Arutam is the ancestral power at the heart of Jivaroan religion, an ancient wandering spirit-force encountered in vision rather than a personified god with kin. A seeker withdraws to a sacred waterfall, fasts, bathes and ingests tobacco water or the datura maikua, and waits for a fearsome apparition, often a pair of jaguars, a great anaconda, a ball of fire or a severed head, to rush upon him; if he stands and strikes it, an arutam enters him and lends him strength, eloquence, resolve and an inner conviction that he cannot easily be killed. The power is impersonal and transferable, ebbs with time and after killing must be renewed. It underwrote a man's standing in the cycle of blood-feud and remains, with the water-realm of Tsunki, one of the two great sources of Achuar spiritual force.