religious life of Indigenous societies where shamanism prevails.

27. An anthropology of dreams among the Shipibo-Conibo would be worthwhile. It would certainly reveal the interesting distinctions observed by Descola (1986: 326-330; 1989; 1993: 122-139) and Taylor (1993) among the Achuar of Ecuador, with dreams that are omens, good or bad, whose interpretation, highly structural, uses metaphors, inversions, etc., and dreams with direct and literal intelligibility, involving the journeys of souls.

The dreams we have discussed so far belong more to this second type.

28. Chaumeil (1983: 115) notes among the Yagua an affinity between dream and shamanic trance; in both cases, it is a journey of the soul. Mystical marriage and shamanic power among the Shipibo and the Inuit 61 The apprentice shaman’s (Questembetsa) quest for knowledge was progressive, and his mystical marriage is like its culmination. It is because he imposed upon himself long, successive periods of fasting, dieting, and sexual abstinence that he was gradually accepted by increasingly powerful spirits, beginning with those of shamanic ancestors, then by those of ayahuasca (master spirits of certain species of plants and animals) who enthroned him as an onánya, along with the chaíconibo of the water, the higher spirits. He undertakes his first shamanic journey without the aid of ayahuasca, into the underwater world, one of the most important in this lowland ecosystem.

These are human-like spirits who guide him into their invisible world by fumigating him with tobacco.

These are the first spirits of the opposite sex to take an interest in him and show him affection. They become auxiliary spirits, but only on a first level: that of friendship.29 He will leave it at that for the moment, while calling upon their help when needed.

These underwater spirits appear under various names in the beliefs of many Amazonian peoples, and several authors have succinctly described the amorous relationships they seek to develop with humans. Chaumeil (1983: 174-176) briefly mentions the “water people” of the Yagua who have turtles as stools and fish as corn.

But it is with a mermaid that Bardal, a mythical hero, enters into a marital relationship. In return, he receives an abundance of fish from his mermaid.

For the Ecuadorian Achuar, Taylor (1993: 437-439) and Descola (1986: 154, 346-348) provide us with some scattered and anecdotal information of great interest about the tsunki, anthropomorphic underwater spirits: [T]he hero of such a tale will say that he met a very beautiful tsunki woman who, in a dream, seduced him, quite honestly presented him to her father, and then, with the latter’s blessing, took him as her husband. He will then recount his double life: in dreams, at night, with his spouse and his tsunki allies; by day with his real relatives; until the moment when… Following a fit of jealousy by one or the other wife, the tsunki barred him from their world. An experience of this kind is the necessary beginning of shamanic training, for these aquatic spirits are the ultimate source of the powers that allow one to heal or inflict disease […]. Taylor 1993: 437-438. Descola (1986: 346) adds: “Human relations with the Tsunki are particularly devoid of immediate utilitarian concerns and most often take the form of a marriage alliance.” Undoubtedly, an exhaustive review of the ethnographic literature on the Amazonian lowlands would reveal many other examples of this kind. In a recent article, Descola (1996: 65) distinguishes three modes of relationship between humans and animals: seduction, magical coercion, and friendship. We believe that these three modes can coexist within the same society and that the traits that characterize them are also found in human/spirit relationships. 62 BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN symbolism of stools

– water turtles as benches; black caimans as boats, etc.

– and a close relationship with shamanic power.

The marital alliance with underwater spirits, as described by Taylor, Descola, and Chaumeil, was also mentioned to us for some Shipibo-Conibo shamans; the majority of them, however, were chosen as spouses by Cháiconibo of the forest (or of space), as is particularly the case with the great shamans (meráya).

In the description given to us above by Questembetsa, the modalities of such an alliance follow the model of everyday life; With this difference, however, that in the shaman’s account, it is the Cháiconi girl’s brother who chooses her future Shipibo brother-in-law. He then presents his sister to him and introduces him to their parents. In practice, it is the suitor vying for a young woman’s hand who must demonstrate his hunting and fishing skills by offering her family the best game and fish.

