customs and ancestral knowledge. He forbade the use of Western clothes, and encouraged people to eat together from one central plate as a community. His four wives were also shamans and helped to revitalize their traditions.
Don Angel even learned Spanish through his plants, such was his faith! Nevertheless, today most of the Shipibo in Roaboya are nominally evangelicos.
After he died, his cousin took over as shaman and he wanted me, at the age of 10, to help at ayahuasca sessions by smoking mapacho for protection while he chanted. I told him I wanted to be a womanizer when I was grown up! And he made it happen by chanting a Huarmi Icaro. I also want to be a good fisherman and again he said yes, I could be, and so it was. By the time I was 14 it had come true, and I had women coming after me! However, I didn’t want to marry at that time.
At the age of 16 I started taking ayahuasca, but my Mother didn’t want it – a womanizer can’t be a good shaman she said. Only when you learn to follow a proper diet can a person serve. This is the test that the plants give us. It has happened to me twice, a woman comes just when you are working and wants to make love. You can’t, if you give in just once you will fall ill, go mad, fall into the water, or die – these are the tremendous problems of being a shaman. At the age of 16, I started my first diet for 3 months, without ayahuasca, only plants, no drink, women, salt etc. After that the shaman called me and said I could go further and he chanted for me.
Then I did another 3 months’ diet, again no ayahuasca, but the plants made me dream of what I should eat, how I should live, to not to go out etc. It is important to avoid women who are