Jai

The Jai religion is the traditional belief of the Emberá, a riverside people of the Chocó of western Colombia and Panama, who deal with the jai, the spirits. These include the Wandra, mothers of the animals and plants who live at the river sources. Forest animals are held to be transformed souls of the dead.

The shaman, the jaibaná, is not hereditary but learns from an experienced teacher. By dealings with the jai he keeps up the hunt and the health of the community, and cures illness by driving out malignant spirits.

In myth, Caragabí made the first humans from clay borrowed from Tutruicá, and felled the tree Jenené, from whose root the sea sprang and whose branches are the rivers. In the late 1700s, pressed by the Spanish, many Emberá moved into Darién.