1

Contact Crisis: Shamanic Explorations of Virtual and Possible Worlds.

Anne-Marie Colpron

As a young anthropologist undertaking my firsts ethnographic fieldwork among the

Shipibo-Conibo of the Western Amazon in the 1990s, I naively expected to observe a
pronounced disintegration of their shamanic practice, a consequence of their increased
relations with national and international agents such as missionaries, healthcare and education
professionals, government representatives and tourists. It was a surprise for me to discover
that the Western presence seemed, on the contrary, to have revived their shamanic practice.
Rather than collapsing under the pressure of the missionaries, teachers, and doctors, Shipibo-
Conibo shamanism had incorporated these heterogeneous influences and undergone an
explosion of creativity: hence the emergence of unusual formulae such as protestant-
shamans, whose shamanic songs referred to hi-tech machines. In contrast to my initial
assumption, more intense contact with the Western world has only multiplied the number of
Shipibo-Conibo shamans and expanded their shamanic practice.

My papers starting point is this initial misunderstanding: why had something I had
presumed to be problematic the crisis that contact with the West must have inevitably
provoked in shamanic practice not been so for the Shipibo-Conibo shamans? How do we
explain the openness and plasticity of their shamanism, which had no difficulty in
manipulating different knowledge and absorbing changes? My aim here is not so much to
observe the transformations imposed on Shipibo-Conibo shamanic practice by contact, but
rather to consider, to borrow Peter Gows formulation (2009), the audacious innovations
Shipibo-Conibo shamans have extracted from contact. Such a distinction is important to make
since contrary to what I had first assumed contact did not mean the same thing for the
Shipibo-Conibo shamans and myself; contact was indeed lived out very differently.

How can contact be experienced in such different terms? My own idea of contact is
based on my Western conception of a linear time the history of the past insofar as it reflects
real and concrete facts which results from a cosmology that considers the world unitary and
regulated by uniform laws. For the Shipibo-Conibo shamans though, reality does not entail a
pre-given objective universe; it does not suppose a single shared world but rather a
multiplicity of worlds and potential subjectivities, a multiverse (Viveiros de Castro, 2009:
29). Therefore, the shamans temporality does not concern the real facts of history but the
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circular time of myths. The purpose of this paper is to explore the shamans experience of
contact acknowledging this radically different ontology, which is based on another enactment
of living worlds and temporality.

Taking another ontology seriously into account implies rendering perceptible our own
naturalistic perspective (Descola, 1996). A long anthropological tradition, since Tylors
conceptualization of animism and Frazers ideas of magic, has led many to consider the
shamans explanations as superstition or folklore, something interesting to study but
obviously not real; a cultural construction that is good to think about, but false. Throughout
the XX century, many attempts have been made to free shamanism from its irrational or
illogical stigma; we can notably think of Lvi-Strauss (1974) theory of the effectiveness of
symbols. Nevertheless, conceiving shamanism as a system of belief or as a way of
representing the world in others words, as a religious cultural view on the unquestioned
real nature only reproduces our own ontology and fails to consider the shamans
multiverse.

The comparative framework of religion as a cultural system (Geertz, 1973) and

shamanism as a cosmovision or worldview remains enclosed in our naturalistic grounds,
reasserting our own ontology different cultural ideas on one and the same world without
acknowledging the shamans worlds-making. Furthermore, by dismissing the shamans
experience as belief, such an approach implicitly claim to have an epistemological superior
understanding of the world not clouded by culture (Blaser, 2009: 17). It thus involuntarily
reproduce the colonial predominant attitude of they believe; we know (Stengers, 2008).
Trying to avoid this colonial attitude by respecting culture, following a tolerant
multiculturalism (ibid.; De La Cadena, 2010) only conceals the problem, since we are still
trapped in our ontology different perspectives on a unitary world blinding ourselves to the
enactment of different worlds. The opportunity of really learning from difference is then
paradoxically missed. To appeal to the shamans different ontology and worlds-making
forces us, on the contrary, to rethink our theoretical naturalistic certainties and to further the
practice of the permanent decolonization of thought (Viveiros de Castro, 2011: 128).
 3

