As Spirits Speak: Interaction in Wauja Exoteric Ritual
Journal de la Société des Américanistes February 5, 2025 Christopher Ball
In a Wauja (Xingu Arawak) ritual called 'bringing spirits,' a sick person converses with the spirit-monsters afflicting him, aiming to transform them from pathogenic into guardian spirits. Village representatives agree to speak as these spirits, entering a lifelong contractual exchange with the sick person and the spirits, with obligations spanning sickness and health. Despite the gravity and weighty obligations, this ritual interaction is surprisingly simple and quotidian compared to Wauja esoteric shamanic practices and elaborate collective rituals with music and dance. Wauja cultural ideologies of illness, language, and cosmology emerge in such interactive texts, highlighting how multiple agencies of persons and spirits are linked through texts that construct social reality.