THE TREE CLIMBING OLD LADY

Our village once knew Aui Sangmo as its last Pamo, a female shaman. In Bhutan, for centuries before modern medicine, ritualistic treatments were paramount, and shamans were our community's healers. Though this tradition now hangs by a thread, I was fortunate enough to witness a shaman's "power" passed to her successor, and even luckier to experience many of their rituals firsthand.

Aui Sangmo hailed from a long line of shamans, her family having performed all the shamanistic rites in our village for generations. I was about eleven when her mother, a powerful and revered Pamo, passed away. Crucially, she died without choosing an heir to her "powers" and responsibilities.

For generations, this shamanic mantle had been passed down. However, the younger generations began to lose interest, believing that embracing the Pamo's "power" meant closing the door to their own liberation. To accept the Pamo's responsibility is to enter a pact with a deity, one that grants the Pamo their abilities and helps them transcend realms to find cures and treatments. It is a noble deed, but one that comes at the price of one's own soul. If a dying Pamo doesn't select an heir, the deity finds its own host, usually from the same bloodline, though occasionally from another family.

Aui Sangmo's mother, however, did not choose. After her passing, whispers about the new heir filled the village. Each Pamo and Pawo (male shaman) has their own deity, and theirs was considered particularly strong and wrathful. About a month after her mother's death, Aui Sangmo began to change.

Soon, it was clear: she was the new Pamo. Aui Sangmo, a devout Buddhist, vehemently rejected the idea. Yet, she grew increasingly ill, plagued by episodes of delusional behavior. I remember being told she would sing, dance, and talk to herself. Fearing the worst, her family locked her inside their house. I can still recall her shrieking, as if in unbearable pain. She was about fifty years old at the time.

One day, I followed my father as he rushed out, heading towards Aui Sangmo's house. A crowd had already gathered. As I neared, I was baffled by the sight: Aui Sangmo, a fifty-year-old woman, dangled from the roof edge of their two-story house. She laughed hysterically, while her daughter and son cried below, terrified. Just as men began to move to help her, she simply let go, landing with a loud thud on the ground. Everyone gasped, a wave of shocked cries sweeping through the crowd. To our astonishment, she stood up and began to shiver furiously. As her body shook, everyone present pressed their palms together, bowed low, and began to pray. She continued to shake her head and body for some time before passing out. The deity had found its new host.

She had fallen from a two-story house, a height of about thirty feet, yet landed safely, without a single scratch. And she remembered nothing of it.

She regained consciousness the next day. When told that the deity had chosen her, she became furious, rejecting it entirely. She cursed and, it was said, begged the deity to release her.

A few days later, I was tending to the cattle when I saw someone running towards me, dressed in what looked like a white gown. As she came closer, I recognized Aui Sangmo, in just her petticoat, laughing hysterically and shouting. I stood frozen, too shocked and afraid to move a muscle. She stopped, walked right up to my face, and gave a chilling smile. I looked into her eyes, and it wasn't Aui Sangmo I saw, but someone entirely different.

As I stood there, she danced up the hill, shouting and muttering strange words. The moment she passed me, I bolted back to the village, shivering and crying, to tell the first person I saw. Soon, a group of men gathered, and we set off after her, with me leading the way. We ran deep into the forest for about thirty minutes until we heard her laughter. Following the sound, we eventually found her, and the sight left every man baffled and shocked.

Aui Sangmo was atop a massive, ancient pine tree, easily a hundred feet high. What was even more astonishing was that there were no branches for the first twenty meters of the tree. Yet there she was, dancing in the wind, utterly fearless. Every now and then, she would leap from one branch to another as if simply stepping over a puddle.