I was honoured and moved, to be able to join friends at the church of Reino do Sol, Sao Paulo, Brasil, on the 15th of March, singing Glauco´s hymns Chaveirinho (the little Key). The experience left many seeds in my heart, but as the internet is not stable at the moment (due to rain) I would only send this short note at this moment.

The murder happened on Friday morning, around 0100 (local time).

People started gathering at Céu de Maria on Friday 1400, singing the hinario of Mestre Irineu ‘O Cruzeiro’ with neither maracas nor music. Three Ave Marias were prayed between each hymn.

The ceremony ended around 0700 when the bodies were then transferred to a house of a friend.

The funeral ceremony started about 1000 on Saturday morning and Marco was buried 10..30.

Close friends are telling that Gauco had never before turn down anyone from a ceremony. he believed in the healing powers of the tea, and all though many people were without an interview (an official requierment in Brasil) he never have refused to give them tea. This is said to be the only time he had told someone to go and get a psychological treatment before he comes back to drink. Raoni called Carlos Eduardo (who confessed the murders) about once a week during the past 6 months, in order to inquire how the treatment is going on.

He then came to the house around 00.30 with a gun to his head threatening to commit a suicide. Gauco tried to talk him out of it. there was a conflict. Raoni came and got in the way. he shot Raoni 4 times and Gauco 4 times.

Glauco is very famous in Brasil for his work as a cartoonist. some of his works can be found at http://www2.uol.com.br/glauco/.

A month ago Glauco comforted a friend who mourned a death, “No worries, he is free and happy now”.

Santo Daime Followers Can Have Their Tea and Drink It Too
Jacob Sullum | March 19, 2009, 12:45pm

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 containing 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.” The church already had convinced the Oregon Board of Pharmacy to exempt it from state DMT restrictions.

As I noted in my 2007 Reason article about the fallout from the Uniao do Vegetal decision, it was hard to see why Santo Daime practitioners would not qualify for protection under RFRA, since the relevant facts are almost exactly the same in the two cases: Both groups are small, they use the same sacrament in carefully controlled conditions, the sacrament is central to their religious practices, there is strong evidence that it enhances the lives of people who use it, there is practically no evidence that it causes serious problems, and there is little interest in it as a recreational drug. But you never know. Uniao do Vegetal’s ayahuasca rituals seemed, if anything, less threatening to the current drug control regime than the peyote ceremonies of the Native American Church, which involve many more people yet have long been tolerated by the federal government. UDV still faced unrelenting resistance from the supposedly pro-religious Bush administration, which fought the church all the way to the Supreme Court and was rebuked by the courts at every step.
Panner’s ruling is available here (PDF).

http://www.neip.info/downloads/edward/ebook.htm

Although the Daime works keep within the traditional shamanic parameters, one should take into consideration the remarks made by Couto, that, here, one is dealing with what he calls “collective shamanism”. The command of the works is held by more experienced shamans, but the shamanic activity is not, exclusively in the hands of a few initiates and all participants are considered apprentice shamans and even potential shamans. Taking part in the rituals is a way of learning the art, and it is thought that any of the participants of the ritual may display shamanic powers which are considered to be latent in human nature

Summary:

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. Following a panoramic and historical introduction of these religious movements, it offers a general evaluation of their bibliography, seeking to identify the principal characteristics, tendencies, and perspectives on this field of study. Then, it discusses the main studies in the areas of pharmacology, psychiatry, and psychology carried out in the context of these groups, evaluating their results, contributions, and limitations. Finally, it presents a bibliography of the worldwide literature which aims to be the most exhaustive possible on the theme, including both academic literature and the writings of ‘natives.’ This publication is intended as a kind of guide for researchers in the area, and to be useful also to others interested in the subject, insofar as the past decade has seen not only a national and international expansion of the ayahuasca religions, but also a true boom in studies done about them.

“The documentary “O Senhor da Floresta” directed by the journalist Mivan Gedeon, won the category “Best video from the State of Maranhao” awarded by the Technical Jury of the 30^th Guarnicê Video and Cinema Festival in Sao Luis, Maranhao.

The 19 minute video was filmed on DVCAM. The film brings the testimony of Mestre Irineu’s relatives, amongst them, from his nephew, Daniel Serra, who lived with him for 15 years, and from two of his cousins, sons of Paulo Serra (adoptive uncle of Irineu), Rita Serra and José Barnabé (who is now diseased). It was José Barnabé who went from São Vicente de Ferrér to São Luís when Irineu returned to Rio Branco – Acre (in 1958), bringing with him three nephews, including Daniel Serra.

The first images for the video were shot in 2003, in São Vicente Férrer, birth city of Irineu. In 2005, the journalist went to Rio Branco (AC) and finished the video in 2007. The professional wrestler Rei Zulu was asked to play the main character in the documentary due to his physical resemblance to Mestre Irineu. For his acting debut, the wrestler was assisted by the famous theater director Urias de Oliveira.

