Yaminahua shamans in Peruvian Amazonia use complex, opaque metaphorical language in their power songs, which are their most important tools for journeying and opening an interactive space with the spirits – and for bringing energy and healing through. This is called, literally, “twisting-twisting words”. One shaman explains that with ordinary words, you’ll “crash” in this deeper reality; “twisting words” let you circle around and see.
Wherever the old ways of dreaming and soul healing are still alive, poets of consciousness - those born and dreamed to be our shamans and Speakers - know what this means.We'll never be able to travel the song lines and the story lines into the space where worlds are made and can be recreated until we come up with our own fresh words.
We need twisting words to change and twist the behavior of the body, in the direction of health, and to re-weave tangled or torn energy webs. We need to twist and shout our way out of the boxes, constructed by limited and self-limiting belief systems, that we sometimes mistake for home.
Keeping a journal and letting fresh words and images burst from our dreams and adventures is a way of putting yourself on the way to becoming a poet of consciousness who can offer word doctoring in this way.
text adapted from Dreamways of the Iroquois: Honoring the Secret Wishes of the Soul. by Robert Moss. Published by Destiny Books.
Image: cover of a dream art journal kept by dream teacher Véronique Barek-Deligny
Image: cover of a dream art journal kept by dream teacher Véronique Barek-Deligny
5 comments:
Nice. I can relate, but can not express in words. I'm not sure if you mean that using our language to express something out of this language can not be... Or do you mean that we need to rearrange words to express differently and bring along change. Whatever you mean, your words made my heart smile. :)
Dear Marisa, I mean, among other things, that by describing things more creatively we can change the behavior of the body and our experience of the world. This requires "fresh words" that can also help others to see and experience things differently - and will entertain the spirits.
Your post taps on what the 'poetic devices' used in my Hawaiian culture, among them, the layering of meanings (kaona) and the skillful use of song and chant (mele and 'oli) all of which flow like water or lava to move or make new land. "Twisting, twisting" might be like the twist of the first light of the moon ... the Hilo Moon just lit (out of the darkness) inciting both the Ancestors who have turned and those who will turn later.
Loved this idea. Thanks.
Mokihana, I loved your descriptions of the "poetic devices" in you Hawaiian culture.It was so Beautiful!!
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