I lived for a year among the Guahibo Indians along the Orinoco River ( tributary of the Amazon Eiver) in southern Venezuela, eastern Columbia. The Guahibo likely have lived the same way as their ancestors stretching back thousands of years? They believed they lived in a jungle filled with spirits. I was given a tour of the spirit world after ingesting Banisteriopsis ( chemically identical to DMT, administered by the village Shaman. given the Hallucinations I experienced while being guided by the shaman in the Jungle, it was easy to see how their beliefs were maintained… the Jungle was alive for anyone to see, you just needed a guide and a Bit of a hallucinogenic to see and experience the forest spirits., there were a lot of them inhabiting Plants, trees, and even the river. Anger one of the spirits and bad things happen. Of course the Shaman was always about to reinforce beliefs and inflate his importance. A child gets snatched by a cayman and the reason was someone pissed off Ishu, the River spirit. That required that the Shaman be paid to mediate with the angry River spirit. The Guahibo didn’t pray to their spirits, but did commune with them. Navigating the Jungle and the River safely required observing certain rituals the even the children knew.