Link to video of “O senhor da Floresta” (original in Portuguese with no English Subtitles):

Part 1:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aCbn-2EAXxI

Part 2:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=f2GlBvvjEjk

Original entry by Bia Labate: http://alto-das-estrelas.blogspot.com

Translation graciously provided by:
Flavia Dzodan

Ayahuasca, is a word from the Quechua linguistic family of Andean-Equatorial South America. It means “vine of the soul” and refers both to a large forest liana (Banisteriopsis caapi), and a strong infusion (tea) made from its woody parts, or with one or more other plant admixtures. The most usual addition to the brew are leaves from the shrub Psychotria viridis. These plants are endemic to the Amazon Basin, where they are part of a much larger plantas maestras or “teacher plants” tradition native to that part of the world. Such plants – many of which have emetic, purgative, cathartic, dream-inducing and/or visionary effects – are used to facilitate states of consciousness that are believed to open into the worlds of spirit.

In the typical ayahuasca preparation, the molecular basis for this lies in the betacarboline complex (harmine, tetrahydroharmine, etc.) and the indole dimethyltryptamine (DMT). These are part of a structural group that includes neurotransmitters, molecules used to effect internal communication in the human body. In ayahuasca, these dialogues are deepened and expanded to include all manner of elemental, plant, animal, ancestor, and deity. These then appear less as an “other,” and more as participants in the metabolisms of yet larger bodies, such as regional ecosystems, or the earth itself.

Such organismic cosmologies are common to many indigenous peoples. These often suggest the existence of a reality a priori to material existence, one of mythic causality in which all beings are mutually transformative and exist as ontological equals, as “persons”. Dialogues with such a world are effected through imaginal exchanges (dreams and visions), dance, prayer, song, and their attendant feeling states and sensory awareness. These describe the body’s innate capacity to converse with what is presumed to be the affective life of the natural world. Ayahuasca allows access to this generous bandwidth of communication, and its repeated use cultivates familiarity with the ecology of souls which inhabit it.

Sophisticated eco-cosmologies have therefore evolved among Amazonian peoples around the use of ayahuasca and other plantas maestras. These tend to order such practical activities as healing, divination, procreation, and hunting within the concept of an all-encompassing fertility circuit. This view understands the world to be nourished by a finite supply of vital force that must be equitably shared. Human greed, waste, and disrespect can easily disrupt this flow, and the repercussions are thought to express themselves in personal and social ills. Spirituality and medicine are thereby integrated into various social norms which tend to preserve ecosystem integrity. Examples include food, sex, and hunting taboos, and the cultivation of kinship relations with plants and animals.

The world of nature as revealed by ayahuasca typically appears as a society, a culture of spiritual relations. The teachings of ayahuasca are acts of healing, remediations in energy flow and balance whereby one “becomes” the lessons. One so healed may then enter into transformative relations with larger organizing forces, with greater ecosystemic intelligences, which in turn tend to increase human self-consciousness, inspiration, revelation, and sense of mission. When these traits are understood within the context of spiritual evolution, ayahuasca takes on a religious significance.

The idea of healing body and soul has formed the essence of religious beliefs of peoples the world over. Similarly, one can conjecture that the supplication of humans to the healing power of nature is the source of much of what we know as religious thought. In this regard, the role of plants and fungi in the origins of religions has been explored by a number of authors. Perhaps the most well-known example is Soma, the mysterious plant (or fungus) recounted in the Hindu Rg-Vedas as a vehicle of religious ecstasy.

Plant-inspired religions can be understood as acts of guidance by an elder community of species to a younger one, the human. They are concerned with successful co-creative relations within the community of nature and the organismic and spiritual growth that these bring about. Such religions allow the initiate to cultivate an expanded sense of self, whereby one’s actions in the world are reviewed in experiences of right or wrong, heaven or hell. This often results in a greater awareness of, and respect for, the spiritual ecologies that govern the world.

These understandings have been lost to much of religious life as humanity civilizes itself into increasingly mono-species (exclusively human) social arrangements and dialogues. Politicizing, intellectualizing, and influences that move divinity off-planet have all played their roles in denaturing the religions that have co-evolved with Western industrialism.

However, a reformation of plant-inspired religions has been occurring since the late 1800s. These often come of syncretizing influences in places of sudden and disruptive culture change. Examples include the evolution of the use of peyote (Lophophora williamsii ) into a pan-Native American religion; and the creation of churches that employ iboga root (Tabernanthe iboga) in colonized central west Africa. Similarly, ayahuasca-based churches were born in the Amazon basin with the influx of colonists and forest extractivists.

In the late 1920s, a rubber tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra, or Master Irineu as he came to be called, had a series of visions in the forests near Acre, Brazil brought on by his use of ayahuasca. In these he was visited by the Queen of the Forest in the guise of the Virgin of Conception. Through her he received the doctrine of a new religion based on spiritual healing. Ayahuasca took on the name of Daime, after the invocation Dai-me Amor, Dai-me Luz. . . (“Give me Love, Give me Light”), and the religion became known as Santo Daime. Master Irineu moved to the nearby town of Rio Branco in 1930, and there began to cultivate this religion with a small group of adherents.

A number of hymns began to be received by church members in the form of “singing murmurs,” considered to be gifted from higher worlds. They invoke an eclectic pantheon that includes Old and New Testament figures and various saints, spirits of sacred plants, forest animals, devic presences, and heavenly bodies. These, along with accompanying musical instruments and formalized dancing, became an important part of church ceremonies and source for doctrinal development.

