Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power, and Healing among Chilean Mapuche

CHAPTER 1. Introduction: The Gendered Realm of the Foye Tree

CHAPTER 1 Introduction: The Gendered Realm of the Foye Tree Foye tree, I am calling your path to the high sky, your path beside the transparent earth. I am invoking you, Father God Foye; I am giving you signs, Mother God Foye. Put yourself in front of his heart, of his head, Old Man Foye of the eastern lands from above. Old Woman Foye of the high sky, of the earth, of the four directions. Old Man Foye of the four dawns, warrior of the four wars. Send us from above water from waterfalls; lighten up the powers of the original earth. —rogAtion By MAchi José, DeceMBer 21, 2001 (All trAnslAtions into english Are Mine) Since 1991, when I first began working with Mapuche shamans in the Bio-Bío, Araucanía, and Los Lagos regions of southern Chile, I have been intrigued by the myriad meanings of the foye tree, also known as canelo (Drimys winteri), and its connection with the many gendered dimensions of shamanic powers, identities, and practices (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2). Foye trees are sacred trees of life that connect the natural, human, and spirit worlds and allow Mapuche shamans, or machi, to participate in the forces that permeate the cosmos. They are symbols of machi medicine, and machi use the bitter leaves and bark to exorcise evil spirits, as an antibacterial for treating wounds, and to treat colds, rheumatism, stomach infections, and ringworm. Foye trees also serve a political purpose. During colonial times Mapuche used them as symbols of peace during parleys and for deceptive purposes in setting up ambushes.1 Today, machi use foye trees to bind ritual congregations together in collective ngillatun rituals and as symbols of Mapuche identity and resistance to national ideologies and practices. Foye trees also express spirits’ perceptions of machi’s gender identities. The masculine and feminine aspects Figure 1.1. Chile, showing the research area. Figure 1.2. The southern Mapuche regions of Chile. 4 Shamans of the Foye Tree of the foye tree and its white, hermaphroditic flowers legitimate machi’s ritual transvestism, their sexual variance, and their co-gendered ritual identities (during rituals they move between masculine and feminine gender polarities or combine the two), which mark machi as different from ordinary women and men.2 Chilean national discourses construe machi as sexual deviants who voluntarily engage in gender crossing. Mapuche believe machi gender identities are determined by spirits who subject machi to a series of hierarchical gendered relationships which sometimes result in sexual variance among machi (Fig. 1.3). The night before he said the prayer quoted in the epigraph to this chapter, Machi José had performed a healing ritual at his home in which he mounted his step-notched foye tree altar and pounded his painted drum (kultrun) to propitiate ancestral and nature spirits, as well as Catholic and national figures, to help him divine and heal. He wore women’s clothes to seduce the spirits. José donned a purple head scarf and a black shawl pinned by a silver brooch. He flattered the spirits with stories of power and begged them for spiritual knowledge: “You have all the power . . . You have power of the heart. You have power of the head . . . Look at me. I am not a machi because of my own choice. I am your bud, your child, your humble servant . . . I kneel before you. I beg you to blow me your healing knowledge, your remedies. Have pity on me.” José rocked from side to side as he beat his drum. His head rolled loosely as he entered into trance. Once the spirits were present, José assumed masculine, feminine, and co-gendered identities for purposes of healing. When he mounted his step-notched axis mundi, or tree of life (rewe), which connects the human and spirit worlds, he traveled in ecstatic flight to other worlds as a masculine master of animals and a mounted warrior. José called on male ancestral warriors, Chilean generals, and Jesus to help him exorcise illness and misfortune from his patient’s body. He placed crossed knives behind his patient’s head and sprinkled firewater first around the patient’s bed and then around the outside of the house. José also became a feminine bride possessed by spirits, embodying Old Moon Woman, the morning star, and the Virgin Mary, in order to reintegrate patients into their communities. He rubbed this patient’s body...