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Edited by
Beatriz Caiuby Labate,
Clancy Cavnar
and Alex K. Gearin
The World Ayahuasca Diaspora

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive substance that has long been associated with indigenous Amazonian
sharnanlc practices. The recent rise of the drink's visibility in the media and popular culture, and its
rapidly advancing inroads into international awareness, mean that the field of ayahuasca is quickly
expanding. This expansion brings with it legal problems, economic inequalities, new forms of ritual
and belief, cultural misunderstandings, and other controversies and reinventions.
In The World Ayahuasca Diaspora, leading scholars, including established academics and new
voices in anthropology, religious studies, and law fuse case-study cthnographies with evaluations of
relevant legal and anthropological knowledge. They explore how the substance has impacted indig-
enous communities, new urban religiosities. ritual healing, international drug policy, religious perse-
cution, and recreational drug milieus. This unique book presents classic and contemporary issues in
social science and the humanities, providing rich material on the bourgeoning expansion of ayahuasca
use around the globe.

Beatriz Caiubv Labate has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the State University of Campinas
(UNICAMP), Brazil. Her main areas of interest are the study of psychoactive substances, drug policy,
shamanism, ritual, and religion. She is Visiting Professor at the Center for Research and Post Gradu-
ate Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), in Guadalajara, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the
Drug Policy Program of the Center for Economic Research and Education (CIDE) in Aguascalientes,
Mexico. She is also eo-founder of the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psycho actives (NEIP),
and editor of NElP's website (http://www.neip.info). She is author, co-author, and co-editor of twelve
books, one special-edition journal, and several peer-reviewed articles. For more information, see:
http://bialahate. net!

Clancy Cavnar is currently a licensed clinical psychologist working with dual diagnosed clients.
In 20 11, she received a doctorate in clinical psychology (PsvD) from John F. Kennedy University in
Pleasant Hill, California, with a disscrtatlon on gay and lesbian people's experiences with ayahuasca,
She is Research Associate of the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psvchoactivcs (NEIP), and
co-editor, with Beatriz Caiuby Labate, of three books: The Therapeutic Lse ofuvahuasca (2014);
Prohibition. Religious Freedom, and Human Rights: Regulating Traditional Drug Use (2014); and
Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond (20 14). She is also author of peer-reviewed articles
(at the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs and the International Journal ofDrug Policy).

Alex K. Gearin has a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Queensland (UQ), Brisbane,
Australia. His Ph.D. dissertation involves an ethnographic study of ayahuasca use in Australia and
focuses on sensory, medical, and ethical themes of ritual practice and social organisation. He currently
lectures in anthropology at the University of Queensland and works in the UQ Anthropology Museum,
Brisbane, Australia. For more information, see: https://culturaladmixtures.wordpre~s.com/
 Vitality of Indigenous Religions The World Ayahuasca
Series Editors:
Graham Harvey, Diaspora
Open University. UK
Afeosemime Adogame, Reinventions and controversies
The University a/Edinburgh, UK
Ines Talamantez,
Universitya/Cab/omia, USA
Edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate,
Routledge's Vitality of Indigenous Religians series offers an exciting cluster of research Clancy Cavnar, and Alex K. Gearin
monographs, drawing together volumes from leading international scholars across a wide
range of c1iscipl inary perspectives. Indigenous reIigions are vital and empowering for many
thousands of indigenous peoples globally, and dialogue with, and consideration of, these
diverse religious life-ways promises to challenge and refine thc methodologies of a number
of academic disciplines. whilst greatly enhancing understandings of the world.

This series explores the development of contemporary indigenous religions from tradi-
tional, ancestral precursors, but the characteristic contribution of the series is its focus on
their living and current manifestations. Devoted to the contemporary expression, experi-
ence and understanding of particular indigenous peoples and their religions, books address
key issues which include: the sacredness of land, exile from lands, diasporic survival and
diversification, the indigenization of Christianity and other missionary religions. sacred
language, and re-vitalization movements, Proving of particular value to academics, gradu-
atcs, postgraduates and higher level undergraduate readers worldwide, this series holds
obvious attraction to scholars ofNative American studies. Maori studies, African studies
and offers invaluable contributions to religious studies, sociology, anthropology, geogra-
phy and other related subject areas.

Other recently published titles in the series:

Religion and Non-Religion among Australian Aboriginal Peoples

Edited by James L. CO.\' and Adam Possamai

Shamanism, Discourse, Modernity

Thomas Ka,.1Alberts

Anishinaabe Ways of Knowing and Being

Lawrence W Cross

Progress and Its Impact on the Nagas

A Clash of Worldviews
Tezenlo Thong

Religious Change and Indigenous Peoples I~ ~~o~:~:;n~~:up

The Making of Religious Identities LONDON AND NEW YORK
Helena Onnudottir; Adam Possamai and Brvan S. Turner
First published 2017
b) Routledgc
2 Park Square. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and hy Rourledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 100] 7
ROll/ledge is (In imprint cfthe Tavlor & Fruncis Group. all informa business
t 2017 selection and editorial matter, Beatriz Caiuby l.abate, Clancy
Cavnar, and Alcx K. Gear!n: individual chapters, the contributors
lhe right of Beatriz Caiubv Labate, Clancy Cavnar, and Alex K. Gearin to
be identified as the authors of the editorial material. and of the authors tor
their individual chapters. has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright. Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted Or reproduced or To Erik, Des and their garden.
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
I\.n0\\"11 or hereafter invented. including photccopvir.g and recording. or in
any information storage or retrieval system. without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Photos: Be-jar-In K. De Loenen
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names mu) be trademarks or
registered trademarks. and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this hook is available from the British l.iurary
Library ofCongress Cataloging-ln-Pubiication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN: 978-1-4724-6663-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-3 I 5-55 I42-5 (ebkj
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

Author biographies IX
Foreword: ayahuasca in the twenty-first century:
having it both ways by Glenn H Shepard J/: xv

Introduction: the shifting journey of ayahuasca in diaspora

BEATRIZ CAIUBY LABATE, CLANCY CAVNAR, AND ALEX K. GEARI~

1 If tradition did not exist, it would have to be invented:

retraditionalization and the world ayahuasca diaspora 19
ANDREW DAWSO~

2 Between ecstasy and reason: a symbolic interpretation of

UDV trance 39
ROSA VIRGiNIA MELO

3 The religion of the forest: reflections on the international

expansion of a Brazilian ayahuasca religion 57
BEATRIZ CAIUBY LABATE A~D GLAUBER LOURES DE ASSIS

4 Culling the spirits: an exploration of Santo Daime's

adaptation in Canada 79
ELl ODA SHEI~ER

5 A religious battle: musical dimensions of the Santo

Daime diaspora 99
BEATRIZ CAIUBY LABAfE, GLAUBER LOURES DE ASSIS, AND
CLANCY CAVNAR

6 Good Mother Nature: ayahuasca neoshamanism as

cultural critique in Australia 123
ALEX K. GEARI~
viii Contents
7 Aussiewaska: a cultural history of changa and ayahuasca
analogues in Australia 143 Author .biographies
GRAHAIvl ST JOH'l

8 Disentangling the ayahuasca boom: local impacts in

Western Peruvian Amazonia 165
JOSHUA HOIvlA'l

9 The economics of ayahuasca: money, markets, and the

value of the vine 183
KENNETH W. TUPPER

Glauber Loures de Assis is currently a PhD student in sociology at the Federal

10 Global ayahuasca: an entrepreneurial ecosystem 203 University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where he leads
DA~!ELA 1\1. PELUSO a comparative research project on Santo Daime in the transnational context. He
is also Research Associate at the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psy-
11 A climate for change: ICEERS and the challenges of the choactives (NEIP) and eo-founder of the Center of Sociology Studies Ant6nio
globalization of ayahuasca Augusto Pereira Prates (CESAP). He has developed research on Daimista
BE).jJAMl\l K, DE LOE\1E\l, OSCAR PARES FRA\lQlJERO. A\lD groups from Brazil and Europe, and has also studied the sociology ofreligion
CO'lSTA'lZA SA'lCHEZ AVILES from a wider perspective. His main interests include the ayahuasca religions,
the New Religious Movements (NRMs), the internationalization of the Brazilian
12 Ayahuasca in the English courts: legal entanglements religions, and drug use in contemporary society.
with the jungle vine 243 Clancy Cavnar has a doctorate in clinical psychology (PsyD) from John F. Ken-
CllARLOTTE WALSf-J nedy University. She currently works at a dual diagnosis residential drug treat-
ment center in San Francisco and is a research associate of the Nucleus for
Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP). She combines an eclectic
Index 263 array of interests and activities as clinical psychologist, artist, and researcher.
She has an undergraduate degree in liberal arts from the New College of the
University of South Florida, a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the San
Francisco Art Institute, a master's degree in counseling from San Francisco
State University, and a certificate in substance abuse counseling from the exten-
sion program of the University of California at Berkeley. Her art is inspired by
her experience with psychedelics, especially with the Santo Daime religious
tradition. She is author and co-author of articles in the Journal ofPsychoactive
Drugs and the International Journal for Drug Policy, among others. She is co-
editor, with Beatriz Caiuby Labate, offour books: The Therapeutic Use ofAya-
huasca (Springer, 2014); Prohibition, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights:
Regulating Traditional Drug Use (Springer, 2014); Ayahuasca Shamanism in
the Amazon and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2014); and Peyote: History,
Tradition, Politics and Conservation (ABC/Clio-Praeger, 2016). Clancy's art
and academic work has been presented both in the U.S. and abroad. For more
information, see www.neip.info/index.php/content/view/l438.html and www.
clancycavnar.com
Andrew Dawson is a Senior Lecturer in Religion at the Department of Poli-
tics, Philosophy and Religion of Lancaster University, U.K. He obtained his
x Author biographies
doctorate at Oxford University and has degrees in Social Science and Reli-
gious Studies from U.S. and other U.K. institutions. Andrew's principal
research interest concerns the interface of religion and modern society, which
he examines mainly in thc contexts of Brazil, Europe, and North America.
Focusing chiefly upon the Santo Daime religion, he has worked upon the inter-
nationalization ofayahuasca religiosity by exploring its ritual, theological, and
organizational implications. In recent years he has published Santo Daime:
A New World Religion (2013), edited Summoning the Spirits: Possession and
invocation in Contemporary Religion (2011), and authored Sociology ofReli-
gion (2011) and New Era-New Religions: Religious Transformation in Con-
temporary Brazil (2007). Andrew has most recently edited The Politics and
Practice ofReligious Diversity: Natlona! Contexts, Global issues, published
by Routledge in 2015.
Benjamin K. De Loenen studied audiovisual media in the Utrecht School ofArts,
the Netherlands, where he graduated from the master's program with honors as
film director and editor of his documentary ibogaine: Rite ofPassage (2004),
which he directed and produced. This documentary focuses on the therapeutic
potential of iboga in addiction treatment and its traditional ceremonial use in
Gabon. He is the founder of the International Center for Ethnobotanical Edu-
cation, Research, & Service (rCEERS), a philanthropic, tax-exempt nonprofit
dedicated to the acceptance and constructive integration of ayahuasca, iboga,
and other traditional plants as psychotherapeutic accelerants and enhancers in
Western societies. ICEERS was founded in 2009 in the Netherlands and cur-
rently has an office in Barcelona, Spain, and in Montevideo, Uruguay. In 2012,
Benjamin made the documentary Experience Bwiti: Renascence ofthe Healed,
and he is currently working on a documentary about the legal aspects and ther-
apeutic potential of ayahuasca. He is also a member of the board of directors
of the Global Ibogaine Therapist Alliance (GITA), and of the Etlmobotanical
Stewardship Council (ESC), an organization that IeEERS helped incubate,
which is dedicated to the safe use and sustainability of traditional plants.
Alex K. Gearln has a PhD in anthropology from the University of Queensland
(UQ), Brisbane, Australia. His PhD dissertation involves an ethnographic
study of ayahuasca use in Australia and focuses on sensory, medical, and ethi-
cal themes of ritual practice and social organization. He currently lectures in
anthropology at the University of Queensland and works in the UQ Anthro-
pology Museum, Brisbane, Australia. For more information, see https://cultur
a1adm ixtures,wordpress. corn/
Joshua Homan is a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the Univcr-
sity of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. Since 2005, he has conducted extensive
ethnographic fieldwork among indigenous (Shawi, Kukama, and Quechua)
and mestizo communities throughout the western Peruvian Amazon. He is cur-
rently conducting fieldwork among the Inga of the Pastaza watershed in the
northwest Peruvian Amazon, examining the relationships between information
Author biographies Xl
and communication technologies (ICTs), such as shortwave radio and indige-
nous political action. For more information, see www.runashimi.org and www.
amazonianist.org
Beatriz Caiuby Labate has a PhD in social anthropology from the State Uni-
versity of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. Her main areas of interest are the
study of psychoactive substances, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, and religion.
She is Professor at the Center for Research and Post Graduate Studies in
Social Anthropology (CIESAS), in Guadalajara. She is also eo-founder of the
Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP), and editor of
NEIP's web site (www.neip.info). She is author, co-author, and co-editor of
13 books, one special-edition journal, and several peer-reviewed articles. For
more information, see http://bialabate.net/
Rosa Virginia Melo earned her PhD in social anthropology from the University
of Brasflia (UnB), Brazil, where she was an adjunct professor. Currently, she
is a postdoc researcher and professor at the Federal University of'Paraiba. She
has developed ethnographic research on gender and violence, cultural herit-
age, and popular culture. Her most recent interests include Brazilian religions,
religion and the public sphere, mutual help, and religion and mental health. She
has published articles on mediumistic trance within the Brazilian ayahuasca
religions.
Oscar Pares Franquero studied philosophy and anthropology at the University
of Barcelona, after which he earned a master's degree in drug addiction at the
same university. He is currently Assistant Director/Social Network Coordina-
tor ofthe International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, & Ser-
vice (lCEERS) Foundation (and coordinates drug policy projects. He trained
as a volunteer at Energy Control (ABO) and later was hired to facilitate educa-
tional harm-reduction workshops with youth. For more than seven years he has
collaborated as a consultant with the government of Catalonia in coordinating
risk-reduction programs in the area of nightlife and in the field of the regula-
tion of the activity of cannabis social clubs in Catalonia. He is founder of the
Instituto de Polfticas de Drogas y Sostenibilidad (IPDS).
Daniela M. Peluso is a sociocultural anthropologist who has been working in the
Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon Basin since the 1980s. Her current Lowland
South American research focuses on indigenous urbanization and relatedness.
She works in close collaboration with indigenous organizations and has been
involved in various local efforts on issues relating to health, gender, and land
rights. Daniela also conducts research in the U.K. and the U.S. 'on business
organizations. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2003 and is
a Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent.
Constanza Sanchez Aviles is a political scientist and holds a PhD in international
relations and international law. Her work focuses on the political economy of
illicit drugs, transnational organized crime, and national and international drug
Xll Author biographies Author biographies Xlll

policies, issues on which she has published several papers and book chapters. Kenneth W. Tupper is Adjunct Professor in the School of Population and Pub-
From 2007 to 2013, she worked at the Department of International Law and lic Health at.the University of British Columbia, where his research interests
International Relations at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She has been a Visiting focus on the cross-cultural and historical uses of psychoactivc substances;
Scholar at the University of Miami (2010), the Justice in Mexico Project at the public, professional, and school-based drug education; and creating healthy
University of San Diego (2012), and Research Assistant at the Global Drug public policy to maximize benefits and minimize harms from currently illegal
Policy Observatory at Swansea University (2013). She did fieldwork on drug drugs. Kenneth has a PhD in educational studies from the University of British
policies in Peru, the United States, Mexico, and the U.Si-Mexican border, and Columbia and an MA degree in education from Simon Fraser University. For
collaborates with several drug policy research institutions. In 2013 she joined more information, see www.kentupper.corn
the Intemational Centcr for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Service
Charlotte Walsh (LLB; MPhil) is a legal academic at the University of Leicester
Foundation (lCEERS), where she coordinates the law, policy, and human
School of Law, England, where she runs an undergraduate course on crim-
rights activities, including legal defense for ayahuasca practitioners who are
inology, largely concerned with drug policy. Her main research focus is on
prosecuted; policy reform activities; and the development ofreports about this
the interface between psychedelics and the law, viewed from a liberal, human
subject matter. In this frame, she coordinates the Ibiza Expert Committee for
rights-based perspective, and she has published widely on this subject, both
the Regularization of Psychoactive Ethnobotanicals created at the World Aya-
in edited collections - such as the recently published Prohibition, Religious
huasca Conference in Ibiza in September 01'2014.
Freedom and Human Rights: Regulating Traditional Drug Use - and in lead-
EIi Oda Sheiner is a graduate student in the Division of Social and Transcultural ing journals such as the Criminal Law Review, British Journal of Criminol-
Psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He studies the interna- ogy, International Journal of Drug Policy, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs,
tionalization of the ayahuasca religions, with an emphasis on Santo Daime. Eli's and International Journal ofHuman Rights. She believes that drug prohibition
research focuses on the ethical and political issues arising at the intersections conflicts with our fundamental right to cognitive liberty. Charlotte is involved
between Santo Daime, First Nations and Aboriginal people, and contemporary with advising people who are being prosecuted for activities involving plant
Canadian society. He is also interested in the politics of ontology, or the way psychedelics. She is a member of the International Center for Ethnobotanical
worlds, worldviews, and attendant power dynamics are navigated in an onto- Education, Research, & Service (ICEERS) Expert Committee for the Regu-
logically plural environment. His findings will trace the similarities and dis- larization of Psychoactives, a group concerned with coordinating a common
similarities in discourses between South American ayahuasca traditions and defense strategy in ayahuasca cases and with the development of a global strat-
geographically removed communities in Canada, and explore the conflicts and egy of normalization for ayahuasca,
confluences between ayahuasca as it is understood by the Canadian government
and by the Canadians who employ it as a sacrament.
Graham St John, PhD, is an anthropologist specializing in dance movements,
event-cultures, and entheogens. He is the author of several books, including
Mystery School in Hyperspace. A Cultural History of DMT (North Atlantic
Books, 2015); the monographs Global Tribe: Technology. Spirituality and
Psytrance (Equinox. 2012) and Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures
(Equinox, 2009); and the edited collections The Local Scenes and Global Cul-
ture of Psytrance (Routledge, 2010), Victor Turner and Contemporary Cul-
tural Performance (Berghahn, 2008), Rave Culture and Religion (Routledge,
2004), and FreeNRG: Notes From the Edge of the Dance Floor (Common-
ground, 200 I). Hc is currently editing Weekend Societies: Electronic Dance
Music Festivals and Event-Cultures (Bloomsbury). Dr. St John has been
awarded postdoctoral fellowships in Australia, the United States, Canada, and
Switzerland, where he has recently begun researching the global Burning Man
diaspora. He is founding Executive Editor of Dancecult: Journal ofElectronic
Dance Music Culture. He is Adjunct Research Fellow at the Griffith Centre
for Cultural Research, Griffith University. For more information, see www.
cdgcccntral.net
Foreword
Ayahuasca in the twenty-first century:
having it both ways

The genie is out of the bottle, tweeting about the next shamanic bodywork leader-
ship seminar, and the bottle; well, check and see ifit isn't in the back ofyour fridge
by the vegan TV dinner.
Who would have ever imagined that ayahuasca, the enigmatic jungle potion
William S. Burroughs once referred to as "the secret" (Burroughs & Ginsberg,
2006 [1963]) and whose very botanical identity was a matter of debate through
the mid-twentieth century (Schultes, 1957) would, within a matter of decades,
become a household (or at least, yoga-mat) word; the subject of hundreds of sci-
entific, anthropological, and medical studies; a magnet for international tourism;
the motor behind a global religious diaspora; and the victorious plaintiff in absen-
tia of an historic Supreme Court case?
The rhyme "herbal brew"/"bamboo" in Paul Simon's 1990 ayahuasca-inspired
song "Spirit Voices" already rings of kitsch, but there is still something, if not
fresh, then at least compelling about Sting (2005, p. 18), in his biography Broken
Music, revealing that "ayahuasca has brought me close to something, something
fearful and profound and deadly serious." But by the time Lindsay Lohan con-
fides to a reality TV host in April of 2015 that ayahuasca helped her "let go of
past things ... it was intense" (Morris, 2014), Burroughs's "final fix" has finally
entered the realm of cliche.
How did this happen? What is the special appeal ofthis bitter Amazonian brew
in the post-post-modern global village toolbox of self-realization? How has it
fared in the bustling marketplace of New Age spiritual entrepreneurism and on
the battleground ofthe War on Drugs? And what does it all mean for the multiple,
religiously and socially diverse, commnnities and individuals who consume aya-
huasca, as well as various ayahuasca-like analogs, around the world?
We can think of the global ayahuasca expansion of the past two decades as a kind
of second wave to the psychedelic revolution, following upon that other, "fantastic
universal ... inevitable ... high and beautiful wave," Hnnter S. Thompson describes
as cresting in the mid-I 960s only to crash so quickly, and so disappointingly:

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas
and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-
water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
(Thompson, 1998 [1971], p. 68)
XVI Foreword
Many of those who sought out ayahuasca in the Amazonian rainforests in the
1970s and 1980s were indeed spiritual orphans, in some sense, of this failed revo-
lution that, though inspired by natural psychoactive substances and indigenous
medico-religious rituals of the Americas, relied heavily on synthetic substances
like LSD and mescaline, often consumed in informal or recreational, rather than
ritual, settings. In its initial expansion, beginning in the 1980s, ayahuasca came,
first, to non-Amazonian urban centers in tropical countries, and later, to dozens of
countries across the globe, in much the same form as it was consumed in its place
of origin. Traditional practitioners and religious groups still export ayahuasca,
brewed from the rainforest vine Banisteriopsis caapi and the dimethyltryptamine
(DMT)-containing shrub Psychotria viridis and related species, to adepts in many
world countries, who risk and sometimes face prosecution under international
controlled substance laws. Freelance enthusiasts operating at the fringes oflegal-
ity may also obtain raw ingredients and make their own preparations.
But, due to chronic problems of supply, transport, and storage, not to mention
legal restrictions, a growing number of people have experimented with various
ayahuasca analogs, using alternative plants or pure pharmacological substances
("pharmahuasca") with essentially the same chemical constituents, to produce
brews that have similar experiential effects, at least according to some enthu-
siasts. And yet, by all indications - and despite the myriad contexts of interna-
tional use, from commercially adapted indigenous rituals in ecotourism lodges
in the Amazon to weekend workshops at yoga academics around the world - the
ayahuasca diaspora seems to have resisted what Thompson and others saw as
the recreational denouement, hedonistic failure, and political marginalization
of the 1960s psychedelic revolution. Instead, wherever it is used, imported, or
reinvcnted, ayahuasca seems to quickly, almost automatically, elaborate around
itself a protective cloak of ritual and social control, from the Christian-influenced
doctrines of Brazilian ayahuasca religions to the idiosyncratic neoshamanic cer-
emonies emerging in North America, Europe, and Australia. Whether this is due
to a changing social milieu of use, or something about the ayahuasca experience
itself, remains to be seen.
Setting aside the hype, and respecting the cultural and individual variability
inherent in such powerful subjective states, one constant element of the aya-
huasca experience, attested across different cultures, spiritual traditions, and per-
sonal backgrounds, is its ability to propitiate encounters with radical otherness.
Speaking myriad languages, through dozens ofreligious and spiritual idioms and
within infinite possibilities of individual variation, ayahuasca drinkers across the
globe have described visions of celestial landscapes beyond comprehension and
encounters with awe-inspiring, alien intelligence that alternately tantalizes and
terrorizes them with healing and bodily degradation, spiritual salvation and ego
disintegration, ecological wisdom and universal apocalypse.
The ayahuasca experience defies ordinary notions of causality, space, time, and
logic. Indeed, in its intensity and fundamental strangeness, the ayahuasca experi-
ence can fccllike the cognitive equivalent of the far side of a black hole, spewing
out new space-time tunnels and parallel universes with utter disregard for the laws
Foreword xvn
of cognition, if not of physics itself. It is perhaps the very intensity ofthe cognitive,
bodily, and spiritual disassociation produced by ayahuasca that calls so desperately
to the structnring powers of ritual, ideology, and social control to impose order,
provide meaning, and even extract advantage from the boiling foam of ecstasy.
Trance associated with altered consciousness of all kinds is characterized by
symbolic visual imagery and nonlincar thought processes that can result in rev-
elatory insights or intuitions about self, others, nature, and the cosmos (Winkel-
man, 1986). Gregory Bateson's (1972) cybernetic theory of mind sheds light on
the adaptive functions of trance and altered states. In his reformulation of Freud,
Bateson suggests that, for reasons of sheer economy, mental processes that are
repetitive or that surpass the boundaries ofthe individual self become "sunk" into
the subconscious. Bateson (1972) views art and certain kinds of religious beliefs
as serving a corrective function, allowing integration of the narrow, individual
consciousness with larger circuits of mental process, including collective and
environmental "ecologies of mind." In the light of Bateson's theories, psychoac-
tive plants like ayahuasca can be seen as tools for loosening up mental processes,
blurring ego boundaries between individuals and their larger social and ecological
context (Shepard, 2005). By amplifying the unexpected, nonlinear associations of
the subconscious, this "ecstatic mode" of consciousness allows for the perception
of new patterns and relations among things, experiences, and events.
Although trance states emerge for the individual through specific alterations
in brain function, these personal experiences become framed and imbued with
meaning by the social group, often in a ritual context. Victor Turner's (1974) clas-
sic writings on ritual, structure, antistructure, and the countercultural movement
of the 1960s provide a framework for understanding what several authors call the
"re-traditionalization" of ayahuasca (Lab ate & Cavnar, 2014). For Turner, people
participating in rituals occupy a liminal or transitional social state, clearly distin-
guished in space and time from ordinary social life. During ritual, social structure
is temporarily suspended and replaced by an undifferentiated comunitas of equal
individuals who share a mutual sense of identity and belonging. The social dis-
tinctiveness of ritual is accompanied by a distinctive cognitive state in which ordi-
nary logic is suspended and replaced by the nonlinear, inductive, combinatorial
logic of symbols. Thus, ritual itself represents a kind of altered state of conscious-
ncss that, when amplified through trance techniques or the use of psychoactive
substances, only reinforces the social, spatial, and temporal distinctiveness of the
ritual state (Shepard, 2005).
Though he began his work studying rites of passage in a Zambian village,
Turner realized that these concepts could also be used to understand the social
upheavals of the 1960s. Although serving to maintain the functional.stability of
"institutionalized and preordained" social structures, liminality and communitas
can also emerge in moments of "radical structural change" (Turner, 1974, p. 248).
The difference, for Turner, is that institutionalized rituals, when they conclude,
facilitate the orderly return of individuals from liminality and comunitas back into
the social order, whereas revolutionary and countercultural movements attempt
to create permanent liminality: not a passage, but rather a constant state (1974).
XVlll Foreword Foreword xix
Perhaps ayahuasca is the contemporary world's way of having it both ways; Schultes, R. E. (1957). The identity of the malphigaceous narcotics of South America.
of being both traditional and modern, ecstatic and scientific, heterodox yet mcs- Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University, 18, 1-56.
sianic, transgressive but safe and (eventually) legal, altruistic and selfish. It is Shepard, G. H. Jr. (2005). Psychoactive botanicals in ritual, religion and shamanism. In E.
precisely around this set of contradictions - or dialectics, or challenges - that Elisabetsky & N, Etkin (Eds.), Ethnopharmacology: Encyclopedia of life support sys-
the current volume is organized. Moving beyond the ethnological purists' snub- tems, Theme 6.79. Oxford, UK: UNESCO/Eolss Publishers. Retrieved March 17, 2016,
bing of neo-ayahuasca practices as mere drug tourism, and yet also avoiding the from www.eolss.net.
intellectual pitfalls ofnaive enthusiasm, the authors in this volume apply the clas- Sting. (2005). Broken music: A memoir. NewYork, NY: Dell.
Thornpson, H. S. (1998). Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. New York, NY: Random Housel
sic tools of critical sociocultural analysis to the universe of the global ayahuasca
Vintage Books. (Original work published 1971.)
diaspora. The chapters present a multitude of voices, from "Aussie-huasca" (a
Turner, V. (1974). Dramas.fields and metaphors: Symbolic action in human society. Ithaca,
native Australian analog) enthusiasts hoping to save the planet from the evils of NY: Cornell University Press.
capitalism, to indigenous Amazonian communities tom apart by rivalries and eco- Winkelman, M. (1986). Trance states: A theoretical model and cross-cultural analysis.
nomic disparities brought on by the "ayahuasca boom." Though sympathetic to Ethos, 1.J(2), 174-203.
this diversity of experiences and opinions, the authors take an unblinking look at
the legal and social conflicts and ideological contradictions produced as indig-
enous shamans and Brazilian ayahuasca churches have entered the global mar-
ketplace of New Age spiritualism. Contributions discuss troublesome emergent
issues, including the commodification of ayahuasca practices, the reconfiguration
of shamanic worldviews to attend to the modern self-as-project, health and safety
concerns (drug interactions, ayahuasca-related accidents, sexual harassment),
legal disputes, the "bureaucratization of enchantment" in ayahuasca religions, and
the sanitization of darker aspects of traditional Amazonian shamanism, such as
witchcraft and attack sorcery.
Will the "re-traditionalization" of global neo-ayahuasca ceremonies provide
adequate social controls and ideological coherence to ensure that this "second
wave" psychedelic revolution doesn't crash and dissipate somewhere between the
headwaters of the Amazon and the Great Barrier Reef? Will the contradictions of
the modern se If and the temptations of capitalism undercut the radical vision of
individual and planetary healing that some neo-ayahuasca enthusiasts prophecy?
Will ayahuasca become another battlefield casualty in the global War on Drugs,
or will legislation evolve to protect ayahuasca as a religious sacrament, as a medi-
cine, as a tool of experiential freedom? We don't yet have all the answers to these
questions, but the authors of this book are on the crest of the wave, and if anyone
can see ahead to the far shore, it is they.
Glenn H. Shcpard Jr.
Museu Paraense Emflio Goeldi

References
Bateson. G. (1972). Steps to an ecology ofmind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Burroughs, W. S., & Ginsbcrg.A. (2006). The .mge letters rednx. San Francisco,CA: Cil,
Lights Books. (Original work published 1963,)
Labate, B. C; & Cavnar, C. (2014). Ayahuasca shamanism in the Amazon and beyond.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Morris, B. (2014, June 15).Ayahuasca: A strong cup of tea. The New York Times, p. ST1.
Retrieved Julv 1,20 151rom www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/fashion/ayahuasca-a-strong-
cup-of-tea.html
1I Introduction
The shifting journey of ayahuasca
in diaspora

Beatriz Caiuby Labate, 1 Clancy Cavnar?

and A lex K. Gearin3

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew that has been historically used by indigenous

and mestizo Amazonians for shamanic purposes. It is typically constituted by boil-
ing the vine Banisteriopsis caapi with the shrub Psychotria viridis ~ two plants
that contain sets of chemicals that are a "match made in heaven."! Many books
and articles on the topic of ayahuasca begin with a similar opening statement,
and while the statement is not necessarily incorrect, it often reflects a longing for
the standardization of both the "ayahuasca" brew and for a research topic that
can be demarcated and objectified into the field of "ayahuasca studies." Defining
"ayahuasca," however, is challenging. This is because there is very little research
on the ethnobotanical aspects of these plants (although it is most probable that a
variety of both the Psychotria and the Banisteriopsis species are, in fact, used in
any ayahuasca preparation), and because many other plants from different spe-
cies native to different continents and ecologies can be added to the mix. Also,
in contemporary times, "ayahuasca" is composed of many different cultural and
religious practices around the globe ~ including, among indigenous shamanic
complexes, several Brazilian ayahuasca religions, neoshamanic New Age groups,
and therapeutic and tourist centers.
Ayahuasca brews typically consist of vines and shrubs native to the Amazon
jungle, yet, in recent years, these plants have, in some instances, been substituted
with desert plants from Australasia and the Middle East, the root of a shrub from
North America, and, among other phytogenic sources, a species of grass that is
widely distributed across the globe.' While ayahuasca is typically considered a
drink, the Piaroa have prepared and consumed ayahuasca in the form of a snuff
(Rodd, 2002), and, with recent innovations in Australia, ayahuasca has been pre-
pared into "smokeable ayahuasca" (Graham St John, Chapter 7 in this volume).
In the early years of the twenty-first century, chemicals found in ayahuasca were
synthesized or extracted and put into gel caps labeled "pharrnahuasca" to be
consumed at psychedelic electronic music festivals in Western societies. Aya-
huasca goes by many different names, including caapi, daime, natem, vegetal,
yaje, and more recently, aya, just to name a few. Depending on its context of
use, ayahuasca may occasion ecstatic visions of different spiritual figures and
places, from jaguars and Jesus to aliens, Persian palaces, and hyper-technological
worlds.
2 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Clancy Cavl1U1; and Alex K. Gearin
The chapters in this volume illustrate and explain the complexity of ayahuasca
and its global dispersal while focusing on questions of cultural reinvention and
controversy. More specifically, the book includes research that broadly examines
ayahuasca use around the globe in terms of processes of modernity, economics,
and legality. Chapters variably and ethnographically focus on popular milieus in
Australasia, Europe, North America, and South America. The widespread geo-
graphical dispersal of ayahuasca use across Amazonia and the South American
continent during the last two centuries, and its continuing spread to multiple cor-
ners of the world during the last three decades, warrants this compilation of a
volume on the ayahuasca diaspora. In discussing an ayahuasca diaspora, we can
better describe ayahuasca's global dissemination, transformation, and outreach
that account for the various different diasporic elements that each context pro-
vides. The thrust of the volume thus includes topics on how ayahuasca groups
and practices are linked through material and symbolic flows and constructs, and
how the use of ayahuasca has transformed, been constrained, and persisted or
flourished in new social and cultural settings.
This book emerged from an interdisciplinary conference entitled AYA2014,6
The World Ayahuasca Conference, held in Ibiza in September of 20 14. The event
represented a significant moment in the world ayahuasca diaspora, It pooled together
650 people from 60 different countries, including 40 scientific, legal, and public
policy experts; some indigenous shamans; key figures from nodes of the Brazilian
ayahuasca religions; ncoshamans and therapeutic "facilitators"; and representatives
from nongovemmental organizations (NGOs) with interests in ayahuasca and psy-
chedelic substances. With UN-style live translation in three languages - English,
Spanish, and Portuguese - and voices from across continents sharing knowledge
in the form of lectures, talks, musical performances, and discussions, the event was
a vibrant gathering that generated multiple connections and knowledge. This book
aims to materialize some of this to the field of ayahuasca studies.
Using an analytic diasporic framework allows us to examine a practice that
exists in different forms and in many different societies, cultural groups, and reli-
gions. In the twenty-first century, globalization, transnationalism, and the flow
of people, goods, and information around the globe have intensified to such a
degree that classic social science concepts are under continual revision, and, in
some cases, particular terms and conclusions are banished to the annals of history.
For instance, the idea of a bounded, rooted culture or community operating in
isolation with an organic system of social relations struggles to have any utility in
today's world of high-speed Internet connection, temperamental global markets,
rapid environmental changes, and unprecedented mobility and travel. In this highly
interconnected humanity, people are not simply more connected across time and
space, but also local experiences are increasingly influenced by conditions, forces,
and symbols linked to events on different sides of the globe (Kearney, 1995),
in what James Clifford termed "entangled tensions" of relationality (1995, p. 306).
The diasporas oftoday are embedded in complex globalisms and have summoned
a pluralism of definitions, given the array oftranslocal modes of existence on the
planet.
Introduction 3
Traditional concepts of diaspora, often exemplified by the history of Jewish
mobility across Europe, were based upon notions of displacement and disper-
sal, myths and' memories of the homeland, alienation in the host society, ongo-
ing support of the homeland, and a "collective identity importantly defined by
fhis relationship" (Clifford, 1994, p. 305). Such a universal categorization proved
problematic, however, when varied "homelands" could be remembered and
mythologized, and the ongoing support of, or discourse about, returning "home"
was not a necessary prerequisite. Around the globe, some cases of population
displacement and dispersal have involved some of the above-noted diasporic ele-
ments, but not others. The intense amount of movement of people and goods
around the globe during the last few centuries has prompted Clifford and others
to argue, "in the late twentieth century, all or most communities have diasporic
dimensions" (1994, p. 310). The complex global context of ayahuasca use, we
argue, is an exemplar of the contemporary diasporic moment.
This introduction chapter provides a short overview of the topics and research
covered in the book, and includes a brief synopsis of the mobility of people, goods,
and ideas that have carried the visionary flame of ayahuasca use. This synopsis
covers significant crossroads in the histories and events by which ayahuasca use
has been transformed, innovated, and expanded. To this end, we consider indig-
enous and mestizo cultural logics of ayahuasca use and highlight their relation-
ship with the Brazilian ayahuascareligions, the networks ofayahuasca lodges and
groups associated with tourism and New Age neoshamanism, and the academic
milieu of researchers studying ayahuasca; these contexts should not be considered
as exclusive or diachronic.
The dispersal ofayahuasca use across parts of South America and the globe has
not necessarily been associated with forced displacement of peoples who erect a
"home away from home." But, in many cases, myths of origin tied to the Amazon
jungle have helped constitute the identity and legitimacy of ayahuasca groups.
The dispersed nodes of ayahuasca use beyond the Amazon have often shared
types of social alienation and stigmatization in the host countries and settings due
to issues related to international drug regulations, legal persecution, highly moral-
ized discourse on "drugs," and cultural stigmatization. In sum, while the global
nodes of the ayahuasca diaspora are not necessarily based upon lost rootedness
and experience of "displacement," they are, in many cases, "out of place" in the
host countries or cultural setting. Before examining in more detail the "out of
place" dynamics of ayahuasca groups in Europe, North America, South America,
Australasia - or outside the Amazon jungle - it is useful to examine how the his-
tory of ayahuasca use in Amazonia has been associated with forms of displace-
ment in indigenous settings.
Since approximately 3000 BP, vast trade routes have connected indigenous groups
in the Amazon Basin, Pacific coast, and the Andes (Renard-Cascvitz, Saignes, &
Taylor, 1988), and several anthropologists and other researchers have suggested
that ayahuasca use dates back to this period (Furst, 1976, p. 45; Narby, 1998,
p. 154; Luna & White, 2000). These suggestions, however, have not been cor-
roborated in the broader literature on Amazonian archaeology and ethnohistory.
4 Beatriz Caiuby Lobate, Clancy Cavnar. and Alex K. Gearin
Ancient Amerindian diasporas, including those of the Arawakan language group
that constituted "one of the great diasporas of the ancient world" (Heckenberger,
2002, p. 99), traded hunting equipment, baskets, jewelry, foods, and medicines
(Alexiades, 2009), but there is no evidence of ayahuasca trade or use.
Today, ayahuasca use constitutes central forms of shamanism for many Arawa-
kan and other language groups of Western and Southwestern Amazonia (Virtanen,
2014). Research conducted by Gow (1994), Alexiades (2000), Pantoja & Con-
ceicao (20 I0), Brabec de Mori (20 11), Saez (20 14b), Shepard (2014), and others
has suggested that many indigenous groups who use ayahuasca have adopted it
during the last 150 years, coinciding with the boom of the rubber-tapping indus-
try and other channels of exchange. Undertaking a linguistic analysis of songs
and associated tenus performed ill ayahuasca sessions across parts of Western
Amazonia, Brabec de Mori (2011) suggests that indigenous groups south of the
Peruvian jungle city Iquitos appear to have adopted ayahuasca as recently as the
last 100 to 150 years. Similarly, Shepard (2014) explains that ayahuasca brews
that include Psychotria viridis, which has become typical of ayahuasca brews in
Western Amazonia and elsewhere, only became a part of Matsigenka shamanic
practice 50 years ago.
The anthropological and archaeological research that points to a much more
recent history of ayahuasca use across Upper and Western Amazonia challenges
the myth of primordial origin found in some scientific research and in common-
place belief. This myth reflects narratives that circulate in numerous ayahuasca
groups around the planet, and, as Shepard (2014) explains, the studies that debunk
notions of ancient origin may appear heretical to ayahuasca drinkers from differ-
ent backgrounds. While some ayahuasca drinkers in Western societies are familiar
with many scientific concepts about ayahuasca - including its chemical composi-
tion, metabolic action, and therapeutic effects - one wonders if the lack of research
addressing the historical origin appears to relate to a longing for ayahuasca to
be "more legitimate" in the social milieus in which ayahuasca is criminalized
and pathologized. In any case, the mythologizing of an "ancient homeland" - the
Amazon - seems to be common for both consumers and researchers in the global
diaspora of ayahuasca.
During the 1800s, the colonial extractive industries of Amazonia were involved
in devastating levels of depopulation and extensive changes to indigenous social
organization, generating a "massive displacement of people [and] decimating
and dismembering some indigenous societies while promoting certain forms of
inter-ethnic exchange and mixing in others" (Alexiadcs, 2009, p. 23). The pro-
vincial Brazilian government employed military forces and violence in an attempt
to coerce indigenous peoples and impose tax systems on trade materials such
as manioc cereal (Weinstein, 1983, p. 22; Wright & Hill, 1986). The lax sys-
tem failed; however, by the 1850s, the rubber-tapping industry had skyrocketed.
Indigenous peoples were forced in large numbers into labor camps to extract rub-
ber for the bourgeoning international market (Weinstein, 1983, p. 122). By the
late 1850s, large-scale forms of resistance from Arawakan, Tukanoan, and other
indigenous groups of the area were manifesting in the form of dance festivals,
Introduction 5
song ceremonies, and other rituals. This rapidly transforming context of indig-
enous Amazonia marks the period when ayahuasca use appears to have dispersed
throughout Upper and Lowland Amazonia.
Among the transformations in indigenous social organization during this period,
millenarian jaguar-shamans that drank ayahuasca and similar psychoactive sub-
stances traveled to indigenous groups atomized during post-conquest dissolution
and led key movements of resistance to colonial domination. The millenarianjaguar-
shamans represent an early example of ayahuasca being involved in a vast and
complex network of indigenous mobility.' Contemporary research of indigenous
forms of ayahuasca appears to suggest that one of the reasons ayahuasca was used
by millenarian jaguar-shamans may be related to the maintenance and materiali-
zation of social relations between indigenous polities.
Vast trade networks associated with shamanism that connected Western and
Upper Amazonia and the Andes have been acknowledged to exist from ancient
times up until today (Freedman, 2014, p. 134). Shamans traded knowledge, power
objects, and medicines in complex political networks. Mobility has been associ-
ated with Amazonian shamanism to such a degree that the distance a shaman
has traveled is considered equivalent to his or her shamanic power (Freedman,
2014, p. 135). In parallel to this ethos oftraveling, political mediation and diplo-
macy have been associated with how ayahuasca rituals may help to "material-
ize alliances" (Virtanen, 2014, p. 65) between different social groups. Ayahuasca
shamans are masters of alterity and typically attain powers and abilities to trans-
form into nonhuman beings, and to mediate forces between people and between
humans and mythological beings. Virtanen (2014) explains how this dynamic is
present in intergroup ritual encounters between different indigenous groups where
new political relations may be generated.
Similarly, indigenous ayahuasca curing sessions have involved ecstatic visions,
performances, and social interactions in which disputes internal to communities
and families have been emphasized and played out. Indigenous ayahuasca healers
are typically described in morally ambiguous terms and given ascribed magical
abilities to both heal and harm or kill (Whitehead & Wright, 2004). The ambigu-
ous and provisional powers of shamans are due to a structural relationship between
healing and sorcery in which the act of healing depends upon returning a spiritual
attack to an accused sorcerer. This ambiguity may be accompanied by ambiva-
lence on the side of the patient and his or her family as to the abilities, intentions,
and politics of a particular shaman (Brown, 1988). The powers of shamans appear
to reflect the provisional nature of social life such that healing and sorcery accu-
sations involve "very real microconflicts among neighbors, kin, and rivals over
knowledge, power, and economic resources" (Saez, 2014a, p. xx). These pow-
ers, and the "equivocal political status of shamans" (Brown, 1988, p. 104), have
invested a dynamic mode of social control in Amazonian shamanism in terms of
both internal and external group social relations. Furthermore, Townsley argues
that Yaminahua ayahuasca practice "emphasizes ways of knowing rather than a
system of things known" (1993, p. 126). He argues that the techniques of shamans-
which include a sort of "twisted language," magical songs, and spirits of artifacts
6 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Clancy Cavnar andAlex K Gearin
(such as outboard motors and radios) ~ are flexible in ways that have allowed
shamanism to flourish in times of radical social and cultural change. Controversy
and reinvention, in the form of ambiguity, ambivalence, and intergroup ritual
encounters, have been central to the logic of Amazonian shamanism for as long as
ethnographic thought has existed (see also Labate & Cavnar, 2014).
The social and diplomatic or mediating quality of Amazonian ayahuasca sha-
manism has extended to relations between indigenous and nonindigenous peoples
in a variety of ways. Examining historical accounts of British rubber barons com-
mitting violent acts and terrorizing indigenous peoples in the Putumayo region of
the Colombian Amazon, Michael Taussig (1987) illustrates how shamans inter-
nalized colonial projections of "wildness" and "mystery" and provided healing
rituals to peasant colonists. From the encounter between indigenous Amazonians
and colonial settlers, a third identity, that of the mestizo, emerged in parallel with
"vcgetalismo" shamanism - a key complex of ayahuasca use in parts of Amaze-
nia. Vegetalismo shamanism combines Catholic elements with forms of indig-
enous animism centered on cosmologies of plant-spirits, and has represented a
mediating cultural zone between peoples of the forest and the city (Gow, 1994),
and in a transnational context (Labate, 2014).
One thousand kilometers southwest of the Putumayo region where Taussig
was researching, and where some researchers hypothesize ayahuasca use began
(Brabec de Mori, 2011, p. 24), an urban ayahuasca religion was born out of the
decline of the rubber-tapping industry in 1930s Acre, Brazil. Combining elements
of Catholicism, African religiosity, European esotericism, and indigenous sha-
manism, the ayahuasca religion Santo Daime began with a descendent of Afri-
can slavery, Brazilian rubber tapper Raimundo Irineu Serra, or "Mestrc Irineu."
Santo Daime was formally established in 1945, gained government recognition in
1971, and, by the end of the century, had spread to urban centers across Brazil, to
other South American countries, and to Europe and North America (Cemin, 2010;
Labate & MacRac, 2010; Labate & Jungaberle, 2011; Dawson, 2013; Labate &
Assis, Chapter 3 in this volume).
Concomitantly, another Brazil ayahuasca religion comparable in size, the
Uniao do Vegetal (UDV), underwent a somewhat similar dispersal and expansion
(Labate & MacRae, 2010; Labate & Jungaberle, 2011). The two religious organi-
zations are the largest social bodies of the Brazilian ayahuasca religions that may
be conceptually linked by a rangc of factors, including historical trajectories and
a particular combination of certain cultural and religious sources (Goulart, 2004).
In the expansion of the Brazilian ayahuasca religions across South America
and the globe, Acre, a state in Brazil on the edges of the Amazon jungle, repre-
sents a kind of religious "homeland" and provides actual and symbolic flows of
diasporic elements, whereby people and ideas undergo psychic and geographic
"pilgrimages" (Soares, 2010, p. 71; see also Labate and Assis, Chapter 3 in this
volume). Until recent decades, the Brazilian ayahuasca religions dominated
the public debate about ayahuasca in Brazil, in which they sometimes evoked
notions of indigenous ayahuasca practice as a source of legitimacy and authentic-
ity (Labate & Coutinho, 2014, p. 191). However, over the last several decades,
Introduction 7
various indigenous ayahuasca practitioners and groups have increasingly been
participating in-urban networks and have been active in public debates (Labate &
Coutinho, 2014, p. 191). A relationship that flows two ways has emerged between
the indigenous "homeland" of ayahuasca use and the urban environments of aya-
huasca use across Brazil.
Since the early 1980s, parts of the Peruvian, Ecuadorian, Colombian, and Brazilian
Amazon began to experience an increase in what has come to be tennedayahuasca
tourism; spiritual, shamanic, or medical tourism; and ethnotourim (Winkelman,
2005; Davidov, 2010; Fotiou, 2010; Labate & Cavnar, 2014). Seemingly related
to neoshamanic elements of the 1960s counterculture of Western societies (Atkin-
son, 1993; Znamenski, 2007), the nascent ayahuasca tourism industry is centered
on an encounter between sick, spiritually thirsty, or culturally curious Westerners,
and local or sometimes "gringo" ayahuasca shamans. Considering the develop-
ment of ayahuasca shamanism in the context oftourism during the first decade of
the twenty-first century, Freedman (2014) examined changing aesthetics in two
emergent forms of this intcrcultural situation: the ceremonial maloca and the sha-
man's ethnobotanical garden. Both the maloca and the ethnobotanical gardens
have become part of a generic model of "ayahuasca shamanism," and represent
means by which locals relate to a new and economically powerful "ethnic group":
the transnational tonrist.
Many of the ayahuasca tourist lodges in Amazonia are funded and organized
by citizens of the United States, France, Australia, or a number of other Western
countries. We suggest here that the imported industry represents a kind of "tour-
ism diaspora." In this diaspora, certain myths of the "homeland" are factors in the
ecstatic and healing experiences ofayahuasca tourists. Fotiou (2010) and Gearin
(Chapter 6 in this volume) have indicated forms of cultural rejection and critique
of Western culture in the healing ideologies of ayahuasca tourists and neosha-
manic practitioners. The people who left the West to open an ayahuasca lodge
in the Amazon are providing a service to consumers of re-mythologizing their
original "homelands" in the form of ecstatic healing experiences conducted by
local shamans.
The new standardized spaces of the tourist lodges provide certain means by
which the age-old diplomatic logic of ayahuasca shamanism managing networks
of people is being altered and refined into a service based on logics of indus-
trial tourism for transitory visitors from around the globe. As argued by Gearin
(Chapter 6 in this volume), cultural differences between shamanic tourists and
ayahuasca shamans are being invented in the "culturally, socially, and economi-
cally interconnected and interdependent spaces" (Gupta & Ferguson, 1992, p. 14)
that constitute the transnational circuits of ayahuasca tourism. Given the influx of
international consumers and the sudden increasing amounts of money associated
with ayahuasca tourism in places such as Iquitos, Peru, the maloca and the eth-
nobotanical gardens represent cultnral inventions or proliferations of inventions
linked to global representations of shamans.
Similar to stories of tales and "pintas" (ayahuasca visions) being shared among
indigenous peoples in the Putnrnayo region of Amazonia (Taussig, 1987), images
8 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Clancy Cavnar; and Alex K. Gearin
and text in media articles on ayahuasca in The New York Times, Men's Health,
and The Guardian circulate the globe of (potential) ayahuasca drinkers, These
media images and stories help constitute the imagination and scale of people
who visit ayahuasca malocas and ethnobotanical gardens in Amazonia, and
those who become interested in the Brazilian ayahuasca religions, and represent
global influences in the rcinvcntion of ayahuasca use. The "international aya-
huasca community" context involves events and news published in the media in
London, Sao Paulo, or New York that may impact intercultural encounters and
flows of people and information to ayahuasca tourist lodges or to Santo Daime
or UDV churches. The Internet forums on ayahuasca.com, which include 18,500
registered members, and tbe social media Facebook group "Ayahuasca World,"
wbicb bosts 43,000 members, represent informal platforms of exchange that are
intensifying global dynamics of the world ayahuasca diaspora. The online forums
and groups include regular exchanges of information and reflections on "how
to" practice ayahuasca, advertisements for retreat centers and groups, political
debates relative to ayahuasca branches, and the sharing of art, music, and per-
formative media.
This global knowledge or information system of formal and informal media has
been paralleled by an interdisciplinary network of academic researchers, advo-
cates, legal representatives, NGOs, and activists of ayahuasca. To consider, for
one moment, tbis global context with a loosened imagination, tbe ultimate nexus
that links the energetic and dynamic group of people at the AYA2014 conference
(from which this book emerged) and ayabuasca drinkers around the globe is the
ecstatic spaces that drinking ayahuasca occasions. The journey, or ecstatic flight,
in ayahuasca ceremonies is often described - in indigenous contexts, the Brazilian
ayahuasca religions, and New Age scene - in terms of disclosing ultimate truth,
a hidden universe of causation and being in which the "authentic" or "real" is
revealed. Whether drinkers are driven by a sense of "displacement" in the world
or an attraction to ecstatic embodiment and social or natural communion, whether
they are driven by desires to use the hidden world to their own advantage, whether
they simply want to escape from this world, or whether they are driven by cco-
nomic gain, ayahuasca reveals a world in transformation. With this in mind, it
can be considered that all ayahuasca drinkers are, in some sense, residents of an
everyday "diaspora" ofthc luminous ecstasy of the brew. Ayahuasca is an ultimate
agent of metamorphosis, akin to the greatest tools of any rite of passage, past or
present, that reveals and transcends the limits of the human experience to the
"Other." And, at the same time, as illustrated in this book, the brew is transform-
ing and being transformed by the limits of its own existence with regard to legal
systems and to its dispersal to varied cultural and social settings. This volume
provides a series of new research that highlights key anthropological and socio-
logical features of the expanding and changing use of global ayahuasca in the
early twenty-first century.
In the opening chapter of the book, sociologist of religion Andrew Dawson
undertakes a bold investigation of dynamics of detraditionalization and retra-
ditionalization with regard to the major currents of ayahuasca use outside the
Introduction 9
Amazon region. The chapter works as a valuable general introduction to the spirit
of this book, that there is a "world ayahuasca diaspora" that somehow unites dif-
ferent modalities under one general umbrella. Considering the constitutive role
of globalization, marketization, and modernization in the reinvention of practi-
cal and symbolic dimensions of ayahuasca use outside its "traditional" contexts,
Dawson adds theoretical gristle to sociocultural explanations of guiding princi-
ples of ayahuasca expansion. The simple idea that modernity is annihilating tra-
ditional ways of social and religious life is tackled critically, and the dynamics of
ayahuasca retraditionalisation are considered in relation to aspects ofmodem sub-
jectivity. The author demonstrates how notions of instrumental self-realization,
meritocracy, relativism, the sacralization of the self, and other modes of subjec-
tivity linked to modem social forms reveal how the reconfiguration of ayahuasca
use in Australasia, Europe, and North America is geared toward needs typical to
modem, urban-industrial existence.
In the second chapter, anthropologist Rosa Virginia Melo provides a detailed
ethnographic analysis ofUDV's ritual and myth, providing an important contribu-
tion to the very sparse literature existing on this Brazilian ayabuasca religion in
English. Outlining processes and structures of ritual practice, the author examines
conventions of ecstatic trance and reveals a "bureaucratization of enchantment"
in social relations defined by the rituals. Similar to Dawson's chapter on the retra-
ditionalisation of ayahuasca, Melo introduces evidence of an influence of modem
forms of institutional rationality in the ritual structure of UDV trance practices.
Furthermore, she works to explain the participants' subjectivity and quest for self-
knowledge in terms of institutional regimes that extend to cosmological postu-
lates. The chapter indicates how syntheses exist in the way UDV incorporates
aspects of myth and reason, belief and the state, and enchantment and bureauc-
ratization, and how this has been valuable in term of the religious organization's
expansion from the Amazon to urban centers of Brazil.
Examining the national and international expansion of Santo Daime, anthro-
pologist Beatriz Caiuby Labate and sociologist of religion Glauber Loures
de Assis, in the third chapter, help to explain the growth and adaptability of
Santo Dairne by linking it to a broader Brazilian culture of "miscibility" and
to a penchant toward "psychoactivity," The authors explore the social and cul-
tural history of Santo Daime and analyze its expansion from the marginal social
space of the Amazon region of Western Brazil to a dispersed metropolitan urban
middle-class and to Europe and North America. The processes by which the
religious groups gained legitimacy along different trajectories of this expansion
reveal, the authors demonstrate, key religious ambivalences and controversies
associated with modernity. Three distinctive social spheres of San to Daime-
which include the Amazon region, urban middle-class Brazil, and international
contexts - are investigated with regard to notions of the production oflegitimacy
and religious and cultural innovation. The authors also address religious and
legal persecution in European and North American contexts, taking into account
distinctions between institutional and dispersed forms of social organization, and
between homogenous and heterogeneous religious practice. The expansion of
10 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Clancy Cavnar, and Alex K Gearin
Santo Daime represents, the chapter illustrates, a unique response to the contem-
porary zeitgeist of modem, global religions.
Moving away from the more general and encompassing type of analysis pro-
vidcd by Labate and Assis, and yet complementing it, anthropologist Eli Oda
Sheiner, in the fourth chapter of the book, investigates the adaptation of Santo
Daime in the context of Canada. The ethnographic study is focused largely on Ceu
do Montreal, a Canadian chapter of the Santo Daimc religion, and investigates
tensions and innovations related to an intersection between religious practice and
broader Canadian society. Considering the implications of legal discourse and
policy that places ayahuasca into the category of dangerous "drug," and Santo
Daime practices of ecstatic encounters with sacred nonhumans, Sheiner illustrates
differences that exist on the levels of ontology and epistemology. The knowl-
edge system of the state and the secularist qualities of Canadian society are con-
sidered in relation to Santo Daime participants' accounts of drinking ayahuasca.
Innovations and disputes that emerged between Santo Daime groups in Canada
and groups in the homeland of Brazil are examined. In this direction, the chapter
provides an interesting account of the sorts of "local adaptations" performed by
Santo Daime in different contexts, contextualizing forms of indigenous Canadian
syncretism with a Daiinista ritual in Montreal. Sheiner explores the ways in which
Santo Daime members in Canada navigate and bridge multiple ontological frame-
works of identity, spirituality, and health, and reveals controversies and adapta-
tions of the religious practice relative to broader Canadian society.
The fifth chapter, by Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Clancy Cavnar, and Glauber
Loures de Assis, focuses on Santo Daime diaspora through its musical dimen-
sion. Some parallels are established with the international expansion of capocira
and Brazilian Afro-religions, situating the expansion of Santo Daime within the
wider Brazilian religious diaspora. Tt provides a short description, based on field-
work and literature review, of how the Brazilian hymns are sung and practiced
outside Brazil. In different countries, they are either sung in Portuguese, or sung
in translated versions; new hymns are "received" directly into various languages.
Local groups, especially in the V.S., divide into two schools ("traditionalists" and
"translationalists"): One advocates singing only in Portuguese; the other wants
to sing translated hymns. This division invites dehate about notions of tradition,
authenticity, and sacredness. The authors examine the positioning of key experts
around the musical performance and analyze how this reflects new power maps,
where religious expertise is mixed with language knowledge - Brazilians fluent
in English and foreigners fluent in Portuguese being on the top of the scale - and
musical skills. Tt is argued that the ability to perform cultural translations is central
to establishing leadership abroad. Tt is hoped that this reflection on music in Santo
Daime inspires more research on the relationship between psychedclics, religion,
language, subjectivity, and cognition.
Undertaking an ethnographic study of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia,
anthropologist Alex K. Gearin provides in Chapter 6 an analysis of how indig-
enous ayahuasca shamanism has been reinvented in ways that embody political
and cultural issues relative to Australian society. The chapter links Australian
Introduction 11
ayahuasca neoshamanism to earlier forms of neoshamanism in the 1960s coun-
terculture of Western societies and to fantastical constructions of "shamans" in
eighteenth century European theatre. This contextualization assists the author in
explaining the structures of the neoshamanic ayahuasca cosmology in which a
dichotomy between nature and society underpins conceptions of illness, malaise,
and healing. Gearin examines narrative accounts of ayahuasca trance and healing
inAustralia and considers the etiological implications ofthe narratives in contrastto
healing systems of Amazonian shamanism to reveal a critical cultural sensibility
in the cosmology and phenomenology of Australian ayahuasca neoshamanism.
The chapter demonstrates how, in the context of Australian ayahuasca neosha-
manism, conceptions of nature, plant-spirits, and an indigenous Other represent
objects by which drinkers reflexively assess various aspects of everyday ethics
and the broader cultural institutions of which they are constituted.
In Chapter 7, anthropologist Graham St John examines the cultural history of
"changa," or what has been termed "smokeable ayahuasca," which is an inno-
vative practice that originated among psychedelic experimentalists in Australia
(see also Tramacchi, 2006). The author situates the emergence of changa within a
recent history of psychedelic gnostic practices in which Westerners have experi-
mented with ayahuasca analogues or different chemical combinations similar to
those of indigenous ayahuasca brews. The use of changa emerged from a group of
psychonauts within a large ethnobotany scene in Australia and from experiments
with the natural depository of dimethyltryptamine (DMT)-containing Acacia
trees in Australia. St John examines this history and explores various crusades of
people disseminating "smokeable ayahuasca," including large-scale commercial
efforts by a public store front, to reveal the travels of changa in Australia and
beyond to electronic music festivals in Europe and North America. Drawing on
interviews conducted with the creator of changa, other pioneering psychedelic
experimentalists in Australia, and visionary artists and authors within a global
psychedelic milieu, the chapter illustrates disputes and innovations that the "DMT
effect" of changa has contributed to in the cultural context from whence it came.
This represents perhaps one of the most original contributions ofthis volume. The
description of changa raises issues on the very notion of what "ayahuasca" is, as
mentioned earlier, and the limits between sacred and nonsacred, ritual and recrea-
tional, and natural and synthetic use of psychedelics.
Chapter 8, by anthropologist Joshua Hornan, addresses the cultural impact
of nascent forms of ayahuasca tourism in indigenous and mestizo contexts of
the Western Peruvian Amazon. The chapter examines the "ayahuasca boom" in
contrast to other economic "booms" of the area, including the notorious rubber-
tapping operations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and the
violent 1980s coca boom. Examining the historical context of ayahuasca tour-
ism allows the author to explain innovative sequences of urban and remote, and
mestizo and indigenous, cultural change. While sorcery has been a hallmark of
much ayahuasca healing in the region, the emergence of Westerners visiting the
Amazon jungle to drink ayahuasca has resulted, Homan argues, in sanitized forms
of shamanism in which local accusations of sorcery are less likely to encompass
12 Beatriz Caiuby [abate, Clancy Cavnar, and Alex K. Gearin
ayahuasca shamans providing services for Westerners. The chapter has the merit
of highlighting key cultural tensions and challenges that have emerged at the
intersection of the mobility of indigenous and mestizo ayahuasca shamans and
diasporic networks in Western Amazonia, and in global trails of Europe and North
America, such as commercialization, health-related problems, training of sha-
mans, and cultural shocks.
Considering broader and philosophical questions about the economics of aya-
huasca, professor of public health Kenneth W. Tupper provides an ambitious
enquiry in Chapter 9 into ayahuasca as a globally exchanged material commodity.
The transnational expansion ofayahuasca has included variations in the exchange
systems of ayahuasca brew and materials (that arc usually less explored), as well
as consumptive practices. Tupper elucidates roles that government policy and
free-market logics have had in exchange relations in the context of the Brazilian
ayahuasca religions, shamanic tourism industry, and New Age neoshamanic cir-
cles. Compared to forms of indigenous Amazonian exchange relations in which
ayahuasca is tied to animistic ideologies of reciprocity, the commodification of
ayahuasca in Western contexts, Tupper explains, appears somewhat unavoidable,
given the pervasiveness of free-market capitalism in late modern life. A neat con-
gruence between ayahuasca and free-market capitalism, however, is approached
critically by the author. Introducing the concept of "cognitive tool," Tupper con-
siders ayahuasca in relation to literacy, numeracy, bookkeeping, and other "cogni-
tive tools" that were fundamental to the development of prehistorical and modern
economics. The chapter provides speculations about the potential of the "cogni-
tive tool" ayahuasca to provide transvaluations of contemporary issues related to
global economic crises and to the possibility of new forms of exchange relations.
Anthropologist Daniela M. Peluso follows Tupper on the topic of econom-
ics, tracing the material bases that enabled ayahuasca's world diaspora in Chap-
tcr 10. Examining small-scale entrepreneurship and related cultural dynamics of
the ayahuasca tourism industry, she investigates actual and potential impacts of
the ayahuasca boom with regards to issues of postcolonialism and globalization.
Stemming from a focus on the Tambopata Province of Madre de Dios, Peru, the
chapter addresses how the positive normalization of perceptions of the shamans
providing ayahuasca experiences for wealthy foreigners coincided with the emer-
gence oflarger tourism initiatives on the part of the Peruvian goverument. Peluso
examines the "entrepreneurial ecosystem" of ayahuasca tourism in this broader
social and historical context, and provides brilliant insights on issues related to
indigenous livelihood and structural economic inequalities, appropriation politics,
and the flow of goods and services from the south to the north or from the Ama-
zon jungle to New Age markets in Western postindustrial contexts. The capitalist
dynamics in which value is exchanged in the ayahuasca tourism industry is exam-
ined critically, and messianic underpinnings and also the dangers of aggressive
entrepreneurship are considered.
In the final two chapters of the book, the focus moves toward the topics of legal
systems and the persecution of ayahuasca drinkers in national and international
contexts. Members of the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education,
Introduction 13
Research & Service (ICEERS), Benjamin K. De Loenen, Oscar Pares Franquero,
and Constanza Sanchez Aviles, in Chapter 11, delineate the challenges of aya-
huasca globalization, triangulating the current state of stigmatization and legal
vulnerability of ayahuasca in different countries. Mapping characterizations of
ayahuasca and traditional medicines in reports compiled by international drug
control conventions, the authors address the rise in persecution rates of ayahuasca
possession and consumption in Europe, South America, and North America since
2010. The practice of drinking ayahuasca in parts of these continents currently
exists in problematic, and at times contradictory, legal conventions, or in legal
vacuums, and the work of ICEERS has been investigating and proactively sup-
porting court cases and media programs in various ways. It can be said that the
very emergence of an NGO like ICEERS is evidence of the world ayahuasca dias-
pora; its appeal among users, in terms of their "public services" regarding health,
safety, and diffusion of scientific information, shows an institutionalization and
profcssionalization of what used to be purely oral and local traditions.
Examining legal processes of ayahuasca in English courts, legal academic
Charlotte Walsh, in the final chapter of the book, provides a window on com-
plexities and ambiguities of the legal status ofayahuasca in the United Kingdom.
Investigating a case in which a self-proclaimed shamanic practitioner was prose-
cuted and convicted for production and supply ofDMT, the author highlights how
confusions in the case raise issues of a legal abuse of process and human rights.
The chapter includes an exploration of ambiguous legal definitions of production
and preparation in relation to the act of brewing ayahuasca, and to the status of
organic and inorganic or "natural" supplies of the scheduled substance DMT. The
need for the court to consider harm and benefit in order to fulfill the central act
by which ayahuasca is prohibited is examined. The legal status of ayahuasca in
the United Kingdom and other Western societies includes similarities with cases
that concern similar psychoactive substances, such as psilocybin or magic mush-
room, peyote cactus, and marijuana. Given the varied motivations that underpin
ayahuasca consumption in the United Kingdom, which may include religious,
medical, or cognitive expansion, the author indicates that a general right to drink
ayahuasca appears necessary when considered next to the "artificial boundaries"
that are the result of modem institutional categories. This chapter is relevant both
in terms of placing ayahuasca in the broader drug policy debate, and in establish-
ing legal links between ayahuasca and other psychedelics.
The field of ayahuasca studies appears to represent a window onto the future
of academic work, given its strong interdisciplinary bent and given how the field
includes considerably blurred borders between academic knowledge, public
thought, government policy, and the lives of the people researched. The readership
market of this text is wide for an academic text, potentially covering ayahuasca
drinkers and groups from different backgrounds, researchers in the social sciences
and humanities, lawyers and drug policy experts, and also those who research aya-
huasca in the "hard sciences," such as neuroscience and chemistry. The following
contribution of chapters represents ideas of and for the world ayahuasca diaspora
in a way that captures a very significant moment in the history of ayahuasca and
14 Beatriz Caiuby Lobate, Clancy Cavnar. and Alex K. Gearin
global society. We hope this book will become increasingly relevant and useful
over the next decade or so, during a period in which humanity continues to come
to terms with what Marshall McLuhan coined "the global village."
Notes
Visiting Professor at the Center for Research and Post Graduate Studies in Social
Anthropology (CIESAS), in Guadalajara. Mexico, and eo-founder of the Nucleus for
Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP). Brazil. Email: blabate@bialabate.net
2 PsvD in clinical ps~ chology and research associate at the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary
Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP), United States. Ernail: clancycavnarzz.gmail.com
3 PhD in anthropology from the Universitv of Queensland. Brisbane. Australia. Email:
akgearin(jJgmai l.corn
4 Certain vines of the Banisteriopsis family contain harmala alkaloids, and the shrub
Psychotria viridis contains the psychedelic alkaloid dimethvltrv ptaminc (DMT).
When consumed oral I" the harmala inhibits an enzyme in the gastrointestinal track
that allows the DMT to enter the bloodstream.
5 These organic sources of the alkaloid currently consumed around the globe in brews
natively termed "ayahuasca" include Peganutn harmala, for the harrnala content, and,
for the DMT content, several species of Acacia iacuminata, obtusifolia, confusa.fiori-
bnndas; Mimosa tenuiftora, and Phalaris grass.
6 All authors \I ha contributed to this book were present in Ibiza except Joshua Homan
and Glauber de Loures Assis. Several chapters were different presentations than the
ones given in Ibiza.
7 Venancio Kamiko - a mestizo Arawakan boat-builder' who realized that he and others
were being structural I) coerced into C) cles of debt to colonizers - pia) ed a central role
in this network by traveling across Northwest Amazonia preaching, conducting festi-
vals and rituals, and organizing other millenarian prophets to do the same. Kamikos
political power was related to his abilities as a healer and a "master shaman," or "jaguar
owner," which he gained through overcoming an illness and training with ayahuasca
and other psvchoactive plants, and conducting healings across Northwest Amazonia
(Wright& Hill, 1986; Hugh-Jones, 1996; Wright, 2013).
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1 If tradition did not exist, it
would have to be invented
Retraditionalization and the world
ayahuasca diaspora
Andrew Dawson'