As the religion grew in Brazil, it spread from rural caboclo (mixed-blood river dwellers) communities into new settings and populations. These include the urban middle class, health professionals, and intelligentsia, as well as more marginalized groups, such as drug addicts (the churches have become well known for their work in helping people to overcome addictions), counter-culturalists, and the urban poor. This growth stimulated the formation of sects. For example, the Barquinha (“little boat”) group emerged in the 1950’s; it accommodates aspects of the very heterogeneous Umbanda (mediumist) spiritualism.

Yet another rubber tapper, Jose Gabriel da Costa, encountered the use of ayahuasca with native Indians in the forests bordering Bolivia and Brazil. In 1961 he founded the U.D.V. (União do Vegetal) which soon spread into the urban south of Brazil. Among the more hierarchical and organizationally sophisticated of the ayahuasca religions, the U.D.V. stresses a less “active” service, with long periods of silence interspersed with conversational sharing.

Despite differences, all churches share similarities that derive from the integrative nature of ayahuasca itself. It is considered a sacrament, and like its predecessor soma, a divinity, both “Christ’s blood,” and a forest spirit. The replacement of the bread and wine Eucharist with ayahuasca brings an eco-spiritual force into communion with Christian saints and their prescriptions of love, peace, charity, and fraternity. By unifying the naturalized and the civilized, it appears to work as a bridge over the 500 years of culture clashes wrought by the colonialist enterprise. In this way it births new cultural forms of indigeneity, ways of belonging to the land that reflect the needs of the various peoples brought to it.

A notable example is the 1982 founding of a community called Vila Céu do Mapiá (Mapia) by Santo Daime church members. Located in a large forest reserve in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, Mapia is intended as an ecological-communal “social laboratory” where the teachings received through the Daime can be practiced in daily life.

The world affirmed by ayahuasca, and in fact all teacher plants, tends to run contrary to that enacted by industrial-growth cultures. Hence those individuals that convert often become less amenable to mainstream mores, values, and ways of life. The media in Brazil and elsewhere have observed this, and in recent years have accused the churches of contributing to the breakdown of society; this by inducing its followers into acts of fanaticism, such as leaving one’s city life and disappearing into the forest.

Antipathy to the forces of change unleashed by sacred plants is likewise reflected in the modern War on Drugs. Under international pressure, Brazil added B. caapi to its list of controlled substances in 1985. Following a series of appeals and investigations it was removed from the list with provisions in 1987, and fully exempted in 1992. In that year its legitimacy was celebrated with ayahuasca ceremonies featured as part of the inter-religious vigil of the Global Forum section of the Earth Summit conference in Rio de Janeiro.

As the use of ayahuasca spreads outside of Brazil, it continues to run into prohibition policies. In recent years the churches in Europe and the U.S. experienced a number of seizures and arrests. Many court cases are pending, though a decision on May 21, 2001 in the Dutch court acquitted the Santo Daime church under the constitutional right to freedom of religion.

Modern ayahuasca religions are born both of the sylvan cosmos and a humanity sundered from that world. They therefore have great implications during this era of ecological crisis. To reestablish communicative relations with medicinal plants is to reconnect with a perennial source of assistance to humans. What such plants can do for individuals, they can do for communities; in this way they engender healing cultures. This process continues in Brazil (e.g., the Centro de Cultura Cósmica has recently sprouted from both Santo Daime and the U.D.V. influences) and in other areas of the world, where such movements are more covert.

These religions are prophetic in considering themselves microcosmic realities of a future-healed earth, yet for them, the future is now. They presume that as more people awaken to this reality, a relational indigeneity appropriate for the times will become increasingly accepted as a new cultural norm, and the planetary crisis will then pass. This vision is millenarian in scope, and suggests the inevitable evolution of a heart-opening ecotopia. To this end, a Daime hymn sings of a “new life, new world, new people, new earth.”

Bibliography

Descola, Phillipe

1994 In the Society of Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Forte, Robert, ed.

1997 Entheogens and the Future of Religions. San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices.

Grob Charles, et al

1996 Human Psychopharmacology of Hoasca, A Plant Hallucinogen Used in Ritual Context in Brazil (including commentary by Marlene Dobkin Del Rios). Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 184(2):86-98.

Groisman, A., and A.B. Sell

1996 “Healing Power”: Cultural-Neurophenomenological Therapy of Santo Daime. (In) Yearbook of Cross-Cultural Medicine and Psychotherapy 1995. Michael Windelman & Walter Andritzky, eds. VWM – Verlag fur Wissenschaft und Bildung.

McKenna, Terence

1991 The Archaic Revival. San Francisco: Harper.

Metzner, Ralph

1999 Green Psychology: transforming our relationship to earth. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions Press.

Polari, Alex

1996 Might the Gods be Alkaloids? Paper presented at International Transpersonal Association’s Annual Conference “The Technologies of the Sacred.” Manaus, Brazil

Reichel-Dolmatoff, G.