At a time where shamanism gains in popularity in the Westerners imaginary

considering the increasing production of literature and documentaries on the ayahuasca1
illuminating path or the boom of Amazonian spiritual quest tourism it seems important to
emphasize that the question here is neither a matter of belief, nor of considering the
shamans lived worlds as the original truth. The mystical attitude they know appears very
seducing since it calls for immersion and desire to be affected by the shamanic experience,
but is nevertheless problematic. The danger lies in forgetting that the reality of an
experience is always dependent of a specific ontology.2 Assuming a common shamanic
experience autonomous from a particular enactment of reality brings us back to the true facts
of a unitary world, once again our ontology. Consequently, shamanism is appropriated and
lived out in Western terms of truth and belief, thus undermining any possible dialogue with a
different indigenous standpoint.

Rather than approaching the shamans experiences in terms of beliefs, as the

fantasies of others, or fantasizing about them as leading to the true reality (Viveiros de
Castro, 2011: 137), the present paper seeks to illustrate how they enact very different lived
worlds. Turning our backs on the shamans explanations judging them erroneous and
illusory would be asserting that reality is given independently of human experience (Ingold,
2000). Praising them as the ultimate truth leads us to the same dead-end a simple inversion
of the equation. Another avenue, taking the shamans ontology seriously into account, allows
us to explore other ways of enacting reality and to problematize some taken for granted
anthropological ideas, in this case, the usual distinction we make between the illusory and
immaterial aspect of religion versus the reality of history and contact (A dichotomy
importantly challenged by Sahlins, 1981; Gow, 2001).

I shall stress that acknowleging difference does not stem from an anthropologist
chimera and desire to exoticise, but is explicitly asserted by the shamans themselves. A
notably example, the superb cosmopolitical manifesto of the Yanomami shaman Davi
Kopenawa (2010: 193, 49), written in collaboration with the anthropologist Bruce Albert,
makes a loud claim for ontological self-determination:

1
Hallucinogenic vine (banisteriopsis caapi) used by shamans of the Western Amazon.
2
On this matter, Poirier (2005: 59) exemplifies eloquently how her Western ontology makes her experience of
the wind very different than the one of her Kukatja Aboriginal friend: they lived and felt the strength of the wind
at the same time but for Poirier it was an unpleasant and intrusive experience while for her friend it was
protecting and nourishing.
 4

the speech of the people of the forest is other; the Whites think that we have to
imitate them in everything. This is not what we want we will be able to become
Whites only the day they will themselves transform into Yanomami.

Similarly, the Shipibo-Conibo shamans display their difference by their very resiliant
shamanic practices. Out of respect for difference and in awareness of the perpetual
misunderstanding implied in attempting to echoe a different ontology, this paper does not
pretend to describe the real realities of the shamans. It rather seeks to render an encounter
between the Shipibo-Conibo shamans and myself that has intellectually affected my
anthropological approach.

Some context

The Shipibo-Conibo inhabit the central forest of Peru within a vast territory bordering
the Ucayali river and its tributaries. In contrast to other indigenous Amazonian people, the
Shipibo-Conibo have not been recently contacted; rather the opposite is the case. Since their
lands are accessible via navigable river, they have known a strong missionary presence since
the 17th century, followed by heightened commercial and labor exploitation since the 19th
century (Morin, 1998). In other words, the Shipibo-Conibo have been through a long history
of social disturbances: epidemics, missionary action, war raids, slavery and ethnic fusions,
which have given rise to the composite name Shipibo-Conibo.

Today the Shipibo-Conibo are in permanent contact with Western agents largely due
to the following: the enormous city of Pucallpa, located in the heart of their territory; the
numerous immigrants from urban areas who have colonized their lands in search of
opportunities; the demands of itinerant traders or logging firms; the development programs
and primary schools dispersed throughout their communities; the always highly active
missionaries; and the increase in the number of tourists who seek the exoticism and
ayahuasca quest experiences. The intensity of these contacts varies according by
community depending to a large extent of their distance from Pucallpa city.

This brief contextualization tells us that the Shipibo-Conibo have been exposed to
Western contact since the 17th century, a fact with important repercussions for their social
practices as a whole, especially shamanism. Contrary to what might be expected, perhaps,
Shipibo-Conibo shamanism is not an archaic and immutable phenomenon exposed to contact
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for just a few decades, but a phenomenon that persists despite centuries of relations with the
West, including centuries of missionary action (a history that incidentally surfaces in
contemporary shamanism when shamans evoke the flu spirits in the form of missionaries in
cassocks3).