Among the Shipibo-Conibo, the rule of residence is matri-uxorilocal (Morin 1998), and the rule of descent is cognatic with a patrilineal bias. Despite this difference, from the Shipibo perspective, there is no doubt that this is indeed an alliance; all the more so since the term Cháiconibo is constructed from the root Chái-, which means “brother-in-law” for a man; -coni, meaning “true”; and -bo, “humans, people.” That is to say: the true brothers-in-law.

The problematic nature of the alliance with a spirit woman has been well highlighted by Erikson (1987: 113), due to the fact that in the mystical alliance, there is no reciprocity or quid pro quo, the spirit allies providing both the wife and the game, whereas in the common Shipibo alliance, there is often a simple exchange of sisters (Morin 1998) and always the gift of a daughter with, in return, the labor and game of the son-in-law.30 Daillant (in this issue) proposes a solution to this apparent paradox, arguing that the shaman’s human wife makes masato (cassava beer), which the spirits are very fond of, and which is offered to them during major ritual feasts.

The Cháiconibo also have a reputation among the Shipibo-Conibo for being great drinkers of masato. It is claimed that they infiltrate all the major nighttime gatherings to drink with the humans, and that they disappear at dawn without the slightest sign of intoxication. We will propose another solution to the question of reciprocity later.

Unlike the Achuar described above by Descola, the utilitarian purpose of Shipibo mystical marriage is very clearly emphasized by all our informants.

The mystical wife becomes the shaman’s principal spirit helper and manages his relations with the spirit world. It is the chaíconi father-in-law who decides the future of his shaman son-in-law, who prepares him to forge links with other worlds, and who even chooses other mystical wives for him.

Starting on the 30th, when the son-in-law satisfies his in-laws, they may offer him one or two other daughters in marriage. Sororal polygyny was a common practice among the Shipibo; it is still practiced in the most traditional families. Mystical Marriage and Shamanic Power among the Shipibo and Inuit 63 The moment he enters into such an alliance, the shaman never lacks fish or game. It is his wife who guides him in caring for patients, who tells him which remedies to use, who helps him solve the problems presented to him, who provides designs for decorating ceramics, who warns him of threatening dangers, and who ultimately helps him triumph over his enemies. Comparable data are lacking for the Shipibo-Conibo’s closest neighbors, but some can be found in ethnographic literature for other Amazonian groups. Those concerning the mystical marriage of shamans among the Chimane of Bolivia, studied by Daillant (this issue), are strikingly similar.

Among the Huachipaire and the Zapiteri of southwestern Peru, studied by Califano (1988), the mystical marriage is not performed with human-like spirits.

But with animal spirits that transform into women, to live with the shaman in a conjugal relationship parallel to that which he knows among humans. He can thus acquire several animal wives from the different species of the forest, such as the tiger, the monkey, the tapir, deer, etc., and have children with each. He also has the ability to transform himself into an animal.

The wife of the species he is preparing to hunt ensures the guide easy and plentiful prey.

This scenario, which is found in other regions of South America (Crépeau 1997), is similar to the Siberian examples analyzed by Hamayon (1990). Despite the differences noted in the examples above regarding the relationships between shamans and auxiliary spirits, the reference to the marriage alliance and conjugality appears as a constant in regions as distant as South America and Siberia.

This is what Sternberg had discovered in the 1920s, but which he was unable to convince his Russian colleagues of. It was believed that the spirit woman, protector of the shaman, and the latter’s cross-dressing were merely a remnant of matriarchy.

This is also the interpretation Eliade (1968) gave in his famous essay on shamanism, which had the effect of diverting interest from mystical marriage. Eliade was indeed convinced that the essence of shamanism lay in the symbolism of death and resurrection.³² This is undoubtedly why ethnographers of the Inuit region have never been interested in the question of mystical marriage. Most of the classical ethnography about the Inuit, silent on this subject, was in fact carried out before the publication of Sternberg’s work, and the remainder after Eliade’s essay. It therefore seemed worthwhile to re-examine the case of the Inuit, who share with Siberian peoples a long history of adaptation to the Arctic environment and with Amazonian peoples a number of Pan-American traditions and representations.

31.

