Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon byStephan V. Beyer

Abstract

Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon . Stephan V. Beyer . Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press , 2009 . 544 pp . Beyer's book developed from trips to the Amazon out of an interest in jungle survival that extended to a personal absorption with Amazonian spirituality. Although purportedly about “mestizo shamanism of the upper Amazon” (p. xi), it covers a broader context, including: part 1, “Shamanic Healing”; part 2, “Ayahuasca”; part 3, “Context and Sources,” which loosely contends the Amazon Basin is a culture area; and part 4, “Meeting Modernity,” which discusses international legal aspects and specific legal cases of ayahuasca in the United States. Beyer proposes the book is based on his teachers (Roberto Acho Jurama and dona Maria Luisa Tuesta Flores), but the coverage is much less about them and his experiences with them; rather, it is an effort to allege a general ethnology of the use of ayahuasca in the Upper Amazon. Beyer's book provides an interesting and readable portrayal of many aspects of contemporary ayahuasca practice in the Upper Amazon and a glimpse of the broader cultural and international contexts of ayahuasca practices. Beyer's scholarly efforts are indicated by approximately 1,800 endnotes and 60 pages of references. He also relates some interesting contextualization provided by modern laboratory and clinical research (e.g., on the psychoactive ingredients). Beyer proposes that this book is necessary because “we now know much more about shamanism than when Mircae Eliade published his famous overview in 1951” (p. xi). In deference to some notion of a universally distributed shamanism, Beyer frequently provides examples from various parts of the world that are similar to Amazonian ayahuasqueros’ practices. Beyer, however, does not define shamanism or explicitly tell us why we should consider these practices to be shamanism. Although Beyer does not use any empirical framework for a systematic analysis of shamanism or ayahuasca use, he does frequently note some pattern among Upper Amazon ayahuasca users to argue that certain characteristics are not defining features of shamanism. For instance, Beyer challenges conceptualization of shamanism proposed by Eliade involving shamanic soul flight, noting that in contrast the ayahuasqueros “summon the soul back to the body” (p. 158), rather than seeking it through out-of-body flight. The lack of centrality of shamanic soul flight in these ayahuasca practices leads Beyer to conclude that soul flight cannot be a defining feature of shamanism because Beyer's “shamans” do not do that. Perhaps he should conclude that these practices do not constitute shamanism. Beyer documents the variation and specialization among the Upper Amazon groups and people who use ayahuasca and shows that many features of mestizo ayahuasca practices are fused with Hispanic and Catholic elements; this should make us question whether the term shaman should be applied here. This is a problem that vitiates Beyer's book. What is a shaman, and why should the term be applied to these ayahuasca practices? Beyer ignores ethnological literature and empirical criteria that establish universal principles of shamanism (e.g., Winkelman 1992, 2000) in favor of an approach that basically considers a shaman to be whatever he happens to attribute to it in the moment. Beyer often makes a point about a general aspect of ayahuasca use by citing sources for a specific practice or belief among a number of Upper Amazon groups. But there is no systematic regional ethnology to establish that pattern among Upper Amazon cultures. A lack of attention to relevant anthropological and ethnological literature is exemplified in his discussion of possession, which he uses to dispute characterization of shamanism that note the lack of possession. Without defining possession, Beyer tells us that shamans are possessed because ayahuasca users incorporate spirits or because their “darts” may act outside of their control. Such features are not the concepts established in systematic cross-cultural research (e.g., Bourguignon and Evascu 1977; Winkelman 1992). A particularly troubling claim by Beyer is that Upper Amazon ayahuasca use constitutes the only true hallucinogenic origins of shamanism: “I think there is reason to believe that the extended Upper Amazon culture area may be uniquely characterized by the use of psychoactive plants and fungi in shamanic work” (p. 286). This statement is accompanied in the same paragraph by reference to “Mazatec shaman Maria Sabina” and her use of psychoactive mushrooms! He discounts other patterns of shamanic hallucinogen use by noting comments that such substances were used “by nonshamans attempting to emulate shamans” (p. 287) or by weak shamans. He ignores however the many cultural groups where hallucinogens have central shamanic applications. Among the other shortcomings, one notes several chapters of two to four pages in length on sex, magic stones, herbalism, and vomiting; frequent inserts on topics not directly related to understanding ayahuasca use such as clothing, house construction, mestizo music, South American literature, snakes and snake-bite mortality, arrow poisons, dugout canoes, grubs and other culinary delights, soccer, fishing, and hunting; and a frequent repetition of material from earlier chapters. Unfortunately, Beyer's efforts at analyses of the patterns of ayahuasca use in the Upper Amazon and their relationships to shamanism are impressionistic, lacking a systematic analysis to establish the regional patterns and their relationship to cross-cultural patterns of shamanistic practices. Beyer's methodology is more characteristic of 19th-century anthropology than a scholarly examination of the patterns of Upper Amazonian ayahuasca use and whether it should be considered shamanism.