Yachay

What it is

Yachay is a phlegm that Amazonian shamans and sorcerers in Peru are said to generate and carry inside their bodies. People who hold this belief understand it as the vessel of a shaman's strength: within the phlegm sit virotes and tsentsak, small weapons described as darts, arrows or even slivers of bone. A practitioner can launch these from the mouth, and a person struck by one is thought to fall ill in a number of ways. Another shaman can undo the damage, drawing the dart back out by sucking it from the patient's body. The Quechua language gives the word its meaning, knowledge, and names the ritual specialist a yachak, a knower.

Where it comes from

The name is Quechua. Yachay means knowledge, and it grows out of the verb yacha, to know, with a leaning toward knowledge of ritual. From the same root comes yachak, the word for a shaman: literally, one who knows. The beliefs gathered under this name belong to the shamanic world of Peru's Amazon Basin, where ceremonies with ayahuasca are held. The Kokama, a people of the Ucayali region, use mariri both for the spirit that dwells in the phlegm and for ikara, the magical songs of those ceremonies, which Spanish speakers write as icaro.

How it is done

Two movements define the craft, one hostile and one curative. A shaman is believed to spit the darts stored in the phlegm toward a target, and the piercing is thought to bring on many kinds of illness. A colleague called to help then sucks the dart out of the sufferer. The spirit mariri, lodged in the same phlegm, is fed on tobacco smoke. It travels between generations when a teacher brings it up and a disciple swallows what emerges, or when the pupil draws it in through a pipe; nature spirits, among them that of the ayahuasca plant, may also grant it.

Tools and materials

The phlegm is the first material, and everything else rests inside it. Its virotes and tsentsak, the darts, arrows and bone splinters, embody the shaman's power in portable form. Tobacco smoke stands as the spirit's food: mariri, living in the phlegm, is kept alive on it, and a pipe serves as the route by which a disciple can receive the spirit. Song has its place too, since among the Kokama the same word, mariri, covers the ikara or icaros, the magical songs of ayahuasca ceremony.

What it is for

As believers describe it, the darts serve attack: a sorcerer who sends one can leave the person struck with a range of ailments. The cure lies in the same craft, since a shaman is able to suck the missile back out. Mariri works the gentler side. Shamans keep it as a shield and a guard when they work magic, and it is regarded as a healer of real strength. So the same phlegm holds both a weapon and a remedy, depending on the intent of the one who carries it.

Who does it

The specialists said to carry yachay are the shamans and sorcerers who work in Peru's Amazon Basin. The Quechua term for such a ritual expert, yachak, marks them as people who know. Transmission runs from teacher to disciple: a master brings up the mariri spirit and passes it to a pupil, who takes it by swallowing it or by breathing it through a pipe. Nature spirits can short-circuit that line, since mariri is also said to come directly from beings such as the ayahuasca plant spirit.

Peoples and places

The beliefs are set in the Peruvian Amazon Basin, and the vocabulary runs through Quechua, the language that supplies both yachay and yachak. The Kokama give the picture a local turn. This people lives in the Ucayali region of Peru, and for them mariri has a second sense: it names the ikara, which Spanish renders as icaro, the magical songs sung in ayahuasca rituals. Elsewhere the word points to a spirit housed in a shaman's phlegm; among the Kokama it can also point to song.

What people believe

Power, in this view, has a bodily home. A shaman's force condenses into phlegm and takes shape there as darts, arrows or bone splinters. That power can move: launched from the mouth, a dart enters a victim, and the piercing itself explains the sickness that follows. Spirits are close neighbours in this world. A nature spirit called mariri makes its home inside the phlegm, accepts tobacco smoke as food, and can be handed from a master to a pupil or bestowed by plant spirits, ayahuasca's among them.

Compare and confuse

Mariri and ikara overlap: among the Kokama of the Ucayali region the two words cover the same ground, the magical songs of ayahuasca work, with icaro as their Spanish form. The subject also sits within the wider field of shamanism, and the healer who draws darts out of patients is the kind of figure English speakers call a witch doctor.

Questions people ask about Yachay

Good reading and sources

• Yachay on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data