The Sacred Path of the Ishir
Nonfiction - by Mariana Escobar
The Chamacoco are indigenous inhabitants of the Paraguayan Chaco, the great alluvial plain between the Andean cordillera and the Brazilian highlands. Although the name refers to their linguistic group, they call themselves the Ishir—the people. Traditionally they were hunter-gatherers living in small family groups. Today they are mostly subsistence farmers, probably fewer than 2,000 in number. They are divided into two major groups, the Ebitoso and the Tomáraho. Though the Ebitoso are more integrated into mainstream Paraguayan society, the Tomáraho have kept mostly to themselves, other than anthropologists and other researchers living among them to observe their traditions and culture. These observers report that religion holds a privileged position in the culture, safeguarded by shamans (Fričová 2017). Although this essay focuses on the Tomáraho, their beliefs and rites vary only slightly from those of the Ebitoso and therefore offer insight into the sacred world of the Chamacoco.
The journey into the sacred path of the Ishir starts with their conception of the beginning and of the skies. As in many mythologies, the Chamacoco believe that at the beginning, there was a tree uniting the earth and the sky. This tree was the center of the world, the axis mundi, connecting the different levels of the world, the sacred and the profane. The connection was vertical, as was travel between them. It was along this cosmic tree that the creation of the world took place, eventually expanding to the periphery. It was also here that humankind was born, and it was the fall of the tree that determined the layers into which the world was later divided (Sequera and Gangui n.d.).
For a long time, humankind inhabited the cosmic tree in harmony. The tree fused the worlds together, with no barriers between them. Humans lived effortlessly, hunting and collecting food easily in a Chamacoco version of the Garden of Eden. One day , however, a widow named Dagylta and her children asked their kinsmen for food and were denied. In a rage, Dagylta turned into a beetle and started to gnaw at the cosmic tree. Although the process was slow, the tree started to weaken, despite the efforts of Carancho, an owl who tried to stop the beetle to no avail. Many inhabitants of the tree foresaw its eventual fall and climbed to the lower levels to avoid having no means of traveling between layers once the tree had fallen. Those who didn’t follow were trapped in the upper kingdoms, clinging to the skies. In time they turned into porrebija, or stars (Sequera and Gangui n.d.).
When the tree fell, the world split into the higher world and the underworld, each containing strata. The higher world has six strata, beginning with the lower sky, where animals and humans live. The third level is inhabited by the male twins, the Sun and the Moon, and the rainmaker named Lapyxe. On the edge of this layer are the Gates to Heaven, guarded by spirits that stop anyone from entering the highest layers of sky. Only the spirits of shamans can make this ascension, and one of the challenges they face is overcoming the guardians. The fourth level of sky is where the stars are found, porrebijas as well as other constellations. The brightest star after the Sun and the Moon is Venus, or Iodhle, and she is surrounded by the Milky Way and the other souls forever clinging to the sky. After the next two strata there is nothing but the infinite expansion of the universe.
The underworld is composed of three strata dominated by demons and malign spirits, a place where destruction reigns. The deeper one goes, the darker the netherworld becomes, ending in a zone of darkness, rotten corpses and souls (Sequera and Gangui n.d.). Shamans acquire the power to ascend to the higher layers by visiting the demons, who grant them special powers. Chamacoco religion is governed by the concept of dualism, in which darkness and light are opposed but complementary. Thus, to ascend one must first go down.
After the fall of the tree, humankind inhabited the lower sky, where they carried on a different sort of life, no longer connected with the upper worlds or even with the divine. However, under the influence of the Anábsoro, creatures from the underworld, a new set of beliefs emerged. An anábser is “a demon-god, a monstrous and somewhat brutal superhuman” (Escobar et al. 2007, 17). They can be considered the Other, the potential divine, similar to humans but also different, possessing a few anthropomorphic characteristics that make their differences more obvious. Prominent among them is Ashnuwerta, a mostly benevolent primordial mother figure. Her male counterpart Nemur is perhaps even more powerful, with the power to curse and dispense justice. Just as there is a conception of duality and complementarity between different divinities, duality is also manifested within each god. Nemur is the severe bringer of justice, the giver of sanctions on one hand and the keeper of peace and order on the other. His symbol, a staff named ook, symbolizes rule and punishment as well as equilibrium.
The Anábsoro were first discovered by the women, who were ordered to establish a tobich, a center of learning, where the women could receive divine instruction (Escobar et al. 2007, 20). The women were reluctant to share their discovery with the men and kept the Anábsoro and the men unaware of each other. Suspicious of how the women kept disappearing into the woods, the men followed and discovered the clearing where the harra, the sacred dance, was being performed in a ceremonial circle. Both Anábsoro and the men were angry at being deceived by the women. Ashnuwerta banned the women from the rituals, making the men take their place. From then on, men were the receivers of divine instruction (Escobar et al. 2007) and a new social structure was defined. The customs and other practices that emerged are called the Word of Ashnuwerta and are still followed today.
Before the Anábsoro arrived, humans lived a directionless and colorless existence. However, the Word of Ashnuwerta created techniques, rites, social norms, eating taboos, etiquette, ceremonies, and rules for hunting that ensured that the cycle of nature, of birth and death, would be continuous, assuring the survival of the tribe. (Escobar et al. 2007). Nevertheless, one day the peaceful coexistence of men and Anábsoro changed, once again redefining the rituals of the Chamacoco.
