433 Chapter Seven Cosmos For the Matsigenka of Shimaa, kameti ...

(shamans). Since both of the latter can turn against humans under certain circumstances, the
Matsigenka world is indeed fraught with spiritual peril.
What is primarily in peril is the human soul or spirit, isure (m.), osure (f.). The
Matsigenka concept of soul is of the ineffable essence of self, whatever it is that goes where the
self goes during a dream or in the trance of ayahuasca. As we have seen, all animate beings,
and a few plant species, have souls, although plant spirits were rarely mentioned by
Matsigenkas in Shimaa nor do they appear in folktales. But animals, humans, shamans, demons
and the unseen ones--all animate beings--have active souls that move in and around this world
and are capable of bringing about great harm and great good.
In a certain sense, the soul is separate from the body. When a woman, for example,
meets her lover for a tryst in the forest, they may play together, run and laugh, make love and
share wild fruits they have picked. She will return home with the memory of an afternoon’s
pleasure. She does not know that it was a demon who adopted her lover’s form, who raped
her soul with his huge penis, breaking her up. That night she sickens and, within a day or two,
she dies. What her soul experienced in that other reality was entirely different from, though in a
sense parallel to, what her body experienced in this one.
Yet, although her soul “broke up” and her body died, she did not die. She, or some
version of her, has become the spouse of the demon who took her. But her humanity has been
stripped, she is now evil and dangerous to humans. Still, she has a (demon) body with desires
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