1976 Cosmology as Ecological Analysis: a view from the rain forest (Huxley Memorial Lecture 1975). Man. 11:307-318.

Ruck, Carl, R. Gordon Wasson, Stella Kramrisch, Jonathan Ott

1992 Persephone’s Quest. Yale University Press: New Haven, CT.

Santo Daime is a syncretic spiritual practice, which was founded in the Brazilian Amazonian state of Acre in the 1930s and became a worldwide movement in the 1990s. Santo Daime rituals involve collective singing of hymns, sometimes while engaged in a formalised dance step, other times simply seated in chairs, combined with the consumption of Daime, the name founder Raimundo Irineu Serra, or Mestre Irineu gave to the drink known generically as Ayahuasca. Dai-me means “give me” in Portuguese, as in “daime força, daime amor” (give me strength, give me love), phrases found in several of the doctrine’s hymns.

Santo Daime is syncretic in that it incorporates elements of several religious or spiritual traditions including African Animism, South American Shamanism, and Christianity. The religion, called simply the Doctrine of Mestre Irineu by its most senior practitioners, has little basis in written texts. Instead, its teachings are learned experientially, through singing of inspired hymns, which explore perennial values of love, harmony and strength through through poetic and metaphorical imagery.

Ceremonies, which are called trabalhos meaning “works”, are typically several hours long and consist of drinking Daime and either sitting or dancing while singing hymns and playing maracas, or sitting in silent concentration.

The drinking of Daime induces a strong emetic effect which is embraced as a purging of both emotional and physical impurities. Overall the Santo Daime promotes a wholesome lifestyle in conformity with Mestre Irineu’s motto of “harmony, love, truth and justice”, as well as other key doctrinal values such as strength, humility, fraternity and purity of heart.

Ayahuasca, which contains the psychoactive compound dimethyltryptamine (DMT), has been the subject of increasing legal scrutiny in the last few decades as Santo Daime has expanded. The decoction has been explicitly legal for religious use in Brazil since 1986, while recent legal battles in Europe have legalized its use in Holland and Spain. In the United States, the Supreme Court in 2006 upheld a preliminary injunction permitting another Brazilian church, the União do Vegetal (UDV), to use ayahuasca ritually. This decision, as the result of specific litigation involving the UDV, applies only to that group, so the legal status of ayahuasca generally remains in a gray area in that country.

Origins

Santo Daime is the name given to the religious practice begun in the 1920s in the far western Brazilian state (then-territory) of Acre by Raimundo Irineu Serra, an immigrant of Maranhao in Brazil’s northeast region.

Irineu Serra was born in Brazil in 1892 to African parents. Inineu migrated to the Western Amazon region in 1912, attracted to a boom in the rubber tapping industry. He first drank ayahuasca in the border region between Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. After experiencing a series of visions whilst spending 8 days in solitude in the forest, he began to conduct spiritual ceremonies using Ayahuasca. Many people came to him sick, seeking healing they could not afford or failed to find in standard medical practice.

Ritual

“All who drink this holy beverage must not only try to see beautiful things without correcting their faults, but give shape to perfection of their own personality to take their place in this battalion and follow this line. If they would act this way, they could say, I am a brother” – Mestre Irineu

Devotional in context, the songs praise divine principles. The Cross of Caravacca, with its double horizontal beam, stands on the altar. Each session begins and ends with Christian prayers. Santo Daime practice features several kinds of ritual: two kinds are concentrações (“concentrations”) and bailados (“dances”), also known as hinários (“hymnals”). Other rituals focus on the saying of the rosary, or healing. Participants drink Daime in all types of ritual; but the format and focus can differ; concentrations are silent, seated meditations, while hymnals involve dancing and singing hymns while playing maracas.

The Christian core is combined with other elements, such as an emphasis on personal gnosis and responsibility, an animist appreciation of nature, such as the Sun, Moon and Stars, as well as the totemic symbol of the ‘beija-flor’, the hummingbird. Spiritual beings from indigenous Amazonian shamanism and deities from the African pantheon such as Ogum and Iemanja are also incorporated into the doctrine. The nature of the work is sometimes personified and addressed as ‘Juramidam’, a name disclosed to Irineu in his visionary experience, which means literally, “God (jura) and his soldiers (midam)”.

Participants in the ritual come to submit themselves to a process through which they may learn things. This may include various wonders – Ayahuasca is famous for the visions it generates, and the sense of communion with nature and spiritual reality – as well as more mundane, less pleasant lessons about oneself. The Daime is thought to reveal both positive and various negative or unresolved aspects of the individual, sometimes resulting in difficult or blissful ‘passages’ involving the integration of this dissociated psychological content.

It is not for nothing that ceremonies are referred to as ‘works’ since they can last up to 12 hours. The effects of Daime combined with dancing, singing and concentration require and develop stamina or ‘firmeza’ – firmness.

Hymns

The essential teachings of the Doctrine are transmitted through the hymns, which, when sung, create a direct link to the astral and the Divine. Master Irineu received 129 hymns within his hinario, or hymnal, and his hinario marks his spiritual journey and evolution from when he began drinking the Daime until his death. Through the singing of his hymns, the participant is able to connect with the spirit, teachings, and salvation of the Master and, in many ways, begin walking the same spiritual path which the Master walked.

Hymns are often received as direct transmissions from the astral, and it is through the singing of hymns that teachings of the Master, Padrinhos, and Madrinhas are passed to the members. Through the force of the sacrament, the hymns become living testimony and bring specific energies of healing, strength, communion, forgiveness, and remembrance. Many members of the church receive hymns, and there are literally thousands of hymns throughout the Doctrine.

The singing of particular hinarios conicides with official dates on the Santo Daime calender, which includes the singing of the Master’s hinario on the Virgin of Conception (Dec. 7), Christmas, Day of Kings (January 6th), St. John (June 23rd). The hinario of Padrinho Sebastiao is sung on Master Irineu’s birthday (Dec. 15), Saint Sebastian (January 19th), Madrinha Rita’s birthday (June 25), as well as Brazilian Father’s Day. Padrinho Alfredo’s hinario is sung on Padrinho Alfredo’s birthday (January 8), St. Joseph (March 18th), and Saint Peter (June 28th), as well as New Year’s Eve (December 31st).

Non-Portuguese-speaking members often “receive” hymns in their native language.

Denominational Diversification

The death of Mestre Irineu in 1971 resulted in a diversification within the Santo Daime community. From a global perspective, the most significant of these occurred when Sebastiao Mota de Melo, commonly called Padrinho Sebastiao, left the original center with a large group of his followers, and formed a group known as CEFLURIS.

According to church documents, this split also entailed disagreement over the use of cannabis. Followers of Sebastiao Mota de Melo believed marijuana to be a healing plant teacher, and referred to it as Santa Maria, using it in ceremony to help their mediumship (embodying of spirits for the purpose of healing.) Followers of Mestre Irineu regard use of cannabis, as well as mediumship generally, as outside the doctrine.

In the early 1980s Padrinho Sebastiao moved the church headquarters to Ceu do Mapia. Control of CEFLURIS was increasingly shared with the southern intellectuals who joined the movement in the 1970s, and in the 1980s CEFLURIS established centers in southern Brazil. The group now has affiliates in North America, Europe, and Japan, as well as throughout Brazil.

Ayahuasca – Daime

Santo Daime’s entheogenic sacrament, ayahuasca, has been used for millennia in South American indigenous cultures. It is one of the traditional tools of the shaman in South America, and in many regions is to this day a common medicine used for finding and treating various ailments as well as for its vision-inducing effects, which are said to be profound and life-changing.

The tea has had many names including Santo Daime (or simply Daime), Hoasca, Ayahuasca, Yage, and Caapi. It is made from two or more plants, one a woody vine (Ayahuasca vine or Jagube; generally b. caapi), and the others known as admixtures. While various plants are used throughout South America, most of which have high concentrations of dimethyltryptamine, the preferred admixture in the case of Santo Daime is Psychotria viridis, known to church members as the “Queen of the Forest,” after the figure who is said to have appeared to the church’s founder in a vision, prompting him to start the religion.

The Santo Daime Church uses only the Jagube vine and the Viridis leaf, not adding any other plants to the mixture. The tea is prepared ceremoniously over a week by members of the church in a festival called a ‘fetio’. Hymns are sung, and Daime is drank while the men hammer the vine into powder and the women clean and sort the leaves. Because of the very specific manner in which they prepare their sacrament, and the very specific way in which they use it, the beverage is not called ‘Ayahuasca’, but ‘Santo Daime’.

Law

Due to their usage of ayahuasca as a sacrament and the spread of the religion, Santo Daime has found itself the center of Court battles and legal wrangling in various countries.

In Brazil, CONFEN (the Federal Drug Council) has consistently upheld the right of the Daime Church to practice its religion and healing practices using the Daime. A study was made of the Daime by the CONFEN in 1987 which included visits to the various churches and observation of the making of the Daime. It also included study of another group of Ayahuasca users, who call the drink Vegetal (Uniao do Vegetal). The work group which made the study included representatives not only of the CONFEN but also of several other government agencies. The conclusion of the study was that the Daime was a very positive influence in the community, encouraging social harmony and personal integration. The study noted that, rather than simply considering the pharmacological analysis of the plants, it was essential to consider the whole context of the use of the tea — religious, social, and cultural.

In the Netherlands, Santo Daime won a court case in 2001 which allowed them to continue their ceremonial usage of ayahuasca. One factor in this decision was a fax from the Secretary of the International Narcotics Control Board to the Netherlands Ministry of Public Health, stating that [P]reparations (e.g.decoctions) made of these plants, including ayahuasca are not under international control and, therefore, not subject to any of the articles of the 1971 Convention. [1]

In France, Santo Daime won a court case allowing them to use the tea in early 2005; however, they were not allowed an exception for religious purposes, but rather for the simple reason that they did not perform chemical extractions to end up with pure DMT and harmala and the plants used were not scheduled. Four months after the court victory, the common ingredients of Ayahuasca as well as harmala were declared stupéfiants, or narcotic schedule I substances, making the Daime and its ingredients illegal to use or possess. See [2] and [3] (French) for more information.

In the United States, court battles over ritual use of Ayahuasca have mostly been fought by the UDV, and practitioners of the Santo Daime doctrine are watching these events closely. So far, UDV has been able to continue practicing legally thanks to Supreme Court decisions that soundly rejected attempts by the government to prohibit it. see [4] for more information.