It seems important to underline, however, that the Shipibo-Conibo were already

exposed to exogenous influences before the arrival of the Westerners, participating in vast
networks of exchanges connecting the Amazon forest to the Andes and the Pacific coast,
involving both the trade in goods and the circulation of knowledge linked to shamanism
(Chaumeil, 1995: 65; Renard-Casevitz et al., 1989). The complexity of these influences is
illustrated, among other things, by the mythological importance ascribed to the Inca, one of
the shamans most powerful helpers.4 Consequently, although Shipibo-Conibo shamans refer
today to Christianity, Western technologies and other modern concerns, they merely continue
to do what they have always done, namely incorporate difference and feed on alterity
(Erikson, 1996). This encompassing dynamic inherent to Shipibo-Conibo shamanism
accounts for its resilience and vitality.5

Shipibo-Conibo shamans and their multiverse

This initial contextualization is addressed, of course, to a Western audience seeking

the concrete facts of the history of contact. Although it may seem obvious to us that the
shamanic loans references to the Inca, Christianity or modern technologies result from
Shipibo-Conibo interaction with outside agents, the shamans have an entirely different
interpretation. They consider these events not through our kind of linear historical time but
through the circular temporality of their myths. Hence the technological artifacts to which the
shamans refer in their mediations airplanes, tape recorders, X-rays are said to come not
from the towns or recent contact with the West, but from the forest and their own mythic
ancestors.

3
Khon (2007: 121) mentions a similar phenomenon among the Runa of the Upper Amazon: although demons
() are described as wearing priestly habits, modern missionaries in the region no longer wear this.
4
The periodic messianic movements that arose in the region since colonial times can also explain the Incas
persistence as an influential shamanic helper (Morin, 1976).
5
For more information about this Western history of contact, I refer the reader to Colpron (2012), the purpose of
this paper being rather to explore the Shipibo-Conibo shamans experience of contact. Similar ethnographic data
is further developed in that paper, but is here explored into a new light.
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Shipibo-Conibo myths recount how wealth and sophisticated goods were stolen by
cannibal ancestors who were subsequently transformed into either Incas or Whites, successive
figures of power relations. According to these myths, the Whites and their technologies first
originated from the Shipibo-Conibos own ancestors.6 These acquisitions, which for us are
wholly Western and modern, are deemed by shamans to have belonged to themselves from
time immemorial. Consequently rather than perceiving the encounter with the West as a
crisis, a radical break with the past, Shipibo-Conibo shamans interpret it through their mythic
accounts. Any attempt to approximate their own experience of contact thus depends on
exploring their ontology and comprehend how it differs from our own.

The Shipibo-Conibo do not evoke a unitary concept of a natural world with fixed
ontological attributes. The word used for world in Shipibo-Conibo, nete, also designates
day and life. Rather than reflecting a concrete and definitive reality, this concept appears
to be linked to temporality, movement and experience. Just like the alternation between day
and night, or life and death, Shipibo-Conibo experience the alternation between wakefulness
and dreams as different worlds following in succession. Dreaming enables access to other
temporalities, where everything is movement and, as in mythic times, where transformation
is anterior to form (Viveiros de Castro 2009: 33).

As Westerners, we tend to think of myths as imaginary stories or legends and of

dreams as hallucinations or images that exist only in the unconscious mind; thus the very
opposite of the solid, physical world. For the Shipibo-Conibo though, these are not illusions
but other lived realities, others enactment of peoples and temporalities. Dreaming entails
many dangers since the dreamer can become immersed in other lived experiences to the point
of no return, a relocation elsewhere that inevitably entails death. What distinguishes the
Shipibo-Conibo shamans named onanya, a term meaning the one who knows is
precisely knowing of how to shift between these diverse experiences, embodying different
lives, becoming movement, and transforming without having to choose between life and
death, wakefulness or dreaming. It is this intermediary position, an in-between state, which
allows the shamans to actualize the virtualities of the dream or myth (ibid.).

