Yube

Yube is the anaconda ancestor at the centre of Cashinahua vision cosmology. In the founding narrative a man falls in love with a woman of the anaconda people, follows her beneath the water, sheds his human skin and becomes an anaconda; there he learns the vine nixi pae and the songs that unlock its power. When he returns to dry land he brings the vine and its dangers to humankind, and thereafter the brew is spoken of as his blood or urine, its visions as his body, and its songs as his voice sounding through the singer. The name Yube also attaches to the rainbow, called Yube's blood or Yube's road, the coloured way by which souls climb to the sky. Sources differ on whether the Yube of the vine, the anaconda of the deep waters, and the youth of the moon-origin narrative are one being under many aspects or distinct figures sharing a name; Lagrou records the single name Yube across these registers, while other recordings keep the moon episode separate.

Domains

• ayahuasca vision
• anacondas
• rainbow

Powers

• transforms into the water-anaconda
• gives the vine of vision to humankind
• rises as the rainbow, the path of the dead

Epithets

• yuben imi

Relations

• spouse: Yube Nawa Ainbu

Sources

• Kensinger, Kenneth M. 1973. 'Banisteriopsis Usage among the Peruvian Cashinahua.' In M. Harner (ed.), Hallucinogens and Shamanism. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Lagrou, Els. 2018. 'Anaconda-becoming.' Horizontes Antropologicos 24(51): 17-46.
• Lagrou, Els. 2007. A fluidez da forma. Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks.