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Anthropology of Consciousness, Vol. 17, Issue 1, pp. 35–64. ISSN1053-4202, © 2006 by the American
Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissions to
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Piaroa Sorcery and the Navigation
of Negative Affect: To Be Aware,
To Turn Away
robin rodd, ph.d.
School of Anthropology,
Archaeology, and Sociology,
James Cook University
robin.rodd@jcu.edu.au
abstract
An overemphasis on the interpretation of language has impeded understanding
of the cultural and cognitive logic of sorcery’s focal acts: divination and sorcery
battle. Among the Piaroa of southern Venezuela, divination and sorcery battle are
conducted during hallucinogen-induced visions, and are predicated on an episte-
mology that privileges forms of knowing that are neither linguistic nor language-
like. I suggest that Piaroa sorcerers use hallucinogen-induced visions to map the
social ecology of emotions in ways partially explainable by cognitive science, and
that mature contemplation may provide the anthropologist with a means of
understanding relationships between nonlinguistic thought and culture. I inter-
weave an account of my participation in a sorcery battle with neuropsychological
interpretations of cognition and emotion to present a navigation of a negative
affect theory of sorcery. The navigation of negative affect theory complements
sociological and psychoanalytic approaches while emphasizing the cognitive
skills and visionary experiences that underpin the practice of sorcery by shamans.
keywords: Sorcery, Piaroa, hallucinogens, emotional appraisal, divination
introduction
An overemphasis on the interpretation of language has impeded understanding
of the cultural and cognitive logic of sorcery’s focal acts: divination and sorcery
battle. Among the Piaroa of southern Venezuela, divination and sorcery battle
are conducted during hallucinogen-induced visions, and are predicated on an
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36 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
epistemology that privileges forms of knowing that are neither linguistic nor
language-like.
1
This article presents a theory of sorcery that outlines the methods
and epistemology for interpreting the practice of sorcery by shamans. The navi-
gation of negative affect theory of sorcery complements sociological and psy-
choanalytic approaches while emphasizing the cognitive skills and visionary
experiences that underpin the practice of sorcery by shamans.
Sorcery accusations are not uncommon in Piaroa society, where powerful
shamans are attributed the power to kill individuals and to cause long-term suf-
fering to communities. Accusations are associated with a wide range of social cir-
cumstances (including conflicts among parents and children or between the
families of potential spouses) that result in negative emotions (such as jealousy,
guilt, and anger). When the expression of these negative emotions becomes
socially problematic (i.e., impedes a community’s pursuit of work and love) the
following cycle might begin: sufferers invite a shaman to divine the cause of their
suffering; and the shaman deflects negative emotions away from victims to a sor-
cerer by means of sorcery attack. The media of sorcery harm—crystals and
malevolent spirits (märi)—are analogous to acute negative emotions (felt by
individuals) and generalized negative affect (felt by a community), respectively.
Divination visions provide the shaman with a gestalt map of social relations and
personal motivations that result in emotions while sorcery battle, also conducted
during hallucinogen-induced visions, is a means of redirecting negative affect
away from victims and towards malevolent sorcerers.
In this article I interweave an account of my participation in a sorcery battle
with neuropsychological interpretations of cognition and emotion to present a
theory of sorcery as the navigation of negative affect. The navigation of negative
affect theory explains the cognitive and experiential logic of the practice of sor-
cery by shamans, and complements sociological and psychoanalytic approaches.
Sorcery divination is considered in relation to cognitive theories of emotional
appraisal and Lazarus’s (1991) “core relational themes” for emotions. Lazarus’s
core relational themes, which outline the human-environment relationships
that might result in negative emotions, provide a good framework for under-
standing the sorts of social situations associated with Piaroa sorcery accusations.
I suggest that mature contemplation may provide the anthropologist with a
means of understanding relationships between nonlinguistic thought and cul-
ture, and that Piaroa sorcerers use hallucinogen-induced visions to appraise the
social ecology of emotions in ways partially explainable by cognitive science.
sorcerers, witches, and shamans
The etymologies of witch and sorcerer reveal remarkably similar patterns of
meaning, and illuminate relationships between consciousness and emotions as
well as between the individual and the community. The word sorcerer can be
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piaroa sorcery 37
traced to the French sorcerie “the telling of lots” and the Late Latin sortiârius “a
teller of fortunes by lots” (Skeat 1963:503). Here we have the divination aspect of
sorcery; becoming aware of another person’s position, and sharing this informa-
tion to “change lots.” Witch, on the other hand, can be traced to the Friesic English
and German word wikken, and the Medieval Dutch wicker as “a soothsayer” and
“to predict.” As in “sorcerer,” divination would appear to be integral to early def-
initions of witchcraft. As we turn to the earliest Norwegian and Icelandic variants
of witch (vikja and vîkja [plural Vik-inn], respectively), we find another important
aspect of the sorcery complex: “to turn aside, (2) to conjure away” . . . “To move,
turn, push aside” . . . “Thus witch perhaps =‘averter’” (Skeat 1963:613). Witch as
“averter” or “to move, turn, push aside” comes extraordinarily close to the Latin
root for emotion, êmôtus, meaning “to move away or much” (Skeat 1963:164).
Indeed, the Piaroa sorcerer is one who works by envisioning and turning
emotions away.
I use the word sorcery as opposed to witchcraft to describe the harmful acts
attributed to Piaroa shamans because, since Evans-Pritchard’s (1937) distinction
between the two terms, sorcery has generally been used to denote learned as
opposed to ascribed abilities. There are no people in Piaroa society who have
ascribed powers to cause harm by psychic means. Only highly-trained shamans
are able to infect people or places with pathogenic agents that are visible and
manipulable only by other shamans. I acknowledge, however, that the distinc-
tion between witch and sorcerer has not been unproblematic, and that there has
been considerable conflation of the terms, not least by Evans-Pritchard himself
(Marwick 1967:232–4; Turner 1964:318–322). In Piaroa society shamans train their
minds for years to be able to ensorcel (i.e., to bewitch). However, it is also
believed that those who have had the greatest success in learning to become
shamans were born with a potential for divination and sorcery that they have
been able to develop through ongoing training.
Piaroa people distinguish two types of ritual specialists to which we can apply
the term shaman: the yuhuähuäruhua and the meyeruhua (Oldham 1997:242;
Mansutti 1986). For the purposes of this discussion I use the term shaman to
denote a ritual specialist who uses knowledge and power attained during vision-
ary experiences to either heal or harm, and sorcerer to refer to a shaman who is, at
a particular point in time, occupied with sorcery defense or harm.