Introduction
The title of this chapter arises from a playful modification and subsequent fusion of
Voltaire's famous aphorism ("lfGod did not exist, he would have to be invented")
with Eric Hobsbawm's seminal insights into the "invention" of tradition within
modem society. Provoked by an atheistic pamphlet then in circulation, the apho-
ristic response coined by Voltaire in 1768 embodies a functional affirmation of
religion as ultimately beneficial to societal order and cohesion (Voltaire, 1877).
Written over 200 years later, the title ofHobsbawm's seminal work (The Invention
of Tradition) acknowledges the widespread formation of Western socio-political
traditions during the highly transformative years of 1870-1914 (Hobsbawm &
Ranger, 1983). Contrary to academic views dominant at the time, Hobsbawm
argued that, far from eradicating tradition as a prevailing societal force, modernity
is actually conducive to the ongoing production and consolidation of tradition.
Consequently, modern society is not just a place of detraditionalization but also of
retraditionalization (see below). Phrased as it is, the chapter title signals the intent
to engage the world ayahuasca diaspora as a form ofretraditionalization involving
the recapitulation of traditional beliefs and practices in a way that engenders not
only their reconfiguration but also the invention of new traditions. Such recon-
figuration, for example, unfolds through the practical or symbolic modification of
rituals, beliefs, and values that revises but does not wholly eradicate cultic, con-
ceptual, and ethical components bequeathed by past generations. The reconfigura-
tion wrought by retraditionalization may thereby change the schedule or structure
of a specific ritual, theologically qualify a particular belief (e.g., in spiritual enti-
ties), or morally reconstrue prevailing opinion (regarding gender and sexuality).
Complementing the incremental modification of received traditions, the introduc-
tion of new practices and beliefs formerly absent from established repertoires
further radicalizes the retraditionalization currently underway across the world
ayahuasca diaspora. On the one hand, new ayahuasca traditions arise through the
hybridization of established beliefs and rituals with practical-symbolic compo-
nents appropriated from other religio-cultural worldviews (e.g., Aboriginal, Bud-
dhist, Native American, and Pagan). On the other hand, new traditions emerge as
the creative imagination of diaspora practitioners formulates novel and previously
20 Andrew Dawson
inexistent cultic practices and symbolic construals more readily suited to the new
sociocultural contexts progressively encountered by the geographical spread of
ayahuasca religiosity.
Framing retraditionalization
By way of theoretically framing the following treatment of the retraditionali-
zation undcrway across the world ayahuasca diaspora, three points are worthy
of note. First, much of this chapter is theoretical in nature and works at a level
once removed from the actual beliefs and concrete practices of the movements,
groups, and individuals which combine to form the world ayahuasca diaspora.
Irrespective ofthcir primarily abstract nature. the following theoretical reflections
upon the ongoing rctraditionalization of ayahuasca religiosity within the world
diaspora nevertheless apply empirically to most actual forms of ritual ayahuasca
consumption occurring outside the Amazon region. By virtue of their relatively
institutionalized character, the formalization of tradition instantiated by the Bra-
zilian ayahuasca religions of Santo Daime and the Uniao do Vegetal (hereafter,
UDV) furnish many of the most exemplary instances ofretraditionalization (e.g.,
Melo, 2010; Dawson, 2013). Though in different ways and to varying degrees,
each of these ayahuasca religions makes explicitly proprietorial claims to pat-
rimonial charge of an established repertoire of revered practices and sanctified
beliefs otherwise understood as "tradition" (Dawson, forthcoming). As modifi-
cations of and additions to institutional ized tradition arc the easiest identifiable
examples of retraditionalization, the experiences of Santo Daime and the UDV
offer fertile ground to those interested in the ongoing transformation of the prac-
tices and beliefs traditionally associated with ritual ayahuasca consumption (see
Chapters 2 and 3 in this book by Melo and by Labate and Assis). At the same
time, but increasingly so, the ritual consumption of ayahuasca is occurring within
trans-institutional contexts beyond the more formalized confines of these two aya-
huasca religions. Moreover, the trans-institutional contexts in which ayahuasca
is ritually consumed likewise reference and employ practices and beliefs that are
valorized by virtue of their historical association with the Amazon region. Albeit
less routinized (Weber, 1965), more ad hoc, and self-consciously less traditional
than the ayahuasca religions themselves, the trans-institutional modes of ritual
ayahuasca consumption treated in this book (e.g., Gearin, Chapter 6) and else-
where (e.g., Hanagraaff, 20 11; Labate & Cavnar, 2014) nevertheless make ample
use of what may be, in academic terms at least, justifiably regarded as "tradition."
Consequently, the overwhelming majority of what follows in respect of the ret-
raditionalization of ritual ayahuasca consumption applies just as much to these
trans-institutional contexts as it does to the ayahuasca religions of Santo Daime
and the UDV
Second, this chapter is not claiming that retraditionalization is something new
to ayahuasca religiosity. Indeed, all of the available evidence indicates that retra-
ditionalization has been at the very heart of nonindigenous ritual ayahuasca con-
sumption from its first appearance and throughout the subsequent decades of its
Retraditionalization and the world ayahuasca diaspora 21
development in both the Amazon region and various parts of the South American
continent (Luna, 1986; Labate & Araujo, 2004). In respect solely of its formative
Amazonian period (l 93 O---c. 1980), for example, Santo Daime's ongoing appro-
priation, fusion, and transformation of tradition is evident through successive
phases such as the "Christianization" of originary sources, "de-Africanization"
of its foundational repertoire, "esotericization" of key beliefs and practices, and
subsequent "spiritization" through the impact of Spiritism and Umbanda (Gou-
lart, 2004; Dawson, 2013). While the UDV's preoccupations with institutional
orthodoxy engender a more conservative organizational ethos than Santo Daime,
retraditionalization nevertheless occurs by way of schismatic disputes and ongo-
ing, though incremental, modifications to inherited beliefs and practices (Daw-
son, 2007; Melo, 2010). The modification of or addition to traditional practices
and beliefs is thereby nothing new to ayahuasca religiosity. What, then, does this
chapter add by way of furthering appreciation of the processes and implications
of retraditionalization as they pertain to ayahuasca religiosity?
Third, this chapter argues that the dynamics of retraditionalization currently
underway within the world ayahuasca diaspora are not random but patterned by
an identifiable set of sociocultural forces. On the one hand, these forces are typi-
cally modem, in that they refract a range of processes and dynamics intimately
associated with the contemporary sociocultural configuration most commonly
termed "modernity." On the other hand, these forces are characteristic of aya-
huasca religiosity's new diaspora constituency in that they embody a range of
practical-symbolic concerns typical of the urban professionals now preponderant
within the global community of ritual ayahuasca consumers. The retraditionali-
zation of ayahuasca religiosity currently underway across the world diaspora is,
then, framed by typically modem forces and shaped by characteristically urban-
professional concerns. Constituted by the complementary changes of geographical
context and demographic profile, the world ayahuasca diaspora thereby engenders
modes ofretraditionalizationnot previously experienced by ayahuasca religiosity.
By reflecting upon its modern context and urban-professional profile, this chapter
explicates the principal processes and dynamics implicated in the retraditionaliza-
tion of contemporary ayahuasca religiosity.
Before engaging these principal processes and dynamics, something more
might be said about the theoretical assumptions informing the following discus-
sion. The first theoretical assumption relates to the notion of modernity that, it
is duly acknowledged, remains a hotly contested concept within the social and
human sciences (e.g., Bhambra, 2007; Wagner, 2012; Dawson, 2014a). The ori-
gins and character of modernity's contestation are, however, too nuanced and
complex to be adequately treated in a chapter such as this. Suffice to say; there-
fore, I am aware that the concept of modernity is controversial and have elsewhere
discussed many of these issues at much greater length (e.g., Dawson, 20l4b;
2015). In the interests of discursive efficiency, however, the following discussion
employs the notion of modernity as a viable theoretical model for understand-
ing the myriad macro-structural processes, mid-range institutional dynamics,
and micro-social forces currently impacting contemporary human existence and
22 Andrew Dawson
thereby framing the retraditionalization of ayahuasca religiosity. The second the-
oretical assumption informing this chapter is a foundational principle of social
science that underwrites many of the claims made with respect to the urban-
professional constituency now preponderant within the world ayahuasca diaspora.
Although referred to in many ways, this foundational theoretical principle is today
commonly termed the "self-society" or "agency-structure" dynamic (Dawson,
2011, pp. 8-13). Again, by no means uncontested, a basic thrust of this principle
resides in the assertion that human subjectivity is a situated phenomenon which-
in some way, shape, or form - reflects its given sociocultural environment. Such
is not to say, however, that human consciousness is a mere reflection of its pre-
vailing societal context; nor does it deny that society is the structured outcome of
human agency at both individual and collective levels. It does, though, maintain
that certain correspondences exist between particular sociocultural contexts and
particular modes of human subjectivity engendered by them. Weber, for example,
explicated this correspondence through his concept of "elective affinity" (1992),
and Mannhcim did so by revitalizing the theory of "ideology" (1936), while
Bourdieu employed the notion of "habitus" (1998). With respect to its concrete
application below, the "agency-structure" principle plays out through the asso-
ciations made between the practical-symbolic preoccupations of ritual ayahuasca
consumers and the urban-professional status-group to which the overwhelming
majority of diaspora practitioners belong. In social scientific terms, then, the
processes of retraditionalization treated below should be understood more as the
unintended consequences of class-orchestrated (i.e., urban-professional) agency
than the subjectively intended outcomes of individual actors.
The structure of this chapter is determ ined by the central pillars of its argument;
that is, the retraditionalization of ayahuasca religiosity currently underway within
the world diaspora is both framed by typically modem dynamics and impacted
by a range of practical-symbolic concerns characteristic of its urban-professional
constituency. As such, the following discussion opens by delineating the most
relevant modern dynamics framing the ongoing retraditionalization of ayahuasca
religiosity. Employing the concept of the "new middle-class," the sociocultural
profile of the urban-professional constituency now preponderant within the
world ayahuasca diaspora is then discussed. The analytical focus narrows still
further as the discussion moves on to explicate various practical-symbolic con-
cerns driving the retraditionalization of ayahuasca religiosity at thc hands of its
urban-professional practitioners. The chapter concludes by drawing these differ-
ent threads together in a typology (borrowed from Hervieu-Leger) that situates
the contemporary dynamics of retraditionalization within an organizational spec-
trum that ranges from the most institutionalized of contexts to the thoroughly
individualized.
Modernity and detraditionalization
With respect to the typically modem dynamics framing the retraditionalization
of ayahuasca religiosity, the most relevant pertain to modernity's transformative,
Retraditionalization and the world ayahuasca diaspora 23
differentiated, individualizing, globalized, and increasingly market-oriented
character. Exemplified by tre metamorphic processes of urban industrialization,
modernity comprises a thoroughly transformative ethos characterized by the rapid,
widespread, and ongoing reconfiguration of macro-structural, mid-range institu-
tional, and micro-social dimensions of human existence. The modern societal
environment is thereby constantly mutating through the ceaseless modification
or wholesale replacement of, for example, infra structural networks (e,g" state,
transport, and communication); interactive contexts (e.g. education, work, and
leisure); and extended webs of dependency (e.g., food, health, and technology).
Another feature of the modern social landscape, societal differentiation, occurs
principally through the combined processes of structural variegation and sociocul-
tural pluralization. In structnral terms, modernity is characterized by a dizzyingly
diverse number of variegated mechanisms and specialized institutions through
which the day-to-day activities of humankind occurs, At the same time, modernity
exhibits a sociocultural variety unprecedented in human history. Related in no
small measure to structural differentiation, sociocultural pluralization occurs as
the variegation of practical-symbolic structures engenders progressively diverse
life experiences for the different groups, categories, or classes populating the
increasingly varied terrain of modern society. Sociocultural pluralization also
results from domestic and transnational migration and the subsequent interaction
and miscegenation of different social, racial, ethnic, and linguistic groups,
Furthermore, modernity is typically oriented to the individual such that the
characteristically modern process of individualization involves the progressive
rccalibration of collective determination and individual choice in a manner that
enervates the former and empowers the latter. While individualization does not
eradicate communal forms of belonging or collective modes of identity formation
(see below), compared with what has gone before, the modern individual enjoys
historically unrivalled degrees of self-determination and subjective expression,
On the one hand, the erosion of collective determination manifests through an
increased level of sociocultural mobility, as the modern individual enjoys new-
found latitude in, for example, matters of education, employment, leisure, and per-
sonal relationships. On the other hand, the dynamics of individualization engender
enhanced degrees of subjective expression, exhibited through broadened reper-
toires of, for example, sexuality, belief, and lifestyle (e.g, self-presentation, diet,
and patterns of consumption), The globalized character of modernity is grounded
in techno-scientific developments, enabling the rapid and large-scale circulation
of goods, people, information, power, tastes, and values at a vertiginous speed and
scale that renders established spatio-temporal distinctions increasingly irrelevant.
At the same time, the worldwide spread of commodity capitalism is radicalizing
established commercial processes and consumerist tendencies in ways that under-
pin the increasingly marketized character of modernity. In combination, moderni-
ty's globalizing processes and market-driven dynamics constitute a geographically
diffuse and evolving network of rapid and large-scale flows through which local
economic, legal, political, ethical, and aesthetic structures are connected to a seem-
ingly limitless number of otherwise disparate and faraway locations.
24 Andrew Dawson
The process of detraditionalization is grounded in the combined effects of these
typically modem dynamics. That is, the typically modem dynamics of transforma-
tion, differentiation, individualization, globalization, and marketization combine
to erode both the objective impact and perceived relevance oftraditional modes of
signification and established means of collective determination (e.g., family, class,
religion, sex, and race). By distancing contemporary generations from received
traditions and the authority structures through which they are operationalized,
detraditionalization undermines the "taken- for-granted" character of inherited
practices and prevailing sign-systems (Bergcr & Luckmann, 1966). Although
common in sociological parlance (e.g., Beck, Giddens, & Lash, 1994; Heelas,
Lash, & Morris, 1996), the term "detraditionalization" is slightly unfortunate, as it
does not connote the end oftradition as such. For example, while describing mod-
ern existence as typically "detraditionalized," Beck and Beck-Gemsheim go on
to assert that "this does not mean that tradition no longer plays any role"; rather,
they maintain, such are the prevailing conditions of modernity that "traditions
must be chosen and often invented" by individuals who "are constantly engaged
in discarding old classifications and formulating new ones" (2002, pp. 25-26).
Instead of spelling the end of tradition per se, the term "detraditionalization" in
fact signals modernity's reconfiguration of both the kind and degree of sociocul-
tural detenninacy exerted by inherited forms of practical knowledge that have
customarily underwritten the ongoing force, significance, and salience of rou-
tines, habits, values, beliefs, and rituals bequeathed by past generations.
The ongoing, but transfigured, existence oftradition within modern society was
most famously treated by Eric Hobsbawm in the now classic text, The Inven-
tion of Tradition (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983). Although not furnishing anything
by way of a foundational anthropology, Hobsbawm underwrites the continued
existence of tradition in modem society through reference to humankind's preoc-
cupations with: a) "establishing or symbolizing social cohesion or the member-
ship of groups, real or artificial communities"; b) "establishing or legitimizing
institutions, status or relations of authority"; and c) "socialization, the inculcation
of beliefs, value systems and conventions of behaviour" (1983a, p. 9). By way
of meeting these concerns, humankind mobilizes tradition as a formalized and
ritualized "reference to the past" that serves to underwrite the sense of belonging,
structure, and cohesion necessary to societal existence in any era. Consequently,
argues Hobsbawm, "such formalizations are not confined to so-called 'traditional'
societies, but also have their place, in one form or another, in 'modern' oncs"
(l983a, pp. 4-5). In contrast to what has gone before, however, the particular
dynamics of modem society combine to engender a historically novel context
comprising two relevant characteristics pertaining, respectively, to the invention
and the status of tradition.
Regarding the invention of tradition in modern society, Hobsbawm identifies a
somewhat ironic scenario. On the one hand, the highly transfonnative character
of modernity "weakens or destroys the social patterns for which 'old' traditions
had been designed" and, as such, undermines the ability of inherited modes of
practical-knowledge to perform their "significant social and political functions"
Retraditionalization and the world ayahuasca diaspora 25
with respect to belonging, structure, and cohesion. On the other hand, such is
people's "need" of the kind of services furnished by tradition fhat modem soci-
ety must "produce'i new traditions capable of performing similar "functions" to
the "old" traditions which modernity "destroys" (l983a, pp. 4-5; 1983b, pp. 263,
307). At one and the same time, then, modern society is engaged in both erod-
ing and inventing tradition. Somewhat ironically, therefore, modernity is simul-
taneously a context of detraditionalization and retraditionalization. In respect of
the traditions produced by modem society, their status is, however, different than
what has gone before. Such is the case because the highly dynamic character of
modernity undermines the significatory impact, practical reach, and chronologi-
cal perdurance which tradition formerly enjoyed in premodern times. "In spite of
much invention," Hobsbawm observes, "new traditions have not filled more than
a small part of the space left by the secular decline of both old tradition and cus-
tom"; consequently, he concludes, "even the invented traditions of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries occupied or occupy a much smaller place than the old
traditions do in, say, old agrarian societies" (1983a, p. 11).
In light of these discussions, the detraditionalization currently underway within
the typically modem contexts of the world ayahuasca diaspora is best understood
as the ongoing reconfiguration rather than simple erosion of the concrete prac-
tices and significatory structures bequeathed by past generations of ritual aya-
huasca consumers. Certainly, the detraditionalizing ethos of modernity weakens
the determinative status of established practices and beliefs that have tradition-
ally informed ayahuasca religiosity. Yet, modernity's retraditionalizing charac-
ter ensures a continued concern with referencing and appropriating material and
symbolic elements that are, for various reasons and in varied ways, valorized
through their association with "traditional" contexts and repertoires of ritual aya-
huasca consumption. Consequently, and though the detraditionalization of aya-
huasca religiosity erodes the established role and inherited status of traditional
practices and beliefs, its ongoing retraditionalization encourages the formation of
new and hybrid forms of ritually consuming the "sacred" brew. A principal con-
tention of this chapter, however, is the assertion that the retraditionalization cur-
rently underway within the world ayahuasca diaspora is not random but patterned
by a range of preoccupations most closely associated with the urban-professional
constituency now preponderant among ritual ayahuasca consumers. Prior to treat-
ing at length these practical-symbolic concerns, the following section employs
the concept of the "new middle-class" to explicate the most relevant aspects of
the urban-professional constituency now dominant across the world ayahuasca
diaspora.
The world ayahuasca diaspora and the new middle-class
The new middle-class as an analytical category is important to understanding the
ongoing retraditionalization of ayahuasca religiosity in two key respects. First,
it allows the beliefs and practices of the overwhelming majority of the world
ayahuasca diaspora to be situated and subsequently understood relative to their
26 Andrew Dawson
place within sociocultural contexts constituted by the intersection of aforemen-
tioned modem dynamics. As argued here, the modern-day profile and progressive
retraditionalization of ayahuasca religiosity reflect the now dominant position
of an urban-professional constituency. Mediated through the new middle-class,
the retraditionalization of ritual ayahuasca consumption is thereby not randomly
achieved, but rather the outcome of a particular combination of typically mod-
ern practical-symbolic forces to which ayahuasca religiosity has been progres-
sively exposed since its initial spread from the Amazon region of its birth. By
understanding the new middle-class, which forms the overwhelming majority of
the world ayahuasca diaspora, we thereby understand more about the contempo-
rary transformation and potential trajectory of ayahuasca religiosity. Second, the
analytical category of the new middle-class provides a theoretical lens through
which the otherwise variegated life-experiences of ayahuasca religiosity's urban-
professional practitioners may be focused and treated in both a manageable and
conceptually meaningful way. That is, as members of the new middle-class, the
overwhelming majority of the world ayahuasca diaspora are believed to share a
sufficiently common life-experience as to underwrite a meaningful degree of col-
lective theorization that applies to the group as a whole (i.e., as a single unit of
analysis).
The varied manner in which the aforementioned processes of modern society
intersect makes global modernity a multifaceted phenomenon characterized by
a multiplicity of context-specific dynamics and variegated regional subjectivi-
tics (Dawson, 20 14b; 2015). The urban-professional constituency comprising the
majority of the world ayahuasca diaspora is thereby not a singular, homogenous
entity but a variegated collective whose individual subjectivities embody a range
ofrespectively regional sociocultural dynamics. Impacting the local appropriation
of ayahuasca religiosity, these regional sociocultural dynamics inform the ongo-
ing retraditionalization ofritual ayahuasca consumption as it is refracted through
and melded with a variety of endogenous life-experiences. The acknowledgement
of the pluriform character of ayahuasca religiosity's now preponderant urban-
professional constituency should not, though, detract from the many material and
immaterial aspects which their modern middle-class existence holds in common.
Local by way of their appropriation of ayahuasca religiosity, the retraditionalizing
variations wrought by this urban-professional constituency nevertheless remain
at all times variations on an overarching modern theme. Of course, such collec-
tive theorization of an otherwise glohally dispersed and socioculturally diverse
cohort unavoidably involves elements of analytical reductionism. As employed
here, however, the category of the new middle-class provides a useful theoreti-
cal tool which minimizes reductionism while aiding theoretical appreciation of
the overarching modem theme which informs these otherwise regional variations
(see, for example, Lange & Meier, 2009).
Emerging in the second half of the twentieth century, the new middle-class
is closely associated with the post-I 950s expansion of the modern nation-state,
technologization of private commerce, spread of commodity capitalism, growth
of the culture industry, and rise of the service sector. It is no coincidence, then,
Retraditionalization and the world ayahuasca diaspora 27
that the new middle-class is chiefly employed in administrative bureaucracy and
management, communications and information technology, education, health and
research, and sundry provision of cultural goods, capital services, and immate-
rial commodities (Vidich, 1995; Mills, 2002). Overwhelmingly drawn from the
new middle-class of Australasia, Europe, and North and South America, the vast
majority of the world ayahuasca diaspora are college or university educated and,
when not self-employed, generally engaged by state institutions or private firms
as professionals and specialists responsible for, among other things, health and
social care, information technology, education, culture industry, and service sector
provision (Dobkin de Rios & Rumrill, 2008; Labate & Jungaberle, 20 11; Dawson,
2013; Labate & Cavnar, 2014). As such, much that is said of the new middle-class
might also apply to the overwhelming bulk of the world ayahuasca diaspora.
An archetypal scion of modernity, the new middle-class exhibits a relatively
pluralized and fluid subjectivity that reflects, inter alia, an informed appreciation
of ongoing sociocultural transformation and exposure to a varied range of world-
views and life-experiences. Cosmopolitan in nature and outlook, new-middle-
class subjectivity is generally tolerant of cultural, political, or religious difference,
comfortable with societal change, and copes well wifh moral ambiguity. Individ-
ual subjectivity is customarily informed by the eclectic appropriation of practical
regimes and symbolic resources from a broad spectrum of sociocultural sources.
Relatively self-assured in respect of the diverse tastes, values, and behavior it
embodies, new-middle-class subjectivity is nevertheless disposed to the ongoing
revision of the practices and symbols on which it draws. In tandem with its indi-
vidualized demeanor and commoditized disposition, the pluralized and fluid sub-
jectivity of the new middle-class manifests in a relativizing worldview through
which commitments and allegiances are readily rendered provisional. As such,
the individualized demeanor of new-middle-class subjectivity qualifies col1ective
modes of belonging and corporate participation through their subordination to the
desires and concerns of the modern self. Evaluated relative to their contribution
to individual well-being, communal forms of be havior are progressively volunta-
rized and self-oriented.
Where it exists, new-middle-class political activism tends principally to articu-
late a range of subjectively orchestrated concerns that trade traditional collectivist
and emancipatory politics for a "life politics" (or "politics of lifestyle") preoc-
cupied with obtaining societal conditions conducive to "self-actualisation" (Gid-
dens, 1991, p. 214). The political behavior of the individualized new middle-class
manifests most explicitly in a "politics of the first person" (Betz, 1992, p. 108).
Not least owing to its socioeconomic status, enhanced educational capital, and
informed worldview, the individualized subjectivity of fhe new middle-class is
also highly reflexive in character. Here, reflexivity comprises a strategic and self-
aware instrumentality through which the practical and symbolic concerns of the
new middle-class are pursued. New-middle-class reflexivity thereby includes a
keen positional awareness characterized by the comparative dynamics of associa-
tion, dissociation, and "distinction" vis-a-vis other groups occupying fhe contem-
porary social landscape (Bourdieu, 1984). At the same time, new-middle-class
28 Andrew Dawson
reflexivity involves the subjective dynamics of strategic self-presentation through
which practical and symbolic resources are appropriated and displayed in the
cause of personal development (ad intra) and individual advancement (ad extra);
achievements frequently regarded as two sides of the same coin. Combined with
the aforementioned concerns, thc new middle-class thereby views the self as a
"project" forged through a customized lifestyle permanently under construction
and constantly in pursuit of aesthetic gratification (Feathers tone, 2007). As such,
and no little indebted to its birth under commodity capitalism and exposure to
post-1950s culture industries, the subjective well-being of the new middle-class
is closely tied with what and how it consumes. Of an expectant and aspirational
nature, new-middle-class subjectivity valorizes consumption as an integral com-
ponent of the self-project.
As stated above, it would be overly reductionist to assume an automatic cor-
respondence between all things "new middle-class" and the world diaspora of
ritual ayahuasca consumers. At the same time, it would be theoretically naive to
ignore the sociocultural implications of the fact that the overwhelming majority
ofthose ritually consuming ayahuasca beyond the Amazon region are members of
the new middle-class. Holding these two analytical aspects in view, the following
section identifies a range of characteristics that both exemplify the key dynamics
impacting the retraditionalization of ritual ayahuasca consumption, and embody
a range of practical-symbolic preoccupations typical ofthe new middle-class pre-
ponderant within the world ayahuasca diaspora. Treated at length in the following
section, the characteristics most evident in the ritual repertoires of those consum-
ing ayahuasca in the world diaspora include: the subjectivized valorization of the
individual as the ultimate arbiter of religious authority and the primary agent of
spiritual self-transformation; an instrumental (i.e., strategic and reflexive) religi-
osity oriented to the goal of absolute self-realization; a holistic worldview which
both grounds the individual self in an overarching cosmic whole and relativizes
religious belief systems as contingent expressions of otherwise universal truths;
an aestheticized demeanor characterized by strong experiential preoccupations
manifest through inward self-exploration, outer self-expression, and an experi-
mental bent; and a meritocratic-egalitarianism which is both expectant of rewards
for efforts expended and qualifies traditional hierarchical structures. Both indi-
vidually and collectively, these typical characteristics function as orchestrating
principles guiding the retraditionalization of ritual ayahuasca consumption across
the world ayahuasca diaspora.
Exemplary characteristics of the diaspora ritual repertoire
The contemporary ritual repertoire of the world ayahuasca diaspora is, first and
foremost, characterized by a highly valorized sense of subjectivity in which the
individual is viewed as both the primary agent ofself-transfonnation and ultimate
arbiter of spiritual authority. In many ways, each of the other characteristics iden-
tified below flows from and speaks to this typically modern valorization of the
self. Noted below, the agency and judgment by and under which the transformed
Retraditionalization and the world ayahuasca diaspora 29
self is wrought are commonly underwritten by asserting the subject's connatural-
ity with an overarching, all-pervasive cosmic whole. In keeping with its plurifonn
character, the diaspora ritual repertoire affords its participants a wide range of
themes and tropes by which this sacralization of the self is articulated. In addition
to established motifs appropriated from traditional Amazonian (e.g., vegetalismo)
or Brazilian (e.g., Spiritist and Esoteric) paradigms, for example, the sacral status
of the self is increasingly underwritten by reference to regional tropes (e.g., Abo-
riginal, Druidic, Heathen, and Native American) respectively associated with the
new diaspora contexts of ritual ayahuasca consumption. Irrespective of the source
and motif mobilized, the status and trustworthiness of the self are assured by onto-
logical and epistemological claims which both guarantee and valorize subjective
agency and judgment.
The second exemplary characteristic ofthe diaspora ritual repertoire is its instru-
mental character. The instrumentally oriented focus of ritual practice furnishes a
clear rationale in which cultic activity is viewed as a means to the end of absolute self-
realization, and is variously conceived as including, for example, "self-perfection,"
"self-transformation," and "self-understanding." Indicative of its subjectivized ethos,
ritual activity exists to support the self in its inwardly focused endcavors through
which self-scrutiny occurs, faults are identified, and self-correction ensues. Such
endeavors, for example, may be undertaken to the end of discovering the inner self
(through peeling away the accumulated accretions of material existence), nurturing
the higher self (through the incremental eradication of the ego and its stultifying
effects), and/or generating cosmic merit (through burning off bad karma and gener-
ating good karma). Whatever the goal of ritual activity, the benefits engendered by
consuming ayahuasca are generated by the self, working on the self, for the benefit
of the self. The self-orchestrated instrumentality of the diaspora ritual repertoire
makes it a thoroughly autopoietic enterprise.
The sacralization of the self as connatural with the cosmic whole furnishes
the practical-symbolic means by which self-realization is pursued. Anchored to
the cosmos and pervaded by universal forces, the self's connaturality endows
it with the powers necessary for its autopoietic transformation. Supernaturally
resourced by its sacral nature, the self pursues its absolute realization by learning
to identify, harness, and focus the cosmic energies inherent to it. Equipped with
the fundamental powers underwriting its agency and judgment, the self neverthe-
less requires guidance as to the most efficacious ways of manipulating them in
the cause of self-transformation. Although the sacral (connatural) character of the
self provides much by way of (super)natural resourcing, for one reason or another
(e.g., limitations of material existence, weaknesses of the flesh, or poor kannic
inheritance), the self requires some form of external input and guidance as to the
best ways of optimizing its inherent resources - hence, the self's recourse to the
practical knowledge furnished by the diaspora ayahuasca repertoire.
The self's relationship with the practical knowledge accessed most commonly
through collective ritual practice is shaped by a meritocratic egalitarianism which
constitutes the third exemplary characteristic of the contemporary diaspora rep-
ertoire. The meritocratic aspirations of the modem self inform a ritual work ethic
30 Andrew Duwson
in which cultic participants expect due returns (material and immaterial) com-
mensurate with the effort expended. At the same time, ritual exertions are fre-
quently underwritten by an assumed reciprocity (e.g., "what you give up, you get
back"; "no pain, no gain") that guarantees a favorable return upon cultic activities
when undertaken appropriately. By no means denying the deep-seated respect
that diaspora practitioners have for traditional practices, adherence to any respec-
tive ritual regulation is nevertheless also motivated by a concern to ensure the
meritocratic efficacy associated with the appropriate execution of cultic prescrip-
tions. Obedience to prescribed modes ofbchavior thereby commonly embodies a
typically procedural preoccupation with obtaining sought-after results (c.g., self-
realization) through appropriately executed measures. The egalitarian aspect of
this exemplary characteristic is similarly grounded in a mixture of esteem for
given authorities and commitment to procedural efficacy. Frequently regarded as
steeped in the traditional wisdom of ayahuasca traditions, respective ritual author-
ities are venerated as tried an d tested sources ofthe practical knowledge necessary
to self-realization. The duties and constraints through which traditional authority
asserts itself (and by which individual freedoms are restricted) are thereby offset
against the subjective benefits enabled by them. In the same vein, and as long as
they can be climbed, corporate hierarchies are tolerated as structured indicators of
individual spiritual maturity which, likewise, serve as way-markers for the aspira-
tional self. At the same time, the authority enjoyed by high-status practitioners of
ayahuasca religiosity is always exemplary rather than exceptional. Even in cases
of ascribed status, the authority borne by leadership is commonly perceived as
something achieved by virtue of long-standing engagement with ayahuasca. Serv-
ing to guide by example rather than to dictate, leadership exists to show the way
along which all ritual practitioners, by virtue of their sacral nature, have the innate
ability to travel when the practical knowledge made available through ayahuasca
is learned and employed appropriately. Ultimately, then, the authority of leader-
ship resides not so much in its exceptionality as something beyond the ordinary,
but rather in its exemplification of what every self can become.
The nature and operational scope of received traditions and collective authority
is further qualified by the fourth characteristic of the diaspora repertoire, that of
its holism. The holistic perspective posits a universal force, principle, or dynamic,
the ubiquitous presence of which underlies every aspect of cosmic existence. The
unmitigated nature of this ubiquity ensures that every individual component of
the universe, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, is joined to it and,
by virtue of cosmic mediation, to every other unit of existence. The ontological
avowal of universal holism, in which every aspect ofreality is connected to every
other aspect of reality, underwrites the aforementioned connaturality of the self with
the cosmos. This, in turn, furnishes the individual with the requisite universal ener-
gics to be harnessed and manipulated in the service of self-realization. Equipping
the selfwith the necessary means of its absolute realization, this ontological aspect
of holism is accompanied by an epistemological assertion that individual, unitary,
or differentiated existence is only ever apparent. As every individual component
of existence is, in reality, part of an all-embracing whole (ontological avowal),
Retraditionalization and the world ayahuasca diaspora 31
no specific unit can be properly understood without reference to the overarch-
ing whole of which it is but a particular expression (epistemological assertion).
Operationalizcd within the diaspora repertoire, the holistic narrative lends itself
to the relativization of all forms of practical knowledge as metaphorical, and
thereby contingent, expressions of one and the same all-encompassing, universal
reality.
The relativization of rituals and beliefs as contingent sociocultural expres-
sions of an overarching universal whole renders all forms of practical knowledge
amenable to appropriation and inclusion within the diaspora repertoire. Whereas
repertorial insertion inevitably involves some form of modification to the beliefs
and practices appropriated, such adaptation is frequently rationalized as allow-
ing previously unappreciated aspects of transcendent reality to be comprehended
in a new light. Underwritten by its relativizing holism, the diaspora repertoire's
conspicuous appropriation and ongoing revision of beliefs and practices from a
wide range of sources and contexts engenders a practical-symbolic worldview
that is both hybrid and rapidly evolving. Perhaps of greater significance, the range
and mutability of the beliefs and practices at hand furnishes the ritual ayahuasca
consumer with an enhanced degree of choice and expression through which the
pursuit of absolute self-realization can be undertaken. Even more so, of course, as
the relativization of practical knowledge applies just as much to ayahuasca religi-
osity as it does to other worldviews and repertoires. In combination with afore-
mentioned characteristics, holism's relativization of belief and practice endows
the self with a versatile and mobile demeanor that empowers individuals to pursue
their absolute self-realization by whatever means and in whatever context they
adjudge to be most suitable for them, for now. Indeed, and not unsurprisingly, a
significant number of the world ayahuasca diaspora have established histories of
participation (consecutive and concurrent) in various nonmainstream spiritualities
and alternative repertoires.
The fifth, and final, exemplary characteristic of the diaspora repertoire is its
aestheticized character. The aesthcticized character of the diaspora repertoire
includes an experiential preoccupation manifesting most explicitly in the explora-
tory bent and expressive demeanor of its ritual participants. Grounded in the val-
orization of inner, subjective states, this experiential preoccupation is reinforced
through reference to other repertorial characteristics. The self's connaturality
with transcendent reality, for example, underwrites the belief that inner, subjec-
tive states (c.g., thoughts and emotions) are actually reflective of outer, external
realities. What the self thinks and feels is thereby of potential cosmic significance.
Of a principally inward nature, the exploratory bent of the aestheticized self is
mediated by a preoccupation with subjective experiences and emotions. Above
all, this involves the stimulation and nurturing of new and familiar affective states
through ritual regimes designed to elicit, sustain, or heighten particular feelings
and subjective conditions. The intensification of inner states associated with psy-
choactives and novel experiences helps explain the importance of power plants
such as ayahuasca, as well as the inveterate openness to, if not perennial pursuit
of, the avant-garde and exotic. The inward focus of mystical self-exploration is
32 Andrew Dawson
complemented by an outwardly expressive dynamic. On the one hand, the expres-
sivity of ritual practitioners reflects the relative esteem with which the new middle-
class regards the externalization of otherwise subjective experiences - so much so
that the expression of one's inner emotions is now viewed as an integral compo-
nent of a well-rounded personality. On the other hand, the outward expression of
inner states constitutes an important clement of sell-presentation and subjective
assertion. Because subjective states reflect objective realities, the outer expression
of inner conditions communicates far more than simple individual experience. It
is, then, less a case of "look what I'm experiencing" than "look what I'm capable
ofexperiencing."
By no means exhaustive of the material and significatory forces at play across
the world diaspora, the five principles explicated above are nevertheless wholly
exemplary of the varied practical-symbolic dynamics currently directing the
retraditionalization of ayahuasca religiosity. Embodying the overarching preoc-
cupations of the new-middle-class constituency preponderant within the world
ayahuasca diaspora, these practical-symbolic principles are reconfiguring tradi-
tional beliefs and practices in ways that reflect their typically modern character.
As such, this practical-symbolic reconfiguration of ritual ayahuasca consumption
embodies a range of processes and dynamics which owe more to the contemporary
landscape of modern urban- industrial society than they do to the Amazonian con-
text in which received ayahuasca traditions were first forged. The retraditionaliza-
tion underway across the world ayahuasca diaspora is, therefore, not random but
orchestrated by typically modern forces that impact received ayahuasca traditions
through the practical-symbolic reconfiguration wrought by new-middle-class
ritual practitioners. At the same time, this reconfiguration is effected in a manner
that is neither wholly self-conscious nor intentionally disrespectful of traditional
beliefs and practices. While many diaspora consumers of ayahuasca espouse a
deep-seated respect for traditional beliefs and practices, as members of the new
middle-class they view and occupy the world in ways that are markedly different
than earlier generations of ritual practitioners. Consequently, the overwhelming
majority of the world diaspora is imbued with practical-symbolic preoccupations
that are not straightforwardly compatible with established traditions with respect
to, for example, gendered distinctions, dietary restrictions, ritual disciplines, and
hierarchized authority structures. An unintended consequence of this practical-
symbolic incompatibility, retraditionalization unfolds as the new-middle-class
majority incrementally transforms traditional ayahuasca religiosity in ways that
render it increasingly conducive to meeting the needs and expectations of its typi-
cally modern, urban-industrial existence.
Conclusion
It is not sufficient to regard the process of detraditionalization underway across the
world ayahuasca diaspora as solely comprising the weakening ability of the past to
impress itself upon the beliefs, values, and practices of the present. Though con-
veying much of what is meant by the term detraditionalization, this "past-present"
Retraditionalization and the world ayahuasca diaspora 33
conceptualization does not adequately capture the concomitant process involv-
ing the weakening ability of collective modes of existence to impress themselves
upon the increasingly self-oriented behavior of the typically modem individual.
Such is the case because the past traditionally makes itself present through col-
lective contexts of socialization, such as the family, class, religion, and ethnicity.
Progressively weakened through the combined impact of the characteristically
modem dynamics mentioned above, collective modes of traditional determination
become increasingly inefficient at transmitting beliefs, values, and practices from
one generation to the next. Detraditionalization, then, comprises a weakening
impact of both the past upon the present and the collective upon the individual.
As such, the detraditionalization underway across the world ayahuasca diaspora
unfolds not simply through the contemporary reconfiguration of traditional beliefs
and practices, but also through the typically modem recalibration of the relation-
ship between the individual practitioner and collective contexts of ritual practice.
In effect, this recalibration of individual-collective dynamics shifts the traditional
balance of power (e.g., authority, commitment, determination, and priority) from
the corporate toward the subjective. Although the collective duties and commu-
nal obligations traditionally associated with ritual.ayahuasca consumption neither
disappear nor go unacknowledged within the world diaspora, they are neverthe-
less relativized through their ongoing subordination to the practical-symbolic pre-
occupations of the typically modern, self-oriented individual.
The recalibration of collective-individual dynamics implicated in the ongo-
ing processes of detraditionalization has been well treated by academics of reli-
gion since the mid-twentieth century (e.g., Berger, 1967; Luckmann, 1967; Roof,
1999; Flory & Miller, 2000). Regarding the retraditionalization of ayahuasca
religiosity within the world diaspora, however, Hervieu-Leger's reflections upon
the typically modern recalibration of collective-individual dynamics offers a very
useful way of concluding this chapter. They do so because they allow apprecia-
tion of the diversity of collective contexts through and within which the retradi-
tionalization of ritual ayahuasca consumption is being effected across the world
diaspora. Just as the processes of retraditionalization are shaped by the typically
modern dynamics and new-middle-class demographic of the world diaspora, so
too are they influenced by the respective corporate contexts in which the ritual
consumption of ayahuasca occurs. From the UDV, through Santo Daime, to the
trans- institutional arenas treated elsewhere in this book, the world ayahuasca dias-
pora comprises a variegated range of collective contexts that variously impact the
beliefs and practices of individual ritual participants.
Hervieu-Leger regards the recalibration of collective-individual dynamics
prevalent in the contemporary religious landscape as indicative of modernity's
"de institutionalization" oftraditional modes of authority. Treating religious world-
views as "regimes of validation," she defines deinstitutionalization as "the ero-
sion of institutional regimes of the validation of religious faith" and, in so doing,
offers a fourfold typology by way of schematizing this progressive erosion. Mov-
ing from the most collectivized "regime of validation" to its most individualized
manifestation, this typology respectively comprises "institutional," "communal,"
34 Andrew Dawson
"mutual," and "self-validating" contexts of rcligio-spiritua! practice (I-Iervieu-
Leger, 2001). According to Hervieu-Leger, the institutional regime of validation
focuses religious authority in constituted hierarchies "with the power to proclaim
the truth of faith" (p. 169). Individual members of the institution are thereby vali-
dated (i.e., affirmed, authenticated, commended) to the extent that their subjective
beliefs and practices are in "conformity" with the collective "norm" dictated by
institutional authorities. In contrast, communal regimes of validation invest "the
group" as a whole with the authority to determine collective "norms," "objec-
tives:' and "truths." Whereas official modes of leadership exist, their power is
qualified by an "egalitarianism" which entails that "leaders are always supposed
to express themselves in the name of the whole group: they are the voice of the
group" (p. 170). The beliefs and practices of individual community members are
thereby validated relative to their "coherence" with "the homogeneity of truths"
embodied in a corporate "code of communal faith."
Further diffusing traditional religious authority from its customarily collec-
tivized institutional structures, the regime of mutual validation relies upon the
processes of "intersubjective interaction" to affirm the individual beliefs and
practices of group members. According to Hervicu-Leger (200]), preoccupations
with the subjective spiritual "search," "personal appropriation of meaning," and
"accepted acknowledgment of differences" stand to the fore, while notions of
hierarchical authority, "norms of belief," and communal determination are relativ-
ized. Although personal concerns and experiences may well be validated through
their "convergence" with collective beliefs and practices, they do so only with
the caveat that "there is no 'true faith' but that which is personally appropriated"
(p. 170). The fourth, and most individualized of Hervieu-Legers typical regimes
of validation, that of self-validation, requires all forms of collective affirmation
and communal authentication to "vanish." Within self-validating regimes, "it is in
individuals themselves, in the subjective certitude of possessing the truth, that the
confirmation of the truth of faith is found" (p. 170). Such is the certainty invested
in individual beliefs and practices that all other modes of validation (i.e., institu-
tional authority, communal identity, and mutual affirmation) are deemed surplus
to subjective requirements (Hervieu-Leger, 2001, pp. 165-174).
The variety of ritual repertoires existing across the world ayahuasca dias-
pora entails that each of Hcrvieu-Leger's typical "regimes of validation" may
be found in one region or another of Australasia, Europe, and North and South
America. As this repertorial variegation exists also within specific ayahuasca tra-
ditions like Santo Daime and the UDV, however, it would be unduly reductive
to suggest that any single regime of validation applies entirely to relatively large
organizations such as these. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that the UDV exhibits
a range of organizational characteristics that indicate a strong tendency toward
Hcrvieu-Legers most conservative type, the "institutional regime of validation"
(Melo, 20 10, and Chapter 2 in this book). At the same time, and of a more var-
ied nature still, the organizational dynamics manifested by the diaspora Santo
Daime movement suggest strong tendencies toward the second ("communal") and
third ("mutual") types outlined above (Dawson, 2013). Adding further diversity
Retraditionalizaiion and the world ayahuasca diaspora 35
to the regimes of validation at play across the world diaspora, the aforementioned
trans-institutional contexts of ritual ayahuasca consumption primarily exhibit
both "mutual" and "self-validating" tendencies (Labate & Cavnar, 2014; Gearin,
Chapter 6 in this book).
Irrespective of the particular regime of validation in force, the most relevant
point here pertains to the varied marmer in which the world ayahuasca diaspora
mediates the processes of retraditionalization framed by modernity and wrought
by the new middle-class. As to be expected, for example, the "institutional" ten-
dency prcvalent in the UDV impacts both the reconfiguration of received tradi-
tions and the recalibration of collective-individual dynamics in ways different
than the predominantly "communal" and "mutual" tendencies typical of Santo
Daime. Likewise, the typological tendencies prevalent within Santo Daime shape
the processes of retraditionalization in a manner that varies from those opera-
tive within trans-institutional contexts of a chiefly "mutual" or "self-validating"
tendency.
Whatever its organizational context, however, recognition of the retradition-
alization underway across the world diaspora should neither negate nor under-
mine the esteem in which new-middle-class adepts hold the beliefs and practices
associated with traditional modes of ritual ayahuasca consumption. For the over-
whelming majority of diaspora practitioners, respect for traditional beliefs and
practices plays a vital significatory role in valorizing contemporary ritual reper-
toires through their purported "continuity with a suitable historic past" (Hobs-
bawrn, 1983a, p. I). Given their valorizing significance, if such traditions did not
exist, they would have to be invented.
Note
Professor of ModernReligion at Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. Email: andrew.
dawson@lancasteLac.uk
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2 Between ecstasy and reason
A symbolic interpretation of
UDV trance

Rosa Virginia Melo'

Translated to English by Matthew Meyer

Introduction
The following discussion takes up symbolic claborations of myth and ritual as
expressive channels for institutional meanings activated by the psychoactive sacra-
ment used in the Uniao do Vegetal (UDV), an ayahuasca religion born in Brazilian
Arnazonia. Called vegetal or hoasca, the decoction is prepared with the leaf of
Psychotria viridis and the vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which contain, respectively,
the alkaloid dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and the beta-carbolines harmine, harma-
line, and tetrahydroharmine. The vine's alkaloids inhibit the action of monoamine
oxidase (MAO) produced in the human organism, which prevents the psychoac-
tive effects of the leaf's DMT when it is taken orally. Thus, both substances are
active constituents in the human body.
I take the definition of the group's use of the drink as an elaboration central
to the religion's theology, which is based on the category of burracheira (the
desired effect of the drink), and whose teachings effect a linkage of archaic and
modern cosmologies. I emphasize this movement's efficacy in attracting middle-
class adherents, the social segment in which religiosity is most notably expanding.
Known as a "religion of the forest," the UDV has, in its historical formation, a
hybrid constitution among three sociocultural spaces that have contributed to the
construction of its form of trance: Amazonian rubber camps, Porto Velho (capital
of Rondonia state), and Brazil's center-south region. In the early 1970s, during the
military dictatorship, middle-class youths from Christian families - often identi-
fied with the counterculture, the thcater, leftist political movements, backpackers,
students, and so on -left Sao Paulo and Brasilia in search of unusual experiences,
embarking on journeys, described in adventurous tones, to the Brazilian states
of Acre and Rondonia to try the ancient tea (Lodi, 2004). Along with their bags,
they brought back tales oftransformative experiences, the fruit of the spirituality
born from the call of a mysterious drink. These youths - today in their fifties and
sixties - hold, along with the individuals "from the origins" (the "caboclos"? from
Amazonia), the highest offices within the UDV hierarchy.
The founders of the UDV centers in Brazil's major cities belong to a socio-
economic segment different from the one that was gathered in Acre and Ron-
donia during the period in question; one was formed primarily of semiliterate
40 Rosa Virginia Melo
individuals, ex-rubber tappers who were experiencing rapid transformation ofthe
rustic culture in which they lived.
The meeting of distinct social classes, with the economically more powerful
class placing itself under the indoctrination of the less favored one. was a union
that bridged the gap between groups with conflicting interests. The indoctrinating
caboclos, with their forest experience, exercised a fascination on the young travel-
lers in the 19705 who, in an inversion of Brazilian social structure, viewed them
as niestres. The group's self-representation turned on three fundamental axes: a
valorization of nature and of the rural world, expressed in the "caboclo culture" of
the "mestres from the origin" - the contemporaries of the founder - performatized
in ecological mysticism and "caboclo simplicity": a legalistic internal organiza-
tion based on the bureaucratic logic of the state, which provided a positive model
ofroutinized and rationalized action (Weber, 1999); and forms of communication
that interpellated the subject by means of its interiority through the centrality of
"self-knowledge" as a spiritual and moral goal of the adept.
The production of UDV trance (the burracheira; takes place through a pro-
cess of rein vent ion and rearticulation of meanings that frequently blur boundaries
when the goal is to compose a legitimated whole (Montcro, 1994). The present
discussion aims to analyze the productive tension arising from the multiple inher-
itances lending meaning to the use of ayahuasca in this group, constituted through
resonances among various systems and codes (Carneiro da Cunha, 1998).
The UDV was officially founded in 1961, in the Sunta rubber camp on the
Bolivian border with the state of Rond6nia in northern Brazil. The religious jour-
ney of Jose Gabriel includes the manipulation of extraordinary forces (Fabiano,
2012), and service as an ogi: [a close assistant of the leader - trans.] in an Afro-
Brazilian terreiro (Brissac, 1999) and at a mesa de cura [a form of spiritual heal-
ing seance - trans.] in the rubber camp, where he incorporated entities (Goulart,
2004). The UDV's founding represents a break with Garicl's Afro-Indian-Brazilian
past and the establishment of a form of trance ccntcrcd on his messianic figure.
I believe that the hybridism between magical and religious knowledge is organ-
ized hierarchically, depending on the context, between the elements of forest
mystique and a bureaucratized, ascetic morality (Goulart, 2004), an argument to
which I will return after description and analysis of the ritual. In what follows,
I invert the canonical logic of anthropology, where the myth comes before the
ritual, and, in order to facilitate symbolic interpretation of the burracheira, I use
the capillarity between the two in a model description of UDV ritual.
The ritual and the myth
Data for the analysis were collected in ethnographic fieldwork, conducted between
2006 and 2008, that was the basis for my doctoral thesis.' The ritual form used
as a reference is that of the "scale sessions,"! which are held on the first and third
Saturday of every month in each "nucleus" or administrati ve unit, as the space for
religious activities is known. The "vegetal hall" [saIao do vegetal] is illuminated
by various electric lights, which, with the generally light-colored floor and walls,
A symbolic interpretation of UD V trance 41
creates an environment similar to that of an auditorium, where a ritual scene simi-
lar to an assembly takes place.
The ritual scene is composed of disciples dressed in forest-green shirts with
distinction embroidered upon fhe left pocket, a sign of the "place" of each one in
the hierarchical structure. Men wear white pants, and women wear orange pants
or skirts, all of them with immaculately white socks and shoes. The green, yellow,
blue, and white colors of the uniform, according to a founding mestre, clearly
refer to the colors of the Brazilian flag. In its public discourse, fhe UDV empha-
sizes patriotism and respect for authority, and on commemorative dates, the flag
is hoisted to the sound of the UDV anthem.
The ritual scene is arrayed around a table adorned with an arch at one of its
heads, from which the mestre who is "conducting the session" speaks. On the arch
is written DIVINE STAR UDV UNIVERSAL; the one who conducts the session
speaks beneath it - a place conferred upon disciples in the "Instructive session"
who are able to connect to the force that comes from the heights (the "power"
[poder]) and to transmit it in words, opening a channel for the "light that orients,
comes from God, and is for all." Once the session is open, whether the disciple
is male or female,' beneath the arch he or she is called "mestre" and referred to,
invariably, wifh masculine pronouns. To be chosen to "direct" [dirigir] a session is
to be in a position where the disciple has privileged access to the "light and force"
[a luz e aforr;a] of the spiritual guide. A firm and loving performance is expected,
with skillful control of one's thoughts during the burracheira, knowledge of the
doctrine, choice of the correct words in the transmission of teachings, willingness
to answer questions posed by members, and knowing what can and cannot be said.
Behind the arch on fhe table, a line of chairs abutting the wall is occupied by
members with distinct spiritual responsibility, nearly always destined for "grad-
uated" [graduados] members (Instructive Corps, Counsel Corps, and Cadre of
Mestresi, who constitute a kind of "connecting wire" [fio de ligar;ao], an invisible
current supporting fhe "progress offhe session" [andamento da sessao].
The chairs around the table are filled by members who are not implicated in the
support provided by the "wire" behind fhe arch, but they also confer distinction.
It is expected that disciples who are invited or who obtain penmission to sit there
know how to behave themselves appropriately. The other chairs in the hall may be
used by members of any hierarchical grade and by "visitors."
At precisely 8:00 in the evening, the Assistant mestre announces, in a firm
voice, "All stand to receive the vegetal." It is the Assistant's responsibility to
attend to the smallest details of fhe movements of those present to guarantee the
due progress of fhe session, a function considered fundamental to the 'activity of
the mestre Dirigente (Directing mestre).
The vegetal is distributed in a hierarchically organized line from the mestres
to any "visitors." The disciple is advised to drink fhe tea with open eyes. At fhe
sessiies de escala, ingestion follows the same order as distribution, beginning wifh
fhose who make up the "Instructive" corps. The cup is held in the right hand, at
shoulder height, and an invocation is said: "May God guide us on the path oflight,
forever and always, amen Jesus." After this, the "others" drink: that is, the Cadre of
42 Rosa Virginia Melo
Members [Quadro de Sacios]6 and nonmembers, using the same invocation. Fol-
lowing the "distribution of the vegetal," a member selected beforehand announces:
"My brothers, I ask your attention to a set ofdocuments that govern the Uniiio do
Vegetal," and begins reading passages from the organization's documents, to be
followed by another, higher up in the group's structure, who gives an "explanation"
of what is read. This phase lasts, on average, about 25 minutes, and provides guid-
ance both within and outside of the session.
The text that is read excerpts the UDV's Statutes and Articles of Incorporation
[0 Estatuto e 0 Regimcnto Intemoi. The reading in session underlines aspects of
the relations among members, and between them and the institution, as well as
some key points of cosmology related to the niestre and to the "mysteries" of the
drink. Following the reading and explanation of the documents - an obligatory
part of the sessiio de escala - absolute silence reigns in the hall, broken only by
the voice of the session leader, who intones the series of "opening chamadas" dur-
ing a period of about IS minutes, depending on the length of silence between one
chamada and the next. Chamadas are devotional chants, perfonncd a cappella,
similar to those used to invoke the presence of spiritual beings in Afro-Indian-
Brazilian sects such as Pajelanca Cabocla (Galvao, 1952), Bahian Candomble
(Bastide, 1958), Amazonian Mesinha de cura (Gabriel, 1980), and Northeastern
Jurema (Assuncao, 2006).
The sequence of chaniadas begins with Sombreia, Estrondou no Barra, and
Minguarana. The Chamada do Sombreia tells of the "shadow" that comes with
the "light," a reference to the negative side of being revealed by the divine light.
Estrondou na Barra evokes the force of the mythic figure Tiuaco, "the great king
in the hall of the vegetal," marshal of King Inca, consubstantialized in the mariri
vine. Minguarana is divine nature, which, through the appeal of the session's
guiding ntestre. grants the power to "see" the "mysteries" to those who have
not yet attained the condition to "enter." Mestre Gabriel, in telling the Story of
Hoasca, explains this chamada. He explains that when he performs it, he is not
calling [chamando]' but rather teaching "how to call when it is needed, teaching
those who do not yet have this right" how to access it at the source. In the midst of
this invocation, one hears a series of verses that mention Jesus and the Most Holy
Mother covering all with her mantle, and, lastly, the "oratory" is opened "with the
Divine Holy Spirit."
The session leader stands and, walking counterclockwise (the "direction of the
force"), asks those closest to the table: "How are you, brother (sister)? Is there
light" Is there burracheira:" The effect of the series of questions, answered posi-
tively, is to "turn on the force." "I now ask those whom I have not yet asked: Is
there light'! Is there burracheira'i" The mestre sits once more and performs the
Chaniada do Caiano, a reference to the "first hoasqueiro" invoked to illuminate
his "caianinhos" ["little Caianos"] and give them "degree" [grem], a hierarchical
category expressing a member's evolution throngh spiritual principles and levels
of status. Mestre Caiano is called to guide those present, and to influence the
mestre conducting the session, who, by means of the extraordinary contact repre-
sented by the arch on the table, is able to see what appears on the "spiritual plane."
A symbolic interpretation ofUDV trance 43
The next chamada reflects a particular hierarchical principle with respect to
the others, indicating its importance: the Chamada da Uniiio must be done by the
Representative of the nucleus, whether he is leading or not, except when the ses-
sion is conducted by a mestre superior" to him. This is the chamada of the union of
the mariri and the chacrona-the vine and leafthat compose the sacred tea-with
the mariri as the "king of force" and the chacrona "queen of light." The initial
phase ofthe session concludes with the chamada of Guarniciio ["Garrison"]. The
first verse suggests recognition and solicitation: "My first mestre is God, the sec-
ond is Solomon, author of all science, give us thy protection [guarnir;ao]."
The opening chamadas are obligatory, and as the session proceeds, others are
"done" [feitas]. The sequence is not random: "it guides the disciple within the
session," teaching the path of spirituality, understood as a way to access one's
"evolution" [evolur;ao], a term that points to Kardecist cycles of reincarnation,
distinguished from Hindu karma by its correspondence to the principles of Chris-
tian morality.
The session's rhythm grows in effervescence under the influence of the a cap-
pella canticles and their imagetic elaborations of enchanted nature, a valued
aspect of members' experience, and one that should be complemented, according
to doctrine, by normative suppositions regarding consciousness and behavior, It
is the adept's duty to seek the "science of the self' [a ciencia de si] and not an
encounter with the spirits of others, incarnated or disincarnated. This self-centered
exhortation, however, for all its frequency in ritual, does not elide the value of the
chamadas that activate the "spiritual battalion" of the mestre - the mythic figures
whose help is sought in the course of the session because of their curative proper-
ties (Brissac, 1999; Goulart, 2004).
Instrumental music played on the sound system joins other chamadas in fill-
ing out the ritual sequence, in which auditory phenomena are capable of trans-
formation into myriad images and unforeseeable scenes. The exuberant esthetic
of the chamadas contrasts with the subsequent phase, expressed in pedagogical
language, relating to the moral teachings that permeate the play of question-and-
answer in the sessions.
Around 9:00 p.m., the mestre Dirigente announces that the session is open to
whomever would like "to call [that is, perform a chamada], to speak, to ask, just
ask permission." Without delay comes a voice:
"Mestre?"
"Yes. "
"Sir, will you permit me to ask a question?"
"Yes, sir (madam). You may ask."
The question must be asked standing up, and afterward, one returns to the
initial position. Topics may include the chamadas performed, and, if a "Story"
[Historia] is told, questions should prioritize its exegesis. Existential ques-
tions, dear to the principles of the doutrina, are frequently heard. Ora] expres-
sion is expected to be straightforward and simple. Word choice in the hall is very
44 Rosa Virginia Melo
important, demonstrating one's knowledge of the power that sound-images have,
and the care that must therefore be paid to it. In the "time ofthe burracheira," "the
word frees" and the mind speaks from within, from the heart - in contrast to the
"ego," a term that designates behavior that is inauthentic to the human essence, a
spurious sentiment brought about by error.
The use of undesirable forms of speech is corrected by the leader, and the ques-
tion must be rephrased, as the "burracheira is guided by the word," according to
doctrine. Protecting oneself and others is the role of everyone under "the light and
force of the vegetal" and a value that demands emphasis on the disciple's verbal
apprenticeship. The disciple must "examine" words that are charged with "mys-
tery" [misterio] to understand their true meaning. The symbolic system attributes
concreteness to sound-images, transforming them in action; be it the rationalized
word of institutional documents or the enchanted word of the chamadas, the act
of verbal expression is a potentializing force in the elaboration of ritual (Munn,
1973; Leenhardt, 1979; Tambiah, 1985).
"Mes tre, what is obedience?" is a recurrent question, around which answers
tend toward the following counsel: in life, a person is always obeying something;
what is important is knowing what (or whom) one is obeying. On thc one side is
imperfection, which brings pain and suffering, and on the other is the reward that
comes from the "straight path."
The burracheira presents itself to the disciple as a privileged channel in the
process of the "spiritual journey," where one is obligated to self-reflection. To see
oneself, according to doctrine, the person should begin with the family circle and
relations of friendship, The ideological triad "work, family, and religion" points to
solid affective links as a precondition for one's development in the world.
Various explanations exist for the lack of burracheira and the appropriate steps
for a mem bel' to take in this situation. In any case, more concentration in the ses-
sion is advised, as well as quieting the mind to be sensitive to the vegetal, and
having more confidence in the ntestre. The absence of burracheira is also play-
fully attributed to those with "thick hides," whose layers of hurt, resentment, and
other negative feelings impede the work of interior "examination" facilitated by
the vegetal. For them, repeated sessions may be needed for the work of the mestre
in the person's consciousness to be carried out, little by little.
I have heard niestres, imbued with the simplicity and clarity inherited from the
mestres "from the origin," say during a session that disciples with a "thick shell"
should drink more, that the quantity should be greater, "you shouldn't be afraid."
I have also heard from adcpts that the absence of burracheira indicates a lack of
"worthiness" [lIlerecimento], and that for this reason, the mestre did not offer the
"strange force."
In sessions, the expression "at the niestre's discretion" ["0 criteria do mestre"]
is sometimes appropriated to account for the absence of burracheira, since, if the
mestre "has wisdom," is "in the tea," if "he gives what a person deserves and can
withstand," as adepts say,this would explain thc will ofthe founder in denying bur-
racheira to those who, out of personal resistance, do not allow seIf-examination.
Othcr times, the lack of burrachelra is an illusion on the part of one who, out of
A symbolic interpretation of UDV trance 45
anticipation to see a prior experience repeated, lacks the sensitivity to perceive
what is, at that very moment, being "reached" [alcan9ado].
On occasions of the "high time of burracheira" in the hall, when the leader
spurred the audience to participate, I heard, "Let's go, my brothers, let us ask ...
we are the ones who make the session ... the grade of the session is our respon-
sibility.". A thematic link should run through questions posed during the session,
since, with the exception of superficial queries that are answered quickly (with
mention of their impropriety, at times), it is a time of indoctrination. Chamadas
are invoked in answer, or to add to or enrich an explanation, whether dealing with
the mythic or everyday frame. The mestre may perform them himself, or he may
ask someone to do it; there are also those who ask permission to "do a chamada."
which should be followed by several seconds of silence, as the "force" continues
"circulating through the hall of the vegetal."
If the subject under consideration peters out, other lines of questioning become
possible, and in the interval, the Directing mestre may choose to play smoothly
melodious music. Pop songs authorized for play in the session are selected based
on the "mystery of the word," are usually in Portuguese, and carry positive exis-
tential messages and beautiful imagery.
Frequently, the mestre refuses to answer a question about chamadas or historias
presented in the session, explaining that such a topic can only be discussed in an
Instructive session owing to the care necessary with the "memory," a term ofinitia-
tory significance referring to the remembering of the spirit's journey in the world
under the mestre's teachings, and leading to "knowledge of oneself." The disciple
must await the next "degree session" (the Instructive session), or, in the case of
the Cadre of Members, keep "examining" until arrival at the "place" to achieve
the answer.
Illusion, vice, mistake, and error are common themes of questions and of
testimonies - both volunteered and solicited by the mestre - as are patience, con-
fidence, work, and above all, family. To "become better" is to "evolve spiritually,"
which is possible through searching one's "consciousness," the "science of
oneself"
According to the UDV's "Fundamentals and Objectives," "The tea facilitates
mental interiorization, producing clarity of consciousness and heightening per-
ception" (Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal [CEBUDV], 1989, p. 30).
The constant search for "clarity" demonstrates the desire to "evolve" and to "bet-
ter" oneself, a personal decision that is highly valued, and awakened and ampli-
fied by the burracheira. The intention of the disciple is, ideally, to want to know,
to want to see "reality" - a constant in testimonies of those who transformed
themselves through "the teachings of the mestre,"
Knowledge of oneself is spiritual knowledge, and the affect is primordial, inte-
grating the being in the world in relationship to everything that is. The weight and
intensity of contact with the elements of the cosmos make steadfastness of intent
and action indispensable. "For the Union, what is right is right, and what is wrong
is wrong; what is right cannot be wrong" (A Palavra do Mestre, n.d, [a CD record-
ing circulated among members D. The doctrine exhorts "steadfastness of thought"
46 Rosa Virginia Melo
[finneza 110 pensamentoi, underlining the importance of lessening doubt through
acquaintance with the good and the bad.
Discussion of administrative issues begins the closing of the session. The
appointed secretary stands at the side of the table and reads a text, written in
bureaucratic language, relating the center 's announcements and communicating
occasional warnings, demotions, suspensions, or the reassignment of members to
their "place" in the hierarchy.
The practical and administrative matters raised by the organization's officials
continue as the organizers of the activities announce the "events" [prolllo,'oes]
to be held at the center as a way to raise funds for the administrative unit: there
are luncheons, book clubs, expositions, workshops, guided tours, etc. Tasks to
be done around the grounds of the nucleus, or outside it, are discussed in order
to prioritize what is most urgent; once this is done, volunteer labor is requested.
Around 11:30 p.m., the conclusion begins with the announcement that the time
has come for all to sit up, shake their heads, and open their eyes, as it is time to
"bid the force farewell." At that point, the session leader walks clockwise through
the hall, opposing the direction of the "force," and asks, addressing one of those
questioned before:
"How is the brother (sister)? How was the burracheira?"
"Well, thank God" and "It was good" are the ritual responses.
Then the leader says: "All those whom 1 didn't ask, I ask now: How was the bur-
racheira?" and the disciples respond, "It was good," in a sequence that "bids fare-
well to the force," with Minguarana carrying away the visions and the burracheira.
The disciple who offered explanations earlier announces the levying of the
"tithe" [dizimo], an unspecified sum to be paid by those who vomited in the hall,
and which is meant to cover the cost of buying cleaning supplies, which is not
included in the monthly dues. Some disciples arise and deposit small amounts of
money in the container on the table. There follows an interval of several minutes
during which those assigned to snack duty begin to work; people get up, converse,
exchange hugs, sit in others' chairs, stand around, laugh, cry, go to the bathroom,
or simply stay in their places.
At five minutes before midnight, a bell is heard, and all return to their seats,
assuming a posture of respectful silence. The chamada "Stroke of Midnight"
["Ponto da Meia Noite"] is intoned, highlighting the passage of time and the
arrival of a new day. Some announcements may still be made at this time, fol-
lowing which the mestre closes the ritual [fecha 0 oratorio] with the Divine Holy
Spirit, and a slow and marked "A-Deus" [lit., "to God"] ends the session.
The myth
The History of Hoasea is held to be the story that tells what is most important to the
doctrine, and becoming familiar with this and other narratives of the UDV moti-
vates members self-identified as ones who "want to know the origin of things."
A symbolic interpretation of UD V trance 47
The-male conselheiro, to obtain the "degree of mestre" enters an "application";
that is, he submits himself to evaluation of his personal and institutional conduct,
and, if approved, advances to the final phase, reciting the History of Hoasca in a
session. If the ritual performance is successful, he receives a shirt with the star
embroidered on the breast at a subsequent session. In addition to the History of
Hoasca, a mestre must have command of certain liturgical procedures, such as
"opening" and "closing" a session, but it is the performance of the narrative about
the origins of vegetal and the reincarnations of the mestre that will determine the
ascension of the conselheiro to the degree of mestre.
In interviews and informal conversations, I suspended emphasis on the anthro-
pological value of the myth, scrutinizing instead the reception of the ritual asser-
tion of its historicity, and observed various perspectives. I saw how affirmations
lacking what modem science defines as "objective truth" were perceived in a
group of bureaucrats, journalists, therapists, academics, doctors - in short, among
members of the "affluent middle-class" of the nucleus where I focused my work,
in the Federal District, the site of Brazil's capital, Brasilia.
The variety of informants' positions with respect to the historicity ofthe myth is
not ritually shared, and may be summarized as follows: there are those dedicated
to confirming the historicity of the tale, propounding other, unofficial temporal
registers; most commonly, they described themselves as "examining" the ques-
tion. For others, if the story is important because it teaches values, its verifiability
is irrelevant. For a smaller group, the History of Hoasca is a myth, and Mestre
Gabriel a great shaman, able to synthesize Brazilian religiosity.
The UDV origin myth narrates the journey ofthe tea on earth, linking it intrin-
sically with the history of the spiritual journey of the founder, Mestre Gabriel. It
is told at commemorative sessions (open to visitors), or at the discretion of the
niestre who leads the session. It was recorded in Mestre Gabriel's own voice," and
it is divided into four parts interspersed with passages from some of the open-
ing chamadas, which tell the stories of figures from the UDV cosmology and
generally feature reciprocal transformations between the spirits of humans and
nonhumans.
*
"Before the universal deluge," there was a King called Inca, who governed wisely,
thanks to the counsel of his mysterious Counselor Hoasca, who knew all. One
day, Hoasca died, and the King, stricken with grief, buried her. From Hoasca's
grave was born a tree that the King reckoned was Hoasca, and thus he called it.
He made a tea from the leaves of the tree, and gave it to his marshal; Tiuaco, in
an effort to help the latter discover the secrets of the Counselor. Feeling the pres-
ence of Hoasca, Tiuaco succumbed and died. He was buried next to the King's
CounseJor, from whence grew a vine. The kingdom, after the King's death, grew
deserted.
Many years passed, and Solomon, King of Science, heard the story of King Inca
and his Counselor, and went, along with his vassal, Caiano, to find the graves.
He found the tree and vine growing there, and recognized them as Hoasca and
48 Rosa Virginia Melo
Tiuaco. Solomon announced the vegetal union [uniao do vegetal] and exclaimed,
"The mariti will give us strength, and the chacrona will give us light."
Solomon taught Caiano the mysteries of divine nature. He made a tea from
the plants and, intoning magisterial words asking that he encounter the pow-
ers of Hoasca, he offered it to Caiano. Caiano drank the vegetal, felt the force
of Hoasca come near, began to suffocate and, following Solomon's teachings,
"called" rchamoll] for Tiuaco, "the great king in the hall of vegetal." Caiano also
learned the secrets of Divine Nature, gaining the ability to open the enchantments
of Minguarana to him, but only through the power of the request. Thus Caiano
became "the first hoasqueiro"
Ages later, the spirit of Caiano. which is the same as that of King Inca, returned
to Peru with the name lagora ["What Now"], whom all call on in times of need.
Iagora is an indigenous emperor born after Christ, and who "calls" on Jesus
and the Virgin of Conception. Known as King Inca because he told the story
of King Inca and his Counselor Hoasca, Iagora was beheaded by disciples who
rebelled and went out in the world, originating the "mestres of curiosity," who
lack "knowledge."
The return of the spirit in its fourth incarnation happened in Bahia, and Jose
Gabriel, a simple man ofthe people living in an Amazonian rubber camp, "remem-
bers" his "mission": to "balance the vegetal." lIe becomes tnestre, opens "the
oratory with the Divine Holy Spirit," and explains that oratory is to pray [ol'al'],
to explain, to say what is necessary. He teaches that, when we need to, we call:
"I call Caiano, I call burracheira" Gabrielteaches, but he doesn't call, because
"Caiano am I, the burracheira am I ..." At the end of the narrative is heard, in
the mestre's voice, "Burracheira means strange force; that is why [ do not have
burracheira ... because I am the burracheira and nothing is strange to me ..."
An interpretation of the myth
We see that Hoasca and Tiuaco exist prior to the components of the drink. This
means that the leaf and vine are generated by spiritual beings, updating the cos-
mological principle of the spirit's precminence over matter. The tea called veg-
etal, as a fount of knowledge, configures successive transformations and unions:
the esoteric mystery of Hoasca's feminine wisdom transmuted by the leaf of the
chacrona, from which comes the "light"; and the marshal Tiuaco, a mixture of
indigenous knowledge fused with the military authority of a marshal, transmuted
by the mariri vine, source of the "force."
The Counselor and the Marshal symbolize the chemistry of the drink's com-
ponents: I-loasca gave life to the leaf responsible for the visionary effect which,
according to doctrine, is the feminine principle, the "light"; Tiuaco is translated
as the masculine principle, the "force." Tiuaco is a figure with a double function,
as his presence is prerequisite to the action of Ho asea's power, in addition to con-
tributing his "force" to it- a metaphor for the betacarbolinic alkaloid of the vine,
responsible for the intense effect "on the matter" [na materiai, among them, the
"purge" of the tea, symbolized as "cleaning."
A symbolic interpretation of UDV trance 49
According to the myth's logic, when the vegetal is prepared, the spiritual
components of the leaf and vine receive meanings given by Solomon, demiurge
and catalyzer, as "Solomon is the key to the Union," since the vegetal implies
something beyond the "light and force" - namely, the "wisdom" [sabedoria] and
"knowledge" [conhecirnento] tied to it. Therefore, beyond mere chemistry or pure
experience, the normative precepts given to Caiano by Solomon are fundamental,
and internally differentiate the UDV from that which is called "curiosity": incom-
plete knowledge, external to the institution. The term "curious" [curiosas] arises
among the caboclos of the Lower Amazon as a reference to the work of midwives,
who were said to know more than the doctors, "due in part to a special knowledge
that most of the curiosas believe they have" (Galvao, 1952, p. II6). "Curiosity,"
like magic, can be understood as a category that indicates the power to manipulate
forces not articulated in a systematized order, being first a power generated by
anarchic means.
In its third incarnation, the mestre's spirit returns to Peru as the King Iagora, an
Amerindian, yet part of the Christian conquest, as he is imbued with the logic that
he inserts in the chamada "Minguarana" in reference to the Virgin of Conception
and to Jesus. Iagora is killed by his subjects, who break the unity, "creating force"
instead offollowing the "creative force" - a reference to the "curious," followers of
another spirituality, distant from the "high spiritism" with which the brotherhood
identifies. Internally, "high spiritism'' is identified as "auto-spiritism,' generator of
"self-knowledge" and not related to the "low spiritism" used in religious discourse
as a category of accusation (Maggie, 1977; Ortiz, 1978; Giumbelli, 1997).
"Curiosity" is perhaps the clearest of the conflicts projected on the myth, and
is opposed to the "Science of Solomon," generating classificatory effects between
the institution and groups not sharing a "knowledge" defined by an essence of the
social as a form of opposition to the profane (Douglas, 1986), an "ungoverned use
of vegetal." The fourth incarnation of King Inca takes place in Bahia, and Jose
Gabrie l comes along with the mission of "balancing" the vegetal. Gabriel says,
in the origin narrative, "I came to open the oratory with the Divine Holy Spirit,"
emphasizing the Christian quality of his mission and the importance of orality
in transmitting divine knowledge. The Christianization of this magical-religious
practice may have been influenced by the strong presence of Pentecostal evange-
lizing missions on the border with Bolivia (Vilaca, 2002), where Gabriellived in
the 1940s and 1950s.
King Inca, Caiano, Iagora, and Gabriel are aspects ["destacamentos"] of the
same spirit, but the latter three are distinct from the first because they drank the
vegetal and became mestres. While King Inca depended on the counsel of Hoasca,
the other aspects of this spirit came, thanks to Solomon, to have direct access to
the source of knowledge, exercising a power over it. The History of Ho asea ends
with the affirmation that Gabriel himself is the burracheira. There we can see
that mestre and burracheira have a metonymic relationship that was not present
with Caiano and 1agora. In this revelation, the powers of the vegetal depend upon
the presence of the mestre's spirit in the tea - a spirit that is consubstantializcd in
various entities.
50 Rosa Virginia Melo
The identification of Solomon as the King of Science amongst rubber-tapper
ayahuasqueiros in Brazilian Amazonia is also recognized in Santo Daime, in the
form of a star. In Brazil, King Solomon is a well-known entity in the giras of Cati-
mbo, the Northeastern Jurema (Assuncao, 2006), constituting an element com-
mon to both Afro-Indian-Brazilian mediumistic trance and to the urban matrices
of Brazilian ayahuasca use. Native discourse seems to associate King Solomon
with Masonic tradition, a link sometimes replicated in academic work (Goulart,
2004). However, according to his contemporaries, Mestre Gabriel "worked" [Ira-
balhava] at mediumistic consultations in the rubber camps, and in Porto Velho
he was oga at the terreiro of Chica Macaxeira, precursor of the Afro-Brazilian
tradition of Tambor de Mina in the capital of Rondonia, in northern Brazil (Bris-
sac, (999).
The penetration ofthe Biblical king in mediumistic sects, which do not hold the
Christians' sacred book as canonical, can be illustrated by the book of Solomon,
which features Babylonian and Chaldean magic, demonstrating Solomon's non-
Christian wisdom (Sachs, 1988), a quality that Le Goff (1999) finds in records
regarding this king of the Jews. Thus, the author ofthrce Biblical texts - Ecclesi-
astes, Song of Songs, and Wisdom - partakes, fundamentally, ofthe vast religious
content that Jose Gabriel elaborated in forming the UDY.
Key passages for understanding the UDV myth can be found in the Bible, which
offer clues as to the kind of relationship between Solomon and Hoasca, the myste-
rious Counsclor of King Inca. At the end of Song of Songs, two verses figure as an
apology: a man rejoices because he has a grape vine (his wife) that is worth more
than the best vineyard of Solomon (Song of Songs 8: 11-12), an allegorical form
for knowledge anthropomorphized as a woman. In the Bible (Wisdom 7: 14), that
which Solomon obtained from the feminine-spirit-turned-wife-and- counselor
takes us to that which Hoasca possessed, tracing a parallel between both feminine
entities as sources for producing intoxicating liquids. Hoasca is the principle of
knowledge - its anthropomorphization - as well as the wife of Solomon, offered
to him by God. King Inca did not have the privilege of possessing his counselor;
she was another, apart from him.
With the possession of feminine figures by Solomon in both myths, king and
wisdom hecome a single thing; as the King of Science says, "I went ahout seeking
how to take her to me" (Wisdom 8: 18). This "knowledge" that makes him king
ineludes religion and state, but it has mystique at its source - that is, the mysteries
of nature as an expression of Law, of Wisdom, and of Justice.
King Inca owes the power to govern with wisdom to the "knowledge" of
Hoasca, the mysterious female namesake of the sacramental object. Recalling
Weber (1946), for whom the kingdom is a consequence of charismatic heroism,
extraordinary knowledge resides in Hoasca, which makes the King "victorious."
In the UDV, the religious power of Solomon transmits an instituted order that
seems to say that it falls to men to complete the knowledge begun by women,
which suggests an inextricable, yet hierarchical, relationship I" between Nature
and Knowledge. Thus, the transfer of Hoasca's powers and mysteries is exclu-
sively to beings of the masculine sex, who alone may reach the "degree" of mestre
A symbolic interpretation of UDV trance 51
in the UDY. The veridical quality of the myth justifies the exclusion of women
fr~m the "degree of mestre" along with their valued function as counselor in sup-
port ofthe mestre.
By way of conclusion
In the following, I take up again central aspects of UDV theology anchored in
trance, and I emphasize the fecundity of religious and nonreligious influences in
the growth of the institution among the middle elass in Brazil and the world. By
founding the UDV at the start ofthc 1960s, Mcstre Gabriel made a symbolic break
with his Afro-Indian-Brazilian past (Brissac, 1999; Fabiano, 2012), organizing
an ecstatic ritual oriented by the doctrine of "spiritual evolution" through "con-
sciousness of self' and of self-control that catapults the adept through degrees
of the stratified order. It is possible to glimpse, in this passage through various
spiritualist influences, a reduction in emphasis on the cure of the body in favor of
curing the spirit, in a religious enterprise identified with the concepts of evolution
and progress, through which it is legitimated.
The UDV has, in its veins, the mark of its first disciples' desire for ascension
and recognition; laborers in the capital of the state of Rondonia, in the 1960s, they
incorporated elements of military and state organization in the group's ritual and
hierarchy. This symbolism would be reinforced during a process of rapid institu-
tional growth beginning in the mid-1980s, when members of the affluent middle-
elass from populous urban areas leapfrogged to the top of the hierarchy.
In native cosmology, the gradual purification ofthe religious subject corresponds
to members' institutional ascension, symbolized in the category "degree" [grau]
through which continuities arc traced between the spiritual and social place of the
adept in the stratified group. The tenn "Spiritist," which, in Brazilian religious his-
tory, was associated by medical discourse with mental anomalies and criminality
(Giumbelli, 1997), runs from Kardecists to Umbandists, and is used to identify UDV
adepts. However, the UDV stands apart from both Spiritist traditions in not conceiv-
ing possession as part of its doctrinal framework, where the encounter "in conscious-
ncss with the dimension of the mestre" is an ascension of the spirit in the direction
of itself, defined by the category of "mental concentration." Thus, the three axes that
typify the UDV - the magical-religious, the stratified religious order in expansion,
and the cultivation of the self - permit analysis of the modem process of multiplex
religious currents that inelude mediumistic trance in their theological formulations.
From indigenous influence comes a characteristic idea about the drink: that
through it, humans can communicate with invisible forces. Under ecstatic effects,
the initiate learns to move such forces, making them work under his or her guid-
ance. Shamanism anticipates the movement of power between the two worlds,
that of the shaman and that of the cosmos. In the UDV; the movement between
the two worlds is undertaken primarily by the session's directing mestre, who
receives the emanations of the mestre, and thereafter by the others, in accordance
with their "degree." This hegemonic notion does not rest easy with some mem-
bers, who see their relationship with the mestre as direct and independent of the
52 Rosa Virginia Melo
institutional recognition of "degree." In any case, such cleavages diverge from
the concept of shamanism and vegetalismo, and reinforce the Christian polarity
between good and evil in the religious field (Hertz, 1980).
Therefore, the supposedly shamanic relationship of the "people of the forest" is
far from what happens within the religious group, since it becomes part of a syn-
cretic, yet hierarchical whole, self-identified as ancient, and linked to the Judeo-
Christian monotheistic tradition (Fabiano, 2012). Expansion of the UDVin Brazil
and in the larger world adds, to the Christianized, Afro-Indian-Brazilian elements,
influences of the New Age and the so-called "New Religious Consciousness"
[Nova Consciencia Religiosai, whose dialogue, in a nonuniform way, is in a field
called "spiritualist."
The construction of the burracheira throughout the UDV's expansion illumi-
nates a trance permeated by the enchantment of a divine mother and a niestre who
works in the adept's consciousness, and at the same time, it highlights a represen-
tation of the value of individuality and its regimes of truth. If Christian freewill
is mediated by interiority with relation to the love of Jesus, in the UDV, the inex-
tricable relation between the object of communion and the spiritual guide gives
rise to the systematization of conduct necessary to "self-knowledge" as "key" to
"spiritual evolution." In this scenario, there arises a structure with a stratifying
basis, founded in metaphysics and the individual morality that organizes social
relations, which enjoys credibility, becoming an institutional pillar that makes
way for projects of personal advancement,
The power lines of UDV teleology, according to my analysis, point toward
hybrid roots of its cosmology and ritual, between public and private, between
enchantment and rationality, or between tradition and modernity. The adoption of
some aspects of a conservative morality, internally identified with the caboclo, by
the urban middle-class majority, carries the value of the "straight path," similar
to Christianity of a Pentec~stal mien, notorious for offering mechanisms of moral
regulation. This notion is instituted by the values of abstinence and constancy
expressed, above all, by the sanctioning of heterosexuality, of work, and of the
constitution and maintenance of the nuclear family. These are fundamental actions
to the group's religious objective of "spiritual evolution," through which men and
women ascend, spiritually and institutionally, in an asymetrical way - since, as we
have seen, access to the sacred corresponds to the hierarchy of "dcgree," in which
the status of mestre is forbidden to women.
In the universe of these symholic exchanges, I emphasize that the UDV is ori-
ented, in the private sphere, by values that delineate an interesting relation of
opposition between the drink and the re-elaboration of the moral customs of that
segment identified with Brazil's urban counterculture beginning in the 1970s. In
public, the group continues to seek connections that sit easy with its rational and
legalistic ethos (at least as compared with the other ayahuasca lineages), drawing
nearer to the hegemonic face of modem urban society, where it has experienced
its most significant expansion. This trend has engendered a sophisticated legal and
political apparatus in support of international expansion, one capable of taking on
laws against the use of the substance (Labate & Jungaberle, 2011).
A symbolic interpretation of UD V trance 53
The UDV has 140 nucleos in Brazil, the U.S., Spain, the U.K., Switzerland,
and Portugal, with 12,000 registered members (Soares & Moura, 2013). The legal
challenges it has faced along the way were discussed by Labate and Jungaberle
(201 I) and Bernardino Costa (2013) in articles that clarified the problems and suc-
cessful strategies of formal organization in the U.S. and Spain. Among the social
actors involved in the institution's struggles for legal recognition in those coun-
tries (which lasted five and seven years, respectively) figured academic authorities
and legal specialists, showing the importance of economic and social capital in
confronting international administrative barriers.
I argue that UDV trance must be understood within a religious logic that is
anchored on the plane of modernity, without losing its hues of mystical tradition.
Vegetal, as an instrument that directs a bureaucratically organized moral ration-
ality, promotes "self-knowledge" [autoconhecimento] as an "evolved" form of
contact with extraordinary forces. Thus, the burracheira is an interesting religious
instrument consisting of enchantment, rationality, and subjectivity, and whose tel-
eology, I emphasize, corresponds to models of development and progress.
In this situation, the group's identity gives rise to dualities, and here it is most
important to point to the symbolic productivity ofthe slippage between the secular-
ity of the bureaucratic order and the religiosity of the insurgent mystical visionary.
The recent institutional proposal for a dialogue with science (Bernardino-Costa,
2013), analyzcd in Labate and Melo (2013), seems to point to a public affirma-
tion of the relationship of the UDV with the world of science. The institution,
despite nurturing a "discreet" profile (CEBUDV, 1989), has, since the early years
in Rondonia, cultivated successful relations with the secular sphere, especially in
legal and scientific circles, which shows the internal relevance of secular ways as
instruments for achieving legitimacy in the religious field.
I understand the native ethos, through the meaning given to trance and the
sophisticated administrative model, as erasing modern ontological boundaries by
uniting belief and the state, magic and political power, visionary forces and self-
knowledge. The burracheira communicates, in a single operation, values of a
morality articulated between the religious, enchantment, statist bureaucracy, and
subjectivity, synthesizing diverse spheres of power, and recalling what Dumont
(1980) teaches us about dualistic internal tensions - which, far from being unpro-
ductive, provide a hierarchical and necessary coexistence of opposites.
Notes
Postdoctoral fellow at the Universidade Federal da Paraiba; Associate Researcher
at the Interdisciplinary Nucleus for Psychoactives Studies (NEIP); arid Associate
Researcher, Graduate Program in Social Anthropology, University of Brasilia. Email:
rosavmelo@gmail.com
2 [Caboclo is a complex and multivalent social classifier. Most commonly it is used
adjectivally to denote indigenous persons, customs, and technologies. In light of its
positive value in the UDV, the term's frequent usage as a pejorative allonymis signifi-
cant (see, e.g., Wagle)', 1953). - Trans.]
3 For more details On the project and on relations with the group's leadership, see Melo,
2010; Labate & Melo, 2013.
54 Rosa Virginia Melo
4 There are other kinds of session: instructive, commemorative, extra, de acerto [for
addressing interpersonal conflicts -trans.], and of the cadre of mestres.
5 Of about 48 sessions 1 attended during fieldwork, four were directed by women.
6 All members are called socios, but those that make up the "cadre," so named, arc at the
base of the hierarchy.
7 Chamada is the nominal form of chamar ("to call"), suggesting invocation as a key
function of these musical forms.
8 The degree of mestre is itself hierarchically structured, with the Mestre Central, Mes-
tre Geral Representante, Mestres of the Conselho da Rcprcsentacao Geral (those vvho
have been Mcstre Geral Represcntantc), and Mestres of the Consclho da Recordacao
at the ape".
9 The doctrine emphasizes the oral transmission of knowledge, but the iostitution may
record the sessions. Formally, the circulation of these recordings in the group is pro-
hibited, but the recording is sold in markets io Porto Velho. and was offered to me as a
fieldwork gin by a member.
] 0 See Rcichcl-Dolmatoff, ] 976, on the same principle io Desana accounts of yage's origins.
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J The religion of the forest
Reflections on the international
expansion of a Brazilian
ayahuasca religion!

