My image of a jungle Shaman
A Short Story –
Experiencing A Miracle In The Ecuadorean Amazon
A year age on a trip to South America we spent a few days at a Ecuadorean Amazon camp. One morning there was an organized walk through the rain forest with a guide, who was a young local man. He introduced himself as a shaman and I admit that my picture of a shaman was an elderly man in native garb wearing beads and feathers. Regardless our shaman, who was wearing boots and jeans, in his introduction said that he needed to perform a ritual on each of us so the jungle would give us safe passage. There is always a bit of theatre in events like these and no harm could come from playing along.
He proceeded to cut a bunch of branches with leaves from a nearby bush and began to shake them over each of our heads and shoulders while blessing(?) us individually. When he came to my wife he stopped, grabed his shoulder and leaned in an spoke to her.
At this point I need to explain that for several years my wife has suffered from pain in her left shoulder. It hasn’t been unbearable and she always claims it is something she just lives with. The best diagnosis guess is arthritis and bursitis and at times when it gets worse she takes ibuprofen to help.
My wife heads into the rain forest followed by our guide/Shaman
What this young shaman said to my wife was that he felt the pain from her shoulder in his and he would now take it from her. That’s it – we moved on into the rain forest. At the end of the walk my wife says that her shoulder no longer hurt. After that incident and to this day she has no pain at all in her left shoulder.
Not just because of this but because of a number of things, oddly some based in science but mostly things like this, I am coming back to believing in the existence of the mystical. I think Shakespeare expressed it best with .
Above is a statue of Huba often noted as one of the legendary figures in Hungarian history, symbolizing the arrival of the Magyar tribes in the Carpathian Basin. He is featured in the 13th-century epic poem, the Gesta Hungarorum, which narrates the history and migration of the Magyars.
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