2
Further, all
Piaroa shamans have the capacity for sorcery. The meyeruhua is not attributed
the power to cause death by sorcery, although he is attributed the power to inflict
minor illnesses or disruptions in the lives of others. The yuhuähuäruhua, by con-
trast, possesses high-end divinatory capabilities and is capable of causing serious
harm or death to an individual or an entire community. The yuhuähuäruhua
occupies a highly ambivalent position in Piaroa society. He is feared for his
malevolent capabilities while revered for his divinatory, protective, and curative
powers. Stephen (1987a) contends that the primary difference between sorcerers
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and shamans, as they have been conceived of by a range of anthropologists, is
how their community perceives them. While shamans “may be suspected of
controlling dangerous powers . . . it is his restorative role as healer that is stressed
by the community.” By contrast, the sorcerer is “primarily [perceived] as the
vehicle of punitive force” (Stephen 1987a:74). In Piaroa society the power to
cause harm and the power to cure rest on the same continuum along which
shamans can be situated, and along which they might move in either direction
over the course of their careers. Most yuhuähuäruhuae will be considered more
sorcerer than shaman by some people at a given time, while more shaman than
sorcerer to others, depending on evolving perceptions of this yuhuähuäruhua’s
involvement in protective or malevolent practices.
Piaroa sorcery shares many similarities with the malevolent shamanic activity
of various lowland South American tribes (c.f. Brown 1986:61; Colson 1977;
Harner 1972; Kensinger 1973; Thomas 1982). Thomas’s distinction between gen-
eralized and particular power in Pemón sorcery applies equally well to the
Piaroa context. For example, Piaroa sorcery is “concerned with the elevation of a
problem thought of in terms of particularized power (e.g., the specific actions of
a sorcerer) to a problem of generalized power . . . [the movement of märi in the
case of the Piaroa] which must be handled by a river area as a whole” (Thomas
1982:185). As is the case for numerous lowland tribes (c.f. Brown 1986; Harner
1972), Piaroa sorcery involves sending a pathogenic agent, usually a crystal,
which flies to and penetrates an intended victim. The pathogenic crystal is
sent almost exclusively at night, and usually enters the victim’s body while he or
she is asleep. Piaroa sorcery can be described as “projective,” after Glick’s (1972:1029)
account in which the sorcerer and victim do not come into contact and the sor-
cerer, acting on his own initiative or on behalf of others, propels harmful objects
into his victim. As such, the victim, in association with his or her consorts, will
seek a cure and also, in some cases, initiate retributive action against the offend-
ing sorcerer and/or those sponsoring his attack. The first act of Piaroa sorcery is
divination of offensive activity. As Lewis (1996:86) has argued cross-culturally, it
is the accuser, not the sorcerer, who sets the process of sorcery in motion. Once a
shaman has ascertained that a sorcerer has attempted to infect a victim, the
offending sorcerer will be held responsible, and a battle will ensue. If confronted,
sorcerers will not deny their involvement in malevolent acts.
sorcery, language, and visionary experience
Visions are central to the practice of Piaroa sorcery, as they are to those of other
societies (for example, the Elema [Williams 1940:105]; the Dobu [Fortune
1963:181], the Mekeo [Stephen 1979, 1987a]; the Aguaruna [Brown 1986]; and
Peruvian curanderos [Joralemon & Sharon 1993]). There have been few in-depth
ethnographic analyses, however, of the practices of mental imagery cultivation
38 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
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employed by shamans or sorcerers to translate information perceived during
ASC to practical effect during waking life (see, however, Peters 1981). Although
visions have been portrayed as central features of shamanic practice (e.g., Noll
1985; Dobkin de Rios 1984; Harner 1973; Wilbert 1987), according to Stephen
(1987a:41), “no comparable interest has focused on the experiential aspects
of sorcery.”
Interpreting sorcery according to what sorcerers and their victims say cannot
capture the logic of a practice based primarily on nonlinguistic cognition. Mauss
(1972:122) argues that judgments made by sorcerers are neither analytical nor log-
ically functioning. “We have clearly shown that this reduction to analytical terms
is quite theoretical and that things really happen otherwise in the magician’s
mind. His judgments always involve a heterogeneous term, which is irreducible
to any logical analysis.” Using the example of two classic studies of sorcery
(Lévi-Strauss 1973 and Mauss 1972), Siegel argues that sorcery:
is a question of articulation, of bringing into language, and particularly of
bringing into speech, something that until that time was merely guess, sentiment,
and suspicion. It is equally a question of restoring coherence to social life that
has been upset by feeling a general sense of malaise.
[Siegel 2003:135]
Although Piaroa sorcery is concerned with bringing into speech a generalized
sense of malaise, this malaise is envisioned before it is vocalized, and what is
vocalized is of secondary importance to what is envisioned. Whereas proof of
sorcery guilt among other ethnic groups may derive from confessions, proof of
guilt among the Piaroa is established in hallucinogen-induced visions where the
shaman must carry out his case and retribution. Local community members will
be told about the shaman’s visions, divination of, and confrontation with offend-
ing sorcerers. In most cases, however, there will be no face-to-face reckoning
between the victims and the accused. Knowledge as image is of primary impor-
tance relative to knowledge as language.
märipa: visionary epistemology
Hallucinogen use is central to Piaroa knowledge systems, constructions of reality,
and sorcery practice. Piaroa people privilege information that exists and is retrieved
during visionary experiences resulting from the consumption of two plant
hallucinogens: yopo and Banisteriopsis caapi.
3
According to Monod (1970:18) “it is
not only that [Piaroa] thought precedes reality, but that drugs precede thought.”
Piaroa shamans believe that by training to use yopo and B. caapi, it is possible to
participate in a realm of infinite knowledge and power, which the shaman can
use to understand social and environmental questions, as well as to heal or to
harm. This visionary knowledge and power is referred to as märipa.
4
As one
piaroa sorcery 39
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40 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
Piaroa shaman explains, “to have märipa is to know everything. It shows you how
things are and how things will be, the cause behind the event, the meaning
behind the sign.” Relative to the expanses of märipa, knowledge developed dur-
ing waking consciousness is considered to be an inadequate basis for under-
standing social processes and cause–effect relationships.
Several scholars have suggested that indigenous ASC practices represent a
framework for interpreting behavior that is no less objective than the social sci-
ences, and in some cases could provide the basis for a more accurate study of
human behavior than the social sciences have provided. For example, Kapferer
(1997) argues that while sorcery practice has a similar focus to the social sciences,
it comes closer to the realities of human processes because it is based on direct
observation and experience.
Sorcery is often founded in a profound grasp of the dynamics involved in the
practices of human beings. In other words, the arguments of sorcery practice
may be no less significant as a way to a general comprehension of the processes
of human action than many of those social science theories constructed inde-
pendently of the close observation of human action, yet applied to it. Such
theories, for all their claims to be scientific and objective, are no less human
constructions, than is the work of sorcerers, and in many ways are farther from
the concrete problems of human existence and struggle.
[Kapferer 1997:22]
Many Western models for understanding consciousness have thus far been
primitive relative to those developed in Eastern meditative traditions, or to those
of Amerindian societies that value and make use of knowledge derived from a
range of modes of awareness. According to Tedlock (1987:20), “some cultures are
much more interested in and sophisticated about alternative or altered states of
consciousness than our own.” Winkelman (1997:404) suggests that, among many
traditions, ASC practices provide the basis for the most accurate interpretations
of reality.
Evidence from contemplative traditions indicates that ASC can provide the basis
for a more objective perception of the external world. Rather than being bound
up in subjectivity, the transpersonal mode of consciousness is viewed as a means
of recognizing the illusions and constructed nature of ordinary perception.
[Winkelman 1997:404]
In Western society there is an assumption that language precedes knowledge
and, secondarily, that literacy precedes higher (professional) types of knowledge.