Beatriz Caiuby Labate' and

Glauber Loures de Assis 3

In the 1930s, a new religious community emerged from the rubber camps of Brazil's
Amazonian hinterlands, founded by a charismatic leader, Raimundo Irineu Serra,
referred to by his followers as Mestre (Master) Irineu. He was born in the impov-
erished state of Maranhao, the grandson of black slaves, and had no formal school-
ing. The nascent church of Santo Daime represented a fusion of multiple folk
religious and spiritual influences centered on the consumption of a psychoactive
beverage best known in the academic literature as ayahuasca, but referred to by
the group as daime. The initial community was small and included mostly Afro-
Brazilian migrants from northeast Brazil. Their social milieu included the rubber
camps and military bases in the Amazon frontier, a traditional view of gender
roles, and cultural exchange between Europeans, Afro-Brazilians, and indigenous
Amazonian peoples. The group remained small, stable, and mostly unknown else-
where in Brazil until the 1970s.
Four decades later, the situation has changed drastically. Santo Daimc is no
longer a small, unified community, but rather a widely dispersed network that
includes thousands of adepts, many of them educated and middle class. There are
dozens of churches in all parts of Brazil, as well as affiliates in several other coun-
tries, where Daime is presented as a religion of universal salvation. The church
has also attracted wide (and not always positive) media attention, appearing on
the cover of important news magazines and on national television news networks.
It also provided a paradigmatic example in national and international discussions
over the medical and legal status of ritually used psycho active drugs.
The rapid expansion of Santo Daime, both geographically and in terms of its
broader social and political repercussions, has transformed this relatively small,
localized, and tradition-bound religious community into a heterogeneous, trans-
national phenomenon at the cutting edge of modem religious, scientific, and
legal scholarship. While many scholarly works have addressed the origins, main-
tenance, and diversification of various religious influences within Daime, few
studies have examined the effects of these profound transformations on Daime
religious practice and its relationship to Western religion more generally. This
chapter analyzes the expansion and internationalization of Santo Daime within
the context of the contemporary global religious scenario.
58 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Glauber Loures de Assis
We draw on extensive bibliographic research as well as multisite fieldwork by
both authors at various Daime centers in Brazil (Acre, Amazonas, Minas Gerais,
Sac Paulo) as well as Europe and North America. Fieldwork activities included
participation in rituals, interviews with church members and leaders, and personal
correspondence that is ongoing with Daime church members from several loculi-
ties. Labate conducted fieldwork between 1998 and 2014, and Loures de Assis
from 2009 to 2014.
We describe and analyze how this religion has crossed regional and interna-
tional boundaries and we reflect on how the international setting of contempo-
rary religiosity has facilitated this process. We argue that the expansion of Santo
Daime is not only a unique phenomenon, but is also integrated into a broader dias-
pora of Brazilian religious traditions responding to the contemporary zeitgeist.
Thus, the expansion of Santo Daime helps to illustrate and lets us understand the
current trends and ambiguities within Western religion more generally.
Santo Daime: historical genesis
After Brazil lost its monopoly on rubber production to the Malaysian plantation
system in the early 1900s, the Amazon region went through a sudden economic
collapse that affected millions of migrants who had initially fled from poverty in
the drought-stricken northeastern region to seek land, rubber income, and a better
life in the Amazon. When rubber prices collapsed, these people found themselves
abandoned and in dire social, health, and economic conditions. Many moved to
the urban peripheries (MacRae, 1992). It was in this socioeconomic context that
Raimundo lrineu Serra founded the religious group we now know as Santo Daime.
Serra arrived in Acre in 1912 and came into contact with ayahuasca, a psycho-
active beverage made by cooking the liana Banisteriopsis caapi, known locally
zs jagube. with leaves of the shrub Psychotria viridis, known to Daime adepts as
rainha or "queen," sometimes with other admixtures (Labate, 2004). The main
psyehoactive agent is N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), present in the Psychotria
leaves. Because DMT is included on the United Nations' list of prohibited drugs
in the Convention on Psychoactive Substances from 197 1 (UN, 1971), the use
of ayahuasca in Brazil and other countries has generated significant controversy.
Still, there is some discussion as to whether ayahuasca should really be treated
under the UN Convention, because it is prepared from natural materials and does
not consist of pure DMT per se. Related to such legal issues, ayahuasca has also
generated debate and controversy in political, social, and medical spheres, espe-
cially with regards to the question of freedom of thought, consciousness, and reli-
gion. Thus, the debates surrounding ayahuasca are relevant to broader discussions
about the "war on drugs," health, public safety, and freedom of religion (Labate &
Feeney, 2012, Fecney & Labate, 2013; Labate, 2014).
Although ayahuasca is used ritually by indigenous peoples in countries such as
Peru and Colombia, it is only in Brazil that the substance has been incorporated
into syncretic religious traditions- which are referred to as Brazilian ayahuasca
religions. They emerged in the Amazon region and some have spread broadly
International expansion ofSan to Daime 59
throughout Brazil and the world. The three main religions are Barquinha, Uniao
do Vegetal, and Santo Daime. Though all three emerged in similar Amazonian con-
texts and feature ayahuasca consumption, as adopted from indigenous populations
and as central to their spiritual practice, they are quite different one from another.
This chapter focuses on Santo Daime as founded by Irineu Serra in the 1930s.
After drinking ayahuasca, he received a spiritual revelation from the Queen of
the Forest iRainha da Florestai in the interior of the state of Acre. He then cre-
ated his own group in the capital city of Rio Branco. He referred to ayahuasca as
"daime" and, though this psychoactive beverage used in indigenous shamanism
was always central to the group's practice, elements from many other Brazilian
religious and spiritual movements were present, including folk Catholicism, Euro-
pean esoteric practice, and Afro-Brazilian religions. Santo Daime rituals focus on
the performance of "hymns," considered to be divine messages received from the
spiritual plane (MacRae, 1992).
Mestre Irineu remained at the helm of this spiritual group in Rio Branco until
his death in 1971, and most of its membership throughout that time was Afro-
Brazilian with very limited formal education. The church became formally insti-
tutionalized in 1963 with the creation of the Centro de Iluminaciio Cristii Luz
Universal ("Universal Light Center for Christian Illumination"), known more
frequently by the abbreviation CICLU. This constitutes one of the more orthodox
groups, known as Alto Santo, a denomination that aims to distinguish itself from
the more expansionist Santo Daime church, as discussed below. Though Mestre
Irineu remained the undisputed leader of the group throughout his lifetime, after
his death (passagem) in 1971, the church split as a result of disagreements over
the process of succession. It was at this point that Santo Daime ceased to be a
relatively small, homogenous group in terms of both its social composition and
rel igious practices, and this process has only continued as parts of the group have
also expanded geographically.
Leoncio Gomes, Mestre Irineu's disciple and son ofAnionic Gomes, one of the
most important companions of Irineu Serra, took over leadership of the original
CICLU community. The CICLU community is currently led by Mestre Irineu's
widow - also Leoncio Gomes's niece - Peregrina Gomes Serra, who is referred
to as Madrinha ("Godmother") Peregrina. Also at this time, Sebastiao Mota de
Melo, a charismatic recent disciple of Mestre Irineu (from the 1960s), who was
experienced in Kardecist and spiritualist religiosity, created his own independent
group. Padrinho ("Godfather," as he later became known) Sebastiao's branch is
currently based along the Mapia River in Amazonas State, in a community called
Ceu do Mapia (Heaven of Mapia), This is now a village of religious character
and the largest Santo Daime center in the world, with approximately 1000 active
members, including residents and visitors, according to our field research.
In 1974, Padrinho Sebastian's group formally registered itself as Centro Ecle-
tieo da Fluente Luz Universal Raimundo Irineu Serra ("The Raimundo Irineu
Serra Eclectic Center of Universal Flowing Light"), or CEFLURIS. The name
was changed once again in 1998 to fgreja do Culto Ecletico da Fluente Luz Uni-
versal ("Church of the Eclectic Cult of the Universal Flowing Light), or ICEFLU.
60 Beatriz Caiuby Lobate, Glauber Loures de Assis
The presence of the term "eclectic" in both the CEFLURIS and ICEFLU names is
indicative of the spiritual and symbolic plurality of the newer group, and reflects
its openness to new ritual components (see the discussion of "miscibility" below).
These features stand in sharp contrast to the original CICLU community now
known as Alto Santo, which was less open to change and novelty, and which
remains through today restricted mostly to the state of Acre.
Padrinho Sebastiaos group initiated a particular interpretation of the "spirit-
ual works" (trabalhos espirituais) inherited from Mcstre Irineu, adding to them
ritual elements borrowed from Kardecist spiritism and Atro-Brazilian religions
(including spirit possession), as well as sanctifying the consumption of Cannabis,
referred to as Santa Maria, in certain kinds of rituals. This group also began to
distinguish itself from the original, traditionalist group, CICLU, because of its
geographical expansion throughout Brazil and, eventually, the world. But until
1975, Padrinho Sebastiaos group included only about 40 families who lived with
him in a community that shut itself off from outside influences in a kind of "other-
worldly asceticism" (Weber, 1997), and were restricted to the Amazon until the
late 1970s.
The transformation and expansion of Santo Daime
Santo Daime began its period of expansion in the early 1980s. The 1970s were
characterized by a countercultural movement that began in the U.S. and was asso-
ciated with the protests surrounding the Vietnam War, but eventually spread to
youth throughout the world, that combined political and social protest with an
interest in experimentation with psychoactive drugs and the search for mystical and
spiritual experiences. The 1970s also saw the international oil crisis, which shook
confidence in unquestioned Western economic dominance, as well as the emer-
gence of the environmental movement: Greenpeace, for example, was founded
in the early 1970s. The period also witnessed a crisis of belief in traditional reli-
gious institutions (Hcrvieu-Leger, 1999) and the progressive proliferation of new
religious movements (NRM). In this context, exotic religions and new spiritual
experiences became a topic of curiosity among some sectors. Carlos Castaneda's
popular books on native psychcdelics rekindled interest in shamanism and Latin
America. Notable "Beat Generation" guru William S. Burroughs traveled to the
Amazon in the 1950s in search of ayahuasca (Losonczy & Mesturini, 20 11).
Brazil, too, underwent a period of political and social opening with the end
of the harshest phase of the military dictatorship in 1978 and the amnesty law
of 1979. The 1970s in Brazil were also an era of optimism toward the idea of
developing the Amazon region and integrating it with the rest ofthc country with
highway, colonization, and infrastructure projects. Traditional Catholicism also
started to lose its hegemony over Brazilian religiosity in the 1970s with a growing
Christian pluralism, as well as the emergence of esoteric and "New Age" religions
(Assis & Rosas, 2012).
We argue that this political, social, and religious context provided a natural syn-
ergy with two structural features of the Padrinho Sebastian's CEFLURIS branch
International expansion ofSanto Daime 61
of Santo Daime, namely, "miscibility" (miscibilidadei and "psychoactivity" (psico-
atividadey: at the end of the 1970s, many hippies, backpackers, and restless middle-
class youths set out from southern Brazil to get to know the Amazon region and the
visionary world of ayahuasca, laying the ground for the subsequent expansion of
the Santo Daime religion.
The idea of "miscibility" was used in Gilberto Freyre's (1986) classic study of
how a relatively small nation like Portugal managed to expand and maintain, at
least initially, such a vast overseas empire in huge areas of different continents,
the biggest of them comprising what is Brazil today. For Freyre, the success of
the Portuguese expansion was only possible because of the Portuguese people's
capacity to mix with other peoples and cultures, i.e., their miscibility. This mis-
cibility responds to the "imprecise" character of Portuguese people and their
history, or their bi-continentalism, their dualism of race, their balance between
cultures. According to Freyre, the miscibility, rather than any other aspect ofPor-
tuguese culture, was the reason why the "Portuguese made up for their deficiency
in human mass or volume in the large-scale colonization of extensive areas"
(Freyre, 1986, p. 11). We understand the multiple valiances of Santo Daime as a
reflection of a similar aptitude for creative confluence, exchange, and mixing with
multiple religions, incorporating elements of their cosmology and ritual practice.
The term "psychoactivity" refers to the central importance of the use of psy-
choactive substances for this group. The group gets its name, Daime, from the
psychoactive beverage that is the religion's main sacrament. The use of Santa
Maria (Cannabis) also sets Padrinho Sebastiao's group apart from other aya-
huasca churches, and this same penchant toward psychoactive substances has
led the group to adopt, in more recent years, other substances, including tobacco
snuff, kambo frog venom, sanango, and others (Labate & Coutinho, 2014; see also
below).
These structural features were important in the expansion of Santo Daime.
Its miscibility makes the movement theologically porous and capable of adapt-
ing to different cultures, localities, and religious concepts, permitting various
arrangements and bricolage of beliefs. This miscibility converged with a broader
movement of subjectivization of religiosity, in which traditional ecclesiastical
orders lost their traditional totalizing, regulatory function (Hcrvieu-Leger, 1999).
Although involving some similarities, "miscibility" is not synonymous with
notions of hybridity or syncretism; it is more than that. Santo Daime's miscibil-
ity enables it to be molded to different, sometimes divergent, conceptions of the
world. It facilitates the pluralization of daimistas groups, the internationalization
of the religion, and the adaptation of its faith in varied contexts, but it hinders the
control of the ICEFLU on Daime centers by weakening the power and relevance
of institutional logics. It makes Santo Daimes trajectory quite different when
compared with the parallel, but quite distinctive, process of expansion of the Bra-
zilian ayahuasca religion Uniao do Vegetal (UDV), which is characterized by a
strong, centralized institution, bureaucratic organization, and less room for local
transformations and reinterprctations. In this sense, UDV is, like Santo Daime,
hybrid and syncretic, but unlike the daimista expression, not miscible.
62 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Glauber Loures de Assis
"Psychoactivity" gave Santo Daime an enchanted, exotic, and mysterious aura,
both because of the difficulties of obtaining and producing the beverage and its
legendary visionary and curing properties. This aspect also puts Santo Daime
within the realm of psychedelic or shamanic tourism, responding to people's
search for altered states of consciousness, alternative therapies, exotic peoples,
and voyages into nature (Labate & Cavnar, 2014). Beyond that, daime's psy-
choactivity attracted media attention, as well as the curiosity of ordinary people,
while motivating academic research on the ritual consumption of drugs. Santo
Daime enthusiasts from the early 1980s included the hippie Lucio Mortimer,
the psychologist Paulo Roberto Souza e Silva, and the former left-wing militant
Alex Polari. These prominent Brazilian countercultural figures, as well as people
like the journalist Nilton Caparelli, stand out in the history of the expansion and
spread of the CEFLURIS branch of Santo Daime. Mortimer was one of those
responsible for introducing Cannabis into the Santo Daime ritual and for the cod-
ification of the oral tradition of Daime hymns into written form, thereby greatly
facilitating their transmission. Paulo Roberto Souza e Silva was at the forefront
in founding the first Santo Daime church in Rio in 1982, and soon thereafter Alex
Polari established his own Daime community at Visconde de Maua in Rio de
Janeiro State.
During the following years, other centers were created in various Brazilian
states, initiating the demographic and social transformation of Santo Daimc from
a religion of lower-class Afro-Brazilians and rubber tappers to a middle-class,
urban phenomenon. Also during the 1980s, strong emotional and personal ties
developed between the centers in the Amazon region and southern Brazil, even-
tually crossing national boundaries as Brazilian Daime practitioners became
involved with, and sometimes even married, foreign adepts of many nationalities.
Santo Daime ceased to be a unified religious group tied together by bonds of kin-
ship, social class, and regional identity (see Clarke & Beyer, 2009). In previous
times, membership in the church was determined by ethnic and geographical iden-
tity, and other traditional social ties (compadrazgo or godparent relationships), or
personal knowledge of some episode involving Padrinho Sebastiao; this ceased
to be the case as Santo Daime spread and became an international phenomenon.
However, abroad, personal alliances with relevant leadership in the "Doctrine"
are still an important means of legitimation.
As it spread to urban centers in southern Brazil, Santo Daime found itself
within an entirely different social dynamic from that created by the migratory
flux of rubber tappers to remote parts of Amazonia. Instead, Santo Daime was
transformed into a global religion with a universal appeal and mission. In this
context, the group must constitute itself as a religious entity to gain formal legiti-
macy and recognition. On the other hand, religion itself becomes progressively
a more plural, subjective, and individualized conception (Bcyer, 2006). Thus, as
Santo Daime affirmed itself as an institutional religion, the group also underwent
a period of profound reflection, redefinition, and restructuring, both in regions
of expansion and innovation, as well as in the traditional centcrs of origin in the
Amazon region.
International expansion ofSanto Daime 63
Bricoleurs, gurus, and atheists: Santo Daime
and contemporary religion
Contrary to sociology's positivist predictions about secular modernity and the
eclipse of religion when faced with the triumphant hegemony of science (Dur-
kheim, 1995), contemporary society is in fact replete with fervent religiosity. The
contemporary world is full of televangelists, religiously specific political parties,
messianic leaders, gurus, Eastern religious centers, neoshamans, an ascendant
conservative Islam, Christian pop music, and diverse other creeds that coexist
today with several forms of secular eschatology. In the modem Western world,
the individual has become freer to experience religion in his or her own fashion
(Hervieu-Leger, 1999). At the same time, the West has imported religious tradi-
tions, as much from the Orient as from the decolonized southern hemisphere.
Noninstitutional esoteric spiritual traditions have flourished among the midd!c
class (Freston, 2009), while peripheral religious movements and Latin American
religions in general have undergone a process of expansion and internationaliza-
tion. Moving from the periphery toward the economic and political centers, this
trend is significantly different from the historical process of Europeanization of
Latin American religiosity. The new situation is also motivated by migration, cul-
tural exchange, high-speed communication, and intense mobility ushered in by
globalization. Unlike the previous colonial situation, this new process does not
involve political imposition or forced religious conversion, but is rather a matter
of individual freedom and choice.
The de-centering of religion on a global scale has facilitated the emergence of
a new religious consciousness (Soares, 1994) associated with a broad and diverse
"market" of religious options. This "alternative religious network," although wide
and varied, is relatively connected around the world due to the intense production
of religious goods and events, and to an effervescent cultural exchange through
books, religious seminars, and workshops. In this scenario, hybrid and syncretic
movements placed under the "New Age" label have special relevance. The New
Age, according to Beyer (2006, p. 279), is defined as a "religious complex rooted
in Western esoteric traditions," combining cultural and religious elements from
diverse sources, including Eastern and indigenous traditions. Generally speaking,
the New Age movement suggests that all religions are but diverse, historically
and socially contingent versions of a single, universal spiritual truth. New Age
religiosity also reflects values and forms of conduct emerging from the 1960s
countercultural movement: environmentalism, antiestablishment sentiment, the
search for mystical experiences, and an aversion to industrialism and consumer-
ism. Thus, the New Age emerged as a network of alternative religiosities empha-
sizing new kinds of spirituality allied with holistic, ecologically conscious values
associated with religious traditions "uncorrupted" by institutionalized religious
hegemony. Despite these overall observations, it should be noted that the New
Age movement is highly heterogeneous, and some groups within it are opposed to
the use of psychoactive substances, even while others are strongly drawn to this
path of spiritual experience,
64 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Glauber Loures de Assis
It was within the broad social, political, and religious context of the New Age
movement that Santo Daime gained significant numbers of followers in the edu-
cated, urban, middle class, discontent with majoritarian religion and open to alter-
native religiosity networks. Thus, to borrow Weber's metaphor, there are "elective
affinities" between the New Age "spirit" and the Santo Daime (Assis, 2013).
In Brazilian urban centcrs, Santo Daime became part of what might be called
the "mystical left": humanistic, antimaterialist, and philanthropic people, opposed
to capitalist patterns of accumulation and consumption, but worn out by frustra-
tion in the political sphere and seeking revolution and societal change through
spiritual practice and the transformation of the self (see Soares, 1994).
While part of a broader diaspora of Brazilian cultural and religious practices
like capoeira, Afro-Brazihan religions, spiritism, and neo-Peutecostal Christi-
anity (Rocha & Vasquez, 2013), the particular configuration of Santo Daime is
quite distinctive. For example. Brazilian nco-Pentecostal religion, represented
especially by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG; also Igreja
Universal do Reino de Deus, or IURD), acts through a model of direct transplan-
tation and strongly centralized hierarchy, and its spread is seen mostly among
the Latino, black, and Portuguese-speaking population. Some have viewed it as
a kind of "Black Church" or ethnic religion, even though it is present in over 80
countries, appealing to foreign disciples by offering services in many local lan-
guages (Freston, 2009).
Santo Daimc shares with UCKG and other Brazilian exports, like capoeira and
Afro-Brazilian religions, a strong appeal. Even though the expansion of Santo
Daime is largely coeval with that of the UCKG, and like UCKG, its expan-
sion does not owe to any massive migratory movement of Brazilians overseas,
its movement through class lines has been roughly the opposite. Santo Daime
began among mostly poor, marginal Afro-Brazilians and mestizos, and spread
to white, middle-class populations in urban Brazil and other countries. Although
Sanio Daime maintains Portuguese as a fundamental language for rituals, and
even though its founder was an uneducated black man, and the main sacrament
is originally from the Amazon, most initiated members of Santo Daime outside
Brazil are white and do not speak fluent Portuguese.
The internationalization of Santo Daime
In the second half of the 1980s, Santo Daime expanded beyond Brazil's borders
to several countries, mostly in Europe and North America. Initially, the Daime
ceremonies took place in an informal workshop setting, gradually becoming more
structured (Balzcr, 2005). Santo Daime arrived in the United States in 1987-88.
The first CEFLURIS ritual in Europe look place in 1989 in Spain, led by the
church Ceu do Mar from Rio de Janeiro (Groisman, 2000; Pavillard & de las
Casas, 201 J). That same year, the first international Daime encounter was held at
Ceu do Mapia, By 1990, there were Daime groups established in Spain, Belgium,
and Portugal (Blainey, 2013), and Padrinho Valdcte (Padrinho Sebastian's eldest
International expansion ofSanto Daime 65
sonjhad made his first visit to Germany (Rohde & Sander, 2011). But that same
year also saw the church's first legal problems in the U.S.
In 1992, Alfredo Gregorio, or Padrinho Afredo, another son of Sebastiao Mota,
and the church's top authority, made his first trip outside South America. The
year 1992 also saw the first Daime church founded in Holland, Ceu dos Ventos,
followed by Ceu de Santa Maria, currently one of the largest and most respected
Daime centers outside Brazil, which is led by a Dutch woman, Geraldine Fijne-
man (Groisman, 2000). This in itself was an important innovation, since a male
hierarchy had traditionally dominated the church. Around this time, so-called
comitivas - small groups of singers, musicians, and leaders - began traveling
together, serving as cultural emissaries and strengthening the sense of group iden-
tity in both national and foreign Santo Daime centers. The comitivas typically
are hosted in the houses of local members or in special accommodations. They
are treated with great reverence and have an intense agenda. Usually, they visit
as many churches as possible. Their activities include things such as long hymn
rehearsals, advice to members on ritual and personal matters, interpretation of the
meaning of the hymns, tips on how to handle the fardas and maracas (a percus-
sion instrument typical in Santo Daime rituals) or conflicts in the church, and
stories about the old leaders and the "Doctrine." When a eomitiva is in town,
members from all regional churches tend to show up; these are considered special
or "better spiritual works [rituals]." Extra fees are charged in order to cover the
travelling expenses and projects in Mapia, Being part of a comitiva is a sign of
great prestige and personal status; members of the comitivas tend to have a better
material situation than people who do not have the possibility to travel outside the
Amazon.
Santo Daime arrived in the mid-1990s in Italy (Menozzi, 2011), where two cent-
ers were formed; and in the late J 990s, it arrived in Ireland, brought there by people
associated with the centers in Holland (Watt, 20 J 3). Centers also spread to Uruguay
(Scuro, 2012) and Canada, where a church was founded in 1996 (Tupper, 2011).
However, this rapid process of expansion has also produced a complex history
of conflicts within the group and other ayahuasca religions, legal problems, and
several media scandals. In 1994, Germany was one of the first countries to take
legal action against Daime groups active overseas, accompanied by a sensation-
alist media story about the group in the important news magazine Del' Spiegel
(Rohde & Sander, 2011). In 1999, authorities in the U.S. detained two Daime
practitioners. That same year, two Santo Daime leaders from Holland were jailed
for violating Dutch antidrug laws, while in Germany, a group of 100 heavily
armed police raided a Daime campsite (Rohde & Sander, 2011). In Spain, chureh
members were detained in 2000. In 2004, in Italy, 27 liters of the daime beverage
were confiscated, and a year later, 20 Daime practitioners were jailed. Sensational
media coverage described the group as a satanic cult practicing black magic and
orgiastic rituals (Menozzi, 2011). In Ireland, a Daime leader was detained for aya-
huasca possession in 2007 (Watt, 2013), and in Belgium, 47 liters of the beverage
were confiscated between 2011 and 2013 (Blainey, 2013). Such cases continue
66 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Glauber Loures de Assis
to happen in various countries around the world where Daime groups arc active
(Lab ate & Feeney, 2012; Feeney & Labate, 2013).
Such problems are relevant to understanding the ongoing process of organ-
izing, adapting, and resignifying Santo Daime in new contexts, but they have not
impeded the transnationalization of the group. Current fieldwork by others and
ourselves confirms that Daime rituals are being carried out in at least 43 coun-
tries on aJJ the inhabited continents (Blainey, 2013; Dawson, 2012), including the
foJJowing:
22 European (Eurasian) countries: Germany, Armenia, Austria, Belgium,
Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Holland, England, Ireland,
Italy,Britain, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland,
and Turkey;
7 South American countries: Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and
Uruguay, in addition to Brazil;
3 North American countries: the U.S., Canada, and Mexico;
3 Asian countries: India, Japan, and Russia;
3 African countries: South Africa, Morocco, and Kenya;
3 Middle Eastern countries: Iran, Israel, and Palestine; and
2 countries in Occania: Australia and New Zealand.
In Europe, there are an estimated 600 uniform-wearing members tfardados,
belonging to 40 different Daimc groups, including both fuJJ-fledged churches
as well as pontos ("points": small centers that distribute the beverage but don't
carry out all official rituals) (Blaincy, 2013). Spain alone has some 250 fardados
(Lopez-Pavillard & de las Casas, 2011). After two decades of activity, Holland's
Daime ccnters are among the most highly structured outside of Brazil (Groisman,
2000; Rehen, 2011). Whereas it is true that, numerically, the number offardados is
almost insignificant, the depth oftransnational expansion is impressive and, most
importantly, the sociological issues it raises are important.
AJJ ongoing research indicates that these numbers are only growing. Unlike
the case of UDV, Santo Daime congregations overseas have tended to become
increasingly independent from their original institutional networks in Brazil
(Dawson, 2012). The fluidity of the less-institutionalized pontos, the clandestine
nature of the religion in many countries, and the dynamic nature of the move-
ment make it almost impossible to catalog the exact number of Daime groups and
adepts, either within or outside of Brazil. This situation is amplified by the large
number of sporadic participants who occasionally attend ceremonies but are not
fardados, or by fardados who leave the group after a few years.
The transnationalization of Santo Daime (CEFLURIS/ICEFLU) has been a
diverse, nonlincar process, involving a unique dialogue with the culture and legal
situation in each context. These contingencies likewise impinge on liturgical and
religious questions. But before analyzing this situation, we return to Brazil, where
the process of expansion occurred in parallel, and as a vivid complement to, the
international scene.
International expansion ofSanto Daime 67
Change and growth of Santo Daime in Brazil
While foreigners were first coming into contact with Santo Daime, the religious
group also continued its process of expansion within Brazil. The structural mis-
cibility of the group stands out during this time period, producing relevant modi-
fications. The first of these was reflected in a changing membership profile. In
urban centers in Brazil, unlike in its Amazonian region of origins, Daime adepts
were mostly educated professionals, artists, and intellectuals. At this time, Santo
Daime ceased to be based on what Weber (1997) caJled "other-worldly asceti-
cism." Social, family, and gender relations came to reflect middle-class stand-
ards of southern Brazil, such as the professional independence of women and
small numbers of children per family - standards that were quite different from
those of the founding members of the church from poor, rural communities of
northern Brazil. Another important transformation was the proximity and open-
ing of the CEFLURIS branch of Santo Daime toward other religious movements,
notably the Afro-Brazilian tradition of Umbanda. This contact was initiated by
Padrinho Sebastiao's first visit to southern Brazil in the mid-1980s, when he met
an Umbanda priestess (mae de santo) known as Baixinha ("Short Lady") from
the Flumincnse neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. This contact led to the develop-
ment of what is now known as "Umbandaime," a mixture of Santo Daime and
Umbanda found in many Brazilian cities as weJl as overseas.
Although the miscibility of Padrinho Sebastiao's group was characteristic of
Santo Daimes initial expansion, this is not to say that this openness and adapt-
ability was unlimited. Each group developed its own particularities, and its
own conflicts and discontinuities in such interreligious dialogs. Certain Daime
branches welcomed borrowings from Umbanda, but this acceptance was by no
means unanimous and created dissent in some quarters. Daime branches or indi-
vidual adcpts with a stricter attachment to Christianity, for example, rejected these
innovations as contrary to their interpretations of the Christian nature of "the Doe-
trinc." However, according to our fieldwork observations, the practice of spirit
possession and incorporation, strongly associated with Umbanda, is especiaJly
important in overseas Daime branches.
Toward the end of the 1980s, Sebastiao Mota's son, Alfredo Gregorio, gradu-
ally took over his father's role in the church, and he was already leading the group
in 1990 when Mota died. Thus, there was no dispute over leadership succession
as had happened in the original CICLU group when Mestre Irincu passed away.
Nonetheless, the death ofPadrinho Scbastiao did result in a process offragmen-
tation and pluralization of Santo Daime. Many churches, without ever contest-
ing the role of "Padrinho Alfredo" as their legitimate spiritual leader, became
progressively more independent from the CEFLURIS/ICEFLU organization in
institutional terms (Assis, 2013).
Each time Santo Daime opened itself to new religious tendencies and local
expressions in this process of expansion, the new groups gained autonomy in
relationship to the institutional roots in Amazonia. Involvement with new prac-
tices and cultures differentiated and distinguished each ofthese new Santo Daime
68 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Glauber Loures de Assis
groups, which became ever more heterogeneous and distant from the traditional-
ist, "hard core" Daimistas of Rio Branco.
The process of expansion was thus closely associated with liturgical and theo-
logical innovations and resignifications, leading to major institutional reorganiza-
tion in the 1990s. In 1998, an effort was made to formally separate Santo Daime
into different administrative spheres: the CEFLURIS religious institution was
reorganized and renamed as ICEFLU, and a distinct entity was established to han-
dle social and environmental issues, the CEFLURIS Institute for Environmental
Development (lDA-CEFLURIS).
Expansion into southern Brazil and overseas also forced the group to deal
with the important question of religious freedom and the use of their sacrament.
Although Santo Daime had been stigmatized and persecuted over thc use of the
psychoactive beverage since its earliest days under Mestre Irineu (Goulart, 2004),
its growth and increasing visibility took these conflicts to a higher level, result-
ing in national and international legal disputes that persist to this day (Labate &
Jungaberle, 2011; Labate & Feeney, 2012; Labate, 2014).
From the Amazon to the world: particularities
and resignifications
The expansion of a religion to new horizons always results in transformations. In
the case of Santo Daime, two kinds of transformation stand out distinctly in the
case of overseas movements: a particularizing character, which favors growth and
promotes both differcntiation and conflict: and an opposing, gcneralizing char-
acter, which contributes toward religious self-reflection and produces integration
and shared identity. The former is apparent in the way various Daime churches
develop idiosyncratic differences. This, in association with Daime 's structural
miscibility and CEFLURIS/ICEFLU's institutional weakness, results in each
church becoming a particular microcosm. Ritual idiosyncrasies include the choice
of music and hymns, ways of preparing and storing the beverage, and various
other aspects that can be summarized as follows:
The introduction of non traditional instruments like the violin, marimba, cha-
range, and others;
Production of the daime (ayahuasca) beverage over gas stoves rather than
over wood fires; new varieties of daime (see below); refrigeration to avoid
fermentation; and
Various ritual innovations, including meditation, Hindu-style mantras, North
American indigenous shamanistic practices, the use of other psyehoactive
plants, etc.
In overseas Daime groups, although the official hymnals arc in Portuguese, and
although the Portuguese language and all things Brazilian maintain an elevated
status within the Daime milieu, many parts of the ritual are carried out in the
local language, and hymnals are sometimes translated into bilingual versions.
International expansion ofSanta Daime 69
The better-known hymns are sometimes sung in the local language, and there are
already several examples of "received" hymns in languages besides Portuguese
(Rehen, 2011). These sometimes contain cultural references entirely alien to the
Amazonian or Brazilian Daime universe, for example, Nordic and Celtic mythol-
ogy (Rohde & Sander, 2011; Watt, 2013).
Another important aspect is access to the daime beverage. For climatic as well
as legal reasons, foreign groups have tremendous problems in producing and
importing their sacrament. Temperate climates in Europe, much of the U.S., and
Canada make cultivating the jagube (ayahuasca) vine and rainha (Psychotria)
shrub almost impossible. In Hawaii, by contrast, the tropical plants grow remark-
ably well, and several different religious and psychonautic groups prepare the
beverage there. The dubious or illegal status of the beverage also greatly restricts
access in many countries, whether for production or importation.
For the most part, Daime groups overseas must import the beverage from Brazil,
resulting in sometimes-difficult negotiations with church leaders in Brazil, as well
as problems with storage, shipping, customs, and drug enforcement laws. All of this
has resulted in a series of ritual and symbolic innovations as well as practical adap-
tations. One recent example is the development of a highly concentrated "daime
gel," even more viscous than the honey-like daime mel Cdaime honey"), which
itself was an innovation, being a concentration of the original liquid beverage pre-
pared by Mestre Irineu. Daime gel is cooked to evaporate almost all the liquid to the
point that it becomes a paste, facilitating its transport to Daime centers in Brazil dis-
tant from Amazonia and making it easier to avoid customs problems internationally.
Because of its centrality to all Daime liturgy, ritual, and belief, obtaining the
beverage is fundamental to this religious practice. This creates a chain ofproduc-
ers and distributors, both within and outside the religious group proper, and can
also sometimes engender disputes. Producing, obtaining, or acquiring access to
the sacrament becomes a form of increasing one's personal status and rising in the
internal hierarchy of the group.
Other particularities arc tied to the place of worship. In Brazil, there arc
churches and centers built exclusively as Daime temples, but in Europe and the
U.S., services may be held in rented recreation rooms, spiritual centers, Christian
churches, or private homes. Often, these groups structure themselves as "mov-
ing churches," without a fixed place of worship and carrying with them all ritual
paraphernalia. The lack of their own facilities does not necessarily mean a lack of
organization or membership, but it does present significant challenges when com-
pared with the situation even in southern Brazil, outside the Amazonian center of
the religion. Groups in different localities constitute themselves more or less insti-
tutionally. In Holland, for example, where daime use is not prohibited, churches
are highly structured and institutionalized, with a significant membership and
group identity (Groisman, 2000; Rehcn, 2011). On the other hand, in Germany,
where the beverage is illegal, groups are small, dispersed, not very cohesive, and
institutionally precarious.
Another example of how legal context influences the internal organization of
religious groups is found in the case of Cannabis (the Santa Maria sacrament for
70 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Glauber Loures de Assis
Daime practitioners) in Holland, where the drug is tolerated. Thus, in Holland,
Santa Maria plays a central role in Daime ritual, contributing to group cohesion
and integration. It is used regularly by both men and women in certain rituals
and is a normal part of the religious life of church members. This represents an
effective and singular example of endogenous cultural regulation of a psychoac-
tivc substance governing how the plant is grown, how the cigarettes (pitos) are
prepared (conical instead of cylindrical rolling), characteristic liturgy for specific
celebrations, a specialized vocabulary, and the habit of introducing new members
to the rituals at first only with Santa Maria. This exemplifies how the cultural and
legal context can permit informal social controls to develop in relation to psycho-
active plants, such that new ritual modalities appear in opposition to marginal,
unregulated uses of substances for mostly recreational ends (with no concern for
origins and processes of production and use).
Such practices do not occur in Brazil, mostly because Cannabis is illegal, and
hence it is not possible to fully develop the doctrinal symbolism and ritual prac-
tices around the plant. Instead, in Brazil, Santa Maria becomes a source of dif-
ferentiation and conflict between groups: Cannabis use by some groups is cited
by more orthodox Daime churches as an example of the "perversion" of Mestre
Irineu's traditions, while rival ayahuasca religions evoke this use of an illegal
substance - in contrast with now regulated ayahuasca (for more information on
the current legal situation of ayahuasca in Brazil, see Resoluciio n.O I, 20 I0) - as
a factor that reduces the legal and religious legitimacy of Santo Daime overall.
And yet, alongside the particularities and idiosyncrasies of each group, the
process of expansion has also engendered a larger trend of religious reflection
and identity concerning Santo Daime in terms of its history, origins, and spiritual
practice. This process, which we might call "spiritual belonging," has allowed
Santo Daime to build a fairly cohesive culture, ethos, and worldvicw from which
it presents itself to the wider society as a homogeneous group, despite sectarian
differences, conflicts, and the lack of a strong institutional organization.
Back to the forest: the return of the "religion of the forest"
The transformation of Santo Daime is now coming full circle as the processes of
resignification that occurred through its international expansion are now returning
to influence the conception and practice of the religion in its place of origin in Ama-
zonian Brazil. For example, environmentalism is a popular movement, especially
among New Age practitioners, and the Amazonian origins of the religion provide
additional value for the religion's adepts in regions outside of the Amazon and
Brazil. Ecology and sustainability were already significant concerns for such peo-
ple, and the spiritual experience with daime has further intensified, enchanted, and
mystified their connection with the forest. This connection extends to an almost
utopian view of indigenous peoples and their harmony with pristine natural envi-
ronments. The power of these interpretations among both non-Amazonian Brazil-
ians and non-Brazilian practitioners has had strong internal repercussions. Santo
Daime has come to represent itself as the "religion of the forest." This connection
International expansion ofSanta Daime 71
with the Amazon has been used by Santo Daime to gain social and legal legitimacy
as an "authentic" and "traditional" religion of Amazonian and Brazilian origin.
Mestre Irineu's original group has become a symbol of idyllic communal life,
uncorrupted by the illusions of the modern world, representing the autochthonous
traditional peoples of the Americas who survived despite historical repression.
Irineu, the "grandson of slaves," thus becomes a double representation of both
African and Amerindian resistance, an icon of precolonial wisdom that has come
to illuminate the modern mindset that has lost all harmony with the origins of spir-
itual knowledge and nature. In this way, the consumption of ayahuasca has been
expressively reinterpreted in southern Brazil and overseas. During the early days
of Santo Daime, disciples of Mestre Irineu viewed any consumption of ayahuasca
outside of his ritual centers with suspicion and disdain, even use by traditional
indigenous shamans. Today, indigenous practices are understood to be the tradi-
tional roots of ayahuasca, which, according to the mythology of Santo Daime as
well as UDV, was associated with the Inca and other ancient South American civi-
lizations. In this sense, and in clear disagreement with the attitudes of its founding
members, Santo Daime is valued as a "shamanic religion." This valorization of the
indigenous origins of Santo Daime has allowed indigenous peoples themselves to
enter into and benefit from the urban ayahuasca scene. Some indigenous groups
have claimed an explicit connection to the origins of Santo Daime through their
ancestor's supposed mentorship of Mestre Irineu (Labate & Coutinho, 2014).
And yet, through its dialogue with Christianity as well as its travails in the
legal realm, ayahuasca has also been reinterpreted as a sacrament analogous to
the Christian host. Santo Daime and other ayahuasca groups in Brazil have con-
sciously constructed themselves as religions - indeed, authentic, uniquely Brazil-
ian and Amazonian religions that deserve legitimacy and respect.
These two models of resignification, particular and generalist, are illustrated
in the relationship between Ceu do Mapia and Santo Daime churches in south-
ern Brazil and overseas. Though it is the spiritual heart of Padrinho Sebastiao's
movement, Ceu do Mapia exerts no institutional control over a significant por-
tion of Santo Daime churches that were never formally affiliated with, or else
disassociated themselves from, the CEFLURIS/ICEFLU organization. Some of
these groups produce and consume daime in a completely autonomous fashion.
However, this institutional pulverization does not necessarily represent a rup-
ture in the religious order. Representatives and members from such nonaffili-
ated churches make occasional visits to Mapia and likewise receive comitivas
from Mapia as their guests. This flexibility of relationships within the network of
affiliated and nonaffiliated churches allows individualized expansions based on
the initiative of certain comitivas or groups that form around charismatic padrin-
hos. Church leaders in Mapia appear to tolerate and even welcome such contacts,
perhaps as a strategy for maintaining some degree of involvement with the group
and as a means to advance expansion worldwide. In sum, although the institu-
tional ties between Santo Daime groups are weak, there are a set of religious and
spiritual bonds that maintain a certain level of cohesion and identity throughout
the group.
72 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Glauber Loures de Assis
Such spiritual bonds are also implicit in the widely shared hexagonal shape
of the ritual space, a standardized calendar of ceremonies, shared dance rhythms
(march, waltz, mazurka) for rituals, the gendered division of labor, the shared
patterns in uniforms, the presence of certain religious symbols, and the reverence
for certain Padrinhos and Madrinhas, Amazonia, and Brazil itself These reflect a
widely shared set of cultural features present throughout the whole loose religious
network that serve as points of contact between different groups, making it pos-
sible for diverse groups to be understood under a shared dcsignation and sense of
identity, to wit: Santo Daime, the "religion of the forest."
Built through specific historical processes, the diverse Santo Daime groups
constitute an intensely mobile network of social relations and exchange among
members and groups in different localities. The Daime tradition goes beyond reli-
gious practice per se and includes a series of social relations - marriage, affinity,
compadrazgo - that goes beyond strictly economic issues.
Daimc adepts from southern Brazil and other countries travel periodically to
Amazonia, and some own their own houses in Mapia, where they may reside
for some time. By the same token, Daimistas from the Amazon region also visit
southern Brazil and foreign countries as part ofthc traveling cornitivas, and some
take up residence in these places: their "spiritual capital" provides them with
migratory opportunities. Knowledge of English and other foreign languages has
become an asset for Brazilian Daime adepts, especially those who participate in
comitivas.
The process of international expansion has turned Mapia into a kind of Mecca
for Santo Daime, a center for international pilgrimage that provides significant
local economic activity. Such visits may include prearranged programs, especially
for foreigners, such as daime preparation ifeitios), expeditions to the forest, sing-
ing lessons, and initiation into other aspects of doctrine. Residents of Ma pia have
seen changes in their social life such that doctrinal and musical knowledge that
was previously a normal part of their religious upbringing in the church have
become a distinctive, valued kind of expert knowledge.
In southern Brazil, the expansion and legalization of Santo Daime created a
growing supply of centers and possibilities for religious mobility to urban areas.
An individual unsatisfied with a particular church can find another center fairly
easily. Thus, the adept's relationship with Santo Daime has become increasingly
like that of a believer in any ordinary religion, and not the specific, highly struc-
tured life of a minority religious movement,
The Internet has been another important innovation, increasingly used by the
churches to aid in organizing their own groups and maintaining contact with the
international Daime network. The Internet serves, on the one hand, to attract new
adepts, as well as for internal communication, providing a channel for learning
hymns, doctrine, and history, and thus intensifying the group's unique social and
cultural identity. On the other hand, the Internet, and especially social networks,
also represent a source of conflict among different churches, leaders, and their
followers, to the extent that it offers horizontal channels of communication that
challenge the hierarchical structures that predominate in religious institutions.
International expansion ofSanto Daime 73
Thus, the expansion and internationalization of Santo Daime, and the legal dis-
cussions it has provoked, constitute a dynamic, plural, and ongoing enterprise that
translates into a continuous process of adaptation to the global religious context.
Though it represents a single religion, we can identify three distinctive spheres:
the Amazon region (notably Ceu do Mapia), where members tend to have lower
income and levels of formal education, as well as mestizo (caboclo) and Afro-
Brazilian ethnic roots; urban areas in southern Brazil, where Daime is largely a
middle-class phenomenon, and its members often have more diverse religious
practices related to new spiritual movements; and overseas, where the question of
the different cultural and linguistic contexts, as well as legality, can be paramount,
and where Santo Daimes Brazilian, and specifically Amazonian, origins have an
ever greater significance (as in the case of other religious transnational diasporas,
where the image of the "homeland" takes on powerful meanings and discourses).
Santo Daime's international expansion thus provides an excellent opportunity to
reflect on questions such as the tension between religious identity and individual
liberty, between a universalizing doctrine of salvation and local resignifications,
and on the very condition of modernity itself.
Final remarks
In the West, and in countries heavily under the influence of Western culture such as
Brazil, modernity and the process of secularization did not create a society without
religion and did not mandate the construction of a strictly scientific and "rational"
human subjectivity. Instead, they produced a multiplication of religious groups,
the individualization/subjectification of beliefs and religiosity, and even the radi-
calization of religious fundamentalism. The "global south," formerly a prime site
of evangelization and conquest by monotheistic Western religions, has become an
exporter of diverse and distinctive religious traditions. Latin America took on a
surprising level of agency in the global religious scene, and Brazil stands out as
simultaneously (and somewhat paradoxically) the largest predominately Catholic
country in the world, the second largest country in terms of the number of practic-
ing Protestant Christians, and the largest in terms of Pentecostal and spiritist practi-
tioners (Freston, 2009). In addition, Brazil is the cradle of numerous non-Christian
religious movements, from Afro-Brazilian to esoteric and New Age, to the syn-
cretic ayahuasca religions studied here: what has been called the Brazilian religious
diaspora (Rocha & Vasquez, 2013). In this context, Santo Daime has emerged as a
new option: a rich and complex phenomenon and yet, until recently, under-studied.
Santo Daime was particularly ripe for expansion beyond its traditional regional
limits due to a series of characteristics inherent to the religious movement itself-
which we identify as miscibility and psychoactivity, As the religion spread to
southern Brazil and internationally, a series of transformations occurred in two
separate and somewhat opposing dimensions that we have identified as particu-
laristic, referring to the establishment of differences, idiosyncrasies, and conflicts
between loosely affiliated groups; and a broad generalizing tendency toward
cohesion and religious identity, despite this internal diversity.
74 Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Glauber Loures de Assis
Indeed, Santo Daime only came to be understood as a true religion (as opposed
to a sect or cult) in the global religious system (Beyer, 2006) after the process of
expansion and resignification analyzed here, This trajectory included conflict as
well as dialogic processes among various actors that contributed to new percep-
tions of the group, both from the outside and from within, The international and
virtual (through the Internet) expansion of this religious movement touches on
important questions in the contemporary world, including freedom of belief, the
definition of religion, ritual use of psychoactivc plants, the diaspora of transna-
tional religious movements, and the role of Brazil in world culture, The popular
expression has never been more appropriate: "God is Brazilian,"
Notes
This text was modified and translated from a manuscript originally published in the
Portuguese as: Assis. Glauber & Labate. Beatriz C. (2015). Dos igarapes da Amazonia
para 0 outro lado do Atlantico: A expansao e internacionalizacao do Santo Daimc no
contexto religioso global. Religido e Sociedade, 3-1(2).
2 Visiting Professor at the Center for Research and Post Graduate Studies in Social
Anthropology (CIESAS), in Guadalajara; and Co-Founder of the Nucleus for Interdis-
ciplinary Studies of P" choactives (NEIP). Brazil. Entail: blabate@bialabate.net
3 PhD Candidate in sociologx at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Hori-
zonte, Brazil; and Research Associate at the Nucleus for lnterdisciplinary Studies of
Psychoactives (NEIP). Email: glauberloris@.hotmail.com
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4 Culling the spirits
An exploration of Santa Daime's
adaptation in Canada

Eli Oda Sheiner 1

This investigation explores the beliefs and practices of a Canadian branch of Santo
Daime, a syncretic religion founded in Brazil and structured around the ritualistic
consumption of Santo Daime, a psycho active plant decoction - referred to outside
the religion as "ayahuasca" - indigenous to the Amazonian Basin. In spite of
legal and political obstacles to the growth of ayahuasca practices, the brew is rap-
idly becoming a global phenomenon as traditional and syncretic South American
ayahuasca practices establish themselves throughout the world, and as ayahuasca
tourism grows in South America (Harris & Gurel, 2012; Feeney & Labate, 2014;
Fotiou, 2014; Peluso, 2014). In this chapter, I examine Santo Daime's adapta-
tion to the Canadian context through a focus on alterity; that is to say, I look at
the ways in which members of Santo Daime, at individual and collective levels,
understand themselves and their practice as "other" vis-a-vis contemporary Cana-
dian society. To elicit evidence of alterity, I use the concepts of ontology, the study
of what there is, and epistemology, the study of ways of knowing, to shed light
on the radically different worlds and worldviews of Santo Daime. The limitations
of current positivistic epistemological conceptualizations of ayahuasca and its
effects have been identified as one of the most significant challenges facing sci-
entific research on ayahuasca (Tupper, 2011a; 2011b). By conducting participant
observation and a series of in-depth, semistructured interviews with the members
of the Ceu do Montreal church, a Canadian chapter of Santo Daime, this research
aims to document an aspect of Santo Daime practice that is underrepresented
both in the ayahuasca literature and in contemporary Canadian drug discourses.
More than a discussion about the globalization of an Amazonian plant-medicine,
the case of ayahuasca in Canada speaks to the dynamics of alterity in a pluralistic
society and the navigation of co-existing - yet diverging - perspectives on health,
identity, and spirituality.

Ayahuasca iu Cauada
The majority of scholarship on ayahuasca in Canada is authored by Kenneth Tup-
per, whose work on ayahuasca addresses its presence in Canadian culture and
attendant policy issues (Tupper, 2011a; 20 11b). Rather than repeat here the con-
tents of Tupper's comprehensive assessment, I present relevant contexrualizing
80 Eli Oda Sheiner
information and point interested readers to his chapter in the volume The Interna-
tionalization of Ayahuasca (Labate & Jungaberle, 2011). Ayahuasca began to gain
visibility in Canada in the mid-1990s with the establishment of Ceu do Montreal,
a chapter of the Santo Daimc religion, and the publication, by Canadian authors,
of accounts of ayahuasca from ethnobotanical and anthropological perspectives
(Davis, 1996; Narby, 1999; Tupper, 2011 b). In the absence of survey data docu-
menting the diversity and number of ayahuasca users in Canada, various indica-
tions signal its growing availability and consumption: six additional Santo Daime
chapters have been founded since the inauguration of the original church in 1996;
various individuals and organizations throughout the country have begun to offer
sessions in the style of South American indigenous and mixed-indigenous tra-
ditions (often labeled vcgetalismo practices); and finally, Banisteriopsis caapi,
Psychotria viridis, and other monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAO!) and dimethyl-
tryptamine (DMT)-containing plants are becoming increasingly available on the
Internet and at specialist shops in major Canadian cities. The growth of interest
in ayahuasca can be traced, in part, to the degree of networking and information
made available by the Internet and social media websites. Illustrating this point,
the social networking platform "Meetup" hosts a group called the Ayahuasca Asso-
ciation of Canada, created in 2012, and boasting more than 1700 members as of
2014. The group publicizes several ceremonies taking place in various Canadian
cities each month. The diction employed in the ceremony descriptions evokes veg-
etalismo and neoshamanic traditions; the Brazilian syncretic Christian religions-
Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) and Santo Daime - are notably absent from the Aya-
huasca Association of Canada. Finally, an observational study gave evidence of
a rural First Nations community in British Columbia that organized a series of
ayahuasca healing sessions in alliance with a Shipibo ayahuasquero to address
substance dependence and other habitual behavioral problems in the community
(Thomas, Lucas, Capler, Tupper, & Martin, 2013). The extent of ayahuasca use
in First Nations and Aboriginal communities in Canada has not been documented
at this time; however, a recent publication from the First Nations Health Author-
ity, the Province of British Columbia, and the Government of Canada recognizes
the ceremonial use of ayahuasca as "beneficial" on a spectrum of substance use
(Tripartite First Nations Health Plan, 2013, p. 20). While the existence of this
document does not imply a broad adoption of ayahuasca practices among Cana-
da's First Nations and Aboriginal people, it does suggest their recognition of the
potential for the therapeutic and spiritual use of ayahuasca in a ceremonial setting.
The availability of materials for the production ofayahuasca or ayahuasca-like
substances turns on the ambiguous legal status of the brew in Canada. Psycho-
tria viridis, one of ayahuasca's two principal plant ingredients, contains N,N-
dimethyltryptamine (DMT), while Banisteriopsis caapi, its second principal plant
component, contains harmaline and harmalol; all three substances are classified
in the schedule III category of the Canadian Controlled Drug and Substances Act
(CDSA)(S.C. 1996, c. 19). While DMT, harmaline, and harmalol are scheduled
substances in the CDSA, plants containing these substances are neither explicitly
exempt (e.g., mescaline-containing peyote) nor included (e.g., opioid-containing
The adaptation ofSanta Daime to Canada 81
Papaver somniferumy in the schedules. Although the distribution or possession of
ayahuasca preparations may be interpreted as criminal activity, the distribution
and possession of its plant constituents does not fall clearly into the same cat-
egory (Tupper, 2011 b). According to my personal observations, Montreal stores
specializing in psychoactive substances and paraphemalia, as well as commercial
websites that ship to Canada (Tupper, 2011b; see also Tupper's chapter in this
volume), sell ayahuasca's plant constituents, with which customers can attempt
to prepare ayahuasca at home, or else, popularly, extract DMT and consume it in
vaporized form. This legal grey area effectively enables ayabuasca practices in
which plants containing DMT and MAOIs are imported into Canada and brewed
inside of the Canadian border, and hampers the practices of communities - like
Santo Daime - that rely on imported ayahuasca prepared in ritualized contexts
outside of Canada, which, if seized at the border, is more likely to be treated as a
contravention ofthe CDSA.
As a consequence of ayahuasca's shared category membership with myriad
other illicit substances, broader discourses surrounding prohibited psychoactive
substances play a large role in constructing policy on ayahuasca. The history of
drug policy in Canada mirrors the trajectories taken by other major developed
countries (e.g., United States, Australia, etc.), where concern about the demo-
graphics associated with particular substances (typically ethnic and cultural
minorities) has steered drug-related decision-making processes more than con-
sideration for the health risk and benefits inherent to the substances themselves
(Manderson, 1999). To this effect, critics have variously argued that the War on
Drugs is more accurately understood as a war on racial and cultural minorities
(Small, 2001; Bobo & Thompson, 2006). Since Canadian drug policy continues to
reflect discourses rooted in implicit and explicit logics of moral and social control
in lieu of evidence-based reasoning, ayahuasca users face significant drug-related
stigmatization (Tupper, 2011a). This stigma hampers opportunities to study aya-
huasca scientifically ~ to date, no clinical trials of the safety or efficacy of aya-
huasca have been approved or conducted in Canada - and, coming full circle, this
lack of academic knowledge precludes the creation of the types of evidence (on
safety and efficacy) that are privileged in policy making.
The present research
I undertook this research in the wider context of prohibitionist Canadian drug
policy. Anthropological methods of studying ayahuasca are amenable to conserv-
ative research ethics boards that steer clear of implicating educational institu-
tions in the acquisition and distribution of ayahuasca, even for scientific reasons.
As participant observation and interviews interface with ayabuasca users without
explicitly facilitating or disabling their practices, they were presumably approved
on account of their relative neutrality. My research was conducted in cooperation
with Ceu do Montreal, a congregation established in 1996 as a subsidiary of the
Centro Ecletico da Fluente Luz Universal Raimundo Irineu Serra (CEFLURIS)
line of Santo Daime. Through Brazilian contacts at CEFLURIS, Ceu do Montreal
82 Eh Oda Sheiner
began importing Santo Daime' (also known as "Daime"). The practice of Ceu do
Montreal proceeded uninterrupted until the year 2000, when the Canada Customs
and Revenue Agency detained a shipment of Daime en route to Ceu do Montreal
and forwarded it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; Canada's fed-
eral police force) for chemical analysis (Tupper, 2011a). In correspondence with
the RC MP, Ceu do Montreal explained their sole use of Daime as a religious
sacrament, and were informed that an exemption would be required for further
importation of the sacrament (Rochester, 2014). Subsequently, Ceu do Montreal
initiated a request with Health Canada's Office of Controlled Substances for a
Section 56 exemption from the CDSA (Tupper, 20 JJ a). In 2006, after a protracted
investigation, Ceu do Montreal received a letter from Health Canada granting
them approval "in principal" of the request for exemption, pending export permis-
sion from the government of Brazil (Tupper, 20 lla).
For several years, bureaucratic delays stalled the issuance of export permission
from Brazil until 20 12, when the Canadian Minister of Health - upon whose dis-
cretion a Section 56 exemption ultimately turns - issued a letter to the president
of Ceu do Montreal that annulled the approval "in principle" (Aglukkaq, 2012).
In addition, in 2010, Ccu do Montreal dissolved ties with CEFLURIS over con-
cerns about the latter's conformance to regulations and the administration of its
international growth (Tupper, 2011a). Without an established source for daime,
Ceu do Montreal officially stopped holding their regular spiritual services and
serving Santo Daime in 20 IO. Since the official hiatus of Santo Daime works - an
umbrella term used to denote the range of ceremonies where daime is ingested -
Ceu do Montreal has been organizing visitor's information evenings to receive
newcomers and introduce them to the Santo Daime community, the tenets of the
faith, and some of the hymns sung at works. In addition, Ceu do Montreal holds
hymn practices for members as an occasion to get together as a community and
sing hinarios, the sets of hymns performed at Santo Dairne works.
Over the period of one and a half years beginning in April 2013, I attended Ccu
do Montreal's visitor's information evenings and hymn practices. Furthermore, from
July 2014 tlnough September 2014, I conducted in-depth, scmistructured inter-
views with scven "star-wearing" members of Ceu do Montreal. A "star-wearing"
member refers to an individual who has participated in a compulsory number of
works and who has appealed to the church elders with an official request to join
Santo Daime. Pending approval of the individual's request, the individual makes
a commitment to Santo Daime, and the community recognizes the individual's
commitment in return. These seven members make up approximately one-third of
Ceu do Montreal's core membership, which consists of 20 members, in addition
to roughly 20 regular visitors who attend hymn practices and meetings, and more
than 60 people who were affiliated with the center and arc awaiting legalization
to resume practicing. Ceu do Montreal's membership is comprised principally of
English- and French-speaking individuals of white, middle-class background, in
addition to a minority of people who identify as non-white. Many members of Ceu
do Montreal have a Christian background; however, people of Indigenous, Mus-
lim, Jewish, and New Age backgrounds are represented among the membership.
The adaptation ofSanta Daime to Canada 83
In terms of age, members range from 26 to 80 years. Until the official hiatus of
Ceu do Montreal's ritual works, ceremonies were conducted in various facilities
rented tlnoughout Montreal and the surrounding area. I designed my interview
questions as a series of flexible conversation prompts.
My aim was to steer conversation toward the following topics: (a) beliefs about
the practices and tenets of Santo Daime; (b) the perceived relationship between
Santo Daime and Canadian discourse and policy on drugs; (c) the impact of
Santo Daime practices on aspects of health; (d) the connection between Ceu do
Montreal and the First Nations and Aboriginal people of Canada; and (e) efforts
made to adapt Santo Daime to the Canadian context. The interviews took place
in private locations chosen at the discretion of the interviewees; for the most part,
they took place in participants' homes. After obtaining consent from the inter-
viewees, I created audio recordings of the interviews using a digital audio device
and subsequently converted the recordings into written transcripts.
By way of discussing the aforementioned topics, I examined Canadian Santo
Daime beliefs and practices using the concepts of ontology and epistemology
to frame the differences between Ceu do Montreal and the Canadian context in
which they are embedded. I provide the following working definitions of ontol-
ogy and epistemology, which remain close to their roots in philosophy. Ontology
refers to "the study of, or reflection on, the question of what there is - what are
the fundamental entities or kinds of stuff that exist," while epistemology refers
to ways of knowing what there is (Pedersen, 2012). The majority of attention
to anthropology's "ontological turn" centers on the recursive vein of ontologi-
cal work, most prominently associated with the University of Cambridge and
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Figures of the ontological turn emphasize the study
of alterity, or ethnographic difference, and aim to elicit the multiplicity of forms
of existence; "making the otherwise visible by experimenting with the conceptual
affordances (Holbraad, forthcoming) present in a given body of ethnographic
materials" (Holbraad, Pedersen, & Viveiros de Castro, 2014, para. 5). Further,
the turn affirms the political nature and potential of work that presents alternative
understandings of what "is," and it maintains that "the antlnopology of ontol-
ogy is antlnopology as ontology; not the comparison of ontologies, but compari-
son as ontology" (Holbraad, Pedersen, & Viveiros de Castro, 20]4, para. 4). To
this effect, the present project deviates from the injunction of "not comparing
ontologies," since in the material at hand, meaningful power dynamics will be
brought to light by comparing the divergent manifestations of what there "is"
enacted by C6u do Montreal and the various actors in dialogue with them. I begin
the foray into psychedelic ontologies with an exploration of Santo Daime and
inters ubjcctivity,
Ontological and epistemological alterity in Ceu do Montreal
Among the members of Ceu do Montreal, interaction with nonhuman beings
emerges as a distinctively salient dimension ofalterity. By using the term nonhu-
man, I do not imply that these beings are less than human, but rather, I use the
84 Eli Oda Sheiner
term to invoke an intentionally ambiguous category that is not limited to the
human. The relationship between my interlocutors and the presence that ani-
mates or accompanies Daime is central to many aspects of life for Santo Daime
members, and thus serves as a good point of departure for an analysis of my
interview. Before delving into specific examples of my interlocutors' encoun-
ters with nonhuman entities, it is important to note that the degree to which
my interviews indicate Ccu do Montreal members' ontological commitment to
the existence of non human entities varies. While the tenets of the Santo Daime
faith establish a commitment on the part of Santo Daime, as an organization, to
the reality of the sentient force - called .luramidam - residing within the Daime
sacrament, Ceu do Montreal's mission statement permits space for interpretive
ambiguity: "we affirm beliefs without rejecting those who doubt" (Rochester,
2012, p. 16). To explore this aspect of intersubjectivity - experiences implicitly
or explicitly characterized as being shared between conscious beings - I distin-
guish between ritually bound intersubjective experiences and reflexive thoughts
about them. It should be noted that my interlocutors used a variety of terms to
describe their intersubjective encounters with non human beings; for instance,
they described incorporating, communicating, connecting, getting in touch,
or feeling guided, assisted, or directed by/with entities, celestial beings, spir-
its, plant voices, the astral, and a range of proper nouns referring to specific
entities. These intcrsubjective experiences presented across a range of sensory
modalities: through visually manifest beings, or heard voices, or through the
felt presence of an entity. The epistemological frameworks adopted by my inter-
locutors mediate the ontological weight attributed to the beings encountered in
these experiences. In other words, reflecting on intersubjective encounters with a
being, daimistas - members of San to Daime (also known asfardados, or uniform
wearers) - deliberate on whether the being is "real" or imagined, whether it is
external or internally generated, whether there is a direct encounter with an oth-
erwise invisible being, or whether it is a pharmacologically induced experience
with an imagined subject.
Elements of my interviews with Ccu do Montreal illustrate thc negotiation of
ontology in the experience of the nonhuman encountered in the Daime. One of
my interlocutors described himself as committed to the scientific method, but
with a spiritual or an existential conviction, and specified that he didn't believe
in God, heaven, souls, or "the ability to perceive supernatural things." Discuss-
ing experiences in the Daime. he reported hearing "the plants talking to me" and,
in this regard, felt like he was "transgressing the line of science" and was being
"antiscientific." Of the experience of hearing the plants, he asserted that "you
feel like it's an entity," and that he felt its awareness. He maintained a critical
lens on whether the Daime has consciousness and an intelligence - whether it is
"an entity in itself that you experience when it talks to you," and hypothesized
that the encounter may hinge on metaphor and frame of reference. He reported
that he struggled with "the language that we use to talk about the plants talking
to us, and the plants being teachers," and that, ultimately, the question of whether
the voices were internally generated or coming from the Daime does not really
The adaptation ofSanto Daime to Canada 85
matter, as the experience and the knowledge it conveys is "sort of undeniable
once you've had it for yourself." Our conversation revealed a process that arose
several times over the course of my interviews: meaning emerges out of a per-
son's relation with the Daime, and the truth of this meaning is of an immanent
and personal nature - overshadowing concerns for the scientific validity of the
emergent meaning, or the ontological status of the being invoked in the meaning-
producing relationship.
A similar privileging of personal meaning over concerns for validity of a posi-
tivistic nature recurred in my interviews. One of my interlocutors, e fardado from
Brazil, related that he used to be an atheist, and he used to try to "find scientific
explanations for everything." Since his involvement with Santo Daime, he discov-
ered a different mode of being that he elucidated in contrast to scientific skepti-
cism: "divine experience." He described undergoing a change in which he began
to feel something that he had no desire to explain, volunteering, "If a scientist
made me a lot of questions, to prove to him that I am right about my beliefs -
I don't wish to answer those questions. Because I just feel, and that's enough.
This was the change. I didn't find a meaning, I just felt something." In shifting
away from identifying as an atheist, he adopted an approach to spirituality where
reason and logic are not the arbiters of the validity of an experience and, rather,
feeling was the criterion to gauge the validity of an experience; to feel was to
know. Expanding further on the subject of feeling, he reiterated that while daim-
istas may see or hear entities, he felt them instead. Acknowledging the absence
of visually or sonically tangible encounters with entities, he speculated that other
daimistas may experience entities as mediators of the power of God and likened
his own experience to an unmediated encounter with the same force. For lack
of a visual encounter with an entity, he stressed that he could not describe what
it was he was encountering, saying, "the only thing I can say is what I feel, and
I feel a power ... maybe it's a person, I don't know." Among my interviewees,
this individual's descriptions evoked the notion of an encounter with an "other"
that was the most "other." His experience with Santo Daime eluded explanation
in conventional scientific terms; in fact, he resisted being made scientifically com-
mensurable altogether. Another interviewee corroborated the notion ofa shift that
opened space for ontological alterity. Asked how his experiences with entities fit
into his web of beliefs, one of my interlocutors, who is Cree, told me that "it's
not always that helpful to think about these things too much." This person - who
was raised Anglican and made contact with his Indigenous heritage later in life -
appealed to what he described as traditional native knowledge to address my ques-
tioning. He explained it as such: "Our purpose is not to understand this creation,
not to analyze this creation, but to develop a relationship with the mystery, so it
must remain a mystery." He emphasized a "symbiotic," as opposed to analytic,
approach to relationships with the Daime and embraced a path "from the heart,"
not "from the head." Though my interlocutors had aecess to a rational epistemol-
ogy to address the question of how we can know about the other encountered in
the Daime, knowledge per se was not at stake, but rather the maintenance of an
enriching relationship with the unknown.
86 Eh Oda Sheiner
Negotiating alterity collectively
Ethnographic engagement with Santa Daime leads me to recognize intersubjective
encounters with felt, seen, or heard entities as indispensable sources of meaning
for Ceu do Montreal. Conversations about collective decision-making within the
Ceu do Montreal church substantiated the importance of meaning produced from
intersubjectivc encounters in the Daime. When I would ask about the particulars
of different rituals, or the reason that the Ceu do Montreal community adopted a
certain stance, the causal chain could often be traced back to an instruction that
a daimisto had received in a vision. Significantly, the word "received" recurred
frequently in reference to a daimisto's process of acquiring meaning or insight.
This diction corroborates the relational dynamic in Santa Daime, wherein insights
result from relational experiences that have an intersubjective, rather than solipsis-
tic, quality to them. Turning to the broader cultural context of Santa Daime within
Canada, the core of Ceu do Montreal's practices and actions at an institutional
level are thus grounded in an ontological framework that differs substantially
from the frameworks espoused by most Canadians, or by the actors in the Cana-
dian government - Health Canada and the Office of Controlled Substances - with
whom the Ceu do Montreal congregation are working to legitimate their practices.
First, not only arc entities "believed-in" by daimistas to the extent that they rep-
resent important components of their idiosyncratic cosmologies, but they are also
experienced as tangible, nonhuman others in the ritual setting. Thus, I argue, non-
human intersubjective encounters are more than just a worldwew for Ceu do Mon-
treal, they are part of the world, as lived. Second, concerning epistemology, my
interviews suggest that meaning is a personal, immanent quality of experiences
in the Daime. This stands in contrast to a positivistic epistemological construal of
meaning. where validity turns on an objectivity-oriented ethic of verificationism.
The Santo Daime sacrament itself stands at the fulcrum of the ontological and
epistemological disparity between Ceu do Montreal and Government of Canada.
Discourse produced by actors in the Canadian Government ranks Daime squarely
within the category of controlled drugs. In concert with Health Canada's moral
agenda, this categorization imposes ontological limits on the kinds of things
that Daime can be; the semantic scope of the word "drug," in the sense that it is
deployed by Health Canada, is far from neutral and conveys more than just the
notion of a psychoactive substance. Instead, dominant legal and political opinions
are reified in the term "drug", and reflect the Canadian government's stance on
the historical trajectory of the War on Drugs. The aforementioned letter annul-
ling the Section 56 exemption request exemplifies this logic. In the Minister of
Health's 2012 letter to the leader of Ceu do Montreal, Daime is never referred to
as such, and instead, is called a "preparation containing N,N-dimethyltlyptamine
(DMT), harmalol and harmaline" (p. 1). The document cites the Food and Drug
Regulations to indicate that these three substances have "no recognized medical
use" (p. 2), and frames their use as a threat to the CDSA's imperative to pro-
tect public health and maintain public safety. Further, the document addresses
the psychological effects of "preparations containing N,N-dimethyltryptamine
The adaptation ofSanto Daime to Canada 87
(DM'T], harmalol and harmaline" in exclusively pathological terms, and its physi-
cal effects along dimensions of risk and physiological harm. The letter does not
address potential benefits arising from the use of Daime or ayahuasca, and it does
not make reference to the 100 odd years of anthropological and ethnobotanical
literature documenting the myriad uses of ayahuasca in Amazonian contexts. In
turn, the terms by which the Minister of Health invokes Daime leaves no space for
the role it plays for Ceu do Montreal. Ontologically, the categorization of Daime
as a drug construes it as an inherently threatening and harmful substance and pre-
cludes consideration of the positive range of its social, physical, psychological,
and spiritual effects in traditional contexts (Tupper, 20 Ila). For a related analysis
of the discourses surrounding the regulation of ayahuasca, see Labate's (2012)
paper on the UDV and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
For Ceu do Montreal, the ontological reality of Daime exceeds the category of
the drug and warrants a more careful classification, residing in a space between
a substance and a person; for Santo Daime, the other encountered in the Daime
is part and parcel with the substance itself (Vasquez, 1998, as quoted in Tupper,
20 11a). From the domain of epistemology - concerning ways of knowing - the
practice of Ceu do Montreal signals a nuanced approach to how knowledge is
construed; my interviews suggest that knowledge qua positivistic truth claims
does not map onto Santo Daime practice. Instead, my interlocutors evoked a
knowing, or a feeling, where meaning was produced through personal, immanent
experience. Denoted in this way, Daime is perhaps better understood as a medium
for knowledge rather than as an instigator or exacerbator of pathological experi-
ence. Considering the current political climate, it comes as no surprise that Health
Canada does not even pay lip service to more radical aspects of ontological and
epistemological alterity in its treatment of Daime, as this would require a signifi-
cant revision of positions on what a "drug" can do and be.
While the ontological and epistemological disparity between Ceu do Montreal
and the Goverrunent of Canada prevents the latter from producing policy that
reflects a nuanced understanding of the former, the discrepancy is not altogether
incommensurable since Ceu do Montreal is aware of differences of perspective
and power. Thus, the members of Ceu do Montreal employ a kind of double logic,
where their decisions are informed first and foremost through recourse to knowl-
edge received from the Daime, and then are ontologically and epistemologically
translated into terms that are legible in the broader Canadian context. In prac-
tice, this manifests as a de-emphasis on the esoteric aspects and logics of Santo
Daime (for instance, the agency ascribed to the Santo Daime sacrament and enti-
ties encountered in works) such that spirituality is invoked instrumentally to give
proof of the authenticity and sincerity of Ceu do Montreal. This strategic position-
ing of spirituality allows Ceu do Montreal to appeal to the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms' protection of religious freedom. Manifesting a familiarity
with the importance of scientific evidence in government discourse, Ceu do Mon-
treal has assembled a medical and scientific advisory committee composed of
experts in the field of ayahuasca research, who ground claims about the social,
psychological, and biological safety of the Santo Daime practice in evidence from
88 Eh Oda Sheiner
the academic literature on ayahuasca. In accordance with the government agenda
to reduce harm associated with drug use, Ceu do Montreal fore grounds the meas-
ures put in place to ensure the safe and responsible distribution of Daime within
the organization, including a thorough screening process for new members and a
code of ethics that establishes participants' rights and articulates policy against
harassment and discrimination.
Navigating difference and adapting practice to
the Canadian context
Intersections between Santo Dainie churches and their broader Canadian con-
text occur at more than just the institutional level. Members of Ceu do Montreal
navigate the alterity of their experiences, beliefs, and practices on a daily basis.
Whereas in Brazil, the infrastructure exists for daimistas to live in full-blown
communities anchored around the Santo Daime religion, this is not the case in
Canada. With a much small Cl' membership than their Brazilian counterparts,
Canadian daimistas are just as embedded into the fabric of their communities
as any other Canadian. This means that each Canadian daimista maintains his or
her religious practice within the context of work, friendship, family, immediate
and extended community, etc. Throughout the interviews, my interlocutors dis-
cussed their understandings of Ceu do Montreal's place within the contemporary
Canadian context and described adaptations made to their attitudes and relations
in light of their involvement with Santo Daime. At risk of under-representing the
diversity of fardados in Ccu do Montreal, I will address key themes that arose
around these conversations.
Throughout my interviews, daimistas often pointed to the bare fact of having
a spiritual predilection as an identifiable source of tension with their relations
outside of Ceu do Montreal. This speaks as much about Canadian culture as it
does about Santo Daimc's place within it; on the whole, much of Canadian culture
operates under a rubric of secularism. As one of my interlocutors put it, "you have
to deal with this sort of stigma of being religious as being traditional and back-
wards." In this respect, many aspects of Santo Daime practice, even if only glazed
over at a superficial level, appear to run contrary to scientific rationality - not
least of all, the instrumental role ofa "drug" in the catalysis of profound personal
insights. Discussed earlier in the context of the Minister of Health's letter to the
leader of Ccu do Montreal, the model of pathology monopolizes a great deal of
the scientific and cultural availability of explanatory models for the psychedelic
experience and, more broadly, prohlematizes experiences that are healthy or nor-
mative in other cultural contexts. Consequently, the use of a psychoactive agent to
facilitate transactions of meaning, or the postulation of ontologicalIy incomrncn-
surable sources of insight, precludes the validity of said meaning or insight in the
eyes of many individuals outside of Santo Daime.
The members of Ceu do Montreal are hyperaware of the rhetoric of pathol-
ogy, and stress that the proficiency of elders and guides, in unison with struc-
tural features inside and outside of the ritual setting, mediates the safety of Santo
The adaptation ofSanta Daime to Canada 89
Dairne works. On multiple occasions, my interlocutors alluded to the existence
of North American communities or individuals working with ayahuasca where
psychological, physical, and spiritual safety were imperiled by a lack of training
and organizational structure. Relatedly, members of Ceu do Montreal frequently
express a wariness of the promotion of ayahuasca, within certain New Age cir-
cles, as a panacea for any number of physical or psychological issues. In contrast,
Ceu do Montreal actively dispels the notion that Santo Daime will heal you, and
explicitly locates the responsibility for improvement within the individual and
not the Daime sacrament itself. Based on my interviews, two main points arose in
connection to this issue. First, historically, Ceu do Montreal's efforts to gain legal
recognition have centere d on the possibility of an exemption to import Daime
on the grounds of religious freedom. Ceu do Montreal acknowledges that they
are not politically positioned to secure a medical exemption to administer aya-
huasca, and that such an exemption would likely impose problematic restrictions
on their practice. Accordingly, they recognize the strategic importance of distin-
guishing themselves from people or groups that make health-related claims about
ayahuasca. Second, and for reasons intrinsic to the religion, my interlocutors often
stressed the notion that the Daime sacrament can identify personal problems and
potential solutions, but that it will not solve them. Daimistas place a great deal of
importance on the notion of integration; it is not uncommon to hear people joke
that the real work takes place outside of the Santo Daime works.
The distinction between spiritual emergency and mental illness emerged as
an important corollary to discussions about healing and ayahuasca; it is also a
source of tension between Ceu do Montreal and its affiliates in Brazil. One of my
interlocutors described a failure to effectively distinguish between spiritual emer-
gency and mental illness, resulting in the medical establishment's over-attribution
of pathological labels and treatments to issues of a fundamentally spiritual or
existential tenor and, conversely, the spiritualization of pathological experiences
within religious communities. As evidence ofthe former, she referred to the medi-
calization of quintessential human experiences that were traditionally navigated
through recourse to spiritual frameworks. For instance, she cited gung-ho inter-
ventions to the grieving process through diagnoses of depression and the prescrip-
tion of antidepressants. In a similar vein, she pointed to the reconceptualization
of processes like menopause and other major personal changes as falsely-framed
problems with pharmaceutical solutions.
Concerning the latter, she raised concerns about the adaptability of Brazilian
practices surrounding the spiritualization of potentially pathological behavior to
the Canadian context. Without pointing fingers, she suggested that there were
Santo Daime centers where potentially inappropriate, disordered behavior was
tolerated through recourse to spiritual frameworks that reinterpreted conduct in
less threatening ways. In these cases, she explained, tolerance was over-extended
to avoid seeking help outside of Santo Daime, or vice versa, to avoid drawing
outside attention to issues within Santo Daime.
My interlocutor indicated that this sort of practice would not mesh with the
Canadian cultural context and, taking this into consideration, called attention to
90 Eh Oda Sheiner
the creation of "a resource list of people, therapists, and other allied professionals
to be able to refer people to, who might need some assistance outside of works.
Not to assume that just drinking Daime will heal and cure everything." All things
considered, a balanced approach to mental health and spirituality does not fore-
close the possibility that Santo Daimc can have a positive impact on mental well-
ness. For instance, one of my interlocutors described how, priorto her introduction
to Santo Daime, she encountered entities that were invisible to others. Eventu-
ally, these encounters occurred frequently and indiscriminately enough that they
became very distressing, to the point where she "thought [she] was crazy." She
explained that, through her practice with Santo Daimc, she had reined in her
encounters with these entities such that she no longer experienced them in her
daily life and only experienced them within the circumscribed context of Santo
Daime works, where she was able to deal with them constructively.
Over the course of my interviews, I did not encounter evidence of negative
mental health outcomes from participation in Santo Daime; however, my inter-
views were not designed to elicit this type ofinformation and did not include any
formal diagnostic criteria. Still, many of the members of Ceu do Montreal who
I spoke with recounted experiences that they described as very difficult or psy-
chologically and emotionally taxing. Unanimously, my interlocutors discussed
these difficult experiences as important and often inevitable stages in the process
of self-improvement. Despite Ceu do Montreal's reconfiguration of the difficult
occurrence as an obstacle to be overcome - rather than as an inherently negative
or harmful experience - members reported apprehension leading up to works. In
fact, I was told that Padrinhos (lit. godfathers; Santo Daimc elders) occasionally
approach works with trepidation, and that the sense of nervousness that precedes
Santo Daime rituals is even referenced in the hymns. Proper training and ritual
preparation play mitigating roles in the management of difficult experiences at
Ceu do Montreal. One of my interlocutors described how lapses in personal pre-
paredness could make the Santo Daime work a "sacred hell," and that if a per-
son's intention is "just" to have fun, they wi 11 not get what they are expecting.
Approaching this topic from another perspective, an interlocutor explained how
she was occasionally approached to participate in or lead a ceremony outside
of the context of Santo Daime, and that she vehemently refused these requests,
asserting that with Daime, "anything can come, good and bad, and you have to
be strong enough to hold the space for the people." Corroborating this notion,
another interlocutor described the misguidedness of people with aNew Age ori-
cntation who enter the Daimc with a panglossian attitude, and who arc critically
unprepared for the experiences they may encounter. Congregants of Ceu do Mon-
treal thus distinguish themselves from other users of ayahuasca, particularly those
they identify as New Age, by virtue of their recognition of the ontological reality
of dark beings. This ontological recognition underscores my interlocutors' oft-
referenced responsibility for the spiritual- in addition to physical and psychological-
welfare of attendees at Santo Daime works.
The ontological navigation of Santo Daime doctrine plays a large role in the
adaptation of the religion to its Canadian context. As mentioned earlier, daimistas
The adaptation ofSanto Daime to Canada 91
place emphasis on the notion that hymns and instructions are received rather than
personally authored. In turn, the divine provenance of hymns and instructions
performs the function of legitimating them, but it also provides grounds for tradi-
tional daimistas to insist on an unquestioned adherence to their contents (Dawson,
2013). While committed ontologically to the notion that hymns and instructions
are received from entities in the Daime, Ceu do Montreal contends that some
practices have substantial cultural components, in addition to spiritual legitimacy.
Part of Ceu do Montreal's task, as one of my interlocutors articulated, is the ongo-
ing process of disentangling cultural from spiritual elements of practices inherited
from Brazilian Santo Daime. The place of women in Santo Daime occupies a
significant portion of Ceu do Montreal's concem vis-it-vis cultural-spiritual dis-
entanglement. As a church headed by a woman, Ceu do Montreal has argued for
the equal rights of women in Santo Daime but came up against resistance with for-
mer institutional affiliates in Brazil. According to the leader of Ceu do Montreal,
while seeking equal responsibility for women and the right for women to serve
Daime - and raising related questions concerning the role of women in Santo
Daime - with Ceu do Montreal's former affiliates in Brazil, she was accused of
transgressing doctrinal direction and met repeatedly with hostility. In turn, Ceu
do Montreal's members maintain that deep study of the doctrine and contempla-
tion have anchored their conviction that hierarchical relations between men and
women in Santo Daime are a culturohistorical product and not purely the intent of
divine will, and they have revised their practices accordingly.
Local innovations: Santo Daime and the First
Nations people of Canada
The integration of First Nations traditions represents the largest syncretized aspect
of Ceu do Montreal and, according to many of my interlocutors, plays a signifi-
cant role in grounding Santo Daime's cultural and spiritual presence in Canada.
Members often allude to the importance of indigenous Amazonian traditions in the
founding of Santo Daime in Brazil, and many see the integration of First Nations
traditions into Ceu do Montreal as a further manifestation of this indigenous con-
nection. Several of my interlocutors identified the integration of First Nations tra-
ditions as the definitive syncretization of Ceu do Montreal - the innovation that
sets the Montreal branch apart from other Santo Daime lines. Ceu do Montreal
traces the origins of the alliance between First Nations peoples and Santo Daime
to the prophetic vision of a Cree elder and validation of this connection through an
indigenous member's vision of the meeting of spiritual beings from the North and
the South. This connection has manifested in several additions to the Santo Daime
ritual repertoire, such as the consecration of ritual space and participants with a
blend of sacred indigenous herbs by a First Nations member of Santo Daime, In
addition, Ceu do Montreal members report that they have begun to receive hynms
from First Nations spiritual beings and integrate them into regular use. Idioms and
symbolism from First Nations traditions, such as the figure of the Creator, have
also been implemented throughout the practices of Ccu do Montreal. The following
92 Eli Oda Sheiner The adaptation ofSanto Daime to Canada 93

hymn, entitled "Sacred Warnpum" and offered to Ceu do Montreal, speaks to the unique healing ritual called the Black Eagle Cura (cura means heal or healing in
connection between First Nations peoples and Santo Daime: Portuguese). While most Ceu do Montreal works take place in the urban setting of
Montreal, the Black Eagle Cura is conducted in a rural location outside of Mon-
Minha Senhora Jurema [My Lady Jurema] treal. The night before the cura, the Cree elder in the church leads a sweat lodge
Meu Senhor Juramidam [My Lord Juramidam] ceremony. According to my interlocutor, the Black Eagle Cura is held four times
You have addressed a prayer of access a year to honor the four seasons and, weather permitting, is held partly outside;
To the Spirits of this land being in nature is an important aspect of Santo Daime, and a number of works are
traditionally held outside. Instead of the traditional uniform, participants in the
You extend the hand of friendship Black Eagle Cura wear white clothing. If the cura is inside, people sit in a circle
To the Chiefs who guard this line on the floor with the central altar on a low table; or, ifthey are outside, on a white
This is the place of meeting cloth on the ground. The cura, according to my interlocutors, is similar to the
This is the appointed time Mesa Branca (White Table) work of the Santo Daime tradition in that it has sec-
They awaited your arrival tions dedicated to different spiritual beings, permits the incorporation of spiritual
Now at your entry brave and grand forces, and honors indigenous traditions and Eastern spiritual lines.
The Peacemaker Deganawida Despite Santo Daime's adoption of aspects of First Nations culture, the adop-
And His Virgin Mother stand tion of Santo Daime by First Nations peoples has been relatively limited. At this
point in time, one indigenous person, a Cree elder, sits on the board of Ceu do
They declare the door is open Montreal, and four members of the Native American Church, among a number
For the healing that you bring of formerly affiliated indigenous people, have remained connected with Ceu do
Please represent this Sacred Wampum Montreal since they stopped importing the Daime sacrament in 2010. According
Among the hymns you now shall sing to one of my interlocutors, many aboriginal people are not at ease with the sig-
They request that all good people nificant amount of Christian ritual and symbolism present in Santo Daime. I was
Who shall drink this Sacred Tea also told that some aboriginal people were not comfortable with the uniform of
Will recall All Our Relations the Santo Daime - which was modeled after a school uniform (Groisman, 2000,
Who now struggle to be tree cited in Blainey, 2013) - because it bears an uncomfortable likeness to the uni-
form indigenous children were forced to wear in residential schools.' Aboriginal
They send blessings to this Circle people, my Cree interlocutor told me, preferred Black Eagle Curas over other
That the Lie may never mar Santo Daime works, attended them in greater numbers, and were comfortable
Through the eyes of Grandfather Eagle with the culturally adapted form that the ritual assumed. It is important to note
They arc watching from afar that the Black Eagle Cura and other ritual innovations resulting from the integra-
They address you in your languages tion of First Nations traditions are legitimated within Ceu do Montreal through
They respect you in your Song the acti ve participation of indigenous people in Santo Daime. An analysis of the
For the Red Road of the Heart still loves political implications of the encounter between Canadian aboriginal peoples and
All those who thought it wrong Santo Daime, a Christian syncretic religion from Brazil, exceeds the scope of this
chapter. First Nations and Aboriginal people are rightly alert to the consequences
Soyez sages et soyez unifies [Be wise and be united] of culturally appropriative practices, and it is my hope that elements owed to
Beneath your Sacred Star their traditions are employed by Ceu do Montreal at the discretion of indigenous
And call the peoples ofthe Earth people, and in a continuing dialogue with them. However, while it is important
To remember who they are. to consider the adoption of indigenous traditions in Santo Daime through the
Cree Elder Frederick Bevan Skerra\\ lens of cultural appropriation, a second - and not inherently mutually exclusive -
possibility should be considered: figuring indigenous agency centrally, the inte-
Further solidifying the connection, a Cree elder and member of'Ceu do Montreal gration of First Nations traditions in the Santo Daime church can be read as a
received the instruction to give Mestre Irincu - the founder of Santo Daime - the shaping of Santo Daime's syncretic form by indigenous people, for indigenous
honorary posthumous title of Black Eagle. Finally, the most significant syncre- people. If this is the case, then the numbers of First Nations people attending
tization of First Nations practices into Ceu do Montreal has taken the form of a Santo Daime rituals could be expected to increase along with the integration of
94 Eh Oda Sheiner
additional First Nations traditions. Should Ceu do Montreal establish the legal
right to pursue their religion, the syncretization of First Nations practices into
Santo Daime doctrine will be an exciting, and possibly controversial, site of inter-
cultural encounter and ritual innovation.
Conclusion
This chapter rendered a portrait of Ceu do Montreal and its place within Canada
through an exploration of ontological and epistemological alterity, and an unpack-
ing of its manifestations at several levels of analysis. Recognizing the rhetorical
importance of received meaning in the Santo Daime, I looked to the site of mean-
ing transaction as a locus of ontological divergence from mainstream Canadian
culture. Interview data gathered from seven members of Ceu do Montreal sup-
ported the doctrinal view that the Santo Daime sacrament mediates experiences
of spiritual agency, as evidenced by my interlocutors' descriptions of meaningful
intersubjective encounters either felt, seen, or heard during Santo Daime works.
Beginning with the navigation of alterity at an individual level, I attended to the
language that people used to describe intersubjective encounters and the way
these figured into their understandings of the world. I explored the notion that
Santo Daimc rituals catalyze meaningful relations with Daime, where an imma-
nent, personal understanding of meaning is privileged over a positivistic notion
of meaning - allowing, among other experiences, for the ontological recogni-
tion of a nonhuman "other." While the Santo Daime reify their commitment to
the ontological "other" through doctrinal beliefs, my interviews suggest that this
commitment is renegotiated on an individual basis. Although conversations with
my interviewees phenomenologically corroborate the prevalence of forms of
intersubjective encounters it appears that, while some daimistas are committed
to the existence of entities both inside and outside of ritual works, others espouse
epistemologies that open less ontological leeway for the recognition of entities
outside of ritual space.
Given the centrality of ontological alterity - vis-a-vis secular, ostensibly rational,
North Americans - in key aspects of Santo Daime doctrine, Ceu do Montreal
engages in processes oftransJation to make their beliefs and practices commensura-
ble to interlocutors outside the church. I proceeded to unpack translational processes
enacted at a collective level by focusing on the disparities between the oniologies
and epistemologies of the government of Canada (in particular, its Health Canada
division) and those of Ceu do Montreal. Specifically, I looked at Health Canada's
rhetorical construal of Daime as a "preparation containing N,N-dimethyltryptamine
(DMT), harmalol and harmaline" and their analysis of this "preparation" along
metrics of ha1111 and risk. Health Canada's understanding of Daime as a drug of
abuse precludes the possibility that Santo Daime could be understood as beneficial
rather than harmful and forecloses the opportunity for an ontological recognition of
intersuhjective relations with Daime and the heings it mediates. Thus, r highlighted
the discourses performed by Ceu do Montreal in order to make their goals stra-
tegically commensurable to the state. Shifting attention back to intra-community
The adaptation ofSanta Daime to Canada 95
discourses, r examined the cultural translations that Ceu do Montreal members
undertake to bridge perceived differences - along dimensions of identity, spiritu-
ality, and health - between themselves and Canadians at large. At once aware of
the alterity of their beliefs and practices, and the fact that they are embedded in a
largely secular society, the members of Ceu do Montreal emphasize the cultiva-
tion of a mutually reinforcing dynamic between ritual works and day-to-day life.
r explored members' beliefs about healing and illness as components of a process
oflocating spiritual experiences within the context of a secular, highly medicalized
culture. Finally, r described some of the principal innovations that Ceu do Montreal
has added to the Santo Dairne ritual repertoire, and framed these innovations as
efforts to ground Ceu do Montreal's practice in the spiritual and cultural context
of Canada. By deploying the concepts of ontology and epistemology, this chapter
assessed Santo Daime's expansion and subsequent adaptation to a Canadian setting
by calling attention to evidence of alterity, and the techniques that Ceu do Montreal
has employed - at individual and collective levels - to navigate these differences
and establish their practice in Canada.
Notes
Graduate Student, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University
in Montreal, Canada. Email: eli.sheiner@mail.mcgill.ca. The research presented in
this chapter forms part of a project undertaken for the fulfillment of a master's degree.
2 It is worth noting that practitioners of Santo Daime in Canada make a distinction
between the terms "avahuasca" and "Santa Daime." The term "avahuasca" casts a large
semantic net and may refer to anything from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine to decoc-
tions containing the vine in addition to the Psychotria viridis leaf and any number
of admixlures. On the other hand, "Santo Dairnc" refers specifically to preparations
brewed in the context of a feitio ~ the highly sanctified ritual for the production of
Daime - and is composed exclusively of Banisteriopsis caapi vine, Psychotria viridis
leaf, andwater (Mcyer, 2010; Labate, 2012).Thus, for my interlocutors at Ceu do Mon-
treal, while all Santa Daime is consideredayahuasca,not all ayahuascais Santa Daime.
3 Residential schools were institutions created by the Canadian governmentwhere indi-
genous children were sent to be forcefully assi~ilated into Canadian culture. Children
attending these boarding schools were not allowed to speak their mother tongues and
were suhjected to a range of physical, sexual, and psychological violence. In contem-
porary Canada, residential schools are now acknowledged to be a part of a colonial
effort to wipe out Aboriginal culture (Milloy, 1999).
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5 A religions battle
Musical dimensions of the
Santa Daime diaspora

Beatriz Caiuby Labate, 1

Glauber Loures de Assis, 2
and Clancy Cavnar'

Introduction
This chapter examines the experience of music and language in relationship to
the religious use of a psychoactive substance in a case study of the diaspora of
Santo Daime, a Brazilian ayahuasca religion. Although there is a growing litera-
ture on the international expansion of Santo Daime, only a handful of studies have
addressed the crucial role of music and language in this process.
First, we address the Daime diaspora in the light of certain contemporary global
flows. Then, we examine the role of music in the expansion of Santo Daime, espe-
cially since it is considered by its adepts to be a "musical doctrine." We explore
how the musical dimension connects with the modus vivendi of Daime groups
outside of Brazil. Daime's musical universe is structured by alliances, conflicts,
performance, language fluency, and linguistic resignifications. It provides a rich
context for understanding the ethos and expansion ofthis new religious movement.
Our analysis is based on a multisite ethnography carried out in Santo Daime
centers in Brazil and other countries.' We make generalizations that we apply to
Daime churches abroad; however, there are many particularities. It is important to
note that some linguistic observations are less valid for Portuguese- and Spanish-
speaking countries than for countries such as the United States, the Netherlands,
and Germany.
We adopt a comparative approach, which is somewhat rare in studies of aya-
huasca religions. We argue that the international diaspora of Santo Daime dia-
logues with other transnational movements and shows interesting parallels and
contrasts with other Brazilian religious and cultural manifestations that have
spread overseas. We aim to demonstrate how the international expansion of Santo
Daime illuminates contemporary global phenomena and helps us understand the
effervescent new religious moment in which we live.

