Religion
The Aguarunas traditionally believed in many spirits and mythological figures, among them: Etsa, or the Sun; Núgkui, or mother earth, who ensures agricultural success and provides the clay for ceramics; Tsúgki, water spirits who live in the rivers; and Bikut, or father shaman, who transforms himself into hallucinogenic plants that, mixed with ayahuasca, allows one to communicate with powerful spirit-beings.
Young men would traditionally take hallucinogenic plants including ayahuasca to give them visions. The visions were believed to be the souls of dead warriors, and if the young man showed no fear he would receive spirit power known as ajútap. A man with such spirit power would be invulnerable in battle.
In the distant past, the Aguarunas engaged in the practice of shrinking human heads to make tsantsa.
Evangelical missionaries began contacting the Aguaruna in the mid-20th century, and today many Aguarunas have converted to Christianity.
Read more about this topic: Aguaruna People
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“In the latter part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian of Dunstable, “Towns were directed to erect ‘a cage’ near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.” Society has relaxed a little from its strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the tighter in another.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one’s religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)