Sucking – A common method of healing illnesses employed by shamans while performing their duties as doctors. It is commonly understood that illness results from the intrusion of projectiles shot or forced into patient’s bodies by witches, sorcerers, or other predators such as animal shamans, other-than-human persons, and other aggressors. Healing shamans may first purify the patient—for example, in Amazonia, they may blow tobacco smoke over them— and then suck (with or without the aid of tubes) to remove pathogenic objects, such as darts, or “spirits” (illnesses understood as otherthanhuman persons). Sucking has also become part of the repertoire of neo-shamans.
SOURCE:
Historical Dictionary of Shamanism by Graham Harvey and Robert J. Wallis 2007