Contemporary global flows: the Brazilian diaspora

Throughout its long and complex history spanning the five centuries since Euro-
pean colonization, Brazil has been the recipient of a massive influx of religious
and cultural traditions brought by colonizers, migrants, and slaves from diverse
100 Beatriz Caiuby Lobate et al.
regions of the world. In recent decades, however, this movement has reversed
direction dramatically as Brazil has transformed itself into a country not of immi-
grants, but of emigrants. In this so-called "Brazilian diaspora" (Falcao, 2005),
hundreds of thousands of Brazilians have migrated overseas: some lA million are
currently in the United States; 230,000 in Japan; 200,000 in Paraguay; 180,000
in the UK; and 136,000 in Portugal, to name only the top destinations (Rocha &
Vasqucz, 2014). In addition to this movement of people, Brazil has also become
an exporter of cultural and musical traditions, such as samba, Carnival, and capoe-
ira, which is now practiced in over a hundred countries (Castro, 2007), as well as
diverse religious and spiritual practices (Freston, 2009; Rocha & Vasquez, 2014).
In a word: Brazilian culture, music, and religions arc everywhere.
Without even trying, one encounters the singular rhythms, songs, and acrobatic
movements of capoeira in martial arts studios and public places in New York,
London, Paris, Lisbon, and Cusco. The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God
(Igrcja Universal do Reino de Dcus), a controversial Pentecostal mega-church that
originated in 1977, is now found throughout Asia, Africa, and North America. The
Afro-Brazilian religion Umbanda is likewise practiced in terreiros in Japan, Por-
tugal, Uruguay, the United States, and Argentina. You can sing along with Can9GO
Nova groups in Israel, follow the charismatic Brazilian spirit healer Joao de Deus
in Australia, and take ayahuasca at Santo Daime centers in all the inhabited conti-
nents (Rocha & Vasquez, 2014: Labatc & Assis, Chapter 3 in this volume).
The international expansion of these diverse religious traditions, which has
been referred to as the "Brazilian religious diaspora" (Rocha & Vasquez, 2013), is
neither homogenous nor linear. but instead, diverse, wide-ranging, and polycen-
tric. It emerges not only from the migration and personal initiative of individual
people, but also from broader cultural flows fed by media, the Internet, religious
tourism, religious missionaries (in the case of neo-Pentecostals), as well as the
fascination, bordering on mystification and fetishism, that many people through-
out the world have toward Brazil (Granada, 2015).
The diaspora of Santo Daime has also occurred within this broader religious
context, showing elective affinities with the contemporary zeitgeist and global
economic and religious processes, including: transformations in capitalism
toward a deterritorialized market, based on the information economy; revolutions
in transportation and communication, notably the advent of the Internet and digi-
tal social networks; a popularization of the environmental movement, concomi-
tant with a weakening of traditional left-leaning political associations and trade
unions and the emergence of a "spiritual left" (Labate & Assis, Chapter 3 in this
volume); and global changes in the role and scope of religion, including subjec-
tivization and deinstitutionalization as epitomized in the emergence of so-called
"New Age" spirituality (Hcrvieu-Lcger, 2008; Assis, 2013).
Thus, the case of the Brazilian religions reflects this broader scenario of chang-
ing international religious and cultural flows, in which not only Brazil but also
Latin America and other economically marginal regions of the "global South"
have emerged as important generators of religious and cultural references (Fres-
ton, 2009; Rocha & Vasquez, 2014), including dance traditions like the tango from
Musical dimensions ofthe Santa Doime diaspora 101
Argentina, the conchera dance from Mexico (Brito, 20 11; De La Torre & Zuniga,
2011), and various religious movements, ranging from Eastern religions (Bud-
dhism, Hinduism, Tao, and more recently Islam), African and Afro-American reli-
gions like Cuban Santeria, Candomble, and South American shamanism, to name
but a few.
Santo Daime is a particularly illustrative example of this new global religious
configuration. The Brazilian census of 2010 registered approximately 35,000
self-identified practitioners of the so-called Brazilian ayahuasca religions: Santo
Daime, Uniao do Vegetal, and Barquinha (Rocha & Vasquez, 2014). Of the three,
Santo Daime is the oldest, and also the first to expand both within Brazil and
internationally. The group was founded in the 1930s by Raimundo Irineu Serra,
now known as Mestre Irineu, a black man and grandson of slaves who had left his
home state of Maranhao in arid northeastern Brazil for the rubber camps of the
Amazon. There, he was introduced to the psychoactive beverage used in native
Amazonian shamanism, ayahuasca, a mixture composed of the vine Banisteriop-
sis caapi and the leaf of a rainforest shrub in the coffee family, Psychotria viridis.
He incorporated these indigenous psychoactive plants, which he referred to with
an alternative local name, daime, into a syncretic religion built around Christian,
Esoteric, and Afro-Brazilian elements, with ayahuasca as its central sacrament.
After Mestre Irineu's death in 1971, Santo Daime split into a number of alter-
native and, in some ways, competing religious groups; each claimed legitimate
descent from Mestre Irineu's original doctrine. The most important of these are
the Centro de Iluminacao Crista Luz Universal (CICLU-Alto Santo: Universal
Light Christian Illumination Center), referred to more commonly as "Alto Santo,"
and the Igreja do Culto Ecletico da Fluente Luz Universal Patrono Sebastiao
Mota de Melo (lCEFLU: Church of Eclectic Cult of the Universal Flowing Light
Patron Sebastiao Mota de Melo). CICLU-AIto Santo is led by Mestre Irineu's
widow, Peregrina Gomes, or "Madrinha Percgrina," and is restricted to the city of
Rio Branco in the state of Acre in the Brazilian Amazon. By contrast, lCEFLU,
founded by Sebastiao Mota de Melo, or "Padrinho Sebastiao," and currently led
by his son Alfredo Greg6rio ("Padrinho Alfredo"), has spread widely in Brazil
and to dozens of countries throughout the world. It is the ICEFLU tradition, with
thousands of members worldwide, that is most closely associated with the interna-
tional diaspora, perception, and reputation of Santo Daime, and it is on this group
that our chapter focuses.
ICEFLU (hereafter referred to as "Santo Daime," which is how it is more com-
monly known) remained restricted to the Amazonian region of Brazil until the
late 19708. At that time, the group began a rapid, diasporic expansion, first to
urban centers in southern Brazil and then to dozens of countries, during roughly
the same time frame that other Brazilian religious and cultural traditions spread
throughout the world, notably neo-Pentecostal churches like Igreja Universal,
Afro-Brazilian religions, and capoeira.
The international expansion of both capoeira and Santo Daime was driven by
personal initiatives and ambitions of key individuals, and not by any expansion-
ist institutional strategy, much less with any state support (Falcao, 2005). It was
102 Beatr iz Caiuby Labate et al.
also facilitated by a romantic, idealized, exotic vision of Brazil on behalf of peo-
ple in many countries. In this context, the Portuguese language took on almost
sacred overtones among foreign adepts, whether they were singing the rhythmic
folksongs that accompany capocira games or chanting Santo Daime hymns (Cas-
tro, 2007; Assis, 2013). This culturalist model of expansion, shared also by the
Afro-Brazilian religions (see Frigerio. 2013), contrasts with the diffusionist model
proposed for the international expansion of Brazilian neo-Pentecostal religions,
characterized by aggressive proselytization and missionary activity. One promI-
nent example is the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), which
has expanded through a process of direct, highly centralized, and hierarchical
transplantation. Its expansion has been particularly successful among Portuguese-
and Spanish-speaking populations and groups ofAfrican descent. It has expanded
internationally by offering services in local languages in order to be recognized as
a truly "universal" religion, but it is frequently seen as a kind of "Black Church"
or "ethnic religion" (Freston, 2009). Thus, there is currently a wide diaspora of
Brazilian religions and other cultural traditions, illustrating various modes of
expansion.
In the beginning there was music: sonic
experience and spirituality
"In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word
was God" (John I: I).
So begins the Gospel of John, the sacred text of Christians: the idea that words
create is as ancient as religion itself. Through words, priests, pastors, shamans,
sheiks, monks, rabbis, and pais-de-santo conduct and give form to the rituals of
the world's diverse religious traditions. In this context, language, cognition, and
translation are inseparable, fundamental elements. In many religions, language
itself is sacred, including the Arabic language used in the Koran, the Hebrew
used in Jewish religious texts, and, prior to the Prolestant Reformation, the Latin
used in all church writings and rituals. In such religions, knowledge of the sacred
language becomes a key to God's revealed word. And yet, in other religions, prin-
cipally Protestant religions after the Reformation, and notably messianic Evan-
gelical and Pentecostal religions in recent limes, an effort is made to translate
sacred texts and rituals into many different languages to "bring religious insight
and salvation" to as many people as possible.
Alongside language, music is an important dimension in many of the global reli-
gious traditions we are interested in studying. Despite their profound ideological
differences, Australian Pcntccostals, Brazilian neo-Pentecostals, Umbanda prac-
titioners, Native American Church members, Peruvian vegetalisras, Sufis, Hare
Krishnas, Catholic "Cancao Nova" enthusiasts, and Santo Daime adepts are all
united by their dedication to music. Music is both Word - sacred language - and
mundane social communication. Music provides structure to rituals, creates nar-
rative, activates deep emotions, produces religious ecstasy, and permits spiritual
transcendence; it invokes collective memory and tears down and rebuilds notions
Musical dimensions ofthe Santo Daime diaspora 103
oftime and space, creating the experience of a self-evident, intangible truth. In
other words, music itself creates the religious universe (Labate & Pacheco, 2010).
These elements are found in the most diverse cases around the world, from
Oceania to the Amazon basin. In Australia, music transformed the Hillsong Pen-
tecostal Church when its high-quality music recordings achieved worldwide suc-
cess and the church band Hillsong became one of the country's most popular.
This band, in turn, inspired religious pop music around the world, including the
Brazilian evangelical band Diante do Trono ("Before the Throne") (Riches, 2010;
Rosas, 2015), which is the musical arm of the Baptist Church of Lagoinha in Belo
Horizonte. The band achieved national fame and became a striking example of
the rising star of neo- Pentecostal religion in Brazil, currently the fastest-growing
religious movement in the country.
Charismatic Catholicism has also seen a renaissance in Brazil, driven largely
by catchy music, spectacular masses broadcast on TV, and some priest-singers
who have become national celebrities (Carranza & Mariz, 2013). The associated
"Cancao Nova" pop music movement helped reinvigorate Brazilian Catholicism
in a moment when it was largely perceived to be in decline. The examples of
the centrality of music in ritual and religious life can be multiplied. In the Afro-
Brazilian religion Umbanda, music has a fundamental role in invoking divine
forces (Frigerio, 2013; Saraiva, 2013). In Amazonian shamanism, music functions
as the great integrator and mediator of ritual life (Bustos, 2008).
Much has been written about the visual and cognitive aspects of altered states
of consciousness induced by psychoactive substances, but the sonic aspect has
received less attention. However, sound is a universal phenomenon permeat-
ing the ritual use of ayahuasca in all its contexts. Whether among indigenous
or mestizo vegetalistas in Peru, Colombian Taitas, urban neo-ayahuasca healers,
or the rituals of Barquinha, Uniao do Vegetal, and Santo Dairne, the ayahuasca
experience is eminently sonorous and strongly musical (Bustos, 2008; Labate &
Pacheco, 2010; Garcia Molina, 2014).
In the world of ayahuasca, music is the language of the spirit. In Uniao do
Vegetal ceremonies, both chamadas ("calls") sung by Masters and participants,
and musical selections played over loudspeakers, are fundamental aspects of the
ritual (Labate & Pacheco, 2010). Followers have recorded catchy pop-music
tracks with spiritual messages, and some of these artists are favorites to play dur-
ing sessions. In Barquinha, the salmos ("psalms") chanted during the ceremonies
represent a central religious symbol. In Peruvian vegetalismo, the icaras activate
spiritual entities and can be used to heal. In Santo Daime, the "hymns" are the
main conductors of religious ritual. Memory, emotion, language, and cognition
are all mobilized in the sonic experience of ayahuasca: without music, there is no
ritual, and no guided experience of ecstasy (Brabec de Mori, 2012). In sum, music
is a technology that permits intersubjective communication between persons, spe-
cies, and peoples.
Sound does not just negotiate; it also creates an enviromnent. These architec-
tural or musical landscapes lead to, and bring people back from, spiritual journeys
(Brabec de Mori, 2012; Garcia Molina, 2014). Music guides individuals through
104 Beatriz Caiuby Labate et a/.
the visual and physical dimensions of the ayahuasca experience, referred to as
miraciio in Santo Daime, burracheira in Uniao do Vegetal, mareacion in Peru,
and pinta in Colombia. It opens portals to the astral plane, to the unknowable.
The symbiosis between ayahuasca and music is a passport to the sacred and to
revealed truth, untranslatable in ordinary language or states of consciousness. It
also enables a range of synesthetic perceptions, such as Peruvian artists who cre-
ate pictorial representations of the icaros, or Daime adepts who claim to see the
"color" of the hymns (Rabelo, 2013; Garcia Molina, 2014).
The experiences induced by psychoactive substances cannot be reduced to bio-
chemical effects in the organism but depend on other factors, such as individual
subjectivity and sociocultural setting (Zinberg, 1984). The relation between aya-
huasca and music is a paradigmatic example of the profound interaction between
drugs, culture, body, and spirituality.
Santo Daime: a musical doctrine
Santo Daimc adepts refer to the religion as a "musical doctrine." lndeed, Santo
Daime ceremonies are carried out to the cadences of religious chants, referred
to as "hymns" (hinos), that constitute the cosmology of Santo Daime. All adepts
are encouraged to sing and dance to these hymns as part of the "spiritual works"
itrabalhos espirituaisi. It is impossible to understand the Daime religion without
taking into consideration the important role the hymns 'play as conductors of ritual
and of the subjective experience of participants. Due to space limitations, we will
focus here on the hinos and omit discussion of the bailado, the dance rhythm that
guides certain rituals lasting for up to 12 hours. We note, in passing, that this form
of dance and bodily expression is extremely important in Santo Daime, but it has
so far received limited attention in the literature.
The first hymns were "received" through divine inspiration by Mcstre Irineu
and his closest early followers, many of them illiterate, and then learned through
repetition and transmitted orally. Later, after Irineu's death, ICEFLU began pro-
ducing little hymnal "notebooks" tcaderninhosi that came to be used regularly,
although some church members take pride in having memorized the hymns and
thus prefer not to use them. A group of over 100 of these hymns, received by
Mestre Irineu throughout his life, comprise a foundational hymnal known as "The
Cross" (0 Cruzeiros. Organized chronologically, these hymns are considered
by church members to be divine teachings revealed by Our Mother of the Holy
Conception to Mestre Irineu, and constitute a fundamental theological reference
for the religion. Church members believe that the hymns are not "composed" or
created by Mestre Irineu or other authors, but are rather "received" directly as
instructions from the spiritual realm, or "Astral" (plane) (Rehen, 2011).
Beginning with the hymnal "New Jerusalem" (Nova Jerusalem) by Padrinho
j becomes
Sebastiao, hymns could also be "offered" to other people: thc person who receives
the hymn can then "offer" it to another person, who can in turn offer it to some-
one else or include it in his or her own hymnal. This innovation became a way of
establishing social ties and networks - these days, intercontincntal- of circulation
Musical dimensions ofthe Santa Daime diaspora 105
of the sacred musical repertoire, representing both a source of personal prestige
and a kind of "gift" in the sense of French sociologist Marcel Mauss (Rehen,
2011). To possess a hymn "offered" by a prominent leader is an important form of
religious capital, providing a respected and enviable bona fide of one's adherence
to doctrine.
The hymns of Padrinho Sebastiao and his disciples currently number in the
thousands, including lyrics in many languages, such as Japanese, English, Ger-
man, Dutch, Spanish, and others. Santo Daime churches allow some degree of
flexibility in the choice of hymns performed during spiritual works, though there
is an official calendar to be followed that requires studying particular hymnals
depending on the occasion. Thus, Santo Daime churches, both in Brazil and over-
seas, sing their own local hymns occasionally, but generally try to follow the
calendar and study the original Portuguese-language hymnals. Strict dedication to
the official calendar, which includes dozens of different kinds of spiritual works,
is proof of a church's strength, organization, and adherence to doctrine.
But how does one know if a given hymn is legitimate, given the fact that it is
not an ordinary musical composition? There do not appear to be specific rules
for evaluating authenticity. Generally, following what Becker (1973) refers to as
the "interactionisr" maxim, a legitimate hymn would be one that is defined or
accepted as such by the group, which is in turn related to a series offactors such as
the status of particular individuals and their ability to introduce and present their
hymns to the rest of the congregation. But, at least in theory, any Santo Daime
member can receive hymns, making Santo Daime more flexible and theologically
"horizontal" than other ayahuasca religions, notably Uniao do Vegetal (Labate &
Paeheco,20l0).
Beyond reflecting internal prestige dynamics, hymns also reflect the ethical
and moral values of the group. And yet, the dynamic content of Daime hymns
also tracks the transformation of the church in its process of expansion, as is the
case for other religious and cultural traditions. Songs and lyrics in capoeira and
the Mexican conchera dance, for example, reveal a process of adaptation and
reinterpretation in new contexts (De La Torre & Zuniga, 2011; Granada, 2015).
For example, in Spain, some contemporary conchera practitioners change the lyr-
ics of certain phrases to reflect more of a New Age, rather than Catholic, ethos.
For example:
Estrella del Oriente que nos Dio su santa cruz
"Star of the East that gave us its holy cross"
Estrella del Oriente que nos Dio su santa luz
"Star of the East that gave us its holy light"
In the case of Santo Daime, the older, more traditional hymns emphasize daily
work and Catholic elements like the Holy Trinity and the saints. In more recent
106 Beatriz Caiuby Labate et al.
hymns, WC find references to other spiritual beings, like Orixas from Afro-Brazilian
religions and divinities Irom the pantheon of Eastern religions, as well as New
Age themes and other aspects from the symbolic universe of educated, urban,
middle-class people. And yet, despite this dynamism in terms oflyric themes, the
musical forms of Daime hymns remain practically unchanged since the time of
Mestre Irineu, built around three basic rhythms: the march (4/4 time signature),
the waltz (3/4), and the mazurka (6/8).
Much of the time spent doing "spiritual works" in Santo Daime rituals is dedi-
cated to the performance of hymns. Various musical instruments may be used for
accompaniment, especially guitar, accordion, and maracas. Through the process
of expansion, a variety of other instruments have been incorporated, including
drums, flute, marimba, violin, electric guitar, sitar, harp, and charango.
The incorporation or suppression of certain musical instruments reflects the
process of resignification in a new context. As has happened with Umbanda and
the capoeira diaspora, certain unchanging elements provide a core identity (e.g.,
Santo Daimes three rhythmic forms, and capocira and Umbanda chants), while
other elements are adapted and resignified (Castro, 2008; Saraiva, 2013; Granada,
2015).
The hymns serve to differentiate between different Santo Daime groups and,
of course, between Santo Daime and other ayahuasca religions. The hymns and
music connect people with the history of the religion, creating a kind of "col-
lective memory" (Halbwachs, 1980). ill this sense, there is also the individual
memory of the participant members ifardados ["uniformed"], in reference to the
vestments members wear). Upon hearing a specific hymn, members remember
powerful or personally significant moments from other ceremonies. Sometimes,
just hearing the first few notes ofthe melody is enough to bring back the memory
of the full lyrics of a forgotten hymn. Occasionally, people remember a hymn
without even knowing how to sing it, just from its harmony, melody, or rhythm:
it is said that the hymns are "recorded in the heart." This musical memory is
important for Brazilian members, of course, but takes on a somewhat different
meaning for foreign members, who don't necessarily speak Portuguese or fully
understand the lyrics.
Hymns are so dominant in Santo Daime ceremonies that there is little room for
homiiics or sermons. The Holy Doctrines (santas doutrinasi are contained in the
hymns themselves, and the spiritual work consists largely in drinking daime, danc-
ing, and singing with focus and attention. A symbiosis exists between the hymns
and the daimc beverage. Many church members say that the hymns become trans-
formed under the forca ("power"), a term for daime's psychoactive effects, and
that only in this state is the true meaning of the hymns revealed. Some hymns are
said to raise a person's energy, others cure; and there are also hymns of praise, of
punishment, and of moral teaching. The music itself also guides daimes mystical
journey: as daime reveals a hymn's profound meaning, the hymn itself shapes the
experience. The relationship between understanding the literal meaning ofa hymn
versus "feeling it through the vision" is a key concept for analyzing the dynamics
of hymns for foreign church members.
Musical dimensions ofthe Santo Daime diaspora 107
Santo Daime overseas
Musical and linguistic experience in Santo Daime is more complex than it might
seem at first glance. There are foreign Daime members who speak Portuguese,
Brazilians who attend ceremonies in other countries, and Brazilian musicians and
singers who have immigrated to the U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe, and Asia.
This diversity results in a wide range of translations of hymns and bilingual ver-
sions of hymnals to make the hymns intelligible to those who don't speak Por-
tuguese. International expansion has created a global network of Santo Daime
groups with different constructions of identity. These different "Daime identities"
overseas are strongly related to language, which becomes a concrete religious and
philosophical dilemma when it comes to the Portuguese language and the transla-
tion of hymns.
Santo Daime ceremonies overseas closely resemble those in Brazil, but there
are some notable differences. Groups tend to be smaller, and with fewer musi-
cians. Works are sometimes divided across two days, and groups rarely have their
own church property. And yet, despite these differences - or perhaps even to make
up for them - one sometimes notes a kind of hyper-realism in relation to rituals
and habits; a similar phenomenon can be observed in capoeira, Umbanda, and
Peruvian vegetalismo. Some ritual practices appear to become more orthodox
than in the native Brazilian ceremonies, "more traditional than the original," rep-
resenting an effort on the part of foreign practitioners to legitimize their authentic-
ity in the absence of more typical ethnic Brazilian markers of identity. Inversely,
some ritual aspects considered sexist, reactionary, backwards, or pretentious in
the new context might be suppressed or "cleansed." This negotiation between
exotic authenticity and local adaptability seems to confer advantages in terms of
attracting new followers in different regional contexts (Labate, 2004; Brito, 2011;
Labate & Assis, Chapter 3 in this volume).
Outside of Brazil, new elements tie Santo Daime members together, such
as religious service, a special emphasis on spirit possession, and especially the
notion of "Brazilianness": Santo Daime is a religion that emerged from the sha-
manic practices of indigenous Amazonian people, but it is also deeply associ-
ated with all things Brazilian. This fascination with Brazil is certainly part of the
appeal of Santo Daime, and contributes to people's appreciation of the music and
hymns. The international success of capoeira, too, owes partly to an essentialized
conception foreigners have about Brazil: Capoeira is a traditional ethnic art form
and a symbol of national identity, strongly associated with the idea of Brazilians
as people who sing, dance, and sway to the rhythm. In both cases, participation
in the cultural form creates a bond, shared among other participants, with the
Brazilian nation. As Andrew Dawson argues in Chapter I of this volume, while
modernity stimulates, on the one hand, a movement toward individuation, subjec-
tification, and "detraditionalization" of religion and culture, on the other hand, it
can also stimulate valorization of tradition, what he calls "retradirionalization."
In the modem world, tradition has become chic: one more trapping of personal
distinctiveness and individual choice.
108 Beatriz Caiuby Labate et al.
This all creates a strong motivation among foreigners who practice capoeira
to learn Portuguese and visit Brazil; speaking Portuguese can become a matter
of personal pride (Falcao, 2005). Some capoeira teachers prohibit the translation
of names for capoeira moves, kicks, songs, and instruments into other languages
(Assuncao, 2007). According to Joao Grande, a renowned master of "Angola"
style capoeira who has lived for many years in New York, "This studio, students
come in here every day. Come in, take class, go away, come back again. All in
Portuguese. I teach them capoeira, and Portuguese too. I never need to speak Eng-
lish here" (Castro, 2007, p. 46, author's translation).
One capoeira ladainha ("lament") in particular illustrates how the international
capoeira diaspora has creatively incorporated new elements according to its own
logic:
Mestre Boca Rica / Mestre Boca Rica / Mestre Nobre de Valor / Foi dar curso
em Los Angeles / Ate a gringo chorou
Master Boca Rica [Gold Tooth] / Master Boca Rica / Noble Master, Valued
Master / Went to give a course in Los Angeles/ even the American girl cried
(Assuncao, 2007, p. 213)
Thus, in capoeira, as in Santo Daime, each generation adds new elements and
interpretations to the original formulas, keeping novelty within the boundaries of
tradition (Assuncao, 2007, p. 212).
One curious example of a linguistic readaptation can be found in this capoeira
corrida (vrunning'') song:
6 lemba, e lcmba. t. lemba do Barro Vermelho
Oh rember, yeah rember. Yeah rcm'ber Red Clay
The song is not easily translated: the word lemba originally referred to a place
in the country of Angola, as well as to a female African spirit associated with
fertility and the birth of twins, among other meanings. But few contemporary
capoeira masters are aware ofthe original religious meaning, and instead interpret
lemba as a contraction of lembror, "remember." New verses are added in relation
to the concept of remembrance, and the original African meaning has been (ironi-
cally) forgotten (Assuncao, 2007).
Outside of Brazil, there are likewise new readings of the religious meaning of
Santo Daime. Each church builds its own narrative, interpreted under the guid-
ance ofthe church's "Godfather" or "Godmother" t p adrinho or madrinhav and the
local community. One Dutch church leader, for example, claims that Santo Daime
helps purge Europe of "bad karma" associated with the Holocaust. In Hawaii,
some hymns worship Pele, the local volcano goddess. In Germany and Ireland,
there are newly received hymns that include references to Norse and Celtic
mythology, while in Canada and the U.s., there are many Native American refer-
ences. As is the case within Brazil, each Santo Daimc ehurch overseas has its own
Musical dimensions ofthe Santo Daime diaspora 109
"local fiavor," The same thing happens with Afro-Brazilian religions: in Uruguay,
foi example, certain entities absent from the Brazilian context appear in rituals,
such as the so-called africanos (Frigerio, 2013).
Hymns received in Portuguese are the basis of the Santo Daime doctrine, such
that the language has a special value in the religion. Portuguese provides a kind of
seal of authenticity and Brazilianness, serving as a sign of status and dedication in
overseas capoeira groups or Dai.me churches, in the latter case especially for people
who are fluent and can "receive" hymns in Portugnese. Yet, this does not impede the
coexistence of multiple forms of understanding and practicing the Daime religion.
Hymns in overseas Daime churches can be sung in different ways, Some are
sung by alternating English and Portuguese verses, or using a few Portuguese
words (though not necessarily with correct Portuguese grammar) interspersed in
an English, Dutch, or German hymn. This also happens when foreigners speak
during rituals. The recurring salutation "Viva 0 Padrinho Alfredo!" ("Long live
Padrinho Alfredo") is often shortened to "Viva Padrinho Alfredo!" without the
article, Likewise, the Canadian church is named "Ceu do Montreal" instead of the
proper form, "Ceu de Montreal."
Most of the important hymnals have already been translated into English. The
hymnal "notebooks" are also usually bilingual, with alternating pages in the two
languages. On one side of the page the translation is printed; on the other, the
original is printed in Portuguese. The translations, like the hymns themselves, can
change through time; sometimes, different translations circulate simultaneously.
One of the few translated hymns that is sung according to a standardized rendition
is Padrinho Sebastiao's last hymn, Brilho do Sol ("Sunshine"), which is sung by
almost all overseas groups, first in Portuguese and then a second time translated
into the local language.
The bilingual "notebooks" demonstrate a subtle but significant transformation
in the Santo Daime ethos: the passage of a predominately oral tradition into a writ-
ten culture. Throughout much of its history, Santo Daimc was mostly an orally
transmitted religion. Hymns were learned by repetition, passed on from parents to
children, and sung from memory during the rituals, The arrival of the first printed
hymnals transformed the situation, and the oral culture came to coexist with a bur-
geoning written tradition. This process has only intensified with the international
expansion, as foreigners find it difficult to memorize songs in another language
without a written text to study.
As hymnals were translated into different languages, adaptations had to be made
to allow the translated lyrics to be sung with the original melodies. Some words
are left untranslated to fit the original melody, and definitions or explanations
may be added in the footnotes. Sometimes, long-time foreign church members
may even translate their own native-language hymns into Portuguese, although
Brazilians rarely sing the hymns received by overseas members. Yet, members of
the so-called comitivas - touring groups of musicians, singers, and church lead-
ers, mostly from the Amazon region, who travel to different international Daime
congregations as spokespersons for the church - usually play at least a few hymns
from local church leaders as a form of courtesy.
110 Beatriz Caiuby Labate et al.
And yet, foreigners encounter notable barriers in asserting their leadership,
just as happens with foreign capoeira masters or pais de santo (Saraiva, 2013;
Granada, 2015). Geraldine Fijneman, a Dutch madrinha in Amsterdam, is a rare
exception, as she is highly respected at Ceu do Mapia, the main Santo Daime
ccnter in the Amazon. Although intemational expansion is encouraged, the Bra-
zilian cultural and religious diaspora still shows some resistance to granting full
legitimacy to foreign leaders.
Participants will listen to the preferred pluasing of a translated hymn in the
hymnal booklet, reading along with it first to hear how the translation is sung
in the foreign language. Sometimes, a leader might stop the ceremony to read a
specific hymn in the local native language (e.g., English, German, French, Dutch,
etc.) aloud if a translation is not available. Those who are not fluent in Portuguese
sometimes sing the words to a hymn without unders tanding their meaning, and yet
there are those who insist that they can absorb the larger meaning that goes beyond
lyrics, transmitted directly through the melody, the rhythm, and the "power of
Daime," and felt with the heart. Sometimes, church leaders' lectures are translated
simultaneously during the ceremonies. As has happened with neo-Pentecostal
Brazilian churches overseas, and the "God is Love" iDeus e Amor) church in Peru
(Rivera, 2013), a new kind of ritual specialist has emerged: the translator.
In this context, Brazilian immigrants to the U.S. and Europe help provide a con-
nection with the Santo Daime doctrine. Given the language barrier that exists for
most foreign practitioners, native Brazilian members become valuable assets for
communicating with the travcling comitivas. The mere fact of speaking fluent Por-
tuguese can make Brazilian members especially prominent in overseas churches.
Some compare the hymns to mantras, such that the sound itself has the power to
alter consciousness or call spirit beings; this kind of acoustic trance power is also
especially important in Umbanda (Saraiva, 2013). And, by the same token, a Bra-
zilian church leader once sang the English-language hymnal of Jonathan Goldman,
an American Daime leader, and although he spoke no English, he said he could
understand the meaning of the entire hymnal through its "vibration." Furthermore,
one German guitar player stated that Portuguese is the "language of God," which is
to say, Portuguese has become the sacred language in the overseas Daime milieu.
Many overseas Daime members in several countries have learned to sing
hymns in Portuguese without understanding the language. There are even puxa-
doras (female song leaders) who guide their congregations through the hymns
and sing beautifully in Portuguese without actually speaking the language. And
then there arc others who understand Portuguese fairly well but pronounce it with
a strong accent of their own language, which can limit their ritual capabilities as
singers and communicators.
The difficulty foreigners face with Portuguese produces some interesting
results, such as discussions about the correct meaning of certain words or their
proper pronunciation. It is sometimes thought that knowing Portuguese helps in
understanding the true meaning of the hymns even when a foreign-language trans-
lation exists.
Musical dimensions of the Santo Daime diaspora 111
While most foreign Santo Daime church members are non-Brazilian, there
are usually at least a few Brazilian immigrant members, as well as the constant
circulation of Brazilian visitors, that can make Daime churches feel like a kind of
local "Brazilian embassy." This creates a niche for some Brazilian church mem-
bers to support themselves by offering courses in the "Daime arts" for foreign-
ers. In our fieldwork we came across a puxadora from Ceu do Mapia who lives
in the D.S. and offers private lessons in singing, dancing, playing the maracas,
and instructions on how to guide oneself in rituals, to supplement her income.
A guitar player from Sao Paulo lives in Holland with a Daime community work-
ing as a kind of "Jack of all trades" in instructing Dutch church members in how
to sing and play.
Alongside these concrete efforts to leam from Brazilian immigrants and the
traveling comitivas, there appears to be a conviction that the daime drink itself
facilitates the leaming of Portuguese. The idea that daime is a spiritual teacher that
can help one leam languages, music, and other abilities is also found in Brazil and
in the ayahuasca universe more generally (Bustos, 2008; Garcia Molina, 2014).
For church members, it is "the daime itself who teaches; if you don't understand,
take daime again."
The cultural transposition of Santo Daime activates a complex web of knowl-
edge, expertise, values, and conceptions. Different modes of interpretation and
reception of the religion come into play, generating passionate differences of
opinion and conflicts that can become true religious battles.
Religious battles: translation wars
Entrei numa batalha v.i meu povo esmorecer. temos que veneer com 0 poder
do senhor Deus
"I went to battle and watched my people falter, we have to be victorious
with the power of our Lord God"
Peguei a minha espada, [oi para guerrear
"I took my sword, I went to war"
Porque estou preparado, com as armas na mdo
"Because I am prepared, with my arms in my hands"
As attested in these passages taken from tluee of the most revered hymnals in the
religion, people experience Santo Daime rituals as a kind of spiritual warfare,'
waged on the"Astral [plane]" and guided by the dual missions of fighting malev-
olent beings or helping suffering spirits with the doctrine, and attaining personal
spiritual development. And, as in all wars, combat takes place on a battlefield:
the ritual chamber. Dressed in their white costumes and arrayed in battalions, the
Santo Daime adepts sing and danee for hours, transcend their individual limita-
tions, join together, gain self-awareness, receive cures and visions, and are over-
whelmed by emotion.
112 Beatriz Caiuby l.abate et al.
But there are times when opinions diverge, conflicts emerge, opposing interpre-
tations of doctrine cause disagreement; people compete with each other and dis-
pute over positions of authority, prestige, and ritual performance. Internationally,
such conflicts arc strongly expressed around questions of language and music.
These proccsscs can become true "wars of translation" and "musical wars," analo-
gous in some ways with the "worship wars" that have been found in the interna-
tional Evangelical movement, where different churches jockey for distinction in
reference to musical styles (Riches, 2010; Rosas, 2015).
To translate, or not to translate the hymnals" To sing in Portuguese, or not?
Fardado church members have different interpretations about these issues, and
during our fieldwork, we identified two main "schools": the traditionalists vs. the
"translationalists." The f0D11er insist on maintaining the music and hymns exactly
as they are performed in the original Brazilian rituals, placing a high value on
their formal, traditional, ethnic trappings, while the latter maintain certain basic
liturgical and musical elements but promote the translation of hymns as a positive
form of cultural adaptation, allowing people from other countries to fully com-
prehend the doctrine.
Various arguments are used to support both positions. Traditionalists who insist
on singing in Portuguese claim that the hymns are divine gifts from the Astral,
and that they should not be changed or altered in any way. They frequently quote
a specific hymn of Padrinho Alfredo which says. "Follow the Doctrine truly and
don't change a single letter." They draw an analogy between the Portuguese
of the hymns and certain words in Sanskrit that are considered to have sacred
power. For the traditionalist school, there is an easy solution for those who don't
understand the hymn: silently read the translation printed on the opposite page
of the hymnal. Reading the translation allows the meaning to be comprehended
without compromising the musicality of the hymn. They also point out examples
where semantically correct translations do not match the original melodic and
rhythmic cadences. For example, the Portuguese word irmiios might be rendered
most literally as "brothers," but the English term excludes the feminine gender,
while irmiios does not. "Brothers and sisters" expresses this inclusive meaning,
but has five syllables and hence does not work rhythmically. "Siblings" might
thus be more appropriate, but sounds overly technical and decidedly unpoetic.
These examples support their argument that translation destroys the poetry ofthe
hymns.
Militant traditionalists might also say that there is a certain aesthetic charm
to singing in the original Portuguese, or that it is nobler and more challenging,
something reserved for the initiated. They see the tendency to translate the hymns
as a sign of ethnocentrism on behalf of Americans and Europeans who are inca-
pable of appreciating other cultures. Some traditionalists place a high value on
the full, original form of the hymns. For them, spiritual "power" is imprinted on
the musical framework of the hymns, meaning that translation necessarily implies
diminishing the power of the sacred chants. This tendency is especially strong in
Uniao do Vegetal, which does not allow the sacred "calls" (chamadas), lyrics, or
melodies to be translated or otherwise modified (Labate & Pacheco, 20 I0).
Musical dimensions ofthe Santo Daime diaspora 113
.Labate (2011) proposes an alternative explanation that applies to diverse aya-
huasca musical traditions: singing in an exotic language cnhances the mystique
of the experience, and linguistic incomprehension contributes to this sense of
enchantment, especially with regard to indigenous Amazonian languages, some-
times invoked in ayahuasca songs. The use ofthe Portuguese language by cosmo-
politan overseas practitioners - whose spirituality is more likely to be New Age
than traditionally Christian - also provides a kind of linguistic distancing from
Catholic references such as "Our Father," the Virgin Mary, the Holy Trinity, and
so on, commonly invoked in Santo Daime songs and prayers.
And yet, on the opposite pole, are the translationalists, who would rather sing
in their own native language in order to better understand the meaning of the
words they are pronouncing. They recognize that translation works better for
some hymns than others, depending on the melody and phrasing. But rarely are
ceremonies conducted entirely in the local language; Portuguese is maintained for
hymns whose melodies and rhythms are more difficult to transpose. Translational-
ists argue, "And what ifthe Bible had been left in the original Greek and Aramaic?
It is like expecting that the mass will be done in Latin forever." They feeI that not
understanding the meaning of the words they sing cuts off their connection with
the ceremony. Some also complain that it is tedious and boring to participate in a
long ceremony by singing in a language one doesn't understand.'
But for translations to be sung, they need to be consistent. Sometimes an infor-
mal "translation committee" is invoked to decide on the best version. Translations
made in Holland have circulated throughout Europe and the V.S., while some
V.S. translations have also made it to Europe, establishing intriguing new North-
North connections that don't depend on Brazil.
Singing in English is rare in the European Daime churches, where Geraldine
Fjineman, a major figure there, expresses a traditionalist preference for singing
hymns in the same language in which they were originally "received." Jonathan
Goldman also supports this view. However, Paulo Roberto Silva e Souza, from Rio
de Janeiro, has been important in supporting and expanding the use of English hymn
translations. Married to one of Padrinho Sebastiao's daughters, and now leading
a branch independent of ICEFLV, he is one of the few Brazilian padrinhos who
speaks English. He claims to have had a vision telling him that the hymns should
be translated and sung in English. He translated many of the traditional hymnals as
well as his own hymns into English. For many years, he led ceremonies with chants
sung mostly in English, and gained many followers and admirers. He was especially
influential in the early North American Daime movement, but more recently has lost
his influence over serious polemics involving his personal behavior. Some churches
in the V.S. associated with him still sing his English translations of the hymns.
While Paulo Roberto's fluency in English provided him with a kind of short cut
to ascend the foreign church hierarchy, others who don't speak English nonethe-
less maintain a special prestige in the V.S., Canadian, and European Daime cir-
cuit, such as Padrinho Alfredo, Mestre Conselheiro Luis Mendes, and Padrinho
Alex Polari. Their limited language ability, or the liminal communication, seems
to be part of their appeal (see also Rivera, 2013).
114 Beatriz Caiuby Labate et at.
Translators are obviously key actors in this process. Some are Brazilian; some
are natives of their home countries. Some specialize in translating hymns, or
doing simultaneous translations of oratories during the ceremonies, while others
serve both functions. Language ability isn't the only factor involved, however, as
most translators already maintain religious prestige and strong ties within their
church. They sometimes try to adjust translations to make them fit better with the
hymns' rhythms and melodies, or interpret esoteric concepts or obscure, nonordi-
nary words. Sometimes their translations are not literal, taking interesting poetic
license while couching these adaptations in an aura of enchantment and power.
In some cases of simultaneous translation for Brazilian visitors, the translator
makes deliberate changes in interpreting some terms, adapting the speech to the
local context (a special challenge considering the altered state of consciousness).
During fieldwork, we observed one translator change the phrase "self-buried"
to "self-integrated." This kind of deliberate alteration also occurs in the hymns,
though it is less common, because the hymns are considered as sacred, received
knowledge. Nonetheless, there are numerous cases where the English translation
intentionally "softens" the intent of the original Portuguese phrase; for example
humilhacdo, "humiliation," may be rendered as "humility," or rhicote ("whip")
becomes "discipline," and so on.
Paulo Roberto's followers sometimes imitate his translations, his idiosyncratic
English style, or his Rio de Janeiro (carioca) accent. For example, the verse 0
Beija-flor; santo das matas, bateu as asas na mais alta vibraciio, was sung trans-
lated as, "Oh Hummingbird, Saint of the jungle, flap-ped his wings in the highest
vibration," with the word "flap-ped" sung in two syllables, as was Roberto's speak-
ing style. Another verse, Aguia desceu, aguia POllSOU, was first translated as "the
eagle got down, the eagle landed," but later modified to "came down" after some-
one pointed out the suggestive connotations of the slang expression, "get down."
Even when singing in English, Americans will adopt Brazilian prosody and, for
example, pronounce "divine" as "dee-vine" in the Brazilian fashion. One hymn by
Padrinho Sebastiao has the phrase Eu digo ta, eu digo to, eu digo ta e aqui estou,
translated and sung as, "I say yes! I say yes' I say yes! And here I am." Those
who learned the hymn with Paulo Roberto and are familiar with the English ver-
sion emphasize the word ta the way they sing "yes" in English, in an emphatic
way, which is absent from the original, thus altering the original version through
contact with the translation. Therefore, the international expansion is a two-way
street. Variations are sometimes corrected by local puxadoras or comitivas, who
serve as guardians of song orthodoxy to make sure all pronounce and sing the
hymns in the same way.
The case of Paulo Roberto is reminiscent of what happened with Brazilian
nco-Pentecostalism when it moved into Peru, where Brazilian-accented Spanish
came to be admired and copied by Andean disciples. Andean people tend to be
stigmatized in Peru for the way they speak, among other things; and copying the
linguistic eccentricities of Brazilian priests speaking "portunhol" ~ a joking term
for this mixture of Portuguese and Spanish ~ became an opportunity for them to
gain acceptance (Rivera, 2013, p. 130).
Musical dimensions of the Santo Daime diaspora 115
In.the case of Santo Daimc, when Paulo Roberto finished a ceremony, he would
solemnly invoke: "Our Empire Master Juramidarn," translating the original phrase
Nosso Mestre Imperio Juramidam. A local church leader in California adopted
this phrase, and when someone suggested that the correct phrase should have been
"Our Imperial Master Juramidam," the leader ignored the comment and continued
to close the ceremonies with Paulo Roberto's exact phrase. In one example we
observed, a church member repeated, in an especially loud voice, his version of a
particular phrase whose translation was contested. Thus, in addition to traditional
preoccupations with correct dancing, singing, and musical performance, there is
now a new layer in finding the "correct" translation, generating new microlevel
power disputes.
These cases demonstrate the importance of charismatic leaders and the sym-
bolic importance of Brazilian leaders who were key players in transposing the
culture and music of Santo Daime overseas. The particular influence of a given
leader can become naturalized in an overseas church as if it were a fundamental
aspect of Daime doctrine.
More generally, however, when church members become more familiar with
the music, there is a tendency to sing more often in Portuguese and limit the use of
English translations to the most common and frequently used hymns. It becomes
an issue of pride and a sign of spiritual capital among foreign church members
to memorize the hymns in Portuguese and sing along perfectly with the visiting
Brazilian comitivas. We also note that members who sing the hymns aloud gain
more status than those who contemplate their meanings silently. As a bodily as
well as a musical religion, ritual performance is a key aspect in Santo Daime.
ICEFLU has never taken an official stance on the issue of whether performing
the hymns in foreign languages is appropriate, but it has tacitly supported these
initiatives. On the question of translation, our research suggests that ICEFLU
leaders generally suggest informally that hymns should be translated only if the
original melody can be preserved. In some places, notably the U.S., it has been
difficult to apply this rule uniformly, since local leaders never consulted with the
main church in Ceu do Mapia about the challenges of translation and the liturgi-
cal innovation this represents. Foreign leaders note that there are no guidelines
to follow, opening a margin of doubt around which internal disputes intensify,
In short, there is no clear policy or official guidelines on the issue of translation,
echoing the eclectic spirit and limited institutional elaboration ofICEFLU in Bra-
zil. Multiple schools and visions co-exist, resulting in "translation wars" that are
cousistent with the religious plurality and diversity that exists among the various
Santo Daime lineages in Brazil.
Musical warfare: Santo Daime music overseas
In some sense, the collectivity of Santo Daime adepts participating in "spiritual
works" comprises a kind of "Astral orchestra": hundreds of people around the
world singing and praising God in unison, with their guitars, drums, flutes, and
maracas performing a body of musical work, as a hymn says, "firmed in the Sun,
116 Beatriz Caiuby Labate et al.
the Moon, and the stars" tfirmados no sol, na lua, e nas estrelas). From another
perspective, however - and considering the travels of comitivas, the recordings of
hymnals, the Daime distributors, the celebrity of certain singers and musicians,
and the competition and conflicts among these various protagonists- the musical
aspect of Santo Daime can be seen as a kind of "rainforest show business."
In the early years of the expansion of Santo Daime within Brazil, a main fac-
tor binding the groups in southern Brazil with the [CEFLU organization was the
distribution of the daime sacrament itself. The southern branches still had no way
of producing the beverage, so they needed to maintain ties with Ceu do Mapia to
guarantee their supply. Gradually, however, these groups became more indcpend-
ent and started producing their own daime or acquired it through a more diversi-
fied network of distributors. As this happened, the musical charisma of performers
from Ceu do Mapia and the travels ofthe contitivas became even more important
elements in preserving the religious capital and influence of ICEFLU in its ties to
churches in Brazil and overseas.
From the point of view of overseas members, ceremonies carried out with visit-
ing comitivas are a chance for a more authentic experience, by hearing the hymns
sung in the original Portuguese and appreciating the presence of the Brazilian
padrinho and his ability to command the ritual; thus, these rituals are considered
to be of superior quality. But the deeper purpose of the comitivas is to nourish the
expansion of Santo Daime and "indoctrinate the whole world," according to one
of Mestre lrineu's hymns. In addition to their missionary function, "world tours"
by the comitivas bring prestige and status to the churches that host them, both in
Brazil and overseas. Having someone like Padrinho Alfredo leading a ritual in
one's church is a proof of legitimacy for groups that have this prerogative. And,
from the perspective of the comitivas, traveling overseas can lead to employment
opportunities and provides a chance to visit places that rural Amazonian people
could not otherwise easily visit.
Being part of a comitiva can reflect musical ability, or kinship or friendship
with church leaders. Knowing how to sing hymns, dance, or play musical instru-
ments is a basic and normal part of the Daime community's practice, but in this
new context it has come to be seen as a kind of religious expertise associated
with Amazonian traditional culture. Traveling overseas allows comitiva members
to earn significant amounts of money and attain a privileged status when they
return to Mapia, contributing to growing social and economic inequalities in this
community.
Participating in the recording of a hymnal also represents a status symbol and
important personal achievement for Santo Daime members. The musicians who
join the comitivas become identified with specific church leaders; such and such
a person might be the "singer of Hymnal X." or "the musician ofPadrinho Y"
In addition to local singers and musicians from Mapia, some Brazilian musi-
cians from other parts of the country have developed their hymnals and comitivas
to promote throughout Brazil and elsewhere in the world. These people typically
make studio recordings of their work and make efforts to promote them using
Musical dimensions ofthe Santa Daime diaspora 117
COs, Internet videos, and visits to many churches. In an effort to stand out from
existing work, these recordings sometimes boast more complex melodies and
musical arrangements than the traditional style. Lacking roots and social ties in
Mapia, such musicians invest in more sophisticated, innovative music in order to
compete in the Daime music marketplace that includes established names such as
Cristina Tati and Julio Cesar, or "Carioca," who tour Brazil and the world promot-
ing their recordings and hymnals. Some members of the "brotherhood" question
the authenticity of these hymnals, but the fact is that some of these recordings
have gained wide popularity. A similar movement toward musical specialization
and professionalization, studio recordings, and online video production is found
in capoeira, neo-Pentecostalism, and the charismatic Catholic resurgence, and is
closely tied to the success these groups have had in international expansion (Castro,
2008; Riches, 20 I0; Carranza & Mariz, 2013).
The Internet plays an important role in this musical dimension. The full reper-
toire of official ICEFLU hymnals is now available for download, including sev-
eral different versions on multiple websites. Listservs and email groups provide
updates, discuss specific hymns, and share recordings online. When Brazilian
leaders "receive" a new hymn, it is now typical for it to be recorded within a
matter of weeks, if not days. Church members race to publish such new hymns
on the Internet and share them on social networks. Using social networking tools
like Facebook and YouTube, some groups have been successful at increasing their
popularity and reach. The Internet also seeds new internal conflicts and competi-
tion among groups over doctrinal and political questions.
International exchange in Santo Daime has created a musical scene where
hymns and people circulate globally, certain singers and musicians are now inter-
nationally recognized, where young people dream about joining comitivas and
traveling throughout the world, and the "owners" of hymnals make an effort to
promote and gain recognition for their work. Musical innovations have created
"sonic identities" that Santo Daime members recognize and distinguish, at the
same time generating competition for prestige and disputes, and questions about
legitimacy and rivalry between Daime churches.
In this rich and complex scene, Santo Daime music may take on celestial con-
notations for those who participate in the rituals: the hymns carry them through
the experience and profoundly touch their emotions. At the same time, music can
also take on belligerent overtones; for example, too many guitar players may try
to sit at the main ritual table at the center of the temple (there are limited spaces);
or players with different styles may compete with each other during the rituals; or
singers may jockey for position, or try to stand out in their maraca rhythms, or the
way they dance, or their vocal volume. Translators, likewise, can have divergent
interpretations or try to gain influence in the translation oflectures. These disputes
in the musical field become a kind of "musical warfare" that is not uncommon,
and, in fact, is seen as natural by participants, who might engage in animated
discussions over such issues, thus strengthening the group's identity and religious
practice.
118 Beatriz Caiuby Labate et af.
Conclusions
In this discussion of the contemporary religious scene of Santo Daime and its
international expansion, we have emphasized musical and linguistic dimensions.
On the one hand, we situate this phenomenon in a broader context of the "Brazil-
ian diaspora," involving various religious and cultural movements from the Global
South, and note how these diverse processes share certain basic dilemmas and
transformations related to the contemporary zeitgeist. On the other hand, we sce
how these diverse manifestations of the Brazilian diaspora obey different models
of expansion and transnationalization that have shaped their overseas identities.
Santo Daime music is one of the main pillars ofthe religion for foreign and local
church members. Music, we argue, is a privileged locus for analyzing disputes and
competition, and also alliances and agreements (for the latter, sec also Labate &
Assis, Chapter 3 in this volume.) Through this musical dimension, we have
explored the dynamics of constant construction and reinvention of religious iden-
tity, showing both flexibility and contested narratives at the heart of the religion.
In the ICEFLU branch of Daime, unlike in other Brazilian ayahuasca religions, all
members can, in principle, "receive" new hymns, apply their own interpretations
oflyrics and ritual performance, and incorporate and recombine local elements in a
dynamic and malleable movement. The production of music in the context of Santo
Daime reflects social configurations and can provide upward mobility in the church
hierarchy: in this sense, music both creates and reflects ncw maps of power. Espe-
cially in Santo Daime groups outside of Brazil, musical ability, religious knowl-
edge, fluency in Portuguese, ethnic identity, social networks, and the capacity to
carry out cultural translation are al1 closely tied and intricately interpenetrated.
This casc study has shown that the configuration of religious groups - in their
ethnic composition, universalism, and orthodoxy - is not a given, imposed from
above, but rather constructed through conflicts, interpretations, subtle tensions,
and alliances. The example of Santo Daime reveals that even those religious
groups perceived as "traditional" and "exotic" are, in fact, far from being isolated
and provincial, but instead dialogue among themselves while circulating interna-
tionally, fully embedded in modernity and in the contemporary religious scene.
The Daime diaspora, like other Latin American diasporas, involves not only
South-North flows. but also North-South. South-South, and even North-North, in
a process of two-way reinvention.
Santo Daime members view themselves as engaged in a kind of spiritual war-
fare on the Astral plane, using magical, musical weapons against disruptive spirit
beings. The Santo Daime "religious battle" is, however, not only a spiritual one,
but also a struggle to establish itself as a religion and to spread internationally;
subtle religious battles and "translation wars" also take place within and among
congregations, likewise played out in a musical idiom. This case reveals how
culture, religiosity, and music decisively influence thc psychedelic experience.
From the perspective of drug policy, the Santo Daime example challenges the
idea that ayahuasca and other ritually used psychoactives are "hallucinogenic
drugs" that produce false perceptions of reality and social or mental pathologies.
Musical dimensions ofthe Santa Daime diaspora 119
Instead, we see how the religion, the sacrament, and the cultural and musical tra-
ditions are tied together in a rich and complex web. In the contemporary context
of the transnational Daime diaspora, this cultural system involves singing in for-
eign languages, reading or producing translations of various texts and speeches,
learning and coordinating dance steps and rhythms, memorizing lyrics, as well as
having spiritual visions, possibly incorporating disembodied spirits, and attaining
psychological revelations. In this sense, we hope this contribution inspires more
inclusive and tolerant policies as well as more comparative studies that examine
the rich and fascinating relationships among language, music, cognition, religious
ecstasy, and the ritual use of psychoactive substances.
Notes
Professor at the Center for Research and Post Graduate Studies in SocialAnthropology
(CIESAS), in Guadalajara; and Co-Founder ofthe Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Stud-
ies of Psychoactives (NEIP). Email: blabate@bialabate.net
2 Psyf) in clinical psychology, John F. Kennedy University; and Research Associate at
the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP). Email: clancycav-
nar@gmail.com
3 PhD Candidate in sociology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Hori-
zonte, Brazil; and Research Associate at the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of
Psychoactives (NEIP). Email: glauberJoris@hotmail.com
4 Author Labate conducted fieIdwork between 1996 and 2015, visiting Santo Daime,
the Uniao do Vegetal, and neo-ayahuasca groups in Argentina, Italy, France, Spain,
IIolland, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, England, Canada, the United States, and
Mexico. Assis carried out fieldwork between 2009 and 2015, visiting Daime groups in
Germany (2012), Ceu de Santa Maria in Hol1and (2012), and Ceu do Mapia in Brazil
(2013,2014,2015). Cavnar's work between 1997 and 2015 focused on Daime groups
in several regions of the United States, in the Amazon Basin, at two Daime centers in
Rio de Janeiro, as well as in the Czech Republic, Amsterdam, and Assisi, Italy.
5 Unlike the notion of spiritual warfare fonnd in the neo-Pentecostal faith, SantoDaime's
"battle" is not conceived of in opposition to other religions.
6 It is important to note that some might criticize the music for being repetitive and bor-
ing, independent of understanding the words or not.
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6 Good Mother Nature
Ayahuasca neoshamanism as
cultural critique in Australia

Alex K. Gearin:

Introduction
This chapter investigates the practice of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia
and the ways in which narrative accounts of ecstatic healing are inscribed with
forms of "cultural critique" (Marcus & Fischer, 1986) against urbanization, mate-
rialism, environmental destruction, and consumer capitalism. The ecstatic healing
practices are centered upon ritualized styles of consuming the indigenous Amazo-
nian psycho active beverage ayahuasca. While a variety of groups, networks, and
individuals drink the beverage in Australia, this paper circumvents the Australian-
based diasporas of the Brazilian ayahuasca religions (Santo Daime and Uniao do
Vegetal) and focuses on Australian-based ayahuasca neoshamanism.' By "neosha-
man ism," 1refer to what Atkinson (1992, p. 322) calls the "new shamanism," which
emerged in the middle classes of European, North American, and other societies
among people associated with the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s 3
Neoshamanism traditionally traces its lineage to indigenous practices and cosmol-
ogies, and tends to be defined by its practitioners as a "spiritual path for personal
empowerment" (Wallis, 1999, p. 42). Grounded in a Euro-American history, it
involves a cosmology aligned "at once with Nature and the primordial Other,
[and] in opposition to institutionalized Western religions and indeed Western polit-
ical and economic order" (Atkinson, 1992, p. 322). This chapter demonstrates
that, in the context of Australia, ayahuasca neoshamanism represents a novel exten-
sion and reinvention of earlier types of neoshamanism with regard to an ethos of
cultnral opposition.
The practice of Australian ayahuasca neoshamanism involves a critical cultural
sensibility that permeates the realms of mythology and phenomenology. Practices
of narrating ayahuasca trance experiences, and the trance experiences themselves,
are subject to ritual codes of individualism (Gearin, 2015a) that encourage a wide
variety of beliefs and perspectives to be articulated and experienced. Within this
heterogeneous whole, I argue, are certain tendencies of belief that can be read as
forms of cultural critique and oppositional politics. Pharmacologically enhanced
conditions of the body and perception, combined with dilated emotional experi-
ence, and violent acts of purging, characterize the phenomenology of ayahuasca
trance experiences (Townsley, 1993, p. 456); and these bodily acts and bodily
124 Alex K. Gearin
states (Gow, 2012), I demonstrate below, are codified by Australian drinkers with
articulations that index rejections of "mainstream" society.
Ayahuasca ncoshamanism gained currency at the turn of the twenty-first cen-
tury, inventing and introducing Western adaptations of indigenous Amazonian
shamanism. In the context of Australian ayahuasca circles, these adaptations
include portraits of Amazonian shamanism that are characterized by forms of cul-
tural idealism and forms of critical discourse mounted against social and cultural
institutions of "mainstream" Australian society. The logic by which this counter-
cultural perspective is authorized, as detailed below, entails certain similarities
with the project of anthropology as cultural critique.
Marcus and Fischer illustrate, in their pioneering text, Anthropology as Cu/-
tural Critique (1986), ways in which ethnographic practice and knowledge can
disclose and bring critical perspectives to cultural institutions that are so common
they defy perception. The purpose of cultural critique, they explain, is "to gcner-
ate critical questions from one society to probe the other" (1986, p. 117). Marcus
and Fischer defined this "promise of anthropology," arguing that ethnographic
realities may "serve as a form of cultural critique for ourselves. In using portraits
of other cultural patterns to reflect self-critically on our own ways, anthropology
disrupts common sense and makes us re-examine our taken-for-granted assump-
tions" (Marc us & Fischer, 1986, p.I).
The importation of perspectives from one cultural sphere or context to critique
another exists beyond anthropological reflections, and in diverse and radically
dissimilar cultural projects and practice. In recent decades, the notion of cultural
critique has been extended by anthropologists to explain realms of the political
economy and devil possession in Ecuador (Crain, 1991), the history of ethnomu-
sicology (Bohlman, 1991, p. 131), open-source software and copyright politics
(Kelty, 2004), the independent film industry (Ortner, 2012), the subjectivity of
postmodern anxieties (Ortner, 2005), value as a theoretical project (Otto & Will-
erslev, 2013), and various other fields and cultural projects.
Shamanism, spirit possession, and ecstatic trance practices may, in diverse con-
texts, involve forms of critical politics and subaltern resistance (Lcwis, 1971).
Spirit-possession cults, McIntosh argues, have long involved forms of resist-
ance and opposition to "Western incursions, capitalism, and other oppressive
forces" (2004, p. 92). This includes, tor example, Barolong boo Ratshidi spirits
of resistance in South Africa that protest against colonial and postcolonial forces
(Comaroff, 1985); deities in Songhay possession dance styles ofNiger that dram-
atize "horrific comedies" whereby European civilization is rejected and ancestral
traditions are enacted preferentially (Stoller, 1984); and spirits of resistance that
possess female factory workers in a highly capitalist context in Malaysia (Ong,
1987). In terms of the anthropological record, Boddy argues, "most would agree
that possession cults are, or have become, historically sensitive modes of cultural
resistance" (Boddy, 1994, p. 219). The practice of ayahuasca neoshamanism in
Australia does not typically include forms of spirit possession - although, I did
encounter minor cases of spirit incorporation that included glossolalia and drink-
ers associating embodied trance bchavior to the agency o f nonhum an beings. Yet,
Ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia 125
the way in which cultural critique and oppositional politics are encoded into nar-
rative accounts of ayahuasca trance experiences and healing in Australia indi-
cate a level of similarity between ayahuasca neoshamanism and spirit possession,
ecstatic trance cults, and other "sensitive modes of cultural resistance" (Boddy,
1994, p. 219). Ayahuasca neoshamanism draws upon portraits of Amazonian
shamanism - and thus embodies similarities with other forms of cultural critique-
while representing a form of spiritualized cultural resistance. In the practice of
ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia, nature, plant-spirits, and an indigenous
Other represent objects by which drinkers reflexively and critically assess various
aspects of everyday ethics and the broader cultural institutions of which they are
constituted.
Nature's medicine and the toxins of society
Ayahuasca is an agent of healing for Australian neoshamanic practitioners. Drink-
ers regularly refer to ayahuasca as "the medicine" or "la medicina" and to each
other as "medicine brothers" and "medicine sisters." The most common live
music performed in ceremonies is referred to as "medicine songs." The array of
sicknesses and maladies that drinkers attempt to cure with ayahuasca is complex,
and the accounts in which sickness and well-being are articulated include themes
that bring into focus various political, cultural, and philosophical dimensions of
the lives of drinkers.
At the foundation of illness, maladies, and suffering, Australian ayahuasca
drinkers typically explain, is a psychic and toxic separation between the individual
and the natural world. For example, Fred, a regular ayahuasca drinker, explained
to me that "the root cause of all sickness is simply separation from nature and the
natural order ... ayahuasca heals this separation at a very fundamental level."
Similarly, another drinker, John, explained, "The medicine connects me more
deeply to myself, the planet, and the grid of life." Daksha, Australia's pioneering
and most expensive ayahuasca ritual specialist, explained, "The main illness I've
been working with, specifically, is the split in the Western psyche, the individ-
ual, between themselves and nature" (Daksha, personal communication, March,
2012). Central to the cosmology of ayahuasca neoshamanism is the reification and
personification of nature in the form of a Mother Nature goddess. Drinkers have
creatively reinvented or summoned the Ancient Greek goddess Gaia in ways that
relate to popular depictions of Mother Nature and to various New Age formula-
tions (see Hanegraaff, 1997, p. 156).
There is typically a strong rejection of artificial or "nonnatural" things for Aus-
tralian ayahuasca drinkers. Nonorganic foods, water treated with chlorine and
fluoride, synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, synthetic psychedelic drugs, Wi-Fi tech-
nologies, artificial light, urban cityscapes, and other artifacts may be associated
with illness, disease, toxicity, and spiritual malaise. In contrast, organic foods,
natural environments, and plant-spirits are associated with well-being and spir-
itual fulfillment. Ayahuasca ceremonies are held almost exclusively outside cities
and in nature or "the bush," and drinkers warn of the dangerous "energies" that
126 Alex K. Gearin
may enter a ceremony conducted in city or urban settings. For example, Nick, a
regular ayahuasca drinker, explained to me:
All of the functions of society take me away from having a profound experi-
ence; so, being out in wilderness gives you a natural environment from which
to have a natural experience. Things don't get in the way, they kind of work
with your experience.
Drinkers tend to explain that ayahuasca ceremonies conducted in urban settings-
that may include sounds of cars, sirens, and people walking through streets - are
limiting, dangerous, and will distract participants from types of deep healing
that may occur in ceremonies located in natural surroundings and a sensorium
of nature. Ayahuasca healing is described in terms of a psychic connection with
nature that becomes more available in geographies that are devoid of cities, urban
landscapes, and human settlement.
Ayahuasca typically induces dramatic and grueling bodily processes and states
of purging (that may include afflictive experiences such as vomiting, profuse
sweating, extreme yawning, glossolalia, and haunting visual imagery and sensory
experiences), and drinkers codify these proccsscs and states in terms of notions of
healing. Concomitantly, drinkers explain that extreme purging may be the result of
incorrect practice. Forms of incorrect practice may include drinking ayahuasca in
city or urban settings, drinking with malevolent or na'ive shamans or "charlatan"
"cowboy shamans," and not following strict dietary and behavioral regimes in the
period before drinking ayahuasca. Participants warn that incorrect practice may
block or hinder the type of deep communing with nature that ayahuasca occasions
and, in these instances, the purging and radical bodily process of ayahuasca trance
experiences may represent processes of "unblocking" and preparing the drinker
for a deeper and more authentic spiritual union with "energies" of the natural
world. The practice is ultimately a work of self-cultivation. As Nick explains:
Working with aya requires a real desire to make change in your life. It isn't
easy. You have to work at it, work with it, be willing to purge, to get messy, to
get down on your knees in the dirt and let it all out, to be humble or humbled,
and to re-join the world as part of nature instead of a dominator and consumer
of nature.
Nick explains that "all the functions of society" prohibit him "from having
a profound experience" of healing and rejoining "the world as part of nature."
In the practice of ayahuasca neoshamanism, the famous Cartesian and modem
dichotomy of nature-society is not overcome, but inverted and radicalized by
locating transcendent value in nature, not society. Society and the rational mind
are instrumentalized by the "intelligent" and uncontrollable purgative powers of
the sacred plant-spirit ayahuasca. By sharply inverting modern axiologies, the
neoshamanic ayahuasca cosmology is grounded in a Euro-American cultural
genealogy, while at the same time producing a form of resistance or alternate
1
Ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia 127
modernity that challenges an emphasis on humanity and human artifice with
perceptions and radical practices of nature made sacred. The personification of
nature, as a total being, in the form of'Gaia and Mother Nature is premised upon a
modem dichotomy that involves what appears to be a Rousseauian-style valuation
in which nature is placed in opposition to society.
Ayahuasca drinkers explain that ayahuasca offers an indispensable intervention
into psychic crises and the "roots" of global political and ecological problems. The
notion of a rupture between the drinker and nature - a kind of fall from Eden - is
central to conceptions of this cultural crisis, and the healing that ayahuasca pro-
vides involves the production oftropes and themes whereby enviromnentalist eth-
ics are raised to mythological postulates. The Australian ritual specialist, Daksha,
echoed this affinity between ayahuasca healing and environmentalist ethics to me
in a conversation in the hills of subtropical Australia:
The medicine, coming from the very jungles that we are decimating at such
a rapid rate is a panacea for that very sickness that can do that, that can cause
so much destruction to the mother, the planet. From the very place of what
is being destroyed comes the plant which can heal that, and as a kid I always
remember whenever I was near stinging nettles and got stung, just nearby
there was a plant that had a milky thistle to stop the pain. So there is always
an antidote near the problem. Ayahuasca has come out of the jungle into the
Western psyche to invite the Western psyche back into the garden. Come
hack into Gaia, back into Eden, back into oneness, back into connectivity
and symbiosis and synergy with the plants, with Mother Earth. So that's what
1 feel she's coming to the West to do.
(Daksha, personal communication, March, 2012)
Similarly, Matthew, a regular ayahuasca drinker, explained to me:
Aya is a sacred plant, which means it is a gift from a higher consciousness
to aid humanity in our quest to awaken into the truth of what we are doing
as a species, what we are doing to each other and to the planet. There is an
urgency to this awakening due to our moral responsibility to future genera-
tions to not make sick and lifeless the planet they inherit.
The idea that ayahuasca can contribute substantially to the survival and evolution
ofthe human species is a relatively general claim shared by Australian ayahuasca
drinkers; these expectations are also shared by certain scientists of ayahuasca
(McKenna, 2005; Grob, 2013). Furthermore, psychedelic advocates in Western
societies may be associated with instilling an environmentalist consciousness in
users (Brown, 2009).
The discourse that drinking ayahuasca is healing the human species and our
devastating impacts on nature or the anthropocene appears to stem from, or be
related to, the reproduction of certain forms of the phenomenology of ayahuasca
trance experiences. A dominant theme of narrative accounts of ayahuasca trance in
128 Alex K. Gearin
Australia includes descriptions of sensory and existential merging with all ofnature
and the cosmos. For example, Kate, an Australian ayahuasca drinker, explained,
"After purging I felt completely connected to all nature, every breath, movement,
small or large felt like my own or like the 'I' did not exist anymore ... I was feel-
ing everything all at once in a soft, gently and perfect way." There appears to be
an affinity between ayahuasca trance experiences of "becoming everything" and
the politics of "all nature," "all life," and "species healing" that drinkers articulate.
Furthermore, the challenges that drinkers mount against anthropogenic assaults on
the environment - which stem from conceptions of people embodying a psychic
disconnection from nature - and the challenges of undergoing the grueling act of
ayahuasca purging, involve perceptions of imbalance in nature and the body.
Drinkers integrate a sacred environmentalist ethos of ayahuasca healing into
a complex array of descriptions of personal healing. Practices of drinking aya-
huasca represent a key means of explaining and healing various forms of everyday
and chronic illness, disease, and malaise for Australian ayahuasca drinkers. For
example, Peter, a regular drinker, refers to ayahuasca as a healing modality that
can unite humanity with nature and sustainable living practices, and that can heal
a myriad of everyday illnesses. Concepts of global proportion - including fears
of human "species extinction" - are described alongside descriptions of personal
healing. I asked Peter, "Has ayahuasca healed anything for you, personally')" He
responded as follows:
Depression; a non-functioning sense of smell; acute back pain; emotional
trauma that has caused long-term negative effects on my interpersonal rela-
tionships; umrn, general lethargy and a lack of ability to focus and achieve
goals; heavy metal detoxification; digestive system imbalance; anal polyps.
Ultimately, I feel the root cause of all sickness is simply separation from
nature and the natural order, My feeling is that ayahuasca heals this percep-
tion of separation at a very fundamental level, and as a result has the ability
to heal all of the expressions of this underlying sickness ... As our species
awakens from what Einstein referred to as the delusion of separateness, we
increase our likelihood of averting human extinction and finding a way to live
sustainably as a species on our only home, I'm not aware of any other healing
modality [than ayahuasca] capable of addressing issues as important as us
averting our own self-caused extinction.
Ayahuasca trance "journeys" through the realms of Gaia and Mother Nature rep-
resent a certain kind of flight from conditions of ecological sickness and spir-
itual poverty that drinkers associate with modern civilizations. They also provide,
drinkers explain, the means of curing a myriad of biological illnesses and dis-
eases. Through pervasive explanations, such as "all sickness is simply separation
from nature," an environmentalist ethics and a critique of urbanized socialization
imbue the framework of an etiological system in which politics and everyday
sickness are bound together.
Ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia 129
The act of drinking ayahuasca and purging to "rejoin" nature may involve artic-
ulations that include critiques of social institutions and general cultural practices.
The process of healing invisible levels of the psyche that inform a (dis)connection
between the individual and nature may also be accompanied by critiques of insti-
tutions and cultural conditions that, drinkers explain, harm this connection and
nature proper. For example, in the following transcript, Nick, an Australian nurse,
critiques biomedicine and "Western society" in ways that pivot upon the healing
powers of ayahuasca:
I find the problems in the medical system to be a reflection of the flaws in our
Western society. A world of distractions, materialism, self-interest and ego
indulgence does not make for healthy living or healthy systems. I believe
it increases illness and mental health issues ... the average person is so far
removed from any element of living that could be described as normal or
natural that most people do actually suffer from some form of mental disease,
but that is the new normal, without actually knowing what freedom is, with-
out actually having any interaction with nature, without ever experiencing a
period of time away from unnatural light, without eating food that is not pro-
cessed, without being away from electrical grids and flooded EMF and many
other strange things we now take as normal.
I asked, "How does ayahuasca compare?" and Nick responded:
It feels like when I partake of aya in a ceremonial way, I am allowing a plant
consciousness access to my physical and spiritual being. It feels ancient and
Wise, seems to have a feminine spirit, it has always acted kindly and patiently
with me ... It feels like the experience has been customized just for me by
someone or something that has an intimate knowledge of who I am and what
I need ... Aya is the spirit of the earth in plant form, Mother Nature taking a
form that can actively communicate and participate with humanity. Our indi-
vidual and collective pain and confusion is personally felt by that spirit and
is holding the who le planet back from the next step, from something amazing
I am unable to even imagine yet.
(2012)
Critiques of urbanization, consumerism, biomedicine, and materialism may be
read in the practice of ayahuasca healing and "rejoining nature" in the neosha-
manic milieu, and these critical perspectives may also include demonization
and pathologizations of capitalism. Paul, a regular Australian ayahuasca drinker,
described that he once worked as an information technology consultant for a mul-
tinational mining company but, through drinking ayahuasca, he decided to change
his occupation to hosting spiritual retreats. During a discussion we had about aya-
huasca healing, Paul critiqued "corporations," "governments," and "schooling,"
stating that they create and maintain a sick world in which people are asleep and
l30 Alex K. Gearin
are mindless robots. In contrast to this "sick world," he affirms types of sensory
ayahuasca healing and an "awakened" sociality shared among ayahuasca drink-
ers. Paul explained to me:
Paul: We are all connected to the Earth. We are children of the planet. And, as
you know, these are all part of a dangerous worldview that must be kept
from the mainstream by keeping sacred shamanic medicines illegal. How
else will we work like robots and keep a sick system that doesn't serve the
people running"
A/ex: Why would the sick system want to conceal ayahuasca 0 What does aya-
huasca do to this sickness')
Paul: The system doesn't serve the interests of the people. It serves corporate
interests. It has brainwashed us to believe that we need whatever the cor-
porations market to us. The governments have become agents for the cor-
porations and not the people; they've sold us out. They are like shepherds
that have Jet the wolves into the lamb pen. They have molded us through a
sub-standard education system to be obedient and to accept whatever irra-
tional policies they impose ... the current system works as long as peo-
ple remain dull, complacent, and asleep to their true identity. Awakened
people are the opposite of the mindless consumers that the corporations
wish us to be.
A/ex: Suffering with our hearts disconnected from our minds'?
Paul: Andjourney-work [drinking ayahuasca] involves putting down the ego and
accessing spirit through the feeling body. All our senses become enhanced.
Smelling, taste, touch, etc. are much more awake when the ego is disabled.
This is not hallucinogenic. It's heightened perception of reality.
The deeply embodied and sensory experiences of ayahuasca trance provide
Australian drinkers with a space wherein types of cultural critique - that include
environmental and social ethics - are radically experienced. It is from these expe-
riences that the particular critiques and ethics are articulated or reconstituted.
While the ccstatic trance wisdom may differ from person to person, the way of
knowing is consistent and is shown to encode forms of cultural critique in which
urbanization, materialism, and consumer capitalism may be actively evaluated,
purged, healed, and replaced with visions of an interconnected, sustainable, and
sacred world associated with nature, Gaia, and ayahuasca plant-spirits.
By momentarily stepping outside society, the everyday, and regular conscious-
ness, the everyday is thrown into view, reconstituted, and rearticulated. The limi-
nal space of ayahuasca ceremonies is geographically oppositional to urban life
and culturally oppositional to social and industrial factors that drinkers under-
stand to be harming people and the natural world. The oppositional and critical
stance of ayahuasca neoshamanism is valorized by utopic visions and trance expe-
riences in which the entities Mother Nature and plant-spirits play central roles;
t depictions of "shamans" in the works oflate eighteenth-century European Enlight-
these entities, drinkers explain, is the natural territory of Amazonian shamanism.
Ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia 131
Ayahuasca neoshamanism and Amazonian shamanism
In February of 2012, I attended a series of ayahuasca ceremonies near a small
town outside of Melbourne with 67 other people. Most of the participants were
"experienced journeyers" and had been drinking ayahuasca for several years or
more, yet there was an unusual level of anticipation among participants in the
period shortly before the ceremony. People travelled across the continent and
from as far as New Zealand to attend the event. Australia's most esteemed and
expensive ayahuasca ritual specialist - who spearheaded and cultivated ayahuasca
circles across Australia during the turn of the millennia - organized to bring, for
the first time, his teacher, the shaman Don Julio from the Peruvian Amazon, to
conduct a series of ayahuasca ceremonies. It was a significant moment in the his-
tory of ayahuasca in Australia, and the retreats sold out during the first few days of
being privately advertised. Australian ayahuasca drinkers tend to invest Amazo-
nian ritual specialists with a degree of skill, authenticity, and spiritual power that
typically eludes Australians.
Ayahuasca ceremonies in Australia are conducted throughout the night, culmi-
nating in a morning "sharing-round" ritual where participants publically articulate
and narrate aspects of their personal trance experiences. Given the special occa-
sion of having Don Julio conducting the ceremony, the sharing-round ritual was
reconfigured into a question-and-answer time directed toward the Amazonian sha-
man. The questions posed through a translator to Don Julio in the sharing-round
ritual near Melbourne, described here, represent a certain kind of distillation of
forms of ayahuasca neoshamanism as cultural critique. A participant opened the
discussion by asking the shaman, "Should we work with or oppose the current
political and mainstream culture'?" It was followed shortly after by another similar
question, "Do you see corruption and toxicity finishing on earth?" The Peruvian
shaman answered, "No, no, but this is why we are doing this work with ayahuasca,
to heal these problems." By conceptualizing an affinity between practices of aya-
huasca healing and political and cultural issues, the shaman helped to authorize a
relationship between the radical somatic acts of ayahuasca trance experiences and
the forms of cultural critique expressed by the ayahuasca drinkers.
Conceptions of indigenous Amazonian shamanism that Australian ayahuasca
drinkers articulate appear to follow in the lineage of a historical relationship
between colonizer and colonized, the Old World and the New World, and the
West and the East that extends back to at least the late eighteenth century, with
the emergence of the "shaman" character in European theatre (Stuckrad, 2012).
Stories and accounts of "shamans" first began to trickle into European intellectual
and aristocratic circles during the early eighteenth century through Dutch and
Russian colonial missionary accounts of the Siberian Tungas saman (Flaherty,
1992; Stuckrad, 2012). Historian of religion Kocku von Stuckrad (20 12) analyzed
enment rationalists, romanticists, poets, and playwrights. The author exposes an
ambivalence in influential eighteenth-century attitudes toward shamanism that, he
argues, reveals an "intrinsic tension ofthe European project of modernity" and the
132 Alex K. Gearin
dramas and contentions of rationalists and religionists (Stuckrad, 2012, p. 103).
The Siberian shamans were understood in terms of notions linked more to Euro-
pean politics and history than to Tungas cultural life. Stuckrad (2012, p. 102),
quoting Kohl (1981), explains how "What European observers 'perceived in the
foreign civilization was essentially determined by the limited horizon of experi-
ence of their own civilization.'" Interpreting late eighteenth-century European
attitudes toward and constructions of shamanism, Stuckrad concludes that, in this
context:
The shaman is a projection screen for European fantasies, fears, and desires.
Lovers and haters of the irrational could fill in the details, whether these details
were concerned with a re-invention of pre-Christian Greek philosophy - with
Orphe us as a key figure - or with fantasies about the East.
(Stuckrad, 2012, p. 118)
Seem ingly following a related historical lineage, particular fantasies about indig-
enous Amazonian shamanism have become important factors in the rcinvention
of ayahuasca shamanism in the recent emergence of ayahuasca tourism lodges in
Arnazonia (Labate & Cavnar, 2014), and in the practice of ayahuasca in Australia
and other places outside Amazonia.
There arc various structures of cosmology and cultural ideology among Amazo-
nian peoples that contrast dramatically with the cultural backgrounds ofAustralian
and Euro-American ayahuasca drinkers. The shapeshifting and predator-and-prey
cosmologies of indigenous Amazonia (Riviere, 1994; Viveiros de Castro, 1998;
Praet, 2009) - in which animals and natural beings may constitute "moral failings"
inhuman sociality (London Sulkin, 2005, p. 13) and general political ambivalence
(Fausto, 2004, p. 171), and that are couched in the broader "moral ambiguity" that
characterizes the practice of healing/sorcery in Amazonian shamanism (White-
head & Wright, 2004) - are no doubt difficult for Western ayahuasca drinkers to
swallow. The emphasis on an Edenic cosmos, populated by the benevolent, holis-
tic, and healing figures Gaia, Mother Nature, and Madre Ayahuasca, finds itsclfa
cosmos apart from the notions of assault sorcery and moral ambiguity typical of
Amazonian shamanism. Furthermore, as described by Labate (2014), aspects of
the neoshamanic projections of indigenous Amazonian shamans have resulted in
certain forms of confusion and dissonance in situations where ayahuasca "tour-
ists" have observed indigenous ayahuasca shamans throwing trash into the forest
and rivers, or buying expensive Western clothing or video games.
The anthropology of sorcery and dark shamanism in Amazonia (Whitehead &
Wright, 2004) - in which practices of spiritual attack by malevolent shamans or
nature spirits are described as "imperative for the deccntering of power" (Peluso,
2009, p. 199) and for maintaining social harmony - contrasts dramatically with
the etiological system of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia. Sorcery as a
concept or practice is virtually nonexistent in Australian ayahuasca neoshaman-
ism and tends not to hold political or social currency in the lives of drinkers.
I became aware of only two accounts of sorcery accusations during fieldwork.
Ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia 133
These were confidentially made by ritual specialists and were associated with
rival ritual specialists. Resonating with Dobkin de Rios' (2008, p. 12) study of
ayahuasca neoshamanism in Peru, in Australian ayahuasca practice "the etiology
of psychological disorders and stress are clearly anchored within the individual's
self (although influenced by his milieu), [and] not attributed to the evil-willing
on the part of one's enemies or rivals." In contrast to Australian ayahuasca ritual
specialists that hone abilities of "holding space" for drinkers to personally purge
maladies and gain insights from personal visions, Amazonian Shipibo ayahuasca
healers, as described by Brabec de Mori, are structurally both healers and sorcer-
ers "because healing consists of neutralizing an enemy's action on the patient, and
overthrowing this enemy by striking him with his own weapon" (2014, p. 218).
The absence of sorcery in Australian ayahuasca practice reflects the characteris-
tics of the Western self as bounded, autonomous, and responsible (Gearin, 2015b).
Ayahuasca circles in Australia, I suggest, would struggle to gain popularity if they
included dimensions of assault sorcery and predator/prey ideologies in the prac-
tice of drinking ayahuasca.
The practice of sorcery in Amazonia has come up against resistance by the
global market of ayahuasca tourism in Peru, Ecuador, and elsewhere, revealing a
cultural intersection characterized by contradictions. There is an inverted political
dynamic that has been noted in the juxtaposition of Western ayahuasca tourists
with indigenous Amazonian shamans. On the one hand, indigenous ayahuasca
shamans have evaluated competencies of each other based upon the degree to
which they arc culturally and geographically proximal to urban or modem settings
(Gow, 1994; Brabec de Mori, 2014; Shepard, 2014). On the other hand, Western
"ayahuasca tourists" have tended to value ayahuasca shamans to the degree to
; which they are outside jungle cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa, and in remote
f parts of the jungle or nature (Saez, 2014, p. xxi). When I told people in Aus-
tralia that I was studying the use of ayahuasca in Australia, frequently they asked,
"When are you planning on visiting the real thing in Amazonia?" Yet, the "real
thing," Brabee de Mori (2014) explains, is typically not attractive to ayahuasca
tourists, given the ideologies of sorcery that underlie conceptions of illness and
healing in indigenous Amazonia.
Echoing the "mark of obsession" logic that Stuckrad illustrates in eighteenth-
century European Enlightemnent projections of Siberian shamans, Carlos Fausto
(2004, p. 172) comments on Euro-Americanneoshamanie ayahuasca use and the
absence of sorcery, moral ambiguities, and predator/prey ideologies in concep-
tions of well-being and social life. He writes, in parallel, "neoshamanism subjects
others' thoughts to Western thinking and moral standards" (2004, p. 172). Western
ayahuasca drinkers may expect indigenous Amazonian ayahuasca ritual special-
ists to be able to intervene upon or cure toxicities associated with the city, urbani-
zation, and consumer capitalism, and these expectations involve the production of
cultural difference in which, as Cesarino states, "indigenous shamanism becomes
a metaphor for our [Western] dilemmas ... rather than being understood accord-
ing to that which is original and specific to itself' (Labate, 2013, p. 7). In the
reimagining of ayahuasca use in neoshamanic milieus, indigenous ayahuasca
134 Alex K. Gearin
shamanism - perhaps the most remote geographical and cultural dimension of
the Western imagination - has become a space for "orphaned citizens of tran-
scendence" (Saez, 2014, p. xxv) to rearticulate or reconstitute aspects of Western
cultural ideology.
By crudely comparing the etiological and healing systems of ayahuasca neosha-
man ism with f011115 of Amazonian shamanism, the extent to which ayahuasca
ncoshamanism is characterized by forms of cultural critique and ideological
lim inality becomes apparent. Analyzing the absence of sorcery in Australian aya-
huasca practice reveals an etiological system in which moral failings, sickness,
malaise, and bad fortune are not associated with psychic attacks from sorcerers,
animal spirits, neighbors, or kin - a hallmark of indigenous Amazonian shaman-
ism (Whitehead & Wright, 2004) - but with an alienation from nature, with urbani-
zation, materialism, consumer capitalism, and other cultural entities that become
sites of critique. In the context of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia, plant-
spirits and indigenous ayahuasca shamans are associated with nature, polarized
in a way, in which broad aspects of society and culture become open to critique.
When the Peruvian shaman Don Julio visited Australia, he reaffirmed perceptions
of being connected to nature by telling a story to everyone about his history of
training and initiation with indigenous shamans "deep, deep, deep in the jungle."
The apparent depth of relationship with nature is met by neoshamanic ayahuasca
drinkers with a corresponding depth of expectation of abilities to heal and critique
society.
The cultural dissonance, interaction, and reinvention emerging between the
use of ayahuasca by Westerners and indigenous Amazonians is a bourgeoning
topic for anthropologists (Dobkin de Rios, 2008; Brabec de Mori, 2014; Labate &
MacRae, 2010; Labate, 2014; Losonczy & Cappo, 2014). Anthropologists have
studied the intersections between indigenous Amazonians and Westerners in the
rubber-tapping industries (Taussig, 1987; Chaumeil, 1992; Gow, 1994), and in the
nascent ayahuasca tourism lodges (Fotiou, 2014; Freedman, 2014; Peluso, 2014).
Overshadowing research into these cultural intersections of hybridity, invention,
and imagining appears to be subtle criticism of nonindigenous ayahuasca being
inauthcntic. For example, there is a telling comparison in the fact that anthropolo-
gists are quick to accuse New Age ayahuasca neoshamanism of being guilty of
including romantic, exotic, and false perceptions of indigenous Amazonian sha-
manism; yet, in contexts where indigenous Amazonians have absorbed, for exam-
ple, modem artifacts as spirits of psychic healing and sorcery, anthropologists do
not account for this with charges that indigenous peoples are romanticizing or
exoticizing "modem" societies. The indigenous practices of contacting the spir-
its of radios, syringes, sunglasses, and outboard motors during ayahuasca trance
experiences, and for the purposes of healing, sorcery, and various f0I1115 of divi-
nation, have been described by anthropologists as forms of absorption whereby
novel things are incorporated into pre-existing epistemologics or techniques of
knowing (Chaumeil, 1992; Townsley, 1993). Anthropologists, I argue, have over-
looked the ways in which the absorption, reimagining, and appropriation of indig-
enous ayahuasca practices by Western neoshamanic practitioners has resulted in
Ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia 135
novel epistemological formulations that bring into focus different social and cul-
tural realities of the everyday plight of Westem ayahuasca drinkers.
What I would like to highlight is that the promise of an archaic, natural wis-
dom of Gaia that Western ayahuasca drinkers often mistakenly associate with
indigenous Amazonian life includes f01111S of individual personal healing and
cultural critique that foreground real issues that constitute the lives of the drink-
ers.' Australian ayahuasca trance accounts are arguably best understood not as a
depository ofa static system of ("false") knowledge, but as representing a practice
whereby techniques ofknowing - that draw upon portraits of indigenous Amazo-
nian shamanism - are put to work on realities that constitute the everyday ethical
and cultural contexts of Australian drinkers. The "Other," however falsely por-
trayed, is absorbed in ways that create space or "hold space" (to use the language
of neoshamanic ayahuasca ritual practice) for personal and cultural issues to be
healed, known, reevaluated, and reconstituted.
Moral and healing pedagogies of Gaia and trance experiences
As noted, the phenomeno logy of ayahuasca trance experiences may include gru-
eling emotional, sensorial, and cognitive challenges, and vomiting, dilated fears,
extreme sweating, visions of haunting imagery, and other afflictive experiences. It
may also include blissful, pleasurable, and lucid experiences, and visions of beau-
, tiful, graceful, and benevolent spirits. The famous psychedelic dictum "To fall
tI,
in hell or sore angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic," penned by psychiatrist
Humphrey Osmond, crudely encapsulates the sublime spectrum of the phenom-
enology of ayahuasca trance experiences.
In Australia, ayahuasca trance experiences are shaped by mythological narratives
of Gaia and Mother Nature that index f01111S of cultural critique. There is a moral
and affective pedagogy in mythological characterizations of Gaia that appears to
subtly teach drinkers ways of approaching the phenomenology of drinking aya-
huasca. A central piece of advice that Australian ayahuasca ritual specialists give
drinkers is, when confronted with distressful, difficult, and challenging ayahuasca
visions, to "just let go" and "surrender," because "resistance is persistence," and fear
tends to only "feed" the afflictive spirits in visions. "Letting go" may bring "ego
death," or the annihilation of the self, which is described as an important process
of healing, gaining self-wisdom, and undergoing positive personal transformation.
The process of personal transformation is why people are undergoing the chal-
lenging psychic gymnastics of ayahuasca trance. It is "the work," drinkers explain,
and the work may take the f01111 of an embodied allegory of cultural imagining
whereby mythological descriptions of evolutionary ecological and political crises
mirror descriptions of the psychic personal crisis that the individual may undergo
during an ayahuasca trance experience. The ritual specialist Daksha explained to
ayahuasca author and advocate Rak Razam the history of Mother Nature:
It's not just you and I going through transformation, It's the earth, Gaia, who
is going through an amazing rebirth. It's as big as puberty ... the planet has
136 A/ex K. Gearin
grown up to a certain point and then, you know what it was like when you go
through puberty and you get pimples and boobs and you rebel against author-
ity and all kinds of emotional stuff happens. Well you look at the planet, it's
in an emotional cloud, you know, Muslims again the Jews, tucking Christians
against whomever they're against and political factions and all this emotional
weather going on around the planet. You look at the volcanoes going off, they
are like the pimples ofGaia and it's all got to be expressed. It's all got to come
out. But when you're in the middle of it, like puberty, it's pretty intense; you
don't know what's going. Gaia, the planet, we are going through a transition
that is as big as puberty. It's one big global initiation. Fear of being annihi-
lated is an essential part of aboriginal initiations. And this is what's happen-
ing on the planet. This is a good thing. The feeling of possible annihilation is
what is needed for transformation.
(Razam, 2009)
Mythological descriptions ofGaia are emergent in different forms in the visions
that drinkers articulate and share with each other. Daksha's characterization above
appears to represent a form of neoshamanic media in which psychic crises of the
earth, nature, and global politics arc transmitted not only into the drinkers' imagi-
nation, but also potentially into their ayahuasca visions. There is an affective ped-
agogy in the neoshamanic mythologies of a sentient earth undergoing ecological
and political crises, being "annihilated" during a process of "planetary puberty"
and discharging through volcanoes, that tacitly teach drinkers to "let go," purge,
discharge, and allow themselves to undergo various f0l111s of catharsis from which
"personal transformation" can occur. The predicament of Gaia doubles as a map
for "navigating" the ayahuasca trance-realms. A global political and ecological
crisis is described in ways that covertly inf0l111 drinkers how they should approach
their ayahuasca trance experience and healing practice.
The encounter with near-annihilation, or seemingly actual annihilation, dur-
ing ayahuasca trance experiences is naturally followed by a reflective period in
which the forces opposing annihilation or death are in the foreground. These
are typically described as feelings of communion and connection with nature,
the self, and significant others. An intersection or affinity between processes
of the mythologies of Gaia, the phenomeno logy of the trance experiences, and
notions of interpersonal healing and communion is enshrined into bodily pro-
cesses and bodily states. The topic of "interpersonal healing" is too large and
will have to wait for another publication. But, if we incorporate the theoretical
consequences of it, aspects of the social, the political, the body, and the natural
global environment may be characterized by drinkers in terms of darkness, tox-
icity, and imbalance that the medicine ayahuasca intervenes upon. The com-
plex dimensions of ayahuasca healing that explicitly involve immediate social
relations are mediated by the same bodily processes and states that drinkers
describe as healing the most chronic issue of all: the individual's separation from
,
nature.
Ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia 137
Final thoughts
In the context of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia, the occasioning of radi-
cally augmented and ecstatic sensory perceptions, along with vomiting, sweating,
and purging, mark the potent moments in which Gaia and ayahuasca plant-spirits
enter the sensorium with more force and character than usual, or with more pres-
ence than in ordinary consciousness. These are also the moments that may heal
distress related to interpersonal and social life, and that inform types of cultural
critique related to urbanization, materialism, consumer capitalism, and environ-
mental destruction, alongside cultural ideals of a sustainable, sacred, and healthy
planet and human species. Bruno Latour notes that neopagan constructions of
Gaia and Mother Nature have been criticized for being nostalgic, romantic, and
a reinvention of an exotic "cult" that never existed (2013). Ayahuasca neosha-
manism is undoubtedly vulnerable to similar criticisms, and these, I argue, risk
deflating and silencing the social and cultural issues that appear to underpin the
motivations of people in Australia and other Western societies who seek healing
and wisdom from ayahuasca. Idealized conceptions of Amazonian shamanism
couple with conceptions of nature as interconnected, archaic, and transcendent,
and provide the visions by which neoshamanic drinkers rearticulate and reconsti-
tute critical perspectives of modern life. With and through portraits of Amazonian
shamanism and portraits of a sentient natural world, Australian ayahuasca drink-
crs "reflect self-critically on [their] own ways" and "disrupt common sense ...
taken-for-granted assumptions" (Marcus & Fischer, 1986, p. 1) related to global
politics, various cultural institutions, and industrial and individual practices of
environmental destruction.
The radical differences between anthropological portraits of "traditional" Ama-
zonian shamanism and ayahuasca neoshamanic portraits of Amazonian shaman-
ism present important evidence for the extent to which Amazonian ayahuasca
shamans are radically rein venting themselves in the tourism circuit of Amazonia
and in Australia, Europe, North America, and elsewhere. New forms of cultural
difference are being produced in the "culturally, socially, and economically inter-
connected and interdependent spaces" (Gupta & Ferguson, 1992, p. 14) that con-
stitute the tourist circuits of ayahuasca use in Amazonia and the neoshamanic
circuits around the globe. These new forms of difference - which include con-
ceptions of indigenous Amazonians being connected or confiatcd with nature,
Gaia, and "intelligent," "healing" powers of Mother Nature - represent important
grounds by which Western ayahuasca drinkers articulate critiques of global and
local cultural milieus, Furthermore, the new forms of difference situate the prac-
tice in a larger and older lineage of neoshamanism properly linked to Western
social groups in the 1960s (Atkinson, 1992, p. 322),
Australian ayahuasca drinkers are immersed in everyday Australian cultural and
political life and may be found working in schools, restaurants, universities, gyms,
hotels, tattoo parlors, or any other area and sector of society. The emergence of
political and cultural critiques in ayahuasca neoshamanic trance accounts does not
fit typical everyday processes of cultural and political practice in Australian society,
138 Alex K. Gearin
and thus the question is raised of whether ayahuasca ncosharnanism represents a
vacuous simulacrum of politics and not a pragmatic form of political action. How-
ever, by reducing neoshamanic ayahuasca drinking to dominant institutions and
norms of Australian society, ayahuasca neoshamanism is reduced to terms, rules,
and practices that fail to properly accommodate the reasons for why people in
Australia drink ayahuasca. The problems that ayahuasca drinkers in Australia are
seeking healing and solace from are problems that drinkers characterize as being
beyond the capacity of "mainstream" social and cultural institutions to deal with
or heal. Thus, ayahuasca neoshamanism represents a "radical political imaginary"
(Hage, 2012) and a radical cultural imaginary that appears in the cracks of moder-
nity with particular prescriptions of well-being that link to forms of ncoshamanic
idealism. The practice and visions of ayahuasca neoshamanism involve forms of
empowerment and well-being that drinkers seek to receive not tram regular chan-
nels of Australian society, nor from society at all, but from nature as a sacred ally.
Notes
PhD in anthropology from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Email:
akgearin@gmail.colll
2 I undertook fieldwork during 2011-2014 across eastern Australia. Fieldwork included
attending 30 ay ahuasca ceremonies and other gatherings, interviewing, and generally
exploring Australian ayahuasca "loose-knit communities of vision seekers" (Tramac-
chi, 2009, p. 7). Australian av ahuasca practice closely resembles and is connected with
global currents of ayahuasca neoshamanism Given the illegality of ayahuasca use in
Australia, informants' names have been converted to pseudonyms.
3 The social and cultural upheavals of the counterculture included ideological opposi-
tions to core Western values of "progress, materialism, and rationality" (Znamenski,
2007, p. x) and a fascination with spiritualities linked to pre-Christian traditions, the
occult, Eastern religions, shamanism, and various other denominations of the sacred
(Alexander, 2003, p. 206).
4 There is also a small number of Australian ayahuasca facilitators and drinkers who
specifically distance themselves from indigenous Amazonian practices and perceive
them as primitive, backward, and unevolved.
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 7 Aussiewaska
A cultural history of changa and
ayahuasca analogues in Australia
Graham St John l

