Observations placeholder

Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff – Amazonian Cosmos

Mahsiri is to know, and mahse is a person, a thinking being, who sees and hears the echo and thus knows. A mahse is he [she] who knows the symbolism of things, objects, acts, events, and who has the capacity to establish chains of symbolic associations, which become more and more abstract. A mahse is one who can reduce an abstract concept to its simplest symbolic expression.

The ability of conceiving resides in the ka'i.  The ka'i permits man to reflect; man comes to "stabilize" his thoughts and emotions by reflecting. This cognitive act is designated as pesi k'ranyeari, a term derived from peri/to hear, to understand, k'rapiri/to step, and nyeari/to seize. Mentally, this expression is accompanied by a fixed image: a man standing upright, firmly planted on the ground as a cosmic axis, stepping firmly.

Mere understanding, pesi turage (derived from tulari/force) is something very different because it only refers to intellectual agility, good memory, and eloquence, but "to understand-step-seize" embraces a more profound dimension because it leads to wisdom and not simply to knowledge.

To achieve this state of reflection, of "stabilization" and equilibrium, is the ideal of a Desana man ….. But in order to achieve this goal it is necessary to hear the echo of things; in other words, it is necessary to know the ramifications of the symbolic system and to be able to reduce them to their elemental bases.