Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon

Chapter 4: Creation, Cosmology, and Ecological Time

147 4 Creation, Cosmology, and Ecological Time This chapter discusses the metaphysical and ecological principles through which the Baniwa pajés of the upper Aiary River understand their universe (Hekwapi). The most knowledgeable sources on this are the experienced and powerful jaguar shamans. Here I seek to build on and revise previously published versions of cosmology (Wright 1998) with the information provided by several of the highly respected and powerful jaguar shamans still alive at the beginning of this century. Two of them have since died, one through old age and the other because of a serious accident. It is important that their versions of the universe, complementary to Mandu’s, be known. First,the stories of creation published in Cornelio et al. ’s Waferinaipe Ianheke (Wisdom of our ancestors, 1999), based on research with Baniwa elders in the 1970s and 1990s, did not contain the story of the first universe and the universe child, Hekwapi ienipe. This evidently did not please some Baniwa elders, who pointed out this error and wanted the “correct” version to be published in its entirety. The opening episodes of that version are presented here. 148 Shamanic Knowledge and Power in the Baniwa Universe Second, I am convinced that a different way of seeing the interrelations among the levels of the universe could better reveal several principles that dynamically give it shape. This chapter is especially indebted to Irving Goldman’s Hehenewa Metaphysics (2004). This work provides important insights and ethnography about a people who are neighbors to the Baniwa of the Aiary and who share many aspects of cosmology and shamanism. For the purposes of this chapter and this book, Goldman’s work is the most significant ethnography of indigenous religions of the Northwest Amazon ever published. Third, this chapter develops more deeply an ecological understanding of the universe and its relation to shamanism,building on a long line of research among the neighboring Tukanoan-speaking peoples by Reichel-Dolmatoff (1985,1989,1996),his daughter,Elizabeth Reichel (1999), Janet Chernela (1993), Kaj Arhem (2001), and others. Finally Hill’s book on the Wakuenai (Kuripako)“trickster”myths (2009) about“Made-from-Bone”presents versions that are,in many aspects, similar but distinct from those told by Hohodene and Dzauinai jaguar shamans of the Aiary River.Thus it is appropriate to present the two traditions as variations and seek to understand their differences in relation to distinct historical contexts. What this chapter attempts to do is systematically think through key features of the Baniwa cosmos: (1) relations among the worlds above and below the world of humans,(2) the kinds of knowledge and power attributed to the creator deity and to the great spirits of the Other World, (3) the material and nonmaterial forms this knowledge and power take and how these are transmitted from ancestors to descendants; (4)the pajés’powers in universe-making, as evidenced in the sacred narratives; and last but not least, (5) the “ecological metaphor” inherent to the arrangement of levels of the cosmos. The ecological metaphor assists in understanding Creation, Cosmology, and Ecological Time 149 the arrangement of critical norms and values situated at different levels. the universe as a whole One of the points to be examined is how and why the jaguar shamans’ views of the cosmos show an asymmetry between the “Other World” (Apakwa Hekwapi or Apa-kuma), the primordial and eternal world, the world of the deities and great spirits, and the “World Below,”called “Place of Our Bones”(Wapinakwa), the world of the bones of the deceased, the souls of the animals, and a series of worlds of different and strange “peoples,” all of whom are images of a proto-humanity that may come into existence“in another end of the world,” as the Baniwa pajés say. The nature of this asymmetry can be understood through the qualities of the different“peoples,”spirits, and deities of the Other World. These qualities are expressed in shamans’ exegeses about each level of the universe. The levels of the Other World can be seen as“magnified versions”(Fausto 2008) of each of the principal “specialists”outlined in table 1 (chapter 1). Apakwa Hekwapi and Wapinakwa are normally accessible only to the pajés. The importance of presenting the universe as a whole is in placing humanity (or This World) in proper perspective both spatiotemporally and as part of an interrelated process between...