Ayahuasca, homepage of the great medicine

Ayahuasca.com

Homepage of the Great Medicine

News

News from around the planet about Ayahuasca

  • Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    Reflecting the beliefs and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador, the constitution declares that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” The new constitution redefines people’s relationship with nature by asserting that nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited by people, but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity under the law.

  • Brazilian Ayahuasca Music

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    Authors: Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Institute of Medical Psychology, Heidelberg University, Germany (http://bialabate.net) and Gustavo Pacheco, National Museum/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
    Publisher: Mercado de Letras, Campinas/SP, Brazil
    Year: 2009
    Format: 11,5 x 21 cm
    Support: German Research Council (DFG) and the Collaborative Research Center “Ritual Dynamics” (http://www.ritualdynamik.de).
    120 pp.
    ISBN 978-85-7591-125-9
    Price: U$ 16,00 (to be confirmed) + shipping fee
    Summary:
    This [...]

  • Bia Labate site and newsletter

    Posted by Bia Labate • Category: News

    Dear Friends
    I invite you to join the newsletter of my site. From time to time I send some news about my writings and my activities, about the universe of ayahuasca and psychoactive substances in general, legislation on drugs, important cultural events and conferences etc. Usually I do not send too much messages, and they do [...]

  • Don Pablo Amaringo makes his Passage.

    Posted by Daniel Mirante • Category: News

    Don Pablo Amaringo, one of the most significant artists of our age, shaman of the highest order, and teacher to many, died November 16th.
    The world of art has lost a truly original visionary – a seer in all senses of the word. I think we all join together in wishing him a safe passage to [...]

    Tags:

  • UDV Church plan brews unease

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    The UDV, whom fought a long legal battle for the right to drink tea in as part of their spiritual practice want to build a temple and greenhouse which has attracted the beady eye of the news media, hungry for cheap controversy.

    Tags:

  • The myth of the chemical cure

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    It is often said the fact that drug treatment “works” proves there’s an underlying biological deficiency. But there is another explanation for how psychiatric drugs affect people with emotional problems.

  • Help to suspend laws that open up the Amazon to destructive industries

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    The Peruvian government has pushed through legislation that could allow extractive and large-scale farming companies to rapidly destroy their Amazon rainforest. Indigenous peoples have peacefully protested for two months demanding their lawful say in decrees that will contribute to the devastation of the Amazon’s ecology and peoples, and be disastrous for the global climate. But last weekend President Garcia responded: sending in special forces to suppress protests in violent clashes, and labelling the protesters as terrorists.

  • Crisis in Peru

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    Luien Chauvin, reporting for Time Magazine, says, “Peruvian President Alan Garcia is furious. His plans to open huge parts of the country’s Amazon jungle to foreign investors are crumbling … a casualty of violent protests by indigenous people in the northern jungle last weekend. … The violence was unleashed when police officers received word from Lima, the capital, to remove the protesters who were blocking a highway and the nearby pumping station on the northern pipeline.”

  • Santo Daime Followers Can Have Their Tea and Drink It Too

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    On Wednesday a federal judge in Oregon ruled that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) allows followers of the Brazil-based Santo Daime sect to consume ayahuasca, a psychedelic tea ontaining the ordinarily illegal drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT), as part of their rituals. Guided by the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2006 ruling in “a very similar case” involving Uniao do Vegetal, another Brazilian religious group that also consumes ayahuasca, U.S. District Court Judge Owen Panner concluded that RFRA “requires that plaintiffs be allowed to import and drink Daime tea for their religious ceremonies, subject to reasonable restrictions.”

    Tags:

  • The Wine of the Souls – Pilgrimage into the Heart of Santo Daime & Amazon Forest

    Posted by Bia Labate • Category: News

    The film “Wine of the Souls” follows six foreigners along their paths in search of healing, self-discovery and mystical experiences. They embark on a pilgrimage to the Amazonian Rainforest, the birthplace of the Santo Daime religion.

  • Shipibo Art and Life Links

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    Some links out to the Shipibo and their art and life.

    Tags:

  • UDV case update

    Posted by admin • Category: Law, News

    An update on the interactions between the União do Vegetal and US Supreme Court by Matthew Meyer.

    Tags: , , ,

  • Ayahuasca: Peruvian National Cultural Heritage

    Posted by Steve Beyer • Category: News, Primordial Culture

    The Peruvian National Institute of Culture resolved that indigenous ayahuasca rituals — “one of the fundamental pillars of the identity of Amazonian peoples” — are part of the national cultural heritage of Peru, and are to be protected, in order to ensure their cultural continuity.

    Tags: , , ,

  • Drugs and Culture: New Perspectives

    Posted by Bia Labate • Category: News

    The book Drugs and Culture: New Perspectives, the result of a symposium organized by the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP, www.neip.info) and that took place at the Universidade de São Paulo in 2005, represents an important push by researchers in the areas of anthropology, sociology, political sciences, law, and history to approach the topic of “drugs” from multiple angles and who have as their common ground the staunch criticism of the prohibition of these substances.

    Tags:

  • Voyaging to DMT Space with Dr. Rick Strassman, M.D.

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    Voyaging to DMT Space with Dr. Rick Strassman, M.D, interviewed by Martin W. Ball …

    Tags: ,

  • New Book on Brazilian Ayahuasca Religions

    Posted by Bia Labate • Category: News

    This book presents the bibliographical state of the art of the Brazilian ayahuasca religions, Santo Daime, Barquinha, the União do Vegetal, and their multiple offshoots.

    Tags: , ,

  • Ayahuasca in the Supreme Court

    Posted by Steve Beyer • Category: Law, News

    By Steve Beyer
    There has been a lot of confusion about the current legal status of ayahuasca in the United States since the Supreme Court decided the União do Vegetal case two years ago. This post attempts to shed some light on the subject in the context of earlier cases involving peyote, the Native American Church, and other claims of religious exemption from the Controlled Substances Act.

    Tags: , , , , , , , ,

  • Ayahuasca mainstreamed?

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    Steve Beyer comments on the growing commodification and cultural appropriation of Ayahuasca in California

    Tags: , ,

  • Benny Shanon Reveals a Speculative Hypothesis on Biblical Entheogens

    Posted by admin • Category: News

    Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, releases a paper outlining a hypothesis that entheogenic plants including ayahuasca analogues formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times.

    Tags: , , , ,