Above all else, our ancestors left us with profound faith in Creator and in the world of the spirit. We believe that all creation is the handiwork of Creator and that it was Creator who taught us to follow the path of yagé, the medicinal plants, and our culture. Naturally, the names we have in our languages to refer to Creator, spiritual beings, and the supernatural world are different than those brought by the Europeans. That does not mean that we necessarily have different beliefs, or that our Creator is not the same “God” as that of other peoples.
For us, life is full of visible things and invisible things. The teachings of our ancestors have afforded us the opportunity to believe in, see, and know unseen things. Nevertheless, Western science does not appear to believe in the unseen and therefore often concludes that our beliefs are superstitions, lies, or
magic.
We ask: What is magic to non-indigenous people? Is it contact with invisible forces and energies? Or does magic simply refer to those things that research methods fail to explain?
We know that Creator is invisible; that the world of the spirit is invisible; that the guardian spirits of our jungles and our sacred sites are invisible; and that love and sentiments are invisible. But their invisibility is no cause for us to deny their existence or to conclude that they do not figure in our treatments.
We strive for the day that Western science will be able to grasp our medicine, and to consider the possibility that the unseen may also exist.
Thus, it is our practice to identify several diseases or first causes that belong to the realm of the unseen: bad humors, envy, feelings of rage or bitterness and selfishness, and the discord between spiritual forces. And we have faith that, thanks to the legacy of our ancestors, our knowledge and skills, our ceremonies and our medical practices will always enable us to help resolve these problems.
It would be difficult for us to take a clear position in this Code of Medical Ethics on issues of magic, witchcraft, superstition, or lies, without having engaged in a respectful dialog with non-indigenous science.
The problem that we traditional healers face is not our work with visible or invisible things. In both cases, our ethical commitment is always to work with good and for good in our practices with visible things as well as with the unseen. Accordingly, we reassert our commitment always to work for and on
behalf of what is right and good. Our healing knowledge must be used in the service of others; it must never be used to do wrong to anyone.
Just as Western doctors swear the Hippocratic oath, we take our own oath to respect and to defend life. We shall never use our wisdom to work against the life or health of a living thing on Earth.
We seek blessings to keep our hearts free from evil, hate, desires for vengeance, jealousy, and envy