Exciting and exclusive narrative by the Villas-Bôas brothers: the Indians talk to the Spirits

Living in the jungles, our heroes from the Sertão tell us details of Indian life and their relationship with the “supernatural”.

Text by Marlene R. Severino Nobre

We had a family reunion: the Villas-Bôas brothers, Sulamita Mareines and her son Ivo and us from the Spirit Sheet to discuss a subject that is so little known or poorly publicized: religion among the Indians.

Ivo had returned enthusiastically from his excursions to the Xingu. Sulamita mustered up the courage to get on a plane and set off in the same direction, in order to study indigenous customs in their natural habitat. In the meantime, we've gathered some very important information, right here in São Paulo, in this sensational interview with Cláudio Villas-Bôas.

In the anteroom, our conversation transported us to the forest. We were already breathing the pure air of the forests, seeing the bright fish, gilded by the sun's rays, struggling in the expert hands of the native fishermen, and this evocation of our most genuine roots lulled our thoughts into the hopes of the future. In the future, when the desire for peace will ensure mankind's growing progress and definitive spiritual conquests, the rulers of the peoples will be wise and kind men with ample mediumistic faculties, guaranteeing the collectivity the climate of tranquillity that we all dream of.

The story for the children of the third millennium will go something like this: “Our rulers, my children, are the shamans of the 21st century - priests, fathers and teachers...”. And the man who inherits the earth will have in his attitudes the meeting point of science, philosophy and religion, indispensable links with the Kingdom of the Supreme Giver of Life!

FE - Cláudio, first of all, I want to tell you how pleased we are to be interviewing you and Orlando. You know, you are people who are highly respected by all of us Brazilians. The Villas-Bôas family is linked to the simplest and purest thing we have: our Indians. Well, I think our readers would really like to know: what is the religion of the Indians?

Cláudio - This is a very complex issue indeed. Above all, it's a problem of conceptualization: could the Indian's behaviour in relation to the supernatural be conceptualized as religion? I'm asking this question initially so that we can better understand the issue. What we understand as religion has no correspondence in indigenous culture.

FE - In general terms, do Indians believe in survival? Do they communicate with entities that no longer have a physical body? What about their belief in God?

Cláudio - The Indians have their cultural heroes and a whole experience with the supernatural, which is pajelança. I wouldn't classify it as a religion. The pajelança is a whole practice that the pajé or their sorcerer, as we classify them there, has to get in touch with the supernatural. It's a whole technique that they know and develop according to the moment and the need. Now, religion has a much broader concept, it means worship, connecting the living with something higher, for example, with the Creator, with the being who created the world. Indians don't believe in a creator, they have their cultural heroes.

FE - Cláudio, how is a shaman chosen?

Cláudio - The shamans always appear when there is a tendency to do so. To understand this better, we need to say that there is a very wide variety of spirits, or categories of spirits, among the Indians: there are those who live at the bottom of the waters, others who live in the forests. When the Indian is hunting or fishing, he can sometimes be hit by these supernatural entities. When he is hit, he becomes linked to that particular spirit; he then returns to the village, disturbed, and his relatives ask for the shaman who has the same origin.

The shaman comes to find out what happened. The Indian tells them, in a state of near unconsciousness - I don't know if it's feigned, but it happens among Indians - that he was “caught” by Jacuí - Jacuí appeared - or he heard Jacuí's flute. The shaman then begins to initiate this Indian, who has been affected by this supernatural influence, to make him a shaman linked to this category of Spirit that is Jacuí.

FE - Is Jacuí the Spirit of the forest?

Cláudio - No, it's the Spirit of the deep.

FE - Currently, who is the main shaman in the Upper Xingu?

Cláudio - There are several shamans and, as such, they all occupy a position within the group that is not only religious but also socio-economic.

FE - In the case of Tacumã, do you remember anything specific about how he became a shaman?

Claudio - I know the whole story until he became a great shaman. Tacumã was fishing in the Coluene River and then arrived in the village with a high fever. His relatives went to ask for resources at the post, they thought he had malaria... When we arrived to find out what was going on, the shamans were already around him, and they said: “What he has is not a disease that you can cure... It's not a civilized disease. He was caught by the Jacuí, so we're the ones who know how to cure Tacumã”.

They started the pajelança and, indeed, the Indian healed and returned to his normal state. After that, he began to have some very strange disturbances; he would run off into the woods, enter the village, climb the houses, roll down the stairs, taken over by the Spirit. This influence remained until he managed to dominate that category of Spirit, when they accepted him as a living person representing that spiritual entity.