Intellectual development proceeds as one is able to store information coded in
words and writing which has been, as far as science goes, highly categorized.
Piaroa epistemology, by contrast, is based on the assumption that any meaning-
ful thought, indeed truth, will be experienced during yopo intoxication when it
is possible to perceive the entirety of the natural order and the fragmentary and
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piaroa sorcery 41
imperfect order of the living (Monod 1970:20). The distinction, essentially, is
between a society (the West) that believes it can know particulars by studying
particulars, and through an understanding of these particulars move to an under-
standing of systemic relations, to one (the Piaroa) that begins from a very differ-
ent premise: that the study of particulars will yield false accounts of their nature,
and that only by glimpsing the whole is it possible to understand the particular.
Laughlin et al. (1990:20) maintain that the social scientific neglect or misunder-
standing of the significance of visionary experiences to many religions and epis-
temologies “is not accidental, but rather a systematic bias in science born of what
we call monophasic consciousness in the enculturation of Western observers.”
Societies that integrate knowledge derived from all phases or states of conscious-
ness within one worldview are polyphasic. Euroamerican society, by contrast,
can be described as monophasic, because it generally gives credence only to
information derived from experiences during waking consciousness, “the phases
oriented primarily toward adaptation to the external operational environment”
(Laughlin 1997:479; Tart 1972). Positivist and monophasic approaches to inter-
preting shamanism have not led to the development of adequate models for
explaining the psychocultural logic of shamanism, and its enduring cross-
cultural significance (Langdon 1992:1).
We can summarize the navigation of negative affect argument thus far. The
practice of sorcery by shamans is primarily non-linguistic. Divination and battle
occur in the minds of sorcerers, and analyses of sorcery that rely exclusively on
the interpretation of speech or on the symbolic analysis of rituals cannot capture
sorcery’s cultural or cognitive logic. Märipa is an epistemology based primarily
on non-linguistic knowledge, and underpins Piaroa sorcery practice. Episte-
mologies that privilege non-linguistic thought need to be accessed through
means other than, but not exclusive of, language.
mature contemplation, non-linguistic thought,
and culture
The question of how to interpret visionary knowledge is connected to the ques-
tion of how best to conceptualize culture. Most definitions of culture assume that
it is bound up in language, and that the logic of culture is language-like, consist-
ing of linked linear propositions. Bloch (1998:14) disagrees: “Contrary to what
anthropologists tend to assume, we should see linguistic phenomena as a part of
culture, most of which is non-linguistic.” Bloch defines culture in such a way that
most of it is neither linguistic nor language-like. Culture is “that which needs to
be known in order to operate reasonably effectively in a specific human environment”
(Bloch 1998:4). That which we know best gets pushed to the subconscious to
make space in our consciousness for the appraisal of novel information, which is
more readily cognized and expressed in words. Expertise in a given activity
implies that the actor no longer needs to think in words about what it is that he or
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42 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
she does. Linguistic articulation is a time-consuming and cognitively inefficient
means of thinking about the things we know best (Bateson 1972:141). Non-linguistic
knowledge would accord to something like a connectionist logic of loose, shifting
networks that operate in parallel fashion. Linguistic, linear, rational thought accords
to a sentential logic. There is a “fluid, transformative boundary between the two”
(Bloch 1998:14), meaning that the process of unpacking connectionist, relational
thought into words changes the nature of the former. The conclusion Bloch
comes to, regarding the methodological implications of culture being primarily
non-linguistic, is that once a certain level of familiarity with the way of life of people
being studied has been achieved then “we can attempt to understand chunked
knowledge through introspection” (Bloch 1998:16).
I suggest that mature contemplation can be a valuable ethnographic tool for
interpreting non-linguistic thought such as that involved in sorcery divination
and battle. Although there is a history of anthropologists using “reflexivity” as a
tool in the interpretation of ethnographic data (e.g., Bourdieu 1990), I prefer
Laughlin et al.’s (1990) and Laughlin and Throop’s (1999) notion of mature con-
templation as an approach to the use of phenomenological data in ethnography.
Marcus (1998:193) refers to ethnographic strategies that harp on “the personal
quest, playing on the subjective, the experiential, and the idea of empathy” as a
“basic or null form of reflexivity” that has “more often than not . . . [reinforced]
the perspective and voice of the lone, introspective fieldworker without chal-
lenging the paradigm of ethnographic research at all.” Analysis of the psychocul-
tural logic of sorcery, however, requires a methodology that privileges empathy,
experience, and practice, because shamanic knowledge is nonlinguistic, empa-
thetic, and learned more by way of imitation than conversation. Mature con-
templation is akin to Husserl’s notion of “phenomenological reduction,” a method
of training the mind to perceive its internal processes (Husserl 1931; 1977). Much
of my work to understand the psychocultural logic of Piaroa sorcery involved
phenomenological training, as outlined by Laughlin:
Phenomenological training directs the mind inward in a disciplined way. The
student learns to direct concentration and inquiry toward his or her internal
processes, be those processes dreaming, bodily functions (such as breathing,
movement, etc.), eidetic imagery, feelings, thought processes, and the like. The
training builds habit patterns that counter the Euroamerican conditioning
toward ignoring or repressing internal processes and prepares the student for the
kind of procedures used in the alien culture for incubating and attaining transper-
sonal experiences.
[Laughlin 1997:484]
Mature contemplation can enable the fieldworker to become aware of the
structures of consciousness as content rather than self, and could be used to
reflect on taken-for-granted thoughts and behavior constitutive of culture
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piaroa sorcery 43
(Laughlin et al 1990:24_33). I made every effort “to suspend judgment, to bracket
personal views as well as a scientific materialist stance, and for the period of field-
work, to take things [including the perception of spirits] at face value”
(Townsend 1997:458). By using mature contemplation to reflect on connectionist-
like thought it might be possible for fieldworkers to unpack the layers of networks
constitutive of conceptual thought. Mature contemplation has an important
advantage over cognitive approaches that rely on the generation of schemas from
what people say (e.g., D’Andrade and Strauss 1992). While each approach assumes
a fluid, transformative boundary between thinking and language, mature con-
templation does not require the fieldworker to work back from what someone
said to what they may have thought.
Between 2000 and 2001, I conducted 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork
with the Piaroa of Bolívar and Amazonas States, Venezuela, undertaking a
shamanic apprenticeship for half of this time. I spent eight months apprenticed
to José-Luis, a senior Parguaza River shaman. José-Luis taught me during the
evenings when we consumed yopo together, and discussed our visions. Over the
course of the evening José-Luis recounted stories about other shamans, curing
ceremonies, illnesses, sorcery battles, myths, as well as practical information
(about plants, animals, and local geography). I attended numerous curing cere-
monies performed by José-Luis in his home or that of the family seeking a cure.
I also accompanied José-Luis on visits to neighboring villages where we met with
other shamans, and during which he taught me how to assess the health of par-
ticular people and the community as a whole.
My relationship with José-Luis took on features characteristic of father–son,
brother–brother, teacher–student, and friend–friend relationships. José-Luis has
an excellent command of Spanish, which facilitated early bonding between us
and an ease of communication. The camaraderie we shared over many nights of
shared visionary experiences made continued research possible and pleasurable.
