(Note: See Cal Roeker's comment posted on the previous blog below)
Sometimes ghost stories reach the big press. This one was in the March 2017 edition of National Geographic, involving a young man named, of all things, Maykool Acuna, from Chile. He had gone on a tourist jaunt to the big jungle in Bolivia, to Madidi National Park, cared for by a vigilant tourist company that was well used to tenderfoots who were oblivious to the ways of the jungle. At base camp, before a walking tour into the jungle, they had a local shaman lead a Pachamama ceremony that praised and asked for protection from the “earth mother” still worshiped by the locals (and much of Peru and Bolivia), where candles were lit and instruments played, all good stuff for the tourists. But Maykool refused to participate. Getting up from the circle that had been formed, he stalked out of the ceremony, but did not go back to his room. Instead he ran into the jungle, and that was the last that was seen of him for over a week.
The tour company, very upset at having lost one of its customers, and set out to find him at once, but soon had to give up. Something more had to be done, so they hired a husband-wife shaman team to try to get to the bottom of the disappearance. The shamans quickly pronounced that Maykool had offended Pachamama, and having lost her protection, was quickly attacked by a local duende (a forest spirit), who it is said could whisk the unwary into a different dimension, hiding them in plain sight. The duende had used a powerful tree spirit to accomplish this, and the shamans were very worried. A team of expert forest guides searched for days, but could find nothing. Finally, an article of clothing was found, and at this, the shamans pronounced that the duende had been convinced to let the man go, and that shortly he would be found. The following day, he was, and this is his story:
At the Pachamama ceremony, he had become anxious and confused, and had panicked at being in the jungle. Irrational, he had tried to run away from it by going straight into the forest. To lighten himself, he had even thrown off his sandals and his cell phone. When finally he came back to his senses, he was beneath a tree, utterly lost. He tried to find the nearby river, but could not. To survive, he followed a troop of monkeys who dropped fruit to him from the trees, and led him to shelter and water at night. Still, he weakened, and was found exhausted and covered with bug bites at last.
He did not know why this had happened to him, and still did not believe in the spirits, despite his mental confusion and apparent disappearance from experienced trackers. He had been less than a mile away from camp when found. Putting it all together, the rest were convinced – the duendes and the other spirits of the forest were real.
I know of them – in the Venezuelan Amazon, they also believe in the duendes, and also in a dark, often malevolent forest spirit called Mawadi. I must admit that I felt the malevolent side to this spirit myself, although, obvious to us racionales, there are psychological explanations for it. I heard many stories of spirits and shamans while there, but one in particular comes to mind. A criollo (what a typical, mixed-race Venezuelan is called), Don Quero, who had come from the Llanos (the great flood plains of Venezuela north of the forest) to run a small store in the Amazon told us of his father, who was a shaman himself. For the criollos, there are two main types of shamans: the curandero, or healer, and the brujo, or bad sorcerer who is paid by his clients to either make someone fall in love with them, or to harm their enemies in some way. Don Quero claimed that his dad was a curandero, although some work both sides of the fence. In any case, due to a clash of interests in clients, his father came to battle a local brujo, and Don Quero as a child witnessed much of it: tables suddenly upturned by invisible forces, the presence of and howling of demons, and the projection of magical darts that are able to harm or even disengaged the spirit from the body (causing illness and death). The story was a true ghost story – the details were harrowing, and one could imagine the child that he was cowering in the corner of his house. The father came out victorious, but Don Quero wanted nothing more to do with any of it. It was real, and too much to handle. The Indians in this area fully agreed, except that many had taken up the task of dealing with the forest spirits. For some, it was a way to social power, but for many, they felt they had to deal with them. They lived among them, after all, often miles upriver in a canoe while fishing, or miles away from home while hunting in the forest. It was, to them, not an option to ignore them. They were real.
In my humble opinion – and it has to be humble, because I haven’t the faintest idea how to deal with such things – they, these spirits, are real. Just from my experiences alone, too many people have encountered them who were otherwise rational adults. Some even swore that sometimes the duendes would come to party with them during their yarake (fermented manioc) fests. But I would stress to New Agers who want to contact them that, whatever they are – aliens from another dimension, nature spirits, demons from hell, or all of the above, many are not benign. They may be mischievous and relatively harmless, or they may embody a will of enmity towards one or all humans.