The problem of shamanism among the Xingu Indians is very complex. Orlando and I are working on this to explain in detail what really happens in these situations. It's not easy to explain in a few lines. Even more so for me, who has difficulty expressing myself.

FE - That's not what we're hearing, you express yourself very well.

Sulamita - Do you believe that there was a spiritual influence, an intelligence from another dimension, acting on Tacumã?

Cláudio - You know, today there is a lot of confusion about these things, but for a long time we have believed in something that transcends our lives. Science itself studies parapsychological phenomena and, today, no one doubts that non-physical factors act on us.

Sulamita - Don't you doubt it?

Cláudio - I don't doubt it.

Sulamita - Congratulations!

Cláudio - Who can deny, for example, that pajelança is linked to something outside of what can be tested!

Sulamita - What an opening! Congratulations! Now could you tell us in detail the story of the two children that Tacumã found in the forest?

Cláudio - That's right. This happened in the Kalapalos village. The father went fishing, taking two children, and at a certain point in the day he left the children by the Marivarré lagoon, a lagoon near our post, which is the Park's headquarters. When he returned, the children were gone. He looked everywhere and then went back to the village to ask for help. Everyone helped in the search, but to no avail... The next day, a shaman from the Kalapalos said that a spirit, Evurá, had taken the children. The shaman didn't manage to do all the shamanizing and the children didn't come back.

They then looked for other shamans from other tribes - Kuicuri, Meinaco, Arueiti - all of whom were concentrated in the Kapalos' village, but to no avail. That's when someone remembered Tacumã. By this time, he was already head of the village, but he wasn't respected as a great shaman. They were hopeful, because Tacumã was the son of a shaman who had become famous and might be able to find the children who had been lost for five days. Tacumã came with a group of auxiliary shamans and did all the shamanizing, singing and performing the attraction. When he had finished, he said that the children would appear at 10am the next day, that Evurá, a Spirit, had taken the children away, but that he had talked to him and they were already back.

Remarkably, at 10 o'clock there was a shout in the woods, and the children appeared on the edge of the savannah. I was there! I can't doubt it because we saw the whole thing. When the children appeared, the relatives ran to get them, but Tacumã shouted: “Don't go, otherwise she'll go and never come back...” But the relatives ran to get them, and the children went back into the bush and disappeared. Tacumã did another work with a lot of pajelança, a lot of smoke with that cigarette that was almost 3 cm long, huge. He smoked one after the other, went into a trance and said: “Tomorrow he'll come back again, but tomorrow no one will go there, I'll go and get the children”. This is real, ask Orlando, we saw it.

At 10 o'clock, there was a cry from the children at the edge of the bush, and they appeared. So Tacumã, with his rattle in hand, went singing towards the children and, with the help of another shaman, took them by the arm to their parents' house. They were two girls, one aged nine and the other six.

Ivo: I don't think there was any way of feeding these children.

Cláudio - They spent twenty days in the bush.

Ivo - And they came back intact?

Cláudio - We took one of our small planes and took the children to the clinic. They were just skin on bone.

FE - Could you say something about the funeral ceremonies the Indians perform?

Cláudio - Guarup is the funeral ceremony. It's part of the religious dimension. The Indian believes that the dead person has another destiny, outside the reality in which we are. They perform this ceremony to free the dead person, to expel them from there, because they believe that the “ian” - their soul - stays there around the relatives because they miss them, but everyone must let go. The ceremonial is done with exorcisms; it's a collective solution so that the problem of longing doesn't arise. After the Guarup, the dead man's relatives are washed, painted, so that they forget the dead man, so that the widower can get married, the son doesn't have to remember his father, and the wife her husband, and so on.

FE - Do the Indians put anything in the tombs?

Cláudio - I need to explain that the soul - for the Indian - has to cross a very long and difficult path before reaching Uivat - heaven - where there is a village similar to the one here on Earth. In this village, he will live to the full. The Indians put bows, arrows and clubs in the tomb so that the deceased can cross that difficult region, where there are huge hawks that can destroy him. You have to overcome this difficult path to reach the village of happiness, heaven.

FE - What a wonderful thing! The pure faith of the simple!

Cláudio - There really are some beautiful details. In our book Xingu, the Indians and their myths, We analyze all of this. There are ethnologists, for example, who lump religion and magic together, but for us they are two completely different things. Magic is technique, it's a way of getting in touch with the supernatural; religion is pure worship, it's understanding the supernatural; it's something static.