This evolutionary interpretation dominated the humanities from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. It influenced both Marxism and Freudianism.

32.

This is also the perspective adopted by Blaisel (1993) in his comparative study of shamanic initiation among the Inuit, based on early ethnographies. We are far from suggesting that this theme is not essential to Inuit shamanism, but it only acquires its true meaning in relation to the mystical alliance with the spirits. 64 BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN

Invisible Allies and Mystical Lineage

A generic term among the Inuit designates the invisible, human-like spirits we mentioned at the beginning of this article: the term ijiraq (plural: ijirait or ijiqqat), known from northern Alaska to the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, whose meaning refers to invisibility. In fact, this invisibility calls for some commentary. It is indeed controlled by the spirits themselves, who would be visible to all if they did not possess the ability to elude human perception. We saw earlier, in relation to the Shipibo-Conibo, how the chaíconibo could make themselves invisible thanks to herbs with magical powers, and how they could also allow certain humans of their own choosing to benefit from this particular power. Let us also add that humans sometimes see these spirits, but this is always by chance; And when they begin to question these “Shipibo” they don’t recognize, the spirits vanish from their sight.

The Inuit share this belief; but they also think these spirits possess other means of escaping human observation, either by creating a thick fog or by inducing blindness, resulting in de facto invisibility. Their actions can also affect memory, temporarily erasing all recollection of an encounter or interaction with them from human memory, which is also a form of invisibility.

These interactions with fluctuating effects on human consciousness are reminiscent of the relationship between dream activity, memory, and consciousness.

Amarualik, the first shaman husband of our elderly Inuit informant, Iqallijuq, was approached by two invisible Ijirait women. Distraught by the death of his first wife, he had gone alone inland, far from his camp, far from the area heavy with footprints, typical of inhabited areas, where spirits do not like to venture.

These alluring women appeared to him and sought to console him in his grief. They took him deep into the mountains of Baffin Island, to their camp, overflowing with caribou meat and fat (the most prized delicacies of the Inuit). Hunting was easy for the Ijirait, for they possess superhuman speed and strength, which they can bestow upon the humans they choose. There, they made him their husband, and he led a happy life, without a thought for his family. One day, however, he remembered that his parents were waiting for him with the spoils of his summer hunt; so he wanted to return home to bring them the hides of the caribou he had killed. His “invisible” wives let him go, making him promise to return as soon as possible.

But upon returning home, he remembered nothing and was unable to give any details about his long absence, except that he had brought back an exceptional hunting haul… After that, every time he went hunting inland, his family would appear and take him back for a while. Things took a turn for the worse, however, the day his parents, taking advantage of one of his returns, decided to marry him off to an Inuit woman of their choosing (our informant).

The shaman’s spirit women did not accept this and began to torment him day and night, even going so far as to chase him back into the tent where he slept with his human wife.

When she, intrigued by the sounds of voices and the strange phenomena she perceived, questioned him about it, he claimed there was nothing to it and that it was all in his imagination. Then he fell gravely ill and died.

But shortly before, his memory returned; he confessed everything to his wife, explaining that she herself had not been tormented by these spirits because of her Catholic baptism. A few years later, she had a son with a new husband: he was named Amarualik, after the deceased shaman, as was the custom.

When the child reached adulthood… He was married to a young Inuit woman, and then he dreamed that two very beautiful young women came to visit him and showed him great affection. They were the Ijirait wives of his namesake, who mistook him for him. He refused their advances, but they took their revenge on his family, causing illness in his children.

The same thing happened every time they returned to visit him in his dreams and he rejected them.

Another shaman, after the death of his parents, also entered into an alliance with an Ijirait woman, who from then on ensured him great success in caribou hunting. Then he married an Inuit woman and converted to Catholicism. One day, while he was inland hunting caribou, he was approached by Ijirait people who told him to come and live with them. He begged them to let him return to say goodbye to his wife and family and promised to join them afterward. They agreed. Back home, he fell ill and informed his family that after his death, he would go to live with the ijirait, for he had made a covenant with one of them. At the end of the world, he would join his Inuit family in heaven. 65 Many such cases were recounted to us in the Igloolik region. In a neighboring village on Baffin Island, in Clyde River, an elderly man we met during the winter of 1998 recounted being married to an invisible woman, a tarriaksuk, and having a daughter by her. His shaman grandfather had also been married to such a spirit woman.