6
The Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa (1998) conveys a similar idea: The whites were created by Omama
in our forest, but he expelled them because he was afraid of their lack of wisdom and because they were
dangerous to us!
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This midway position also explains the shamans role as mediators, since they must
always use their abilities to the benefit of their own kin group; if not, they will become
marginalized as dangerous sorcerers (yobe). The Shipibo-Conibo shamans actualize other
potential worlds in response to the demands of their own people, in order to promote success
in hunting, influence the weather, or restore someones health; in short, to defend the well
being of their own group, ensuring that it does not tip in favor of another. To this end,
shamans shift between the domains of animals, trees, watercourses, meteorological
phenomena, stars and even objects, all of which, as we shall see, are apprehended as virtual
universes. The shaman thus embodies a kind of cosmopolitical diplomat (Viveiros de Castro
2009:121) who negotiates between different worlds.

Illustrations

As stated in the introduction of this paper, a description of shamanism in terms of the

supernatural or the imaginary a religious phenomenon implicating the spiritual realm or a
cosmovision representing the world still remains overly bounded to an opposition to a
palpable reality the natural, the real, the concrete far too close to our own cosmological
depiction. To exemplify how this binarism fails to translate the shamans multiplicity of
worlds, I shall here refer to some drawings made by Shipibo-Conibo shamans in which they
portray their ayahuasca experience. The interpretation of these drawings will allow me to
illustrate how the shamans consider each phenomenon, entity or object as a potential universe;
how for them everything can become the subject of a social relation.

The first drawing, made by the shaman Cesar, depicts himself on an ayahuasca
journey accompanied by his wife, also shaman. Travelling on the back of a boa-canoe, the
shamans are entering different trees worlds, each one distinguished by the use of a specific
color: light green, purple, and dark green. Cesar and his wife managed to experience these
worlds to apprehend them from the inside, as different villages, with their own people,
chiefs and shamans by observing a lengthy process of initiation in which, through extreme
forms of commensality, they sought to become symbiotically linked to them, turning into
allies.

An important feature of the drawing is the positioning of the worlds within a

relational field. Cesar and his wife are tied to the trees worlds by their heads crowns (miti);
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the boas bridge the trees and suns worlds; the bird is bound to the tree, etc. Even if I refer
here, for the sake of the explanation, to trees, sun, and bird, these cannot be considered as
types or species, since there are not fixed essences of a constant invariable nature. On the
contrary, they only exist in relation to the shamans experience. This explains the crucial
interconnectedness aspect of the drawing: worlds are not permanent entities; they do not stand
per se autonomously, but rather depend on the shamans engagement and relationship to
them. The shamans reveal these worlds by experiencing them, actualizing them throughout
their lived interaction. In doing so, they appropriate a positioning among the many existing
ones, literally incarnating these worlds (Stolze Lima, 2002).

Lets consider as an example the sun of the drawing, which is inhabited: Cesar explains
that this person the suns person is equally himself. We can understand this statement if
we take into account that Cesar is living the suns experience through the suns own
standpoint, in other words, Cesar is personifying the sun. Cesar also incarnates the trees, boas
and bird, which are likewise peopled, or said otherwise people in themselves, commonly
named ibo, a term more or less translatable as masters. This concept does not refer so much
to the idea of spirits, in the common sense of the term, since the masters are not
characterized by immateriality. We can take the example of the boas, considered as the
masters of lakes and rivers: these often appear to those uninitiated into shamanism in their
animal form or in the shape of packet boats or large whirlpools. If the shamans succeeds in
subjectivizing these masters that is to say, seeing them as people, decorated in sumptuous
clothes whose beautiful designs recall the skin of the boa this is not because they have the
gift to render visible any kind of spiritual, invisible and hidden manifestation. Rather it is
because they have learnt to embody their particular boas standpoint.

Encountering the masters of lakes and rivers in the form of subjects that is to say, as
adorned people rather than in their objectivized form, as a simple whirlpool or boat does not
depend, therefore, on any intrinsic attributes of these entities such as material/immaterial,
natural/spiritual, object/subject. It rather depends on the shamans capacity to incorporate
their experience. As Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2009: 25) suggests, Amazonian shamanism
comprises the polar opposite of the objectivist epistemology encouraged by Western
modernity. For us, knowing is objectivizing: what cannot be objectivized remains unreal or
abstract. The shamans, for they part, are moved by the opposite ideal: for them, knowing is
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personifying, adopting the standpoint of what has to be known, living the experience of the
knowing subjects (ibid.).

