Icaros

Icaros are ritualistic medicine songs, used as part of the toolkit of the Curanderos of Amazonia. The songs or chants are taught to the young chosen to be Curanderos and Curanderas by the elders and are passed from generation to generation. These songs were originally taught directly by the doctor spirits of the Plantas Maestras, and a Curanderos are given through dream vision new Icaros during their lifetimes in order to enhance their armory. Icaros are expressed in the form of song and are a major system of delivery of the shamans’ spiritual energy. They are used to bring on mareación (the visionary effects of the Ayahuasca), take mareación away, call in different plant spirits, call in the spirits of others or the deceased, take away dark spirits and dark energies, and manage the ceremony.

Icaros are either whistled or sung, and can be expressed in any language. The shamans generally sing in a spirit dialect that is a mixture of their native language (i.e. Quechua, Shipibo-Conibo, Asháninka, etc.), Spanish, and different evocative sounds. Icaros represent a system of communication between the shaman and the spirits, and the shaman and the participants in the ceremony. The shamans believe that every living thing has an Icaro (its particular energetic vibration) and that these Icaros can be learned. Each Icaro is used to contact a different spirit, for use of healing.

All levels of existence, including material and non-material levels as thoughts or feelings, have vibration, or sound underneath their surface manifestation. If one can reproduce the sound, vibration, or "song" of that which you are working with, you can enter into it and change it around! The shaman does just this using their own body as an instrument.

The Shipibo tradition follows that early in Shipibo girls’ lives, they are initiated by their mothers and grandmothers into the practice of textile design, pottery craft and Icaros. It is like a rite of passage for a young woman to be given the power by her elders to execute the very important responsibility of creating designs for the village. The designs begin when the shamans use wild plants and meditative trance to receive spiritual design messages from the spirit world in the form of geometric patterns of energy. The patterns emerge through their mouths into a song conveying the designs to the women artists in the form of sound vibration.

Amazingly the Shipibo artist is able to listen to an Icaro by looking at the designs, and paint a pattern by listening to a song or music, or sing to a textile pattern! The Icaros and the Shipibo designs form a ritualistic language of double expression, fully interchangeable and this language is transmitted during ceremony to coax, unravel, soothe and protect. The vibration of the Icaros, even if the words are not understood, transmits the messages clearly and touches our subconscious, penetrating us in an indescribable way. You can find below some examples of Icaros from ceremonies (they are from actual ceremonies, so the sound is not of high quality). Their magic cannot pass through recordings; it has to be experienced in the jungle during ceremony to be appreciated. You will also find some YouTube links to better recorded songs, but even those are a poor substitute for the real thing.