The therapeutic speech of the Desana is a silent speech and without an addressee. Its mode of operation violates the principal functions of language perceived as a means of communication and translation of hought. Under this private and silent aspect, the therapeutic ritual of the kúbú differs from the shamanistic cures usually described as a sort .of dramatization, by gesture andlor voice, of the combat that the shaman wages with the spirits. Lévi-Strauss (1958) has shown that the efficacy of the cure depends on a triple experience-that of the shaman, that of the patient, and that of the attendants (participating or not)-and also on the key role of the audience, which, by its participation, stimulates and reinforces the curing powers of the shaman. On the contrary, the cure carried out by the kúbú is a solitary ritual: the kúbij doesn’t give anything to see, nor does he give anything to hear. “Nobody is there to hear,” the Desana insist. The shamanism of Kúbú is a shamanism of silence, and in this lies its originality.