Introduction
While the complexities of the global ayahuasca proliferation have drawn
the attention of scholars in recent years, the cultural career of DMT (N,N-
dimethyltryptamine) remains conspicuously under-researched, Most known for
its role in the ayahuasca brew - where it is orally potentiated by beta-carboline
harmala alkaloids contained in the liana Banisteriopsis caapi - the tryptamine
~ compound DMT has made an independent, if gradual, release into the modem
cultural bloodstream. DMT's psychopharmacological actions were discovered
in 1956 (Szara, 1956) after which it was identified within psychiatry as a "psy-
chotomimetic," before its appearance as a recreational drug in the 1960s and sub-
sequcnt classification as a "dangerous drug" with "no medicinal value." Given
these developments, along with its recognized occurrence throughout world flora
and mammals (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997), its "coming out" in the 1990s-2000s as
an "cntheogcn" (Ott, 1996) enabling access to higher dimensional "hyperspace"
(McKenna, 1991), and its role in customizable "ayahuasca analogues," DMT has
had a complex career of its own (see St John, 2015a). DMT is responsible for
sudden and short-lasting (20- to 30-minute) effects ranging from complex geo-
metric patterns and synesthesia to out-of-body states and encounters with disin-
carnate beings, and its impact is apparent within a networked cultural movement
of experimentalists, artists, and alchemists. Wbile today recognized as a seroton-
ergic neurotransmitter that crosses the blood-brain barrier, where it has an affinity
with various receptor sites (Hanna & Taylor, n.d.), and where its endogenicity to
humans has prompted its veneration as "the spirit molecule" (Strassman, 2001)
and "the brain's own psychedelic" (Strassman, 2008), the ubiquity of DMT
throughout nature and its purpose within the human brain remain a mystery.
The enigmatic character of DMT has helped nourish the ambivalent status it
has earned vis-a-vis ayahuasca - from which it has grown independent and to
which it remains attached. This tension has dynamized innovation and charac-
tcrizes debates that are the subject of this chapter. Addressing the career of an
Australian invention, this chapter explores the characteristics and implications
of this in/dependent tension. Promoted as a "smokeable ayahuasca," enabling the
"ayahuasca effect," and thereby inheriting the troubled logic of the "ayahuasca
144 Graham St John
analogue," changa (sometimes referred to colloquially as "aussiewaska," and
explained in greater detail below) is found to be as much, if not more, a vehi-
cle to facilitate an accessible DMT effect. While the pharmacological synergy
endogenous to ayahuasca - and indeed its iconic vine - is implicit to changa,
the existence of this innovation is reliant on independent, esoteric, and enigmatic
features characteristic to the use and effects of DMT. Before discussing changa
and its purported association with ayahuasca, I first outline interrelated practices
characterizing DMT use within the cntheogenic movement.
Enigmatic DMT and entheoliminaIity
In this chapter, I recognize DMT user practices under three broad and interwoven
use modalities: gnostic, neoshamanic, and ludic. To begin with, DMT use has
been closely associated with the deeply personal experience of gnosis, where the
experient as seeker or "traveler'' arrives at an awareness of the intrinsic nature
of reality (i.e., as "it" truly is), a truth-bearing destination to which they may
have been previously occulted. As "entheogens" enabling the awakening of the
divine within (Ruck, Bigwood, Staples, Ott, & Wasson, 1979), DMT and other
tryptarnincs inaugurate transparencies typically involving a realization of discon-
nection or alienation from one's higher self, nature, and relations. Enabling such
an "awakening," DMT is often approached as a sacrament and, in this way, it can
be likened to the use of psilocybin-containing mushrooms, mescaline, or indeed
ayahuasca in nontraditional contexts, as explained by Wouter IIanegraaff:
Entheogenic sacraments like ayahuasca are credited with the capacity of
breaking mainstream society's spell of mental domination and restoring us
from blind and passive consumers unconsciously manipulated by "the sys-
tem" to our original state of Iree and autonomous spiritual beings.... They
are seen as providing gnosis: a salvational knowledge of the true nature of
one's self and ofthe universe, which liberates the individual from domination
by the cosmic system.
(Hanegraaff, 2011, p. 88)
As an integral component of ayahuasca, hut also as a distinct agent, DMT car-
ries this liberating potentiality, and it can be studied within the context of what
Hanegraaff (2013) has identified as "entheogenic esotericism," which takes its
previously neglected place in the history of Western esotericism. Among the
unassuming figureheads of "entheogenic esotericism," psychonautical raconteur
Terence McKenna is notable here, not least because he championed the gnostic
significance of tryptamines (McKenna, 1993), reporting that DMT facilitates a
near-death experience. McKenna was renowned for his formative experiences
with the "machine elves from hyperspace," bearers of gnosis possessing science-
fictional personas not inconsistent with Erik Davis' perception, as reported in
Rolling Stone, that "there's something about the televisual, hyperdimensional,
data-dense grandiosity of the DMT flash that seems to resonate with today's
Aussiewaska in Australia 145
globalized, hyperreal culture" (Grigoriadis, 2006). While Davis' experiences are
consistent with the effects reported from smoking synthetic DMT, they appear
to contrast with the experiences reported by pharmacognostic technician D. M.
Turner. Bioassaying harmala alkaloids mixed with DMT in smoking blends that
prolonged the effects by up to 30 minutes, Turner reported:
I often feel that my body and Being are 'embraced' by an ancient earth spirit.
And this earth spirit is instructing me to become aware of, and open up, many
lines of communication that exist between my mind, body and the external
world.
(Turner, 1994, p. 78)
While DMT use is characterized by a range of techgnostic and alchemical
practices, it has also been adopted as a self-therapeutic tool in the neoshamanic
practice of psychotechnology. In research on out-of-body and contact experiences
among Australian DMT users, Des Tramacchi (2006, p. 29) documented practices
of "self-shamanizing," where modem subjects become "their own clients and
their own healers," seeking remedies for alienation and "soul loss" compatible
with desired liberation from dependence on biomedical solutions. Finally, since
its adoption among small circles of users in the 1960s, DMT is used recreation-
ally, with smoking blends using DMT and oilier compounds (including B. caapi)
derived frorn botanical sources becoming pivotal to this development. Here, DMT
space, or "hyperspace," may be accessed as much or more for its pleasurable,
playful, or virtual effects than for divinatory purposes and curative outcomes. But
while a "recreational" trajectory could be conflated with usages that are trivial
or inconsequential, it seems sanguine to follow the lead of Jonathan Ott, who,
circumscribing the modem extramedical use of DMT and other entheogens, pre-
ferred the term ludibund and its variant ludible - deriving from the Latin ludere
meaning, literally, "playful, full of play" (1996, p. 16). Such terminology rec-
ognizes that, if not strictly entheogenic, use may be no less serious, particularly
given that "play" transgresses boundaries (e.g., those separating consciousness
from unconsciousness, the material from the spiritual, and lawful behavior frorn
its antithesis). In the age of prohibition, in which DMT is classified as a "danger-
ous drug" with abusive potential, play is suffused with danger; that is, where DMT
is forbidden, players are outlaws. But, lest playfulness be made consonant with
abusiveness to one's health and well-being, it serves to be reminded that DMT,
like other psychedelics, and unlike those drugs with which they are typically clas-
sified and scheduled (e.g., heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine), is nonaddictive.
These use modalities do not necessarily live together peacefully. For instance,
adherents of the entheogenic/gnostic modality will caution that the potential for
commercial exploitation increases as accessibility expands. These cultural trends
affect the proliferation of DMT as their integrated actions modulate the adoption
of changa, As perhaps best illustrated by the user community at the DMT-Nexus,3
DMT culture crystalizes at the juncture of these gnostic, shamanic, and ludic
trends, which are at the same time integral to a networked entheogenic movement
146 Graham St John
where Psilocvbe cubensis, San Pedro, Salvia divinorum, iboga, and, of course,
ayahuasca, among others, are venerated as "plant allies." Collaborating with
these allies, movement participants research and develop techniques of synthesis;
identify botanical sources; share methods of extraction, cultivation, and propaga-
tion; augment delivery techniques; build guidelines for safe practice (Nickels,
2014); create visionary art and music; and forge rhetorical strategies for explicat-
ing phenomenological experiences (Doyle, 20 11). This disparate user-culture has
fashioned a variegated ritual practice, quite distinguished from ayahuasca rituals,
even the ncoshamanic variations. While DMT trance may inaugurate "cultural
critique," like that identified among ayahuasca drinkers in Australia (see Gcarin,
Chapter 6 in this volume), compared with ceremonial and purgative ayahuasca
trance, the typical DMT trance ritual is virtualized, private, and accelerated. Par-
ticipants typically comport themselves as travel er-initiates who "break through"
into DMT "hypcrspace" - a quintessentially liminal space-time. Dreadful and
wonderful, affirmative and subversive, occasioning veridical aesthetics arriving
with a compelling familiarity, the DMT breakthrough is a potent threshold for
travelers.
Given the complex range ofvariables involved (i.e., "set" and "setting"), includ-
ing the modalities of use described above, the outcome ofDMT use is notoriously
uncertain. And yet, what remains common to its use is the abrupt potency of the
experience, with "travelers" reporting varying "returns" - e.g., beliefs shaken,
novel dispensations, patterns of responsibility, like those evident in Oroc's
Tryptamine Palace (2009). While Oroc assumed the status of a "modern mystie"
who found "Gzd" - on DMT relative 5-MeO-DMT milked from the venom of the
Bufo alvarius toad - and delivered the word, for a great many tryptamine travel-
ers, the "goal" is a liminal condition enabled by venerated alkaloids and their
synergistic effects. This is typically not the liminality native to conventional cura-
tive or divinatory rites, nor a traditional rite of passage where the neophyte will
assume a status at the terminus of a symbolic pathway (van Gennep, 1960; Turner,
1967). Tt appears that DMT's modem users value its analogues more for threshold
effcets than for the medieinal outcomes that have been doeumented in a range of
ethnobotanieal eontexts (Schultes & Hofmaun, 1979; Ott, 1996), and which are
typical of ayahuasca shamanism (Labate & Cavnar, 2014). Not simply awakening
divinity within, entheoliminality augments and prolongs the inner divine, consti-
tuting a set of praetices whieh, often sans intended telos, is directed at that whieh
is happening now (e.g., being, grace, cxistenee). This appears eonsistent with the
optimization of liminal being within psychedelic eleetronica (see St John, 20 15b),
where the interventions of disc jockey/producer teehnoshamans are devised not
to orchestrate the transformation-of-being and status, but a superliminal state of
being in transit (St John, 2012; Forthcoming), and where sensory technologies,
visionary arts, and shamanic plants are adopted to shatter soeial conditioning and
augment visionary experiences; this is not dissimilar to that whieh is available to
participants within the "New Edge" milieu (see Zandbergen, 2011).
While possessing an independent identity and enigmatic liminality character-
istic of its modern and eontemporary use, DMT remains most known for its role
Aussiewaska in Australia 147
as a eomponent of ayahuasca. As Oroc (Tryptamine Palace, n.d.) comments, aya-
huasca use has become "the most commonly available method for individuals to
experienee both the psyehotropie qualities of DMT and the shamanie metamor-
phosis of death-and-rebirth." While the identity ofDMT is then tied to ayahuasea
(like a ehild to its mother), it is a relationship fraught with ambivalence, eeho-
ing DMT's enigmatic status and perceived de/evolution from ayahuasea. This
eomplex dynamie was apparent at the outset of the "countercultural" gravitation
toward yage, principally through the ageney of beat outlaw William Burroughs,
for whom yage (and DMT) assumed a grail-like funetion. For Burroughs, aya-
huasea was "the secret," a magnetic force that held an oeeult promise to bestow
shamanie/soreerous powers (e.g., "telepathy" and "divination"); his approaeh
became an amalgam of transgressive adventure and spiritual journey, an ambigu-
ity partly documented in epistolary narrative with Alien Ginsberg in The Yage
Letters (Burroughs & Ginsberg, 2000 [1963]). This "secret" compelled the des-
perate "junk't-addicted Burroughs to journey to the Amazon in the early 1950s,
originally ehasing yage and eventually injeeting a erude DMT synthesis called
"Prestonia" in Tangier in 1961 (Harrup, 2010). For more details on Burroughs'
motives and experienees, see St John (2015a, Chapter 2). It had been discovered
that the vapors of freebase erystal DMT could be smoked with powerful effect
by underground ehemist Niek Sand in early 1960s Brooklyn (Hanna, 2009); by
1965, it would astonish Tcrence MeKenna, and subsequently his brother Dennis
MeKenna, who together trekked to the Putumayo region of Columbia in 1971 in
seareh of "the seeret" (McKenna & MeKenna, 1975; MeKenna, 1993). In subse-
quent decades, while Terenee became an international emissary for the "machine
elves" as a renowned ethnopharmacologist, Dennis mapped the psyehotropie role
of DMT in ayahuasca's synergistie meehanism. Throughout this development,
interwoven interests in the saeramental, instrumental, and transgressive eharacter-
istics of DMT are apparent; a mosaic found in subsequent experiments.
The ayahuasca effect and experimental anahuasca
Integral to the story of entheoliminalization reeounted in this ehapter is the devel-
opment of praetices invested in knowledge of ayahuasea's unique alchemy. As
Ott has commented, the "ingenious diseovery by South Ameriean Indians of the
ayahuasca effeet - conceivably the most sophisticated pharmacognostical dis-
covery ever made in the archaie world - bids fair to revolutionize contempo-
rary, nontraditional entheobotany of visionary shamanic inebriants" (Ott, 1999,
p. 176). While plant synergies have been implicitly understood among Amazonian
ayahuasqueros for millennia, it was not until the late 1960s that ethnobotanists
hypothesized that monoamine oxidase (MAO)-inhibiting4 beta-earboline alka-
loids were affeeting the activity of DMT in snuffs and ayahuasea (Hohnstedt &
Lindgren, 1967; Agurell, Holmstedt, & Lindgren, 1968). Even then, it wasn't until
a series of experiments with rats (McKenna, Towers, & Abbott, 1984), human
bioassays (Gracie & Zarkov, 1986; Ott, 1996) and systematie psychonautieal
experiments with "pharmahuasca" - using precise measurements of pure DMT
148 Graham St John
and beta-carbo lines (Ott, 1994; 1999) - that this hypothesis was confirmed. For
his experience on a threshold dose of 120 rng of harmine combined with 30 mg
of DMT, Ott found that "effects were quite similar to what I have enjoyed with
genuine Amazonian ayahuasca potions in Brasil [sic], Ecuador and Peru" (1999,
p. 173). Once the "ayahuasca effect" (Ott, 1999, p. 172) had been discovered,
non-Amazonian botanical and chemical sources were experimented with, and the
results were referred to as "ayahuasca analogues." The Entheogen Review (1992-
2008) was renowned for promoting ayahuasca analogues, especially those found
and cultivated in temperate zones:
Creating an approximation of ayahuasca using analogue plants was as simple
as making a pot of coffee. A few plants were potent enough to simply run
thtough a wheatgrass juicer, dry, and smoke. In addition, acid-base extraction
procedures geared toward enthusiasts with no chemistry background were
published. Most chemicals needed to perform extractions were available at
hardware stores.
(Hanna & Taylor, n.d.)
Temperate-zone analogues supplying sources of DMT and MAO inhibitors
(MAOIs) were referred to by Dennis McKcnna (in Ott, 1996, p. 245) as "aya-
huasca borealis." while Ott has used "anahuasca" for analogues ofayahuasca (Ott,
1994; 1995; 1996).
With the discovery of DMT and MAOI alkaloids in increasing numbers of
botanicals, the "ayahuasca effect" seemed poised for an illustrious future. As Ott
(1999, p. 174) recognized, since there were more than 70 each of MAOI and
DMT-containing plants known at that time, there were several thousand possible
combinations, each yielding a unique psychedelic effect; and each of these com-
binations were compounded by a variety of social, environmental, and personal
factors. The staggering array of possibilities and concomitant effects calls atten-
tion to the troubling appeal of "ayahuasca analogues," a problem amplified where
commercially available botanicals (c.g., tryptamines and hannala alkaloids) are
promoted to facilitate an "ayahuasca effect." While recent studies, the current
volume included, illustrate that dynamic experimentalism is implicit to the phe-
nomenon of ayahuasca, both in its globalizing practices and at its foundations, an
apparent "smokeable ayahuasca" is an advent testing the limits of "ayahuasca."
Aussiewaska
Terence McKenna's visit to Australia in 1997 would be among the last interna-
tional adventures of this champion of the neopsychedelic movement. It would
be a fitting destination for McKenna's mission, considering that a self-entitled
commitment to leisure, pleasure, and mobility is particularly advanced among
Australia's European descendants. By the time he stepped from the airplane, an
underground milieu with an evolved leisure apparatus of its own greeted the man
whose message was to open one's life to chaos and become part of the "will of the
Aussiewaska in Australia 149
world soul." In a lecture at the Beyond the Brain club at the Epicentre in Byron
Bay, McKenna shared the wisdom that DMT can be extracted from species of
local Acacia, referred to colloquially as the "wattle." As he commented at the
time, "the national symbol of Australia is the wattle. It's an Acacia. The Acacia
ecology ofAustralia is jammed with DMT.'" Perhaps McKenna had been reading
a review copy of TIHKAL: The Continuation, where Alexander Shulgin digresses
"into a bit of 'Down-Under' history," fascinated as he was with the identification
among Australians with the genus Acacia (there are over 700 species of Acacia
native to Australia), and especially the "golden wattle" (A. pycnantha):
The first Wattle Club was formed in 1899, and in 1910 the first national Wat-
tle day was celebrated in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne on September I.
Songs and poems were written, and sprigs of Wattle were worn on lapels.
The movement grew like topsy. It was used for fund-raising for charities
and for public morale connected with the World War I war efforts. There
were Wattle queens elected and crowned, Wattle Day badges were worn, and
every one pinned on a small sprig of it to wear to school. On the first of Sep-
tember, 1988, at a ceremony in Canberra, the Golden Wattle was officially
proclaimed Australia's national floral emblem.
(Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997, p. 264)
Shulgin then quotes a nursery rhyme recited by a host on a visit he made to Sydney:
Here is the Wattle.
The emblem of our land.
You can stick it in a bottle
Or hold it in your hand
(Shulgin & Shulgin,
1997,pp.263-264)
This slice of history had already been remixed by local psychonauts, as apparent
in the opening lines of "The Pipe Song," written in 1996 by Neil Pike for his band,
The Pagan Love Cult:
This is the wattle
symboI of our scene
you can smoke it in a bottle
or eat with harmaline.
These repurposed lines blink in sharp-hued neon at a critical juncture in the
formation of an Australian ethnobotanical synergy, sometimes referred to as an
"ayahuasca analogue," but also designated colloquially, and less contentiously, as
"aussiehuasca'' or "aussiewaska." These designations refer to brews and smok-
ing blends where the DMT is sourced from local Acacias, with the hannalas
sourced typically, but not exclusively, from B. caapi. As the historical detail above
150 Graham St John
implies, Acacia is iconically Australian, a circumstance relished by those who
cultivate alternative - and sometimes more ancient - visions of "country." While
the "golden wattle" is not itself a widely used source of DMT, phytochemical
analyses have purportedly identified DMT in its phyllodes."
While the idea that DMT could be sourced from the Australian floral emblem
filled McKenna with enthusiasm, locals had been bioassaying acacias prior to his
arrival. Recognizing that harmala inhibited MAO, and thereby potentiated DMT
when taken orally (and smoked), they had been discovering botanical sources and
com bining alkaloids to this end since at least the early 1990s. Enthco-cogniscenti
were already aware of what they might stumble across in their own backyard-
i.e., more DMT-bearing plants (at least 150 species) than anywhere else on the
planet. In fact, "bigjoints of wattle were being passed around the audience" during
McKenna's Beyond the Brain appearance (Ncil Pike, personal communication,
December 8, 2014). The protean culture hero in this story is a brilliant, experi-
mental, and anonymous University of Sydney chemistry student who uncovered
crucial botanical information in a 1990 CS1RO publication, Plants for Medicines,
guiding him to northeastern New South Wales, where he extracted DMT from
locally sourced Acacia niaidenii. The student reported bioassays in an article pub-
lished in the student newspaper, Honi Soit, in 1992, with extraction methodology
subsequently leaking to the Internet via alt.drugs ncwsgroups, the visionary plants
forum The Lycaeum, and Erowid (Sputnik, n.d.). Among those who read the Honi
Soil article was Nen, a then-recent graduate of psychology and ancient history at
the University of Sydney, who befriended the chemist and learned his extraction
method. Highly motivated, Nen set out in January 1993 on a journey to locate the
DMT tree. Scouring the scrub for days, he intuited that he was "on the edge of
something massive and unprecedented," and then, "one day a beautiful tree just
shone and whispered to me." Small branches were pruned, and he returned home
to perform the extraction. "My first experience was more profoundly spiritual and
enchanting than 1 could ever have imagined, including a direct addressing by the
spirit of the tree, to which 1 have felt allied with ever since" (Ncn, personal com-
munication, July 25, 2014).
As it turned out, the tree Ncn found was not A. maidenii as initially believed,
but Acacia obtusifolia, previously unrecognized as a DMT-hearing species of
the genus. A. obtusitolia was found to contain multiple alkaloids: e.g., 2/3 NMT
(N-Methyltryptamine), 1/3 DMT, and a small amount of beta-carboline. The
effects of the "full-spectrum extracts" cooked up from this tree had a profound
impact on a small cohort of pioneers. Nen found the effects of pure synthetic
DMT lackluster compared with that of A. obtusifolia. "The synthetic DMT was to
me like 'virtual reality' while the plant extract was like 'reality.'" The "full spec-
trum plant extract," he recalled, "just did more, had more directions and depth."
Nen realized that he and his friends were undergoing a kind of selt~induced "ini-
tiation." In a culture where traditional rites of passage, like coming-of-age rituals,
had been reduced to getting wasted on alcohol at the age of 21 (the gateway to
adulthood), it was a "profound and rare gift from the bush" that marked a benefi-
cent transit into a whole new way of being human. "You die shamanically, you
Aussiewaska in Australia 151
reconnect to the ancestors and the spirit world, you see the existence of more
than the material, you have a profound mystical vision which makes you see that
there's more beyond death" (in Razam, 2013). Since this and other acacias pos-
sessed a wide variation of alkaloids (and not simply DMT), there was a perception
that they supplied a next-level DMT experience. "A few who saw the acacias as
a unique tryptamine gateway developed a folklore of deep respect for the plants
and, echoing animist traditions, they accepted the alkaloid variations ... as a
'teaching' of the plant" (Jamie & nen888, 2014, p. 9). In the early years of use,
initiates showed great respect toward the trees themselves, recognizing that taking
tree bark (but not branches and leaves) kills the teacher. Working intimately and
sustainably with acacias over the years, Nen formed a relationship with what he
believed was the spirit of the tree, a "plant teacher" with a uniquely diverse inter-
nal alkaloidal potency. With A. obtusifolia promoted in the mid-1990s as a source
ofDMT, commercial exploitation of an exhaustible resource soon followed. Over
the subsequent decades, as the market for DMT grew, disenchantment advanced
with the impact of larger-scale harvesting and trade (Nickles & Nick1es, 2014).
Backyard alchemists, "changaleros,"
and "smokeable ayahuasca"
Downstream from the early acacia research and in the wake of McKenna's visit,
there emerged a vibrant ethnobotanical scene in Australia- as chiefly expressed in
the appearance of ethnobotany conferences and symposia, namely, Ethnobotanica
and, later, Entheogenesis Australis (EGA). In 2003, this development was given
considerable publicity through the efforts of freelance writer Kate Hamilton and
Fairfax Media. Melbourne's newspaper The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald
published in their Good Weekend supplement a hysteria-free condensation on the
subject ofDMT and its growing popularity connected to acacias in the New South
Wales' Northern Rivers region. With spreads in two of the nation's most widely
read newspapers, the story, "The Freakiest Trip," served as an entry point for
those whose interests may have been piqued by how DMT, according to one com-
mentator, enabled access to an "intergalactic telepathic gateway, through which
I could commune with 'higher' alien life forms" (Hamilton, 2003).
This period saw the emergence of an ethnobotanical solution with a unique
symbiosis: changa (pronounced chang-uh). A story of homegrown experimenta-
tion, changa is a smoking blend involving a variable synergy of DMT and har-
mala alkaloids, often identified, sometimes rather speciously, as a "srnokeable
ayahuasca." In changa, which is typically extracted from Acacia (and originally
obtusifoliai, DMT is combined with hannalas (traditionally B. caapi) via cus-
tomized infusion and blending techniques to create a smoking mix at a range of
ratios normally between 20 and 50% DMT by weight. Changa was created by
Australian Julian Palmer as an alternative to smoking or vaporizing DMT crystal,
which often left users mind-blown at ground zero with no desire to return there.
This practical objective inspired much earlier innovations as well. Since the dis-
covery of the freebase vaporizing method in the early 1960s, underground users
152 Graham SI John
subsequently regulated dosages in smoking blends using synthetic varieties of
DMT with a variety of herbs, including cannabis and parsley, in practices that
surfaced in Australia by the early 1970s. But the acacia-sourced DMT plus har-
malas combination enhanced the experience markedly. Flying countless sorties
into the ineffable, beta-testing techniques of extraction, Palmer and his compa-
triot bioneers became thoroughly convinced by the transfonnative power of the
botanical synergetics they were working with. Over a few years, through trial
and error, Palmer grew committed to functionality, learning how to extract alka-
loids, optimize blends, and undertake better living through alchemy. An advocate
for "intelligent" blends (chocobeastie, 2011), Palmer's innovation responded to
several interrelated concerns. A chief concern was the harrowing confrontation
common to using DMT, known as "the nuclear bomb of the psychedelic family"
(Leary, 1966), that initiates would typically show little desire to repeat. It would
also address the impracticalities associated with smoking crystal DMT, and the
elitism characterizing the use ofDMT and ayahuasca before changa's emergence.
Prior to the original changa mixes of mid-2003, regional experimentalists
were smoking what they called "luxury joints" - acacia-sourced DMT sprinkled
in cannabis joints or mixed with popular herbs like passionflower and damiana,
accessible in dried form from herb shops and at festivals. The most popular of
these experimental smoking mixes was commercially available as "Dreamtime."
This mix was sold under-the-counter at Happy High Herb shops, where franchise
founder Ray Thorpe endorsed it. An herb crusader and drug law reformer, Thorpe
held DMT in high regard, not least of all given its origins in the "wattle," the
nation's own herb. He was committed to dispensing DMT mixes that were less
potent than crystal and more appropriate for social-festive contexts (Ray Thorpe,
personal communication, December 19,2014). When Palmer and friends began
smoking 100 mg of OMT sprinkled onto "ayahuasca vine joints" (20% OMT) at
small gatherings, the effect it had was qualitatively different from earlier blends.
When reports came in of users "giving up decades-old meth or coke addictions,"
it confirmed to Palmer that he was onto something.
The herbs in the original changa blend included passionflower, peppermint,
mullein, and blue lotus, but as knowledge of potentiating, fiavoring, and color-
ing DMT expanded, herbal mixologists experimented with aromatic bouquets by
dissolving blends in solvent-soaked herbal infusions like lemon balm, lavender,
and spearmint, or lavender, muna, and pau d'arco, The harmala alkaloids present,
typically shaved B. caapi bark or lea ves, but also Syrian rue (a less effective MAO
inhibitor when smoked), enabled an experience longer in duration - sometimes
up to 40 minutes - to DMT, yet softer and with a more "pleasant afterglow." This
was essential for Palmer, a promoter of the "sub-breakthrough" experience that he
believed was a necessary modification on the sometimes-brutal impact of DMT.
While users had been regulating doses with smoking blends since the 1960s, the
new blends appeared to be an advancement in optimization. Without typically
facilitating the visionary out-of-body impact of OMT, changa's medicinal effects
are purported to be consistent with the function of ayahuasca. With a therapeutic
agenda underlying this approach, changa was designed to transport users "to places
of grace (universal love, total peace), to catharsis, where old patterns, emotions
Aussiewaska in Australia 153
and beliefs can come up to be released" (Julian Palmer, personal communication,
April 26, 2013).7 The innovation assisted users to overcome a set of anxiety-inducing
impracticalities typically confronting the DMT smoker. By varying blends and
ratios, users could effect smoother entries and prolong selected states of intensity
by periodically taking more hits, effectively personalizing their experience. "You
have the ability to fully customize your blend to fit your exact preferences. You
can create a harmala-heavy blend, a one hit breakthrough hlend, or anything in
between, with various aromas and flavors infused" (Mon, 2014, pp. 48-49).
The accessibility of the experience contrasts with the standard ayahuasca cer-
emony that Palmer and others have expressed their reservations about - given the
expensive fees involved, and the perceived constricting, even oppressive, format
of rituals that were not infrequently of dubious quality and often held in big cities
with large numbers of participants crowded into single sessions. Affordable, shorter
in duration, without heavily structured ceremonies reliant on a shaman, changa use
had advantages over ayahuasca. These differences are considered appealing in a
culture where many "are afraid of facing themselves, their own soul, intelligence
and shadow nakedly" (Palmer, personal commnnication). Responding to ayahuasca
ritualization, Palmer expresses a spiritual anarchist sensibility which insists upon
the opportunity afforded to individual drinkers to lose control of their minds, "to
really face their fears and go into the multitude of so many different levels of real-
ity that can be very confronting to an individual's cultural programming" (Palm er,
2014, p. 109). But, while loosening the reigns on the mind is reckoned essential
to the work of healing, to surrender control (and one's mind) to others is troubling
within scenes where self-knowledge and responsibility are vaunted as the ultimate
goals of growth and development - a paradox signaling the ambivalence with con-
ventional forms of shamanism expressed by the likes of Burroughs and Terence
McKenna. All this said, Palmer has also conveyed that there are now "changa cir-
cles" in Australia, South Africa, Norway, and elsewhere. He spoke to me of"Swiss
people doing big circles of 100 people in Chile" (Julian Palm er, personal com-
munication, January 13,2015). How these groups negotiate this paradox would be
the subject of a comparative ethnography that is beyond the scope of this chapter.
While ayahuasca rituals provided a point of departure for changa use, the associa-
tion with ayahuasca and its purported "effect" was pivotal to the identity of changa
from the outset. It was during a mid-2004 ayahuasca session that Palmer facilitated
when the "changa" name "came through" to him. As Palmer clarified to me:
The ayahuasca spirit is engaging with the human organism and doing what
is essential healing work on different layers of the human bio-electrical
system - which can often be clearly experienced by those attuned to this
experience. You simply will not have this same feeling when smoking OMT
crystal - the experience will perhaps feel more empty and less integrated.
Over the last decade, changa may well have become thc most widely traveled
route to an effect debatably analogous to "ayahuasca." It would inspire a pharma-
copoeia of custom smoking blends, including those in Australia like the stronger
"nanga" (acacia-sourced DMT 50% and matured B. caapi vine shavings 45% by
154 Graham St John
weight) or the variety of blends referred to on web forums like DMT-Nexus as
"enhanced leaf," or "1 OX changa," with users extolling the efficacy of B. caapi (i.e.,
its ability to inhibit MAO) and its therapeutic "afterglow" effects. "If you make
changa with a high enough maoi concentration," commented one user on DMT-
Nexus, "it becomes more than just a DMT experience and becomes an ayahuasca-
esque experience, I mean you are taking ayahuasca ..., only smoked ... much
more beneficial in my experience as compared to just DMT ... it's more euphoric,
interactive, healing and lasts longer" (Jamie, 2009).
Palmer claims that from the mid- to late-2000s, he and his friends:
... initiated the smoked DMT crystal experience to hundreds of people, and
wc learnt a lot about how to make sure that people smoked it properly, how to
support people to be in the most conducive mindset, to ensure the best physi-
cal environment for them to go deep, present to them in a space of witnessing
and also, after they had smoked the DMT, listen to their debriefing.
Smoked in bongs, pipes, andjoints in living rooms, by rivers, on mountaintops,
under wattle trees, and at festivals around the globe, changa use has prolifer-
ated. With Australia's Exodus Cybertribal Festival, Rainbow Serpent Festival,
and Entheogenesis Australis event, plateaus of exchange and experimentation,
psychedelic dance, visionary arts festivals, and entheobotanical symposia became
primary vehicles of changa transmission.
As these contexts suggest, changa use has a noticeably social profile by com-
parison to DMT, which is typically an extremely personal and often private jour-
ney of self-discovery (Pahner, 2014, pp. 39-40). Smoother effects facilitated
in blends using herbs, notably B. caapi, have made for an experience shared in
homes or at social gatherings, like underground outdoor parties and music festi-
vals or "doofs," where users claim the experience is highly optimized for dancing
(i.e., individual "trance" dancing rather than partnered dancing). While social in
character, the contexts of changa use (e.g., festive, small groups of two to four
people) are decidedly different from those of ayahuasca (e.g., ceremonial, dieta,
shamanic guidance, large groups) and require fewer ritual preparations. Further
study may reveal otherwise, but 1 have noted few divisions between ayahuasca
and changa users and, while not a noticeable trend, some drinkers will smoke
changa following ayahuasca sessions, occasioning a softer return.
In 2006, changa entered the slipstream for inner circles at Portugal's Boom
Festival, after which it took root in far-flung locations, including Brazil, where,
according to Palmer, DMT has been extracted from Mimosa hostilis to make
changa, quickly gaining appeal within the psychedelic trance scene in that coun-
try. According to Palmer, since the ambient heat in the region melts DMT ClYS-
tal, Brazilians developed a preference for changa over DMT (although he added
that Brazilians often do not use B. caapi, or other sources of harmalas, in their
changa). Intriguingly, many Brazilians think changa is an "ancient indigenous tra-
ditional blend." Given that Anadenanthera peregrina (or "yopo") heans (a source
of DMT) are known to have been smoked in Jujuy Province, Argentina, some
Aussiewaska in Australia 155
4000' years ago - based on the discovery and analysis of smoking pipes made of
puma bone at Inca Cueva (Pochettino, Cortella, & Ruiz, 1999) - this belief might
be based on conflation with historical practices.
By 2008, Jon Hanna had introduced the blend on the Erowid website, and one
could buy "changa" or "xanga" - sometimes pronounced "chan-gah" - in Cam-
den, U.K., head shops for around £20-30 per gram (Hanna, 2008). Changa devel-
oped commercial appeal from this period, a circumstance apparent at psychedelic
festivals in Europe. In July 2013, I attended VIBE, a psytrance festival in the
Czech Republic. Near the main dance floor, I fell into conversation with disc
jockeys billed at the event, one of whom acquired a bag of changa from a passing
dealer offering "acid, MDMA, and changa." The Russian novice lunged at the
opportunity and bought a half a gram for £50 (the regular price for a gram). "This
is one of the things I really want to do right now," the Russian novice said.
Changa has gained currency in the world of psychedelic electronica (St John,
2015a); it even motivated a short-lived commitment to establish psytrance as a
"religion." The initiator of that idea was inspired by an experience at the U.K.'s
Glade Festival in 2009, where he smoked changa and saw
... the most amazing alien beings dancing, flirting at me, a couple kissing and
exploding into a flood of multicolored tessellated tiled fragments, the Egyp-
tian sun god Horus erupting from a foam of seething fractals, I saw Homer
Simpson eating a doughnut and cathedrals of extreme beauty and color. It
was the most amazing 15 minutes of my life! Far better than any cm visuals
or computer graphics could generate.'
Reports such as this read like advertisements for a temporary religious experience,
which also appears to convert the assumed authenticity of ayahuasca into a com-
modifiable product. While its advent has facilitated an unprecedented semipopu-
lar desire for repeat DMT experiences, as Huston Smith (2000, pp. xvi-xvii) has
long observed, "religious experiences" (e.g., the "psychedelic theophany") do not
amount to a "religious life." Changa appears to offer an optimizable spiritual tech-
nology without the cumbersome weight, and obligations, of religion. And yet, lest
this advent be dismissed as pure entheotainment, Erik Davis offers another view
upon his exposure to "smokeable ayahuasca." At Boom Festival 2008, up on a hill
facing across Lake Idanha-a-Nova toward the ancient town of Monsanto, he wrote:
The smoke was sweet, and the entrance into the vestibule of the tryptamine
palace was smooth but strong, and I slid gently along DMT's inside-outside
Mobius strips of sentient energy with more clarity and with less anxiety than
usual. My fingers folded into spontaneous mudras and the breath of fire
sparked without will. Then the vibrating weave of nature's alien mind flut-
tered and unfolded us and set us gently back on the scraggly hillside, where the
crickets and their ambient chirp-track trumped the distant thump of machines.
Boom!
(Davis, 2008)
156 Graham St John
While this description evokes the gnostic potential of DMT and other entheo-
gens, the apparent Disneyfication of hyperspace worries those lamenting changa
as a front for the recreationalizing (and commercializing) of DMT (as "smoke-
able ayahuasca"), The Entheogen Review founder Jim DeKorne, for whom DMT
is a molecule to be revered and respected, forecast the mood: "1 can't imagine it
ever becoming a recreational drug - its nature is to sear away our illusions down
to the core of being - a process few would describe as 'recreational'" (DeKorne,
1993, p. 1).
Out ofthc jungle
The advent of "smokeable ayahuasca" ignited debate between ayalmasqueros and
changaleros. An article published on web magazine Reality Sandwich. "Changa:
The Evolution ofAyahuasca" (Dorge, 2010), fuelled the controversy with changa
convert Chen Cho Dorge, implying that ayahuasca bad "evolved" into the smok-
ing blend- a position he later retracted. For Dorge, the blends exemplified the ,,:ay
psycho integrator plants can "aid in human synergistic relationships with place just
as these plants have done for the peoples of the Amazon." Just as ayahuasca and
its effect were migrating "out ofthe jungle," changa was being lauded as the "next
evolutionary step for the synergistic shamanic technology" (Dorge, 2010). Dorge
claims that changa smoking shows influences from South American vegetalismo
and curandismo practices:
A new form of shamanry is being practiccd and learned from practicing with
these plant teachers. A new entheogenic healing modality, new rituals, new
ways ofrelating to ceremonial structure and the role of the healer as well are
beainninz
to to
to shift and transform - each adapting to the authentic needs of
those working with this medicine.
(Dorge, 20 I0)
But, while ayahuasca was purportedly enjoying a facelift, the natives were get-
ting restless ovcr at Ayahuasca.com. Purist drinkers are typically suspicious of
DMT users - who lack a certain legitimacy, ifnot virtue, so far removed from the
cultural and theologically sanctioned traditions of brews and snuffs. In debates on
Ayahuasca.com, defenders voice claims that DMT is "the crack of ayahuasca,"
that the beings it summons are "Mickey Mouse spirits," and its users little more
than reckless individuals. Ayahuasqucros adopt stances long taken against abuses
(and abusers) of psychedelics, especially those who measure their experience in
acts of psychedelic bravado and fleeting moments of tryptamine tourism. The
accumulation of religious experience and spiritual capital without entering a reli-
gious life is disquieting for those whose use of ayahuasca is characterized by
a commitment to ceremony, community, and ethos - and not simply "effect."
Among committed ayahuasqueros and daimistas, those who smoke for "effect"
and promote their practice or liken the experience to ayahuasca arc appropriat-
ing and even expropriating tradition. Eyebrows are raised when practices appear
Aussiewaska in Australia 157
directed more toward peak experience than integrative returns, where experience
is not adequately integrated within an ethos by which one lives and acts in the
world, and where deep insights do not become the basis for the transformation of
self, relationships, and the world.
Responding to Dorge, visionary artist Daniel Mirante got down to brass tacks:
Ayahuasca is the indigenous Amazonian name for the Banisteriopsis caapi
vine, where it has been used for thousands upon thousands of years in heal-
ing, sorcery, and cleansing. The vine is used as a gatekeeper to the realm
of a myriad of medicinal plants, such as Ajo Sacha and Tobacco, which are
'dieted' in close proximity to the Vine.
Furthermore, Mirante stated,
Ayahuasea lives within a unique complex of customs, traditions, knowledge
and wisdom which are strong to this day, and continue to develop within syn-
cretic communities and movements.
(Mirante, 2010)
While Mirante consented that analogues have facilitated profound healing and
visionary states not unlike that associated with traditional ayahuasca brews, these
analogues should be respected as unique ethnobotanical phenomena and not con-
flared with ayahuasca. Furthermore, and this underlines the insult felt by many a
drinker, "the Ayahuasca vine is not merely a facilitator for a DMT experience. It is
a profound entheogenic plant teacher in its own right" (Mirante, 2010). The status
of the ayahuasca vine as "an ambassador of the plant kingdom" is corroded when
it becomes little more than "a delivery system for DMT" (Mirante, 2010).
The advent of changa forced to the surface an underlying resentment over claims
that DMT is the active component of ayahuasca - the result of, according to Mirante
(2010), a wave of "DMT-centric" entheogenic literature in the early 1990s. By
staking claims to the "ayahuasca effect," users were effectively lauding the "DMT
effect," and the implication that changa was an evolutionary improvement upon, or
successor to, ayahuasca, was like pouring gasoline on the fire. Critics like Mirante
were concerned that the champions of changa and other custom products with an
ostensible "ayahuasca effect" were usurping the cultural power of ayahuasca:
To claim any plant combination that enables DMT to become orally active is
'Ayahuasca', or more, that the DMT effect = 'Ayahuasca effect' = Ayahuasca
itself, is trouble on grounds of cultural appropriation, because it ignores a liv-
ing indigenous tradition, language, etymology, folklore, taxonomy.
(Mirante, 2010)
All of which appears to overlook the circumstance where "ayahuasca" (i.e., typically,
B. caapi + Psychotria viridis) is itself a construction that has been inflated into a
sacred cow in its expansion beyond the Amazon in the last decade.
158 Graham St John
While beyond the scope of this chapter, it would be useful to compare the pre-
sumed threat posed by DMT-centric sensibilities in the time of "ayahuasca ana-
logues" to the threats to "tradition" imagined to follow the advent of that which has
been castigated as "drug tourism" in the Amazonas (de Rios, 1994; 2006), or with
the impact of post-traditional urban and New Age ayahuasca practices suspected
of being "inauthcntic" (Labate & Cavnar, 2014). 1 suspect that, just as "shamanic
tourism" involves a complex ecology of motivations and outcomes (Winkelman,
2005; Fotiou, 2014), so, too, does neoshamanic pharmahuasca, and specifically
those practices promising an ostensible "ayahuasca" effect. The conceit of "smoke-
able ayahuasca" warrants scrutiny as an "ayahuasca affectation," possessing tenu-
ous associations with that which is valued in ayahuasca shamanism, and appears
native to its global diasporic practice - its role as a facilitator for communicating
with the dead. And yet, the synchronistic mechanism native to ayahuasca is wide ly
reputed among users of changa to be responsible for an effect produced by "ana-
logue" botanical combinations, an effect modulated by the gnostic, neosharnanic,
and ludic intentions common to the use of DMT and other entheogens.
Palmer has motioned that it is unnecessary to validate changa through an asso-
ciation with ayahuasca-using traditions. In a response to Dorge and Mirante (as
online commenter "carpedmt"), in Palmer's opinion, changa is primarily an aug-
mentation of DMT. It is an optimal vehicle for an "analogue" experience that not
only makes DMT accessible but also facilitates the DMT/MA01mechanism for
more users worldwide than ayahuasca (carpedmt, 2010). Referring to changa as a
"mini-ayahuasca" experience, Palmer stated that ayahuasca "is not always readily
available in every country. Good luck finding ayahuasca in Skopjc, Macedonia!
However, you may well be able to find people there smoking changa" (Palmer,
personal communication, April 26, 2013). Furthermore, he stated that smokers,
once adapted to changa, often elect to "go deeper with the brew [ayahuasca]."
Neither constituting an evolution from ayahuasca, nor serving as a substitute
for it, changa and its own proliferating analogues would then seem to grease the
mechanisms of use, even becoming an accessory to the ayahuasca experience.
"Srnokeable ayahuasca" and the more general "ayahuasca effect" arc conceits
received with caution among recent commentators. Given that many plants substi-
tuted as "ayahuasca analogues" are known to contain a variety of alkaloids other
than the harmalaslDMT (and specifically the standard B. caapitPsychotria viridis)
synergy, they are recognized to possess varying modes of action. Nen is particularly
vocal about this, clarifying that the source of DMT in the original changa (i.e., A.
obtusifoliai contains multiple tryptamine alkaloids, and that it thereby has "a very
different profile to the ayahuascan, with it's own subjective effects." Nen likens
these multi-tryptamine acacias to snuffs like yopo and hekula more than ayahuasca
(Nen, personal communication, July 25,2014 )." Relatedly, he and compatriots culti-
vate a respect for the "signature, spirit, or energy" of each plant in ways not dissimi-
lar to the animistic traditions of world plant medicine systems. To promote these
plants as "ayahuasca" is then reckoned disrespectful to the plants and those given
the brews and the smoking mixes (N en, personal communication, July 25, 2014).
1
Aussiewaska in Australia 159
Conclusion
The troubling appeal of "smokeable ayahuasca" has been explored in this chapter
While being neither ?MT nor ayahuasca, changa connotes both pharmacognosti~
pr,actlces and "traditions." As a hybrid phenomenon, it is a "perfect embodiment
ot ambiguity," ,;he phrase used to describe ayahuasca, which Saez (2014, p. xxi)
has suggested owes Its success to being located midway along a scale running
from substances that produce light inebriation to others causing a deeper and more
dangerous plunge into other worlds." While changa shares this hybrid variability
m common,wlth ayahuasca, it is not simply a transplanted version of ayahuasca.
Emergmg from the highly active Australian entheogenic movement, where it
would facilitate a "friendlier" and accessible "DMT effect" while at the same
time r~fonnatting the therapeutic-visionary efficacy implicit in the "ayahuasca
effect, changa IS a unique phenomenon. This confluence of "effects" has resulted
in a variable mechanism, the optimizability of which it shares with ayahuasca
Itself, but which can also serve as an accessory to ayahuasca, As Palmer has
stated, changa "is already its own tradition, that sprang out of a certain milieu and
allows people to go deep with the plants" (Julian Palmer, personal communica-
tion, November 13,2014). As a fully customizable tradition suited to the contem-
porary entheogen user, it appears that, with changa and its variations, the DMT/
ayahuasca effect will continue to evolve. With variations of its aromatic vapors
recognizable III locations worldwide, further investigations are warranted on the
career and effects of this "smokeable ayahuasca"/"accessible DMT" hybrid.
Notes
I Adjunct Research Fellow, Griffith University, Australia.
2 DMT and preparations containing it are subject to restrictions laid out in the 1971 UN
Convention ~n Psychotropic Substances, to which most governments are parties, and
where DMT IS a Schedule 1 (i.e., most restrictive) controlled substance. Australia is a
SIgnatory to this Convention, similarly outlawing DMT under Schedule I of its own
Psychotrop[~ Substances Act of 1976, and DMT is currently a Therapeutics Goods
Administration (TGA) Controlled Drug.
3 The DMT-Nexus: www.dmt-nexus.me/
4 MAO (monoamine oxidases) are enzymes that normally neutralize the psychoactive
effects of tryptamines.
5 These lines were deployed as a voice sample on "Geometric Patterns" bv Australian
psytrance musicians Dark Nebula & Scatterbrain (2004). .
6 While several underground reports have claimed success in the range of 0.5% DMT
horn the phyllodes and bark of A. pycnantha, Ihese claims remain unsubstantiated.
7 Subsequent Palmer quotes are from the same interview unless otherwise indicated.
8 www.psytranccismyrcligion.com je now offline (accessed July 1,2010).
9 While ayahuasca has become the paragon of entheogenic tr) ptamine folk medicine,
a discussion at the DMT-Nexus has served to uncover a world of folk DMT and
tryptamine use that existed before ayahuasca and continues in a myriad of evolving
forms. Changa [S among innovations that "present fertile ground for new modes of
p~rs~nal healing, reflection, and insight, beyond just ayahuasca and the curandero"
(jamie & nen888, 2014, p. 10).
160 Graham St John
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8 Disentangling the
ayahuasca boom
Local impacts in Western
Peruvian Amazonia

Joshua Homan'

Since at least the early colonial period, ayahuasca has been crucial to social life
for both mestizo and indigenous peoples throughout the western Peruvian Ama-
zon. This psycho active beverage, containing the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis
caapi) and usually other admixtures, especially chacruna (Psychotria viridisi, is
traditionally utilized by Amazonian peoples for curing numerous ailments, see-
ing the future, ensuring prosperity in business or love, and divining sources of
illness or wrongdoing. Likewise, it takes a central position in the practice of dark
shamanism or brujeria (sorcery or witchcraft), which is often understood as one
of the main sources of illness - especially among indigenous peoples (see White-
head & White, 2004). Its contemporary configuration, stimulated through the
Jesuit miss ionization of Amazonia beginning in 1638, and, later, as a response to
the terrors perpetuated against indigenous peoples during the rubber boom, has
emerged as a global phenomenon as it has moved out of the Amazon in a dias-
pora of practices, knowledge, and peoples (Maroni, 1740!l988; Taussig, 1987;
Gow, 1996; Brabec de Mori, 20ll; Labate & Cavnar, 2014). This diaspora, in
turn, has created new controversies locally in Amazonian urban, peri-urban, and
rural communities. This movement has in part been fueled by shamanic tourism
throughout the region since at least the early 1970s, with primarily those tourists
fr0111 Western countries such as the United States, England, and France traveling
to the Amazon to partake in the psychedelic brew.' Today, in urban centers such
as Iquitos and Tarapoto, ayahuasca is central to a multimillion-dollar industry
that has greatly affected the social lives and economic prosperity of many indi-
viduals throughout the Peruvian Amazon. Moreover, ayahuasea shamanism itself
has been dislocated from its Amazonian roots through the commodification of
its core components, the propagation of its knowledge via the Internet and other
media, and the proliferation of ayahuasca sessions in non-Amazonian locales. To
refer to these interconnected phenomena - the exponential increase of shamanic
tourism focused on the consumption of ayahuasca and the diaspora of ayahuasca
shamanism from Amazonia - I utilize the notion of the "ayahuasca boom," situat-
ing it within the context of other historical economic booms related to commodity
extraction in Amazonia.
In this chapter, I draw upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2007
and 2014 in mestizo and indigenous communities in the Huallaga, Paranapura,
166 Joshua Homan
and Pastaza watersheds of the western Peruvian Amazon to explore the impacts
of the ayahuasca boom for local peoples, I begin with an overview of the rise of
the ayahuasca boom, tracing its history and linking it to other historical extractive
booms in the Peruvian Amazon. Commodity booms radically altered sociality
in Amazonia, especially among indigenous peoples, who often bore the brunt of
asymmetric patron-client relationships and violence perpetuated by those leading
extractive efforts. Yet, as Gow (1996) has cogently noted, these boom periods -
especially the rubber boom - while devastating for many, also created spaces for
social creativity as a response to the myriad terrors experienced by Amazonian
peoples, and ultimately, one of the sources of contemporary ayahuasca shaman-
ism, or vegetalisnio. By situating the ayahuasca boom within the history of eco-
nomic booms in Amazonia, 1 high light the forms that have led to the diaspora of
ayahuasca, as well as the controversies and benefits that have emerged within this
milieu. Following this, I closely examine how shamanic tourism that is focused
on the consumption of ayahuasca, and the ayahuasca boom more generally, has
affected local peoples in both rural and urban Amazonian communities. In this
discussion, I detail the multiple positive and negative impacts Amazonian peoples
have experienced throughout the boom period.
The rise of the ayahuasca boom
While our knowledge ofpre-Columbian practices involving ayahuasca is limited
due to a lack of historical references and archaeological studies, it is generally
accepted that ayahuasca shamanism, as it is practiced in the majority of mes-
tizo and indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon today, emerged fol-
lowing the arrival of the Spanish, specifically in relation to the establishment of
encomiendas, Jesuit reductions, and the rubber boom (Gow, 1996; see also Bra-
bee de Mori, 2011).3 The arrival of the Spanish and subsequent establishment
of encom icndas in the 1530s in the Peruvian Amazon propelled the growth of
vegetalisrno, as indigenous peoples were forced into slavery as a means to pay
tribute to encomenderos (land owners). It was the establishment of Jesuit reduc-
tions ireduccionesi throughout western Amazonia, beginning in 1638, however,
that provided the conditions for the expansion of vegetalismo in the region. The
Jesuits relied on indigenous allies, such as the Shiwilu from the region of Jeberos
(Aipena River), to bring other indigenous peoples, usually captured in the head-
waters of smaller river systems, into reductions (see Golob, 1982; Reeve, 1993;
Homan, 2014). While reductions were often full of disease, and death was com-
monplace, many indigenous peoples saw them as a means to escape the constant
slave raiding and violence perpetuated by encornenderos, the Portuguese, and
even rival indigenous groups. Although Quechua had certainly been utilized as a
trade language in the Upper Amazon during the precolonial era, in Jesuit reduc-
tions, it was utilized as the lingua franca known as inga. All men were forced to
Ieam the language to ensure linguistic homogeny for instruction by the Jesuit
Fathers, who would preach from Quechua texts. This relocation of indigenous
peoples, teaching of Catholic tradition, and instruction in Quechua provided the
The Western Peruvian Amazon ayahuasca boom 167
critical components necessary for the rise of vegetalismo (Gow, 1996, p. 107).
Indeed, the earliest available references to the practice of ayahuasca consumption
are from Jesuit Fathers, highlighting the importance of reductions in the spread of
ayahuasca shamanism during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
(see Veigl,1785; Maroni, i988).
The Jesuits also contributed to the first major commodity boom in the western
Amazon region, based on the extraction cascarilla (Cinchona officinalis) bark,
which contains the medicinal alkaloid quinine, further drawing Amazonian peo-
ples into global economic and social assemblages." Jesuit fathers took cascarilla
samples back to Europe in 1639, and it quickly became a prominent commodity
due to its curative and fever-reducing properties. This boom brought those living
in the Upper Amazon, especially in the piedmont of the Andes, in close contact
with the Spanish, who relied upon indigenous peoples for the harvesting of casca-
rilla bark. This configuration also allowed increased access to foreign commodity
goods as well as the emergence of habilitacion, or the use of recurring debt by
patrones (bosses) to ensure that indigenous workers continued to provide labor.
Patrones would provide critical goods to indigenous peoples at inflated prices that
indigenous peoples would then repay with labor, game, and other forest products.
Due to the high price, however, this debt was rarely repaid in full, and indigenous
peoples would continuously incur more debt to patrones, often passing it on to
their children (see Dean, 2009; Homan, 2014). These asymmetric relations have
continued into the present, but became hardened into Amazonian sociality during
the rubber boom.
While Jesuit reductions and encomiendas were critical for creating the condi-
tions that contributed to the early spread of ayahuasca shamanism, it was the
rubber boom that hastened the growth of the practice in Western Amazonia. The
Amazonian rubber boom, which lasted from approximately 1892 to 1914 in the
Peruvian Amazon, was dependent on a number of critical factors for its develop-
ment. Although rubber had been in high demand, particularly since Condamine
began to disseminate information regarding the production of latex from Hevea
brasiliensis in the late eighteenth century, it was the refinement of the process of
rubber vulcanization by Goodyear in 1839 that increased the need for latex. Like-
wise, the "bicycle craze" in the 1890s and the development of the automobile, as
well as its subsequent increase in production at the end of the nineteenth century
and beginning of the twentieth century, put even more pressure on companies to
procure a steady supply of latex (Weinstein, 1983). As Hevea brasilensis is found
throughout the Amazon Basin in large quantities, from the early 1800s through
the end of the rubber boom, the Amazon was the main source of latex. Hevea
species do not grow in stands like other trees and are susceptible to leaf blight,
which complicated latex extraction (Bunker, 1985). To remedy these issues and
maximize the extraction of latex, rubber barons - mainly located in the city of
Iquitos - relied on indigenous peoples' labor.
These individuals, from groups such as the Huitoto, Bora, and Urarina, among
many others, were forcefully removed from their traditional territories and put to
work in the extraction of latex. Michael Taussig (1987) describes the numerous
168 Joshua Homan
horrors of the "space of death" created by the rubber boom in the Putumayo
region of Colombia, drawing upon the Casement reports, noting the extreme vio-
lence brought on by the rubber barons (see also Chirif & Chaparro, 2009). Asym-
metric relationships between patrones and indigenous peoples exploded during
this period, with habilitacion taking hold throughout numerous river systems as
primarily mestizo merchants engaged in trade relations with indigenous groups.
This system of patronazgo radically altered both indigenous and mestizo social-
ity throughout the Upper Amazon while heavily influencing the contemporary
practice of vegetalismo (Gow, 1996; Dean, 2004; 2009). Following the deeline
of the Peruvian Amazon's rubber industry around 1914 due to increased produc-
tion in the East Indies and tropical Africa, these debt relations continued to be
exceptionally important in understanding the sociality of Amazonian peoples, an
importance that continues into the present.
Following the rubber boom, with vegetalismo practices firmly entrenched in
the social lives of many indigenous and mestizo communities in Amazonia, owing
to the constant feedback between the rural and urban, the practice of patronazgo,
as well as the later arrival of Evangelical and Catholic missionaries, the shift
toward the diasporic movement of ayahuasca shamanism began to emerge, set-
ting the stage for the ayahuasca boom.' Beginning with Manuel Villavicencio's
(185811984) Geografia de la Republica del Ecuador, scientific and popular infor-
mation pertaining to ayahuasca was slowly disseminated throughout Europe and
North America. These early accounts allowed an imaginary to be constructed
from a number of core tropes related to ayahuasca shamanism, creating a standard
of outsider authenticity in the process. It was not until around 100 years later,
however, that ayahuasca shamanism began to take hold within Western con-
sciousness. With the publication of The Yage Letters (1963/2006), William S.
Burroughs and Allcn Ginsberg detailed their voyage to the Western Amazon to
drink ayabuasca, which they saw as the "final fix." Although Ginsberg had some
pleasant experiences, they also expounded upon their negative interactions with
both local curanderos and drinking ayahuasea itself, with Burroughs noting that
he had been "conned by medicine men" in Ecuador (Burroughs & Ginsberg, 2006
[1963], p. 18). This book introduced the emerging psychedelic movement of the
1960s to the effects of ayahuasca, as well as the idea that one could travel to the
Amazon to partake of the beverage, although not without difficulties. Beginning
in the early 1970s, academic and popular publications such as Wizard ofthe Upper
Amazon (Lamb, 1971), The Invisible Landscape (McKenna & McKenna, 1975),
and Visionary Vine: Psychedelic Healing in the Amazon (Dobkin de Rios, 1973),
among others, brought forth an exotic image of ayahuasca shamanism in Western
Amazonia to readers in North America and Europe. Following the explosion of
interest in shamanism, primarily initiated with Carlos Castaneda's influential -
although highly controversial - text The Teachings ofDon Juan: A Yaqui Way of
Knowledge (196811983), New Age practitioners, hippies, and academics latched
on to these works, drawing upon their descriptions of ayahuasca shamanism. Such
texts opened the doors to the ayahuasca diaspora and, in many ways, set the stage
for the later ayahuasca boom. During this period, we also see the emergence of
The Western Peruvian Amazon ayahuasca boom 169
ayahuasca, particularly in and around the city of Iquitos. While the shamanic tour-
ism industry was still nascent, Iquitos was able to secure its footing as a stronghold
for the practice as we II as a critical node in the diaspora of ayahuasca shamanism.
The 1980s were characterized by more violence in the region, related to two dif-
ferent, although connected, fronts - the coca boom and the rise of terrorist groups
such as the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Movimiento Revolucionario
Tupac Amaru (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, MRTA) - which severely
limited the ability of individuals to travel to the Amazon to engage in shamanic
tourism. This was especially the case in the western Peruvian Amazon, as both
the Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA had strong presences in the Huallaga basin
throughout San Martin and western Loreto. Kernaghan (2009) notes, in regard
to the violence perpetuated by both terrorist organizations and those involved in
the cocaine trade, that the Marginal Highway,' which runs between Tingo Maria
and Tarapoto in the department of San Martin, was often littered with corpses that
would lie untouched for weeks. The coca boom, however, brought much prosper-
ity to previously impoverished villages and cities throughout the region, albeit in
a period marred by violence. With the coca boom, like the other economic booms
related to commodity extraction in the Amazon, hierarchies developed, and many
involved in the coca trade, such as farmers, received few economic benefits in
comparison with other individuals at the top, usually from outside of the region.
Furthennore, both the diaspora of ayahuasea shamanism and the rise of shamanic
tourism were slowed during this period, primarily due to travel restrictions related
to the rising levels of violence and political instability in the region.
Although the western Peruvian Amazon was troubled by problems related to
terrorist groups, their presence in Iquitos was limited. This allowed the shamanic
tourism market to grow during the latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s with
little competition from other regions. Indeed, by the mid-1990s, shamanic tourism
focused on the consumption ofayahuasca had firmly entrenched itself within and
around the city of Iquitos (see Dobkin de Rios, 1994). Following the capture of
the Sendero Luminoso's leader, Abimael Guzman, in 1995, however, the group
was highly fractured, and tourism in the western Peruvian Amazon in regions such
as San Martin and Alto Amazonas increased. Likewise, cheap airfare, as well as
the growth of tourism companies specifically focused on ayahuasca, which often
advertised in New Age magazines such as Shaman's Drum, contributed to the
growth of shamanic tourism and the diaspora of ayahuasca shamanism. Perhaps
the most important factor in the explosive growth that led to the ayahuasca boom,
however, was the rise of the Internet throughout the 1990s. The Internet made
information related to ayahuasca shamanism more accessible to individuals -
especially those in Europe and North America, where Internet penetration was
quite high. Online cthnobotanical retailers offered ayahuasca vine, chacruna, and
other admixtures, allowing individuals to purchase and experiment with aya-
huasca completely removed from its Amazonian origins. Similarly, other materials
associated with ayahuasca shamanism, such as icaros and artworks, began to be
available tor purchase or download. This explosion of information on the Internet-
combined with other factors, such as the growing fame of Terence McKenna and
170 Joshua Homan
his talks on the use of ayahuasca and dimethyltryptamine, as well as numerous
documentaries, television shows, and books focused on ayahuasca - heavily con-
tributed to the emerging interest in ayahuasca shamanism (see Homan, 2011).
The various facets described above have come to characterize the ayahuasca
boom in the contemporary era. Today, one can easily purchase artwork associated
with ayahuasca shamanism, especially Shipibo-style designs, as well as clothing
featuring these designs, from numerous Internet retailers. MP3s and CDs of icaros
along with music inspired by the ayahuasca experience abound on the Internet,
available for down load or purchase. The ayahuasca vine itself and its numerous
admixtures, including chacruna iPsychottia viridisi, are easily obtainable both
onlinc and offlinc from ethnobotanical retailers in the United States and Europe.
Moreover, ayahuasca shamanism, devoid of many features important to local peo-
ples, such as sorcery, is being taught through online courses, usually led by a
"gringo shaman" or others who have only cursory training in ayahuasca shaman-
ism. These courses are frequently couched in New Age philosophy and blend
multiple traditions together in their teachings of ayahuasca shamanism. Offiine,
courses are available in larger cities such as Los Angeles and New York, pro-
vided by a variety of organizations. While shamanic tourism is increasing yearly
in the western Peruvian Amazon, within the boom era, ayahuasca shamanism has
been dislocated from its Amazonian origins and spread throughout the world.
One can drink ayahuasca in any major city in the United States, and, although
these are often provided by gringo shamans, on occasion Peruvian curandcros are
"imported" to provide sessions. In the following section, I delve into these facets
of the ayahuasea boom, critically examining the impacts in the western Peruvian
Amazon and how local peoples understand the ayahuasca boom.
The contemporary boom period: impacts
and understandings
Numerous authors have tackled issues associated with the ayahuasca boom, often
focused on shamanic tourism alone (see, for example, Winkelman, 2005; Peluso,
2006; Dobkin de Rios & Rumrrill, 2008; Davidov, 2010). In this section, 1 engage
with shamanic tourism as well, as it is certainly one of the 1110st important fac-
tors in understanding the ayahuasca boom, I also, however, touch on other facets
of the ayahuasca boom linked to the global diaspora of ayahuasca shamanism
and its associated knowledge, practices, art, plants, and material culture, drawing
from field research in the western Peruvian Amazon, primarily in the Huallaga,
Paranapura, and Pastaza watersheds. This is a region where sharnanic tourism is
still particularly nascent in comparison with others near Amazonian cities such
as Puerto Maldonado, Pucallpa, and Iquitos. By focusing on communities that
are just beginning to experience the effects of the ayahuasca boom, we can see
how local Amazonian peoples perceive and understand thc numerous emergent
issues associated with the global diaspora of ayahuasca shamanism. Moreover,
these regions have long histories with vegetalismo, due to the presence of myriad
indigenous groups as well as deep traditions in urban areas. While the ayahuasca
The Western Peruvian Amazon ayahuasca boom 171
boom 'has brought forth many benefits for local peoples, there are also countless
negative impacts that highlight its controversial nature. These impacts and con-
troversies take a number of forms related to diverse realms such as health, ques-
tions of authenticity, comrnodification and appropriation, and the shifting nature
of practices related to ayahuasca shamanism. By examining these issues, a greater
understanding of the ayahuasca boom can be gained, as well as insight into the
possibility of a post-boom period.
Health and safety
Within the ayahuasca boom, health and safety are of extreme importance, not
only for local peoples and tourists involved in shamanic tourism, but also for
those who participate in practices involving ayahuasca outside of the Amazon.
Although ayahuasca has been shown to be safe for the majority of its users, there
have been recent reports of health problems involving the use of ayahuasca that
must be examined. While health problems are primarily seen as affecting tour-
ists, they also affect local peoples as well, especially when individuals imbibe
with ayanuasqueros, who may have entered into the practice as a result of the
ayahuasca boom having received little to no training. One of the primary issues
is related to pharmacological interactions, such as persons taking certain medica-
tions that have an adverse reaction with the ayahuasca brew, leading to a health
crisis. Some shamans, unfortunately, do not know which medications may cause
health problems when combined with ayahuasca, and often do not ask participants
what medication they are currently taking. This is one aspect the larger ayahuasca
lodges in Iquitos and other regions have taken seriously, often having partici-
pants fill out forms related to their medical history prior to ayahuasca sessions.
Some admixtures, such as toe tBrugmansta spp.) or tobacco iNicotiana rustica),
can cause serious health issues for certain individuals, although many shamans
limit their use, especially with inexperienced tourists. A number of the deaths
associated with ayahuasca are seemingly related to pharmacological interactions,
although it is difficult to determine the actual cause of death for these individuals
due to inconclusive or unavailable autopsy results, as well as limited news cover-
age (see, especially, dos Santos, 2013). While there is no evidence that the use
of ayahuasca can result in death, a small number of deaths during or following
ayahuasca sessions are of great concern.
Personal safety is also a serious issue in shamanic tourism in Western Ama-
zonia, particularly for women (see, especially, Peluso, 2014). There have been a
number of sexual assaults reported following the ingestion of ayahuasca, espe-
cially in Iquitos. In one prominent case, a 23-year-old German woman was beaten
and raped by two men, including the shaman with whom she drank ayahuasca,
following her third session in a center located outside Iquitos ("Joven alemana,"
2010). Throughout my fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, I have been told of
numerous reports of sexual abuse, often involving clientele at larger ayahuasca
lodges in Tarapoto, Yurimaguas, and Iquitos, but these have received limited press
attention, and charges were rarely presented against the lodges or shamans (see
172 Joshua Homan
Dobkin de Rios, 2008; Homan, 2011). Unfortunately, local peoples may be reluc-
tant to report sexual or physical abuse by shamans, fearing retaliation. While sex-
ual assault and other crimes against participants in ayahuasca ceremonies are rare,
as the shamanic tourism sector expands and more individuals see it as a means
of generating capital, such problems will unfortunately become more prevalent.
Ethnotourism, which is often included in shamanic tourism packages offered
by lodges and tourism companies, carries great risks for the indigenous peoples
who live in geographically remote regions of the Peruvian Amazon. Indeed, as
Witzig and Ascencios (1999, pp. 67-68) relate, following the arrival of a tour
group in a remote Urarina (Kacha) community in the upper Chambira basin, a
large number of children fell ill with severe upper respiratory infection and gas-
trointestinal issues, presumably brought to the community by the tourists. Many
of these groups were connected to shamanic tourism packages that promised a
brief trip to the region to experience "real" indigenous life. Such practices are
especially troubling in light of more recent contacts between tourism groups
and the Mashco-Piro, a voluntarily isolated group who live in the department of
Madre de Dios. According to reports, tourists have come in close contact with the
Mashco Piro via tourism companies, potentially exposing the Piro to diseases to
which they have no resistance ("Denuncian existia," 2014).
Local peoples see the health and safety issues outlined above as affecting not
only outsiders' views of ayahuasca shamanism, but also Amazonian peoples more
generally. They believe that such reports will harm tourism in the region, espe-
cially in the Western Amazon, which has a burgeoning tourism sector. Many, such
as hostel owners or tour guides, fear that they will lose business due to reports of
rape or ayahuasca-related deaths. These issues also find their way into disputes
between local shamans in which one shaman will accuse a rival of raping or rob-
bing clients, or assert that individuals are harmed through their rivals' ayahuasca
brews due to a lack of knowledge. Such accusations are usually baseless, but they
continue to be common in discourse between shamans in the western Peruvian
Amazon as well as among local peoples. Finally, while local peoples recognize
both the risks of drinking ayahuasca as well as its benefits, they feel that both
shamans and tourists should be held personally responsible for any unwanted
outcomes.
Economic impacts
The ayahuasca boom has also affected the economies of local communities on mul-
tiple levels (see also Tupper, Chapter 9 in this volume; and Peluso, Chapter 10 in
this volume). With the rise ofshamanic tourism, an income gap emerges between
those that primarily work with tourists - especially if they have their own lodge-
and those that primarily work with local peoples. While there are economic bene-
fits for communities that engage in shamanic tourism, these benefits arc limited in
comparison with those directly invo lved in the industry. In my conversations with
ayahuasqueros, I would often speak with them in their home, which would offer
a plethora of data related to their income from shamanic tourism. Many shamans
The Western Peruvian Amazon ayahuasca boom 173
involve d in tourism have homes constructed from "material noble": bricks,
cement, and corrugated galvanized steel roofing. This stands in stark contrast to
the majority of homes in Tarapoto and Yurimaguas, which are usually constructed
of various hardwoods and palm-thatched roofs. Ayahuasqueros' homes are often
filled with the latest consumer technologies, such as flat-screen televisions, sat-
ellite receivers, and laptop computers. As the median income in this region is
approximately $200 USD per month, these luxury goods are exceedingly difficult
for the average individual to purchase. All the prominent shamans I worked with
owned automobiles, especially large trucks and four-wheel drive SUVs, while
most individuals living in the Peruvian Amazon own small 125 hp motorcycles, if
they own a vehicle at all. Aside from the marginalization such wealth creates, this
income disparity also leads to shamanic strife, as shamans accuse one another of
lacking knowledge, being more focused on providing hallucinogenic imagery for
foreigners than healing, uncontrolled sorcery, and even accusations of criminal
activity such as sexual abuse or being involved in drug trafficking. Likewise, local
peoples are more reluctant to visit these ayahuasqueros as they assume they would
not be able to pay for their services due to class perceptions.
On another level, asymmetric relationships emerge that in some ways min-or
those of earlier boom periods, although without the heavy violence. With the
influx of North American and European tourists over the past 40 years throughout
Western Amazonia, there has been a corresponding rise in foreign-owned aya-
huasca lodges. The owners of these lodges often have greater access to capital in
comparison with local peoples, allowing them greater advantages in the imple-
mentation of their business (see Labate, 2014). Due to their native fluency in Eng-
lish or European languages, they are able to engage the tourist market at a much
higher level, especially with those from their home countries. Ayahuasqueros who
work in these lodges only receive a small fraction of the sums paid by tourists for
shamanic tourism packages, with the majority going to lodge owners. Lodge own-
ers also control the particular types of shamans that may work in the lodges, pre-
ferring individuals with indigenous backgrounds or those who practice particular
types of ayahuasca shamanism, chiefly that which is divorced from the "darker"
aspects. This sanitized version of ayahuasca leads to critical changes within com-
munities in regard to traditional forms of ayahuasca shamanism.
Shifting practices
For many Amazonian peoples - especially those living in indigenous communities-
ayahuasca shamanism is linked to notions of spiritual warfare and sorcery in addi-
tion to healing. For example, among both the Shawi of the Paranapura basin and the
lnga ofthe Pastaza basin, brujeria is primarily associated with the use of ayahuasca,
although it is also utilized in critical instances for curing as well as divination. ln
these groups, when someone dies of certain types of illness or in particular situa-
tions, it is assumed that the cause of death was assault sorcery. As in many other
groups, this is usually caused by the blowing of spirit darts (Spanish, virote; Shawi,
Shinere; Inga, wiruti) that become lodged in the body, causing illness and eventual
174 Joshua Homan
death if another shaman does not remove them. Many believe that shamans who
can heal can also cause harm, leading to the ambiguous character of traditional
shamanism in Western Amazonia (see Roe, 1982; Brown, 1988; Whitehead &
Wright, 2004). Today, however, such ideas have little place in the practice of veg-
etalismo that is deeply connected to shamanic tourism and the general diaspora of
ayahuasca shamanism from Amazonia. This leads to a sanitized version of aya-
huasca shamanism, devoid of all "negative" aspects, which readily fits into the
common New Age vision of shamanism being concerned with healing alone (see
also Peluso, Chapter 10 in this volume). For the majority of shamans participating
in ayahuasca tourism, as well as those outside of the Amazon, such as the numer-
ous gringo shamans located in North America and Europe, there is a prominent
theme ofthe erasure of the "darker" aspects of ayahuasca shamanism. These radical
changes to the traditional structure of ayahuasca shamanism leads to questions sur-
rounding authenticity, both locally and from outside the Amazon basin.
Authenticity is commonly cited as onc of the most important issues that arise in
relation to the ayahuasca boom, with critiques of authenticity coming from both
local peoples as well as tourists and academics (see Dobkin de Rios & Rumrrill,
2008). As mentioned above, among the Shawi, ayahuasca shamanism is usually
associated with sorcery, with shamans known as penotonru sa' (brujos) causing
illness and death. Yet, with the rise of shamanic tourism in recent years, Shawi
shamans, who work directly with tourists in locales such as Balsapuerto and Vara-
dero, seem to fall outside of this classification. There have been a number of
Shawi ayahuasca shamans murdered over the past 10 years connected to accusa-
tions of sorcery, leading to the majority of shamans hiding their practice publi-
cally due to fear. When one dies of an abnormal cause among thc Shawi, sorcery is
often suspected. Family members will visit an ayahuasquero to find out the cause
of death and identify the shaman who originally sent the shinere. Once an identity
has been obtained, the family members then visit another shaman to attempt to
confirm the rival shaman's actions. The family then waits for at least a year fol-
lowing the ayahuasca sessions before sending out a commission of young men
to confront the shaman. Armed with shotguns and machetes, the men will attack
and murder the accused shaman when he is alone, usually fishing or in his forest
garden plot. Such attacks have pushed ayahuasca shamanism among the Shawi
into obscurity, as the fear of retaliation is very high.
Those participating in shamanic tourism, however, continue to engage in aya-
huasca ceremonies and advertise their services without any repercussions. In con-
versations with Shawi individuals in 2013, I was often told that these shamans
were not "real" shamans, connected to terms such as wa 'an (leader), penoton,
and nunentuna 'pi (healer), suggesting a lack of authentic practice (see Alvira
et al., 2014). Likewise, with the aforementioned imbalance in new shamanic prac-
titioners in indigenous and mestizo communities, we also see many local people
question shamans' authenticity, especially other shamans within these commu-
nities. Among Kichwa speakers in the Ecuadorian Amazon, for example, sha-
manic tourism focused on the consumption of ayahuasca has recently become
quite popular, leading to intracultural conflicts. For Davidov (2010), ayahuasca
The Western Peruvian Amazon ayahuasca boom 175
shamanism's authentic practice is often contested, as locals argue that new sha-
mans who have not received proper training simply perform for tourists, strategi-
cally utilizing ethnicity, identity, and practice to be perceived within the "savage
slot" constructed from the tourists' point of view (Trouillot, 1991). This is also
seen as problematic from a health and safety perspective for both local peoples
i and tourists. These poorly trained shamans, who are seen as emulating "authen-
I tic" shamanic practices, often lack critical knowledge related to the use of other
plants, as well as how to properly heal certain ailments.
As mentioned above, authenticity is deeply connected to identity, particularly
in relation to shamanic tourism. Identity plays an increasingly important role in
the ayahuasca boom, both within the practice of shamanic tourism as well as
in the diaspora of ayahuasca and its related knowledge, practices, and material.
For many outsiders, exotic notions of indigenous peoples as ayahuasca shamans
who act as the keepers of ancient knowledge that has been passed down over
generations, are prominent - which, in turn, affect how shamans in Amazonia
present themselves to outsiders. While many ayahuasca shamans in urban areas
of the western Peruvian Amazon usually self-identify as mestizo, they also draw
heavily upon indigeneity in their shamanic practice. This takes the form of assert-
ing indigenous identity during ayahuasca sessions with tourists, donning indig-
enous garb or, more commonly, talking of their apprenticeship among indigenous
peoples (see Peluso, 2006; Davidov, 2010). The majority of shamans that I have
worked with in urban areas claimed they trained and lived with a variety of indig-
enous groups, such as the Awajun or Shipibo. Likewise, they also make claims to
indigenous heritage, such as having a grandparent who was an indigenous shaman
from whom they had received healing powers.
Shamanic mobility has historically been important to practices involving aya-
huasca in Amazonia, with shamans traveling long distances to acquire new knowl-
edge, engage in commerce, and maintain social and kinship relations (see Helms,
1988; Homan, 2011; Freedman, 2014). These treks are often used as indicators of
one's power, with those that have traveled extensively having much larger social
and spiritual networks from which to draw upon in both healing and sorcery.
Among the Canelos Kichwa of the Ecuadorian Oriente, for example, a shaman
must make long-distance voyages in which they expand their ayllu (family) and
gain knowledge from other ethnic groups (Whitten, 1976). Upon returning to their
natal communities, these individuals are viewed as being powerfulyachaks (sha-
mans) due to their understanding offoreign entities.' Within the ayahuasca boom,
by comparison, ayahuasqueros are still making these treks through Amazonia -
and elsewhere across the globe - while simultaneously leaving behind their com-
munities. A prominent local ayahuasquero in Yurimaguas, who in the past was
also quite involved in numerous cultural events in the city, spends a large amount
of time each year traveling to Europe and Asia to engage in ayahuasca healing
101' groups who have invited him. While he still maintains a lodge and often cures
local people - sometimes without charge - he also spends a great deal of time out
of the country, leaving many to rely on other, less-well-known shamans for heal-
ing and other purposes.
176 Joshua Homan
While this shift may not be as grave as Dobkin de Rios and Rumrrill (2008)
have framed it, with shamans preferring to work only with tourists rather than
with local people, it is still a highly problematic feature of the ayahuasca boom.
During fieldwork in 2008, I traveled to the small indigenous community of Pun-
chana, approximately 45 minutes from Tarapoto." I had hoped to connect with an
ayahuasquero I had heard about earlier in the week during an informal interview
with one my collaborators. After arriving and drinking a few shots of aguardiente
with a group of men I found near the soccer field, I learned that the ayahuasquero
was not in the village. Moreover, he now spent the majority of his time working
for a prominent ayahuasca lodge in Tarapoto rather than in this small community,
where people had come to rely on his services for many years. While this move-
ment from the rural to urban areas, as well as increased travel outside of the region,
is problematic for local residents, it is simultaneously beneficial to shamans and
their families. Although, as noted above with the Canelos Kichwa, historically
these movements were to gain knowledge and build a shamanic network, which
in turn would be used to the benefit of local peoples, today this has been radi-
cally altered. In the ayahuasca boom, the benefits of such travel are primarily for
the shaman and foreigners. Through the dislocation of shamanic knowledge and
practices, ayahuasca shamanism is weakened in these communities, which, over
time, can lead to the loss of traditional knowledge. Likewise, with the movement
of shamans out of the communities, locals must travel long distances - which is
quite costly - and engage with healers with whom thcy have less familiarity.
Although the ayahuasca boom has brought about the various impacts detailed
above, ayahuasca shamanism remains highly important for local peoples. Indig-
enous communities throughout the western Peruvian Amazon continue to utilize
ayahuasca with its "traditional" purposes, such as various forms of sorcery, heal-
ing, and divination. In urban communities, ayahuasca is critical for health and
healing, as well as for bringing luck to local businessmen or politicians. At a lodge
near Yurimaguas, many of those who receive long-term treatment are local peo-
plcs from the surrounding region. Although the shaman sometimes charges those
who can afford to pay, those who are unable to provide the needed funds are given
treatment and lodging for free or in exchange for labor. In urban areas, we see that
many people have gained a new pride in ayahuasca shamanism, especially in light
of the numerous documentaries and other media pertaining to it. Many individuals
have come to me asking for recommendations for ayahuasqueros, for both heal-
ing and to experience the brew itself. Local peoples also link ayahuasca shaman-
ism directly to the geography of Amazonia, connecting place with practice in an
inseparable manner. When I would tell them that the vine and other admixtures
were available for purchase at a shop in my hometown, they would argue that it
could not function as it does in Amazonia, as the forest is integral to its power.
As mentioned earlier, among the Inga, ayahuasca shamanism has historically
been linked to healing and sorcery. Over the past 40 years, however, with heavy
miss ionization by Catholic and Evangelical organizations, ayahuasca shamanism
has been pushed into obscurity. Today, many Inga shamans practice tobacco sha-
manism, only utilizing ayahuasca or marikawa (Brugmansia spp.) in times of
The Western Peruvian Amazon ayahuasca boom 177
great need. The few ayahuasqueros they do visit are usually from other ethnic
groups, such as the Kandoshi or Achuar, or are mestizos in larger cities down
river, such as Ullpayacu and San Lorenzo (see also Gow, 1996). There is a general
aversion to ayahuasca consumption among the Inga, with the majority having
never drunk the brew or only having drunk it a handful of times in their lives
(cf. Descola, 1996; Dean, 2009). Recently, this aversion has been challenged by
indigenous leaders in the organization Federaci6n Indigena Quechua del Pastaza
(Indigenous Federation of the Pastaza Quechua [FEDIQUEP]). In conversations
I had with a FEDIQUEP official named Juan, who is heavily involved in political
action against the Peruvian state and petroleum companies in the Pastaza basin, he
has often spoke of the influence ayahuasca has had on his position." Juan told me
the first time he drank ayahuasca he received a vision that he would lead the Inga
in protests against extractive industries in the region. He also mentioned, however,
that he did not drink ayahuasca in the Pastaza basin but in Iquitos at an ayahuasca
lodge that has an NOO connected to FEDIQUEP. The lodge owner is an expat
American who has since provided ceremonies to federation members multiple
times. Juan has encouraged others to drink ayahuasca, talking up its potential for
insight into political actions as well as its visionary powers, especially in relation
to seeing the future. This has led to the minor resurgence in interest in ayahuasca
among the Inga, at least among those with strong connections to the federation.
When community leaders (apus) travel to Iquitos to participate in assemblies or
other functions, they often drink ayahuasca at the lodge with the gringo owner.
Upon returning to the Pastaza basin, they speak openly of their experiences, effec-
tively disconnecting ayahuasca from the practice of sorcery and renewing interest
in ayahuasca as a visionary aid. Likewise, the federation periodically brings in
ayahuasqueros from Iquitos and Nauta to provide healing services for local peo-
ples and to facilitate the exchange of knowledge with Inga shamans.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have attempted to demonstrate the importance of ayahuasca sha-
manism for both indigenous and mestizo peoples living in the western Peruvian
Amazon, and the impacts the ayahuasca boom has had on these peoples over
the past 60 years. The ayahuasca boom's impact on local communities, detailed
above, highlights key themes that reflect other boom periods. One of the most
obvious is the boom actively influencing sociality and mobility in Amazonia, as
well as the movement of commodities from the Western Amazon to Northern
countries. Much like boom periods associated with cinchona, barbasco, and rub-
ber, asymmetric relations between foreigners and local peoples have also taken
hold, especially in reference to lodge owners and the construction of authenticity.
TIle problematics of health and safety in regard to shamanic tourism and the aya-
i huasca boom more generally is of great importance and requires more research.
Likewise, there has been an influx of increased economic opportunities, improved
infrastructure, and, in some cases, the strengthening, renewal, or reinvention of
tradition throughout Western Amazonia coinciding with the ayahuasca boom.
l78 Joshua Homan
While earlier boom periods also brought infrastructure and economic opportuni-
ties, as well as opening up spaces for cultural creativity, for many in Amazonia,
they were often tainted with violence, which, thankfully, is not prevalent in the
current period.
We must be cognizant, however, of the possibility of a post-ayahuasca boom
era arising within the near future. Trends - especially those that are heavily com-
modified - come and go, with little warning of their downfall. Although the boom
is currently expanding as information about ayahuasca shamanism flows through
global channels, the ayahuasca boom, like other booms before it, will certainly hit
a bust period. The effects of this post-boom era on local peoples can only be specu-
lated upon, although data from other periods provides us with possible outcomes.
Kemaghan (2009), writing on the post-coca boom in the Huallaga valley, notes
violence in the region decreased dramatically while infrastructure, income, and
labor opportunities became scarce. The landscape was dotted with remnants ofthe
boom, such as concrete foundations of brothels and other businesses frequented
by those involved in the cocaine trade that had fallen into disrepair. We must ask
ourselves what the future holds for a post-ayahuasca boom: Will the landscape be
scarred with dilapidated tanibos and the remains of ayahuasca lodges" How will
the dissolution of incoming capital affect local economies dependent on shamanic
tourism or the export ofayahuasca-related materials? More importantly, what new
cultural forms will emerge from a post-ayahuasca boom era, particularly in regard
to the practice of vegetalismo? Although critical to understanding the ayahuasca
boom, these questions remain unanswered and require continuing research in
Amazonia and elsewhere.
Notes
PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.
Email: jhoman@ku.edu
2 In an article from the New York Times published April 26, 1973, Jonathan Kandell
\\ rites that indigenous peoples in the Amazon have "caned out an economic niche
by drawing tourists to seances at which ayahuasca, a mildly hallucinogenic liqueur,
is served" (Kandell, 1973). While the development of an industry based around sha-
manic tourism was still in its infancv, indi viduals such as WiIIiam Burroughs and Allen
Ginsberg also travelcd to the Peruvian Amazon and Ecuadorian Oriente in the 1950s to
partake in ayahuasca sessions (sec Burroughs & Ginsberg, 2006).
3 For urban and ribcrcfio avahuasca shamanism, see Dobkin de Rios (1973) and Luna
(1986). For indigenous ~ommunities, see Harrier (1972) (Shuar); Descola (1996)
(Achuar); and Dean (2009) (Urarina),
4 Cinchona extraction continued well after this first boom period, expcriencing a short-
Jived second boom during World War 11. In the 1930s, the Dutch created cinchona
plantations in Java, allowing them to surpass South American production (Schiebinger,
2004). The synthesis of quinine in 1944, however, effectively led to thc downfall of
these Dutch plantations as well as extractive efforts in South America.
5 The adoption of contemporary ayahuasca shamanism by indigenous peoples continued
well into the latter half of the twentieth century, with groups such as thc Matsigenka
and Arakrnbut learning of the practice in the 1960s and 1970s (see especially Gray,
2004; Shepard, 2014).
6 Now known as the Carretera Fernando Belaunde Terry.
The Western Peruvian Amazon ayahuasca boom 179
7.The Quechua termyachak is derived from the noun yachay (knowledge), reflecting the
importance of knowledge acquisition in shamanic practice.
8 Pseudonym.
9 Pseudonym.
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 The economics of ayahuasca
Money, markets, and the value
of the vine
Kenneth W. Tupper'

