Smoky Boundaries, Permeable Selves: Exploring the Self in Relationship with the Amazonian Jungle Tobacco, Mapacho

The potent jungle tobacco Mapacho, central to Amazonian shamanic healing practices, is regarded not as a pathogen but as a spirit ally that purifies, heals, protects, and teaches. Its efficacy requires smoking, through which the shaman and tobacco become mutually absorbed. Mapacho smoke blurs culturally recognized boundaries of the Western Self, permeating both internal and external realms of the healing environment. This paper explores the relationships among Mapacho, Peruvian Shipibo shamans, and Western patients, suggesting that the boundaries Westerners typically use to distinguish each from the other may be as smoky as the medicine practices themselves.

Study at a glance

Abstract

As more Westerners travel to the Amazon jungle to seek healing through the increasingly popular plant medicine, ayahuasca, they are exposed to an environment pervaded by the use of tobacco smoke. Mapacho is the name of the potent jungle tobacco that is central to the shamanic practices of Amazonian plant medicine healing, regarded locally not as a pathogen but rather as a potent ally: a spirit that can be co-opted as a purifier, healer, protector and teacher. In order to render these functions available to patients, Mapacho must be smoked, its efficacy, along with that of the shaman, activated through the absorption of each into the other. By means of this relationship, Mapacho smoke pervades culturally recognised boundaries of the Western Self, simultaneously permeating both the internal and external realms that constitute the healing environment. In this paper, I explore the relationship between Mapacho, Peruvian Shipibo shamans and Western patients, suggesting that the boundaries that are often conceived by Westerners to distinguish each from the other may well be as smoky as the medicine practices they engage in.