THE JIBAROS OF THE MARANON RIVER.

The word "Jibaro" comes from its ethnic root "Shuar,"meaning "Rustic." They are the distinct peoples of the Maranon River and its tributaries.
The Maranon River is the principal or mainstream source of the Amazon River, arising about 160 km to the North East of Lima, Peru, and flowing through a deeply eroded Andean Valley in a North West direction, along the Eastern base of the Andean Cordillera, and after running a while it makes a great bend to the North East, and cuts through the Jungle Andes, until at the dark canyon named Pongo of Manseriche it flows into the flat Amazon basin.
Jibaros are scattered over a vast territory and are of similar appearance physically; each small cluster speak a single language with specific words , and their customs, and beliefs are closely interrelated in all of them. They symbolize the strength of such traditional values as living simply, and properly caring for homeland and family. They are hard-working, independent, and prudently wise.
The principal groups are : -Shuar, -Achuar, -Humabisa, -Aguaruna. A group of Achuar speakers identified as Shiwiar people, lives along the Corrientes River, shared by Peru and Ecuador, next to Quechua speakers.
The Jibaro people are famous for their head-hunting raids and shrinking the heads from these raids as a way of identification. These head-hunting occurs every other year in one particular neighborhood, and usually only attack one homestead per raid, killing the men, spearing the older woman to death, and taking younger women as their brides. This is part of its natural heritage.
The Jibaro engage in hunting activities, that usually involve both man and his wife hunting with a blow gun and poisoned dart, dabbed with the poisonous plant extract, "curare," which stops the heart beat of the animal, making its soul depart in a natural way. This way of killing the animal protect them from the punishment that the forces of nature do, when an animal is killed in an unnatural way without a reason. Jibaro usually hunt for monkeys and birds, but they do not rely on hunting as their primary food source.
They place more emphasis on gardening, than they do on hunting. This is due to the unpredictable nature of the forces of hunting in the Amazonian Region, where the Jibaro call home. The ritualistic approach to gardening as root to everything that exist in the unseen world sprouted in the Jibaros' idea of the world in which everyone and everything co-exist.
The Jibaro's world view is built upon the idea that both animate and inanimate objects hold souls that cannot be seen by the physical eyes. These souls in everything contain power that need to be harnessed and contained within one's self. The way of doing it is part of their rituals and the understanding how they work in the unseen world.
Jibaros belief that a person is not born with an "arutam," a protective spirit, that comes to them at night through spirit visions. It is thought that the spirit protect them from injury, disease and death, in the three planes of the existence making the human strong and able to take control of its post in the 3 realms. Such a strong soul must be acquired, and in certain traditional way, and not all are able to harness it. The acquisition of this type of strong soul is considered to be so important to an adult male's survival as a force of energy that a boy's parent do not expect him to live past puberty without that strong spirit inside him. This trade-in mechanism is a very important feature because, when a person has acquired the degree of the "arutam"force for 4 or 5 years, it tends to leave its sleeping possessor to wander nightly through the forest in the unseen world. While the soul is drifting through trees, another Jibaro, will "steal"it. It is highly desirable to obtain a new soul before the old one begins nocturnal wanderings without purpose. This need encourages the individual to participate in a kind of battle every year, in which the killer becomes in possession of the soul of the killed one becoming more powerful, and so on. The one who was killed is returning to the world of the living later on and become engaged in the same perpetual training to maintain the level of force needed to perform its duty as guardians of nature.
The Jivaro god, Tsungi, is the god of shamanism, and the Jibaro goddess, Nungui, refers to mother earth. She is described as being a short and large woman, dressed in black dress. If Nungui dances in a woman's garden, this will produce a productive garden during the harvest season, meaning a powerful descendant cluster. Living deep underground, she emerges at night to dance in the garden. Women sing to Nungui to ask her to protect the garden, and they carefully weed the garden daily to appease her.