Introduction
The field of ayahuasca studies has emerged as a thoroughly interdisciplinary aca-
demic pursuit in the early twenty-first century, with research occurring in areas
such as ethnobotany, neuropsychology, psychiatry, religious studies, anthropol-
ogy, and drug policy studies. In each of these domains, the object of research -
ayahuasca - is represented through a variety of social constructions: an Amazonian
vine, a traditional medicine, a religious sacrament, a plant teacher, and a "drug"
(Tupper, 2011). However, in this chapter, I consider ayahuasca as a different kind
of socially constructed artifact: a material commodity, increasingly circulating in
a global supply chain of monetary exchange. In so doing, I invoke an academic
field that has not yet taken much interest in ayahuasca, that of economics. My
discussion covers how ayahuasca is emerging as an object of exchange in the
modem transnational economic sphere, and takes an exploratory turn into how
this emergence may present a challenge to contemporary mainstream economic
knowledge and thought.
Before proceeding, I will provide some further context for my interest in the
economics of ayahuasca, as I am not a trained economist. My initial forays into
this convergence of topics were prompted by a colleague, a Canadian Metis
woman working in the field of aboriginal health. At that time, I was researching
and writing about the globalization of ayahuasca, and she asked me some ques-
tions that I had not (or had only superficially) considered previously. One was to
ask how ayahuasca drinking was in any way different from going to a 3-D movie,
a rave party, or a theme park. Her observation was that ayahuasca drinking - as
it was manifesting in western Canada in the early 2000s, with people spending
considerable sums of money to purchase a novel experience - seemed to fit rather
well with the modem Western consumerist mindset. My response was that it
seemed phenomcnologically different - there was something profoundly mean-
ingful, often spiritual or mystical, to be realized through ceremonial ayahuasca
drinking, which I believed most drinkers would readily distinguish from those
other kinds of consumer activities. However, I understood the reasoning behind
her question and had to admit that my anecdotal testimony on the matter might
not be persuasive.
184 Kenneth W Tupper
My colleague also asked whether the commodification of ayahuasca might not
profane something sacred. She pointed out that from her knowledge of both his-
torical and contemporary Canadian First Nations cultural practices, negotiating
a monetary exchange for a spiritual or healing ceremony was considered gauche
or even taboo. To be sure, a participant in a healing or spiritual ritual would be
expected to offer something to the ceremony leader in exchange, but traditionally
it would be something like a bundle of tobacco, a bundle of corn, a chicken, or the
like. According to her, a spiritual leader with integrity to traditional mores would
neither ask for nor accept money from someone attending a ceremony.
I reflected on these issues at some lcngth, recognizing that ayahuasca drinking
in the global North is, in a number of respects, a bourgeois phenomenon -local
ceremonies typically cost at least a few hundred dollars per person,' and a plane
ticket to the Amazon was even less affordable. Moreover, it was unclear how
this cultural phenomenon was not just another form of neo-colonial extraction
of material or cultural resources from an economically disadvantaged part of the
world, with precious little in the way of equitable compensation going back to the
people and communities from which it came (Meyer & Royer, 200 I). Yet most
of the individuals I knew who were involved in leading ayahuasca ceremonies
seemed to be doing so from a calling to heal rather than from an entrepreneur-
ial capitalist mindset.' They demonstrated a sincere respect for the traditions in
which they were immersing themselves, and had entered into formal apprentice-
ships with maestros of an indigenous tradition. They had undertaken multiple
long and arduous die/as (periods of strict dietary, sexual, and social abstinence),
and had accumulated impressive repertoires of icaros (chants and songs) as part
of their training to develop the necessary expertise in navigating the ethereal
worlds of ayahuasca. After many years of preparation, they were now leading
ceremonies themselves in places such as Canada, the United States, and Europe,
assuming a duty of care for participants that entailed an awareness of the difficul-
ties or challenges individuals may present before, during, and after drinking the
brew. Further, in some countries they risked potential arrest and imprisonment
for what some governments characterized as importing, possessing, and distribut-
ing an illicit "preparation" of dimethyltryptamine (or DMT; i.e., they were drug
traffickers in the eyes of authorities) (Labate & Jungaberle, 2011). Yet, despite
this, ceremony leaders were devoting themselves to organizing and conducting
events to provide safe spiritual or therapeutic encounters with ayahuasca for fam-
ily, friends, and acquaintances.
My initial reaction was that it seemed unreasonable to expect people under-
taking a vocation to lead ayahuasca ceremonies to offer such services without
compensation - surely they deserved to receive something of value in exchange
for providing something of such benefit. Further, while some would offer sliding-
scale fee structures or work-trade arrangements for low-income clients, I under-
stood that they could not maintain their practices and lives without generating
an income by some means or other. As I reflected longer, however, I had an ink-
ling that the issue was not fundamentally one of reciprocity; rather, I wondered
whether these various concerns might not be related to the only universal medium
The economics ofayahuasca 185
of exchange in the modem world, and something to which I had never previously
. given much thought: money.' From this insight, I started to think further about
the coins in my pocket and the pieces of paper in my wallet, which I had hitherto
naively assumed were symbols of value, beneficently minted and printed by gov-
ernments to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. I began to do further
research into the history and nature of money - its key functions as a medium of
exchange, unit of account, and store of value - and to consider more deeply how
the transnational expansion of ayahuasca was not simply a cultural phenomenon,
but crucially also an economic one.
As I began my research, it became apparent that an economic analysis of aya-
huasca could take a number of directions, as the field of economics is broad and
has numerous subdisciplines. In this chapter, I take a philosophical and sociologi-
cally informed approach to considering basic economic concepts such as value
and exchange, and explicitly draw on principles of cultural-historical psychology
to explore how both ayahuasca and money are examples of "cognitive tools."
With respect to economic theory, my ideas are grounded in the perspective of eco-
logical economics, which is still comparatively marginal in contrast to the politi-
cally entrenched neoclassical school of economics. The neoclassical economic
approach - which relies on rational choice theory to explain utility maximization
by individuals and firms and the determination of prices, outputs, and income
distributions through calculations of market-based supp ly and demand - currently
dominates the majority ofuniversity economics departments, mainstream business
news reporting, and treasury departments or finance ministries of governments
(Keen, 20 11). By contrast, ecological economics explicitly repudiates many of'the
postulates and axioms of its hegemonic cousin, particularly in its acknowledge-
ment of limits to growth and its attempts to account for "externalities," such as
nonrenewable resource depletion, pollution, and global climate change (Jacks on,
2009). Most importantly for what follows, neoclassical economic theories do not
account for the role of the banking system in money creation (Keen, 20 11). In
this chapter, I explore not only economic aspects of ayahuasca's globalization
and comrnodification, but also what ayahuasca may reveal about mainstream eco-
nomic thought, its primary unit of measurement (i.e., money), its status as an aca-
demic science, and the relationship of both ayahuasca and economics to human
flourishing and ecological sustainability.
Commodification through globalization
Much of what has been written about the globalization of ayahuasca has focused
primarily on the cultural aspects of its emergence in the modem public and politi-
cal spheres. However, the increase in ayahuasca drinking among people from the
global North - and consequently their relationships to Amazonian indigenous and
mestizo peoples - has been as much an economic phenomenon as a cultural one.
This is true especially insofar as the brew, its constituent plants, and many of the
ceremonial practices surrounding it have become goods or services embedded
in relations of monetary exchange, and thus increasingly subsumed within the
186 Kenneth W Tupper
broader global financial system. Unlike the traditional indigenous and mestizo
contexts of ayahuasca use in the Amazon, where gift economies and informal
customs of reciprocity have stubbornly prevailed as the primary fonn of socioeco-
nomic interaction,' contemporary globalized drinking practices are increasingly
predicated - either implicitly or explicitly -- on exchanges of money.
The commodification of ayahuasca is most overt in the public markets of Ama-
zonian urban settlements, where vendors supply both local people and interna-
tional tourists with bottles of prepared ayahuasca to take home. Commodification
isjust as evident in the provision ofindigenons-style or hybrid ceremonies cater-
ing to seekers and tourists, whether in or outside the Amazon region, and cash is
the preferred medium of exchange (Losonczy & Cappo, 2014). It is also implicit
in relations between mestizo or indigenous "maestro" ayahuasqueros and their
gringo apprentices, who are seen as a lucrative source of income for individuals
and their families (Brabec de Mori, 2014; Labate, 2014a), in some cases provid-
ing capital and business acumen to establish ayahuasca retreat centers (Fotiou,
2014). Moreover, since the criminal prohibition of the ayahuasca brew (con-
strued as a preparation ofDMT) in some jurisdictions means that its importation
carries considerable risks, as with other contraband substances, both artificial
scarcity and added supply-side costs translate into expectations for greater mone-
tary compensation by those who do engage in procuring and providing it to others
(Ko pp, 2004).
The Brazilian ayahuasca churches' doctrines illustrate some ofthe spiritual con-
cerns about the involvement of money in their practices through the explicit repu-
diation of the commodification of their sacraments (Soares & de Moura, 2011).
However, even these groups are not able to fully abjure monetary exchanges and
the impositions of the modern global economy (Dawson, 2013). For example,
although the Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) has strict policies of noncommercializa-
tion, as with many kinds of religious organizations, it "collects regular dues or
tithes paid to the institution by every member of the congregation, [and] pays an
administrative staff' (Labate, 2012, p. 22). Likewise, while an implicit gill/reci-
procity symbolic logic governs both cosmology and participatory dynamics in the
Santo Daime, and in principle "entrance ... is 'free,'" to become a Daimista also
"implies a moral obligation ... [including] payment of a tithe (when it occurs)"
(Cemin, 2010, p. 62). As Schmidt recounts, old-timers in the village of Ceu do
Mapia in Amazonas, Brazil- headquarters of the Centre Ecletico da Fluente Luz
Universal Raimundo Irineu Serra/Igreja do Culto Ecletico da Fluente Luz Uni-
versal (CEFLURIS/lCEFLU) branch of the Santo Daime church - lamented the
decline of a reciprocity-based system of local trade and exchange that had been
in place for many years, displaced by the increased use of money and depend-
ency on cash introduced through influxes of wage-earning urban Brazilian and
even more affluent international members visiting on pilgrimages (Schmidt, 2007,
pp. 77-79). Thus, the pervasiveness offree-market capitalism and its correspond-
ing commodifying logic in late modern life means it is exceedingly difficult for all
contemporary forms of ayahuasca drinking not to be enmeshed in the ubiquitous
web of markets and monetary exchanges.
The economics ofayahuasca 187
To the extent that it is overtly commodified (especially in nonreligious con-
texts), ayahuasca might be seen as just the latest in a long list of psychoactive
plants whose appropriation and trade have been significant forces in the history
of Euro-American colonialism and empire. For example, tobacco, coffee, tea,
cacao, coca, the opium poppy, and sugar cane (for rum production, as well as a
sweetener) all became commodities for early mercantilists and colonialist govern-
ments to profit from, with consumption patterns decontextualized from the tradi-
tions in which their uses were formerly grounded (Matthee, 1995). In the case of
tobacco, its sacred status among Amerindian peoples for spiritual, medicinal, and
ceremonial purposes contrasted significantly with its adoption by Euro-American
consumers, whose appetites for smoking, snuffing, and chewing tobacco products
appeared unlimited and profane by comparison (Gately, 2001). Further, the scien-
tific reductionist impetus to isolate particular components of plants, such as sugar
cane, opium poppy, and coca leaf, led to the development of easily extractable and
marketable white powders, the lure of which still drives considerable economic
activity today in the legal market for sugar and the ubiquitous illicit markets for
heroin and cocaine.
Unlike the dopamine-mediated, neuropsychologically reinforcing effects that
make these other plant-based commodities both popular and lucrative, aya-
huasca's unpredictable and sometimes harrowing psychoactive properties make
it unlikely ever to become an object of such insatiable consumption as modern
stimulants and anodynes. Nevertheless, among those who do try ayahuasca, a
significant proportion experience something valuable - be it therapeutic, spiritual,
educational, or simply aesthetic - and seek further occasional or regular encoun-
ters with it (Shanon, 2002). A recognition of such potential demand for their sac-
raments and concerns about future sustainability oftheir congregations' needs for
a secure supply has led Brazilian churches such as the UDV and Santo Daime to
commit to significant cultivation policies and projects (Soares & de Moura, 2011;
Labate, 2014b). On the other hand, harvesting of wild Banisteriopsis caapi and
Psychotria viridis from Amazonian regions remains a significant source of plant
material for the global marketplace, and a growing interest in traditional herbal
remedies, along with ayahuasca's growing repute as a therapeutic agent, means
that some profit-minded purveyors will be inclined to commercialize it for their
personal economic benefit.
An illustrative historical case in point is an ayahuasca patent involving an
American who, in 1986, obtained intellectual property rights from the United
States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) on a B. caapi vine (Centre for Inter-
national Environmental Law, 2003). This ayahuasca patent case raises a num-
ber of questions about the concept of intellectual property and the monetization
of knowledge it entails, especially insofar as such claims may be applied to life
forms such as plant species, as well as to cultural artifacts such as images, songs,
dances, and rituals." However, beyond the general issues of whether ayahuasca
might qualify as a patentable cultural artifact of the indigenous peoples of the
Amazon, or whether its adoption as a sacrament by syncretic autochthonous Bra-
zilian religions effectively puts it in the public domain, it behooves us to ask what
188 Kenneth W Tupper
the respective economic values are of ayahuasca's constituent plants, the prepared
brew, and the ritual knowledge of its administration.
On the surface, these questions might be most appropriately answered empiri-
cally, by engaging in ethnographic work in various settings and eliciting informa-
tion about relative monetary costs of cultivation or harvesting of the constituent
plants, production of the brew, distribution both within the Amazon region and
internationally, and ceremonial participation in different parts of the world. Fur-
ther work on the economics of ayahuasca might benefit from such research, which
I hope this chapter may stimulate. However, my purpose here is to delve more
deeply into the philosophical underpinnings of how such a research endeavor -
i.e., determining the relative monetary value of ayahuasca - is framed and what
it may obscure or occlude. In particular. I want to consider how the economic
aspects of ayahuasca's globalization represent an interface between one ancient
and powerful cognitive tool with another: money. However, before turning to this
question I will elaborate on some of the ways in which ayahuasca currently func-
tions politically, and could conceivably evolve in the future, as an object of com-
mercial and economic relations.
The political economy oftransnational ayahuasca drinking
The reception of ayahuasca drinking beyond the Amazon by different govern-
ments has been influenced by not only political but also cconomic factors. In some
instances, such as in South American countries whose jurisdictions include Ama-
zonian territory and local traditional ceremonial uses of the brew, some forms of
ayahuasca drinking have been legally accommodated. However, in most cases,
government policies are oriented to accepting indigenous cultural or syncretic
religious practices and, as far as I know, none has explicitly promoted the produc-
tion and purveyance of ayahuasca as an economic activity that could contribute
to the gross domestic product. For example, in 2006, the Brazilian government
convened a multidisciplinary working group that included members of several
Brazilian ayahuasca churches to craft policy recommendations to legitimize aya-
huasca drinking for religious purposes (MacRae, 2010). Adopted in 2010, the
policy repudiates and forbids the commodification and sale of the brew, declaring
that "the cultivation, preparation and ministration for the purposes of generat-
ing profit is incompatible with the religious use [of ayahuasca]" (Boiteux, 2011,
p. 269). However, it also explicitly makes exception for monetary exchanges
involving production and distribution of the brew, including "the harvesting of
plants, their transport and preparation, taken as 'maintenance costs,' which should
be supported by the user community" (Boitcux, 2011, p. 269). Along similar
lines, the government of Peru, in 2008, declared traditional knowledge and uses
of ayahuasca a cultural patrimony, which it "explicitly differentiates ... from
'decontextualized, consumerist, and commercial western uses:" (Beyer, 2009,
p. 375). However, despite such avowed anticommercial policies, most countries
with Amazonian territory within their jurisdictions (including Brazil, Peru, Ecua-
dor, Bolivia, and Colombia) are receiving regular influxes of Northern tourists
The economics ofayahuasca 189
seeking - and bolstering local economies through their willingness to pay for -
experiences with the brew.
In other countries where ayahuasca has been legally accommodated through
religious freedom arguments in courts, such as the United States, the Netherlands,
Spain, and Italy, this has been primarily through litigious efforts of diasporic chap-
ters of the Brazilian churches, Santo Daime and the UDV (Labate & Jungaberle,
2011). In some of these cases, government prosecntors attempted to snggest that
allowing importation of the sacramental tea for religious purposes posed a sig-
nificant risk that it would be diverted to illegal markets (Bronfman, 20 11, p. 291).
However, as church doctrines prohibit the explicit commodification of their sac-
raments, the concerns about diversion and "trafficking" of ayahuasca have been
deemed unmerited by some legal bodies, allowing for legal pennissions to import
and distribute the brew for noncommercial religious purposes (Labate, 2012).
Despite the religious motivations for seeking legal redress to accommodate the
importation and distribution of ayahuasca for use in ceremonial contexts, in some
places these rulings have led to broader interpretations that have also enabled
commercial trade in the common source plants for ayahuasca. For example, a
number of "smart shops," or ethnobotanical retail outlets, sell B. caapi and P vir-
idis, along with an assortment of other "ayahuasca analogue" plants and a variety
of other psychoactive flora. Further, as with an increasing amount of commercial
activity in consumer markets of all types, marketing of ayahuasca source plant
materials is now firmly established in cyberspace. Online companies engaged in
this trade operate as any aspiring entrepreneurial enterprise ought to: attempt-
ing to expand their customer base, and competing for market share with product
quality, advertising, sponsorships, and offering enticements or perquisites such as
bulk purchase discounts or free shipping. In early 2015, exclusive of additional
shipping costs, one website advertised prices ranging from U.S. $14.50 to $16.50
for a 50-gram package of B. caapi (depending on the variety and whether the
vine was whole or shredded), and around U.S. $23.00 for 50 grams of P viridis
(Azarius, 2015); others were selling "kits" (i.e., combination packages containing
samples of both plants, promoted as "enough ingredients for I trip") for amounts
ranging from U.S. $17.75 (High Street, 2015) to $23.75 (Elephantos, 2015).7 In
some cases, plant samples may be labeled with cautions that they are not intended
for human consumption, although other distributors provide advice, such as reci-
pes and brewing instructions, descriptions of typical physical and psychoactive
effects, and harm-reduction information, through point-of-sale pamphlets or busi-
ness websites.
The burgeoning online marketing and commercial trade in ayahuasca source
plants has been identified by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB)
as among recent examples of "plants ... used outside of their original socio-
economic context to exploit substance abusers" (International Narcotics Control
Board, 2011, para. 286). The INCB is the quasi-judicial body ofthe United Nations
responsible for ensuring compliance with international drug control conventions,
including the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, in which DMT - one
of the primary psychoactive components of ayahuasca brews - is scheduled as a
190 Kenneth W Tupper
controlled substance. Although the 1971 Convention explicitly excludes plants
containing scheduled substances such as DMT (Lande, 1976), and the INCB itself
has affirmed that interpretation of the treaty in communication with states' parties
inquiring about ayahuasca (Schaepe, 200 I), the Board's 2010 Annual Report nev-
ertheless recommended "that governments should consider controlling such plant
material at the national level where necessary" (International Narcotics Control
Board, 20 11, para. 287). Elsewhere, Labate and I have argued that the Board's
recommendation conflates and misrepresents widely diverse plant materials and
their effects, fails to distinguish between "use" and "abuse" of psychoactive sub-
stances, and appears to assume that cultural practices involving substance use are
static and immutable (Tupper & Labate, 2012). However, given the geopolitical
economic influences on the establishment of the intcrnational drug control system
(McAllister, 2000), there may also be economic undercurrents to the INCB's rec-
ommendation for "control" of plants and preparations such as B. caapi, P viridis,
and the ayahuasca brew.
While control over Schedule I substances (or preparations thereof) has his-
torically been achieved by severely restricting access for medical and scientific
research, and while individuals without the authorization to possess or distribute
can be subjected to harsh criminal penalties, it is conceivable that an emerging
evidence base for the therapeutic value of psychedelic drugs through burgeoning
scientific research could change political circumstances. However, the economic
paradigm in which contemporary biomedical and pharmaceutical drug research is
entrenched means that "control" of ayahuasca - or a novel "pharmahuasca" prod-
uct superficially enough like it (Ott, 1999) - could take a significantly different
form, one that more closely resembles that of conventional pharmaceutical drugs
such as opioids, SSRI antidepressants, or benzodiazepines. While the ayahuasca
patent case discussed above has expired, an intellectual property claim for a prep-
aration of DMT, harmine, and tetrahydroharmine (in proportions approximating
those of the traditional ayahuasca brew) is theoretically feasible, allowing an
enterprising pharmaceutical firm the opportunity to conduct research that might
ultimately be commercially successful and pay significant financial dividends.
It is not difficult to imagine how changing sociopolitical circumstances in the
future might lead to a regime of "control" whereby even the traditional plant-
based ayahuasca brew becomes fully embedded within the capitalist market logic.
In such a system, one might see genetic engineering and patcnting of new vari-
eties of source plants, monoculture cultivation and industrial-scale harvesting,
international trade standards applied to the brewing process and product, a system
of classification and appellation protected by trademarks (not unlike regionally
based names for wines or cheeses), brews branded with clever logos and packag-
ing (likely invoking indigenous cultural origins to convey authenticity), and the
establishment of derivatives markets for trading options on B. caapi and P viridis
futures, fluctuating based on uncertain climatic circumstances and growing con-
ditions. Certainly, other plant-based psychoactive consumer products - such as
coffee, tea, cacao, tobacco, alcoholic beverages, and most recently in Uruguay
and some V.S. states, cannabis - have in many respects met a not dissimilar fate.
The economics ofayahuasca 191
But anticipating, and perhaps influencing, the economic future of ayahuasca may
benefit from some reflection on the ubiquitous medium of modern economic rela-
tions, money.
Ayahuasca and money: the economic
interface of cognitive tools
The question of how to assess the val ue of ayahuasca in modern economic terms
implies that there is a perceived commensurability between the brew (and often
inextricably linked, its provision by skilled ceremonial leaders ) and the currencies
for which it may be exchanged, such as the euro, the V.S. dollar, the Brazilian
real, or the Peruvian Nuevo sol. However, in order to explore this matter, I want
first to digress briefly into how these two kinds of things - ayahuasca and money-
may derive value through a common characteristic they share as human cultural
artifacts, that of cognitive tools.
The concept of cognitive tool invoked here is that of early twentieth-century Rus-
sian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, a specialist in child development and learning, and
one of the founders of the cultural-historical school of psychology. The cultural-
historical perspective differs from other disciplinary approaches to psychology in
that it does not deny the specifics of the individual's cognitive skills and abilities,
but rather situates them in a broader social context. Specifically, it considers how
the mind - and as recent neuroimaging technology corroborates, its neurobiologi-
cal substrate in the brain (Hanakawa, Honda, Okadac, Fukuyama, & Shibasakia,
2003) - changes with the use of specific kinds of cognitive tools with which the
individual acquires facility through socialization and enculturation. Vygotsky pos-
tulated cognitive tools as being human symbolic, mnemonic, and behavioral tech-
niques or activities that "are directed toward the mastery of mental processes - one's
own or someone else's - just as technical devices are directed toward the mastery
of processes of nature" (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 85). As examples of cognitive tools, he
identified "language, different forms of numeration and counting, mnemotechnic
techniques, algebraic symbolism, works of art, writing, schemes, diagrams, maps,
blueprints, all sorts of conventional signs, etc." (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 85). To this list,
however, I would add both ayahuasca (and psychedelic substances more generally)
and money, and the elucidation of these additions to the inventory of cognitive tools
provides some insight into the economic structures and stresses that are attending
the brew's emergence as a global commodity in the twenty-first century.
The characterization of ayahuasca as a cognitive tool is a theme I have devel-
oped previously in other work on entheogenic education (Tupper, 20 I I), and on
psychedelic science (Tupper & Labate, 2014). Briefly, acknowledging psychoac-
tivc substances as tools reflects their capacity to mediate between one's mind
and one's environment, and to effect a purposeful change on one's mindlbody
or psychosomatic state (Roberts, 2013). As commentators on Vygotsky's notions
of cognitive tools have noted, "tool use has ... important effects upon internal
and functional relationships within the human brain" (John-Steiner & Souber-
man, 1978, p. 133) - an observation that certainly holds with respect to the utility
192 Kenneth W Tupper
of psychoactive substances. Thus, ayahuasca as a cognitive tool (i.e., a technol-
ogy for affecting neurochemistry, altering consciousness, and possibly reshaping
neural architecture) is a helpful explanatory heuristic not only for positing the
brew's capacity to stimulate novel ways of thinking, but also for perceiving its use
value as derived through its utilitarian functions in healing, cultural, and religious
contexts.
It also bears noting that the phenomenology of the ayahuasca experience itself
may stimulate reflection on the concept of value, especially inasmuch as it can
evoke the sensibility of being a divine gift. It is not uncommon for drinkers to
feel as though the brew bestows a kind of gratuitous and beneficent grace, a sense
of one's being given a profound form of healing and learning for which no com-
pensation is adequate (Brissac, 20 I0). Indeed. the Brazilian church Santo Daime
takes its name from a colloquial Portuguese phrase "dai-me" meaning "give me,"
illustrating the nature of the earliest ayahuasca experiences of its founder, Mestre
Raimundo Irineu Serra (Shanon, 2002). In this respect. the gift sensibility inherent
in the ayahuasca experience, especially in the context of a discussion of econom-
ics, hearkens to the kinds of pre-monetary economic relations that once character-
ized the human condition (Mauss, 1967).
The concept of "money" as a cognitive tool requires some further explanation,
which, in the next section, I illustrate through a cursory overview of some succes-
sive key innovations in human cultural and intellectual development. Specifically,
I aim to show how the particular kind of money with which the vast majority of
readers are solely familiar i.e., debt-based fiat currencies - is a function of a
"ratchet effect" of various other cognitive tool innovations over the past 12,000
to IS,OOO years (Tomasello, 1999). The digression on the evolution ofthe modem
form of money helps set the stage for further elaboration of how the ayahuasca-
money interface may illuminate aspects of the economic landscape for the brew's
globalization today. lt is important to note, however, that I do not mean to impose
an implicitly prescriptive narrative of "progress" from primitive to civilized
among those cultures which adopted these successive innovations; rather, I am
merely attempting to describe a sequence of gradual cultural adaptations in the
evolutionary trajectory of a uniquely powerful cognitive tool: money.
Money, debt, and economic knowledge
A common point of origin for the connection between ayahuasca and money begins
with flowering plants and, in particular, their seeds, whose gcncrativc capacities
were first identified and exploited by humans approximately 10,000 years ago.
The discovery of the power of the seed and the advent ofagricuIture shifted human
cognitive frames with respect to time, the future, and nature, and, in so doing,
also transformed social organization, power, and economics (Harari, 2014). For
those cultures that adopted the agricultural technology of domesticating plants
(and concomitantly animals), among the key changes wrought was a shift from
(semi)nomadic hunting-gathering societies to sedentary agrarian and proto-urban
ones (Wright, 2004). Importantly, the early adopters of agriculture established
The economics ofayahuasca 193
hierarchical forms of social organization, in which entirely new classes of peo-
ple emerged. For the first time, some members of society - such as priests, civic
administrators, and scribes - were not involved in the acquisition or production of
their own food. It also inaugurated the concepts of private property - including not
just land, but also accumulations of grain and chattel- and quantifiable credit or
debt (Graeber, 2011). Crucially, the latter innovation of credit in its earliest forms
allowed for the levying of interest payments, which, through the compounding
function, could inexorably grow to impose an insurmountable liability on the bor-
rower. Yet, even within those primordial structures of credit, it was recognized
that debt burdens often became so onerous that jubilees (mass nullifications of
debt) were regular political occurrences (Chirichigno, 1993). Similarly, the charg-
ing of interest on loans, or usury, was historically condemned as an odious or sin-
l' ful practice in a number of religious doctrines (Visser & McIntosh, 1998).
. The economic institutions of early agricultural societies led not simply to for-
• mal mechanisms of credit and debt, but also (crucially for the development of
f money) to their quantification and documentation. While reading, writing, and
.. arithmetic are clear landmarks in the evolution of human communication and
thought, the earliest instances of literacy and numeracy systems seem to have
been for recording and tabulating debts and interest accruals (Homer & Sylla,
200S). Monetary tokens, such as shells or stamped ingots or coins, were devel-
oped secondarily to rudimentary credit accounting (Graeber, 2011), instantiated
through early symbolic systems in the form of ideographic scripts that were the
direct antecedents to the first alphabets. Vygotskyregarded literacy and numeracy
as foundational types of cognitive tools - and subsequent research on oral vs. lit-
crate cultures has clarified the importance of these innovations on both individual
and collective forms of thought (Ong, 1982) - but it is essential to recognize that
money has a similarly powerful effect on human cognition, including personal
motivations, social relations, and economic calculations.
Two more crucial notches on the developmental ratchet of cognitive tools
underlying the contemporary economic structures attending the globalization and
commodification of ayahuasca are the inventions of Hindu-Arabic numerals and
the double-entry bookkeeping system. Many different kinds of numerical systems
had been used for market transactions and more abstract arithmetic and geometry
in various premodem cultures, but the Hindu-Arabic numeral system - i.c., the
positional notation system using digits of zero through nine, invented in India and
the Middle East around 600-800 CE - proved to be uniquely favorable for both
applied and theoretical mathematics (Kaplan, 1999). In particular, fourteenth-
century Venetian merchants adapted the decimal positional notation system of
Hindu-Arabic numerals into a new way of recording business transactions, today
known as double-entry bookkeeping, the sine qua non cognitive tool of mod-
em accounting and banking (Gleeson-White, 2011). The widespread uptake of
Hindu-Arabic numerals and double-entry bookkeeping in early modem Europe
was roughly coincident with the Renaissance, through which ancient teachings
in geometry and algebra produced other mathematical advances such as calculus,
probability theory, and statistics (Hacking, 2006). Among the early adopters of
194 Kenneth W Tupper
these intellectual pursuits were natural philosophers, or proto-scientists, seeking
to quantify, measure, and theorize about natural processes, whose efforts led to the
quintessential epistemic construct of modernity, the "fact" (Poovcy, 1998). At the
same time, other early adopters of these tools were the early modern forebears of
today's global financial system, including goldsmiths, bankers, insurance agents,
stockbrokers, and market speculators.
In particular, goldsmiths and bankers in the seventeenth century learned to apply
the double-entry bookkeeping method and its fundamental principle of credit-
debit balance to de facto money creation through the concept of fractional reserve
lending. The fractional reserve concept allowed a bank to issue loans in the form
of depository notes (which could be redeemed for gold bullion) in greater quanti-
ties than it held in bullion reserve in its vaults. These notes then began to circulate
in the marketplace, and bankers discovered they could profit tremendously from
the accruals generated through the compound interest function. However, the frac-
tional reserve lending process on ly ever creates "money" in the form of principal;
obligatory interest payments have nowhere to come from than the same pool. Thej
result is that loan defaults and foreclosures, or seizures of collateral assets, for an
unfortunate few are inevitable, and the perpetual transfer of real wealth from debt-
ors (deemed self-evidently culpable for their losses through financial ineptitude)
to creditors is built into the system. Over time, the symbiotic power relationship
between the banking sector and the state was consolidated in the form of a fiat cur-
rency, or a state-backed monetary unit (enforced as a monopolistic form of legal
tender, but still able to be privately created through debt issuance). At the same
time, new kinds of data, calculations, and statistical methods were being assidu-
ously applied in the branch of moral philosophy known as "political economy,"
leading ambitious theorists to regard the emerging discipline of economics as a
science no less rigorous than astronomy or physics (Hadden, 1994).
Before returning to how the cognitive tool of money relates to the econom-
ics of ayahuasca, I will make a few more points about how these early mod-
ern innovations in banking undergirded neoliberal systems of governance that
evolved between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries." The fractional
reserve banking model created convenient forms of paper money, but it was
also inherently unstable due to periodic crises of confidence among depositors,
who could demand en masse the redemption of their paper notes for sums of
gold that never existed (known colloquially as "a run on the bank"). To protect
against such economic catastrophes, governments created central banks to set
reserve requirements, be lenders of last resort, and instill public confidence in
the banking and monetary systems. While its central bank nominally controls a
nation's money supply, the deregulation of banking in many countries in the late
twentieth century - and the consequent rise of the "shadow" banking system -
produced an exponential growth of commercial and investment bank-issued
credit-based money. In particular, new "derivative" financial instruments, such
as collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and mortgage-backed
securities, have created unprecedented amounts of lcvcraged debt in the global
financial system.
The economics ofayahuasca 195
The twentieth century also saw the establishment of free-floating international
currency exchange and the decoupling of fiat currencies from commodities (the
"gold standard" having previously served as a real-world check on credit expan-
sion) (Prins, 2014). Thus, today, the vast majority of the global money supply-
the currencies through which ayahuasca is commodified and exchanged - exists
only by virtue of massive amounts of credit market debt that inexorably transfers
wealth to creditors and widens the gap between rich and poor. Furthermore, as the
2008 global financial crisis demonstrated, the underlying structures of the world's
economic system remain deeply unsound, and the so-called "recovery" achieved
t through the imposition of austerity measures and quantitative easing of monetary
policies has arguably only postponed an inevitable reckoning (Martenson, 2011).
Thus, it seems that ayahuasca's egress from the Amazon and its growing transna-
tional use as a powerful cognitive tool in the early twenty-first century has coin-
1 cided with a dire global economic situation evolving out of the gradual ratcheting
i of other kinds of cognitive tools - numeracy and literacy, money and debt, double
entry bookkeeping and fractional reserve banking - over the past 10,000 years.
r
Conclusion
The ideas about the economics of ayahuasca presented in this chapter attempt
to elaborate some of the themes that have arisen in my critical reflections on the
commodification and commercialization associated with various aspects of the
brew's transnational expansion over the past few decades. Following challenges
presented by a work colleague about whether ayahuasca's ostensible sacredness
might not risk profanation by the brew becoming simply another appropriated
material commodity and dissociated consumer experience in the modem world,
I was impelled to reflect on concepts such as value, reciprocity, and the nature of
money. As the previous section outlined, what I discovered is that many of the
economic issues attending the globalization of ayahuasca point to deeply trou-
bling questions about the debt-based foundation of modem fiat currencies, the
structural sustainability of the monetary system, and the crucial inter-relationship
(or current lack thereof) between ecology and economy.' In fact, it is difficult not
to conclude that the goal of inexorable and interminable growth explicit in mod-
em neoliberal political discourses represents a mass folie it plusieurs, whereby
humans on planet Earth collectively display no more intelligence than paramecia
in a petri dish.
Fortunately, cogent criticisms of the late-modem economic status quo have
been proliferating in alternative and online media since the 2008 global financial
crisis." More importantly, these discussions are focused not just on what is cur-
rently broken, but also on new ways to conceive of and promote human well-
being, social prosperity, economic reciprocity, and ecological sustainability. In
some cases, the voices are those of concerned elders reinforcing demands for
environmental action that they have been making for decades; in others, innova-
tive ideas are being put forward by a new generation of social activists who are
rejecting the dogmas of mainstream neoclassical economic theory and calling for
196 Kenneth W Tupper
radical reconsideration of the perpetual growth paradigm. In particular, there is an
emerging recognition that the construct of debt-based fiat money is an outmoded
relic, and that more effective mechanisms of reciprocity, media of exchange,
measures of value, and units of account arc both possible and desirable (Lietaer,
Arnsperger, Goerner, & Brunnhube, 2012).
To conclude, ethnobotanist Dermis McKenna has mused about the possibility
that the vine may be serving as an "emissary of trans-species sentience, to bring
us this lesson: You monkeys only think you're running things" (McKenna, 2005,
p. 232). Perhaps nowhere is such a lesson more applicable than in the board-
rooms of central banks and government treasury departments, where the pursuit
of economic growth is fetishize d as an axiomatic necessity, and tragic social and
environmental costs arc dismissed as unavoidable and thus tolerahle extcrnali-
ties (Kallis, Kerschner, & Martinez-Alier, 2012). One cannot help but wonder
whether significantly expanded ayahuasca drinking at a population level might
have an antidotal effect on such myopic agendas. Indeed, Benny Shanon reports
that enhanced ecological appreciations and sensibilities are a common phenom-
enon among many ayahuasca drinkers, a "recognition [that] makes people further
appreciate the link between humankind and nature" (Shanon, 2002, p. 168). More
poignantly, Brazilian anthropologist Arneide Cemin relates from her fieldwork
among Santo Daime (Alto Santo hranch) members:
Daime is considered to be the greatest wealth. It has even happened that peo-
ple who exercised the profession of gold-prospecting and have come to Ron-
donia motivated by the search for gold, have said that 'in fact the gold was
Daime and that thanks to God' they found it.
(Cemin, 2010, p. 59)
Thus, it may be that one of ayahuasca's greatest potcntials as a cognitive tool,
or entheogenic "plant teacher," is its capacity to illuminate for us what is trnly
valuable for individual and collective flourishing, which we would be mistaken to
think includes - or can be measured by - our current form of money.
Notes
Adjunct Professor, School of Population and Public Health, university of British
Columbia. Email: ktupper@i..telus.net
2 In North America, prices for ncoshamunic ay ahuasca ceremonies range from U.S. $75
to $250 per person, although some practitioners will accommodate low-income partici-
pants on a case-by-case basis.
3 Although. as illustrated b, the diverse and complex motivations people may have
for pursuing a university-based medical degree, these are 110t necessarily mutually
exclusive.
4 Anthropological perspectives on money illustrate a plurality of approaches to under-
standing its various forms, functions, and evolution (Hart & Ortiz, 2014). In this
chapter, my discussion focuses on the contemporary modern fractional reserve-based
fiat currencies that comprise the vast majority of the global money supply (Lietaer,
Arnsperger, Goerner, & Brunnhube, 2012).
The economics of ayahuasca 197
5. As anthropologist Brabec de Mori notes, "The Shipibo system of [cosmological]
assessment is based on an animist world conception, with reciprocity being the most
important principle for keeping the world in order" (Brabec de Mori, 2014, p. 217).
6 I have explored some of these issues elsewhere (Tupper, 2009), so I will not revisit
them here.
7 I have not personally ordered or tried any of these products, so I cannot comment On
the quality of the service or the plant materials.
8 The history, evolution, and current state of modern banking is far too complex to ade-
quately cover here. For a clearer and more thorough overview of these topics, I recom-
mend the "Occupy Finance" pamphlet (The Alternative Banking Group of Occupy
Wall Street, 2014).
9 The shared etymological root of the words "economy" and "ecology" (both deriving
from the classical Greek word oikos, or "household") indicates the conceptual align-
ment these disciplinary topics might be expected to have. However, with respect to
mainstream political discourse and action, they seem no more related to one another
than a similar set of cognate terms, "astronomy" and "astrology."
lOin particular, see "The Keiser Report" on the Russia Today television network, in which
incendiary hosts Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert deconstruct financial news headlines,
ridicule mainstream politicians and bankers, and conduct incisive interviews with a
wide range of guests on matters of contemporary economic and political affairs (Rus-
sia Today, 2015).
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 10 Global ayahuasca
An entrepreneurial ecosystem

Daniela M Peluso'

This chapter addresses the business of ayahuasca. In approaching ayahuasca as a bur-

geoning industry linked to the ayahuasca diaspora - the spreading of its use beyond
Amazonia - I will discuss its emergence through entrepreneurism arising amid local
contexts and participants. My analysis of how the ayahuasca industry has devel-
oped in only a few decades from an obscure practice into a cosmopolitan capitalist
endeavor is examined through a case study in the Tambopata Province in Peru. It also
suggests that small-scale entrepreneurism has contributed toward shaping ayahuas-
ea's international popularity. This chapter further contemplates the actual and poten-
tial impact that ayahuasca businesses have on South American indigenous and local
peoples whose expertise and practices have long been the hallmark of ayahuasca
practices, and raises questions of South American postcolonialism and its legacy of
imperialism? As such, this analysis provides an anthropological approach toward
understanding the emergence and development of entrepreneurship, and makes con-
tributions to literatures on postcolonialism, globalization, Amazonia, and ayahuasca.
Entrepreneurism, the processes of initiating and enterprising one's own busi-
ness or organization, emerges all around us, and mostly proliferates in potential
business settings that reflect untapped or high-demand markets that can accom-
modate new investments and start-up companies. The Amazon Basin is no excep-
tion to this global phenomenon. In fact, entrepreneurial businesses have long
been operating in its midst, particularly since the seventeenth century, via strong
colonial trade networks in animal skins, timber, vanilla, cacao, and later, quinine,
rubber, and other commodities that propelled personal business pursuits (Cleary,
200 I; Alexiades, 2009). A general pattern of exporting natural resources was well
established by the nineteenth century and has markedly shaped the economic and
political realties of Latin America today (Bulmer- Thomas, 2003). Many of these
entrepreneurial businesses benefitted from colonial discourses of primitivism
and wildness that still pervade popular views about Amazonia (Taussig, 1987).
Indeed, it was often traders who perpetuated myths of danger so as to keep other
entrepreneurial competition away (Taussig, 1987)3

Overview
Increasingly, the majority of people who live in Lowland South America reside
in urban areas (Alexiades & Peluso, 2015), a number estimated to be at 70%

..
204 Daniela M Peluso
(Padoch et al., 2008). Amazonia is home to several large cities, including Manaus
(a Free Trade Zone) and Belem ~ each with a population exceeding two million~
alongside others, like Iquitos and Satarem, with populations in the hundreds of
thousands. This also means that rural areas have become further linked to urban
areas (Pcluso, 2015) and also attract increasing economic interests. For instance,
in rural and peri-urban parts of Amazonia, ecotourism and other tourist-related
activities, alongside the environmental economy, have flourished in the last few
decades and are growing exponentially (Peluso & Alexiades, 2005). For example,
in 1989, $150,000,000 was spent in Manaus in hotel construction, with tourism
being the largest source of income in the state of Amazon as (Veseth, 2002).
Ayahuasca tourists increasingly visit Amazonian cities and rural areas. Such
tourism is part of adventure and/or international tourism, whereby individuals
and groups travel for the opportunity to take the brewed mixture of Banisteriopsis
caapi and Psychotria or various other admixtures. Ayahuasca holds great fascina-
tion for travclcrs, particularly because of its potential for providing hallucinatory
visions that can be used to diagnose and heal illness, as well as to provide psycho-
therapeutic benefits (Trichter, 2010), alongside its association with romanticized
and exoticized images of Arnazonia in the popular imagination (Ramos, 1987;
Conklin, 1997). Ayahuasca rituals, whereby ayahuasca is administered by an aya-
huasquero (individuals who use ayahuasca, including some shamans), have long
been practiced locally in Amazonia and its surrounding Andean environments
by indigenous people and mestizos (Dobkin de Rios, 1970; Taussig, 1987; Gow,
1994; Beyer, 2010; Luna, 2011; Calavia Saez, 2014); and, since the 1930s, these
rituals have also been integrated into popular expanding religious forms through
Santo Daimc, Barquinha, and the Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) in Brazil (Labate,
Macrae, & Goulart, 2010).
With the advent of ayahuasqueros traveling abroad and the export of ayahuasca
itself, ayahuasca tourism has assumed international proportions, and ayahuasca
seekers and tourists are no longer restricted to drinking this hallucinogenic bever-
age in situ. The possibilities for participating in ayahuasea ceremonies or con-
suming it individually have been mounting (Labate & Cavnar, 2014). Now more
readily available outside of local or regional Amazonian settings, ayahuasca
experience-seeking is a global trend (Alexiades, 2002; Winkelman, 2005; Tupper,
2008; 2009; Labate, Cavnar, & Barbira Friedman, 2014). As such, ayahuasca is
now replicated or integrated into new forms of practice in places like Australia
(Gearin, Chapter 6 in this volume), Canada (Tupper, 2011), the United States
(Trichter, 2010; Harris & Gurel, 2012), the Netherlands (Groisman, 2001), Spain,
Germany (Balzer, 2005), as well as countries in Africa (Greenfield & Droogers,
2001; Sobiccki, 2013), Asia, and elsewhere (Labate & Jungaberlc, 2011).
Overall, in the last decade, ayahuasca ceremonies and retreats have been offered
frequently enough for the opportunity to be considered commonplace (Davidov,
20 10; Fotiou, 20 I 0). I suggest that until recently, ayahuasca, as a potential indus-
try, has mostly remained untapped because of its spiritual and religious uses that
may be seen as antithetical to modernity, alongside its variable legal status. Its
temporary haven as an unexploited market is also linked to a general interpretation
Global ayahuasca 205
of the ayahuasca experience as being sacred and therefore outside of the realm of
capitalism. For instance, its existence as a practice is often negated as having any-
thing to do with money (Peluso, forthcoming). Prior to the international focus on
rainforests and the creation of national parks and reserves, tourism to Amazonia
was steady and in some cases lagging. For some time, ayahuasca had been rather
protected from an onslaught of attention and the unleashing of its own marketing
potential. However, for the last two decades, the emerging position of the aya-
huasca experience as a potential income source, both locally and internationally,
can no longer be ignored. Ayahuasca tourism has ignited the potential economic
business lure ablaze with local, national, and international interests in ayahuasca
as part of broader sets of globalization processes.
Ayahuasca economies
I would like to first distinguish between ayahuasca as part of a local economy and
ayahuasca as a form of entrepreneurism. Economically, shamans and ayahuasqueros
have long been participating in various forms of exchange that have generally com-
pensated them for their time, skills, and talents. They have tended to peoples out-
side of their communities, cities, and countries. Indeed, shamans from "afar" are
often perceived as being more powerful, and therefore people tend to travel great
distances to cure more serious illnesses or social problems (Taussig, 1987). As
healers and sorcerers, ayahuasqueros have always been integral to their local and
regional economies, yet systems of reciprocity and tendencies toward egalitarian-
ism, whereby peoples' livelihoods may be different but their lifestyles are not, have
meant that their status did not indicate economic stratification (Clastres, 1987).
In this chapter, "ayahuasca entrepreneurism" refers to a set of responses to the
dynamics of increased ayahuasca tourism and the marketing strategies used to
attract such tourism. This phenomenon has resulted in the proliferation of sha-
mans, ayahuasqueros, tourist lodges, and agencies that provide the ayahuasca
experience alongside a plethora of other secondary businesses that participate in
this rise in popularity and demand. Here, entrepreneurism reflects smaller-scale
activities than those normally associated with high-profile entrepreneurism (e.g.,
the creation of Apple, Inc.), thus incorporating micro-businesses and enterprises.
In taking heed to Keith Hart's (1975) call that the use of "entrepreneur" be refined,
here I refer to entrepreneurs as leaders who exercise particular "aspects" of their
roles (Barth, 1963, p. 6), whereby they assume risk and implement initiative,
anticipating and taking advantage of market opportunities as they arise, and often
"manipulate other persons and resources" to meet their ends. In referring to the
entrepreneurial role, I highlight the opportunistic features of that push toward
profit rnaximization, whereby profit can also include enterprises listed as non-
profit organizations, such as various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
eco-ventures, and charitable institutions. I also emphasize how cntreprcneurism
is a cultural process (Greenfield & Strickon, 1981) that reflects consumer target-
ing and desires, and the social and political milieus and principles to which these
businesses abide and in which they operate.
206 Daniela M Peluso
It is useful here to explore ayahuasca as being part of an "entrepreneurship eco-
system," a term that I borrow from Isenberg (20 10) and modify to reflect an anthro-
pological approach to the ayahuasca industry. for Iscnberg, an entrepreneurship
ecosystem consists of the complex combination of "individual elements - such
as leadership, culture, capital markets, and open minded customer.... In isola-
tion each is conducive to entrepreneurship but insufficient to sustain it" (Isen-
berg, 2010, p. 3). I view such elements as already being informed by and shaping
one another so as to reflect the fluidity, mixture, and unboundedness of culture.
An ayahuasca entrepreneurial ecosystem would need to include indigenous and
nonindigenous individuals, groups, and organizations, and the nations/states in
which they reside, and be a crucial mechanism for the ayahuasca diaspora. These
entities, or "stakeholders," can be favorable or inhibitive for entrepreneurs hips to
prosper.
There is a scant, yet growing, literature on the anthropology of entrepreneur-
ship (Stewart, 1991). Historically and currently, much entrepreneurism is studied
within the context of large-scale organizations (Casson, 1986; Oviatt, McDou-
gall, & Loper, 1995). Yet, more recently, it has been located in the individuals
who craft local forms of livelihood amid processes of global capitalism (Dolan &
Johnstone-Louis, 2011; Sanchez, 2012; Meisch, 2013). It is in this latter vein that
I explore the unfolding entrepreneurism surrounding ayahuasca. Here, I suggest
that ayahuasca tourism and ceremonies have generated a series of profit-based
opportunistic small businesses that, as a whole, link into the larger, broader indus-
tries, such as adventure travel (Palmer, 2002), international tourism (Becker,
2013), and the New Age movement (Davies & Freathy, 2014). To illustrate how
sueh small-scale entrepreneurism emerges and expands, I elaborate by focusing
on the Tambopata Province of Madre de Dios, Peru - one of many regions that
attract ayahuasca tourists - and then broaden the analysis to include the interna-
tional market for ayahuasca."
Amazonian and international frontiers
The Tarnbopata Province is the largest of three provinces in the department of
Madre de Dios. Its economy is based on the extraction of raw materials, including
gold mining and timber, as well as forest products, such as Brazil nuts. Tambopata
is designated as a biodiversity "hot spot," comprised of the Tambopata National
Reserve and the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park. These form part of a "mega-
corridor" aimed to tie together Bolivian and Peruvian protected areas (Bennett &
Ader, 2004). Thus, ecotourism is a major growing industry in the province. In
2005, in the Tambopata Province, ecotourist lodges brought in U.S. $6 million
out ofU.S. $11.6 million spent on Peruvian rainforest ecotonrism, of which U.S.
$3.8 million were local revenues, i.e., funds transacted in Tambopata (Kirkby
et aI., 2011). Ayahuasca, once a decidedly local practice, has exploded alongside
this environmental economy sector.
Only 30 years ago, the ayahuasca usage landscape was starkly different. In
the 1980s, the information for non locals who were interested in experiencing
Global ayahuasca 207
ayahuasca was scarce, and very few people were openly known as ayahuasqueros.
In i983, a nonlocal European man who lived in Puerto Maldonado, the capital of
Madre de Dios, was one of the first nonloca1s to be interested in taking ayahuasca,
He explained how it was not a straightforward process in those days to encounter
people willing to talk about ayahuasca. After trying to determine who knew how
to prepare and drink the brew and whom he could approach, he was eventually
directed to two men, a Tacana and a ribereho, both living in the Ese Eja native
community of Infierno.' When he first went to the community to search for either
of these men, he met an Ese Eja man who was serendipitously approaching the
ribereno ayahuasqueros to drink for the very first time, an experience they shared
together. Although the eco-Iodges in Tambopata now boast that ayahuasca is an
ancient Ese Eja tradition, Ese Eja, like many other indigenous groups, recently
learned to drink ayahuasca from nonindigenous others (Alexiades, 2000).
In the 1980s, there were also several mestizos and one well-known Shipibo
ayahuasquero, now deceased, with the characteristic frontal-occipital skull defor-
mation of Shipibo-Konibo peoples who also practiced in Puerto Maldonado.
When I interviewed his daughter-in-law, she explained that "gringos" never came
to see him, yet patients arrived from elsewhere. Surely there were numerous other
ayahuasqueros that were unknown to outsiders, and certainly in some of the indig-
enous communities such as Tres Islas, where the practice continued among Ship-
ibo, with one younger ayahuasquero who continues to drink to date. Yet, there was
generally much silence around ayahuasca's use, and it certainly would have been
challenging for travelers to come across ayahuasqueros.
The silence and secrecy that once effusively surrounded ayahuasca practices
is understandable considering that municipal officials, the Catholic Church, and
evangelical groups have systematically condemncd the practice of ayahuasca
drinking (Dobkin de Rios & Grob, 2005; Tupper, 2008). Such demonization of
the practice certainly continues to inform attitudes of rural and townsfolk toward
both ayahuasca and its participants. The crucial step in normalizing ayahuasca in
the Madre de Dios region was the emergence of AMETRA 2001 (Aplicaci6n de
Medicina Tradicional), an indigenous health project aimed at integrating local
health beliefs and practices with basic aspects ofprimary healthcare (Cueva, 1990,
Alexiades & Lacaze, 1996).6Although drinking ayahuasca was not a specific aim
of the program, the program did aim to support and revitalize shamanism. The
project was mode led after AMETRA-Ucayali and counted on the participation
of Shipibo shamans, whose presence gave prominence to the use of ayahuasca in
shamanic practices and resulted in the training of shamans as ayahuasqueros. By
1986, the project had spread throughout Madre de Dios, and it cast ayahuasca,
alongside other indigenous treatments for health and illness, in a positive and
popular light. It is in the AMETRA era that various indigenous individuals who
did not customarily drink ayahuasca began to do so with more frequency. During
my own fieldwork visits, I witnessed the training of Shipibo, Ese Eja, Hauchi-
pacre, and Amahuaca individuals as ayahuasqueros, as well as others. Ayahuasca
practices were focused on community health and healing, but with the eventual
changes that were to come, a few individuals began to drink with tourists; and one
208 Daniela M Peluso
of these ayahuasqueros began holding ayahuasca ceremonies in Cusco, a prime
South American tourist destination.
Nationally, tourism began to surge after the election of Alberto Fujimori as
President of Peru in 1990, the subsequent renegotiation of foreign debt, and the
defeat of Sendero Luminoso and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru
(MRTA) activities. J These actions encouraged international investment as the
country invested in their transportation infrastructure, thrusting Peru toward a
tourist boom (Desforges, 2000) that has not stopped since. Tourism to the Tam-
bopata district benefitted from these changes particularly, as international interest
in the rainforest movement also gained momentum, and international conservation
organizations became more active in South America. Furthermore, the 1990s was
a catapult decade for technological and communications innovations that served
to bridge the temporal and spatial distances between places as geographically
remote as Tambopata and the rest of the world, a transformation referred to as a
"time-space compression" (Harvey, 1989), and critical to globalization processes.
Further, gradual changes in attitudes toward ayahuasca in the 1990s emerged
from two principal directions: the flourishing tourism lodges ("eco" or otherwise)
that began to prosper: and the small but influential migration to Puerto Maldonado
of individuals and their families, which was unassociated with previous migra-
tions related to the "gold rush" (mining) or poverty alleviation strategies. Such a
migration was in distinct juxtaposition to Andean migrants who began to arrive
to Tambopata in the late 1960s, and increasingly in the 1980s, mostly due to state
incentives, population pressures, landlessness, poverty, or to economic booms,
such as the "gold rush" or lax regulations on timber extraction (Serra- Vega, 1990;
Fraser, 2009). This small but different wave of migrants opened small businesses
and embraced the benefits of living in an Amazonian town. They also tended to
show interest in rainforest conservation and the struggles of indigenous peoples.
The setting in the 1980s - when there were only two lodges and no other tour-
istic operations apart from a few free lance guides who only sporadically obtained
work by standing at the small airport whenever a flight arrived - has changed
significantly. In fact, the airport, formerly a one-room tin-roofed structure, was
replaced by a more seemingly modern structure. By 2008, there were 37 eco-
tourism lodges (Kirkby et al., 20 11); and since then, at least a dozen more have
opened, as Peruvian legislation increasingly grants private concessions for con-
servation or ecotourism ventures. As nonlocal individuals increasingly traveled
to the Amazon in search of ayahuasqueros, the lodges began to offer an option to
drink ayahuasca with their own ayahuasquero, someone they kept in-house or at
hand, or by transporting guests to the ayahuasquero's home or center.
The increase in tourism, lodges, and the influx of people has had a significant
impact on how the ayahuasca experience is perceived locally. Although conserva-
tive Christian beliefs against the ritual still prevail, seeing it as the work of the
devil, their influence has lost its grip against the encroachment of other views. The
fact that national visitors and international tourists were seeking out ayahuasca
prompted local peoples and businesses to perceive it as something valuable.
Consequently, ayahuasca began to be viewed as a potentially lucrative source of
Globalayahuasca 209
income whose demand by outsiders helped to validate its legitimacy. This meant
that more people wanted to become openly associated with ayahuasca, including
many who had no prior interest or knowledge about it, and this also served as a
catalyst for the current proliferation of ayahuasqueros and their apprentices.
The entrepreneurial drive
Accordingly, ayahuasca became much more accessible, less secretive, and more
readily available via individuals and lodges. Whereas it was once lone travelers
who made their way to seek an ayahuasquero, burgeoning tour guides and tourist
lodges soon began to bring tourists together with ayahuasqueros. In such sce-
narios, there is a wide array of participants who may potentially come together for
the ayahuasca experience, and with ever-increasing chances that they are inexpe-
rienced. In both urban and rural areas, individual homes and lodges began to make
themselves available as part of an ayahuasca ecosystem, offering their spaces and
attempting to gather together basic levels of expertise. Such accommodations
range from small and basic to large and luxurious; they can be individually or
family owned, partly owned by an indigenous or riberefio community or owned
by a larger consortium of partners. They can thus cater to backpackers, affluent
visitors, and anyone in between.
Locally, the critical nucleus for an ayahuasca ceremony had usually been the
patient and the healer. This could also include assistants and family and commu-
nity members. In such a setting, there is little that resembles a formal business,
apart from the fact that services are rendered and some form of compensation,
usually voluntary, eventually follows. Yet in the specialized centers, one sees the
full gamut of ayahuasca entrepreneurship and, in the larger lodges, one is struck
by the way that the ayahuasca experience is offered to tourists as readily as a bird-
watching activity or hiking event, mostly through a language that exoticizes its
features, e.g., "ancient," "tradition," "magical," etc. (Labate, 2011). By the 1990s,
some ayahuasqueros began to seize the opportunities that adventure tourism pre-
sented by starting to operate lodges or healing centers on their lands, or purchas-
ing or renting lands for such purposes. In the case of the Tacana ayahuasquero
mentioned earl ier, he reorganized his homestead to make space for sleepover
guests and put up a large wooden plaque upon which he painted his name. He also
sporadically asked his son to help with transportation, but for the most part, at the
age of84, he still runs a solo business. Most other ventures are often family-based
but also employ workers such as cooks and cleaners. Having a lodge or center also
broadens the extended involvement of tour agencies, tour guides, additional tour-
ist attraction activities and sites, botanical and artisanal producers and markets,
boat and taxi drivers, and social media and business Internet sites. I would classify
this type of interest and expansion as small-scaled entrepreneurism, wherein the
growth ofthe business comes from an existing livelihood.
The eco-Iodges in the Tambopata area represent much larger-scale entrepre-
neurism than the ventures I have just described. Lodges openly advertise ayahuasca
ceremonies as one of many possible activities that their guests may participate in.
210 Daniela M Pelm'o
Some lodges have been exclusively set up with ayahuasca retreats in mind (Fotiou,
2010). Furthermore, these lodges have a strong presence on the Internet via their
own websites or other websites that cater to tourism. Often, visits to these lodges
are also part of larger tourist industry packages (Kirkby et al., 2011), and at least
three of these lodges own or have commercial ties to tourist agencies in Cusco or
Lima. Further, income can also be garnered from government conservation con-
cessions and grants (Kirkby et al., 2011) and from certification accreditation for
behaving as model eeo-tourist businesses (Cater, 2006; Jamal, Barges, & Stronza,
2006). These larger operations employ a retinue of managers, guides, boat drivers,
bus drivers, airport greeters, cooks, cleaners, and several others.
The lodges and centers specifically set up to capitalize on the ayahuasca boom
are strongly linked to the New Age movement, either through their ownership
or their clientele. In the last two decades, Peruvian nationals and non-Peruvian
entrepreneurs, not local to Madre de Dios, founded a majority of these lodges;
they often incorporate a local partner, though more usually, a caretaker. This trend
is also common in other parts of Peru (Fotiou, 20 I0; Holman, 2011; Labate, 2011)
and reflects the ability of nonlocals or foreigners to better access cash, and there-
fore to seize such entrepreneurial opportunities. A frequent origin narrative among
a subset of more recent newer lodges is that the owners were greatly enthused
by ayahuasea visions and were thus inspired to permanently move to the place
where they had their ayahuasca "awakening" (Doyle, 2006, p. 14), an experi-
ence in which one experiences their own "divinity" (p. 13) and that stirs one to
dedicate his or her life to a greater spiritual quest. I have commonly witnessed
ayahuasca tourists return to Tambopata with mcssianic zeal, believing that they
were "chosen" to save the world, which is not necessarily negative as long as it is
rooted in an understanding of local reality and is not detrimental to others. In one
case, a woman sold her home, gave up her career as a professional musician, and
arrived ready to open a lodge. By the time she got a clear sense of how everything
worked, all of her money was gone. Cases of post-ayahuasca-session-euphoria
have been amply documented both historically (Gearin, 2015) and contemporar-
ily; a memorable example is the case of an Englishman who returned to Peru to
follow his ayahuasca vision using his substantial cash savings to build a seven-
story floating wooden pyramid hotel/cultural center, only to watch it disintegrate
into driftwood (Mann, 20 11). Yet several lodges designed as ayahuasca centers,
having a separate maloca (ritual house) for the ceremony, arc successful, espe-
cially when they take time to allow their businesses to develop and thus attain a
better sense of local culture and how things are best situated. These lodges will
seek their own shaman, and the owners themselves are often interested in becom-
ing neoshamans: nonlocal ayahuasqueros. It is common for them to apprentice
with the ayahuasquero in residence.
Ayahuasca lodges and ceremonies are also advertising in New Age periodicals
and wcbsitcs, as well as in blogs and social media. On many of these websites,
individuals share their spiritual awakenings and indirectly entice others to follow
suit. In order to sell rooms and tour packages, lodges are registering with service
wcbsitcs such as Trip Advisor and Booking.corn, where consumers can, in turn,
Global ayahuasca 211
give feedback. Other websitcs, such as AyaAdvisor (http://ayaadvisor.org), cater
specifically to ayahuasca tourist interests so that travclcrs can post reviews based
on various aspects of their ayahuasca experiences.
International ayahuasca tourists began to organize ayahuasca sessions in their
home countries, flying in their shamans and hosting workshops. At these work-
shops, attendees pay per person and the funds are divided differentially to cover
the ayahuasquero's travel and associated expenses, yet also allow him or her to
return with a stipend that usually ranges in the thousands, ifnot tens of thousands,
of dollars. In the latter cases, particularly in places like California, arrangements
are made for ayahuasqucros to hold rituals with celebrities who demonstrate their
appreciation monetarily (Lab ate, 2011). In addition, the host's costs are usually
also covered. This, too, ranges differentially; whereas some hosts are only cov-
ered for the expense of hosting such an event, others derive a percentage for their
efforts. Such entrepreneurial efforts serve to create an international market for
both ayahuasca and ayahuasqueros.
In Tambopata, the ayahuasca entrepreneurial ecosystem has had various nega-
tive impacts on local populations who have long depended upon ayahuasqueros
for purposes of health. These changes are part of a comparatively pan-Amazonian
response to international ayahuasca tourism, and the resultant processes of corn-
modification and appropriation of their practices, that entails local peoples' inac-
cessibility to ayahuasqueros due to tourist obligations, the legitimacy of practices,
the sanitization of rituals for Western purposes, and a host of health and safety
issues affecting both locals and tourists (Hutchins, 2000; Labate & Cavnar, 2004;
Peluso, 2006; Tupper, 2009; Davidov, 2010; Holman, 2010; Labate, 2011; Homan,
Chapter 8 in this volume; Tupper, Chapter 9 in this volume.). These impacts further
exacerbate economic differences in local populatio ns, and also vis-it-vis nonlocal
participation in the commodification of cultural practices, a point I will return to.
If one considers that ayahuasqueros now also travel abroad, and that Western-
ers have also become ayahuasqueros and thus have their own tour and retreat
schedules, then the level of participation expands yet further, as such activities are
welcomed and endorsed by adventure travel and the New Age movement. Such
New Age interests endorse a variety of shamanic retreats and training workshops,
courses, and centers. Furthermore, the growing international popularity of Brazil-
ian religions that use ayahuasca as a sacrament need to also be taken into account
when considering the spread of ayahuasca's popularity. Add to this the sales, both
on- and off-line, of the ingredients for brewing ayahuasca, and an array of other
products and paraphernalia - such as raw tobacco rolls (mapacho), agua de flor-
ida, music CDs of ayahuasquero chants ticarosi, textiles (such as Shipibo cloths,
noted as reflecting the geometric patterns common in ayahuasca visions), jew-
elry, drawings and paintings - and there is further incentive to promote, produce,
and reproduce ayahuasca practices. If one searches for ayahuasca ingredients and
paraphernalia: on the Internet, the pages go on and on.
Another entrepreneurial design has been the development and the sale of phar-
mahuasca" or its equivalent, a synthesized form of ayahuasca (Ott, 2011; Araujo
et al., 2015) with a strong underground market that services various ayahuasca
212 Daniela M Peluso
sects who prefer to ingest ayahuasca this way (Anonymous, personal communi-
cation). In addition, there is an arena of legal specialists who endeavor to protect
ayahuasca's usage, the academics who write about ayahuasca, and the NGOs that
support its use and practices - thus, there is a significant assemblage of liveli-
hoods that come together to form this industry, ranging from a small household or
community in Amazonia to financiers on Wall Street or celebrities in Ibiza.
It is therefore not only ayahuasca's spiritual status but also entrepreneurial
efforts that have assisted in the ayahuasca experience emerging amidst a globalized
sct of activities. This flourishing has also inspired local NGOs that are concerned
about the rapid proliferation of ayahuasqueros, many of whom are considered to
be untrained. As an ayahuasquero in Tambopata explained, he is also disturbed by
neoshamanism and the fact that many of the nonlocal peoples who are taught for
short periods oftime consider themselves to be bona fide ayahuasqueros. Further-
more, some local ayahuasqueros resent that Westerners come to apprentice them
and then return to their own countries to earn money from their craft (Razam,
2014); this may also destabilize the local ayahuasquerc's importance in the inter-
national ayahuasca network. Yet, established ayahuasqueros are just as concerned
by the proliferation of indigenous ayahuasqueros as they are offoreign ones. Their
concern is with anyone who is inexperienced and insufficiently trained, as they
view this as impacting the quality of both the ayahuasca and the healing practices,
and thus the reputation of their profession. In the case of Colombia, as a result of
the gathering in 1999 of the most esteemed yageceros (ayahuasquero shamans)
and community representatives, a declaration, code of ethics, and alliance among
them was founded: the Union de Medicos lndigenas Yageceros de la Amazonia
Colombiana (UMIYAC) (the Union ofIndigenous Yage Healers of the Colombian
Amazon), an alliance among Ingano, Kofan, Siona, Karnsa, Coreguaje, Tatuyo,
and Carijona.? Similar alliances, such as the Consejo de Yachak Runa Amazonico
del Ecuador (Yachak Runa Amazonian Council of Ecuador) are aimed to preserve
cultural and professional integrity. III
Ayahuasca cosmopolitanism
Ayahuasca tourism and its diaspora has also fostered a strong embracement of
cosmopolitan ism - a shared moral and philosophical commitment to "the pri-
macy of world citizenship over all national, religious, cultural, ethnic and other
parochial affiliations" (Beck & Sznaidcr, 2010, p. 6) - creating a sense for aya-
huasca tourists that they are all part of a singular utopian community. In many
cases, this creates blindness on the part of ayahuasca seekers toward the social
and economic differences between Amazonians and non-Amazonians. The rising
cosmopolitanism of ayahuasqueros has much to do with the capitalistic entrepre-
neurial ecosystem in which all participants partake and its focus is on urbanism.
When ayahuasqueros first began to travel, their consumption of novelties was at
first experimental; yet eventually, a political positioning was dynamically asserted
through consumption and capital investment amid families, communities, and cit-
ies that embraces cosmopolitanism - indigenous, riberefio, mestizo, or otherwise.
Global ayahuasca 213
The income and travel perks amassed while traveling abroad, where ayahuasca
workshop prices are considerable, is often used to purchase an urban home or the
land and infrastructure for a local lodge. Indeed, several ayahuasqueros I have
interviewed have funded their lodges from money earned abroad, and they con-
tinue to travel when needed to bolster their funds (see also Labate, 2011).
Concern for well-being among practitioners and users of ayahuasca has recently
spurred further entrepreneurship and niche marketing. Some lodges advertise
only female shamans as a way of safeguarding against potential sexual impro-
priety (Peluso, 2014); others emphasize further details about the ayahuasqueros
they use, as well as a series of safety guidelines and more comprehensive details.
Ayahuasca seekers can also find an abundance of information via a plethora of
user-friendly websites that offer valuable information, such as AyaAdvisor.org,
Plantaforma, Steven Beyer 's SingingtothePlants.com," and other organizations
such as the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education Research & Ser-
vice (ICEERS) (see De Loencn, Pares Franquero, and Sanchez Aviles, Chapter 11
in this volume), who offer a comprehensive set of safety guidelines, as well as
general and scientific information. Following such readily available services, a
new NGO, the Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council (ESC), has also surfaced with
the self-appointed mission to "protect people who work with this medicine [aya-
huasca]" and to set up guidelines for practice so as to provide a comprehensive
certification or "ass urance" at the retreat center level, so that ayahuasca seekers
and tourists can differentiate the market (Wickerham, Percival, Flaming, & Kel-
ler, 2014, pp. 13,65). Although the organization claims to build broad consensus,
its mission is based on the needs of Western consumers; and indeed, the idea for
this organization emerged from the founders' attendance at the Psychedelic Sci-
ence 2013 conference in California. Organizations like the ESC, with the support
of its fiscal sponsor, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelics Society
(MAPS), reflect a common feature of ayahuasca cntrepreneurism and the aya-
huasca diaspora: that they seem to mostly financially benefit outsiders and target
their efforts toward the well-being of Western clientele rather than the communi-
ties from where ayahuasca practices emerge, although their discourse and market-
ing are pitched as being concerned with the well-being of these communities. An
examination of the ESC board and field-workers reflects a lack of field exper-
tise and knowledge about local ayahuasca beliefs and practices, given their large
sweeping mission. Their emergence as self-acclaimed authorities is symptomatic
of the over-optimism that sometimes accompanies a variety of entrepreneurial
forms (Dosi & Lovallo, 1997). It is not unlike the proliferation of poorly trained
ayahuasqueros and is reminiscent of the messianic qualities of novice ayahuasca
visionaries mentioned earlier. While it makes sense that the conference attendees
who inspired the ESC had concerns about ayahuasca safety, even though many
of them may not even see ayahuasca tourism as part of the problem, it was the
concerns of Western conference-goers that were expressed, not the concerns of
Amerindians. While larger eco-tourism businesses might view a certification
scheme as beneficial, and they may be well positioned to acquire and market
such a competitive advantage, the scheme would simultaneously prejudice those
214 Daniela M Peluso
smaller ventures that do not have the necessary Western-appealing infrastructure.
There are serious challenges surrounding the complexity of identifying legiti-
mate authorities, actors, voices, and criteria if an organization like the ESC were
to place their brand on the ayahuasca market. Apart from reservations relating
to viability and ethical considerations, or even the desirability, of whether devis-
ing effective measures of "transparency," "efficacy," and "safety" with regards
to participation in ayahuasca sessions is even suitable or possible, the ESC's
scheme will unwittingly draw lines across the Amazonian landscape between
those their organization would deem as legitimate actors and those they would
not." In turn, certification, as proposed by an NGO like the ESC, would offer
a discriminative marketing tool; this tool would be discriminatory by default,
as some organizations would gain a competitive edge in a world where there is
already a marked disjuncture between what transpires in the spoken, material,
and visible realities, and the unspoken, intangible, and invisible worlds." Such
entrepreneurism makes sense for Western ayahuasca tourists, and would likely
exacerbate tourism levels, but it makes little sense within the broader social,
political, and cultural contexts in which the majority of local ayahuasca practi-
tioners live and operate.
Ayahuasca entrcpreneurism needs to be analyzed as part of the colonial legacy
and postcolonial context from which it sprang forth, and within which it continues
to be shaped. Economic growth and prosperity have been uneven across all sec-
tors of society, and indigenous peoples and their lands have suffered at the behest
of a long history of extractive industries, including rubber and, more recently,
oil and gas companies. Indeed, in particular instances, entrepreneurship has been
associated with piracy because, similar to pirates, entrepreneurs may sometimes
appropriate value that they themselves have not created, thus unsettling processes
of supply and demand (Dent, 2012, p. 29). As I have discussed, entrepreneurial
efforts range from the most grassroots homestead, where profits arc more local-
ized, to larger tourist agencies and organizations that see an opportunity to find
their niche, make their mark, and make money while the profits are garnered and
stored elsewhere. As the ayahuasca ecosystem expands, ayahuasca tourists search
for this "way of life". . and are ironically creating more "ways of making a
living."
Conclusions
There is a wide range of existing and potential forms of ayahuasca-related busi-
nesses that comprise an ayahuasca entrepreneurial ecosystem and contribute
toward the making of an ayahuasca industry. This chapter has argued that such
entrepreneurship is clearly linked to ayahuasca's widespread global use, referred
to in this volume as the "ayahuasca diaspora." In my discussion ofthe emergence
ofayahuasca businesses in the Tampobata province of Madre de Dios, Peru, from
the 1980s through to the present, I address the transformations that have taken
place locally over time - mostly the emergence of international tourism, local
entrepreneurship, and the international popularity of ayahuasca, alongside local
Global ayahuasca 215
perceptions of ayahuasca use and the political changes in Peru affecting both
migration and tourism. In doing so, discussions of neo- and post-colonialism are
inevitably linked to such transformations, particularly as profits are streamlined
outside of local areas while the labor, expertise, and intellectual property of local
peoples and their lands are disadvantageously appropriated.
The ayahuasca entrepreneurial ecosystem - whose participants range from
individuals and groups, and whose enterprises range from the most rustic local
homesteads to large tourist agencies and international networks and organizations -
briskly responds to the increasing intensity of capitalist supply-and-demand
dynamics. Within such a growing ecosystem, where both access to goods and
resources and the capital to invest in them are unevenly available, local peoples
are systematically disadvantaged. It is difficult for them to competitively engage
in ways that do not compromise the integrity oftheir ayahuasca practices, whether
it be because their ayahuasqueros are with tourists or are too busy traveling, or
because there is a plethora of undertrained self-acclaimed ayahuasqueros who
are not effective healers or social mediators. As ayahuasqucros multiply as
a response to indiscriminate demand and they become more customer- and consumer-
oriented, both locally and in their travels, and as ayahuasca seekers become more
product purchase-oriented, exchange is as unequal as the "structures of economic
development that underpin the global circulation of designated 'exotic' goods"
(Huggan, 2002, p. 15). As such, the emerging forms of entrepreneurism and
cosmopolitanism of the ayahuasca industry participate in an historically ongo-
ing economic neo-colonization of South America in ways that privilege nonlo-
cal profits and benefits. Scholars note that, when nation-states are formed after
long periods of imperial dominance, such as in Latin America, they recurrently
become "managers for Western enterprise" as part of broader processes, whereby
the generation of wealth happens abroad - or as Fanon crudely states, "in practice
set[ting] up its country as the brothel of Europe" (Fanon, 1965, p. 154). With
practices such as ayahuasca, when the market becomes determined and controlled
by nonlocals, forms of the old colonialist practices emerge in these various entre-
preneurial opportunities to find a market niche and generate profits. The tensions
between "the official end of direct colonial rule and its presence and regenera-
tion through hegemonizing neo-colonialism within the First World and toward the
Third World" (Shohat, 1992, p. 107) is historically structured in these global rela-
tionships. The ayahuasca diaspora is aligned with the tendency for goods to flow
from the "south" to the "north" (or also, toward powerful nationals); and, while it
holds the promise of the great global transformations precipitated by many of its
forerunners, such as rubber or quinine, it should also be heeded that this diaspora
does not consist of similar patterns of exploitation and disruption as did some of
its predecessors. Further caution is also due to how ayahuasca entrepreneurism
may contradict some of the core values associated with ayahuasca that it seeks
attain, upho Id, and "sell."!'
The sweeping technological, transportation, and communication advances and
ensuing changes across the globe, reflecting a "time-space compression" (Harvey,
1989), have been critical to globalization processes which minimize the temporal
216 Daniela M Peluso
and spatial distances between Amazonians and other people, places, capital, prod-
ucts, processes, and ideas. Such bridging has also meant that practices such as
ayahuasca rituals become part of the flows of trade, migration, and movement of
people and ideas. Yet, alongside this intensification of social relations" and the
greater dissemination of knowledge and beliefs, particularly through increased
travel and diasporas of practices, is a greater potential for its appropriation and
exploitation- to the extent that economic dominance overtakes what would oth-
erwise be a more equally negotiated set of transformations that all culture and its
effects undergo as part of the human condition.
Whereas innovation is a 1110tor for change, it can also inspire entrepreneurs to
push too hard and too fast. Ayahuasca entrepreneurism can also encourage excess
and poor judgment, like the bundling together of a variety of Amazonian and
Andean plant rituals and uses, such as San Pedro cactus iEchinopsis pachanoiy;
datura (various Brugmansia species); kampo venom (Phyllomcdusa bieolor);
tobacco (Nicotiana) in various forms such as eaten, snuffed, ingested, and as
purges; and marketing them as part ofthis growing ayahuasca industry (see Labate,
2014). Such mix-and-match marketing is effective among the New Age groups
who have a penchant for combining traditions." Notwithstanding, entrepreneurism
is a human outlook and practice that is poised to partake in any competitive market
opportunity. As I have described here, ayahuasca ccsmo-capitalist endeavors hold
significant possibilities toward fostering increasing intcr-connectedness. but they
also have escalating tendencies toward redefining the terms of business among
an already unequal set of relations. Here, it is critical to understand that local
and global ayahuasca entrepreneurs portray their products and activities as being
"good" and intricately engaged in spiritual-seeking endeavors, which ultimately
redefine and determine the outcome of such practices in ways that, inevitably, also
reflect capitalism, globalization, and the postcolonial predicaments.
Acknowledgments
1 am grateful to all of the individuals I interviewed who live or used to live in
Puerto Maldonado and have wished to remain anonymous. I would especially like
to thank Migucl Alexiades, Bia Labate, and Didier Lacaze for their comments on
this chapter. Various grants have supported the long-term fieldwork that spans the
time frame covered by this chapter: the British Academy Small Research Grant,
the Wenner-Gren Foundation Ior Anthropological Research, Social Science
Research Council, Fulbright, and American Women in Science. I would also like
to thank La Federacion Nativa del Rio Madre de Dios y Afluentes (FENAMAD)
and the editors of this volume.
Notes
Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Kent, UK. Entail: D.Peluso@
kent.ac.uk
2 This research is based on over 25 years of ethnographic participant-observation research
in Amazonia, particularly in the Madre de Dios region of Peru and the Pando and Beni
Global ayahuasca 217
regions of Bolivia. For this study, I used targeted interviews with ayahuasqueros,
ayahuasca-relatcd entrepreneurs, and ayahuasca participants.
3 Some scholars suggest that the veneer of danger was part of a strategy to ensure com-
pensation from the European colonial powers (Mabry, 2002).
4 Peruvian cities such as Iquitos, Tarapoto, and Pucallpa are also popular ayahuasca-
seeker destination sites.
5 Tacanas are indigenous Amazonians (Takana language family). Riberenos are Ama-
zonian people of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry who are native Spanish
speakers.
6 AMETRA-Ucayali was founded in 1982 by Guillermo Arevalo, a Shipibo shaman/
ayahuasquero who hegan teaching youth in over 100 communities how to identify
plants and prepare remedies to treat common health problems, such as intestinal para-
sites, diarrhea, and dehydration. Guillerrno, his father Benito, also a shaman, and other
established shamans came to Tambopata to assist with the AMETRA2001. In an inter-
view with the Tacana ayahuasquero of Infiemo, he references an AMETRA workshop
on ayahuasca (though not by name) in Tambopata to explain how he became inspired
to use ayahuasca for healing, after having previously learned to drink ayahuasca
among Bolivian woodworkers in the 1950s for personal use only. The important role
of Didier Lacaze, as eo-founder of AMETRA 2001 and health advocate dedicated to
indigenous health issues, is often underplayed in the history of how ayahuasca spread
in the Tambopata region.
7 See Homan, Chapter 8 in this volume, for a comparative analysis regarding historical
changes in Iquitos, Peru.
8 Phannahuasca contains crystalline N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) plus harmine, as
well as comhinations of other psychoactive tryptamines with other ~-carholines (Ott,
1999).
9 See the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) web site: http.z/amazon.dead-city.org/umi
yac.html
10 See www.ecured.cu/indcx.php/Yachak
11 See, for instance, Bcycr 's risk management plan for lodges: www.singingtothcplants.
com/20 12/l0/you-cant-call-91l-in-jungle/
12 See www.ayahuasca.com/amazon/statement-critiquing -the-ethnobotanical-stewardship-
council-esc/
13 See Cater (2006) for a viewpoint on the Western construction of ecotourism and her
reflection on how certification schemes "may he used to further enfranchise the power-
ful tourism companies" (p. 26).
14 See West and Carrier (2004) for a similar discussion regarding the ecotourism milieu,
and Western projections and ideals concerning natural environments and the people
who live there, further linking such values to neoliheral institutions.
15 See Rosaldo (2002) and James (2006) for broader discussions in non-Amazonian contexts.
16 This mixing of traditions as a means to achieve market diversification may, unfortu-
nately, he associated with the increase in ayahuasca-related accidents.
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..,
 10 Global ayahuasca
An entrepreneurial ecosystem