Sulamita - Since schools here in Brazil misrepresent the Indian religion so much, they teach, for example, that they worship the sun, the moon, etc. when that's not the case at all

Cláudio - Religion is always passed down from father to son. Religion is a metaphysical structure. Every Indian knows that he has a destiny, that his soul will remain on a certain plane. This knowledge doesn't require any technique, there are no dynamics. This is no longer the case with pajelança.

FE - Is pajelança a technique?

Cláudio - It is the power of the living to contact entities.

FE - Is there a type of pajelança for each case?

Cláudio - Of course, each case is linked to a category of spirit. The shaman never covers all the spiritual entities. There are shamans from the Jacuí, those from the Anhangú, others from the Aratí, each one is the owner of a certain range of Spirits.

Sulamita - And do they heal through this relationship?

Cláudio - They do. And to this day, when something happens to any of them, we go there in our little jeep. We go to the village. They often say: “No, Cláudio, this isn't ‘torrun-tor-run”, this isn't a caraíba disease, we're the only ones who know. Wait, we'll cure him, he'll be fine, he doesn't need medicine”.

FE - And he stays?

Cláudio - Stay.

Ivo - During my visit to the Xingu, I learned a lot about the Indian and I would like you to confirm this. Is it true that there is no punishment for the Indian when he makes a mistake?

Cláudio - To answer this, we need to remember that in indigenous civilization there is no general chief who determines, for example, service, work, etc. Indians are organized into families, and each family is independent of the other. The chief - die-what in the Camaiurá language - is the owner of the village courtyard; he is only responsible for promoting events in this courtyard, where the social life of the Indians takes place. He is never in a position of command to determine this or that activity. No, he only has to answer for his family. But he must preside over any ceremony in the courtyard.

When the village is visited by another tribe for a festival, for example, it's the chief who has to welcome the friendly neighbors. So, in that case, he really represents the chief, he assumes that position. He has no authority to correct any distortions. We talk like this because there is no crime among the Indians. An Indian, for example, steals something from someone else - an arrow, a bow, an ornament - the others make fun of it, there's no one to say “you made a mistake, you're ugly”. No, they don't devalue or belittle people, nor do they put them in a marginalized situation for any such occurrence.

FE - Are there no crimes between them?

Cláudio - No. There is only a magical punishment, when they conclude that the sorcerer has caused the death of an Indian. In this case, he is considered by the whole group to be a dangerous element, and so they eliminate him, they kill him.

Sulamita - They conclude that the Indian was killed by witchcraft...

Cláudio - For witchcraft, but this punishment is also rare.

FE - I think that in the future, we will once again make use of all the primitive experiences, adapting them to the degree of intellectuality we have acquired. After the year 2000, we hope to be governed by spiritualized creatures who, like the shamans, will have moral ascendancy over us, bringing with them all the possibility of interchange with the spirit world...

Cláudio - I think the primitive has a lot to teach us civilized people. We've distorted our lives so much; for example, economic complications. We have so many complex philosophies. The Indian has something so pure... When I read Sartre or Heidegger, philosophers who are so difficult, we discover, especially in Heidegger, what they have to teach us. The foundation of being, It's a lot about the essence of truth. How much depth there is in that! There's none of that increase in our knowledge through technology. We can see in the Indian the content of these absolute positions within philosophy itself.

FE - I'd like you to conclude by explaining what the connotation is with the Indian?

Cláudio - The Indian is spontaneous, all his behavior is in a certain way pure. The Indian is authentic; he doesn't aspire to anything. He's a man before life. There is an extraordinary relationship between the Indian and Krishnamurti's ethics.

FE - With Krishnamurti?

Cláudio - Yes, precisely because of their spontaneity. Indians don't fear death. It's the living who have the problem of nostalgia and have to keep the memory of the dead person at bay, but the person who is about to die doesn't fear death.

FE - Interestingly, the Indians live by the saying of Our Lord Jesus Christ: “Each day is enough for its own evil”.

Cláudio - The very old Indian is cheerful; the older he gets, the more cheerful he is. He's not thinking: “Tomorrow, I'll be dead”. No, the older the Indian, the happier he is. He's looked after by the others, he has all the respect of his village. I didn't like the book Old age, that uncomfortable reality, In any continent, she may have found a place where the old are despised, but here in Brazil, at least, we can't say that the old are despised by our people.

FE - What other phenomena did you notice during your contact with the Indians?

Cláudio - Countless. One of them occurred when we were arriving, in 1945, in the village of the Kalapalos. Five days later, the Aurás Indians came too. The Kalapalos were surprised because they weren't expecting the visit. The Aurás then explained that they had been warned that civilized people were arriving in the Kalapalos' village.

FE - How interesting! It means that your mission was already being announced by the Spirits to the Indians!