These are human-like spirits who, like the ijirait, can make themselves invisible at will. They dwell within the rocky cliffs that border the sea.

These spirits had become Christian, like the Inuit. They had the same types of places of worship as them, hunted the same game.

But they cannot normally be seen and they leave no tracks in the snow. He had to separate from his spirit family at the request of the Tarriaksuit themselves, for fear, he said, of being accused of being a bad Christian in his Inuit parish. And so his human wife and daughter took on the features of his spirit wife and daughter, whom he never saw again.

In the Belcher Islands, further south in Hudson Bay, it is said that a woman, Quqsulaat, to whom shamanic powers were attributed, disappeared one day from the camp where her companions had abandoned her in the company of another woman. News of her was received much later by a man named Qarvik, who gave our informant, Akuliaq, information about her.

The following details: He was walking alone in the tundra when he met a man he had never seen before. He approached him and they walked together for some time. Like Qarvik.

33. It is from him that we have this part of the story.

34. Akuliaq died in Inukjuak in the early 1970s, over eighty years old: he wrote this story for us in syllabic script in a notebook we had given him to record his life story. 66 BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN were beginning to sympathize with him; he wanted to accompany him to his camp, which the other man agreed to. An entrance then opened in the rock, right in front of them. They entered the porch where there were four dogs. Inside the dwelling, which closely resembled a white man’s house, he saw an old woman, the stranger’s wife, their son, and their daughter, two young people.

The stranger invited Qarvik to stay for several days.

The old woman listened attentively to Qarvik’s stories. She confessed to him that she had once lived among the Inuit. She looked very old and walked with difficulty.

The stranger then went off by himself with his wife, and when they reappeared, she had become a young woman again. Her husband had devoured her and thus restored her youth. That evening, they went to bed, and his host’s daughter joined Qarvik under his blanket and slept with him, without anyone objecting.

The stranger was a Tuurngaq, and his wife was a Quqsulaat.

The following evening, he spoke at length with his guest.

The Tuurngaq were once as numerous as the Inuit; But only his family remained on the island and his brother’s on the mainland.

The next morning, Qarvik wanted to return home, thinking his family was worried about his absence.

The tuurngaq’s son let him out, but no sooner had he left than all traces of habitation had vanished; the entrance had closed by itself. After two weeks with his family, Qarvik went hunting again inland and, without knowing how, found himself at the entrance to the tuurngaq’s house. As soon as the tuurngaq’s daughter saw him, she begged him to come to her room and sleep with her… he couldn’t resist. He thus spent two weeks with the tuurngaq’s family. He then became afraid he would never be able to return home and asked to leave, despite the young woman’s objections. Our informant’s grandmother had known Quqsulaat very well; she was his former companion in misfortune. They often hunted together. After Quqsulaat married a tuurngaq, she continued to supply him with game for a long time.

These various Inuit examples show that marriages with human-like spirits are not uncommon among the Inuit and that they have persisted, despite Christianization, whether with ijirait, tarriaksuit, or tuurngait.

This phenomenon seems to have escaped classical ethnographers and deserves exhaustive research. We have nevertheless found in the archives *manus*.

This is the name given throughout the Inuit Arctic to the auxiliary spirits of shamans (tuurngait in the plural).

36. Apart from the example of the Inuk from Clyde River who had to leave his spirit family because of his membership in the Anglican Church, we noted in the late 1980s the case of a resident of Igloolik, a practicing Anglican, who, shortly before his death, confessed to his family, to their great surprise, that he had entered into an alliance with the ijirait, with whom he would live until the end of the world.

This is a theme we had already heard in these terms in the late 1940s. In Igloolik, it is believed that many Inuit, primarily shamans, live among the ijirait with their spirit family.

37.