This ability is difficult to acquire and implies a long process of initiation in which the
shamans must above all radically transform their everyday life. The initiates no longer
socialize with their own group, no longer eat the typical diet, and no longer pursue their usual
quotidian activities. Instead, they immerse themselves in the way of being, the habitus of the
entity with which they wish to be familiarized. We can take the example of a large thorny
tree. The shamans would isolate themselves in the trees domain, the forest; and impregnate
themselves with its bark, leaves, scent and taste through baths and infusions; they would
remain immobile as long as possible and consume mainly large amounts of tobacco, gradually
riding themselves of their human customs and odors in order to acquire the trees ethos.

The more this symbiotic relation is stimulated, the more the shamans incorporate the
experience of the tree. This process is facilitated through the use of hallucinogens, like
ayahuasca, which can be considered the basic instrument of shamanic technology, being
used as a kind of visual prosthesis (Viveiros de Castro, 2007: 62). By repeatedly ingesting
the drug, the shamans see the inhabitants of the tree, insects or birds, as people; the thorns are
no longer simply thorns, but defensive weapons and the flowers now jewelry. Since they are
impregnated with the tree, the shamans also see themselves adorned with these weapons and
ornaments: these are their shamanic powers that will allow them to access the trees world.
However, this potential is never fully acquired since the odor and taste of the tree fade over
time and the items become worn out. The shamans then have to renew the practice of
commensality and share the trees habitus in order to once again be able to access this tree-
becoming.

Another drawing, made by the shaman Justina, depicts a shamanic session in which
Justina visits the universe of the water-loving bobinsana tree.7 We see the tree in question,
tied to an animal a water horse in turn tied to a boat, a clock and a chapel. All these
shamanic helpers have been contacted thanks to the tree: all are different manifestations of it.
We shall not be surprised that these manifestations are not restricted to a natural order since
the reference here is not to nature but to society: the world of the tree is, just like that of the

7
Calliandra angustifolia.
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Shipibo-Conibo, populated by Indians, Incas and Whites with the forests, modern towns and
machines. But since the shaman experiences this society via the habitus of the tree in
question, everything that seems familiar becomes infinitely different.

A series of transmutations of standpoints take place between the shaman and the tree,
allowing her to actualize the trees world, to become, herself, a manifestation of the tree.
Justina has drawn herself as an anaconda one of the trees incarnations, along with, we can
recall, the masters of lakes and rivers but this transformation is not total since Justina
remains simultaneously human. The process is akin to a play of mirrors in which the shaman
partially transforms into an anaconda to be able, in turn, to transform other entities into
people. If we observe the drawing closely, we can see that the boat has eyes and a mouth
hence the boat is personified and likewise the chapel is inhabited. Explaining her drawing to
me, Justina said that all these helpers are equally herself. She thus embodies the masters of the
tree just as the masters of the tree embody her. This is not merely a form of imitation, nor
merely a metaphor, since with the help of ayahuasca the shaman actualizes something
else entirely: neither simply human, nor tree, nor anaconda, but something between all of
them. The shaman embodies interspecificity, allowing her to perform her shamanic
mediations.

Things become further complicated since all these manifestations of the tree embodied
by the shaman are equally worlds in themselves: the water horse is a world, just like the boat,
the chapel and the clock. Thanks to the processes of commensality with a single riverside tree,
the shaman can shift between multiple dimensions and successively become a water horse, a
boat, a chapel, etc. Moreover each of these worlds refers in turn to other worlds, which refer
to other worlds in an endless series of entanglements. This fractal ontology does not imply a
part-whole relationship because, when apprehended from the inside, these worlds are just
like the tree world populated with Indians, Whites, forests and towns. However though each
world may seem a replica of the other, they are not since each one is actualized differently,
experienced through the alterity of the horse, the boat or the clock. It is because the shaman
lives each of these universes that she knows it differs from the others.

