Ethno medicine and Shamanic Practices in the Ecuadorian Amazon: Journey through the Imaginaries of Health, Disease, Healing and Healing

Amazonian peoples use sacred hallucinogenic plants to heal both body and spirit, restoring balance disrupted by magical arrows sent by enemies. Shamans, as specialists, extract these arrows through elaborate rituals involving ingestion of a sacred plant, allowing them to know the patient's body and spirit. This article argues that healing must address both physical and spiritual dimensions, drawing on ethnographic stories to show how Amazonian groups maintain a philosophy of balance despite years of contact, using knowledge of sacred and medicinal plants to achieve well-being and health.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The use of sacred plants with high hallucinogenic power characterizes one of the forms identities of the peoples of the Amazon. The imaginaries about disease and death processes are seen as an internal rupture, product of magical agents, generally related to arrows that are sent by enemies and that cause contamination that produces ills or damages in the body. The shaman, turned into a specialist, will be in charge of extracting, taking out or sucking these arrows that cause damage in order to restore balance, the healing of the sick person that is carried out through an elaborate ritual of ingesting a sacred plant that allows him to know the body and above all the spirit of the patient. This article proposes to discuss the importance of healing the body, but above all to heal the sick, both their bodies and their spirits, restoring a lost balance. Through ethnographic stories, we try to analyze the relationship between knowledge, the use of sacred and medicinal plants as the way in which Amazonian groups, despite several years of contact maintain a philosophy of balance between body and spirit, in order to heal, maintain well-being and health.