by Liam Howley “No one suspects that the days are gods”. So wrote the transcendentalist writer Emerson. Such a statement needs no context other than the day within which we all live. In truth I cannot remember what text that statement appears in, for it is some time since I have read any of his works, and I have none of them at hand here in the forest, yet I am not preoccupied with that fact.
Often it is a line that catches the attention of the reader, a turn of phrase that illuminates the significance of a passage, whether it be the passage under scrutiny, or the passage of life. In fact when reading a text, essay, book, are we not but reading a representation of the world within which we reside, a picture crafted to alter the perception of the reader, or to embed the mind in realities previously hidden to us by the layered nature of our lives. I have spoken previously of how the ethnobotanist Miguel Alexiades writing in his doctoral thesis speaks of the cosmology of the tribe of Ese-Eja to which the community of Infierno in the lower reaches of the Rio Tambopata belongs. He describes how the Ese-Eja see the universe as one of multiple layers or realities including, eya (sky), meshi (ground) and meshi’ dojo’ (underground), each of which is sub-divided according to the belief structure of the community. All layers to the Ese-Eja are, “internally organized in fundamentally the same way: they have rivers, plants and animals, and are populated by anthropomorphic beings”. He continues detailing Kweyhana, (the world of the dead) as inhabited by emanokwana, souls of the deceased. The truly interesting fact of their view of reality is the intrinsic links between all layers of existence. A potent example of these links and of the anthropomorphic view of the world is the hunting of white lipped peccaries. White lipped peccaries are seen as the emanokwana, or dead Ese-Eja. In semi-nomadic times, when herds were abundant, they comprised a significant portion of the dietary intake of the tribe. The location of, and protocols for the hunting event were determined by the eyamikekwa shaman. As the peccaries were killed the souls or eshawa were released unharmed back to Kweyhana. Each emanokwana is but a representation of eshawa, the “true, essential, primordial, and unchanging element of all beings.” Similarly the peccary as eyami, the corporeal reality of a mythical or spiritual being, is also eshawa. This transformation of existence from one layer of reality to another is an eternal process of recurrence that means to the Ese-Eja that they never truly die. In the Ese-Eja creation myths, most beings were once Ese-Eja, and thus human, or “humans and extra-humans share a common origin”. As the author explains, “the primordial condition of existence was clearly undifferentiated so that what are now distinct layers of the cosmos were then collapsed, and what are now distinct beings, human versus extra-human, animals versus humans, were also one.” Though both complex and incomplete as described above, this view of reality, as it changes, alters also the forms and perceptions of those who transcribe to the changes. The sedentary nature of the communities and the consequential reduction in large peccary herds can partly explain the disappearance of this form of shamanism. Another has taken its place, with plants forming the central symbolic function, yet this is one derived from deja (outsiders), and the proximity of the community of Infierno to Puerto Maldonado can only further alter the perceptual concepts and relationships between the world of the tangible and the ethereal. In a metaphorical sense, each day to the Ese-Eja is a god, as the very nature of their existence has within a matter of generations gone through epidemics that decimated their populations, been hunted to serve as slaves in the rubber boom years, moved from high ground to floodplain waters, ceased their semi-nomadic existence to become a settled community, and have now become majority owners of an eco-tourist lodge that provides welcome for thousands of people from throughout the globe. When reading the forest from the point of view of the occidental mind, all the layers of perception added through our educational and communication systems, and indeed the patterns of thought that have been inculcated through centuries of cultural development impose themselves in just the same way as the myths of the Ese-Eja. Our view of the forest is informed by the television programs which seem almost more real than the location itself. Our scientific criteria for judging truths and falsehoods give us buffers through which our minds sight focuses. Our sophistication in determining causes, events and consequences allow us to search for moments of illumination through which we perceive the processes of nature. We can determine not only that species have evolved, but also from what they have evolved. We can offer insight into the formation of islands in the braids of the constantly changing river. Given sufficient time it seems the doors to knowledge are endless, yet knowledge is not a constant, for it is often only at the advent of a new discovery that we realize that what we held as truths were in fact only part-true, and what we had derided as past heresies and scorned for their simplicity offered a valuable allegory that pointed to the truths for which we were searching. Our almost endless search for total knowledge, though valuable and indeed necessary in the context of the need to conserve the forest, allows us to believe that we can understand the world of the forest and even the world in its totality. It permits an ignorance of our limits, and in the end subverts the ultimate requirement for life in this world, harmony. The thin end of the wedge is here, and the needs are acute, always carrying with them shifting dilemmas. Another line I always remember from a book I read some time previously states, “When the master points to the moon, all the fool sees is his finger”.