The drawing by this shaman therefore takes us much further than a simple split
between a natural and unitary world the same for everyone versus an imaginary and
supernatural world peopled by invisible entities. The problem in assuming a unified non-
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human domain is that it only reproduces an inverted mirror of a unitary natural world. Rather
than alluding to a fictive or transcendent universe, an invisible and absolute reality lurking
behind a natural and concrete faade, the multiplicity of worlds is immanent and revealed
when experienced by shamans (Viveiros de Castro, 2007). Therefore, instead of talking in
terms of the imaginary, the complexity of this ontology seems to be echoed more effectively
by the virtual in the sense of a potentiality that may become actualized. Since every
phenomenon is a potential world that is disclosed only when lived as such, the shamans
experiential knowledge (Gow 2006: 222) proves more decisive than any cosmological
dogma (Viveiros de Castro 2009: 22).

Subjectivations

The previous examples involved trees, sun, and boas, but since the shamans can
choose to incorporate the experience of any phenomenon, they are interested even in those
elements we conceive as simple objects. Everything for shamans can be a virtual world; every
relation can potentially become social, the most powerful shamans being precisely those
capable of subjectivizing any encounter (Vilaa, 2005). That is why some illiterate Shipibo-
Conibo shamans include written texts in their shamanic initiations: the shaman Lucio wraps
the pot he uses to prepare ayahuasca with old illustrated newspapers, thereby impregnating
himself with their knowledge and accessing their urban universe, populated with buildings
and cars; the shaman Artemio makes similar use of the Bible and includes some Saints among
his shamanic helpers (who rather than adhering to a Judeo-Christian morality of good and
evil, respond to the shamans combative aims).

Motors, batteries and transformers are also very popular among the Shipibo-Conibo
shamans since they allow the experimentation of motive and electric forces, highly valued in
shamanic mediations. For example, the shaman Justina explains that when she takes
ayahuasca, her body transforms into a machine, a powerful force that allows her to extract the
sickness. She describes her body being literally connected via cables to the world of the
battery and then to the body of the patient, thereby becoming a kind of transformer allowing
the force from one to circulate to the other. As I was recording Justinas shamanic songs, she
also told me that she knew the world (nete) of the tape recorder, which enables her to retain
an impressive repertoire of shamanic songs proof against memory loss.
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From these examples we can see that shamans are interested as much in trees as in
texts or manufactured goods, since all allow them to incorporate as long as they follow the
norms of commensality specific potentialities, such as the attractive force of magnets, the
knowledge of books, or the resistance of iron. In another drawing made by the shaman
Justina, we can also see how Saint, angel and machines are combined, all of them being
simultaneously included in shamanic mediations. Western technologies and religious
influences are thus appropriated in the same way as subjects of knowledge adhering to an
entirely shamanic logic (Colpron, 2012).

To facilitate my explanation, I have compartmentalized forest knowledge such as

trees, anacondas and lakes and Western knowledge newspapers, Bible, and modern
objects. It is essential to remember, though, that this opposition does not correspond to the
standpoint of shamans, for whom the forest encompasses all forms of knowledge. A shaman
can choose to be initiated directly through a machine, which is a universe in itself, but he can
also access the world of the machine by resorting to a tree, since forest knowledge is
extremely hi-tech. 8 Several shamans described the masters of the ayahuasca vine like
Western doctors kitted out with smocks, stethoscopes and cutting-edge medical equipment.
These medical experts assist the shamans during their ayahuasca sessions and allow them to
provide treatment worthy of a hospital with a surgical theatre, X-rays and all.

But while the forest enables access to knowledge we consider Western, the opposite
does not occur: the objects derived from towns machines, Bibles, newspapers do not
transmit forest knowledge. Shamans may sometimes choose to be initiated directly through
these objects, but only because in these cases initiation is judged to be less restrictive and
dangerous than forest initiation. The asymmetry posed by myths where the forest
encompasses all forms of knowledge means that the Shipibo-Conibo shamans, in this sense,
have nothing to envy the West.

