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Poimandres # 5: Brazilian Spiritual 4.0

Poimandres # 6: Brazilian Spiritual 4.0

Among the Asurini, shamanistic rituals, known as "pajelança", are performed frequently, mobilizing the whole group. The majority of the men participate as pajé in these rituals, helped by assistants and by the women singers, who also have the task of preparing ritual porridge. "Pajelança" (shamanism) includes two types of rituals: the maraká (song and dance) and the petymwo (massage and smoke treatment), executed in order to invoke the spirits with whom the shamans enter into contact, as well as to remove the cause of the sickness from the body of the patient and to transmit to the body the “remedy” (muynga) that the shamans receive, at that time, in the state of transe (therapeutic rituals). In these rituals, the shaman also transmits to the patient and the children of the village ynga, something like “vital force”, translated in Asurini as “heart”, that is, that which beats, that has life. The maraká is also realized as a propitiatory ritual for spirits identified as animals of the forest, like wild pig (ta(*z)aho) and deer (arapoá).

The shamans enter into contact with spirits that fit into the categories of what can be called “guardian spirits", subdivided into species that include individuals identified by proper names. These beings, who reproduce the world of the humans, inhabit certain regions of the cosmos. They are intermediaries between the shamans and another category of beings not identified individually and who do not enter into direct contact with the shamans, and which can be called “unique categories".

Like the shamans, the guardian spirits are intermediaries between men and the unique categories and assist humans to combat the evils of the anhynga. In order to become familiar with the spirits and participate in their world, the Asurini shaman goes through an initiation, that is, a training in order to attain and control the state of transe – interpreted as the “death”of the pajé, from spirit attacks -, through dance and the blowing of tobacco smoke. In order to support these attacks, the pajé manipulates substances (ka´a) that enter into his body. The training of the shaman consists in “taking them” from the spirit in question. He also should learn how to handle certain instruments, such as whistles, that make the sound of the spirits and come from the supernatural world.

Besides the rituals realized for the health of the inhabitants of the village, the shamans perform propitiatory rituals to guarantee subsistence, such as the Tazaho (wild pig) ritual in order to attract and locate the herds of this animal in the forest. Another propitiatory ritual, performed together with the wild pig ritual, is the Arapoá (deer) which recalls the myth in which this animal gave garden products to women, in a time when the Asurini didn’t know these products.

Along with the therapeutic and propitiatory rituals, there are others dedicated to the newborn and the shamanistic rituals of Toré (flute cerimonial complex), in which spirits such as Tau and Kawara are invoked. The Asurini shaman is the central figure in the performance of the social life of the group. His free transit through the various domains of the cosmos allows him to have control over forces that ensure the resistance of the society against all odds. With contact and its consequences of depopulation, the cultural emphasis on shamanism – latent among the Asurini and recurrent among Tupi-Guarani groups -would have developed in an exacerbated way.

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