The Jibaro god anf goddess are deeply tied to nature. They are the ones that symbolize the origins of man and animal, the occurrence of natural events and its relationship to each other that exist in daily life. Their beliefs support their behavior as it is dominated by a series of battles among the forces of the unseen world and an essential duality of where people are the victims. The Jibaros are the warriors of the living in the unseen world and the keepers of the posts in which the 3 worlds interact. The ones who are being killed are just choosing to go to the death world and acquire more knowledge needed in order to be alive and holding enough power in the vessel that are assigned to them at the point of birth. Among the deities are spirits that are known to provide wisdom and protection to the person they are tied to. They assist shamans in healing or bewitching people. It is believed that unreasonable sickness and death are caused by attacks on one's spirit by malevolent forces acting in shamans overpowered by them. Some commonly seen animals, that their souls help to assist shamans in healing or cursing, are the anaconda, "pangi," and the giant butterfly "wampang."
The healing shaman will hold "ayahuasca ceremonies" and perform different rituals to counteract the work done by witchcraft. They have a reliable, elaborate system of horticultural development that helps to identify the root and nature of the negative force. The manifestation of it in its ritualistic way is like gardening. They find the entrance the malignant forces used to gain control of the soul blocking the planting of a new garden and the taboos developed by the individual in connection with the doors, that makes the soul of the individual wanders instead of grow. Much like similar rituals associated with hunting are these involving the creation of a new garden and the encouragement needed to make it grow through various ritual songs, chants , and dances. The garden is regarded as a place of great spiritual significance. Like being inside of a temple, and that temple being treated as one receiving sanctuary.
Only shaman and patient drink the tea made from ayahuasca and participate in the ritual singing and chanting while the shaman perform different actions to the body of the individual to heal from the witchcraft performed on it. Under the influence of it, shaman encounter the first being, Tensak, in a form of a spiritual dart that is cast out to curse or heal a person. This being exists in a higher plane of existence, and being perceived in shaman state of mind. Then a sensation of leaving the body is perceived and the shaman will see the soul of the beasts of the jungle. Anacondas and jaguars throughout the jungles of the world which roll over and over through the forest as they fight between themselves. Sometimes caymans appear on the scene. Sometimes the intruding objects to be sucked out of the patient's body have the appearance of snakes of various classes, like a coiled snake being seen in a patient's abdomen compromising its energy. Panthers and jaguars also make its appearance symbolizing the strength of the patient in overcoming the sickness.
The shaman is forbidden to charge by any means the performance of its act of healing since he is only the representation of the force of healing, and the power does not belong to him it is only transmitted. If the shaman accept payment then the healing is transformed in a negative force enhancing in power and since sickness comes from a negative source it become more powerful, and ended up killing the soul and the body. In the same way the incorrect use of ayahuasca, for the purpose of feeling drunk or flying without purpose, is also punished by the spirit of healing, depending on the weight of the infraction.
The Jibaro have practicing these ceremonies for hundreds of years, keeping them close to their roots.
Prior colonization, Jibaroan people were not living into a structure of clearly bounded polities or ethnic groups. Instead, they lived in widely separated household groups with very little consciousness of any sort of communal or political unity, shifting locations, separating themselves, or being exterminated.
The Jibaro people were, because of their specific way of living, the only group of people known to have revolted against the forces of the European invaders successfully and deny all attempts by them to conquer the Jibaros. In 1599 the Jivaro led a raid on 2 European settlements, enraged by taxes on gold, and killing 25,000 people in the process, and laid waste to the settlement of Logrono, killing its governor by pouring molten gold down his throat until his bowels burst. The type of ritual performed during the killing was on behalf of the powers of earth. All remaining invaders were killed mercilessly since the same attitude they performed to the Andean people, receiving back what they did first, they did not kill the young women because of respect to its matriarcal way of life, and were forced to join their clans. When provoked, the Jibaros join themselves and attack in full force, since they consider themselves the guardians of nature, each one in its own specific post.
The principal force that unify every small unit is the accepted polygonal matrilocal household, thus, the female offspring of a mother remain living in or near the mother's house, thereby forming a cluster of matrilocal-organized and autonomous household speaking the same type of words.