Conclusion

We return then to my initial question: why had something I had presumed to be

problematic the crisis that contact with the West must have inevitably provoked in shamanic

8
For other Amazonian examples of this, cf. Chaumeil (2000); Khon (2007); Cesarino (2008).
 13

practice not been so for the Shipibo-Conibo shamans? I have deliberately approached the
question by exploring Shipibo-Conibo ontology as a legitimate research object and not as a
simple set of supernatural beliefs. This last approach, I defended, would have only reduced
the shamans experience of contact to my own. The purpose of this paper was, on the
contrary, to illustrate how Shipibo-Conibo shamans live contact differently since they enact
very different lived worlds. I have therefore suggested that while we refer: (1) to a linear
temporality the history of the past insofar as it reflects real and concrete facts which
results (2) from a cosmology where the world is considered unitary, regulated by the same
laws, the Shipibo-Conibo shamans pose the question in other terms: for them, (1) temporality
seems to be experienced through the circular time of their myths and (2) the multiplicity of
worlds and potential subjectivities render possible different enactment or realities. What are
the implications of these differences?

From our Western perspective, the persistence and expansion of Shipibo-Conibo

shamanism after contact can be attributed to its timeless capacity to feed on difference and
absorb alterity (Erikson, 1996). Since the shamans specialize in mediating between different
worlds, shamanism becomes the prism through which contact is experienced (Vilaa, 2000).
This seems to explain the shamanisms vitality in the context of increased relations with
Western representatives: shamans become crucial mediators in the interactions with the
worlds of Whites. It then becomes understandable why more intense contact with the Western
world has only multiplied the number of Shipibo-Conibo shamans and expanded their
shamanic practice.

However, following the Shipibo-Conibo shamans standpoint, contact is not a novelty

and Whites are not entirely alien, their knowledge having been encompassed by the forest
since mythical times. Consequently, if the shamans are interested in the worlds of Whites, this
is not to acquire just any kind of unfamiliar knowledge, but rather just as they do with trees
to immerse themselves in another subject position in order to incorporate a specific
understanding or potentiality. Shamans seek to encompass multiple subjectivities in order to
actualize their role as cosmopolitical diplomats. I stress: it is not merely an appropriation of
representations and thus not simply a mimetic relation but the experiencing of another
way of being, or better said, of a way of becoming since shamans embody another ontological
experience. This is why shamanic initiations require symbiotic behavioral practices that affect
everyday life: it is only through these lived experiences that shamans acquire the multiple
 14

positioning indispensable to their shamanic mediations. Therefore shamanism does not imply
the idea of believing, but rather the practice of getting immersed, shamans incarnating and
personifying different subjects of inquiry (Stolze Lima, 2002; Viveiros de Castro, 2007).

That the shamans refer to the worlds of the Whites in the same way as the forest
worlds may from a Western point of view seem fairly odd. However, this makes sense if
we take into account that, for the shamans, the multiplicity of worlds is not imaginary and
transcendent these concepts being meaningless when a fixed unitary world is not the scale
of measure but rather immanent to every phenomenon. Since everything can allow a
different positioning and world enactment, becoming White in the same way as becoming a
tree comprises different manners of embodying subjectivities. Potential worlds are disclosed
only when experienced by shamans, and as a consequence, any cosmological doctrine looses
its pertinence vis--vis the shamans lived experiences. In light of this experiential knowledge
where worlds are revealed only when lived out, our abstract Western theories of the illusory
representations cast upon an unchanging nature appear, in turn, very strange.

The lived multiverse of the shamans forces us to problematize our common way of
depicting shamanism in terms of belief or worldview. Shamanism cannot be apprehended
as a cosmovision or as a cultural representation of the world, since these
conceptualizations implicitly refer to a shared nature, while shamans do not. The alternative
proposed here, that shamanism acknowledges the idea of multiple worlds, implies much more
than a question of rhetoric. Since it challenges our familiar naturalistic theories, this approach
involves a kind of effectiveness just as shamanism does. If the shamans multiverse really
permeates our thoughts instigating a kind of anthropological becoming in which we seek to
mediate different ontological experiences this would allow us to envision a different
anthropological collaboration where shamans would not simply be adjusted to our theories but
would effectively affect our anthropological writings. Rather than simple objects of inquiry
good to think about, shamans would then become real subjects of a dialogue good to think
with (Stengers, 2008). Taken as serious interlocutors, shamans can only lead us to learn from
difference and think differently, thus intellectually stimulating our own attempts in mediating
virtual and possible worlds.
 15

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