About ayahuasca. Transformation of awajun shamanism (Peru)
The difference between a shamanic cure and a psychoanalytic cure, wrote Claude Lévi-Strauss in 1956, is that in the first case the doctor speaks, while in the second case this is the patient. I apply this difference in Awajun society between the past and contemporary ayahuasca practices. Historically, the shaman “saw” beyond the opacity of the bodies and “depicted” the pathogenic objects and their owner. In this respect, shamanic aggression is an extension of the conflicts between local groups and river basins. Today, the patient drinks. It is up to the patient himself to “see” and “tell”; a way for the “modern shaman” to not take any risks in a social context characterized by sorcery imaginary (introduced by the missions). In this paper, I present the Awajun (Jivaro linguistic family) uses, traditional and new, of ayahuasca, as I observed them in the Upper Marañón (Peru) for the last twelve years. I analyze the emergence of new categories of practitioners and the adaptation of therapeutic rituals to new diseases or considered as such, as well as how Awajun shamanism changed to deal with the contempt it has been and is subject to.