THE ANDEAN MARRIAGE WITH NATURE.

Ancient Peru has a long and rich history. The Andean Mountains were the traditional home of the ancestral people. To this day, the Andes still support many of the current surviving descendants, some still claiming a direct ancestry.
Since ancient times Andean cultures have had an extraordinary relationship with their natural environment.
They did not conceive the idea of humans as being separated from nature. They saw themselves as complementing it by being intended collaborators to it.
Ancient people had a profound understanding of plants and animals, and their survival was based upon agriculture and pastoral craftsmanship, which required working in close harmony with the natural world.
They learned how to cultivate and care for the soil, and clearly it is observed the importance that farming and food supply had to them. Fibers came from it, challenging them to learn how to spin and color the fibers with plants, insects, and minerals. Then ritual and utilitarian textiles for any type of need were then produced. Luxury textiles for divine and royal use were made in extremely elaborate, difficult, time-consuming, and labor-intensive techniques. Not other people in history put so much energy into the nature of textile fibers and what their hands and mind crafted out of them. Through their art we can enter into a dialogue with their remarkable minds. There are many ways in which cloth can serve as historical text. Aspects of religion, economic relationship, ethnicity, and personal data are all proclaimed in it. The motifs communicate many kinds of information as well as history. Details are guarded in the memory of the one who knows how to read them.
In the case of knotted "quipus"(cords of different colors and knotted at different levels) for example, they conveyed an extensive amount of information known only to the ones able decipher it. The quipucamayoc was the keeper and the interpreter of it, but in an oral form, another one was trained to interpret the position and color of the knot.
Beans and severe heads appeared interchangeable in Nazca imagery. Beans were one of the main sources of food and as a desert culture, water was scarcely found. Food had to be respected under any circumstances, and mythically in the phantom world, there were forces trying to ruin what was planted.
The representation of those forces are through the severed heads that were collected and buried as an offering to the spirit of nature announcing the restoring of peace to the soil.
When ancient Andean people encountered forms in nature that resonated with their world of ideas, they did not hesitate to modify or tame those natural objects to conform more closely with their ideal World. For example, in a boulder atop Machu Picchu, they saw a form similar to the nearby Huayna Picchu Mountain, and proceeded to sculpt the Mountain's portrait into the stone.
To honor the spirits that take form as mountains and its positive use to the forces of nature, the stone workers carved rock outcrops to replicate their shapes. Doorways and windows of sublimely precise masonry frame exquisite views. This extraordinary marriage of setting and nature explains the fame of Machu Picchu today. The granite stones seem almost alive.
The archaeological remains of the city-capital of the Inca empire represent one of the most striking images of Peruvian ancestry. The majestic scenery of this ancient ruin perched high in the Andes is used to symbolize the resilience of Peruvian traditions. The fact that Machu Picchu lies on an 8,000 ft (2,440 m) mountaintop and that it escaped destruction by the time of colonization looms large in the imagination of Peruvians and tourists. The ruins evoke the nation's Andean past and legitimize both Peru's historical heritage and cultural tradition.

ADEAN SPIRITUAL SYMBOLS

ALPACA, LLAMA : Expression of Mother Earth in its full nature (Mama Pacha) and the Service of Love. They are the providers of Wool (garment of protection), Meat (Preservation), Heart (Sensitivity), and Intestines (good absorption of cosmological forces). Even their excrement is used as the most powerful fertilized by the Andean Man. Its Lard represent the Seminal Male Energy, which engenders new life or new vital energy.
ANDEAN CROSS (CHACANA) : Represent the Constellation of the Southern Cross, which orients all creation on the Southern Hemisphere, as It is Above Shall Be Below. On a smaller scale represents the forces and nature of Mother Earth, and on a large scale, it is the symbol of the forces and nature of the Universe. The 4 arms represent the 4 cardinal points (North, South, East ,West). The Big Circle represent Eternity. The inscribed Square represent the 4 natural Elements (Air, Water, Earth, Fire). The Triangle inscribed in it represent the 3 Worlds in harmony (Hanan (Spiritual), Kay (Physical), Ukhu Mental). The Smallest Circle in the Centre of the Triangle represents the Universal Point of Equilibrium interconnecting everything with the Supreme Force of Creation (Viracocha, the Creator God).
The Life and Society in the Time of the Inca Rulers was based upon the principles and behavior of the Andean Cross, and continue to hold meaning to current-days Andean people. The word "Chacana" comes from the Quechua word "Chacay" meaning "to cross" or "to bridge". Each individual was believed to fulfill a purpose as a person itself and as part of the whole.
ANDEAN ROYAL CONDOR : Represent Liberation. It helps human beings free themselves from pain, past sufferings, internal and external limitations, freedom from the sense of guilt, doubts, and fears, which are self-imposed. Its natural instinct of eating carcasses from animals killed by other predator represent the natural cleaning instinct of the bird. The Condor represents the Spiritual World (Hanan) in communion with Father-Mother Creator, which means Unconditional Cosmic Love.
PUMA : It represents the Physical World (Kay). Its spirit teaches us to Live In a Eternal Present. It works with the Willingness and the Strength of the Spirit (Hanan), and that is why the Inca Pachacutec
rebuilt Cuzco in the shape of a Puma, in order to last its present as long as the Physical World exist.
SERPENT : It represents the Mental World (Ukhu) or Inner World. It symbolizes Illumination, Imagination, Ideas, Divine Intelligence, Sacred Knowledge. It is the precise Balance Between the Positive and Negative energy poles, Dualism such as day and night, male and female, above and below, inside and outside, white and black. These poles complement each other to create, recreate, and procreate in the Invisible and Visible Worlds, rising to the point of Sublime Happiness.
TUMI : It represents the Physical Manifestation of God, Father Creator, Re-Creator, and Pro-Creator. According to Andean Myths, Naylamp or Viracocha in others, came out from the Waters of the Ocean, and taught those inhabiting the Earth the Way to Live in Perfect Communion With the Cosmic Laws, and to be Eternally Happy. During His Long Pilgrimage through Hundreds of Thousands of Years.
When he finished his mission, wings grew on him, then, he flew away with his physical body, to become a Unity with Father and Mother forces of Creation. The Tumi represents a tool from which a connection is achieved to Unified the Forces in complete Harmony through high surgery. Its need to be performed in the physical and non physical Worlds as part of the ceremonial rituals in which the tool was used for its supernatural purpose.