Daniela M Peluso'

This chapter addresses the business of ayahuasca. In approaching ayahuasca as a bur-

geoning industry linked to the ayahuasca diaspora - the spreading of its use beyond
Amazonia - I will discuss its emergence through entrepreneurism arising amid local
contexts and participants. My analysis of how the ayahuasca industry has devel-
oped in only a few decades from an obscure practice into a cosmopolitan capitalist
endeavor is examined through a case study in the Tambopata Province in Peru. It also
suggests that small-scale entrepreneurism has contributed toward shaping ayahuas-
ea's international popularity. This chapter further contemplates the actual and poten-
tial impact that ayahuasca businesses have on South American indigenous and local
peoples whose expertise and practices have long been the hallmark of ayahuasca
practices, and raises questions of South American postcolonialism and its legacy of
imperialism? As such, this analysis provides an anthropological approach toward
understanding the emergence and development of entrepreneurship, and makes con-
tributions to literatures on postcolonialism, globalization, Amazonia, and ayahuasca.
Entrepreneurism, the processes of initiating and enterprising one's own busi-
ness or organization, emerges all around us, and mostly proliferates in potential
business settings that reflect untapped or high-demand markets that can accom-
modate new investments and start-up companies. The Amazon Basin is no excep-
tion to this global phenomenon. In fact, entrepreneurial businesses have long
been operating in its midst, particularly since the seventeenth century, via strong
colonial trade networks in animal skins, timber, vanilla, cacao, and later, quinine,
rubber, and other commodities that propelled personal business pursuits (Cleary,
200 I; Alexiades, 2009). A general pattern of exporting natural resources was well
established by the nineteenth century and has markedly shaped the economic and
political realties of Latin America today (Bulmer- Thomas, 2003). Many of these
entrepreneurial businesses benefitted from colonial discourses of primitivism
and wildness that still pervade popular views about Amazonia (Taussig, 1987).
Indeed, it was often traders who perpetuated myths of danger so as to keep other
entrepreneurial competition away (Taussig, 1987)3

Overview
Increasingly, the majority of people who live in Lowland South America reside
in urban areas (Alexiades & Peluso, 2015), a number estimated to be at 70%

..
204 Daniela M Peluso
(Padoch et al., 2008). Amazonia is home to several large cities, including Manaus
(a Free Trade Zone) and Belem ~ each with a population exceeding two million~
alongside others, like Iquitos and Satarem, with populations in the hundreds of
thousands. This also means that rural areas have become further linked to urban
areas (Pcluso, 2015) and also attract increasing economic interests. For instance,
in rural and peri-urban parts of Amazonia, ecotourism and other tourist-related
activities, alongside the environmental economy, have flourished in the last few
decades and are growing exponentially (Peluso & Alexiades, 2005). For example,
in 1989, $150,000,000 was spent in Manaus in hotel construction, with tourism
being the largest source of income in the state of Amazon as (Veseth, 2002).
Ayahuasca tourists increasingly visit Amazonian cities and rural areas. Such
tourism is part of adventure and/or international tourism, whereby individuals
and groups travel for the opportunity to take the brewed mixture of Banisteriopsis
caapi and Psychotria or various other admixtures. Ayahuasca holds great fascina-
tion for travclcrs, particularly because of its potential for providing hallucinatory
visions that can be used to diagnose and heal illness, as well as to provide psycho-
therapeutic benefits (Trichter, 2010), alongside its association with romanticized
and exoticized images of Arnazonia in the popular imagination (Ramos, 1987;
Conklin, 1997). Ayahuasca rituals, whereby ayahuasca is administered by an aya-
huasquero (individuals who use ayahuasca, including some shamans), have long
been practiced locally in Amazonia and its surrounding Andean environments
by indigenous people and mestizos (Dobkin de Rios, 1970; Taussig, 1987; Gow,
1994; Beyer, 2010; Luna, 2011; Calavia Saez, 2014); and, since the 1930s, these
rituals have also been integrated into popular expanding religious forms through
Santo Daimc, Barquinha, and the Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) in Brazil (Labate,
Macrae, & Goulart, 2010).
With the advent of ayahuasqueros traveling abroad and the export of ayahuasca
itself, ayahuasca tourism has assumed international proportions, and ayahuasca
seekers and tourists are no longer restricted to drinking this hallucinogenic bever-
age in situ. The possibilities for participating in ayahuasea ceremonies or con-
suming it individually have been mounting (Labate & Cavnar, 2014). Now more
readily available outside of local or regional Amazonian settings, ayahuasca
experience-seeking is a global trend (Alexiades, 2002; Winkelman, 2005; Tupper,
2008; 2009; Labate, Cavnar, & Barbira Friedman, 2014). As such, ayahuasca is
now replicated or integrated into new forms of practice in places like Australia
(Gearin, Chapter 6 in this volume), Canada (Tupper, 2011), the United States
(Trichter, 2010; Harris & Gurel, 2012), the Netherlands (Groisman, 2001), Spain,
Germany (Balzer, 2005), as well as countries in Africa (Greenfield & Droogers,
2001; Sobiccki, 2013), Asia, and elsewhere (Labate & Jungaberlc, 2011).
Overall, in the last decade, ayahuasca ceremonies and retreats have been offered
frequently enough for the opportunity to be considered commonplace (Davidov,
20 10; Fotiou, 20 I 0). I suggest that until recently, ayahuasca, as a potential indus-
try, has mostly remained untapped because of its spiritual and religious uses that
may be seen as antithetical to modernity, alongside its variable legal status. Its
temporary haven as an unexploited market is also linked to a general interpretation
Global ayahuasca 205
of the ayahuasca experience as being sacred and therefore outside of the realm of
capitalism. For instance, its existence as a practice is often negated as having any-
thing to do with money (Peluso, forthcoming). Prior to the international focus on
rainforests and the creation of national parks and reserves, tourism to Amazonia
was steady and in some cases lagging. For some time, ayahuasca had been rather
protected from an onslaught of attention and the unleashing of its own marketing
potential. However, for the last two decades, the emerging position of the aya-
huasca experience as a potential income source, both locally and internationally,
can no longer be ignored. Ayahuasca tourism has ignited the potential economic
business lure ablaze with local, national, and international interests in ayahuasca
as part of broader sets of globalization processes.
Ayahuasca economies
I would like to first distinguish between ayahuasca as part of a local economy and
ayahuasca as a form of entrepreneurism. Economically, shamans and ayahuasqueros
have long been participating in various forms of exchange that have generally com-
pensated them for their time, skills, and talents. They have tended to peoples out-
side of their communities, cities, and countries. Indeed, shamans from "afar" are
often perceived as being more powerful, and therefore people tend to travel great
distances to cure more serious illnesses or social problems (Taussig, 1987). As
healers and sorcerers, ayahuasqueros have always been integral to their local and
regional economies, yet systems of reciprocity and tendencies toward egalitarian-
ism, whereby peoples' livelihoods may be different but their lifestyles are not, have
meant that their status did not indicate economic stratification (Clastres, 1987).
In this chapter, "ayahuasca entrepreneurism" refers to a set of responses to the
dynamics of increased ayahuasca tourism and the marketing strategies used to
attract such tourism. This phenomenon has resulted in the proliferation of sha-
mans, ayahuasqueros, tourist lodges, and agencies that provide the ayahuasca
experience alongside a plethora of other secondary businesses that participate in
this rise in popularity and demand. Here, entrepreneurism reflects smaller-scale
activities than those normally associated with high-profile entrepreneurism (e.g.,
the creation of Apple, Inc.), thus incorporating micro-businesses and enterprises.
In taking heed to Keith Hart's (1975) call that the use of "entrepreneur" be refined,
here I refer to entrepreneurs as leaders who exercise particular "aspects" of their
roles (Barth, 1963, p. 6), whereby they assume risk and implement initiative,
anticipating and taking advantage of market opportunities as they arise, and often
"manipulate other persons and resources" to meet their ends. In referring to the
entrepreneurial role, I highlight the opportunistic features of that push toward
profit rnaximization, whereby profit can also include enterprises listed as non-
profit organizations, such as various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
eco-ventures, and charitable institutions. I also emphasize how cntreprcneurism
is a cultural process (Greenfield & Strickon, 1981) that reflects consumer target-
ing and desires, and the social and political milieus and principles to which these
businesses abide and in which they operate.
206 Daniela M Peluso
It is useful here to explore ayahuasca as being part of an "entrepreneurship eco-
system," a term that I borrow from Isenberg (20 10) and modify to reflect an anthro-
pological approach to the ayahuasca industry. for Iscnberg, an entrepreneurship
ecosystem consists of the complex combination of "individual elements - such
as leadership, culture, capital markets, and open minded customer.... In isola-
tion each is conducive to entrepreneurship but insufficient to sustain it" (Isen-
berg, 2010, p. 3). I view such elements as already being informed by and shaping
one another so as to reflect the fluidity, mixture, and unboundedness of culture.
An ayahuasca entrepreneurial ecosystem would need to include indigenous and
nonindigenous individuals, groups, and organizations, and the nations/states in
which they reside, and be a crucial mechanism for the ayahuasca diaspora. These
entities, or "stakeholders," can be favorable or inhibitive for entrepreneurs hips to
prosper.
There is a scant, yet growing, literature on the anthropology of entrepreneur-
ship (Stewart, 1991). Historically and currently, much entrepreneurism is studied
within the context of large-scale organizations (Casson, 1986; Oviatt, McDou-
gall, & Loper, 1995). Yet, more recently, it has been located in the individuals
who craft local forms of livelihood amid processes of global capitalism (Dolan &
Johnstone-Louis, 2011; Sanchez, 2012; Meisch, 2013). It is in this latter vein that
I explore the unfolding entrepreneurism surrounding ayahuasca. Here, I suggest
that ayahuasca tourism and ceremonies have generated a series of profit-based
opportunistic small businesses that, as a whole, link into the larger, broader indus-
tries, such as adventure travel (Palmer, 2002), international tourism (Becker,
2013), and the New Age movement (Davies & Freathy, 2014). To illustrate how
sueh small-scale entrepreneurism emerges and expands, I elaborate by focusing
on the Tambopata Province of Madre de Dios, Peru - one of many regions that
attract ayahuasca tourists - and then broaden the analysis to include the interna-
tional market for ayahuasca."
Amazonian and international frontiers
The Tarnbopata Province is the largest of three provinces in the department of
Madre de Dios. Its economy is based on the extraction of raw materials, including
gold mining and timber, as well as forest products, such as Brazil nuts. Tambopata
is designated as a biodiversity "hot spot," comprised of the Tambopata National
Reserve and the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park. These form part of a "mega-
corridor" aimed to tie together Bolivian and Peruvian protected areas (Bennett &
Ader, 2004). Thus, ecotourism is a major growing industry in the province. In
2005, in the Tambopata Province, ecotourist lodges brought in U.S. $6 million
out ofU.S. $11.6 million spent on Peruvian rainforest ecotonrism, of which U.S.
$3.8 million were local revenues, i.e., funds transacted in Tambopata (Kirkby
et aI., 2011). Ayahuasca, once a decidedly local practice, has exploded alongside
this environmental economy sector.
Only 30 years ago, the ayahuasca usage landscape was starkly different. In
the 1980s, the information for non locals who were interested in experiencing
Global ayahuasca 207
ayahuasca was scarce, and very few people were openly known as ayahuasqueros.
In i983, a nonlocal European man who lived in Puerto Maldonado, the capital of
Madre de Dios, was one of the first nonloca1s to be interested in taking ayahuasca,
He explained how it was not a straightforward process in those days to encounter
people willing to talk about ayahuasca. After trying to determine who knew how
to prepare and drink the brew and whom he could approach, he was eventually
directed to two men, a Tacana and a ribereho, both living in the Ese Eja native
community of Infierno.' When he first went to the community to search for either
of these men, he met an Ese Eja man who was serendipitously approaching the
ribereno ayahuasqueros to drink for the very first time, an experience they shared
together. Although the eco-Iodges in Tambopata now boast that ayahuasca is an
ancient Ese Eja tradition, Ese Eja, like many other indigenous groups, recently
learned to drink ayahuasca from nonindigenous others (Alexiades, 2000).
In the 1980s, there were also several mestizos and one well-known Shipibo
ayahuasquero, now deceased, with the characteristic frontal-occipital skull defor-
mation of Shipibo-Konibo peoples who also practiced in Puerto Maldonado.
When I interviewed his daughter-in-law, she explained that "gringos" never came
to see him, yet patients arrived from elsewhere. Surely there were numerous other
ayahuasqueros that were unknown to outsiders, and certainly in some of the indig-
enous communities such as Tres Islas, where the practice continued among Ship-
ibo, with one younger ayahuasquero who continues to drink to date. Yet, there was
generally much silence around ayahuasca's use, and it certainly would have been
challenging for travelers to come across ayahuasqueros.
The silence and secrecy that once effusively surrounded ayahuasca practices
is understandable considering that municipal officials, the Catholic Church, and
evangelical groups have systematically condemncd the practice of ayahuasca
drinking (Dobkin de Rios & Grob, 2005; Tupper, 2008). Such demonization of
the practice certainly continues to inform attitudes of rural and townsfolk toward
both ayahuasca and its participants. The crucial step in normalizing ayahuasca in
the Madre de Dios region was the emergence of AMETRA 2001 (Aplicaci6n de
Medicina Tradicional), an indigenous health project aimed at integrating local
health beliefs and practices with basic aspects ofprimary healthcare (Cueva, 1990,
Alexiades & Lacaze, 1996).6Although drinking ayahuasca was not a specific aim
of the program, the program did aim to support and revitalize shamanism. The
project was mode led after AMETRA-Ucayali and counted on the participation
of Shipibo shamans, whose presence gave prominence to the use of ayahuasca in
shamanic practices and resulted in the training of shamans as ayahuasqueros. By
1986, the project had spread throughout Madre de Dios, and it cast ayahuasca,
alongside other indigenous treatments for health and illness, in a positive and
popular light. It is in the AMETRA era that various indigenous individuals who
did not customarily drink ayahuasca began to do so with more frequency. During
my own fieldwork visits, I witnessed the training of Shipibo, Ese Eja, Hauchi-
pacre, and Amahuaca individuals as ayahuasqueros, as well as others. Ayahuasca
practices were focused on community health and healing, but with the eventual
changes that were to come, a few individuals began to drink with tourists; and one
208 Daniela M Peluso
of these ayahuasqueros began holding ayahuasca ceremonies in Cusco, a prime
South American tourist destination.
Nationally, tourism began to surge after the election of Alberto Fujimori as
President of Peru in 1990, the subsequent renegotiation of foreign debt, and the
defeat of Sendero Luminoso and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru
(MRTA) activities. J These actions encouraged international investment as the
country invested in their transportation infrastructure, thrusting Peru toward a
tourist boom (Desforges, 2000) that has not stopped since. Tourism to the Tam-
bopata district benefitted from these changes particularly, as international interest
in the rainforest movement also gained momentum, and international conservation
organizations became more active in South America. Furthermore, the 1990s was
a catapult decade for technological and communications innovations that served
to bridge the temporal and spatial distances between places as geographically
remote as Tambopata and the rest of the world, a transformation referred to as a
"time-space compression" (Harvey, 1989), and critical to globalization processes.
Further, gradual changes in attitudes toward ayahuasca in the 1990s emerged
from two principal directions: the flourishing tourism lodges ("eco" or otherwise)
that began to prosper: and the small but influential migration to Puerto Maldonado
of individuals and their families, which was unassociated with previous migra-
tions related to the "gold rush" (mining) or poverty alleviation strategies. Such a
migration was in distinct juxtaposition to Andean migrants who began to arrive
to Tambopata in the late 1960s, and increasingly in the 1980s, mostly due to state
incentives, population pressures, landlessness, poverty, or to economic booms,
such as the "gold rush" or lax regulations on timber extraction (Serra- Vega, 1990;
Fraser, 2009). This small but different wave of migrants opened small businesses
and embraced the benefits of living in an Amazonian town. They also tended to
show interest in rainforest conservation and the struggles of indigenous peoples.
The setting in the 1980s - when there were only two lodges and no other tour-
istic operations apart from a few free lance guides who only sporadically obtained
work by standing at the small airport whenever a flight arrived - has changed
significantly. In fact, the airport, formerly a one-room tin-roofed structure, was
replaced by a more seemingly modern structure. By 2008, there were 37 eco-
tourism lodges (Kirkby et al., 20 11); and since then, at least a dozen more have
opened, as Peruvian legislation increasingly grants private concessions for con-
servation or ecotourism ventures. As nonlocal individuals increasingly traveled
to the Amazon in search of ayahuasqueros, the lodges began to offer an option to
drink ayahuasca with their own ayahuasquero, someone they kept in-house or at
hand, or by transporting guests to the ayahuasquero's home or center.
The increase in tourism, lodges, and the influx of people has had a significant
impact on how the ayahuasca experience is perceived locally. Although conserva-
tive Christian beliefs against the ritual still prevail, seeing it as the work of the
devil, their influence has lost its grip against the encroachment of other views. The
fact that national visitors and international tourists were seeking out ayahuasca
prompted local peoples and businesses to perceive it as something valuable.
Consequently, ayahuasca began to be viewed as a potentially lucrative source of
Globalayahuasca 209
income whose demand by outsiders helped to validate its legitimacy. This meant
that more people wanted to become openly associated with ayahuasca, including
many who had no prior interest or knowledge about it, and this also served as a
catalyst for the current proliferation of ayahuasqueros and their apprentices.
The entrepreneurial drive
Accordingly, ayahuasca became much more accessible, less secretive, and more
readily available via individuals and lodges. Whereas it was once lone travelers
who made their way to seek an ayahuasquero, burgeoning tour guides and tourist
lodges soon began to bring tourists together with ayahuasqueros. In such sce-
narios, there is a wide array of participants who may potentially come together for
the ayahuasca experience, and with ever-increasing chances that they are inexpe-
rienced. In both urban and rural areas, individual homes and lodges began to make
themselves available as part of an ayahuasca ecosystem, offering their spaces and
attempting to gather together basic levels of expertise. Such accommodations
range from small and basic to large and luxurious; they can be individually or
family owned, partly owned by an indigenous or riberefio community or owned
by a larger consortium of partners. They can thus cater to backpackers, affluent
visitors, and anyone in between.
Locally, the critical nucleus for an ayahuasca ceremony had usually been the
patient and the healer. This could also include assistants and family and commu-
nity members. In such a setting, there is little that resembles a formal business,
apart from the fact that services are rendered and some form of compensation,
usually voluntary, eventually follows. Yet in the specialized centers, one sees the
full gamut of ayahuasca entrepreneurship and, in the larger lodges, one is struck
by the way that the ayahuasca experience is offered to tourists as readily as a bird-
watching activity or hiking event, mostly through a language that exoticizes its
features, e.g., "ancient," "tradition," "magical," etc. (Labate, 2011). By the 1990s,
some ayahuasqueros began to seize the opportunities that adventure tourism pre-
sented by starting to operate lodges or healing centers on their lands, or purchas-
ing or renting lands for such purposes. In the case of the Tacana ayahuasquero
mentioned earl ier, he reorganized his homestead to make space for sleepover
guests and put up a large wooden plaque upon which he painted his name. He also
sporadically asked his son to help with transportation, but for the most part, at the
age of84, he still runs a solo business. Most other ventures are often family-based
but also employ workers such as cooks and cleaners. Having a lodge or center also
broadens the extended involvement of tour agencies, tour guides, additional tour-
ist attraction activities and sites, botanical and artisanal producers and markets,
boat and taxi drivers, and social media and business Internet sites. I would classify
this type of interest and expansion as small-scaled entrepreneurism, wherein the
growth ofthe business comes from an existing livelihood.
The eco-Iodges in the Tambopata area represent much larger-scale entrepre-
neurism than the ventures I have just described. Lodges openly advertise ayahuasca
ceremonies as one of many possible activities that their guests may participate in.
210 Daniela M Pelm'o
Some lodges have been exclusively set up with ayahuasca retreats in mind (Fotiou,
2010). Furthermore, these lodges have a strong presence on the Internet via their
own websites or other websites that cater to tourism. Often, visits to these lodges
are also part of larger tourist industry packages (Kirkby et al., 2011), and at least
three of these lodges own or have commercial ties to tourist agencies in Cusco or
Lima. Further, income can also be garnered from government conservation con-
cessions and grants (Kirkby et al., 2011) and from certification accreditation for
behaving as model eeo-tourist businesses (Cater, 2006; Jamal, Barges, & Stronza,
2006). These larger operations employ a retinue of managers, guides, boat drivers,
bus drivers, airport greeters, cooks, cleaners, and several others.
The lodges and centers specifically set up to capitalize on the ayahuasca boom
are strongly linked to the New Age movement, either through their ownership
or their clientele. In the last two decades, Peruvian nationals and non-Peruvian
entrepreneurs, not local to Madre de Dios, founded a majority of these lodges;
they often incorporate a local partner, though more usually, a caretaker. This trend
is also common in other parts of Peru (Fotiou, 20 I0; Holman, 2011; Labate, 2011)
and reflects the ability of nonlocals or foreigners to better access cash, and there-
fore to seize such entrepreneurial opportunities. A frequent origin narrative among
a subset of more recent newer lodges is that the owners were greatly enthused
by ayahuasea visions and were thus inspired to permanently move to the place
where they had their ayahuasca "awakening" (Doyle, 2006, p. 14), an experi-
ence in which one experiences their own "divinity" (p. 13) and that stirs one to
dedicate his or her life to a greater spiritual quest. I have commonly witnessed
ayahuasca tourists return to Tambopata with mcssianic zeal, believing that they
were "chosen" to save the world, which is not necessarily negative as long as it is
rooted in an understanding of local reality and is not detrimental to others. In one
case, a woman sold her home, gave up her career as a professional musician, and
arrived ready to open a lodge. By the time she got a clear sense of how everything
worked, all of her money was gone. Cases of post-ayahuasca-session-euphoria
have been amply documented both historically (Gearin, 2015) and contemporar-
ily; a memorable example is the case of an Englishman who returned to Peru to
follow his ayahuasca vision using his substantial cash savings to build a seven-
story floating wooden pyramid hotel/cultural center, only to watch it disintegrate
into driftwood (Mann, 20 11). Yet several lodges designed as ayahuasca centers,
having a separate maloca (ritual house) for the ceremony, arc successful, espe-
cially when they take time to allow their businesses to develop and thus attain a
better sense of local culture and how things are best situated. These lodges will
seek their own shaman, and the owners themselves are often interested in becom-
ing neoshamans: nonlocal ayahuasqueros. It is common for them to apprentice
with the ayahuasquero in residence.
Ayahuasca lodges and ceremonies are also advertising in New Age periodicals
and wcbsitcs, as well as in blogs and social media. On many of these websites,
individuals share their spiritual awakenings and indirectly entice others to follow
suit. In order to sell rooms and tour packages, lodges are registering with service
wcbsitcs such as Trip Advisor and Booking.corn, where consumers can, in turn,
Global ayahuasca 211
give feedback. Other websitcs, such as AyaAdvisor (http://ayaadvisor.org), cater
specifically to ayahuasca tourist interests so that travclcrs can post reviews based
on various aspects of their ayahuasca experiences.
International ayahuasca tourists began to organize ayahuasca sessions in their
home countries, flying in their shamans and hosting workshops. At these work-
shops, attendees pay per person and the funds are divided differentially to cover
the ayahuasquero's travel and associated expenses, yet also allow him or her to
return with a stipend that usually ranges in the thousands, ifnot tens of thousands,
of dollars. In the latter cases, particularly in places like California, arrangements
are made for ayahuasqucros to hold rituals with celebrities who demonstrate their
appreciation monetarily (Lab ate, 2011). In addition, the host's costs are usually
also covered. This, too, ranges differentially; whereas some hosts are only cov-
ered for the expense of hosting such an event, others derive a percentage for their
efforts. Such entrepreneurial efforts serve to create an international market for
both ayahuasca and ayahuasqueros.
In Tambopata, the ayahuasca entrepreneurial ecosystem has had various nega-
tive impacts on local populations who have long depended upon ayahuasqueros
for purposes of health. These changes are part of a comparatively pan-Amazonian
response to international ayahuasca tourism, and the resultant processes of corn-
modification and appropriation of their practices, that entails local peoples' inac-
cessibility to ayahuasqueros due to tourist obligations, the legitimacy of practices,
the sanitization of rituals for Western purposes, and a host of health and safety
issues affecting both locals and tourists (Hutchins, 2000; Labate & Cavnar, 2004;
Peluso, 2006; Tupper, 2009; Davidov, 2010; Holman, 2010; Labate, 2011; Homan,
Chapter 8 in this volume; Tupper, Chapter 9 in this volume.). These impacts further
exacerbate economic differences in local populatio ns, and also vis-it-vis nonlocal
participation in the commodification of cultural practices, a point I will return to.
If one considers that ayahuasqueros now also travel abroad, and that Western-
ers have also become ayahuasqueros and thus have their own tour and retreat
schedules, then the level of participation expands yet further, as such activities are
welcomed and endorsed by adventure travel and the New Age movement. Such
New Age interests endorse a variety of shamanic retreats and training workshops,
courses, and centers. Furthermore, the growing international popularity of Brazil-
ian religions that use ayahuasca as a sacrament need to also be taken into account
when considering the spread of ayahuasca's popularity. Add to this the sales, both
on- and off-line, of the ingredients for brewing ayahuasca, and an array of other
products and paraphernalia - such as raw tobacco rolls (mapacho), agua de flor-
ida, music CDs of ayahuasquero chants ticarosi, textiles (such as Shipibo cloths,
noted as reflecting the geometric patterns common in ayahuasca visions), jew-
elry, drawings and paintings - and there is further incentive to promote, produce,
and reproduce ayahuasca practices. If one searches for ayahuasca ingredients and
paraphernalia: on the Internet, the pages go on and on.
Another entrepreneurial design has been the development and the sale of phar-
mahuasca" or its equivalent, a synthesized form of ayahuasca (Ott, 2011; Araujo
et al., 2015) with a strong underground market that services various ayahuasca
212 Daniela M Peluso
sects who prefer to ingest ayahuasca this way (Anonymous, personal communi-
cation). In addition, there is an arena of legal specialists who endeavor to protect
ayahuasca's usage, the academics who write about ayahuasca, and the NGOs that
support its use and practices - thus, there is a significant assemblage of liveli-
hoods that come together to form this industry, ranging from a small household or
community in Amazonia to financiers on Wall Street or celebrities in Ibiza.
It is therefore not only ayahuasca's spiritual status but also entrepreneurial
efforts that have assisted in the ayahuasca experience emerging amidst a globalized
sct of activities. This flourishing has also inspired local NGOs that are concerned
about the rapid proliferation of ayahuasqueros, many of whom are considered to
be untrained. As an ayahuasquero in Tambopata explained, he is also disturbed by
neoshamanism and the fact that many of the nonlocal peoples who are taught for
short periods oftime consider themselves to be bona fide ayahuasqueros. Further-
more, some local ayahuasqueros resent that Westerners come to apprentice them
and then return to their own countries to earn money from their craft (Razam,
2014); this may also destabilize the local ayahuasquerc's importance in the inter-
national ayahuasca network. Yet, established ayahuasqueros are just as concerned
by the proliferation of indigenous ayahuasqueros as they are offoreign ones. Their
concern is with anyone who is inexperienced and insufficiently trained, as they
view this as impacting the quality of both the ayahuasca and the healing practices,
and thus the reputation of their profession. In the case of Colombia, as a result of
the gathering in 1999 of the most esteemed yageceros (ayahuasquero shamans)
and community representatives, a declaration, code of ethics, and alliance among
them was founded: the Union de Medicos lndigenas Yageceros de la Amazonia
Colombiana (UMIYAC) (the Union ofIndigenous Yage Healers of the Colombian
Amazon), an alliance among Ingano, Kofan, Siona, Karnsa, Coreguaje, Tatuyo,
and Carijona.? Similar alliances, such as the Consejo de Yachak Runa Amazonico
del Ecuador (Yachak Runa Amazonian Council of Ecuador) are aimed to preserve
cultural and professional integrity. III
Ayahuasca cosmopolitanism
Ayahuasca tourism and its diaspora has also fostered a strong embracement of
cosmopolitan ism - a shared moral and philosophical commitment to "the pri-
macy of world citizenship over all national, religious, cultural, ethnic and other
parochial affiliations" (Beck & Sznaidcr, 2010, p. 6) - creating a sense for aya-
huasca tourists that they are all part of a singular utopian community. In many
cases, this creates blindness on the part of ayahuasca seekers toward the social
and economic differences between Amazonians and non-Amazonians. The rising
cosmopolitanism of ayahuasqueros has much to do with the capitalistic entrepre-
neurial ecosystem in which all participants partake and its focus is on urbanism.
When ayahuasqueros first began to travel, their consumption of novelties was at
first experimental; yet eventually, a political positioning was dynamically asserted
through consumption and capital investment amid families, communities, and cit-
ies that embraces cosmopolitanism - indigenous, riberefio, mestizo, or otherwise.
Global ayahuasca 213
The income and travel perks amassed while traveling abroad, where ayahuasca
workshop prices are considerable, is often used to purchase an urban home or the
land and infrastructure for a local lodge. Indeed, several ayahuasqueros I have
interviewed have funded their lodges from money earned abroad, and they con-
tinue to travel when needed to bolster their funds (see also Labate, 2011).
Concern for well-being among practitioners and users of ayahuasca has recently
spurred further entrepreneurship and niche marketing. Some lodges advertise
only female shamans as a way of safeguarding against potential sexual impro-
priety (Peluso, 2014); others emphasize further details about the ayahuasqueros
they use, as well as a series of safety guidelines and more comprehensive details.
Ayahuasca seekers can also find an abundance of information via a plethora of
user-friendly websites that offer valuable information, such as AyaAdvisor.org,
Plantaforma, Steven Beyer 's SingingtothePlants.com," and other organizations
such as the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education Research & Ser-
vice (ICEERS) (see De Loencn, Pares Franquero, and Sanchez Aviles, Chapter 11
in this volume), who offer a comprehensive set of safety guidelines, as well as
general and scientific information. Following such readily available services, a
new NGO, the Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council (ESC), has also surfaced with
the self-appointed mission to "protect people who work with this medicine [aya-
huasca]" and to set up guidelines for practice so as to provide a comprehensive
certification or "ass urance" at the retreat center level, so that ayahuasca seekers
and tourists can differentiate the market (Wickerham, Percival, Flaming, & Kel-
ler, 2014, pp. 13,65). Although the organization claims to build broad consensus,
its mission is based on the needs of Western consumers; and indeed, the idea for
this organization emerged from the founders' attendance at the Psychedelic Sci-
ence 2013 conference in California. Organizations like the ESC, with the support
of its fiscal sponsor, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelics Society
(MAPS), reflect a common feature of ayahuasca cntrepreneurism and the aya-
huasca diaspora: that they seem to mostly financially benefit outsiders and target
their efforts toward the well-being of Western clientele rather than the communi-
ties from where ayahuasca practices emerge, although their discourse and market-
ing are pitched as being concerned with the well-being of these communities. An
examination of the ESC board and field-workers reflects a lack of field exper-
tise and knowledge about local ayahuasca beliefs and practices, given their large
sweeping mission. Their emergence as self-acclaimed authorities is symptomatic
of the over-optimism that sometimes accompanies a variety of entrepreneurial
forms (Dosi & Lovallo, 1997). It is not unlike the proliferation of poorly trained
ayahuasqueros and is reminiscent of the messianic qualities of novice ayahuasca
visionaries mentioned earlier. While it makes sense that the conference attendees
who inspired the ESC had concerns about ayahuasca safety, even though many
of them may not even see ayahuasca tourism as part of the problem, it was the
concerns of Western conference-goers that were expressed, not the concerns of
Amerindians. While larger eco-tourism businesses might view a certification
scheme as beneficial, and they may be well positioned to acquire and market
such a competitive advantage, the scheme would simultaneously prejudice those
214 Daniela M Peluso
smaller ventures that do not have the necessary Western-appealing infrastructure.
There are serious challenges surrounding the complexity of identifying legiti-
mate authorities, actors, voices, and criteria if an organization like the ESC were
to place their brand on the ayahuasca market. Apart from reservations relating
to viability and ethical considerations, or even the desirability, of whether devis-
ing effective measures of "transparency," "efficacy," and "safety" with regards
to participation in ayahuasca sessions is even suitable or possible, the ESC's
scheme will unwittingly draw lines across the Amazonian landscape between
those their organization would deem as legitimate actors and those they would
not." In turn, certification, as proposed by an NGO like the ESC, would offer
a discriminative marketing tool; this tool would be discriminatory by default,
as some organizations would gain a competitive edge in a world where there is
already a marked disjuncture between what transpires in the spoken, material,
and visible realities, and the unspoken, intangible, and invisible worlds." Such
entrepreneurism makes sense for Western ayahuasca tourists, and would likely
exacerbate tourism levels, but it makes little sense within the broader social,
political, and cultural contexts in which the majority of local ayahuasca practi-
tioners live and operate.
Ayahuasca entrcpreneurism needs to be analyzed as part of the colonial legacy
and postcolonial context from which it sprang forth, and within which it continues
to be shaped. Economic growth and prosperity have been uneven across all sec-
tors of society, and indigenous peoples and their lands have suffered at the behest
of a long history of extractive industries, including rubber and, more recently,
oil and gas companies. Indeed, in particular instances, entrepreneurship has been
associated with piracy because, similar to pirates, entrepreneurs may sometimes
appropriate value that they themselves have not created, thus unsettling processes
of supply and demand (Dent, 2012, p. 29). As I have discussed, entrepreneurial
efforts range from the most grassroots homestead, where profits arc more local-
ized, to larger tourist agencies and organizations that see an opportunity to find
their niche, make their mark, and make money while the profits are garnered and
stored elsewhere. As the ayahuasca ecosystem expands, ayahuasca tourists search
for this "way of life". . and are ironically creating more "ways of making a
living."
Conclusions
There is a wide range of existing and potential forms of ayahuasca-related busi-
nesses that comprise an ayahuasca entrepreneurial ecosystem and contribute
toward the making of an ayahuasca industry. This chapter has argued that such
entrepreneurship is clearly linked to ayahuasca's widespread global use, referred
to in this volume as the "ayahuasca diaspora." In my discussion ofthe emergence
ofayahuasca businesses in the Tampobata province of Madre de Dios, Peru, from
the 1980s through to the present, I address the transformations that have taken
place locally over time - mostly the emergence of international tourism, local
entrepreneurship, and the international popularity of ayahuasca, alongside local
Global ayahuasca 215
perceptions of ayahuasca use and the political changes in Peru affecting both
migration and tourism. In doing so, discussions of neo- and post-colonialism are
inevitably linked to such transformations, particularly as profits are streamlined
outside of local areas while the labor, expertise, and intellectual property of local
peoples and their lands are disadvantageously appropriated.
The ayahuasca entrepreneurial ecosystem - whose participants range from
individuals and groups, and whose enterprises range from the most rustic local
homesteads to large tourist agencies and international networks and organizations -
briskly responds to the increasing intensity of capitalist supply-and-demand
dynamics. Within such a growing ecosystem, where both access to goods and
resources and the capital to invest in them are unevenly available, local peoples
are systematically disadvantaged. It is difficult for them to competitively engage
in ways that do not compromise the integrity oftheir ayahuasca practices, whether
it be because their ayahuasqueros are with tourists or are too busy traveling, or
because there is a plethora of undertrained self-acclaimed ayahuasqueros who
are not effective healers or social mediators. As ayahuasqucros multiply as
a response to indiscriminate demand and they become more customer- and consumer-
oriented, both locally and in their travels, and as ayahuasca seekers become more
product purchase-oriented, exchange is as unequal as the "structures of economic
development that underpin the global circulation of designated 'exotic' goods"
(Huggan, 2002, p. 15). As such, the emerging forms of entrepreneurism and
cosmopolitanism of the ayahuasca industry participate in an historically ongo-
ing economic neo-colonization of South America in ways that privilege nonlo-
cal profits and benefits. Scholars note that, when nation-states are formed after
long periods of imperial dominance, such as in Latin America, they recurrently
become "managers for Western enterprise" as part of broader processes, whereby
the generation of wealth happens abroad - or as Fanon crudely states, "in practice
set[ting] up its country as the brothel of Europe" (Fanon, 1965, p. 154). With
practices such as ayahuasca, when the market becomes determined and controlled
by nonlocals, forms of the old colonialist practices emerge in these various entre-
preneurial opportunities to find a market niche and generate profits. The tensions
between "the official end of direct colonial rule and its presence and regenera-
tion through hegemonizing neo-colonialism within the First World and toward the
Third World" (Shohat, 1992, p. 107) is historically structured in these global rela-
tionships. The ayahuasca diaspora is aligned with the tendency for goods to flow
from the "south" to the "north" (or also, toward powerful nationals); and, while it
holds the promise of the great global transformations precipitated by many of its
forerunners, such as rubber or quinine, it should also be heeded that this diaspora
does not consist of similar patterns of exploitation and disruption as did some of
its predecessors. Further caution is also due to how ayahuasca entrepreneurism
may contradict some of the core values associated with ayahuasca that it seeks
attain, upho Id, and "sell."!'
The sweeping technological, transportation, and communication advances and
ensuing changes across the globe, reflecting a "time-space compression" (Harvey,
1989), have been critical to globalization processes which minimize the temporal
216 Daniela M Peluso
and spatial distances between Amazonians and other people, places, capital, prod-
ucts, processes, and ideas. Such bridging has also meant that practices such as
ayahuasca rituals become part of the flows of trade, migration, and movement of
people and ideas. Yet, alongside this intensification of social relations" and the
greater dissemination of knowledge and beliefs, particularly through increased
travel and diasporas of practices, is a greater potential for its appropriation and
exploitation- to the extent that economic dominance overtakes what would oth-
erwise be a more equally negotiated set of transformations that all culture and its
effects undergo as part of the human condition.
Whereas innovation is a 1110tor for change, it can also inspire entrepreneurs to
push too hard and too fast. Ayahuasca entrepreneurism can also encourage excess
and poor judgment, like the bundling together of a variety of Amazonian and
Andean plant rituals and uses, such as San Pedro cactus iEchinopsis pachanoiy;
datura (various Brugmansia species); kampo venom (Phyllomcdusa bieolor);
tobacco (Nicotiana) in various forms such as eaten, snuffed, ingested, and as
purges; and marketing them as part ofthis growing ayahuasca industry (see Labate,
2014). Such mix-and-match marketing is effective among the New Age groups
who have a penchant for combining traditions." Notwithstanding, entrepreneurism
is a human outlook and practice that is poised to partake in any competitive market
opportunity. As I have described here, ayahuasca ccsmo-capitalist endeavors hold
significant possibilities toward fostering increasing intcr-connectedness. but they
also have escalating tendencies toward redefining the terms of business among
an already unequal set of relations. Here, it is critical to understand that local
and global ayahuasca entrepreneurs portray their products and activities as being
"good" and intricately engaged in spiritual-seeking endeavors, which ultimately
redefine and determine the outcome of such practices in ways that, inevitably, also
reflect capitalism, globalization, and the postcolonial predicaments.
Acknowledgments
1 am grateful to all of the individuals I interviewed who live or used to live in
Puerto Maldonado and have wished to remain anonymous. I would especially like
to thank Migucl Alexiades, Bia Labate, and Didier Lacaze for their comments on
this chapter. Various grants have supported the long-term fieldwork that spans the
time frame covered by this chapter: the British Academy Small Research Grant,
the Wenner-Gren Foundation Ior Anthropological Research, Social Science
Research Council, Fulbright, and American Women in Science. I would also like
to thank La Federacion Nativa del Rio Madre de Dios y Afluentes (FENAMAD)
and the editors of this volume.
Notes
Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Kent, UK. Entail: D.Peluso@
kent.ac.uk
2 This research is based on over 25 years of ethnographic participant-observation research
in Amazonia, particularly in the Madre de Dios region of Peru and the Pando and Beni
Global ayahuasca 217
regions of Bolivia. For this study, I used targeted interviews with ayahuasqueros,
ayahuasca-relatcd entrepreneurs, and ayahuasca participants.
3 Some scholars suggest that the veneer of danger was part of a strategy to ensure com-
pensation from the European colonial powers (Mabry, 2002).
4 Peruvian cities such as Iquitos, Tarapoto, and Pucallpa are also popular ayahuasca-
seeker destination sites.
5 Tacanas are indigenous Amazonians (Takana language family). Riberenos are Ama-
zonian people of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry who are native Spanish
speakers.
6 AMETRA-Ucayali was founded in 1982 by Guillermo Arevalo, a Shipibo shaman/
ayahuasquero who hegan teaching youth in over 100 communities how to identify
plants and prepare remedies to treat common health problems, such as intestinal para-
sites, diarrhea, and dehydration. Guillerrno, his father Benito, also a shaman, and other
established shamans came to Tambopata to assist with the AMETRA2001. In an inter-
view with the Tacana ayahuasquero of Infiemo, he references an AMETRA workshop
on ayahuasca (though not by name) in Tambopata to explain how he became inspired
to use ayahuasca for healing, after having previously learned to drink ayahuasca
among Bolivian woodworkers in the 1950s for personal use only. The important role
of Didier Lacaze, as eo-founder of AMETRA 2001 and health advocate dedicated to
indigenous health issues, is often underplayed in the history of how ayahuasca spread
in the Tambopata region.
7 See Homan, Chapter 8 in this volume, for a comparative analysis regarding historical
changes in Iquitos, Peru.
8 Phannahuasca contains crystalline N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) plus harmine, as
well as comhinations of other psychoactive tryptamines with other ~-carholines (Ott,
1999).
9 See the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) web site: http.z/amazon.dead-city.org/umi
yac.html
10 See www.ecured.cu/indcx.php/Yachak
11 See, for instance, Bcycr 's risk management plan for lodges: www.singingtothcplants.
com/20 12/l0/you-cant-call-91l-in-jungle/
12 See www.ayahuasca.com/amazon/statement-critiquing -the-ethnobotanical-stewardship-
council-esc/
13 See Cater (2006) for a viewpoint on the Western construction of ecotourism and her
reflection on how certification schemes "may he used to further enfranchise the power-
ful tourism companies" (p. 26).
14 See West and Carrier (2004) for a similar discussion regarding the ecotourism milieu,
and Western projections and ideals concerning natural environments and the people
who live there, further linking such values to neoliheral institutions.
15 See Rosaldo (2002) and James (2006) for broader discussions in non-Amazonian contexts.
16 This mixing of traditions as a means to achieve market diversification may, unfortu-
nately, he associated with the increase in ayahuasca-related accidents.
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..,
11 A climate for change
ICEERS and the challenges of the
globalization of ayahuasca
Benjamin K. De Loenen, 1 Oscar Pares
Franquero,' and Constanza Sanchez Aviles'

Background: the broader drug policy context

The legal status in which ayahuasca finds itself nowadays is not easy to compre-
hend, either for users, lawyers, authorities, or academics, and must be understood
in the broader context of the international framework intended to control narcot-
ics and psychotropics. The production, consumption, and trade of psychoactive
substances has been a constant in the history of humankind and has played an
important spiritual, social, economic, and political role in most societies and at
all times (Schultes & Hofinann, 1979); the uses, social perceptions, and political
approaches toward them have changed over time among different social contexts
(Escohotado, 2008). Pleasure, individual freedom, health, morality, and even state
reasons (Astorga, 1996) have been invoked when determining the level of social
control, political intervention, or legal approach regarding their consumption,
production, and trade.
Although it may seem the psychoactive substances generally known as "illicit
drugs" have always been prohibited, prohibition as a political option to regulate
human behavior toward these substances has taken place only in a very small
period oftime in human history. In fact, the contemporary international drug con-
trol system is only around 100 years old. It is integrated by three international
conventions: the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Conven-
tion on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traf-
fic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances; and by three international
drug control bodies within the system of the United Nations: the Commission on
Narcotic Drugs (CND), the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), and
the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). This set of legal and
bureaucratic instruments has been based on the fundamental principle of limiting
the production, consumption, and trade of controlled substances exclusively to
medical and scientific purposes' Other types of uses, e.g., recreational, ritual-
istic, personal development, or therapeutic purposes, should be prosecuted and
eliminated. Beyond its prohibitionist nature, over the decades, the regime became
increasingly punitive. The reason for this is that the conviction that such limita-
tions necessitated the establishment of anticrime measures spread and was inter-
nalized by virtually every national government (Sanchez, 2014).
224 Benjamin K. De Loenen et al.
In order to understand the legal particularities of ayahuasca and other ethnobo-
tanicals, it is necessary to explore some details contained in the intemational drug
control treaties and, in particular, the specific provisions that can affect the sta-
tus of these plants. These international conventions have two general objectives,
which are specified in their preamble and are to be achieved by creating a set of
obligations for the signatory states. The first objective is to reduce the availability
of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances to prevent abuse and addiction,
"recognizing that addiction ... constitutes a serious evil for the individual and is
fraught with social and economic danger to mankind," and this is why signatory
states are "determined to prevent and combat abuse of such substances and the
illicit traffic to which it gives rise."
Within the framework of this objective, states should undertake measures to
counter the production, supply, and trafficking of controlled substances for illicit
purposes. On the other hand, the second objective of the conventions is to ensure
adequate availability of controlled substances for medical and scientific purposes,
as they are vital to relieve human pain and suffering. Therefore, within this control
scheme, the availahility of essential drugs must be assured at the same time the
diversion into illicit channels is prosecuted.
More than 100 narcotic drugs are subject to control under the 1961 Single Con-
vention, including scarcely processed plant-origin products such as opium, opium
derivatives (morphine, heroin, codeine), cannabis, coca, and cocaine, and also
synthetic substanees such as methadone or meperidine. The 1961 Single Conven-
tion introduced several changes to the previous intemational drug control system,
which had started in 1909 with the cclebration of the Shanghai Opi um Commis-
sion (McAllister, 2000). Among them, it broadened control measures to raw mate-
rials from which narcotic substances are obtained: the opium poppy plant, the
coca bush, and the cannabis plant. Some of the traditional uses of plant-origin
substances were understood in this treaty as "quasi-medical" uses that had to be
abolished (Article 49).
As occurs in the 1961 Single Convention, the substances under control by the
1971 Convention - mainly amphetamines, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and
hallucinogens - are organized into four lists depending on their potential harmful-
ness and therapeutic value. An important feature for the legal status of ayahuasca
is that the 1971 Convention also brought under control the psychoactive com-
pounds contained in plants that had been used in traditional societies for religious
and ritual purposes for decades, such as mescaline, peyote's main alkaloid; psilo-
cybin, contained in several mushrooms; and dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the main
psycho active component of ayahuasca.
The INCB, in its 2010 Annual Report, echoed this problematic issue and listed
some examples of these plants, including:
khat (Catha edulisi, whose active ingredients cathinone and cathine arc listed
in Schedules I and III ofthe 1971 Convention; ayahuasca, a preparation made
from plants indigenous to the Amazon basin of South America, mainly a jun-
gle vine iBanisteriopsis caapi) and another tryptamine-rich plant (Psychotria
ICEERS and a climate for change 225
viridis) containing a number of psychoactive alkaloids, including DMT; the
peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsiii, containing mescaline; magic mush-
rooms (Psilocybe), which contain psilocybine and psilocine; Ephedra, con-
taining ephedrine; "kratorn" (Mitragyna speciosa), a plant indigenous to
South-East Asia that contains mitragynine; iboga (Tabernanthe iboga), a
plant that contains the hallucinogen ibogaine and is native to the western part
of Central Africa; varieties of Datura containing hyoscyamine (atropine) and
scopolamine; and Salvia divinorum, a plant originating in Mexico that con-
tains the hallucinogen salvinorin A.
(INCB, 20 lOa, para. 285)
The inclusion of the psychoactive ingredients of these plants in Schedule I was
a reflection of cultural values and prejudices deeply embedded in Western percep-
tions regarding ritual drug use that takes place within the context of indigenous
or syncretic ceremonies in many parts of the world (Labate & Feeney, 2012).
However, the 1971 Convention tried to address these contradictions in the section
devoted to reservations. Article 32.4 allows parties to make reservations regarding
the provisions of Article 7 (whieh regulates the special provisions applicable to
the substances in Schedule I and prohibits their use except for very limited medi-
cal and scientific purposes) to "plants growing wild which contain psychotropic
substances from among those in Schedule I and which are traditionally used by
certain small, clearly determined groups in magical or religious rites.:" In fact, at
the time of accession to the treaty, many states made reservations in this regard,
including Mexico, Peru, the United States, and Canada. When Mexico adhered to
the 1971 Convention in 1975, the government made a reservation claiming that
in its territory, certain indigenous ethnic groups still existed which traditionally
made use of wild plants in magical or religious rites that contain psychotropic
substances from among those in Schedule 1. Canada, which has been part of this
treaty since 1988, also formulated a reservation regarding peyote use by certain
indigenous groups. Peru, which adhered in 1980, made a reservation to Article 7,
following Article 32.4, regarding ayahuasca and the San Pedro cactus. The United
States made a reservation to Article 7 to exclude peyote, which is cultivated and
distributed for use by the Native American Church in religious ceremonies. Brazil
did not formulate any reservation at the time the treaty was signed (UNTC, 2014).
As has been explained in detail in different chapters of this volume, ayahuasca is a
psychoactive beverage generally composed of two plants, Banisteriopsis caapi and
Psychotria viridis, the latter of which contains DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine).
DMT is a controlled substance under the 1971 Convention (Schedule I), and
therefore under most national drug legislations. However, the !NCB, which is the
monitoring body for the implementation of the UN drug control conventions, has
specifically affirmed that ayahuasca, and similar ethnobotanicals that contain psy-
choactive alkaloids included in the 1971 Convention, are not under intemational
control (Schaepe, 2001; ICEERS, 2010). In this sense, dejure legal status of aya-
huasca is the opposite of other plants that are specifically prohibited under the 1961
Convention, namely, the cannabis plant, the opium poppy plant, and the coca bush.
226 Benjamin K. De Loenen et al.
The 1971 Convention consolidated a specific international drug control approach,
strongly biased toward the preferences of Western industrialized countries (McAI-
~
I
, the consumption, cultivation, or possession of controlled substances for personal
lister, 1991). Over time, this strategy has shown significant limitations to resolve
drug-related issues in other contexts. That is the case in the ayahuasca-related
legal challenges we are experiencing nowadays, especially during thc last decade,
when collectives and individuals involved in ayahuasca practices have suffered
stigmatization and legal prosecution, notably, in North America, South America,
and Europe. The main challenges faced by lawyers and policymakers come from
the fact that religious and ritual use of ayahuasca has spread at the global level but
resists the traditional conceptualizations and categorizations of illegal drug "abuse"
that have determined drug policy formulation, Ayahuasca has a long history of use
as a medicine, sacrament. and "plant teacher' - categories that do not fit into con-
temporary drug policy frames (Tupper, 2008), Besides, the presence of ayahuasca
religions is forcing some states to balance the respect for these groups against their
international commitments within the worldwide War on Drugs, namely, to balance
Western perceptions of drug use with the evolving use of ayahuasca (Labate &
Fccney, 2012).
A climate for change
Since the mid-1990s, and especially during the last fivc years, the punitive prohi-
bitionist approach to drug control has been put into question from many political
and social spheres for its lack of effectiveness, its lack of pragmatism and, even
beyond this, its lack of humanism. After more than 100 years of existence, the
most important goal of the regime - to end or significantly reduce the consump-
tion, production, and trafficking of illicit drugs in the world - has never been
achieved. Despite these concerns, currently coming from very different voices
and institutions, including prominent figures from acadernia and politics, interna-
tional drug control agencies - mainly the IN CB - have been traditionally reluctant
to introduce reforms leading to more pragmatic, less repressive legal and policy
schemes. To the reluctance of these organizations, wc must add the opposition
of certain key, powerful states to explore different options, especially the United
States and, more recently, Russia (Bewley- Taylor, 2012).
However, many states have always had difficulties in adapting the international
obligations arising from this control system to the specific circumstances of their
national context, and many have decided to explore alternative ways of managing
their specific problems. Since, in many cases, the cost of abandoning this scheme
of cooperation is too high because of the issue linkage at the international arena,
some countries have chosen to remain inside the international drug control frame-
work. However, they make use of its inherent flexibility in order to avoid some
of the unintended consequences of punitive policies, such as the high rates of
incarceration for nonviolent drug offenses, the expansion of the illicit market, the
stigmatization of drug users, or the overspending in law enforcement.
In the current drug policy landscape, numerous examples of these "deviations"
can be identified (Bewley-Taylor, 2012): harm reduction programs have been
ICEERS and a climatefor change 227
implemented in many Western European countries to handle injected drug use;
use, especially cannabis, has been decriminalized, for example, in Portugal; drug
consumption rooms operate in countries like Spain and Canada; and medical mar-
ijuana programs are implemented in several states of the United States and the
famous coffee shops system in the Netherlands, Moreover, given the evolution of
drug policy in some countries, it is appropriate to speak not only of deviations but
also about ruptures that go a step further - notably, Bolivia's request to withdraw
the ban on chewing coca leaves from the 1961 Single Convention (Economic and
Social Council, 2009), or the regularization of cannabis markets in Uruguay and
in several U.S. states (Pardo, 2014),
But, while cannabis seems to be slowly stepping out of its criminalized envi-
ronment and an expanding number of countries are heading toward more tolerant
drug policy, the same is not true for psychoactive ethnobotanicals, in particular
ayahuasca, that are undergoing increasingly widespread punitive and intoler-
ant legal and political treatment ever since the IN CB first invited governments
to "criminalize where needed" on the national level in its 2010 annual report,
later reinforced in their 2012 report (INCB, 2010a; 2012), Even though this was
directed at all ethnobotanicals containing active principles that are controlled
under the 1971 Convention, according to our empirical observation, police inter-
ventions for the importation and utilization of ayahuasca in particular increased
drastically in 2010, It is hard to say whether the wave of arrests was a direct
result of the lNCB report, but probably there are various elements that played
a role in this sudden change. One of these elements is, without doubt, the rapid
popularization of ayahuasca on the global stage; but, if we look at the evolu-
tion of ayahuasca-related arrests since the end of 2009, it seems unlikely that
this popularization by itself is accountable for the sudden rapid increase of legal
confrontations.
A tidal wave of arrests starts
In 20 10, Spain became the epicenter of ayahuasca seizures and prosecutions. This
wave started before the release ofthe 20 I0 annuallNCB report; that, and the limi-
tation of arrests to the Spanish territory, indicate that, at its base, there is another
cause for this wave.' This cause lies, according to our personal sources, in the fact
that a liquid scanner was installed in the airport of Madrid Barajas - Prime Min-
ister Adolfo Suarez aimed at dealing with the increase of cocaine trafficking in
liquid form from South America." As a side effect, bottles of ayahuasca that were
sent by post from countries like Brazil, Peru, and Colombia were intercepted at
customs. A protocol of arrest was adopted by the authorities at this time: once a
shipment was intercepted, the postal worker (many times, a police officer dressed
up as a mail carrier) would deliver the bottles to the addressee, and when that
person signed for the delivery, the police would come out of the car and arrest the
individual. In other cases, the person was detained when picking the package up
at the post office. After an estimated 37 arrests in Spain alone up to the present
228 Benjamin K. De Loenen et af.
(February 20 IS), Spanish detentions slowly came to an end, most probably due
to the fact the people stopped shipping ayahuasca by mail Irom Latin America.
The legal activities of the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education,
Research & Service (lCEERS)9 have been more prominent in Spanish cases.
However, we have also followed ayahuasca-related police interventions in other
countries, including Portugal, Belgium, Italy, the U.K., Germany, Switzerland,
Denmark, Argentina, and others. In many cases, as we have observed, the accused
were not aware they were violating the law. Some of them even purchased small
amounts through an online vendor (who claimed there was no legal risk whatso-
ever) out of curiosity without having prior personal experience with ayahuasca.
The media coverage of the cases often seemed even harsher than the threat to
the accused by law enforccment. Also, in Chile, Argentina, and Spain, police
interventions were severe, some involving raids and preventive prison time. As
we could observe in our interaction with the people involved, or their lawyers,
Northern European countries generally dealt in a more "humane" manner with
the accused, informing them that an investigation had been opened by certified
letter, and requesting that the individuals appear at the police station for inter-
rogation. While Spain has apparently had higher rates of arrests, the current
situation leads one to believe that growing numbers of UN member states are
following the alarm instigated by the INCB about the utilization of ayahuasca
and other psychoactive plant materials, with arrests being much more widespread
than before. However, further research is needed in this area; such research is
challenging, as it involves usually secret information collected by the police and
international bodies.
Countering the repression: ICEERS' involvement in the
Manto Wasi case
ICEERS' work in the legal defense of ayahuasca started in January 20 I0, with the
case of Manto Wasi in Chile. The arrest took place in December 2009, when a fully
armed police squad raided a center in Pirquc. Santiago de Chile, just when a ses-
sion in the style of Amazonia vegetalismo was about to start. This center had been
utilizing ayahuasca as a therapeutic and personal development tool, along with
psychotherapeutic practices, for several years before the incident happened. Aside
from the traumatic experience of the participants, Cesar A. (Rumi) and Danae S.,
who were leading the session, got arrested and faced four years in prison for drug
trafficking and endangering public health. Propagandistic, pseudo-scicntific dis-
courses about ayahuasca were launched, and the accused were demonized in the
media. Danae, who worked at a psychotherapy ccnter as a clinical psychologist,
lost her position because of the intrusive, sensational media coverage accnsing her
of abusing her professional title to capture clients for the ayahuasca rituals. Even
though the public prosecutor offered a deal if those arrested would plead guilty,
they chose to start a difficult but rewarding 2.5-yeal's-long battle for justice.
ICEERS became a consultant for the defendants and documented the whole
case for a documentary about ayahuasca that is currently in its final stages of
ICEERS and a climate for change 229
production. Because of the dernonizing and sensational nature of all the media
coverage about ayahuasca and the arrest, influencing public opinion was an impor-
tant aspect of the defense. Rumi initiated this through media appearances, where
he shared his side of the story, as well as through the organization ofthe Primera
Conferencia Internacional Uso Ritual de la Ayahuasca: Perspectivas Cientfjica,
Antropologica y Terapeutica (First International Conference on the Ritual Use of
Ayahuasca: Scientific, Anthropological and Therapeutic Perspectives), and with
the collaboration of ICEERS and presentations by scientific director Jose Carlos
Bouso and Jordi Riba, among others (De Loenen, 2010). This event further suc-
ceeded in turning thc tide of the negative propaganda toward a more just reflection
of the reality around this practice.
During the development ofthis case, ICEERS sent a query to the !NCB regard-
ing the legal status of ayahuasca. In its response, the Board echoed previous com-
munications of the !NCB on the matter, and affirmed that no plant or concoctions
of plants containing DMf were currently under international control, even though
chemically extracted, purified DMT is a scheduled substance under the 1971 Con-
vention. The !NCB, however, added a phrase in the letter, saying, "some Govern-
ments may have decided, however, to apply control measures to ayahuasca, as the
use of this preparation implies serious health risks" (lNCB, 2010b). ICEERS for-
mulated a letter (which was never sent) in response to this claim (lCEERS, 2010),
and a compilation of scientific literature comprising all the ayahuasca research con-
ducted on humans (Bouso, 2012), coming to the conclusion that scientific evidence
docs not support the claim of "serious health risks." Instead of entering into debate
with the INCB, however (since they affirmed what was needed: that ayahuasca is
not under international control), we decided to utilize both the letter and the litera-
ture compilation as legal defense materials for the Manto Wasi and future cases.
The solid legal defense supported by the INCB letter - alongside testimonials of
session participants and several expert declarations in court -led to the withdrawal
of all charges, and even to the recognition by the judges that ayahuasca had been
beneficial for the participants of the sessions (Judgment Santiago de Chile, 2011).
A key strategy in this case was the focus on the cultural aspects of ayahuasca
practices versus DMT use. In virtually all cases, the public prosecutor defined the
confiscated bottles as "DMT extractions" and the sessions as "illegal DMT con-
sumption encounters." According to our own experience, the !NCB letter by itself
is often not enough to convince a judge about the fact that ayahuasca and DMT are
different in terms of effects, risks, and patterns of use, because it is very confusing
to state that, even though DMT is illegal, ayahuasca, which contains DMT, is not.
One could try to convince a judge about the absurdity of the whole drug control
system, but this would most probably be a suicidal strategy for the defendant
(for a discussion of alternative strategies for the legalization of ayahuasca, see
Chapter 12 by Walsh in this volume). It proved more efficient to make sense of
this clear distinction in terms of two things: a) cultural aspects; the drug control
treaties that schedule extracted DMT were not set in place to solve an epidemic
of any kind of traditional ayahuasca practice endangering public health, but to
deal with drug trafficking and thc distribution of synthetic or extracted substances
230 Benjamin K De Loenen et al.
considered potentially harmful; and b) the pharmacological differences of pure
extracted DMT versus ayahuasca, e.g., if one drinks a cup of black tea, obviously
the absorption of the caffeine contained in the tea is much slower and less con-
centrated than when one injects pure caffeine extract; the effects on the central
nervous system arc very different, the duration is different, the risks involved
are different, etc. Demonstrating the acceptable psychological and physiologi-
cal safety profile of ayahuasca (Bouso et al., 20 I3) was another important aspect
of the dcfense strategy in all the cases; we are talking here about a tea that has
no potential for addiction (Gable, 2007; Fabregas et al., 2010); generates neither
physical dependency nor tolerance (needing to increase the dose each time to
achieve the same effect): has moderate effects on blood pressure and heart rate,
even in repeated doses (dos Santos et aI., 2012); and has a very low index of
reported adverse psychiatric events (Barbosa et aI., 2012; Bouso et al., 2012).
One year after the Manto Wasi decision, and following a case involving allega-
tions of murder in a cult where the cult leader and some of the members burned
a newborn baby to death, the Public Health Institute of Chile (ISP) announced
that they were considering installing a new law prohibiting ayahuasca in Chile.
Because the cult members had started to use ayahuasca some months earlier, the
media and political debate was again aimed toward implicating ayahuasca in
inciting child murder (BBC, 2013). This initiative came from the right-wing con-
servative party in power at that moment, half a year before the presidential elec-
tions. ICEERS developed a technical report on ayahuasca with the collaboration
of some of the most renowned biomedical researchers in the field of ayahuasca
(Bouso et al., 2013) and collaborated with the lawyer Rodrigo Gonzalez Soto and
Rumi in dealing with the Chilean authorities. This joint effort succeeded in avoid-
ing the criminalization of ayahuasca in the critical period before the elections, and
it seems like this initiative is off the agenda for now. The technical report was later
used in other court cases as defense material.
Countering the repression: ICEERS'
involvement in other cases
After ICEERS' involvement in the Manto Wasi case, growing numbers of vic-
tims of law enforcement against their ayahuasca practice got in touch for sup-
port, and even more so when the film trailer of the Manto Wasi case went online
(De Loenen, 2014). Our involvement was dependent on the needs of each case,
and was not only limited to guidance and expert advice in preparing for a solid
dcfense, but also involved preparation of individuals who were notified that they
had to appear at the police station for interrogation - as happened, for example, in
Belgium and Switzerland. In these cases, we advised them on how to testify and
provided documents to hand to the police. Several of these cases didn't end up in
court, Also, in OLl[ experience, several cases in Spain were archived before reach-
ing court because of the receptive attitude of public prosecutors to the documenta-
tion and argumentation provided. Here is a short overview of the most noteworthy
cases we were involved in of the almost 30 cases in total from 2009 to 20 IS.
ICEERS and a climate for change 231
While, so far, no lawsuits have ended up with a conviction in Spain, not all of
the outcomes were steps in the right direction in terms of ayahuasca regulariza-
tion. A significant number of these cases were dropped because the purchase and
possession of any illegal substance intended for personal use is decriminalized in
Spain, so when someone could demonstrate that the ayahuasca was intended for
personal use only, this would often be enough to gain freedom, even in some cases
where they confiscated up to 25liters. In a few of these cases, the judge concluded
that ayahuasca is illegal in Spain. ID
In a case in Catalonia, however, the final verdict was the first one to not only
declare the accused innocent but also to recognize that ayahuasca is not illegal
in Spain, in part following the INCB's opinion expressed in the 2010 letter."
In March of 20 12, another, more complex, case emerged of someone who was
arrested in Catalonia and admitted during the arrest that the confiscated ayahuasca
was destined for group use in personal development sessions. The prosecutor
wanted to sentence her to four and a half years of prison and a EIO.OOO fine for a
crime against public health. In December 2013, the case led to the most positive
outcome so far in Spain for a legal case concerning ayahuasca: the judge recog-
nized not only that ayahuasca was a preparation of DMT containing plants and
therefore not illegal according to the 20 I0 letter of the INCB, but also that there
was no scientific evidence to claim that ayahuasca was harmful to health. All
charges were dropped (Judgment Barcelona, 20 I3b).
In 20 I0, an ayahuasquero going to Belgium, working in a neoshamanic Peru-
vian style, was contacted by the Belgian police and asked for explanations about
his activity. He had been discreet about his practices, but some body tipped the
authorities off about the sessions. He was cooperative, but after he made dif-
ferent statements during the following years, an official criminal accusation
against him and two of his assistants was made, similar to the first case in Chile;
they were charged with drug trafficking, promoting the use of illegal substances
(DMT), and endangering public health. The prosecutor asked for a penalty of
one year in prison and a El 0.000 fine. ICEERS had been consulting with the law-
yer and defendant, but unfortunately, he was convicted to six months in prison
(all on probation) and a E6000 fine. This sentence (the lowest possible in Bel-
gium for this type of case) involved a public message that the use of ayahuasca
would not be tolerated in Belgium (Judgment Ghent, 2014). In order to counter
this public message of criminalization, the decision was made to appeal the sen-
tence and submit the case to the Higher Court, and providing a more extensive
defense repertoire, including expert testimonies. Eventually the two assistants
were acquitted and the ayahuasqucro was freed with a settlement of a small fine.
Some other cases that are still in process include those in Germany, Denmark,
and Argentina. In the German case, the police found 7 L of ayahuasca in the base-
ment of an ayahuasquero and claimed that it contained 35 g of DMT. This esti-
mation seemed extremely high, so ICEERS provided several scientific materials
that could help to demonstrate these figures were not realistic; about I gram per L
would have been a more accurate number. A second analysis was requested by the
accused that showed a total of only 1.03 grams of DMT in the 7 L of ayahuasca,
232 Benjamin K De Loenen et al.
The police were aware of this fact for at least nine months before the accused was
informed. The trial is still pending as of May 2016.
The case in Denmark is more complex, as the accused was sentenced to an
unconditional six months of prison. An ayahuasquero, he had been receiving aya-
huasca by post for use in ceremonial sessions in Denmark without ever having
any incidents with the police or customs. But one of these shipments - with five
packages containing 2 L of ayahuasca - was confiscated, and he was charged with
the offensc of drug trafficking. He was called in front of the police to explain
what he had planned to do with this "liquid containing DMT."12 He finally went
to trial, although he had explained to the officers that ayahuasca was not under
international control, and it had nothing to do with pure extracted DMT or illicit
recreational drug use. Furthermore. ayahuasca was not prohibited under Danish
law. However, he was found guilty of importing 25 L of ayahuasca that con-
tained approximately 20 g ofDMT, which the judgment (surprisingly) considered
equivalent to 300 to 600 doses of LSD. The convicted faced six months of prison.
After his conviction, he got in touch with lCEERS, which is now supporting him
in the process of appeal.
Finally, a second case in Argentina involved a Colombian taita who traveled to
this country to organize a session. The situation was very confusing at the begin-
ning because, even though the taita's people got in touch with ICEERS, for many
days, the only information we received was through the press - which, obviously,
does not reflect the facts in an objective manner, generally. There was an impor-
tant particularity of this case compared to others: the charges against the taita did
not imply drug trafficking, but fraud and illegal practice of medicine, at least until
the substance could be analyzed - something that apparently can take several
years in Argentina. This meant that the facts were not a federal crime in Argen-
tina. That is why, at the very beginning, we suggested following a legal strategy
that was more focused on the suitability of traditional medicines as therapeutic
tools (see Walsh, Chapter 12 in this volume), reinforcing the fact that ayahuasca
has beneficial effects on health, and patients attending the sessions were aware
of the procedure and potential effects. The taita was finally released two weeks
after being in preventive jail and went back to Colombia. However, he is likely to
receive a judicial citation from Argentinean courts in the near future. 13
Most of the cases that have gone to court so far have ended up in acquittal;
however, ayahuasca, in particular, but also iboga, arc increasingly coming under
pressure. One of the reasons might be the reinforced advice given by the INCB in
their 2012 annual report encouraging national criminalization. The INCB, rather
than providing clarity to the legal ambiguity of plant-origin psychoactive sub-
stances, has contributed to this lack of understanding, noting in its 2010 Annual
Report that there exists an apparent "interest in the recreational use of such plant
materials" that are "often used outside of their original socio-economic context to
exploit substance abusers" (INCB, 20 lOa, para. 286). Then, two years later, the
INCB referred to ayahuasca as one of "the most commonly sold new psychoac-
tive substances" through the Intemet, apparently encouraged by a lack of clarity
concerning the control status of the plants at the national and the international
ICEERS and a climate/or change 233
level, and exploited by "drug trafficking networks and online retailers, resulting in
increased trade, use and abuse of these plant materials in many countries" (INCB,
2012, para. 329). The INCB 2012 report also notes that:
· .. the increasing popularity of practices that purportedly have spiritual con-
notations, such as 'spiritual tourism,' under the cover of which the plant-
based psychoactive materials are consumed ... with concern that the use of
those substances has been associated with various serious health risks (both
physical and psychological) and even with death ...
and reiterates
· .. its recommendation to the Governments of countries where the misuse
and trafficking of such plant materials may occur to remain vigilant ...
and recommends
· .. appropriate action be taken at the national level where the situation so
requires.
(INCB, 2012, para. 329-330)
These statements lack any epidemiological and scientific evidence (Labate & J un-
gaberle, 2011).
Additionally, the World Drug Report of the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime (UNODC) of 2013 (UNODC, 2013) extensively discusses the popu-
larization of iboga as an alarming new phenomenon; other reports have appeared
in which iboga and ayahuasca are mentioned, along with other ethnobotanicals,
like so-called "new psychoactive substances" (NPS) (Spanish National Drug Pro-
gram, 2011). Of course, the difference is that NPS lack scientific research into
mechanisms of action, effects, risks, etc., and have no history of human use,
while ayahuasca has been administered to humans in clinical trials for more than
a decade, has centuries of indigenous cultural use, and its mechanisms of action,
effects, and risks are well understood.
It seems nearly impossible for policymakers and those in charge of the current
drug monitoring and control bodies to understand the phenomenon of ceremonial,
religious, and therapeutic personal development uses of ayahuasca and related
ethnobotanicals in an intercultural framework. If dealt with through constructive
regularization, these practices should be able to exist outside of the range of the
drug-of-abuse paradigm.
In 2008, the UN General Assembly approved the United Nations Declaration
on the Rights ofIndigenous Peoples. In its opening text, UN member states rec-
ognize "that respect for indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices
contributes to sustainable and equitable development and proper management of
the environment." Article 12 states: "Indigenous peoples have the right to mani-
fest, practice, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs
234 Benjamin K. De Loenen et al.
and ceremonies"; and Article 24 states: "Indigenous peoples have the right to their
traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including the con-
servation of their vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals" (United Nations
General Assembly, 2008).
This approach to indigenous ayahuasca practices is obviously discrepant with
the treatment the INCB gives to this subject in its annual reports. Many of the
arrested people were either indigenous people coming from ayahuasca-using
cultures, or nonindigenous people who were apprentices of ayahuasqueros and
worked in the indigenous traditions. In a globalized world, cultural interchange
is natural and something that the UN stimulates, particularly the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (tJ1\ESCO), which describes its
mission as follows:
Today, UNESCO's message has never been more important. We must create
holistic policies that are capable of addressing the social, environmental and
economic dimensions of sustainable development. This new thinking on sus-
tainable development reaffirms the founding principles of the Organization
and enhances its role: In a globalized world with interconnected societies,
intercultural dialogue is vital if we are to live together while acknowledging
our diversity.
(UNESCO, 2014)
Looking at the role ayahuasca serves to an increasing population around the
world, it is in many ways a tool that facilitates sustainable development and inter-
cultural dialogue. In a globalized world, our diversity enriches and inspires, but
when it comes to plants that have consciousness-expanding effects, this under-
standing seems unable to surpass the classical drug control system paradigm. It
seems like only the utilization of ayahuasca "inside its original socio-economic
context," as the INCB states it, is valid, and that Westerners are assembling in
long lines to get a "hit" of ayahuasca, However, there is a generally increased
interest in medicine systems (Blainey, 2014) and spiritual practices from other
cultures (Prue & Voss, 2014), and it seems like the popularization of ayahuasca
falls more in that area.
Integrating ethnobotanicals in a globalized world
In Amazonian traditions, ayahuasca is a tool that is fully integrated into the soci-
etal structure, where it may serve a vast array of purposes: medicine, rites of
passage, access to the spiritual dimensions of existence, divination, and defense
against potential threats (enemies, negative energies, etc.). There are strict per-
formances for its utilization and the passing-on of the traditions from generation
to generation (Labate & Cavnar, 2014a). Preparatory practices are well-defined
(e.g., dietas); and ayahuasca's central place in indigenous culture facilitates social
participation and support for individual processes, such as healing and the initia-
tion into adult life, as well as integration of the experiences into everyday living.
ICEERS and a climate/or change 235
In contemporary society, however, it is common that a person who chooses aya-
huasca as a tool for personal development or to confront mental health issues
cannot count on the support of his or her health professionals, family, partner, etc.
In a similar way, it is not easy to have access to legal and safe multidisciplinary
therapeutic frameworks, with some exceptions, such as in some of the countries
of origin, like Peru, and in some ayahuasca churches, like the Uniao do Vegetal
(UDV) and Santo Daime, that have achieved legal status in a few countries for the
use of ayahuasca as a sacrament (Bronfrnan, 2005; Anderson et al., 2012).
The vision that every human being should be free to choose the tools that he or
she believes in for catalyzing therapeutic or personal-growth processes and spir-
itual development is what drives the ICEERS Foundation's agenda. Even though
consciousness-expanding practices have been fundamental to human living since
the earliest times, there is a general misconception around the nature of the expe-
riences induced by such ethnobotanicals and their value as a means to confront
psychosocial issues and deepen our relationship with ourselves, our loved ones,
the world around us, and the cosmos (Labate & Cavnar, 2014b).
We have observed over the years how often the acute experience induced by
the ingestion of ayahuasca is promoted as the therapeutic process, with very little
emphasis on the importance of what comes before and after. Terminology such as
"cure for addiction," "healing all ailments of the soul" or "ten years of psycho-
therapy in one night" are frequent statements found in educational information all
over the Internet, in documentaries, and at lectures. Such statements are, however,
misleading, and they generally do not contribute to a growing credibility within
the scientific community, or among health professionals, policymakers, and oth-
ers. A more nuanced, comprehensive, and science-based discourse is required to
regularize valid ayahuasca drinking practices in our globalized world. For exam-
ple, there is the concept of ayahuasca as a tool used as an adjunct to psycho-
therapeutic intervention, as an agent to catalyze the therapeutic process. Although
ayahuasca is often promoted as a panacea for all, drinking ayahuasca is not suit-
able for everyone at any given moment in life; this can be due to psychiatric
or physiological conditions, or because of conditional aspects. In a psychothera-
peutic process, someone who initially might not have been in the position to go
through an ayahuasca experience might become "treatment ready." Preparatory
and integration frameworks can both maximize the therapeutic potential of the
experience and reduce potential risks.
Another obstaele in terms of justifying the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca
in court cases and in working toward legal clinical application is that there is
still very limited scientific data regarding specific therapeutic and clinical uses
of ayahuasca beyond the few publications on ayahuasca's potential for addiction
treatment - such as Fabregas et al. (2010), Thomas et al. (2013), Fernandez et al.
(2014), and new publications that will come out soon on the treatment of depres-
sion (Os6rio et al., 2015).
The case of iboga is different, as preclinical and clinical research consistently
shows its potential for the reduction of opioid withdrawal syndrome and crav-
ing, which was crucial in New Zealand's MEDSAFE decision in 2009 to turn
 236 Benjamin K. De Loenen et a!.
~bogaine into an experimental prescription medication for the treatment of drug
ependency (MEDSAFE, 2009). This body of clinical research has not yet been
generated in the case of ayahuasca. In the European Union, the United States,
and other countries, it is a challenge to conduct clinical research studying specific
I~edIclnal or therapeutic benefits of ayahuasca with patients because of the lack
~G phannaceutical_grade product developed under Good Manufacturing Practices
· lMP) conditions (European Commission, 2011). Observational research is eas-
;er to conduct and is something ICEERS is actively working on. The aim here is to
o~k not only at specific clinical treatment outcomes, but also at quality of life and
ot er parameters that can facilitate a better understanding ofayahuasca's potential
as a personal-growth catalyst (ICEERS, 2014).
b The available body of scientific publications on thc safety of ayahuasca has
een quite sUccessful, however, in influencing a large number of the court cases, as
presented either through expert testimonials or technical reports. While scientific
eVIdence f f
d avers an acceptable safety profile of ayahuasca, the appearance 0 new
a Verse events and incidents of irresponsible or unethical practice endanger the
reputatIon of ayahuasca and invite prohibitionist measures from the authorities,
as exemplified by the incident in Chile mentioned earlier. With the rapid populari-
ZatIon
· of a ya h uasca m. 0 ccidental
. he iincrease 0 f sue 11 prac-
society a Iso comes the
tIces
d and op po unism. WIth all eyes ofinternationa regu 1atory b0 dires, nationa
rtuni " . 1 . 1
an legal authorities, and mass media focused on the course of ayahuasca as it
ptlenetrates further into modern society, a great responsibility lies in the hands of
iose Who orga!1lze '. . ayahuasca. In response to t hese et hiICS
rituals and work WIth
~~d safety challenges, ICEERS contributed the Ayahuasca Defense Fund Support
; llena, 14 composed of 13 principles and derived from real-life incidents that took
P ~ce over the last few years with practitioners working with ayahuasca and iboga,
anT first presented it at the World Ayahuasca Conference (AYA2014).
· he conference, held in Ibiza from September 25 to 27, 2014,15 was conceived
lu a strategy to deal with the multiple challenges of the globalization of aya-
. uasca. It brought together 650 people from over 60 countries, with over 100
mtern t'
a Iona1 experts to debate the different aspects of the ayahuasca phenom-
enon. It also brought together important players in the current drug policy reform
mOvement, bringing the topic of ayahuasca closer to this universe (one should
note that ay 1 f . I . di d against
. "drugs, ., an d
d c a iuasca a icionados are frequent y preju Ice
g 7
ru reform activists frequently consider psychedelic substances in general, and
aya h uasca . .
A . 111 parncutar, less relevant issues).
la . s ICEERS is committed to fostering a change of scenario by promoting regu-
fIZatlOn over the current trend of criminalization and legal control, one impor-
t ant obje .
li ctlve of the conference was to put ayahuasca on the map of the drug
y
po :c stage, since there is relativelv no awareness ofthe worrying trend of "crim-
111 a lzation without prohibition" of these plants. Therefore, perhaps one of the
malll achievements of AYA20 14 was the establishment of the Ibiza Expert Com-
~ttee for the Regularization ofEthnobotanicals, during a meeting held with over
attomeys, legal strategists'and drug policy experts. The establishment of the
corn . '-'
JnIltee has two objectives: 1) working with the current status quo; meaning, to
ICEERS and a climate for change 237
structurally counter the increasing tendency ofrepression by developing a knowl-
edge base about the legal situations in each country, supporting ayahuasca-related
court cases with the expertise of the committee members, creating a legal fund,
and developing reports on the current situation; and 2) changing the status quo;
meaning, working toward changes in legal and policy treatments of the ayahuasca
phenomenon within UNGASS 2016 (the United Nations General Assembly Spe-
cial Session on Drugs), a major opportunity coming up. One ofthe main outcomes
of these meetings (and of the conference as a whole) was the publication of the
AYA2014 Declaration: Ayahuasca in a globalized world," This document, sup-
ported by renowned scientists, academics, lawyers, and drug policy experts, ealls
on governing authorities and drug control bodies to take the traditional and cul-
tural value of ayahuasca drinking practices worldwide into account. The Declara-
tion urges that decisions be made based on scientific evidence and human rights,
and recommends ending the legal prosecution of these practices and initiating
collaboration with representatives of the communities of people who drink aya-
huasca, facilitating efficient self-regulation models, health promotion and harm
reduction, and public educational initiatives.
The Declaration also shows that, like many NGOs working in the field of drug
policy, ICEERS is committed to developing a coherent global strategy vis-a-vis
the UN GASS 2016 and to providing a solid foundation to work for the destigrna-
tization and reduction of the legal vulnerability of legitimate practices involving
ayahuasca drinking, fostering tolerance and better understanding of the public
health implications of these practices.
Notes
Founder and Executive Director, International Center for Ethnobotanical Education,
Research & Service (ICEERS), Barcelona, Spain. Email: bendeloenen@iceers.org
2 Deputy Director, ICEERSFoundation, Barcelona,Spain. Email: oscarpares@iceers.org
3 Law, Policy & Human Rights Coordinator, ICEERS foundation, Barcelona, Spain.
Email: constanzasanchez@iceers.org
4 Article 4 of the 1961 Single Convention.
S Preamble ofthe 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs.
6 Article 32.4 of the 1971 Convention.
The first ayahuasca-relatcd case in Spain dates back to 2000, when a group of Santo
Daime members were arrested at Barajas airport. Detailed information about this case
can be found in L6pez-Pavillard & De las Casas, 2011.There were no more ayahuasca
cases in Spain until the arrest of A.Y. in 2008, which was adjudicated in 2011 (Judg-
ment Majadahonda, Spain, 2011). Compared to subsequent cases, this case presented
some peculiarities and ethical dilemmas.Among others, the accused made open adver-
tisement of the ayahuasca sessions he organized in specialized magazines (e.g., alter-
native medicine) or vegetarian restaurants, and offered discounts for minors.
8 This fact concurred with the increased security measures at airports adoptedfollowing
the terrorist attacks of September the 11 th, 2001, which included a ban on traveling
with liquids in the cabin baggagc. The media echoed this trend; see, for instance,ABC
(2006) and Libertad Digital (2006).
9 ICEERS is a charitable not-for-profit organization that was born out of the idea that
ethnobotanicals, which are understood as medicinal plants uIilized inparticular cultural
238 Benjamin K. De Loenen et al.
contexts whose effects cannot be separated from the cultural background in which the)
take place (Spinclla, 200 I) like iboga or ayahuasca - have played a quintessential
role in indigenous societies as tools to facilitate the well-being of the individual, social
bonding, and the survival of the community. Further, ICEERS understands that the
very psychoactive effects that these plants have been used for in traditional contexts
could make them important psychotherapeutic and personal development catalysts in
our globalized world, For further information, sec www.iceers.org
10 In the Spanish case, it is important to note that many ofthc acquittals have also been
due to the fact that the concentration of DMT has not been determined, or based On the
Supreme Court doctrine of shared consumption (both peculiarities of the Spanish legis-
lation on drugs). However, some judgments concluded at the same time that a) ahuasca
is not a legal substance in Spain (Judgment Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Spain, 2012).
11 See, for example, the judgment ofthe 2012 Santo Daime case in Catalonia (Judgement
Barcelona, Spain. 2012). In anotherjudgment the accused was acquitted according to
the criminal law principle in dubio pro reo, as the judge considered it was not prox'en
that the acquisition of ayahuasca was intended for trafficking and that ayahuasca could
not be considered a harmful substance since it is not included in the control schedules
(Judgment Barcelona, Spain, 20 13a).
12 In the indictment, the accused was charged with violation of Article 191, paragraph
2, of the Danish Criminal Code. All the information related to this case was directly
provided b) thc accused, with whom ICEERS had direct contact.
13 For more details of this case, see the interview with Taita Crispin Chindcy at Corrientes
Television (Argentina), available at www.youtllbe.com/watchOv~BcmQhTRB5wA
14 The Ayahuasca Defensc Fund Support Criteria are available at www.ay ahuascadefense,
C orn/i ndes.php/oUI'- Sll ppo rt-C ri terial
15 For more information about the World Ayahuasca Conference, visit the conference's
website at w\V"'.aya20 14.com/en
16 The AYA20 14 Declaration is avai lable at \\'\\w.aya20 14.com/en/aya20 14-declaration/
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12 Ayahuasca in the
English courts
Legal entanglements with
the jungle vine