Training to use yopo is a process of learning to see relationships among people,
the environment, and feelings. I recorded my visions in a notebook before sleep-
ing, and continue to remember them clearly now. My questions to José-Luis
were guided by the desire to understand the epistemological basis of Piaroa
shamanic practice, and the relationship between visionary experience and sym-
bolism. For the most part I let José-Luis dictate what would be discussed on any
particular occasion. The questions I asked evolved with the experiences I shared
with José-Luis, and as my understanding of Piaroa shamanic practices and social-
ity developed. Many themes were discussed incrementally over time as José-Luis
felt I was ready to understand what he had to say.
Apprenticeship, however, requires surprisingly little verbal communication.
Learning is heavily weighted toward imitation: watching and doing. In her study
of weavers in Ghana, Lave (1990:310) says that “apprenticeship learning” relies on
“assumptions that knowing, thinking, and understanding are generated in practice.”
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44 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
Much of what we learn and that becomes cultural knowledge is learned gradu-
ally through “imitation and tentative participation” (Bloch 1998:7). Participant
observation and apprenticeship are ideally suited for interpreting non-linguistic
knowledge because they encourage the unpacking of chunked knowledge
through introspection, and ways of knowing based on imitation and experience
rather than observation and the analysis of utterance.
The interpretive limits of an experience-heavy approach to sorcery are fuzzy,
and tied to the degree that people from different cultural backgrounds can use
nonlinguistic means to communicate nonlinguistic knowledge. Although emo-
tions are one of the most significant types of nonlinguistic cognition (Reddy
2001:64), surprisingly few ethnographers have developed means of interpreting
culture-cognition-emotion relationships that move beyond the interpretation of
language. Several scholars have emphasized the nonverbal aspects of affective
communication (e.g., Urban 1988; Irvine 1995; McNeill 1992). These authors
emphasize body language and bodily sounds as relatively transparent means of
interpreting feeling. Others have emphasized the possibility of using art and per-
formance as a means of expressing and translating the feelings and meanings of
ASC or primary process cognition (e.g., Myerhoff 1995; Bateson 1972). I have
attempted to negotiate this issue as best as possible by using an analytic frame-
work that interweaves symbolic interpretation with psychology and neurobiol-
ogy, and a field methodology that privileges mature contemplation.
fundo nuevo: experiential dynamics of sorcery battle
I had been living as an apprentice to José-Luis for five months when Camilo, the
headman of Fundo Nuevo, a village three hours upriver, paid a visit. Camilo was
worried that his village had been ensorcelled. Young men were leaving for the city
and returning as strangers to their families, there seemed to be particularly few fish
in the water that season, and several young women (including Camilo’s elder
daughter) appeared to be infertile or “had gone crazy.” They were “incapable of
learning. They grow big, but they always remain like children.” Many, apparently,
were listless and weak. Villagers expressed discontent at a rising spate of social
dis-ease, prompting Camilo to seek answers and restore village morale. A shaman
was required to assess the dynamics of sorcery infection, to divine the offending
sorcerer, and to turn back his work. We departed the following morning.
In the mid-1990s, Fundo Nuevo had been an “evangelical town,” a model of
the New Tribes Missions strategy of developing indigenous pastors to sustain the
presence of the Christian God in heathen lands. Camilo was once a pastor and
the headman. He lost his faith in God, however, when he concluded that evan-
gelical songs could neither prevent nor cure illness, and were even less effective
at defending his village from sorcery attacks. Like many Piaroa villages, Fundo
Nuevo has neither shaman nor pastor. During the period in which Fundo
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piaroa sorcery 45
Nuevo was nominally Protestant, the elder shamans had died or “retired,” leav-
ing no ritual specialists to practice as curers and sorcerers. In order to effect
cures, and defend against sorcery attacks, Fundo Nuevo has to invite the partici-
pation of shamans living elsewhere.
The approach José-Luis took to remedying the sorcery problem in Fundo
Nuevo is different only in scale from individual cases of sorcery. Shamanic
address of suspicion of sorcery involves the study of local social dynamics, fol-
lowed by divination of an offending shaman, defensive action to impede further
sorcerous attack, and the attempt to clear away residues of the sorcerer’s work by
performing curing rituals. Cleaning sorcerous infection and defending against
attacks require sustained work over a period of time concordant with the severity
of sorcery affliction. The decision to take revenge against an offending sorcerer is
a serious matter that usually involves consultation among several shamans.
Divination of the cause of sorcery is prefigured by extensive informal discus-
sions, and continued through sensitive empathetic assessment of local psychoso-
cial dynamics. José-Luis refers to this directed socializing as paseando (Spanish
for “strolling”): “Now we are going to work. Firstly, one must know how things
are. If you don’t understand how people have been infected, you can’t make the
bad fish [illness] go away. Let’s go for a walk.”
With gregarious charm, and frequent comic relief, José-Luis works his way
through conversations spanning food, home, family, river, state, and national
politics. Quixotic storytelling ensue, of tales exotic, stories about me, and of his
own travels to Canada, Mexico, and Caracas. Initial, informal conversations are
followed up by systematic visits to each house in the town. In this way José-Luis
is able to develop a gestalt image of the village mood, as well as awareness of par-
ticular problems manifest in individuals: perceived disfigurements in the ideal of
harmonious family relations, eating disorders or malnutrition, and impaired
physical development.
How are the people living? They are not happy here. The boy at the last house
we visited, look in his eyes. He has bad tongue. I can see märi in his eyes. His
mind has gone soft. He has lost the way. When he goes to Ayacucho [Puerto
Ayacucho is the capital of Amazonas State] he will drink rum, lose his mind,
become a criminal, and forget about his family.
José-Luis hands me another wad of B. caapi. The consumption of B. caapi is
integral to the acceleration of empathetic capacities that underpin Piaroa
shamanic social study. The art of “strolling” relies heavily upon hyper-sensitive
empathetic intuition. In this context, conversation is a way of feeling into the lives
of those the shaman studies. Intuiting interpersonal emotional dynamics and psy-
chological conditions, however, moves beyond the interpretation of speech. The
shaman must study gesture, tone, expression, and the eyes. Day and night, over
the duration of our stay in Fundo Nuevo, we sucked fat portions of B.caapi.
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46 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
Sustained consumption of B. caapi facilitates mental clarity, visual acuity (important
for the reading of people in dark interior spaces), and heightened inter-personal
understanding (Naranjo 1973; 1979).
5
The shaman will find the answer to a sor-
cery problem. The success he has in alleviating the symptoms of sorcery, how-
ever, depend to a large degree on how the shaman is received by those with
whom he works. José-Luis’s wit and charm contribute to his ability to evoke faith
in the minds of others that his efforts will alleviate the harmful effects of sorcery.
Language is a tool employed by the shaman to effect changes in the sentiments of
those who believe they have been ensorcelled. The ultimate end, however, is not
articulation (this is a means), but the alteration of emotional dynamics.
The empathy-rich data of paseando serves as the mental background on
which yopo visions deliver convincing answers to the questions of sorcery illness.