The most recent decision came in Italy in 2006; an eight month long investigation had led to the arrest of 24 Italian Santo Daime members in early 2005, but the May 2006 ruling found that no sufficient evidence had been presented to demonstrate that the church members had broken Italian law.

The view from Academia

Two particularly important research projects are worth highlighting. The first is the official investigation made by the Brazilian government at the end of the 1980’s, which resulted in the legalization of the religious use of ayahuasca in Brazil in 1992. The second is ‘The Hoasca Project’ developed by a collective of international scholars. The Hoasca Project presented important findings regarding the use of Ayahuasca as an agent of healing, something it is famous for in its indigenous context.

A collaborative essay on the Santo Daime, in which some of this information is included, can be found at wikipedia.org 

Departamento de Processos Psicológicos Básicos, Instituto de Psicologia, Universidade de Brasília, Asa Norte, Brasília-DF 70910-900, Brazil. banisteria@gmail.com

The use of the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca, obtained from infusing the shredded stalk of the malpighiaceous plant Banisteriopsis caapi with the leaves of other plants such as Psychotria viridis, is growing in urban centers of Europe, South and North America in the last several decades. Despite this diffusion, little is known about its effects on emotional states. The present study investigated the effects of ayahuasca on psychometric measures of anxiety, panic-like and hopelessness in members of the Santo Daime, an ayahuasca-using religion. Standard questionnaires were used to evaluate state-anxiety (STAI-state), trait-anxiety (STAI-trait), panic-like (ASI-R) and hopelessness (BHS) in participants that ingested ayahuasca for at least 10 consecutive years. The study was done in the Santo Daime church, where the questionnaires were administered 1h after the ingestion of the brew, in a double-blind, placebo-controlled procedure. While under the acute effects of ayahuasca, participants scored lower on the scales for panic and hopelessness related states. Ayahuasca ingestion did not modify state- or trait-anxiety. The results are discussed in terms of the possible use of ayahuasca in alleviating signs of hopelessness and panic-like related symptoms.

PMID: 17532158 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

The complete PDF
http://www.maps.org/w3pb/new/2007/2007_Santos_22932_1.pdf

excerpted from “Might the Gods Be Alkaloids?”
http://www.santodaime.org/archives/alex3.htm

Besides the sensations felt during expanded states of consciousness, the shaman’s experience has particular characteristics.

The classic definition of the “art of ecstasy” takes for granted that the shaman retains a special type of knowledge which enables him to function within this state. This is the shaman’s greatest art. The shaman consciously approaches the maximal threshold of annihilation. This is the flight of the shaman, in which the adept reaches the reality beyond our usual awareness, and keeps the door between different planes of consciousness open.

One could say that shamanism is the most archaic system of the attainment of knowledge known to man. One could also affirm that since its beginnings, its practice has always been related to the use of entheogens.

However, the most important quality of shamanism to be emphasized is the lived experience of the self and its mobility to act during trance. The self is found to be the vehicle, the coach (Merkbath) that ascends on flights in search of celestial palaces. But the shaman does not limit himself to a superficial contemplation of the palace’s yards and shining exterior. He walks through the palace’s labyrinths and secret tunnels, seeking to know what occurs in its chambers.

This is the journey of the “miração”, a shamanic state of mystical consciousness attained through the ritualistic ingestion of the beverage, Santo Daime, which we will now describe.

“Miração” is a term that was introduced by Master Irineu in the Santo Daime tradition to designate the visionary states produced by the beverage. The verb “mirar” means to look at or to contemplate. From this is derived the word “mirante”, which is a high isolated place from where an ample landscape can be seen. But the word “miração” links contemplation with action, – “mira”+”ação” (to look at + action). This clearly expresses that the word was created during shamanic ecstasy by a person was well-aware of the self’s journey within the visionary experience. This journey of the spirit is symbolized by the flight of the eagle towards the sun.

Undoubtedly, there is a great difference between a placid initiation that prepares the neophyte through silence and meditation, and the shamanic initiation which invites him to be the protagonist of the “miração”, a position in which he is fully responsible for his acts in the astral world. There, we are invited to participate in a film in which the unfolding of scenes on a screen depends upon everything that occurs within our consciousness.

But we will only be able to rescue the film’s damsel from the clutches of the villain if our disposition to do so is as genuine as our ability to realize our objectives, harnessing from our interior the courage and wisdom necessary to pass the many trials of the initiation trajectory. On the other hand, if the visionary narrative goes out of control, a negative outcome can result and there can be an interruption in the flight towards ecstasy.

In the “miração”, the state of contemplation and the state of action are two sides of the same coin. Before the beginning of the influx of images, the mind experiences many preparatory states. The mind must distinguish the visionary experience form mere imagination, and from mental games of visualization and projection. The visionary events that involve our self within the “miração” from a psychic-noetic world and are occurrences on a level of reality that is contiguous to the spiritual world. Therefore, we can affirm that the “miração” activates our subtle bodies and frees them to enact the magical and numinous scenes of shamanic reality.

The level of consciousness, which is attained through the “miração”, is often accompanied by an inner voice that guides the process. This is the rarer and more wonderful facet of the Daime “miração”.

