The Machiguenga shaman performs ritual healing by communing with the spirit world. To gain insight into the illness and strife in the community, the shaman makes a hallucinogenic drink from the ayahuasca vine. The shaman brews this special drink and stores it in a special earthenware jug until needed.

Long ago, the sky lay low to the ground and was attached by it's umbilical cord to the earth.  One day a group of Machiguengas decides to climb up the cord and capture the star people, who lived in the sky.  As the Machiguenga group was climbing up, one of the sky people, called toucan man, looked down from his perch.  He clipped the cord with his beak, causing the raiding party to fall towards the earth.  The leader of the group, who was highest up, changed himself into a cacique bird and saved himself.  His companions following behind also saved themselves by turning into ground dwelling flightless birds. The others bringing up the rear, were not so lucky as they fell to earth; one impaled himself with the arrows he carried, another got tangled in his climbing rope, fell and stunned himself and became the slow moving sloth.  Others fell into trees and lakes and became many other animals of the forest.  The sky, thus disconnected from the earth by its umbilical cord, floated high up into the sky where it remains today, out of reach of ordinary humans.