Yanomamo Religion: The Soul

(From Yanomamo, by Napoleon Chagnon. 4th Edition 1992)

Yanomamo concepts of the soul are elaborate and sophisticated. The 'true' or 'central' part of the soul is the will, or buhii. At death, this [soul] escapes up the hammock ropes and travels to the layer above. When it reaches the upper layer, it travels down a trail that has a fork in it. There, [a spirit]...asks the soul if it has been generous or stingily during mortal life. If the person has been stingy and niggardly, [the spirit] directs the soul along one path--leading to a place of fire...If the person was generous with his possessions and food, he is directed along the other path--to hedu proper, where a tranquil semi-mortal existence continues.

The Yanomamo do not take this very seriously, that is, do not fear the possibility of being sent to the place of fire. When I asked why, I got the following kind of answer: 'Well, ..[the spirit] is kind of stupid. We'll just lie and tell him we were generous, and he'll send us to hedu!' [Chagnon believed that this particular soul and its ultimate definition might have been the result of missionary influence on the Yanomamo.]

Another portion of the soul, the..bore, is said to be released during cremation. It wanders around on earth and lives in the jungle. ...Some of the bores are malevolent and attach travelers in the jungle at night. They have bright glowing eyes and beat the mortal travelers with clubs and sticks...

The most critical component of the soul is known as the moamo and lies inside the thoracic cavity, near (perhaps even inside) the liver. This portion can be 'lured' out and stolen, and is very vulnerable to supernatural attack if removed for the body. The person who has lost his moamo sickens and eventually dies, and the daily shamanistic attacks are usually directed at the moamo portions of the souls of enemies [in other villages], or directed to recover this soul [in the case of fellow villagers] and return it to its owner...

In addition to multifaceted souls, all individuals have an animal counterpart, an 'alter ego', known as the noreshi. It is a dual concept, for the noreshi is not only an animal that lives in the forest but is likewise an aspect or component of the human's body or psyche. People can 'lose' their noreshis.

A man inherits his noreshi from his father, but a girl inherits hers from her mother. Male noreshis are said to 'go above' and female noreshis 'go below'. Thus, certain monkeys and hawks are male noreshi animals and are found in high places, whereas snakes and ground-dwelling animals are female noreshi animals and travel low, a sexual superior/inferior equation. Kaobara [a Big Man], for example, has the black spider monkey...as his alter ego, which he and all his brothers inherited from their father...Kaobara's wife, Bahimi, has the hiima (dog) as her ..[noreshi], which she and her sisters inherited from their mother. This Up/Down = Superior/Inferior = Male/Female duality occurs in other contexts, including very mundane ones. Men tie their hammocks up high and women sleep in hammocks below them. When the campfire gets low, the men just dangle a foot over the edge of their hammocks, nudge their wives who unhappily grunt and sleepily throw another piece of wood onto the fire.

Noreshi animals duplicate the lives of their human counterparts. When ...[men] go hunting, so too do their noreshi animals go hunting. Whey they sleep, so do their noreshis. If one gets sick, so also does the noreshi. A two-day trip for one is a two day trip for the other.

While the human and his noreshi theoretically live far apart and never come into contact, it is said that misfortunes occasionally occur, as when a hunter accidentally shoots and kills his own noreshi--and thus dies himself. Moreover, if another hunter kills your noreshi, you, too, die. In a sense, hunting game animals is like hunting and killing humans, for some of the animals are the noreshi of humans.

The close association the Yanomamo make between 'soul loss' and sickness is best exemplified in the shamanistic practices of the men. They spend several hours each day, if they are shamans, chanting to their tiny hekura spirits, enjoining them to either attack the souls of enemies or help them recover souls lost by people in their own village. This is a constant battle, and the men take hallucinogenic snuff--ebene--daily to do contest with their enemies through the agency of their personal hekura. [The hekura are supernatural spirits who were the original creator-beings in the top most layer, but now are here on earth. Shamans call hekura to assist them in curing people in their own village--by retrieving their souls (the moamo soul)-- or in harming people in enemy villages--by stealing their souls.]