CHAMAN CANDLE - Emberá culture, Chocó, Northwestern Colombia - First half of the 20th century

CHAMAN TREE
Emberá culture, Chocó, Northwestern Colombia
First half of the 20th century
Wood
H. 70,5 ; L. 2 cm

This wooden stick with a red patina, carved on the upper part with a stylized anthropomorphic figure, standing upright, was an object carrying a particular power.
According to the anthropologist Erland Nordenskiöld, these sticks, charged with beneficent spirits, "help the medicine man to drive out demons".
The "medicine man" thus named refers to the jaïbaná: the shaman among the Emberá Indians.
This individual - who could be a man or a woman - assumed a primordial role in society: he was at the same time the piache, the healer, but also the intermediary, the physical link between man and spirituality, between the visible world and the invisible world.
He alone had access to the jaï, the spirits.

The tradition wanted the shaman in the making, trained by an elder, to carve his first stick himself. When he had reached the status of jaïbaná, he was offered a second stick. A shaman could thus accumulate a large number of sticks throughout his life.

Three introductory facts are reported by the historian Mircea Eliade for a man to become a shaman.
First of all, it was necessary to have the vocation, it is a call, an intimate inclination. It was then necessary that the initiate inherit from a parent who was already a shaman before him. Finally, he had to be chosen by the clan. Once these three points were joined together, the jaïbaná in becoming had to explore an initiatory voyage where the secret languages, the mythology, the ecstasy, the dream and the onirism were taught to him.

Text and photos © FCP CORIDON

Ref.LP : FCP

Ref: HML62QU386