During the trajectory of the “miração”, our consciousness participates in the psychic-noetic and spiritual phenomena via our subtle bodies. Through these subtle bodies, our self, at brief and decisive moments, makes decisions concerning our destiny. This occurs in the midst of probabilities in a vast sea of quantic indetermination.

We can thus help to weave the texture of our destiny, a complex tapestry of the events which generate life. This means that in the ecstasy of the “miração”, we engage in a dialogue with God, in which we are working at his side.

We are, in this sense, summoned to fulfill the great responsibility of being co-creators of the universe. Only a destiny so noble justifies the plan of divine creation; the evidence of evolution; the reasons behind Lucifer’s fall; the appearance of evil in the scene of creation; and now the missions to convert and reunite fallen humanity with the truth until the end of time.

This mission is the crux of revelation throughout time. Likewise, the crux of shamanic initiation is to acquire sufficient strength to execute everything revealed in the “miração”.

Previously, we stated that a lack of aptitude and courage during the shamanic flight could destabilize the “miração”, or even worse, that the lack of these virtues could produce a negative outcome. The spiritual kingdoms, through which the shaman travels are ruled not only by a type of dazzling beauty but also by a type of terrible justice.

Man is not programmed for perfection. He must make a psychological, social, moral, and spiritual choice to be perfect. This is done via the 2-edged sword of his free-will. Thanks to this attribute, man can surpass the stature of demi-gods, divas, and cherubins.

But on the other hand, man’s free will also makes him fall prey to the ambivalence of his weak constitution. Tibetan Buddhism refers to this sudden rupture of the ego in the presence of the sublime, as the moment when the mediator inspired by dakini (the feminine aspect of Buddha) confronts the terrifying entities that guard the portal of nirvana. If at that moment, in our ecstatic flight, the lower self takes control, even briefly, of the pilot’s cockpit we can become vulnerable to the projection of chimeras, fears, doubts, and anxieties. This leads to the disruption of concentration, and consequently causes the miração to be disturbed.

In some cases, one can easily resolve this problem. The mind is released from its weakness and momentary distraction, returning to its original state of self-contemplation, which is propitious for the continuation of visions.

But in other cases, the difficulty worsens and one experiences discipline or “peia”, a term used in the Daime tradition to describe the disciplinary discomfort that precedes enlightenment.

In those moments, one’s visions become negative in their nature, and even terrifying. Usually, this feeling is related to the purgative and adaptive effects of the entheogenous beverage which induces the miração. When the ego emerges from the self, one’s true consciousness recognizes the ego as an impostor, and in a sphinx-like manner poses the challenge “Decipher me or I will devour you”.

Here, we are required to present the fulfillment of our spiritual goals, along with our efforts to attain immortality. If at this very moment, we have no truth to present to God, the elemental monster of our own creation, devours us.

The higher powers constantly requires transformation so that man can be kept on the path. This is required because one’s path becomes dangerous when one’s self is not truthful.

Sebastião Mota, one of the main masters of Daime doctrine, affirmed that man must “be” rather than merely seem “to be”. Therefore, the process of being truthful is the science that allows us to safely enter elevated states of consciousness, and to emerge from these states with new acquisitions for the search.

Within the subtle levels of the astral world, the truthful attracts the truthful. The human being as a manifestation of truth is the raw material of creation. The more we live within the truth, the more we can perceive through the “miração” what we must become, and God uses each one of us as pieces of a divine puzzle. He imbues us with love and gives us partnership in His masterpiece.

The truth of the human being is exact. In it, there is nothing neither lacking nor superfluous. There is no room within the truth for mental conditions or vicious habits whose character is hidden or social rules. We are convicted by our hearts because we lack truthfulness within ourselves.

Every time that this lack of truth disrupts the “miração”, thereby shaking its foundation, we should ask a higher power for the key to transformation. The torment and discomfort that we sometimes experience during moments of discipline are later understood to have been beneficial.

This is the authentic shamanic therapy, a therapy which converts its participants to the truth.

The more one wards off these “samsaras” (illusions), the more one becomes conscious of the noble script that God has written for each one of us.

We try to express the extraordinary sensation one feels in working, through our subtle bodies, at the seraphic tasks of divine creation. This occurs, as we have already seen, through the higher self’s action within visionary images, as though the “miração” was an interactive game of “spiritual virtual reality”.

In order that this process can be incorporated in the self, a receptive-passive attitude and a positive mental pattern is necessary. In this way, man’s tiny boat of consciousness can navigate on the waves of the mind’s sacred sea, and its sails can remain full of wind even in the midst of storms of negative thoughts.

To conclude this discussion, I would like to allude to the shamanic consciousness states of the “miração”, namely those that are relevant to karma and mediunship, because these issues are the main aspects of shamanic healing. In one sense, spiritual healing consists of the self’s immersion in elevated states of consciousness, that allows one to perceive the root of the imbalances that lead to illness.

Through these vivid experiences of the “self” in the “miração”, one can also remember facts about past lives. Sometimes, this allows us to determine which are the karmic patterns that we must break in this incarnation.