These three categories of spirits are distinguished by certain traits and share a number of characteristics. All are inurajait, human-like spirits; all have the ability to become invisible, and in this sense, they are ijirait, or tarriaksuit; All are also tuurngait, meaning they can become the guardian spirits of shamans and their spouses.

References

to these spirits vary by region. In Igloolik, they are primarily referred to as ijirait, on the mountainous coast of Baffin Island as tarriaksuit, and on the eastern coast of Hudson Bay, as well as in the Belcher Islands, as tuurngait. All are believed to inhabit houses which, according to some of S. Frederiksen’s writings, are the subject of a Hudson Bay shaman, Ijikki, who had taken his auxiliary spirit, named Akkaqut, as his wife. Both male and female shamans could form such alliances and, above all, have offspring with their spirit-spouses.

This corresponds well to the Amazonian situations we encountered among the Shipibo and that Daillant describes for the Chimane. Hamayon, on the other hand, believes these alliances are sterile as far as Siberia is concerned.

While these alliances were frequent, they were also fragile and problematic due to the demands of the spirits on their human spouses. Sometimes the death of the human was the condition for the perpetuation of their conjugal bond with their spirit spouse, as we have seen in several examples, whether it was death in the human sense of the term or devouring followed by regeneration, as described in the story of Quqsulaat. Spirit spouses were frequently jealous of human spouses. Sometimes it was the human spouses who were jealous of the spirits… If we return to the case of the Shipibo-Conibo, this fragility of the mystical alliance is a recurring theme in interviews with shamans. A female healer (raomis) was once approached by a chaiconi who wanted to marry her. She maintained an emotional relationship with him for a time, but she couldn’t keep it a secret, and her companion left her. However, the most difficult conditions for maintaining a marital relationship with a spirit spouse lie in the strict diet, rigorous sexual abstinence, and ethical rules to which the shaman’s family members are bound. Thus, Isco Nihue, a meráya-yobé of Pahoyan, had attained a high degree of power after his marriage to a chaiconi. She assisted him in his healing practices, protected him from attacks by other yobé, and provided him with abundant game and fish, until the day he returned home after a long fast and caught one of his cousins in bed with his wife. He tried to avenge this affront with a duel using a huéshati (a knife made from a toucan’s beak blade).

The moral defilement was such that the chaiconi wife left the shaman forever. They had two children together, a son and a daughter, who, after their mother’s departure, continued to assist their father, becoming his spirit helpers. Taylor (1993) writes that among the Achuar, accounts of alliances with the tsunki spirits always come from shamans who have lost their spirit-wife, because one cannot speak of this relationship without compromising it. It therefore appears that while mystical marriage is fragile and unstable for the various reasons listed above, mystical lineage is much more stable and provides the shaman with the spiritual support he needs to practice his art.

This brings us back to the other form of mystical lineage, which we discussed at the beginning of this article. That is to say, procreation by human women with traits resembling those of white people (see Daillant in this issue for a similar remark about the “interior people” among the Chimane: all also live in inaccessible places, such as near the Baffin glaciers for the former and inside cliffs or rocky hills for the latter two). 68 BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN of children predestined for shamanism, following erotic dreams involving a spirit. Might we not have, with these two modes of filiation and alliance, the elements of a shamanic kinship system, where shaman-men ally themselves with spirits to procreate auxiliary spirits, and where spirit-men ally themselves with human women to procreate future shamans?

The paradoxes that Hamayon (1990) and Erikson (1987) believed they encountered would find Perhaps this is their explanation. To this shamanic kinship that unites humans with spirits, we should add another link, at least as important and too often neglected by ethnographers: the homonymous link.

This link is very strong among the Inuit, where a spirit name was sometimes chosen for a newborn and constituted a presumption of shamanic destiny (angakkuksaqtuq).

When this child reached adulthood and embarked on shamanic training, their namesake spirit became their auxiliary spirit (Saladin d’Anglure 1997), and they were given a new name. Or again, when a young child suffered from a serious illness, a shaman might give them the name of one of their auxiliary spirits for protection.

This spirit name could also lead them onto the path of shamanism, as could receiving a shaman’s name. In all the shamanistic societies we visited, certain shamanic powers These practices were transmitted along with the shaman’s name or the names of his auxiliary spirits.