Piaroa shamanism is a practice for understanding energy flows among systems;
the self, human communities, the ecosystem, and the cosmos. Relationships
among these systems are felt by the shaman during hallucinogen-induced
visions as mental images such as dancing bands of light and colorful sentient
geometries to which feelings and meanings are associated and over which a face,
as well as current, past, or future events are glimpsed. The imagery of divination
visions is the imagery of feeling the meaning of the social ecology of emotions.
Damasio’s (1994:145) conception of feeling an emotion echoes the experience of
sorcery divination: “A feeling depends on the juxtaposition of an image of the
body proper to an image of something else, such as the visual image of a face or
the auditory image of a melody [i.e. the trigger that initiated the feeling].”
In order to divine the cause of sorcery, a sorcerer must envision victims, locate
where märi or a crystal has infected them, and juxtapose these images with that
of the face of a sorcerer. The logic of the relationship between images and feel-
ings (of sorcery guilt or a victim’s suffering, for instance) during yopo visions is
radically different, however, to the perception-cognition relations of waking con-
sciousness. During yopo visions it is possible to know that a particular victim has
a sorcery crystal embedded in their stomach, although this person, the crystal,
and their stomach may appear as a swirl of communicative light. You might hear
their voice but not see their face, or see their face and intuit their voice without
hearing a word.
José-Luis and I took yopo on numerous occasions in Fundo Nuevo. On the
first occasion, I wanted to understand the cause of sorcery in Fundo Nuevo.
I sought comprehension of the relationship between social study, märipa, and
divination. Yopo delivered the answers I was looking for:
I saw a little boy who talked to me. He held out a small green and black stone,
explaining that it had come from within his chest. He described his illness.
He also said many things in Piaroa that I could not understand. The boy’s
chest glowed where the stone had been. He pointed me toward the river, and
explained that the stone had come from the water. I walked towards the river
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piaroa sorcery 47
and it became murky and grey. I knew that something was wrong. The river
began to rise up and aggressively engulf me. As I glided back to open eye
thoughts I thought of Camilo’s daughters. Do they have some part to play in
the sorcery equation?
Meanwhile, José-Luis had divined the identity of the offending sorcerer. It
was Najaré, an old shaman now living in Puerto Ayacucho. José-Luis told me
that the boy I saw in my vision was the son of his uncle. This child died young as
a result of Najaré’s sorcery. “Najaré has always been bad. He has killed before,
and he has still not learnt his lesson. Very bad.”
The following day José-Luis invited Camilo and his two sons into our house
to tell them what we had ascertained from the previous evening’s yopo experi-
ences. I recounted the visions I had concerning the child, the water, and the
daughters. Camilo and his sons listened intently and appeared to be satisfied
with our interpretation. Camilo replied by saying that Najaré had once wanted
to take his elder daughter as a second wife, but she had rejected him because
of too great an age difference. So it was anger of rebuttal that had motivated Najaré
to make Camilo’s daughter infertile, and the whole village unhappy.
Camilo and his sons set about writing a legalistic synopsis of the situation.
They prepared a letter to be taken by me to Caracas where I could “study it” fur-
ther, and “enter it into my computer.” The letter was an affirmation of Najaré’s
involvement in “criminal activities” (i.e., sorcery). His trial was one of visions.
Beyond the shadow of shamanic doubt he was found guilty of being a “murderer.”
No one in Fundo Nuevo had yet died as a result of Najaré’s purported sorcery,
but his intentions, it was agreed, were murderous. The letter read as follows:
Fundo Nuevo, 14-05-2000
This criminal was here for two weeks. He went up the river, and there he worked
his sorcery. He also went into the forest, the hills. There he found a large
crystal and with it he sent a spirit [fantasma, there was significant discussion
about how best to translate märi into Spanish].
He was a criminal before leaving for his home, and he asked to marry Camilo’s
daughter. She did not like him, did not want to marry a criminal. She is 14
years old. The criminal said, “well you will see what will happen to your com-
munity then.” Then the criminal returned to his home.
By drafting a letter, Najaré’s guilt would be permanently exposed, his power to
effect harm negated in its submission to Western technology (a computer), and
the equation of sorcery to criminal guilt. That evening, José-Luis would confront
Najaré. “It is a war. And we are going to fight,” José-Luis told me. Feeling high
from my perceived early success at divination, and keen to understand more,
I approached this next visionary experience with the intention of understanding
the experiential dynamics of sorcery attack.
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48 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
José-Luis and I inhaled the first round of yopo trays early in the evening. My
visions were clear and strong. I floated up along radiant beams of light before I
began to feel an incredible temptation to fall, and to keep on falling. Relaxation
and security gave way to the temptation to lose control of my visions and to sub-
mit to the desire to fall into a soft, white void. I felt as if I were being sucked into
a murky hole, and that my mental and physical health were at risk if I did not
take measures to change this pattern of hallucinations. I had seen disturbing
imagery in previous yopo visions, but this was different. It felt like a trap. So I
fought hard, remembering how José-Luis had taught me to use my huräruä (a
wild pig tusk talisman that is a shaman’s weapon during yopo encounters in the
spirit realm). “This is your weapon. Hold it with your forefinger, and never let
go.” I concentrated on repelling what was sent to me and slashed the air with my
huräruä. “Hissssssss . . . rrahhhh! Hissssss . . . . rrah!” Then I saw the face of
Najaré. He had sensed that I was looking for him and was not happy. The attack
lasted a couple of minutes before the seduction of falling faded, the sorcerer’s
face etched in my mind.
José-Luis frequently referred to sorcery attack in terms of “falling.” One falls
prey, in a hole, under the spell of another shaman’s märipa, falls weak, falls ill,
and falls dead. In order to kill a person, a sorcerer must dig a hole in the ground,
placing their huräruä inside. The sorcerer channels a pathogenic crystal through
his huräruä, making an intended victim “fall” into a hole in the visionary terrain
of yopo space-time. “Falling” is also the best description of the sensation a
shaman experiences when he is attacked. Attacks are traps set in the yopo vision
realm in which the ground beneath one opens up, or in which flying darts
(pidoqui) must be avoided. In order to prevent infection by sorcerous crystals, the
intended victim must use his märipa and huräruä to turn away the offending
shaman’s assault. Defense involves actively renegotiating the hallucinogenic
landscape by way of turning the sensation of danger away from oneself and back
at the offending sorcerer. Slashing a tightly held huräruä is a means of focusing
energies to repel the malevolent intentions of other sorcerers. The huräruä is a
powerful symbol that enables the deflection of malevolent desires and negative
affect.
The highest forms of Piaroa divinatory knowledge are attained from flight to
the stars. The sensation of falling below ground is associated with confusion, loss
of control, incomprehensibility, terror, suffering, madness, darkness, and evil.
During yopo visions, it is possible to see and travel along energetic flows between
tiers of lower and upper worlds. To travel upward is to be in command of one’s
visionary experience, to be able to source valued information. The higher one
goes, the more information becomes accessible. To be pulled down is to surren-
der control of the visionary realm to chaos, confusion, and fear. This loss of con-
trol can result in sorcery infection, the dissolution of a shaman’s märipa, and
temporary insanity (ke’rau).
