Psychoactive Traditions

Who chooses the healer?

Becoming a healer is not always a choice a person makes alone. Five traditions on this page say, in turn and each in its own way, who makes that choice. The answers come from different places, people and times, from Xhosa diviners in South Africa to a priest in Recife, Brazil, and from a 2000s doctoral study to Yanomami accounts given in 2024. Each is what particular people said or did, as an article on our site reports it.

  1. Ubulawu in Xhosa Diviner Initiation

    Southern Africa, South Africa

    Among Xhosa people, as a 2000s doctoral study by a trained igqirha, or diviner-healer, reports it, no one can simply decide to begin ukuthwasa, the initiation. A person needs ubizo, a calling from the iminyanya, the ancestors of her lineage, which shows itself through trouble. Few welcome it. For the diviners in that study, entering the initiation is what heals.

    No one can simply decide to undertake it

    In the article, section A calling no one wants

  2. Yanomami Yãkoana Snuff

    South America, Brazil, Venezuela

    As Yanomami of the northern Amazon described it in 2024, becoming a shaman begins in dreams, when the xapiri, beings who heal, pick out a person. Whether to accept is still that person’s choice. In the Brazilian account, the path can also open when the sisters of the yawarioma, water spirits, seduce a young hunter and drive him mad.

    Whether to accept is still that person's choice.

    In the article, section Becoming a shaman

  3. Mazatec Mushroom Velada

    Central America, Mexico

    Mazatec specialists in Oaxaca, Mexico, called chjota chjine or “person who knows,” are understood to be chosen by a higher power. The call can come in dreams, through a ritual death, or through an illness that must be cured with the holy children, the mushrooms. A person can also seek the role, but acceptance then comes during trance.

    Specialists are understood to be chosen by a higher power.

    In the article, section Those who know

  4. San Pedro Mesa Curanderismo

    South America, Peru

    Among San Pedro cactus healers in northern Peru, knowledge most often passes down within families, usually father to son, though women practice too. The most valued are maestros “by birth,” chosen by the encantos, powers of hills and lagoons, which place the tools of the trade in their bodies. “What God writes upon you, you have to do,” one said.

    chosen by the encantos and the lagoons

    In the article, section Becoming a maestro

  5. Jurema Sagrada and the Jurema-Preta

    South America, Brazil

    Juremeiros, who practice Jurema Sagrada, a religion of northeastern Brazil, emphasize ciência, “science”: the power a juremeiro carries, usually understood as inborn rather than conferred. Several leaders who never had a teacher call themselves juremeiros “by birth.” One priest in Recife told the juremeiro and researcher Alexandre L’Omi L’Odò: “Whoever has it, has it.”

    Whoever has it, has it.

    In the article, section How much the drink matters