This is true not only among the Inuit but also among the Shipibo.

Among the Yukaghir of Siberia, we met an old man who had been given a shaman’s name at birth; the shaman had subsequently begun to initiate him into shamanism and had given him a drum.

The shaman’s death and the advent of communism then interrupted the process.

When the gender (or social sex) of the person bearing the name (the eponym), or the gender of the auxiliary spirit, differed from the gender of the person receiving it, all sorts of disguises could be imposed on the child or the shaman.

These included disguises of hairstyle, clothing, kinship terms, tools and tasks, and voice (singing in a very high register), which led Czaplicka (1914) to speak of an “other sex” of Siberian shamans, a concept which we have taken up and developed under the term “third sex” with regard to the Inuit (Saladin d’Anglure 1986, 1988, 1992).

But many researchers are still reluctant when it comes to introducing a problem of gender and cross-dressing into the study of shamanism; they prefer to stick to the register of sexuality where models inspired by the psychological sciences dominate. Thus, based on a few very marginal cases of Chukchi or Inuit (Siberian) shamans, cross-dressers and homosexuals (or bisexuals) described by Bogoras (1904), it was believed that homosexuality could be made a characteristic of this shamanism (Malaurie 1992), whereas the vast majority of shamans in Northeast Siberia are cross-dressers (to varying degrees) and heterosexual.38 The same remark could be applied to studies done on the < Berdaches > Native Americans.

In the case of Amazonian shamans, no study, to our knowledge, deals with the gender of shamans. Regarding the Shipibo-Conibo, the only form of cross-dressing that we [see] Mystical Marriage and Shamanic Power among the Shipibo and the Inuit 69 We must return for a moment to mystical sexuality, with which we began this article by discussing a category of incubi and succubi, mentioned by some Inuit of Ammassalik (Eastern Greenland).

This is the uizerq (or uirsaq in Arctic Quebec).

According to Gessain (1975), this hermaphroditic spirit becomes feminine with a male partner and masculine with a female partner; a sexual relationship with it is fatal when it involves an ordinary human. On the other hand, if it involves a shaman, it is a source of great power.

The opposite of the situation where the shaman disguised himself to adapt to his auxiliary spirit or his mystical spouse, here it is the spirit that adapts to the sex/gender of the shaman in order to mate with him.

This is close to the Christian belief in demonic possession, where the devil was attributed the same hermaphroditism and the same capacity. If spirit/human relationships have an impact on the field of kinship (alliance and filiation), they also have an impact on anthroponymy, sexuality, and gender expression.

This gives their study a complexity and difficulty that the first ethnographers did not suspect (see Daillant’s exemplary article in this issue). To illustrate this complexity, let us cite a short example from our ethnography among the Shipibo-Conibo: in the village of Pahoyan, we met a little girl who bore the name Nete Rama, a name of Shipibo appearance, like many we encountered in The genealogies. By chance, one of the girl’s brothers works for us, and during a conversation about the Cháiconibo, he told us that his sister had a Cháiconi name, that of a spiritual aunt, the daughter of his shaman grandfather and a Cháiconi woman. Some time before the girl’s birth, her father had a dream in which he was visited by a Cháiconi woman he didn’t know; she addressed him by her Shipibo name and, to his surprise, told him she was his half-sister.

The shamans we consulted took this dream as a sign, and it was decided to name the newborn girl after the spirit sister… All of this brings us back to the dream with which we began our exploration of relationships with spirits, a dream that is essential reading for anyone interested in shaman/spirit relationships. What we observed during the shamanic sessions was vocal in nature.

When the mystical wife of the The shaman sings with his mouth. His chants are then expressed in a very high register, with a falsetto voice.

Among the Yagua, Chaumeil (1983) notes a type of hyper-high shamanic chant with a strong feminine connotation, which he suggests is the language of the spirits. We also observed that several shamans were either only sons, the eldest of their siblings, or belonged to male-dominated families.

