Machi

What it is

Within Mapuche society, a machi serves as a community doctor, spiritual leader, and advisor. Practitioners conduct ceremonies called machitun to speak with spirits, heal illnesses, and maintain balance. They also interpret dreams, known as pewma, and historically offered counsel regarding conflicts and peace treaties. While the related term kalku usually indicates malevolent sorcery, common speech occasionally blurs the distinction between the two titles. Machis are widely known for their extensive botanical expertise and are consulted to discover if negative supernatural forces are harming community members. Their traditional medical practices have gained growing recognition across broader Chilean society.

How it is done

Healing sessions take the form of the machitun, an event where the practitioner reaches out to the spirit realm. To treat an ailment, the officiant shifts between feminine, masculine, and dual-gender identities, matching and balancing the cosmic energies of the sick person. Training for the role culminates in the machiluwun, a formal consecration rite. Before this dedication, the selected child spends six months residing alongside an experienced machi, studying herbal preparations, ritual procedures, and dream reading.

Tools and materials

Herbal preparations form the foundation of this practice. Plants carry distinct spiritual genders based on their inherent properties. For instance, the laurel tree is treated as feminine because of its gentle, soothing character. In contrast, the triwe tree is classified as masculine due to its strong protective attributes. Machis draw upon these botanical qualities to create remedies and rebalance spiritual energies.

What it is for

Community members seek out a machi for physical healing, prophetic advice, and the interpretation of symbolic dreams. Rites are conducted to restore harmony when the foundational components of life become disordered within a person. Machis are also consulted to identify individuals suspected of directing harmful supernatural forces against others. In earlier eras, communities relied on their guidance to make crucial decisions about warfare and peace agreements.

Who does it

Candidates are typically recognized in childhood through prophetic dreams, sudden visions, family legacy, or personal initiative. Undergoing the demanding and painful training requires tremendous discipline and mental fortitude. Although most practitioners are women who often inherit their calling through maternal grandmothers, men also take up the path as machi weye. Practitioners frequently embody flexible gender roles, known among researchers as cogender identities. While women often gain respect through marriage and motherhood, male practitioners sometimes adopt celibate or warrior identities.

Peoples and places

This tradition belongs to the Mapuche people, who inhabit the southern regions of South America. Most reside in central Chile, particularly across the Araucanía and Los Lagos regions, alongside communities living in adjacent territories of Argentina. Within these communities, machis hold high spiritual standing, being served first during communal meals as individuals appointed by the divine, even while navigating complex social tensions surrounding their unconventional gender expressions.

What people believe

Mapuche cosmology centers on Nguchen, the creator and giver of life, who encompasses four generational and gendered aspects representing older and younger male and female forces. Illness is understood as a disruption or imbalance among these four fundamental facets. While plants and spirits hold fixed, unalterable genders, machis possess the unique capacity to transcend rigid boundaries, moving fluidly between earthly realities where gender is static and spiritual realms where identity remains dynamic.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Anthropological research, notably by scholar Ana Bacigalupo, explores how machi identity bridges masculine and feminine attributes through fluid, cogendered expressions. Studies emphasize that spiritual tasks require moving beyond rigid binary categories. However, some practitioners voice concern over academic portrayals, arguing that outside researchers often reduce complex ceremonial roles to foreign concepts of sexuality or witchcraft without directly consulting the lived experiences of the Mapuche people themselves.

Compare and confuse

In everyday speech, the term machi is sometimes confused with kalku. While both terms refer to people working with unseen forces, a kalku is typically associated with harmful magic and malevolence, whereas a machi is understood to perform beneficial healing and community service.

Law and persecution

Legal precedent touched this tradition following the 1960 Lago Budi incident. The individuals charged with the sacrifice confessed and were detained, but a Chilean court released them after two years. The presiding judge concluded that the participants had acted without free will, driven by the overwhelming force of ancestral traditions during a catastrophic natural disaster.

Today

Mapuche healing traditions continue to operate actively in southern South America while gaining broader recognition throughout Chilean healthcare and society. Practitioners maintain their traditional responsibilities as spiritual counsellors, botanical healers, and interpreters of dreams. Even as they face modern social pressures and prejudices regarding gender roles, machis preserve their central standing within community ceremonies.

Questions people ask about Machi

Good reading and sources

• Machi (shaman) on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data