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piaroa sorcery 49
I awoke from my encounter with Najaré to see José-Luis “throwing” away
märi with violent slashes of his hurärua. “Red, black, green with red . . .” José-Luis
felt and saw “eleven thousand million crimes.” He pointed, eyes glazed, in sev-
eral directions, “over here . . . there . . . Märi want to kill you! Listen . . . they
are teasing us. The märi are laughing.” José-Luis shook his head. Outside our
hut the dogs were barking, birds were squawking. There were many, many
märi, and they were angry. José-Luis explained that Najaré had come looking
for me.
Najaré killed a shamanic apprentice in Apure State. Najaré didn’t want the
student to learn, so he killed him. It is very dangerous to take yopo here away
from my house. When you take yopo, other shamans know. They can see you.
For this reason you must protect yourself and your family from those who
might wish you harm. Najaré is an enemy of mine, so he is now an enemy of
yours, and I must protect you.
In José-Luis’s first battle with Najaré, he was forced to contend with attack by
pathogenic crystal, and by märi co-opted by Najaré. José-Luis’s account of this
battle is as follows:
I saw a hole open up in the ground in front of me. [Najaré] wanted to kill me.
I flew to the mountains where there were five other shamans [including me]. I
saw Najaré there. He shot a crystal at me but it missed. I have never fought
this sorcerer before, but I know of him. He wanted to kill me, but I was too
powerful for him. There were two thousand märi, one of which was sent to kill
me. I killed it instead, and Najaré left.
Märi are evil spirits that live in the forests, mountains, dark streams, and
waterfalls. They are most active at night, when they frequently take the form of
bats. Märi exist to torment the lives of people, feeding on human suffering and
death. It is said that “before there were many Piaroa and few märi. Now there are
millions of märi, and few Piaroa.” The number of märi, and the degree to which
they are active, are indices of sorcery activity and negative affect in a given region
at any particular time. When the activity of märi is significantly high, shamans
must battle hard to slaughter them. The battle is ongoing. Märi attack and
retreat in flows according to their own desire to torment, and the malevolent
whims of sorcerers. Märi are conscious beings, but they can be manipulated by
shamans to cause harm to particular people, entering a victim’s sleeping body to
cause any number of illnesses. As the sorcerer slaughters or fends off märi, he
manipulates the flow of negative affect within and between communities. Märi
can be conceived of as a Piaroa symbol for negative, nonconscious affect
6
. As
Zajonc argues, nonconscious affect can be redirected toward and attached to any
number of focal points.
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50 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
There is no such thing as a free-floating cognition. But nonconscious affect is
quite different. It is more like moisture, it is like odor, like heat. It can disperse,
displace, scatter, permeate, float, combine, fuse, blend, spill over and become
attached to any stimulus, even totally unrelated to its origins.
[Zajonc 2000:54]
José-Luis did not sleep that night. Instead, he continued to consume yopo and
slaughter märi. At dawn, José-Luis performed curing rituals on dozens of the vil-
lage’s women and children. The night after the sorcery battle was very quiet.
There were no bats or various other manifestations of märi about to molest us.
José-Luis said that they were weary from the previous evening’s fighting. “The
moon is red. It will be tranquil tonight and hot tomorrow. We will sleep well.
Märi will not be back here soon.”
While José-Luis declared that “we have won the battle here,” he conceded
that further action would be required to arrest Najaré’s continued malevolent
activity. Two shamans from upriver were to have arrived to assist José-Luis in a
final confrontation “to finish off the evil sorcerer.” The two shamans never
arrived. Revenge would have to wait.
sorcery as the navigation of negative affect: divination,
deflection, and emotional appraisal
According to the navigation of negative affect theory of sorcery, Piaroa shamans
interpret the social ecology of emotions during hallucinogen-induced visions,
and exert efforts to redirect socially problematic negative emotions away from a
person or place and towards a sorcerer deemed guilty of causing this suffering.
The primary media of Piaroa sorcery transmission, märi and sorcery crystals, can
be interpreted as generalized negative affect and acute, negative emotions. In
this context, the shaman works on behalf of a community to understand the
social relational nature of emotions, and takes responsibility for navigating group
affect in the interests of limiting the social consequences of acute negative affect.
Divination of the cause of sorcery suffering may be underpinned by a height-
ened ability for conscious emotional appraisal, involving the development of
integrative neural networks.
People behave in order to avoid certain emotions, and to pursue certain others
(Damasio 2000). The strategies we employ to achieve these ends change over
time as our schemas of goal-pursuit and goal-conflict change through experi-
ence. Emotional valence can be defined as the degree to which events, things,
or situations are pleasant or unpleasant, and is considered by some psychologists
to be the origin of all goals (Frijda 1994:199). Reddy (2001:122) uses the term nav-
igation to describe the way that social interests and personal goals are negotiated
in a particular cultural context according to the political and social dynamics of
that environment. Navigation is also a good way of conceiving how Piaroa
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piaroa sorcery 51
shamans cultivate mental images during yopo visions, the experiential domain
of their practice. The primary symbols of Piaroa sorcery are sorcerous crystals
and märi, which a sorcerer sends into the body of an intended victim, and which
are seen and manipulated during yopo visions. Transmission of märi and sorcery
crystals is analogous to the redirection of negative affect toward a person
deemed guilty of some social transgression, or suffering from any number of
acute negative emotions. Märi represent generalized evil, and can be inter-
preted as a visionary manifestation of negative emotional valence. While märi
can be directed by a sorcerer, they generally affect an area (household or village).
Sorcerer’s darts or crystals, sent to one or a couple individuals, represent a partic-
ular, socially problematic, negative emotion. Clusters of negative emotion
accrue among individuals and are felt and dissipated through the visionary div-
ination and deflection of a sorcerer’s work.
The institution of sorcery can be seen as a system of emotional navigation,
orchestrated by shamans, to bring individual actions in line with social expecta-
tions, and to redistribute negative emotional valence. Although Ellen (1993:18) is
critical of “sociological theories” of sorcery that posit fear of accusation as a
means of preventing people from behaving in antisocial ways, because they can-
not be effectively measured, Piaroa people make explicit their hesitation to trans-
gress social taboos for fear of sorcery attack. José-Luis knows that to cheat on his
wife could precipitate sorcery attacks against him or his family. He expresses his
restraint from adultery in terms of the potential of sorcery attack. A woman from
San Rafael, a village upriver from José-Luis’s house, feared being a target of José-
Luis’s sorcery when she was accused of stealing money from a tourist. Similarly,
Bené, a man of the lower Parguaza, tells how he had been ensorcelled by the dis-
approving father of an ex-girlfriend.
I was sick, very sick. Skinny, very skinny. My girlfriend’s father was a shaman,
and he wanted me dead. So I went to see a shaman in Puerto Ayacucho. He
went to kill the other shaman [who had ensorcelled me], but I said “no, just
cure me.’ I didn’t live with that girl long. Now I am fine and the other shaman
doesn’t bother me.
Bené feared the repercussions of escalating a battle with his ex-girlfriend’s
father. So he contracted a cure for his illness, but not revenge against the father,
and acceded to the father’s desire for him and the daughter to be separated. If we
see sorcery as the navigation of negative affect, then fear of sorcery is a logical
response to situations in which goal conflict arises out of social transgression, in
this case a socially unacceptable partnership.