The phenomenon of mediumship does not merely consist of trance and incorporation. Mediumship also involves the myriad of “selves” that surround our central and true self, and the manner in which these impostors assume the ownership of our beings.

At certain levels within the “miração”, these “selves” can be perceived as real entities. We then begin to realize that each thought that passes through our mind is an entity. Through this knowledge, we can adjust the mediumnistic “dial” in order to tune into beneficial entities. The mediumnistic “dial” provides a remedy for man’s tendency to have distracting thoughts. It allows us to indoctrinate harmful thoughts and to ward off detrimental influences that would otherwise become our future obsessors.

We are trying to express our comprehension of the “miração”, understood as a state of mystical perception that is similar to other known states of cosmic consciousness. We shall consider a specific aspect of the “miração”; the interactive relationship that the self has with its visions, a relationship characteristic of the shamanic tradition. At the same time, the “miração” is a visionary and ecstatic reality.

This process of “samadi” consists of various stages, degrees, and possibilities. The experience presents broad panoramas and at times focuses on merely a few photograms in detail. Its supreme realization is the realization of the higher self in man.

In spite of the invaluable aid that these sacred plants provide for man’s spiritual achievements, the work of the “miração” does not cease when one returns to normal consciousness. Instead, man continues the process of the “miração” in his daily life by retaining the coherence of its instruction. At times, we can obtain a clear perception of a spiritual reality and life beyond the physical body.

We can the penetrate the mystery which our ignorance has termed death but which is no more than a transition to another state of consciousness. Whoever returns form this state with awareness, will be initiated when he is reborn no matter what creed he possessed or what sins he committed in his previous incarnation. For this reason, we consecrate the divine beings present within these plants that are man’s friends and teachers.

Likewise, we consecrate the “miração” provided by these sacred planes. The responsible use of these entheogens is always helpful, but they are most beneficial therapeutically when they are used within a religious ritual because the ritual creates an atmosphere of protection and safety.

There are many modalities of ritual in the religious movement of “Santo Daime”: rituals for the beverage’s preparation, rituals for meditation sessions, healing sessions, and hymnal sessions.

The hymnal session (hinário), takes place within a spacious room that has the shape of a six-pointed star. Here, separated battalions of men an women, young girls and young boys, line up in their appropriate sections. Neophytes, elders, and women with young infants remain seated to the rear of these sections.

The entheogenous sacrament is distributed and everyone lines up to begin the “bailado”, Daime’s ritualistic dance. The “bailado” follows the rhythm of the hymns, sacred songs that the masters and more advanced members of the Doctrine receive through the “miração”. These hymns are believed to be divine instructions and powerful messages not only for the person who receives the hymns, but for all of humanity. Everyone sings and dances in a rectangle that is approximately 80 cm. long. Each “fardado” (Daime adherent) shakes a “maracá” to accompany the rhythm of the “bailado”. The perfection of a work depends on the harmony of the music, the rhythm and the singing. This journey starts at sunset and continues until sunrise the next day.

The framework of the ritual is conducive to a receptive and safe reaction to the sacramental beverage. This reaction usually begins a few minutes after the ingestion of the beverage. One’s consciousness starts to perceive an iridescent aura enveloping the people and objects around them. A bit later, we feel a pressure, the pulsing of energy within and outside of the body, expanding in concentric waves like those created by a stone thrown on the surface of a lake. It is the influx of what we call the “force”, the active property of the Jagube vines which is the masculine element of the beverage. Moreover, the ritualistic dance and the maraca’s rhythms potentize energy, helping to induce a shamanic trance. Hence, the consciousness of the individual and of the group, as a whole, rises to higher levels.

The common reservoir of spiritual and psychic energy is called the “corrente” (current). It is the support of each individual’s flight within the “miração” and it is the beauty and the harmony of the whole.

Through one’s flight within the “miração”, one’s visual perception is altered, and lights, images, sensation, memories, insights, and vision are experienced. The intensity of the interior moment of the journey expresses itself in the “force” of the chain. With each blink of the eye, the flow of images is charged. It is as if a mental diaphragm regulated light and a zoom lens could draw in the most unknown angles of the universe.

This is the moment when enlightenment occurs. Enlightenment, brought about by the leaf, the beverage’s feminine principle, marries the “force” which originates form the vine, the beverage’s male principle. Bright lights appear, and we hear electronic buzzes and rattling sounds.

The “miração” descends gently and brings us its visions. Depending on the unfolding of the ritual, the chain can facilitate or create difficulties for the process of the “miração”. At certain moments, it is possible for all the members of the current to behold the same visions.

This is the summit of the ritual’s work. During this lengthy journey, the self unfolds; it remembers and resolves certain karmic problems; it channels energy to heal itself and others; it obtains revealing and emancipating insights for its conflicts; and experiences all types of ineffable states of mystical perception, of comprehension of the universe, love for humanity, premonitions or future events and synchronicity. As a result of all these stages, we are given the possibility of experiencing total ecstasy and a feeling of blessedness.

It is important to note that everything described is processed in an inner connection with the music, the singing, the dance, and the rhythm of the maracas. The tiny boat of human consciousness sails on the waves of the mind’s sacred sea rocked by the hymns, which guide our crossing.

From “Might the Gods Be Alkaloids” by Alex Polari