Fixed Forms and Fluid Powers

What is it about?

This article examines the relation of materiality and spirituality in the religious traditions (mythology, shamanism, cosmology) of the Baniwa people of the Northwest Amazon region of Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia. Through an intensive interpretation of fixed forms of tubes (wind instruments, snuff-blowing tubes, "bones") and the spirit-related powers that pass through them (breath, soul, musical sounds, "blood"), this article explores tubes material containers of transmissible powers central to life-giving and regenerative processes in Baniwa cosmology.

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Why is it important?

Because it shifts the focus in ethnological analyses towards the interaction between the material and the spiritual. Mostly, analyses have focusses on the material without taking into account that the material simply serves as a support for the spiritual

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