All Piaroa sorcery accusations can be associated with negative emotions that
arise from social conflict. José-Luis says that most of the sorcery cases he deals with
concern disagreements between lovers and ex-lovers or their families. A Piaroa
shaman from another river system cites jealousy and anger as the root of sorcery.
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52 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
Socially problematic emotional responses arising from strained, skewed, or
unhealthy family relationships (involving power struggles between husbands and
wives and between parents and children) are frequently associated with sorcery
accusations. A third shaman spoke of a Piaroa human rights activist who was
seeking treatment for a sorcery attack, manifested physically in a painful skin ail-
ment. The shaman explained to his patient that a criollo sorcerer was ensor-
celling him because “the criollo does not want [the human rights activist] to
speak.”
7
This case highlights two streams of explanation for sorcery: those
dealing with motivations to alter existing political orders (Zeleneitz 1981:5;
Lindenbaum 1979; Taussig 1987), and those concerned with the movement from
traditional (indigenous) to state and market economy political structures
(Latham 1972; Lindenbaum 1981). The transgressions of social norms in this
instance, however, are still ones that the Piaroa shaman sees in terms of fear and
envy arising from criollo–Piaroa relationships.
A social system of emotional navigation is implicit in many theories of sorcery.
Negative emotions or emotional states are often associated with illness and
sorcery/witchcraft—c.f., the Chewong (Howell 1981), the people of Toraja (Hollan
and Wellenkamp 1994), the Cheyenne (Strauss 1977), the Kwara’ae (Watson-
Gegeo and Gegeo 1990), the Guadelupe (Bougerol 1997). Sociological analyses
have focused on a relationship between social tension and sorcery activity (e.g.,
Kluckhohn 1970). The deflection of the socially problematic expression of
individually-felt emotions is an important aspect of the dispersal-deflection-
release of social tension precisely because emotions only exist within an individual
as he or she relates to other individuals (Kapferer 1997:222; Lutz and Abu-Lughod
1990:11; Besnier 1995:236). Kluckhohn (1970:227) argues that the effectiveness of
witchcraft in defusing anxiety depends upon individual adjustment merging
with group adaptation.
Witchcraft channels the displacement of aggression, facilitating emotional
adjustment with a minimum of disturbance of social relationships . . . . Anxieties
may be disguised in ways which promote individual adjustment and social
solidarity.
[Kluckhohn 1970:232]
Stephen (2000:731) maintains that explanations of sorcery should move
beyond those framed around “a simple release of social tension,” and that sor-
cery can be understood in terms of “the means of deflecting guilt away from the
grieving self,” and “fantasy processes of hostility inherent in mourning.” Several
scholars have applied Jungian, Freudian, or Kleinian psychoanalytic interpreta-
tions of guilt, grief, and fantasy to explain cross-cultural constants in sorcery sym-
bolism (Levine 1973; Stephen 1987b, 2000; Riebe 1987). Although Piaroa sorcery
accusations are sometimes made following deaths, most cases of sorcery are not
related to death or the grieving process.
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piaroa sorcery 53
In order to understand Piaroa sorcery we need a framework that moves beyond
sociological or psychoanalytic approaches, and that elucidates relationships
between the personal and social aspects of a full suite of negative emotions.
Lazarus (1991) has developed a social ecological model of emotions, which is use-
ful for understanding the sorts of social interactions and goal conflicts associated
with sorcery accusations. Frustration of a goal may lead to any one of the negative
emotions: anger, anxiety, guilt, shame, sadness, jealousy, or envy, which the Piaroa
associate with sorcery. Lazarus identifies core relational themes (person–environment
relationships) that figure for the following negative emotions as:
Anger: A demeaning offense against me and mine.
Anxiety: Facing an uncertain, existential threat.
Envy: Wanting what someone else has.
Guilt: Having transgressed a moral imperative.
Fright: Facing an immediate, concrete, and overwhelming danger.
Jealousy: Resenting a third party for loss or threat to the affection of another.
Sadness: Having experienced irrevocable loss.
Shame: Having failed to live up to an ego ideal.
[Lazarus 1991:122]
Emotions arise from human–environment relationships following two parallel
types of cognitive appraisal processes: one automatic, unconscious, and uncon-
trollable; and one that is conscious, deliberate, and under volitional control (and
is hence susceptible to cultural conditioning) (LeDoux 1996; Lazarus 1991;
Panskepp 1997). Although anthropologists have focused on cultural emotion
words, the social circumstances to which these emotion words refer (e.g., Lutz
1988; Rosaldo 1980; Wierzbicka 1994), or the expression of emotions across cul-
tures (e.g., Urban 1988), little anthropological attention has been paid to the ways
that people across cultures may entrain the capacity for emotional appraisal. The
cultural study of emotional appraisal figures to be a fertile field for understanding
the limits of cultural variation in ontogenetic development. According to LeDoux
(1996:67) the line between conscious and unconscious appraisal is “thin and
fuzzy.” “Although the appraisal process itself occurs unconsciously, its effects are
registered in consciousness as an emotional feeling.” Knowing how to alter the
impact of emotional responses requires understanding and ranking group and
individual needs according to urgency, and in a manner that prefigures possible
adaptations to unexpected developments (Bower 1992:4; Pribram 1980). Lazarus
(1991:410) concedes that psychologists have not developed the means to under-
stand aggregate assessments of inter- and intra-individual emotional responses
accruing as a result of the social interplay of long- and short-term goal pursuits.
A shaman’s visions are his means of appraising current and future emotional
responses. It is possible that yopo visions provide the shaman with a visionary
framework for understanding and ranking group and individual needs in ways
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54 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
that Western psychology cannot. Having märipa involves an ability to conceive
of long- and short-term personal and social goals, the particular in relation to the
whole. Divining the cause of sorcery requires envisioning the interplay of long
and short terms goals, formulating aggregate assessments of a community’s affec-
tive valence, and is contingent on a learned capacity for something like con-
scious emotional appraisal. Divination visions involve the juxtaposition of a sense
of a community’s overall emotional valence with imagery representing the social
transaction of emotions among individuals. When the valence is strongly nega-
tive, the sorcerer will envision märi. The effort the shaman expends in fighting
märi is indicative of an attempt to turn away negative emotions.
We can partially account for a shaman’s heightened ability to understand the
social and temporal weave of emotions in terms of the entrainment of neural sys-
tems, which might not otherwise function simultaneously. A range of studies has
sought to explain transcendent experiences or shamanic knowledge in terms of
neural integration or the induction of interhemispheric cerebral coherence
(e.g., Lex 1979; Laughlin et al. 1990; Mandell 1980; Newberg and d’Aquili 2000;
Krippner 2000; Winkelman 2000). Each brain hemisphere mediates sensory
data differently, and serves specialized complementary functions that come into
play in an alternating fashion, according to information being processed at any
particular time. Generally, while one side is operating, the other is inhibited
from operating (Trevarthen 1969). A range of ritual practices, including hallu-
cinogen use, can induce periods of synchronous interhemispheric discharges
(Mandell 1980; Winkelman 2000). The “cerebral cortex likely underlies the
development of complex thought, language, religion, art and culture” (Newberg
and d’Aquili 2000:256). Traditional views of the brain suggest that the left hemi-
sphere mediates language and sequential analytic thought (Sperry et al. 1979;
Nebes and Sperry 1971; Gazzaniga 1970); and that the right realizes “gestalt per-
ceptions, imagery, and in general, the construction of sensorial events as wholes,
and wholes-within-wholes” (Laughlin et al. 1990:129). The right hemisphere is
associated with nonverbal forms of communication involving emotional transac-
tions, kinesthetic perception, and “awareness of human disability” (Luria
1966:90; see also Bogen 1969). Prolonged interhemispheric coherence might
encourage the recognition of bodily conditions such as emotions and illnesses in
terms of social relationships, and the ability to analyze how these conditions
might be dealt with sequentially.