Young men are initiated in the tobich, where they are sent to live with the demons and learn from them, undergoing rituals and ordeals to ensure they are worthy of the knowledge they are about to receive. But not all of them can keep up, and, according to the myth, problems started when the son of the chief was killed by the demons. Although one of the most benign anábser tried to revive him, the damage was too much and the revival failed. When Syr, the chief, heard of his son’s death, he was overcome with grief. Attempting to console him, his lover Ashnuwerta told him about the Anábsoro’s weak spot, the one way to kill them, hoping he would be satisfied with killing only his son’s killers. Unfortunately, most of the Anábsoro were slain. When Ashnuwerta found out, she told the men that henceforth once a year they would have to celebrate a ritual in which they would take the place of the beings they had just slaughtered. She ordered them to hide their horrific deeds from the women by imitating their victims’ movements, cries, and appearance. The rules she issued were strict, concerning “the attire, body paint, choreography, rites, and performance of each of the assassinated Anábsoro” (Escobar et al. 2007, 48). Should they fail to comply or lack diligence in performing the ceremony, the wrath of Nemur would fall upon them.
When Nemur heard of the annihilation of the Anábsoro, he cursed the Chamacoco, telling Syr that because of their actions they would be forever “obliged to follow the words [of Ashnuwerta]. If they failed, sickness, hunger, and enemies will decimate until the last is extinguished” (Escobar et al. 2007, 42).
After Nemur completed his curse, Ashnuwerta divided the tribe into clans, assigning each an animal that represented the anábser they had killed. Members of that clan would be in charge of representing that particular demon in the Great Ceremony. However, Ashnuwerta’s orders were not restricted to the ceremony itself. She gave the Chamacoco a code of ethics and specific instructions for their cultural institutions, involving rights, love, leisure, religion, power, and aesthetics. Every word that came out of her mouth established the way the rites are performed, the status of women, food taboos and much more. (Escobar et al. 2007).
The Great Ceremony, the debylyby, involves overlapping events that create the whole ceremony. Many anthropologists consider them a condensation of the Chamacoco experience of the natural world, their observations about nature and color denoted through feathers, masks, and body markings (Escobar et al. 2007). The Ceremony is usually held during the spring, a rainy season in the Chaco, at the same time as the period of seclusion of the young boys about to undergo initiation rites. The ceremony consists of dramatizations of the seasons (drought and rain), with actors using masks and feathers and painting their bodies with complex symbols to hide their real identities and represent the Anábsoro (“Chamacoco” 2018).
The Ceremony begins with a cry, promptly echoed by the rest of the tribe. Next comes the appearance of the messenger of the Anábsoro, Hopupora, who is similar to the Holy Trinity in that it is more than one person, more than one entity in the same essence. Hopupora is a being based on sounds, and so this part of the ritual is an onomatopoeic one, a combination of rumbles, noise, songs and silence. Hopupora turns into Ashnuwysta, another face of Ashnuwerta, revealing herself to her worshippers. After her appearance, the ceremonial site is prepared for the procession by mourners weeping for the slaughtered gods, and the masters of ceremony, who are members of the Kytymaraha clan, conduct the blessing of the village. Then, the Anábsoro pour out and the imitatio dei starts. The tribe members representing the divine beings become almost divine themselves by association with the supernatural. Their bodies are painted with black, red, and white stripes they applied the day before in the tobich to represent themselves as being marked by the goddess, a blessing they cannot wash away until the ritual is over.
The observers sing traditional songs during the procession of the Anábsoro. When the procession is over, the games start, providing a bit of joy and entertainment to offset the gravity of the Great Ceremony. Furthermore, the Chamacoco believe that while the games of the living are being played, the games of the dead, the osypyte ahamich, are being played by the souls of the deceased, demonstrating again the duality of Ishir culture, the eternal contraries. After the games the Ceremony winds down, the curse of Nemur once more avoided (Escobar et al. 2007).
The Great Ceremony not only distinguishes Ishir culture from all others but also defines Ishir life itself, shaping social structure and customs since time immemorial. Nevertheless, in recent times, it has suffered setbacks. In the nineteen-fifties, a group of American missionaries of the New Tribes Mission interacted with young people in one of the Ebitoso communities, urging them to abandon their demonic beliefs. The young people decided not to participate in the Great Ceremony, risking the wrath of Nemur. When nothing happened they concluded the elders had lied to them, and some converted to Christianity. Currently, the Great Ceremony is considered to be folklore by younger Ebitoso. The Tomáraho remain almost untouched by these changes and still celebrate the ritual, although it is waning in popularity (Fričová 2017).
A glimpse into the ancient traditions and religion of the Ishir suggests a variety of theories, including the Pangaea hypothesis, given the similarities between Ishir traditions and others around the world. One of the most impressive similarities is the cosmic tree uniting earth and sky, a belief that can be compared to the tree of life in other religions, including the Norse. The traditions of this tribe are a fountain of gold conserved almost totally. Much knowledge can and should be extracted from them before they too are influenced by mainstream Paraguayan society. It is the duty of this generation not to let the sacred path of the Ishir vanish unrecorded.
Bibliography
"Chamacoco." 2018. In Encyclopedia of World Cultures. Encyclopedia.com. Last modified December 5, 2018. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ chamacoco
Ticio Escobar, Adriana Michele Campos Johnson, and Michael Taussig. 2007. “The Curse of Nemur : In Search of the Art, Myth and Ritual of the Ishir.” Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press. http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=837873&site=ehost-live.
Yvonna Fričová. 2017. “Paraguayan Indians Chamacoco.” Identity, Tradition, and Revitalization of American Indian Culture, edited by Barbora Půtová. First English edition. Prague: Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct =tr
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Guillermo Sequera and Alejandro Gangui. n.d. “The Tomáraho Conception of the Sky.” Axial: Naturaleza & Cultura. Accessed December 5, 2018.
http://www.paraguayaxial.com/2018/06/the- tomaraho-conception-of-the-sky/