THE INCA VIEW OF COSMOS.

The Inca belief system were inter-related to their view of the cosmos, in particular that way they observed the motions of the portion of the Milky Way and the planets of the solar system as seen from Cuzco, the city-capital of the empire, whose name means "the centre of the earth."
From this perspective their stories depict the movements of constellations, planets, planetary formations, which are connected to their agricultural cycles for a society that relied on cyclical agricultural seasons, which were not only connected to year cycles but to a much wider cycle of time (every 800 years of time).
Inca cosmology was ordered in 3 different realms or Pachas: the Hanan (Upper world), Kay (Inhabited world), and Ukhu (Inner world). The 3 different planes of existence functioned not solely spatial, but simultaneously interconnected and bridged by both physical and spiritual/mythological elements. Pachas overlaped and interacted presenting both a moral order and a material order. Together, the 3 realms shaped the religion, the concept of cosmos and the day-today view of their World of both Inca nobility and the common man.
Andean philosophy views did not focus on the differences or implications of one thing, instead they focused on the qualities that brought those things together, seeing them not necessarily as opposed, but as complementary and being translating to a definition of "the complement of difference" (Yanantin).
Because the positive relationship of opposites as a harmonious partnership is considered the primary organizing principle of Creation, "Yanatin" infuses all aspects of spiritual and social life within their view of its Andean World.
The relationship between entities or energies is the essential component within their communal life, involving -relationship, -alliance, -meeting, -and unity between two forces, entities, or energies. For example, when drinks are served, first they pour a few drops on the ground as an offering, while at the same time speaking the name of the guardian or receiving entity. This is done twice, and a symbolic explanation for the conjugal pair, the ground and the harvest from the ground. When coca leaves are offered to a participant in a ritual, two handfuls  are offered to each person, who receive them in two cupped hands. Coca leaves, being the most sacred plant of the Andes and an integral part of almost all the Andean ceremonies, has to be addressed first in this way, showing respect for its spirit.
When something is felt as an incomplete thing, then it is referred as "chulla" meaning "the one who is missing its other." In order to be whole, one has to pair up. Whether something is unpaired or unpaired is an important distinction within the Andean cosmological view. "Yanatin"is the act of rendering equal two things that were once unequal -what it is called "the correction of inequalities." It has thus been implied that a perfect Yanatin relationship is achieved when two energies are brought into harmony.
Manco Capac the legendary founder of the Inca Dynasty in Peru and the Cuzco Dynasty at Cuzco came to the World of the living passing through the other two worlds. The legends specified the pach from which he came in order to find the suitable spot to found the empire. One legend says he was the son of Viracocha, the Universal Creator of all things, or the substance from which all things were created, and intimately associated with the sea. Viracocha rose from Lake Titicaca during the time of darkness to bring forth light. In another legend, Manco Capac was brought from the depths of Lake Titicaca, and common people were not allowed to speak the name of the Creator God. Then another legend is about the description of Manco Capac and his coming power. Manco Capac is seen as the brother of Pachacamac, and both were sons of the sun god Inti. Manco Capac himself was worshiped as a fire and sun god. Then Manco Capac is sent with Mama Ocllo to Lake Titicaca where they resurfaced and settled in Isla del Sol. After that episode Manco Capac is sent up to the Middle world with his brothers and emerged from the cave of Puma Orco at Pacari Tambo.
The gods of the Inca themselves were not bound to one particular realm. Viracocha roamed the heavens and he also traveled within the realm of man, Kay Pacha, disguised as a beggar.