Maclean’s theory of the triune brain (1973, 1990, 1993) affords a complemen-
tary means of understanding the sorcerer’s heightened perception of emotional
processes. The triune brain theory, based on ethological and anatomical study
and evolutionary principles, divides the human brain according to anatomical,
structural, and functional components. The three formations, proto-reptilian,
paleomammalian, and neomammalian have different structures that mediate
distinct psychological and behavioral functions. Each has its own forms of
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piaroa sorcery 55
subjectivity, intelligence, space–time recognition, motor functions, and capacity
for memory. Although the three segments are integrated to make the whole,
which we recognize as the anatomically modern human brain, the three divi-
sions represent a functional hierarchy of information-processing capacities that
provide the basis for distinct forms of consciousness. Accordingly, the paleo-
mammalian brain, which we share with other mammals, is associated with the
experience of emotions, while the neomammalian brain, including the neocor-
tex and parts of the limbic system, enables symbolic thought and the ability to
reason. If sorcery practices concern the appraisal and navigation of emotions,
then it is possible that the regular consumption of yopo and B. capi, around
which Piaroa sorcery practice revolves, may allow for the entrainment of neo-
cortical and paleomammalian neural structures in the interest of heightening
the ability to reflect on the social ecology of emotions. Achieving greater cortical
control of subcortical regions involved in emotional processes would enable the
sorcerer to successfully navigate group affect.
José-Luis describes sorcery as the highest level of shamanic practice: “To prac-
tice sorcery is very difficult, like the fifteenth year of studies, like the postgraduate
level for shamans. You must know all that there is to know.”
conclusions
Reliance on the interpretation of language has impeded analysis of cultural
practices, such as sorcery, which are based on nonlinguistic cognition. This arti-
cle has proposed that the practice of sorcery by shamans should be considered to
be a system of navigating negative emotions within and among individuals. The
navigation of negative affect theory of sorcery, which combines the appraisal,
and symbolic and social negotiation of emotions, brings together the two halves
of historical definitions of witchcraft and sorcery, divination and deflection, and
offers a means of exploring the experiential and cognitive logic of sorcery.
The navigation of negative affect theory of sorcery can be summarized as
follows: The focal acts of shamanic sorcery are divination and battle. The prac-
tice of sorcery by shamans is predicated on an epistemology that privileges non-
linguistic thought, which can be accessed by the ethnographer through a process
of mature contemplation. The sorcerer navigates the social ecology of emotions
during visionary experiences whereby the cause of sorcery suffering is divined
as a socially–problematic response to goal conflicts, envisaged as culturally signif-
icant hallucinatory motifs, and a battle against an offending sorcerer ensues.
Divination and sorcery battle occur in a hallucinatory terrain where the primary
media of sorcery harm, crystals and märi, are indicative of strong negative emo-
tional valence within an individual or a community, respectively. Lazarus’s
(1991) core-relational themes for negative emotions provide a template for
understanding the possible cross-cultural and social-relational bases of sorcery.
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56 anthropology of consciousness 17.1
The sorcerer’s ability to divine the answer to sorcery questions may be predicated
upon the development of conscious emotional appraisal: knowing which sorts of
social relationships result in which negative emotions. Piaroa sorcery practice
may be underpinned by the entrainment of neural systems amenable to feed-
back dialogues that extend innate capacities for analytic thought and affective
information processing through their systemic integration.
The navigation of negative affect theory demonstrates how sorcerers envision
relationships between the personal and social aspects of a full suite of negative
emotions associated with sorcery, and how the practice of sorcery relates to an
epistemology privileging nonlinguistic thought. Although divination may involve
the union of linguistic and nonlinguistic thought, divination does not follow a lin-
ear logic reducible by reason to words. This paper has attempted to demonstrate
how mature contemplation and neuropsychology might be combined to provide
ethnographers with means of interpreting the nonlinguistic aspects of culture.
endnotes
1. The Piaroa are an ethnic group of approximately 12 thousand people who inhabit trib-
utaries of the mid-upper Orinoco in Bolívar and Amazonas States, Venezuela. The
Piaroa subsist by cultivating bitter cassava, fishing, hunting, and collecting wild fruits,
and live in communities of 30–500 people (c.f. Overing 1975; Overing and Kaplan
1988; Mansutti 1990; Zent 1992). The fieldwork on which this article is based was con-
ducted between 1999 and 2001. Fieldwork would not have been possible without the
generosity of many Piaroa people and especially that of José-Luis Díaz and his family.
2. Based on extensive cross-cultural research, Winkelman (1982, 1986) has defined
sorcerers as a separate type of malevolent shaman. To the Piaroa, however, there are
no essentially evil or good shamans.
3. Piaroa shamans are masters in the use of at least three psychoactive plant substances:
yopo is a snuff derived predominantly from the ground seeds of the Anadenanthera
peregrina tree; sections of Banisteriopsis caapi cambium are consumed prior to yopo
insufflation; long hand-rolled cigars are consumed regularly. Yopo contains a range
of tryptamine alkaloids that act synergistically with B. caapi’s betacarboline alkaloids
to produce vivid visions. See Rodd 2002 for an account of Piaroa yopo and B. caapi
preparation, use, and pharmacology.
4. I have addressed the probable cognitive logic of märipa elsewhere (Rodd 2003). Märipa has
many parallels among other lowland South American indigenous societies (c.f. Reichel-
Dolmatoff 1975, 1996 for the Tukano; Colsen 1977 on the Akawaio; Thomas 1982 on the
Pemón; Kensinger 1973 for the Cashinahua; and Harner 1972 for the Jívaro).
5. The first isolation of a chemical compound from the B. caapi plant was made by
Fischer (1923), who named the crystalline compound telepatina (telepathine) for its
purported ability to induce telepathic awareness in users. In 1928, Elger proved that
telepathine was identical to harmine, isolated years earlier from Peganum harmala.
Many years later, researchers also found harmaline and tetrahydroharmine in stems
of B. caapi (Hochstein & Paradies 1957).
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piaroa sorcery 57
6. Nonconscious processes are mental events that occur outside the individual’s aware-
ness. Nonconscious events may or may not become accessible to the conscious
mind through the practice of mature contemplation.
7. Criollo is the Spanish word that Piaroa people use to refer to the settler or “Creole”
society (i.e. any Venezuelan person whom the Piaroa consider to be non-indigenous).
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