Light at the Edge of the World

by Wade Davis

The Restless Spirit

"But what ultimately inspired these journeys was a restless desire to move, what Baudelaire called 'the great malady,' horror of home. Simply put, I sought escape from a monochromatic world of monotony, in the hope that I might find in a polychromatic world of diversity the means to rediscover and celebrate the enchantment of being human."

The Monolithic Modern Lifestyle

"Our way of life, with its stunning technological wizardry, its cities dense with intrigue, is but one alternative rooted in a particular intellectual lineage."

Discovering Humanity in Warmth and Decency

"For eight weeks, I encountered the warmth and decency of a people charged with a strange intensity, a passion for life and a quiet acceptance of the frailty of the human spirit."

Embracing Life Fully

"Life was real, visceral, dense with intoxicating possibilities. I learned that summer to have but one operative word in my vocabulary, and that was yes to any experience, any encounter, anything new."

The Cultural Fabric of Memory and Myth

"Whether this potential was realized through technological prowess or by the elaboration of intensely complex threads of memory inherent in a myth was a matter of cultural choice and historical circumstance."

The Human Spirit and Imagination

"Cultures of the Gê represented nothing more than a simple triumph of the human spirit and imagination."

Mentorship and Catalyst of Dreams

"He took for granted the capacity of anyone to achieve anything. In this sense, he was a true mentor, a catalyst of dreams."

The Path of the Enlightened

"Sun priests, the enlightened mámas"

Rigorous Spiritual Training

"Those who are chosen for the priesthood through divination are taken from their families as infants and carried high into the mountains to be raised by a máma and his wife. For eighteen years, they are never allowed to meet a woman of reproductive age or to experience daylight, forbidden even to know the light of a full moon. They sleep by day, waking after sunset, and are fed a simple diet of boiled fish and snails, mushrooms, grasshoppers, manioc, squash and white beans. They must never eat salt or food not known to the ancients, and not until they reach puberty are they permitted to eat meat. The apprenticeship falls into two phases, each of nine years duration, symbolic of the nine months spent in a mother’s womb. During the first phase, the apprentices learn songs and dances, mythological tales, the secrets of Creation and the ritual language of the ancients. The second nine years are devoted to the art of divination, techniques of breathing and meditation that lift them into trance, prayers that give voice to the inner spirit. The apprentices pay little heed to the mundane tasks of the world, but they do learn everything about the Great Mother, the secrets of the sky and the Earth, the wonder of life itself in all its manifestations. Knowing only darkness and shadows, they acquire the gift of visions and become clairvoyant, capable of seeing not only into the future and past but through all the material illusions of the universe. In trance, they can travel through the lands of the dead and into the hearts of the living. Finally, after years of study and rigorous practice, of learning of the beauty of the Great Mother, of honouring the delicate balance of life, of appreciating ecological and cosmic harmony, a great moment of revelation arrives. On a clear morning, with the sun rising over the flank of the mountains, the apprentices are led into the light of dawn. Until then, the world has existed only as a thought. Now, for the first time, they see the world as it is, in all its transcendent beauty. Everything they have learned is affirmed. Standing at their side, the máma sweeps an arm across the horizon as if to say, 'You see, it is as I told you.'"

The Significance of Esoteric Beliefs

"The significance of an esoteric belief lies not in its veracity in some absolute sense but in what it can tell us about a culture. Is a mountain a sacred place? Does a river follow the ancestral path of an anaconda? Do the prayers of the Kogi actually maintain the cosmic balance? Who is to say? What matters is the potency of the belief and the manner in which the conviction plays out in the day to day life of a people."

Living Landscapes

"Mountains, rivers and forests are not perceived as inanimate, as mere props on a stage upon which the human drama unfolds. For these societies, the land is alive, a dynamic force to be embraced and transformed by the human imagination. This sense of belonging and connection, noted by ethnographers working among traditional societies throughout the Andes, is also the invisible constant of the Amazon."

Sacred Crafting and Spiritual Connection

"The master builder, who must abstain from sex with his wife until the canoe is consecrated, is visited daily by the spirit of the tree; and as the canoe takes shape as the vulva of the goddess, the very act of carving becomes a mystical act of love, intercourse with the divine."

The Shamanic Role

"There is life on the material plane, scarlet macaws sweeping over the canopy at dusk, a field of manioc to be harvested, sweat bees buzzing about at noon. And there is the realm of the spirit, the place where jaguar go and lightning is waiting to be born. The two domains are never confused, nor are they kept apart. The mediator is the shaman, and it is his ability to slip between spheres that allows for the maintenance of the sacred balance, the harmony of social, religious, and political life."

The Art of Shamanic Healing

"Here, I suggested to my friends, was the essence of the shamanic art of healing: a fusion of mind and spirit, plant and landscape, sacrifice and yearning."

Integrated Spiritual and Medical Practices

"In Western society, however, we make a distinction between religion and medicine, whereas in most indigenous traditions, priest and physician are one, for the state of the spirit determines the state of the body."

The Last Nomads: Health and Isolation

"After that, things went poorly for the Waorani. The military intervened, and the missionaries redoubled their efforts. In their isolation, the Waorani had been astonishingly healthy. Medical studies at the time of contact revealed a people essentially disease-free, with no history of cancer or heart ailments, and no evidence of exposure to polio, pneumonia, smallpox, chicken pox, typhus, typhoid fever, syphilis, tuberculosis, malaria, serum hepatitis, or the common cold. They had practically no internal parasites and virtually no secondary bacterial infections."