This article explores the relation between the verbal arts of the Marubo (Panoan speakers of western Amazonia) and a repertoire of drawings made by their shamans. These drawings are visual cosmographic schemes, possessing affinities with other Amerindian technologies of memory that are also marked by the transit between verbal and graphic expressions. Produced for the anthropologist, the repertoire of images actualizes, in a graphic medium, a formulaic, parallelistic and metaphoric composition that is highly patterned. The analysis of the visual compositions is carried out in parallel with the study of poetic, shamanistic formulas, taking into account questions concerning memory, transmission, and the acquisition of specialized knowledge. The study of the interface between images and verbal arts is articulated with elements of cosmology, concepts of the person and Marubo shamanistic thought.
Shamanism; Cosmology; Iconography; Verbal arts