The Shipibo-Conibo prefer to have daughters rather than sons because, for them, having a daughter means eventually having a male workforce to help them, due to the prevailing matri-uxorilocality. Often, shamans do not respect this rule. They practice patri-virilocality and have a more turbulent marital life than the average man, with numerous wives and frequent separations. Perhaps they are in a more feminine situation than other men, and this characteristic takes on meaning because of their privileged relationships with The spirits (see Hamayon in this issue)? 70 BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN To conclude this article, which undoubtedly raises more questions than it answers, we would like to mention another point of convergence between our Inuit and Shipibo data.

This concerns the importance of human-like spirits in human origin myths.

Among the Inuit, the ijirait are believed to descend from the same Inuit woman as the Inuit themselves, as is also the case for Indigenous peoples and Europeans. They constitute a branch of humanity that can become invisible and possesses abilities (physical strength, speed, invisibility, etc.) that allow them to do without tools and weapons; they represent, in a way, an idealized humanity.

The cháiconibo, for their part, are the descendants of a Shipibo tribe that remained faithful to the Inca precepts at the dawn of history. As a reward, the Inca gifted them the plant that grants invisibility.

These cháiconibo are described as having the most beautiful traditional clothing, with the most exquisite designs and body paint; they are said to speak the purest language, easily catch the finest game and fish, and never become angry… (Illius 1987; Gebhart-Sayer 1987; Bertrand-Ricoveri 1994; Morin 1998). In short, an ideal humanity that serves as a point of reference in times so troubled by the clash of civilizations. In both cases, these invisible spirits are conceived as a primordial humanity from which ethnicity draws its foundations and shamanism its powers.39 Far from being perceived as metaphorical parents by the societies that refer to them, they are described as part of the indigenous reality, the spiritual and human environment, inseparable from the natural environment. They are at the heart of what One could call the animistic ideology of the societies studied, stripping this concept of the evolutionary attributes that the pioneers of anthropology felt compelled to give it (Descola 1996; Tylor 1876-1878).

39.

This theme is undoubtedly recurrent among other Amazonian groups, notably the Shuar of Ecuador, who see the tsunki as descendants of an ancient humanity possessing shamanic power (Pelizzaro 1980). Furthermore, the Chimane studied by Daillant (this issue) excel in everything, like the cháiconibo and the ijirait; they are taller, stronger, better hunters, powerful shamans, etc. Mystical marriage and shamanic power among the Shipibo and the Inuit.

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SUMMARY/ABSTRACT

BERNARD SALADIN D’ANGLURE AND FRANÇOISE MORIN Mystical marriage and shamanic power among the Shipibo The authors adopt a neo-comparatist ethnographic approach to study shamanic mediations among two indigenous peoples of the Americas, from the Peruvian Amazon and the Inuit of Canadian Nunavut. They are initially interested in dream sexuality between spirits and humans, and then in the kinship relations (alliance and filiation) of shamans with their spirit helpers.

These relationships are a source of power, either determining new shamanic destinies or consecrating the end of apprenticeship and the mediating power of the great shamans with the spirits. Cross-dressing, whether perceptible to the senses or symbolic, and androgyny express the shamans’ ability to transcend all boundaries. Keywords: Saladin d’Anglure, Morin, shamanism, sex, gender, cross-dressing, androgyny, dream, mystical marriage, Amazonia, Shipibo, Arctic, Inuit. Mystical Marriages and Shamanistic Powers among the Shipibo of Amazonia (Peru) and the Inuit from Nunavut (Canada).

The authors adopt a neo-comparatist ethnographic approach to study cases of shamanistic mediation in two aboriginal peoples of the Americas. They first look into dream sexuality between spirits and humans, and then into the kinship (by marriage and descent) of shamans with their helping spirits.

These relationships are a source of power. They may engender future shamans or they may sanction the end of the learning period and consecrate the mediating power of great shamans with the spirits. Shamans can cut across all boundaries through androgyny and through transvestism, be it symbolic or concrete (ie, its outward signs can be seen, heard or smelled). 7P4 Françoise Morin Department of Sociology University of Toulouse-le Mirail 5, allées Antonio-Marchado 31058 Toulouse Cedex France