En nuestros sueños nos vienen a curar
c'est dans nos rêves qu'ils viennent nous soigner
Formula of the Kichwa specialist from Pastaza Agustín Butuna Cariajano—delivered in Spanish, the language in which he shares his *cosmovisión*. It describes a medicine without intermediaries: there are “hardly any sorcerers,” one calls upon the “mothers” of the healing plants oneself, and it is in the dream that the master of the plant comes to heal. The cure is not an act applied to the waking body but a visit received in sleep, after one has spoken to the root and asked it to heal. To heal, here, is not to take a remedy: it is to be visited during sleep by the plant-person one has prayed to.
Nosotros casi no tenemos brujos, nosotros mismos llamamos a las “madres” de las plantas para curarnos.
The phrase comes from Agustín Butuna, a Kichwa specialist from the Pastaza, spoken in Spanish—the French title “c’est dans nos rêves qu’ils viennent nous soigner” is merely a rough translation, marked as such. It describes a form of healing that dispenses with specialists: “we hardly have any sorcerers,” he says, “we call upon the mothers of the plants ourselves to heal us.” Each medicinal plant has its madre, its master-person; it is held in the gourd, and spoken to.
The request is made to the root as to a brother: “Hermano sacha-ajo, quiero que me cures en mi sueño, quiero sanarme”—then comes the phrase that defines the concept: “Allí él viene en nuestro sueños a curar.” The cure is not obtained with eyes open. One prays to the plant, sleeps, and the plant’s master descends into the dream to heal what the waking person cannot heal alone. The dream here is not an echo of the day: it is the very place where healing occurs, the threshold through which the plant-person enters.
The Kichwa world of the Pastaza is full of such masters—the Yaku-runa holds the fish, the Sacha-runa the game, each great tree has its madre, who is warned before its home is felled. To heal is to treat the remedy as one of them: not an active substance, but someone who is called upon.
This healing-visit is not the same as the cure of the meraya, the highest-grade Shipibo healer who travels to the spirits himself: there, a specialist crosses the threshold for the patient; here, there are almost no specialists, and it is the remedy that crosses the threshold, in the patient’s dream. And unlike animism as a scholarly category that attributes interiority to beings, Butuna’s formula does not describe anything: it speaks to a plant and waits for it to come.