Lesson: don’t mess. When in Rome, perhaps it is best to call out the best in the spirits along with the locals. However, don’t try this at home. Even experienced shamans are often, and I mean often, harmed, and sometimes even killed in their dealings with the spirits. If it is all psychological, so be it – it can still cause illness and death. But I think not – this is a broad universe, fully capable of housing other types of beings not perceptible to us with our ordinary senses and states of attention. To believe in them – Jesus and the people of his time called them evil spirits or demons – is not to become a heathen. It is simply a recognition that something, in probable fact many things, exist outside our normal knowledge; and that we know so little about them, it is best to avoid contact. Except if you cannot; except if you live in the deep forest where Mawadi reigns. FK
Sometimes ghost stories reach the big press. This one was in the March 2017 edition of National Geographic, involving a young man named, of all things, Maykool Acuna, from Chile. He had gone on a tourist jaunt to the big jungle in Bolivia, to Madidi National Park, cared for by a vigilant tourist company that was well used to tenderfoots who were oblivious to the ways of the jungle. At base camp, before a walking tour into the jungle, they had a local shaman lead a Pachamama ceremony that praised and asked for protection from the “earth mother” still worshiped by the locals (and much of Peru and Bolivia), where candles were lit and instruments played, all good stuff for the tourists. But Maykool refused to participate. Getting up from the circle that had been formed, he stalked out of the ceremony, but did not go back to his room. Instead he ran into the jungle, and that was the last that was seen of him for over a week.
The tour company, very upset at having lost one of its customers, and set out to find him at once, but soon had to give up. Something more had to be done, so they hired a husband-wife shaman team to try to get to the bottom of the disappearance. The shamans quickly pronounced that Maykool had offended Pachamama, and having lost her protection, was quickly attacked by a local duende (a forest spirit), who it is said could whisk the unwary into a different dimension, hiding them in plain sight. The duende had used a powerful tree spirit to accomplish this, and the shamans were very worried. A team of expert forest guides searched for days, but could find nothing. Finally, an article of clothing was found, and at this, the shamans pronounced that the duende had been convinced to let the man go, and that shortly he would be found. The following day, he was, and this is his story:
At the Pachamama ceremony, he had become anxious and confused, and had panicked at being in the jungle. Irrational, he had tried to run away from it by going straight into the forest. To lighten himself, he had even thrown off his sandals and his cell phone. When finally he came back to his senses, he was beneath a tree, utterly lost. He tried to find the nearby river, but could not. To survive, he followed a troop of monkeys who dropped fruit to him from the trees, and led him to shelter and water at night. Still, he weakened, and was found exhausted and covered with bug bites at last.
He did not know why this had happened to him, and still did not believe in the spirits, despite his mental confusion and apparent disappearance from experienced trackers. He had been less than a mile away from camp when found. Putting it all together, the rest were convinced – the duendes and the other spirits of the forest were real.
I know of them – in the Venezuelan Amazon, they also believe in the duendes, and also in a dark, often malevolent forest spirit called Mawadi. I must admit that I felt the malevolent side to this spirit myself, although, obvious to us racionales, there are psychological explanations for it. I heard many stories of spirits and shamans while there, but one in particular comes to mind. A criollo (what a typical, mixed-race Venezuelan is called), Don Quero, who had come from the Llanos (the great flood plains of Venezuela north of the forest) to run a small store in the Amazon told us of his father, who was a shaman himself. For the criollos, there are two main types of shamans: the curandero, or healer, and the brujo, or bad sorcerer who is paid by his clients to either make someone fall in love with them, or to harm their enemies in some way. Don Quero claimed that his dad was a curandero, although some work both sides of the fence. In any case, due to a clash of interests in clients, his father came to battle a local brujo, and Don Quero as a child witnessed much of it: tables suddenly upturned by invisible forces, the presence of and howling of demons, and the projection of magical darts that are able to harm or even disengaged the spirit from the body (causing illness and death). The story was a true ghost story – the details were harrowing, and one could imagine the child that he was cowering in the corner of his house. The father came out victorious, but Don Quero wanted nothing more to do with any of it. It was real, and too much to handle. The Indians in this area fully agreed, except that many had taken up the task of dealing with the forest spirits. For some, it was a way to social power, but for many, they felt they had to deal with them. They lived among them, after all, often miles upriver in a canoe while fishing, or miles away from home while hunting in the forest. It was, to them, not an option to ignore them. They were real.
In my humble opinion – and it has to be humble, because I haven’t the faintest idea how to deal with such things – they, these spirits, are real. Just from my experiences alone, too many people have encountered them who were otherwise rational adults. Some even swore that sometimes the duendes would come to party with them during their yarake (fermented manioc) fests. But I would stress to New Agers who want to contact them that, whatever they are – aliens from another dimension, nature spirits, demons from hell, or all of the above, many are not benign. They may be mischievous and relatively harmless, or they may embody a will of enmity towards one or all humans.
Lesson: don’t mess. When in Rome, perhaps it is best to call out the best in the spirits along with the locals. However, don’t try this at home. Even experienced shamans are often, and I mean often, harmed, and sometimes even killed in their dealings with the spirits. If it is all psychological, so be it – it can still cause illness and death. But I think not – this is a broad universe, fully capable of housing other types of beings not perceptible to us with our ordinary senses and states of attention. To believe in them – Jesus and the people of his time called them evil spirits or demons – is not to become a heathen. It is simply a recognition that something, in probable fact many things, exist outside our normal knowledge; and that we know so little about them, it is best to avoid contact. Except if you cannot; except if you live in the deep forest where Mawadi reigns. FK
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