Charlotte Walsh'

This chapter considers the hazy status of ayahuasca in the English legal system
through a consideration of relevant international provisions, domestic legislation,
and case law, and focusing in particular on the prosecution of self-proclaimed
shamanic practitioner Peter Aziz. The core ambiguity is that, while the psychoac-
tive component of ayahuasca, N,N-dimethyltryptaminc (DMT), is scheduled as
a Class A drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (MDA), neither ayahuasca
itself, nor the plants that are typically combined to constitute it, are listed. A cen-
tral claim of this chapter is that the confusion this generates renders prosecu-
tion for activities involving ayahuasca an abuse of process, conflicting with the
requirement for legal certainty, enshrined within Article 7 of the European Con-
vention on Human Rights (ECHR).
This chapter goes on to explore whether ayahuasca prosecutions could be
considered to breach further human rights, most notably the right to freedom of
thought, conscience, and religion, ostensibly protected by Article 9 of the ECHR.
While this provision might feasibly be engaged in such cases, it is not absolute:
manifestation of this right, for example, through sacramental use of ayahuasca,
is subject to qualification, such that it can be curtailed in the interests of pub-
lic protection. The second key contention of this chapter is that these qualifiers
are viewed as too easily engaged by the courts in cases involving ayahuasca and
other psychoactive substances in the absence of either solid evidence of harms or,
importantly, any acknowledgement of benefits.
One of the traditional uses of ayahuasca is in Amazonian shamanic ceremonies;
more recently, such usage has spread beyond the Amazon (see further Labate &
Cavnar, 20l4a). Peter Aziz - who had participated in shamanic training in vari-
ous locations around the world and was operating as such in England - supplied
paying clients with ayahuasca that he had brewed from component plants that he
had imported from South America as part of rituals aimed at advancing enlighten-
ment and personal development. He was arrested following one such ceremony
in 2008, involving 17 participants, held at a disused hotel in Somerset. Aziz was
then prosecuted and subsequently convicted by a jury at Bristol Crown Court in
2011 for producing a Class A drug (DMT) and supplying it to another, resulting in
a IS-month custodial sentence. Aziz's case represents the first (and to date only)
instance in England where the legality of ayahuasca has been tested in the courts
(Aziz, 2011; 2012).
244 Charlotte Walsh
Aziz's (unsuccessful) defense was built upon two pillars: first, that proceedings
" Ayahuasca in the English courts
against him should he stayed as an abuse of process, with the legal status of aya-
huasca so unclear as to fall short of the requirement oflegal certainty as enshrined
with Article 7 of the ECHR; second, that even if ayahuasca did fall within the
ambit of the MDA, that legislation should be read such that he was exempted from
prohibition on religious grounds, in line with Article 9 of the same. These issues
will be dealt with in tum.
Ayahuasca: shamanic plant teacher or Class A drug?
First to consider is the argument that the uncertainty surrounding the legality of
ayahuasca renders any prosecution for activities involving it in conflict with Arti-
cle 7 of the ECHR, which enshrines the traditional English common law prin-
ciple of the requirement of legal certainty. Under Article 7( 1), "no one shall be
held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did
not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the tune
when it was committed." The House of Lords case of Rimmington: Goldstein
(2005) helpfully reviews this principle, wherein Lord Bingham summarized the
law thusly:
There are two guiding principles: no one should be punished under a law
unless it is sufficiently clear and certain to enable him to know what conduct
is forbidden before he does it; and no one should be punished for any act
which was not clearly and ascertainably punishable when the act was done.
(Rimmington, Goldstein, 2005, para. 482)
Does the law surrounding ayahuasca comply with these principles? This ques-
tion shall be addressed first of all by exploring its legal status on the international
stage, before honing in on domestic legislation. England, like most countries in
the world, is a signatory to the three drug conventions that constitute the system
of global prohibition: the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971
Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 Convention Against Illicit
Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. Ayahuasca itself is not
included within these conventions; further, this psychoactive brew is typically
constituted by combining two plants, Banisteriopsis caapi and Psvchotria viridis,
and these plants are also not listed. (Indeed, the only plants to be specifically
prohibited by the conventions are cannabis, coca, and the opium poppy.) DMT,
the psychoactive component of ayahuasca found in Psychotria viridis, is listed
within the 1971 Convention. Nonetheless, the official commentary on this makes
it clear that:
The inclusion in Schedule I of the active principle of a substance does not
mean that the substance itself is also included therein if it is a substance
clearly distinct from the substance constituting the active principle ... Neither
the crown (fruit, mescal button) of the Peyote cactus nor the roots of the
plant Mimosa hostilis nor Psilocybe mushrooms themselves are included in
245
Schedule 1, but only their respective active principles, mescaline, DMT and
psilocybine [sic].
(Commentary on the Convention on
Psychotropic Substances, 1971)
By extension, Psychotria viridis does not fall within the reach ofthe drug con-
ventions. Furthermore, when, in 2001, the International Narcotics Control Board
(INCB), the body responsible for enforcing the conventions, was specifically
asked about the legal status of ayahuasca, a representative responded that:
No plants (natural materials) containing DMT are at present controlled under
the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Consequently, prepara-
tions (e.g., decoctions) made of these plants, including ayahuasca, are not
under international control and, therefore, not subject to any ofthe articles of
the 1971 Convention.
(Schaepe, 2001)
It is worth noting that the INCB has since proposed that national governments
should consider controlling certain psychoactive plants, including those used in
preparing ayahuasca (INCB, 2011; see also Tupper & Labate, 2012).
In spite of a lack of international control of either ayahuasca or the plants that
it is made from, it is open to states at a national level to decide whether they want
to prohibit them independently; this issue has been resolved differently on a state-
by-state basis (see Labate & Jungabcrle, 2011). Focusing on the legal status of
ayahuasca in England, the primary piece of domestic drugs legislation is the 1971
MDA, listing substances subject to criminal law controls in Schedule 2. Mirror-
ing the situation on the international stage, ayahuasca itself Banisteriopsis caapi,
and Psychotria viridis are not included in Schedule 2; however, DMT is named
within Part 1 of Schedule 2, rendering it a Class A drug, considered to be the most
dangerous in the Act's three-tier classification system.
Thus, where DMT has been chemically synthesized, it falls squarely within the
ambit of the Act; however, where it occurs naturally, the situation is more convo-
luted. The question then becomes: does it suffice, in terms of culpability under the
MDA, to simply be in possession of a plant embodying a scheduled constituent,
in this case Psychotria viridis'l The answer to this question is complicated yet
further by Schedule 2, Part 1, paragraph 5, which provides that any "preparation"
containing a substance specified in Part 1 is also to be treated as a Class A drug.
The issue that now arises is whether or not psycho active plants represent a "prepa-
ration." The Act is unhelpfully silent on the meaning of "preparation"; however,
case law has provided an answerto this question, up to a point, in the case o f DPP
v Goodchild (1978), concerning possession of cannabis.
Cannabis is a Class B drug under the MDA; however, its more potent deriva-
tive, cannabinol, was, at the time of Goodchild's arrest, contained within Class A.
Goodchild, having been found in possession of cannabis, was indicted not only
246 Charlotte Walsh
for possession of a drug of Class B, but also of Class A, given that his cannabis
naturally contained cannabinol. In quashing Goodchild's conviction for the higher
offense, Lord Diplock commented:
There are some listed drugs which, although they can he synthesized, also
occur in the natural state in plants, fungi or animals, and these include some
of the most used narcotic drugs. It would not in my view be a natural use of
language to say, for instance, that a person was in possession of morphine
when what he really had was opium poppy-straw from which whatever mor-
phine content there might be in it had not yet been separated; nor do 1think it
would be an apt use oflanguage to describe poppy-straw as a "preparation or
other product" containing morphine, since this expression is inappropriate to
something that is found innaturc as distinct from something that is manmade.
(DPP v Goodchild, 1978, para. 582)
Thus, by extension, Goodchild confirms that simply being in possession of Psy-
chotria viridis is not enough to bring one within the ambit ofthe MDA. But what of
situations where such plants have themselves been prepared in some way: by being
brewed into a decoction, for instance, as per ayahuasca'? Under the international
regime, as discussed above, this would also not appear to be problematic; however,
the domestic situation is complicated by thc question of whether this might consti-
tute a "preparation," bringing the brew within the ambit of paragraph 5.
To assist with understanding this provision - and to help illustrate the legal
uncertainty present in Aziz's case - parallels can be drawn with earlier case law
conceming magic mushrooms. In a situation akin to that currently surround-
ing ayahuasca, prior to 2004 - and the passage of section 21 of the Drugs Act
2005 - magic mushrooms were not scheduled within the MDA, although their
active constituents, psilocin and psilocybin, were; thus, the majority of prosecu-
tions of myconauts focused on interpretation of what constitutes a "preparation."
The leading authority was Stevens (1981), who had been found in possession of
powdered magic mushrooms. The court found that the term "preparation" should
be interpreted so as to be given its ordinary, natural meaning, rather than a techni-
cal, pharmaceutical one:
What was needed in order that these mushrooms should be prepared is that
they ceased to be in their natural growing state and had in some way been
altered by the hand of man [sic] to make them into a condition in which they
could be used.
(Stevens,1981)
The case of Mardle & Evons (2004) - involving the prosecution of defendants
for selling fresh magic mushrooms from their shop - provides a pertinent illustra-
tion of an attempt to apply these provisions and principles in practice. Mardle and
Evans maintained that they had done nothing wrong: before starting to sell these
fungi, they had contacted the Home Office to enquire about their legal status and,
Ayahuasca in the English courts 247
as a result of that communication, were of the opinion that fresh magic mush-
rooms did not constitute a "preparation"; however, they were being prosecuted
on the grounds that their refrigeration of the mushrooms brought them within the
MDA. The defcnse applied to stay the indictment as an abuse of the process of
the court, due to the law being so unclear as to breach the requirement of legal
certainty, engaging Article 7.
The dcfenses case for abuse of process revolved around the mixed messages
being communicated by the state: first, customs agents on the border had fre-
quently inspected cartons of mushrooms that Mardle and Evans were importing
and allowed them through; second, they had in their possession Home Office
circulars that stated the legality of selling fresh mushrooms. With reference to
these, the presiding judge, Miss Recorder Miskin, noted that, while the later cir-
cular did express reservations about whether refrigerating mushrooms constituted
a "preparation":
1 take the view, the Home Office circular ... is a fudge, to put not too fine a
point on it. They are being ultra cautious maybe, but I do not think the lan-
guage is very happy, because everybody is entitled to know exactly what is
and what is not a criminal offence.
(Mardle v Evans, 2004)
Third, Mardle and Evans were paying value-added tax (VAT)on their mushroom
sales: there is a powerful argument that, ifthe state collects such a tax, they can be
taken not to consider related commerce to be illegal.
In summation, Miss Recorder Miskin agreed with the defense, concluding:
It seems to me that, following what Lord Diplock said in Goodchild, that
somebody should not be jailed on an ambiguity ... I think that proceeding
now with this prosecution in this way is an abuse of the process ofthis court.
tMardle v Evans, 2004)
Two days after the collapse of this trial, clause 21 was added to the Drugs Bill
2005. Now enacted, this provision amends Part 1 of Schedule 2 to include "fungus
(of any kind) that contains the drug Psilocin": the effect is that magic mushrooms
themselves became Class A drugs (see Walsh, 2005). However, in applying these
principles to ayahuasca, the legal uncertainty that led to this (and other) pre-Drug
Act 2005 magic mushroom cases being thrown out of court as an abuse of process
remains, which is why these cases are still so important.
Clear parallels can be seen with the case of Aziz, who argued that he believed
ayahuasca to be legal, and that he had received a letter from the Home Office to
that effect (Aziz, 2012). However, the trial judge, Judge Roach, did not appear
much interested in hearing evidence on whether ayahuasca represented a "prepa-
ration," treating it rather as though it were in and of itseifDMT. It is of further
concem that the preparation of ayahuasca was deemed by Judge Roach, unprec-
edentedly, to amount not just to being in possession ofDMT, but also to constitute
248 Charlotte Walsh
the more serious offense of Class A drug production under section 4 of the MDA,
regardless of the fact that no alteration of the chemical makeup of the drug had
occurred. In other words, Aziz was treated as a chemist for having made the brew.
What can be seen throughout this trial is a clash of narratives concerning what
ayahuasca is: in Aziz's view, a shamanic healing potion, with spiritual properties;
in the eyes of the court, a dangerous Class A drug (for similar issues regarding
Canada, see Sheiner, Chapter 4 in this volume). Those with power have the privi-
lege of making their labels stick.
Ayahuasca and religious freedom
Moving on to consider Aziz's second line of defense: namely, that even were aya-
huasca to be considered to fall within the purview of the MDA, hc should be
exempted from this prohibition on the grounds of religious freedom. More spe-
cifically, Aziz contended that section 28 of the MDA - which provides that lack
of knowledge can be a defense to drug prosecutions in certain circumstances -
should be read down by the court to render it compatible with Article 9, creating a
religious exemption from prohibition. The primary question that arises is whether
or not shamanism - especially a transplanted Westernized version of such, a New
Age variation - would be deemed to constitute a religion in the English courts.
The leading case on how such issues are determined is R (Williamson & Others) v
Secretary ofState for Education and Employment (2005), in which Lord Nicholls
explained:
It is necessary first to clarify the court's role in identifying a religious belief
calling for protection under Article 9. When the genuineness of a claimant's
professed bel ief is an issue in the proceedings the court will inquire into and
decide this issue as a question of fact. This is a limited inquiry. The court is
concerned to ensure an assertion of religious bel ief is made in good faith ...
B ut, emphatically, it is not for the court to embark on an inquiry into the
asserted belief andjudge its "validity" by some objective standard ... Each
individual is at liberty to hold his [sic] own religious beliefs, however irra-
tional or inconsistent they may seem to some, however surprising.
(R (Williamson & Others) r Secretary ofState for
Education and Employment, 2005, para. 22)
Thus, a broad meaning is accorded as regards to what constitutes a religion
under Article 9, with, for instance, druidism being recognized as such in the case
of Pendragon (1999); by extension, including something as potentially "surpris-
ing" to the courts as nee-shamanism within the ambit of this provision should
prove unproblematic. Indeed, as Lord Nicholls proceeded to elucidate, it is not
necessary for an individual's beliefs to be even vaguely religious to attract the
protections of Article 9: "The atheist, the agnostic, and the skeptic are as much
entitled to freedom to hold and manifest their beliefs as the theist. These beliefs
Ayahuasca in the English courts 249
are placed on an equal footing for the purpose of this guaranteed freedom"
(R (Williamson & Others) v Secretary of State for Education and Employment,
2005, para. 24).
This loose-limbed style deftly sidesteps the need to engage in any questionable
doctrinal attempts to delineate what does and does not constitute a religion, and
avoids discrimination against those whose beliefs are more loosely spiritual and those
who are irreligious. Nevertheless, such liberalism may become circumscribed when
it comes to the question of whether or not Article 9 protects an individual's right to
manifest one's religious beliefs, such as, for instance, by drinking ayahuasca: while
the protection of freedom ofreligion is absolute, under Artiele 9(2), freedom to mani-
fest one's religion or belief may be curtailed if this is deemed "necessary in a demo-
cratic society in the interests ofpublic safety, for the protection ofpublic order, health
or morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
The most pertinent precedent on this issue is the case of Taylor (200 I), involving
Rastafarian cannabis use (see further Ashworth & Underhill, 2002; Gibson, 20 I0;
Bone, 2014). Taylor was arrested entering a Rastafarian temple with around 90
grams of cannabis. He admitted that he was intending to distribute this to others
as part of a regular act of worship: smoking cannabis while studying the Bible is
customary for some Rastas, who believe this pursuit brings them closer to JOO. At
trial, the prosecution had "conceded" that Rastafarianism is a religion and had (per-
haps surprisingly) not contested that Taylor was supplying cannabis for religious
purposes; thus, Article 9 was clearly engaged. However, Article 9(2) was taken
to override Taylor's right to manifest his religion through supplying and smoking
cannabis, in the name of the protection of public order, health, and morals.
In arguing that prohibition was a necessary and proportionate response, as
required by Article 9(2), the courts relied heavily upon England's obligations as a
signatory of the drug conventions, whose very existence was taken as command-
ing evidence of international agreement that there was a need for a categorical
ban on such substances for the sake of the public good. Taylor applied for leave
to appeal on the basis that the conventions should not have been treated as deter-
minative that Article 9(2) was engaged; and that, rather, an evidence-informed
exercise, balancing the potentia] risks associated with cannabis against its impor-
tance in the Rastafarian religion, should have been conducted. Leave to appeal
was refused, with the judges viewing the question of whether defenses should be
created for religious usage as a political rather than ajudicial matter. It is submit-
ted that this is an inappropriate abdication ofresponsibility, as it is for the courts
to interpret legislation so as to be compatible with the ECHR, thus leaving scope
for them to accord religious exemptions.
Again, the existence of the drug conventions was viewed as paramount in the
decision-making by the Court of Appeal. How legally persuasive is this kowtow-
ing to the conventions? It is worth noting that the conventions explicitly allow
exemption from enforcement on human rights grounds: Article 36(1)(a) of the
1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs contains the words "subject to its
constitutional limitations," to be utilized when prohibitions unduly conflict with
250 Charlotte Walsh
issues of domestic importance - such as, feasibly, protection of Article 9 rights
to religious freedom under the ECHR, as was sought in Taylor. What is more,
the conventions have been repeatedly breached by other nations with impunity,
not least in the United States - traditionally the spiritual and material home of
prohibition - most notably with the recent legalization of recreational cannabis
use in Washington, Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington DC. TI1lS IS not to
advocate the transgression of international conventions, but rather to draw atten-
tion to the fact that the drug conventions are not inscribed on tablets of stone and
could be reformed to more easily accommodate religious exemptions, or even
abandoned in their entirety should public sentiment shift in that direction (see
Room & McKav, 2012; Feilding, 2014).
Even withou; anv such reform of the conventions, exemptions in the name of
religious lreedoml;ave been made - again, notably, in the U.S. - thus, the restric-
tiveness of the global regime in this realm should not be overplayed. Significantly,
exemptions have been given in eases specifically involving avahuasco in the con-
text of its use as a sacrament by certain churches with roots in Brazil (see further
Feeney and Labate, 2014). Both the Santo Daime (Church a/the Holy Light of the
Queen v. Mukasey, 2009) and the Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) t Gonzales v. 0 Centra
Espirita Beneficiente Unuio do Vegetal, 2006) have been alforded pernussron to
drink their psychedelic sacrament: while the U.S. courts took the view that aya-
huasca was a scheduled substance, the right to religious freedom was here seen to
trump the prohibitive ideal (see Labate & Feeney, 2012). . status of ayahuasca, this is a moot point. The courts are then supposed to consider
Back in Europe - and specifically relying on the ECHR - a representative of the
Santo Daime church in Holland successfully argued that Article 9 was engaged
and protected her church's right to use ayahuasca iFijneman, 2001). Significantly,
the Dutcb prosecution was unsuccessful in retaliating that Article 9(2) should
override this exemption; public health was seen to be the most pertinent of the
qualifiers - yet, even here, the prosecution was found to have faded to show how
it was threatened by ayahuasca use in such a ritualized setting:
The Court is of the opinion that in the defendant's case the statutory prohibi-
tion against possessing, supplying and distributing DMT, which is based on
the Convention, and as a result of which she cannot receive the most impor-
tant sacrament of her religion during the worship service, constitutes such a
serious infringement of her religious freedom that this infringement cannot
be regarded as being necessary in a democratic society.
(Fijneman, 2001)
Unfortunately, as has been seen, this line ofthinking is not mirrored in the Eng-
lish courts, with the trial judge in Aziz's case following Taylor. Accordingly, the
mere fact of ayahuasca's inclusion in the MDA (itself, a highly questionable conclu-
sion) was taken at face value as proving that it constituted a threat to public health
and thereby engaged the qualifiers under Article 9(2). This reductionist approach is
particularly problematic given the sustained criticism that the MDA has attracted ill
recent years in terms of how accurately it reflects risks of drug harms.
Ayahuasca in the English courts 251
Most notably, a group of scientists have synthesized the available relevant lit-
erature and given a score to potential harms from different drugs (Nutt, King, &
Phillips, 2010); while still flawed - in that undue warrant is perhaps paid to set and
setting when assessing drug risks (see Coomber & South, 2014) - this nonethe-
less represents the most reliable such matrix to date. Nutt's grid reveals the U.K. 's
drug classification system to be composed of pseudo scientific divisions not borne
out by empirical evidence, with an almost perversely inverse correlation between
risk of harm and positioning within the MD A, as exemplified by the fact that the
clear front-runner in terms of harm, both personal and social, is the legally and
culturally sanctioned substance, alcohol, curiously exempt from criminalization.
While neither ayahuasca nor DMT are included within this analysis, as a com-
parator, it is notable that the Class A psychedelic LSD is down at the bottom end
of the scale, with harm to others deemed practically nonexistent, and harm to self,
minimal.
In Aziz's case, it was categorically stated that if a religious group, however well
established, adopts as part of its rituals a deliberately unlawful act, the fact that
this is part of a religious ceremony does not provide it with legal authorization.
It is submitted that this approach accords undue consideration to the conditions
that need to be satisfied in order to justifiably excuse a breach using Article 9(2),
which will now be explored in greater depth. First, there is the requirement that
the measure taken is "prescribed by law": given the uncertainty regarding the legal
whether the limitation is necessary in a democratic society; this requires balanc-
ing the severity of the restriction placed on the individual against the importance
of public interest, with only the perceived minimum interference with the right
permitted, viewed as necessary to secure society's legitimate aim.
It is of crucial importance to emphasize that the lawful utilization of ayahuasca
is not merely restricted by the drug laws if no exemptions under Article 9 are
carved out, but is, rather, entirely forbidden. This is significant because, in a
number of (non-drug-related) cases brought before the courts, where individuals
successfully argued that their Article 9 rights had been breached, the offending
practices were nonetheless allowed on the basis that those concerned could mani-
fest their beliefs elsewhere. For instance, in Regina (SB) v Governors ofDenbigh
High School (2006), the fact that one school prohibited a Muslim girl from wear-
ing the full jilbab was seen as acceptable, given that she had the choice to attend
another educational establishment where this was permissible. No such alterna-
tives are offered to those who wish to take ayahuasca in accordance with their reli-
gious beliefs, even in private; thus, their ability to manifest their belief becomes
impossible without breaking the law.
Finally, in applying Article 9(2), the courts should consider if the aim of the
limitation is legitimate, and that it fits one of the expressed headings of that provi-
sion. Whether or not the goals of drug prohibition are legitimate is disputed, but
not what is being debated here. What is being articulated is a concern with the ease
with which the qualifiers can seemingly be engaged in practice in cases involving
psychoactive substances, with supposed harms not empirically demonstrated in
252 Charlotte Walsh
the courtroom; this fatally undermines the protections Article 9 ostensibly affords.
Where human rights and freedoms arc being curtailed, the burden of proof regard-
ing harm to others should be on the state to avoid these protections being hol-
lowed out. That the ECHR provides substantial, rather than merely rhetorical,
protection of human rights is of great importance for minority groups, those that
require shielding from the tendency of democracies without such safeguards to
veer toward mob rule: "Rights by their nature are designed to trump consequcn-
tialist, utilitarian or majoritarian considerations" (Beck, 2008, p. 224). Much finer
distinctions need to be drawn between the different types of controlled drugs and
the ways in which they are being taken when assessing whether or not they actu-
ally represent a threat to public safety; in short, a far more parsimonious and
evidence-based approach is advocated.
Furthermore, undertaking a proper balancing exercise when applying Article
9(2) would involve weighing any risk of harms against the potential benefits of
ayahuasca, largely absent from the language of the courts. It should not be deemed
necessary for users of ayahuasca in a religious setting to prove that their rituals are
risk-free in order to avoid the clutches ofthc qualifiers (for, like most, ifnot all,
things, they are not), but rather for the state to prove that the harms to society actu-
ally do outweigh the benefits. This assessment needs to take account of the fact
that, for many people, ayahuasca is a tool that has helped them with, for instance,
issues of spiritual and emotional healing, or simply their personal evolution; it can
catalyze profound effects on people's consciousness, perhaps even shifting their
ontological view (see Tupper, 2008). Considering the specific individuals who
had been supplied ayahuasca by Aziz, nobody reported halm and one appeared as
a witness at trial to testify that the experience had helped him to "sort his life out"
(see "Shaman's potion," 2011).
While the notion or employing a coolly rational empirical calculation when
deciding whether the qualifications should be engaged sounds more "objectively"
clinical an exercise in theory than it could ever actually be in our subjective reality-
with decisions regarding what is measured, what weight is accorded to any given
harm or benefit, and so on, indelibly infused by value judgments - a more valiant
attempt at balance is certainly warranted. Without this, what we arc really dealing
with here is legal "moralism": that notorious conclusion in search of an argument,
ironically rooted in religious puritanism. Such moralizing was seemingly present
in Judge Roach's comments: "You knew it was wrong to supply DMT. You knew
it was wrong to make DMT, but you did it anyway" (A:::i:::, 20 11). To clarify, Aziz
was not making DMT, he was making ayahuasca, and the law was not sufficiently
clear for him to definitively know that this - even in a legal sense - was wrong.
Morally, Aziz did not believe that what he was doing was wrong. It is notable that,
on sentencing him to 15 months' imprisonment, Judge Roach expressed his regret
at feeling obliged to pass a custodial sentence, remarking that this case was unique
and that he accepted wholeheartedly that Aziz had helped a lot ofpeopJc, alluding
to his neoshamanic role (A:::i:::, 2011).
Aziz was refused leave to appeal his conviction by the Court of Appeal (Aziz;
2012). Commenting upon the reasons for this decision, in relation to the issue of
Ayahuasca in the English courts 253
what constitutes a "preparation" and what amounts to production, Lord Justice
Hughes declared that he had
.. , not the slightest doubt that making an infusion out of the B-Caapi and the
Chacruna [the popular name for Psychotria viridisi amounted to producing
by making a "preparation." It did in any ordinary language and it did in law.
It is not a question of altering the chemical make-up ofDMT. It is a question
of putting it into a form in which it can be consumed, which is in any ordinary
language preparation.
(Aziz, 2012, para. 4)
Thus, this worrying precedent is concretized: ayahuasca is treated as a pro-
hibited substance by the courts, and any individuals prosecuted for activities
involving it in the future are now likely to be charged with production alongside
whatever other offenses under the MDA are deemed to be relevant. The Court of
Appeal was equally dismissive of Aziz's human rights claims, affirming Judge
Roach's reasoning as regards the engagement of Article 9(2), legitimizing his
questionable conflation of this issue with whether or not a substance is present in
the MDA (see Fortson, 2012).
The mysterious disappearing case of the Santo Daime
In 20 10, the police seized boxes containing ayahuasca and arrested seven mem-
bers of the English Santo Daime (see Freedman & Liddell, 2012). One of those
arrested, a church leader, Adrian Freedman, was charged with conspiracy to evade
the prohibition on DMT (and, later, for importation) and released on conditional
bail pending trial, with the conditions including curfew, surrender of his passport,
and a ban on contacting certain people; Jane Liddell, another Santo Daime leader,
was also later charged. These conditions of bail are worthy of note: even in cases
that ultimately do not reach court, defendants have suffered invasions of their
privacy, crippling financial costs, demands on their time, and severe restrictions
on their liberty, not to mention the enormous stress typically suffered when one is
subjected to criminal prosecution, with one's future liberty at risk.
During their two years on bail, Freedman and Liddell, along with their defense
team, built a strategy mirroring the arguments made in Aziz: namely, ambiguity
regarding the legal status of ayahuasca, rendering their prosecution an abuse of
process, conflicting with Article 7 of the ECHR, alongside potential breach of
Article 9, with its protection of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion -
given that, as noted above, ayahuasca is the central sacrament in the Santo Daime
religion. Again, the Santo Dairnc's positive discourse surrounding ayahuasca
conflicted strongly with that of the authorities, exemplified by the fact that the
investigation against them was being carried out by the Serious Crimes and Anti-
Terrorist Group.
In October 2012, the prosecution against Freedman and Liddell was uncer-
emoniously dropped, with the only explanation given by the Crown Prosecution
254 Charlotte Walsh
Service being insufficient evidence for there to be a realistic prospect of convic-
tion, a somewhat surprising decision given the material facts of the case. The
Santo Daime's barristers' perception of this is that, following their disclosure
requests in relation to the approach of customs' officials to prior importations -
namely, levying duty on thelll- the Crown reconsidered their case and eventually
offered no evidence (perhaps fearing that the case would be thrown out of court as
an abuse of process, as with previous magic mushroom cases) ("Doughty Street
Barristers win," 2012).
While this outcome is to be welcomed at the individual level, the situation
regarding the legality of religious activities involving ayahuasca in England
remains unclear. In their letter to the defendants, the Crown Prosecution Service
wrote that: "It is not accepted that the N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) found in the
tea falls outside prohibition imposed by the Misuse of Drugs Act 197 l ' (as quoted
in Freedman & Liddell, 2012). This clarifies precisely nothing: not only is it not
legally binding, but, further, the legality of the DMT found in the tea was never in
question; rather, the ambiguity surrounds the tea itself.
In the abandonment of this prosecution, the chance of successfully arguing for a
religious exemption for sacramental use of ayahuasca was denied the Santo Daime,
who are left in limbo as regards whether importing, supplying, and being in posses-
sion of ayahuasca - necessary for them to carry out their religious ceremonies - will
leave them subject to further proceedings. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility
that they may have been successful in such a claim, given the (nonbinding) prec-
edents of analogous exemptions in other jurisdictions. Although the English fore-
runners are admittedly less encouraging, use of ayahuasca by the Santo Daime can
be seen to be distinguishable from that in Aziz, as their practices more closely con-
form to popular conceptions regarding what a religion and its manifestations might
look like, rendering the courts perhaps less likely to engage the qualifiers. While
the precedent set in Taylor cannot be differentiated so easily, a crucial distinction is
that, while cannabis is specifically listed within the international drug conven tions
upon which the courts relied so heavily in refusing to create a religious exemption,
ayahuasca and its constituent plants are not.
Ayahuasca as a therapeutic tool
While the issue of the right to use ayahuasca therapeutically as an exemption
from prohibition has not been tested in the courts, this could foreseeably happen
in the future, given increasing acknowledgment of its worth in this realm in a
number of different contexts (see Labate & Cavnar, 20 14b). Indeed, as the above
consideration of shamanistic use of ayahuasca renders transparent, there is no
necessary clear division between religious and therapeutic uses; however, they do
potentially engage different provisions of the ECHR, so arguing for a therapeu-
tic exemption may be a wise strategy if the (contested) perspective is taken that
Aziz and Taylor eradicate the possibility of a successful challenge to the MDA on
religious grounds. Some gauge of how the courts might deal with any such claim
Ayahuasca in the English courts 255
can be gleaned through examination of analogous cases, where the right to smoke
cannabis as a therapeutic exemption from drug prohibition was argued.
The Court of Appeal heard a group of such cases conjunctly in Quayle and
others (2005; see further Ormerod, 2006). The medical conditions that the indi-
viduals involved were attempting to alleviate by smoking cannabis were broad
in range, from phantom-limb pain to pancreatitis. The prohibition of their thera-
peutic use of cannabis was challenged as conflicting with Article 8 of the ECHR;
namely, that "everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life."
In dismissing the appeals, the court pointed to the qualifications found in Article
8(2), mirroring those present in Article 9(2). The judicial reasoning in these cases
reflected a clear desire to uphold both the prohibitive scheme of drug control and
the power of the medical establishment to determine which drugs can and cannot
be used for therapeutic purposes.
Similar issues were revisited a few years later in the case ofAltham (2006). Fol-
lowing a serious road accident, Altham had lost one of his hips. Unable to find legiti-
mized pain relief, he gained respite through smoking cannabis. Although given an
absolute discharge - perhaps a sign of the law falling out of step with the court's
ethics? - Altham brought an appeal on principle, resting upon whether his Article
3 rights had been breached; namely, that "no one shall be subjected to torture or to
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." It is notable that Article 3 is an
absolute right: if it is accepted that it is engaged, there are no qualifiers appended to it.
It was advanced by Altham that he had suffered "degrading treatment," because
the only route by which he believed he could avoid pain had been blockaded
by the MDA, necessitating that he break the law, thus risking any ensuing pun-
ishment. Altham argued that, to avoid conflict with Article 3, the MDA should
be read as if it were subject to the defense of medical necessity. The court was
unimpressed with his logic: "In our judgment the state has done nothing to sub-
ject the appellant to either inhuman or degrading treatment and thereby engage
the absolute prohibition in Article 3." There was no support for stretching the
ambit of Article 3 to render the state liable for refusing to permit those in pain to
take whatever steps they felt were necessary to alleviate it, regardless of the fact
that such measures may breach the criminal law. Whether one agrees with this
decision or not, it is consistent with the line of jurisprudence on Article 3, which
makes it clear that, while Article 3 embodies a positive obligation to prevent ill
treatment, it does not go so far as to require that the state provide - or legalize -
desired remedies to deal with those injuries or illnesses that arise from accidental
or natural causes (see Ashworth, 2006).
It is unfortunate that the existence of these precedents probably forecloses the
possibility of the creation of therapeutic exemptions from prohibition for aya-
huasca. It is also worth cautioning that any future defendants who try to argue for
such - particularly if they are involved in supply rather than simple possession-
risk attracting the ire of both the courts and the media for quackery: the bold claim
by Aziz that ayahuasca could cure cancer was (perhaps rightly) wielded against
him both at trial and in the press (Morris, 2011). Indeed, the background to Aziz's
 f
256 Charlotte Walsh
arrest was that a doctor went undercover to one of his ceremonies, posing as a
cancer patient, while secretly recording proceedings Jar a television documentary,
with a view to exposing Aziz's practices and the assertions that he was mak-
ing ("Shaman Aziz jailed," 2011). Accordingly, Aziz's bail conditions prohibited
him from performing any spiritual or healing ceremonies, or from providing plant
substanccs of any kind; again, these bail conditions arc worth noting, as they
effectively prevented him from earning a living for the three and a half years that
he was on bail awaiting trial (Aziz, 2012).
Thus, an undercurrent to the Aziz case is a playing-out of the clash between
Western biomedicine and alternative therapies. In the words of'Feeney and Labate:
Plant preparations like ayahuasca ... arc used therapeutically in specific cul-
tural contexts to treat both physical and spiritual illnesses. Such remedies
have value and application within particular cultural settings, but are not
recognized as legitimate by "modem" medicine, with its rcductionist and
mechanistic approach to medicine and its Cartesian understanding of health
and well-being.
(Feency & Labate, 2014, p. 124)
The likelihood of therapeutic legitimacy being accorded is reduced yet further
where the contextual setting is a disused hotel in Weston-super-Mare, with money
exchanging hands, as was the case with Aziz.
Ayahuasca and cognitive liberty
Although it is unlikely to be legally persuasive, it is worth noting before conclud-
ing that there is a principled case to be made that the prohibition of ayahuasca in
any context breaches the Article 9 protection of freedom of thought, of cognitive
liberty:
The right to control one's own consciousness is the quintessence of freedom.
If freedom is to mean anything, it must mean that each person has an invio-
lable right to think for him or herself. It must mean, at a minimum, that each
person is free to direct one's own consciousness; one's own underlying men-
tal processes, and one's beliefs, opinions, and world view. This is self-evident
and axiomatic.
(Boire, 2000, p. 13)
Whether people are imbibing ayahuasca for religious, therapeutic, or mind-
expanding purposes - or, indeed, simply for pleasure - is rarely clear-cut when it
comes to motivation. Further, given that the brew often serves to destroy such artifi-
cial boundaries, dissolving conceptual walls, the ensuing experience is also unlikely
to be easy to categorize. Due to this blurring between the sacred and the profane,
and the inevitable ensuing arbitrariness involved in protecting some such rituals and
not others, there is a strong argument for a need to move beyond simply seeking
Ayahuasca in the English courts 257
exemptions from drug prohibition in the name ofreified constructs, such as religious
freedom or therapeutic usefulness; rather, there should be a broader right to drink
ayahuasca as an aspect of cognitive liberty. Indeed, whether or not it is believed that
individuals should have to "justify" their ayahuasca use on any grounds is bound up
with one's view of where the line should properly be drawn between the individual
and the state; a line, it is suggested, that drug prohibition in toto - though perhaps
most notably of psychoactive plants - unjustifiably crosses (see Walsh, 2014).
This line of argument has been tested (perhaps unsurprisingly, unsuccessfully) in
relation to psychedelic drugs more generally in the case of Hardison (2005; 2006).
Psychedelic chemist Casey Hardison argued that prohibiting him from producing
and consuming such molecules prevented him from accessing and sharing impor-
tant alternative mind states - with ingestion of these substances being the neces-
sary precursor to particular styles of thinking and ways of seeing the world - thus
impinging upon his and others' cognitive liberty. This is (perhaps unjustly) viewed
as a radical position, the acceptance of which is arguably political and beyond the
scope of the courts, given that this would ultimately fatally undermine the prohibi-
tive regime; as such, it is far less likely to gain juridical acknowledgment than pleas
for narrower religious or therapeutic exemptions, themselves far from assured.
Concluding remarks
The trial of Peter Aziz was disappointing on a number of grounds, not least the
fact that it went ahead at all, rather than being dismissed as an abuse of process,
given the uncertainty surrounding the legal status of ayahuasca and ensuing con-
cerns about compliance with Article 7 of the ECHR. In Judge Roach's cursory
examination of these issues at trial, ayahuasca was conflated with DMT; further,
in addition to the brew being viewed as a "preparation," bringing it within the aus-
pices ofthe MDA, the mere making of it was seen to amount to a section 4 offense
of production. Aziz's claim that his prosecution breached his Article 9 right to
freedom of religion was given similarly short shrift, with the court finding that,
even were this right engaged, the qualifiers in Article 9(2) would automatically
be activated by virtue of the fact that ayahuasca is controlled by the MDA (itself
contestable). These conclusions were affirmed by the Court of Appeal upon refus-
ing Aziz leave to appeal: accordingly, there is now a precedent that ayahuasca is
to be treated as a Class A drug in England.
Religious exemptions for use of ayahuasca in a more institutionalized setting,
such as by the Santo Daime, or indeed for any controlled substance, appear increas-
ingly unlikely, given the courts' circular view on the relationship between the MDA
and Article 9; namely, that if a substance being used as a sacrament is included
within the MDA as a controlled drug, then, even if the right to manifest one s reli-
gious beliefs under Article 9 is seen to be engaged, the qualifiers to this right under
Article 9(2) (that effectively disallow it) are legitimately activated simply by virtue
ofthe sacrament being listed as a controlled drug. It is submitted that this perspec-
tive gives insufficient weight to human rights, and that, instead, an individualized,
evidence-based approach should be deployed by the courts in deciding whether or
 r
258 Charlotte Walsh
not Article 9(2) is engaged, with the burden of proof being on the prosecution to
demonstrate that the harms of ayahuasca outweigh its benefits, as per the approach
in the Netherlands. In reality, the likelihood of the adoption of such a stance in Eng-
land seems increasingly remote: events surrounding the abandoned prosecution of
the Santo Daime church could be (adm ittedly entirely spcculatively) read as sug-
gesting that the authorities decided to keep this stronger case out of court, perhaps
to avoid the risk of exemptions under Article 9 being afforded. It seems equally
unpromising that any future defendants who attempted to argue for a therapeu-
tic exemption would be successful; accordingly, the prospect of exceptions being
extended to those wishing to imbibe ayahuasca in the name of cognitive liberty, or
simply because they want to, seems little more than a pipe dream.
Note
Lecturer in Law at the School of Law, University of Leicester, Leicester, England. Email:
Charlotte. Wa Ish@le.ac.uk
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Aziz (2011) Bristol Crown Court, unreported.
Aziz (2012) EWCA Crim 1063.
Church ofthe Holy Light ofthe Queen v Mukasey (2009) 615 F. Supp, 2d 1210 D. Or.
DPP v Goodchild (J 978) I WLR 578.
260 Charlotte Walsh
Fijneman (200 I) District Court of Amsterdam, Case number: 13/067455-99 21.
Rimmington: Goldstein (2005) lJKHL 63.
Gonzales v. 0 Centro Espiria Beneficiente Unido do Vegetal (2006) 546 lJ.S. 418.
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Mardle and Evans (2004) Gloucester Crown Court, unreported.
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T
Index
abuse of process 13, 243-4, 247,
253-4,257
Acacia (wattle) 149-51
adventure tourism 209, 211
agency-structure dynamic 22
alterity 79, 83-7, 94-5
alternative religious networks 63-4
Alto Santo 59-60,101
Amazon, Peruvian see Peruvian Amazon
Amazonia: ayahuasca entrepreneurism
205-6; ayahuasca tourism 204-5;
ayahuasca use 3-4; colonial
domination 4- 5; commodification of
ayahuasca 186; cultural ideology 132;
displacement of indigenous societies
4; drug tourism 158; economic booms
166; economic collapse 58; ecotourism
204; entrepreneurism 203, 205;
rubber-tapping industry 4, 58; tourism
205, 208; see also Brazil; Peruvian
Amazon
Amazonian shamanism 132; cosmology
and 132; cultural idealism and 124-5,
137; healing and 133-4; moral
ambiguity of 132; sorcery and 132-3;
spiritual power of 131
AMETRA 2001 207
Anadenanthera peregrina (yopo)
beans 154
anahuasca 148
Arawakan language group 4
artworks 169- 70
assault sorcery 173-4
aussiewaska 144, 149
Australia: ayahuasca analogues
149-50; ayahuasca neoshamanism
123-35,137-8; cultural critique
of 123-5,129-30,135,137-8;
dimethyltryptamine (DMT) users 145,
159; ecstatic healing 123; ethnobotany
11,149,151
AYA2014 2, 8, 236-7
ayahuasca: availability of 69, 80-1, 189,
211; brew preparation 1; as a cognitive
tool 191-2, 195-6; cultivation 187,
190; defining 1; development of 147;
healing properties of 165,235; legality
of65, 68-9, 73, 80-3, 86-7, 89,94,
223-33,236-7,243-9,251-8; money
1,1
and 192-3; names for 1; patents 187,
190; Portuguese language and Ill; I,I
production of 69, 116; seizures and 1
prosecution 227-32; smoke able 1, 143, I'
1
145,148-9,151-6,158-9; therapeutic "
potential of 234-6, 254-6 II
II
ayahuasca analogues 148-54, 157-9 1"
,
Ayahuasca Association of Canada 80
ayahuasca boom: artworks 170;
authenticity 174-5; ayahuasca tourism
210; identity 175; Peruvian Amazon
165-6, 169-78; post-ayahuasca boom
178; sexual abuse 171-2; shamanie
tourism 169-77
ayahuasea diaspora 2-3; ayahuasca
entrepreneurism 213; characteristics of
28; detraditionalization 25, 33; music
and 99; new middle-class and 26-9;
practical-symbolic preoccupations
32-3; retraditionalization 19-20, 25,
35; ritual repertoire 28-32, 34-5;
shamanism 169- 71; urban-professional
constituency 22, 25
ayahuasca effect 143, 147-8, 157-9
ayahuasca entrepreneurism 203,205-6,
209-16
ayahuasca neoshamanism 7; Australia
123-35, 137-8; conuection to nature
125-30,134; cultural resistance and
264 Tndex
123-5, 129, 131; development of
124; Euro-American 133, 137; healing
ritual 125-31, 133-7; Mother Nature
and 125, 127-30, 132, 135, 137;New
Age 134; personal transformation and
135-6; Peru 133; sorcery and 132-3;
trances 123,127-8,130-1,135--6
ayahuasca religion: Amazonian 132;
Brazilian 6-8, 20-1,58; cultural
intersection of 134-5; displacement
and 3; esteem for 30; music and
1039,112-13; oral tradition of
109; Portuguese language 107-9;
psychoactive sacraments 39;
rctraditionalization 20-2,26,32; urban
6- 7: vczetalismo shamanism 6: see a/so
Santa D'aime; Uniao do Vegetal (UDV)
avahuasca shamanism 4, 7; authentic it,
, 174-5; aversion to 176-7; England'
243; female shamans 213; history of
166-7; internationalization of 165,
168 - 70; local irnportance 176; mobility
175-6; monetary exchanges 186,205;
online courses in 170; safety and 171-2,
213; shamanic tourism and 169-73
ayahuasca snuff I, 61
avahuasca studies 13
ayahuasca tourism 7-8, 132 -4,204-6,
209-14
avahuasca use: accounts of 168; Amazonia
. 3; attitudes towards 208-9; Canada
79-82, 184; ceremonial 80, 82,
250; commercialization of 190, 195;
commodification of 183-96, 204-5;
controversy in 58, 156-8, 165,207;
cultural practices 229-30, 234-5,
237; drug discourse 79,81, 189-90;
eza! itarian 30; enviror.mental ism and
615,70-1, 127-9; First Nations 80; gift
sensibility 192; global contcxt of7-8;
government policy 188-9; historical
origin 3-5; indigenous influence 51, 53;
internationalization of 185 -6; intern et
and social media information 8, 72, 74,
80, lOO, 169-70,213; music and 106;
new practices 19; Peruvian Amazon
165; pharmacological interactions 171;
religious exemptions for 254- 7; ritual
20,28,32-3,58: secrecy 206-7, 209;
self-real ization 28- 31
ayahuasca visions (pintas) 7, Ill. 115, 119,
130,133,135-8,204,210 11
ayahuasqueros: ayahuasca rituals and 204,
206-7; incomes 173, 186,205,213;
indigenous knowledge 147; mobilitj
204,211-13; prosecution of231-2;
smokenble avahuasca and 156: sore en
174; in touri;t lodges 208-10; training
ofl71, 175,207,212; Western 211-12
Aziz, Peter 2434, 246-53, 255-7
Banisteriopsis caapi I, 39,58,80, 101,
143,157,165
Barguinha 59.101. 103,204
Beck. U. 24
Bccker. H, 105
Beck-Gernsheim. E. 24
Black Church 64, 102
Black Eagle Cum 93
Bodd" J. 124
Bourdieu, P. 22
Bouso, Jose Carlos 229
Brabec de Mori, B. 4, 133
Brazil: ayahuasca religion 6-7,57-9;
Catholicism 60,73. 103; cultural
traditions 99-100; emigrants 100;
immigrants in 99; music and 100;
national identity 107; neo-Pentecostal
Christianity 64, lOO, 102-3; political
change in 60; reiigious trad itions 58, 60,
64,99-103,107-9; Santo Daime 64,
67-8,99-101
Brazi lian diaspora 100
Brazilian religious diaspora 100-2, 118
brujeria (sorcery) 165, 173-4
burracheira (trance) 39-46, 48, 52-3;
see a/so trances
Burroughs, Willia111 S. 60,147,168
caboclo culture 40, 52
Canada: ayahuasca use 79-80; drug policy
80-1,86-7,94; see olso Canadian
Santo Daime
CanadaCustoms and Revenue Agency 82
Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedom 87
Canadian Controlled Drug and Substances
Act (CDSA) 80-1
Canadian Santo Daime: alterity 79, 83-7,
94-5; ayahuasca availability 80-2,
86- 8; Black Eagle Cura 93: Canadian
culture and 88-91, 95; Ceu do Montreal
80,82-95; First Nations traditions
91-4; hymns and instructions 90-2;
Juramidam 84; mental wellness and
89-90; nonhuman beings and 83-6,
90; personal meaning in 84-6; women
and 91
cannabis 61, 152,227,245-6,249-50,
255; see also Santa Maria (Cannabis)
Caparelli, Nilton 62
capitalism 205, 206, 216
capoeira 64, 100-2, 107-8
cascarilla bark 167
Castaneda, Carlos 60, 168
Catholicism 60, 73
CEFLURlS see Centro Ecletico da Fluente
Luz Universal Raimundo Irineu Serra
(The Raimundo Irineu Serra Eclectic
Center of Universal Flowing Ligbt)
CEFLURIS Institute for Environmental
Development (IDA-CEFLURIS) 68
Cemin, Arneide 196
Centra de Iluminaciio Crista Luz Universal
(Universal Light Center for Christian
Illumination) 59-60, 67, 101
Centra Ecletico da Fluente Luz Universal
Raimundo Irineu Serra (The Raimundo
Irineu Serra Eclectic Center of Universal
Flowing Light) 59-60, 62, 64, 67-8, 82
Ceu do Montreal 80, 82-95
chamadas (devotional chants) 42-6
changa 144, 151-9; see also smokeable
ayahuasca
CICLU see Centro de Iluminaciio Crista
Luz Universal (Universal Light Center
for Christian Illumination)
Clifford, James 2-3
coca boom 169
cognitive tools: ayahuasca 191-2,195;
money 191-2; psycho active plants
191-2; types of 191,193,195
COllective-individual dynamics 33
Colombia, ayahuasca use 58
colonial domination, resistance to 4-5
colonial-indigenous encounter 6
comitivas65, 71-2,109-10,116-17
Commission on Narcotic Drugs
(CND) 223
commodity booms 166-7, 169
Convention Against Illicit Traffic in
Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic
Substances (1988) 223-7, 229, 244
Convention on Psychotropic Substances
(1971) 58, 223,244
countercultural movement 7, 11. 39, 52,
60-2
counterculture 123, 138n3
credit 193-4
The Cross (0 Cruzeiro y hymnal 104
cultural critique 123-4
cultural resistance 124-6, 129
daime see ayahuasca
daime honey 69
Index 265
Daime religion: ayahuasca production
69; Christianity and 67; expansion
01'57; internationalization of 58,
64-6; psychoactivity 61-2; Santa
Maria (Cannabis) 69-70; Umbanda
and 67; see also ayahuasca religion;
Santo Daime
Daksha 135-6
dance festivals and ceremonies 4-5, 104
dark shamanism 132, 165
Davis, Erik 144-5, 155
Dawson, Andrew 8, 107
DeKorne, Jim 156
detraditionalization 19,24-5,32-3
diasporas: Amerindian 4; contemporary
global 2-3; traditional concepts of 3;
see also ayahuasca diaspora
dimethyltryptamine (DMT): in Acacia
(wattle) 149-52; in ayahuasca 39,58,
80-1, 144, 147-8,157,225; changa
143, 145, 151-5, 158-9; crystal 147,
151-2, 154; entheogenic movement
and 143-5; gnosis and 144-5, 156;
ludic use 145; outcome of use 146;
plant analogues 148-50; Prestonia
147; prohibition of 58, 80-1, 86- 7,
145,229-32,243-5,253; recognition
of 143; self-shamanizing and 145;
synthetic 145; trances 146; user
practices 144-7
displacement 3
Dobkin de Rios, M. 133, 176
Dorge, Chen Cho 156-8
double-entry bookkeeping 193-4
drug control 180, 190
drug policy: Canada 80-1, 86- 7,
225; controlled substances 224-7;
decriminalization of cannabis 227;
harm reduction programs 226-7;
international 223-6; narcotics 224;
Peru 225; psychoactive plants 224-7,
232-4,236-7; trafficking of controlled
substances 224
drug tourism 158
Dumont, L. 53
ecological economics 185
ecotourism 204, 206, 208-10, 213
ecstatic healing 123, 130
encomiendas 166-7
England: ayahuasca prosecutions 243-9,
252-7; drug classification system 251;
legal principles 244-53, 257; religious
freedom and 248-50
entheogenic education 191
 "..

266 Index Index 267

entheogenic esotericism 144 Hervicu-Legcr, D, 33-4 Labate, B,C. 53,113,132 Mortimer, Lucio 62
entheogenic movement 143-59 Hevea brasilensis (rubber tree) 167 Latin America: dance traditions J00- I; Mother Nature J25, 127-30, 132, 135, 137
entrepreneurism 203, 205-6, 209, 214 History of Hoasca story 46-50 religions JOJ Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac
entrepreneurship ecosystem 206, 214 Hobsbawm, Eric 19,24-5 Latour, Bruno J37 Amaru (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary
environmentalism 68, 70-1, 127-9 holism 30-1 Le Goff, J, 50 Movement, MRTA) 169, 208
epistemology 79, 83 Hoiv Doctrines 106 Liddell, Jane 253 Multidisciplinary Association for
ethnobotanical gardens 7-8 hymns 68-9, 104-18 life politics 27 Psychcdclics Society (MAPS) 213
Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council Huallaga 165 Lowland South America 203-4 music: creation of an environment 103-4;
(ESC) 213-14 human rights 237, 243, 249, 252, 257-8 hymns 68-9, J04- J8; internet and
ethnobotanv: Australia 11,149,151; Mclntosh, J. 124 social media information J 17; medicine
ayahuasca research 80, 87, 146-7; Ibiza Expert Committec for the McKenna, Dermis 147-8, J96 songs J25; New Age J05-6; recordings
online retailers 169 Regularization of Ethnobotanicals 236 McKenna, Terence J44, J47-51, 169 117; religious traditions and J02-3;
ethnotourism 7, 172 iboga J 46,233,235-6 magic mushrooms 246- 7 running song J08; Santo Daime and
European Convention on Human ibogaine 236 Mannheim, K. 22 99, J02, J04-10, 112-13, 116-19;
Rights (ECHR) 243-4, 249-50, lgreja do Cl/Ita Ecletico da Fluente Luz Manto Wasi case 228-30 translation of J07 -16, 1J 8; see also
252,254 Universal (Church of the Eclectic Marcus, G, 124 chamadas (devotional chants)
Cult olthc Universal Flowing Light) Matsigenka shamanic practice 4 musical instruments 106
Fausto, C. 133 (ICEFLU) 59-61, 68,101,104, Mauss, Marcel J05 mystical experiences 31, 40, 53, 60
female shamans 213 115-16; see also Santo Dairne medical marijuana 227 myth: historicity of 47-8; interpretation of
Fijnernan, Geraldine 65, 110, 113 Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus medical tourism 7 48-50; ritual and 42, 46-7
First Nations people: Black Eagle Cum (IURD) 64 medicinal plants J52, J57
93; Santo Daime and 91-4; spiritual indigenous groups: ayahuasca shamanism medicine songs J25 N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT)
rituals 184 166; ayahuasca use 4, 71, 165-6, 170, MED SAFE 235 see dimethyltryptamine (DMT)
Fischer, TvL 124 173 - 7; Canadian Santo Daime 93; Melo, R 53 narcotic drugs 224
Fotiou, E. 7 commodity booms 165-7; cultural Melo, Sebastiao Mota de 59-62, 65, 67, national identity J07
fractional reserve lending 194 practices 233 4; dance festivals and 7J, JOJ, 104-5, J09 Native American Church 93
Freedman, Adrian 253 ceremonies 4-5; displacement of 4; mental health: mcdicalization of 89; NenI50-J, J58
Freedman, F, B, 7 environmentalism and 70; crhnotourism spirituality and 89-90 neoclassical economic theory 185
Frevre, Gilberto 61 172; First Nations people 93-4; forced mestizo people: ayahuasca shamanism neo-Pentecostal Christianity 64, JOO,
Fujimori, Alherto 208 labor of 167-8; health projects 207; 166, J68, 174-5, 177; ayahuasca use 102-3, J 14
identity 175: mobility 5; recurring debt J65; indigenous groups and 6, 168 neopsychedelic movement 148
Gabriel. Jose 40, 47--8, 50-I of 167'-8; social organization 5 middle-class, new see new middle-class neosharnanism: Australia J23-4; Canadian
Gaia 125, 127-8, 132, 135-7 individualization 23, 27 millenarian jaguar-shamans 5 Santo Daime 80; countercultural
Gearin, A, K, 7 Inga 173 Mimosa hostilis 154 movement 7; development of J23;
Ginsberg, Alien 147, 168 International Center for Ethnobotanical Mirante, Daniel 157-8 dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and J45
global south 73 Education, Research & Service miscibility 61, 67 New Age movement 8, 60, 63-4, 73,90,
gnosis 144-5, 156 (ICt:ERS) 228-32, 235-7 missionaries 166-8, 176 100,134,210-11
Go.dman. Jonathan 110, 113 International Narcotics Control Board Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (MDA) 243-8, New Jerusalem (Nova Jerusalem)
Games, Antonio 59 (INCB) 189,223-9,231-4,245 250-1,253,255,257 hymnal 104
Gomes, Leoncio 59 intersubjectivity 83, 84, 86, 94 modernity: concept of 2 J-3; new middle-class: characteristics of26-8;
Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) 236 The Invention of Tradition (Hobsbawm) detraditionalization and 24; globalized individualization 27; life politics of 27;
GO\\', P, 166 19,24 character of 23,26; individualization reflexivity 27 -8; sense of subjectivity
Grande, Joao 108 Irincu Serra, Raimundo 6, 57 -60,69,71, and 23; marketizcd character of 23; new 32; urban-professional constituency
Gregorio, Alfredo 65, 67, 101 101,104,192 middle-class 27; retraditionalization 25-6,32
Isenberg, D, 206 and 25; tradition and 19; transformative new psychoactive substances (NPS) 232-3
Hamilton, Kate 15] ethos of 23 new religious movements (NRM) 60, 99
Hanegraaff, Wouter 144 jagube see Banisteriopsis caapi money: ayahuasca and 192-3; as a nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 205
Hanna, Jon J 55 Jesuits 165, 166-7 cognitive tool J91-2; credit and J93-5;
Hardison. Casev 257 Juramidatn 84; see also Santa Dairne debt-based fiat J95-6; double-entry ontology 79, 83, 84, 95
harrnala alkaloi'ds 143, 145, 148, 151, 152 bookkeeping 193-4; fractional reserve oppositional politics 123, J25
harmaline 39 kambo frog venom 61 lending 194 Oroc, J. 146-7
harmine 39 Kardecist spiritism 43,59-60 monoamine oxidase (MAO) 39 Osmond, Humphrey 135
Hart, Keith 205 Kemaghan, R J 69, 178 monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) the Other 85, 87
Health Canada 86- 7, 94 Kohl, K, 132 80-J,147-8 Ott, J. 145, 147-8

268 Index
Palmer, Julian 151-4, 158-9
Paranapura 165, 170, 173
Pastaza 166, 170, 173, 177
pedagogy 135, 136
Peru: avahuasca neoshamanism 133:
ayahuasca use 58; tourism 208, 215
Peruvian Amazon: adventure tourism
209; ayahuasca boom 165-6,169-73,
177 -8; ayahuasca entrepreneurism
214-16; ayahuasca tourism 206,
209-11; bruieria iscsccvv, 165,173-4;
coca boom 169; commodity booms
166-7, 169; ccotourism 206, 209;
encomiendas 166-7; cthnotourism
172; indigenous health projects 207;
Jesuit reductions 166-7; migration 208;
missionaries io 166-8, 176; New Age
movement 21 0; rubber boom 166-7;
shamaoic tourism 170-6; Tambopata
Province 206-- 11: terrorist movements in
169; tourist lodges 173, 176-7,208-10
pharmaliuasea 1, 147-8, 190,211-12
Piaroa people I
pintas see ayahuasca visions (pintas)
plant-spirits 6, I I, 125, 130, 137
plant synergies 147-8
plant teacher] 96
Polari. Ale" 62
Portuguese expansion, mlscibilir, and 61
Portuguese language: capoeira 108; hymns
] 07 - I 0, 112- 16; Santo Daime and 68,
102,109-10,112-13
postcolonialism 203
Prestonia 147
Psilocybc cl/bens is 146
psychcdchc electronica 155
psychedelic movement 168
psychedelic science 191
psychoactive plants: Acacia l wattle)
149-52; ayahuasca analogues 148,
158-9; Banisteriopsis caapi 1,39,
58,80,101, 143, 157, 165; blends of
152-5,158; cannabis 61,152,227,
245-6,249-50; ceremonial use 7, 80,
154, 185, 187 -9,232-4; as a cognitive
tool 191-2; commodification of 187;
datura 216; iboga 146,233,235-6;
kampo venom 216; magic mushrooms
246-7; Mimosa hostilis 154; prohibition
of 224-8,233,244-5; Psilocybe
cubensis 146; Psyc hotria viridis 1, 4, 39,
48, 80, 10 I, ] 57, ] 65; Salvia divinorum
146; San Pedro 146, 2] 6; therapeutic
potential of 254-5; tobacco 216; see
also ayahuasca
r
psychoactive substances: ayahuasca use 1,
13, 3 I, 39, 57-9, 8]; cognitive liberty
and 257; endogenous cultural regulation
of70; experimentation with 60;
historical use of223, 235; prohibition of
223-4; research on 62; shamanism I, 5;
see also psychoactive plants
psychoactiv;ty 61 - 2
Psvchotria viridis 1, 4. 39, 58, 80,101,
157, ] 65, 170,245-6
ps~ trance J 55
Public Health Institute of Chile (ISP) 230
PU1UlllU\O recion: avuhunsca use 6.
147; tales ~nd V'i~ions 7; treatment of
indigenous people 6, 168
Quechua language 166
Queen of the Forest (Rainha da Florestai
59; see also Psychotrta viridis
rainha see Psvchotria viridis
Rastafarianism 249
rationalities 52, 53
Razam, Rak 135-6
regimes of validation: communal
34; institutional 34; mutual 34;
self-validation 34-5
religions: Afro-Brazilian 59-60, 64,
67,73, 109; alternative 63; Brazil
59, I] 4; global south 73; indigenous
groups 59; internationalization of63;
nco-Pentecostal Christianity 64, 100,
102-3,114; new religious movements
(NRM) 60; Rastafarianism 249;
shamanism 71, 248; spiritism 64;
traditional otl; see also ayahuasca religion
religious consciousness 63
religious freedom 248-50
religious landscape: col1ective-indi\"idual
dynamics 33-4; communal regimes of
validation 34; contemporary global 63;
egalitarian 34~ institutional regime of
validation 34; internationalization of
58; mutual validation 34; self-validation
34-5
retraditionalization: ayahuasca use 19-22,
33, 35; socioeultural forces and 21,
25, 32
Riba, Jordi 229
ritual repertoire: aestheticized character
31-2; characteristics 01'28-32; holism
30-1; instrumental character 29-30;
regimes of validation 34; sense of
subjectivity 28-9; Uniao do Vegetal
(UDV)51
ritnal scenes: mythic figures and 42; Uniao
do Vegetal (UDV) 40-6
rubber boom 166-7
rubber-tapping industry: ayahuasca
religion 40,48,50,57; collapse of 58;
indigenous peoples and 4,6, 167-8;
King Solomon and 50
Rumrrill, R. 176
"Sacred Wampum" hymn 92
Saez, O.c. 159
sa/m os (psalms) 103
Sa/via divinorum 146
sanango 61
Sand, Nick 147
San Martin 169
San Pedro 146
Santa Maria (Cannabis) 61-2, 69-70
Santo Daime 6, 20-1,34; ayahuasca
use 69; Brazilian expansion 67-8,
107,110-11, 116; Canada 79-83;
comitivas 65, 71-2,109-10,116-17;
conflict in 111-12; dance festivals
and ceremonies 104; e lernents of 59;
England 253-4; environmentalism
and 68, 70-1; expansion of 57 -62,
64,67-9,71-4,99,102; founding
of57-9; global context of 57; Holy
Doctrines 106; hymns 68-9,104-7,
109-12, 116-18;hyper-realism 107;
internationalization of 62,64-6,69-70,
72-4,100-1,107-11,113-18; internet
and social media information 117;
leadership 110; legal problems 65 -6,
68-70,73; middle-class adherents 62,
64,67; nuscibilit, 61,67; monetar;
exchanges 186; music and 99, 102,
104-10,112-14, 116-19; places of
worship 69; Portuguese language 68,
102,110,112-16; psychoactivity
61- 2; regimes of validation 35; rituals
59-60, 68-70; as a sbamanic religion
71; shared identity 71-2; spheres 003;
spiritual bonds 71-2; spiritnal works
104,106,115; split in church 59-60,
101; symbolism 001: traditionalists
112-13; transformations in68-7l;
translators 109-10, 113 -16, 118;
transnationalization of 66; urbanization
of 62, 64; women and 65; see also
Daime religion
scale sessions 40-2
Sebastiao, Padrinho see Melo, Sebastiao
Mota de
secularity/sccularization 53, 63, 73
Index 269
self-realization 28-31
self-shamanizing 145
self-society 22
self-validation 34-5
Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
169,208
Serra, Peregri na Gomes 59
shamanic toutism 158,165-6,169-76
shamanism: Amazonian 124-5,131-4,
137,168; ayahuasca use 4-7, 71;
cultural resistance and 124-5; dark 132,
165; Euro-American accounts of 131-3,
168; gringo 7; indigenous 133-4;
mobility 5; power between worlds
51-2; psychoactive plants 156; religious
freedom and 248-9; Santo Daime 71;
Siberian 131-3; techniques of5-6;
trade networks 5; vcgetalismo 6, 80,
166-8; see also ayahuasca shamanism;
neoshamanism
Shanghai Opium Commission 224
Shanon, Benny 196
Shawi ayahuasca shamans 173-4
Shepard, G. 4
Shulgin, Alexander 149
Siberian shamans 131-3
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
(196]) 223-4, 244, 249
Smith, Huston 155
smokeable ayahuasca 1, 143, 145, 148--9,
151-6,158-9
snuff Lo l
societal differentiation 23
sociocultural pluralization 23
Solomon, King 49-50
sorcery 132-3, 165, 173-4
Souza c Silva, Paulo Roberto 62,113-15
spiritism 21, 51, 64
spirit possession 124-5
spiritual evolution 52
spiritual experiences 7, 28, 31, 34, 39-43,
45, 60
spiritual left 100
spiritual works 104, 106, 115
Stuckrad, Kocku von 131-3
svncretic religion 79, 80
Tambopata Province, Madre de Dios, Peru:
ayahuasca tourism 207-11; ecotourism
206,208-9; migration to 208
Tarapoto 165, 169, 171, 173, 176, 217n4
Taussig, Michael 167
tetrahydroharrnine 39
Thorpe, Ray 152
tobacco shamanism 176
270 Index
tourism diaspora 7
Townsley, G, 5
traditions: creation of 25; modcmit- and
19, 24; socio-pol itical 19; see also
retraditional ization
Trarnacch i, Des 145
trances 131; ayahuasca neoshamanism
123,127-8,130,135-6;
dimethy ltryptarnine (DMT) 146; healing
ritual 127-8; psytrance 155; see also
burracheira (trance)
transfonnati ve ethos 23
transnationalisrn :2
tryptamines 143-4, 146, 148, 151
Tupper, Kenneth 79 ,81
Turner, D, M, 145
UDV see Uniao do Vegetal (UDV)
Umbanda21, 67, 100,103
Um bandai me 67
Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) 20-1,101;
burracheira (trance) 39-46, 48,
52-3, 104; chamadas (devotional
chants) 42-,6, 103. 112; cosmology
and 52; dualities of 52-3; expansion
of 52, 61; founding of 40, 5 I, 59;
global organizations 53; hierarchy of
39-43,46; King Solomon and 49-50;
middle-class adherents 39-40, 51;
monetary exchanges 186; oral expression
43-5,47; origin myth 47-50; regimes
of validation 34-5; ritual scenes 41- 7,
51-2; scale sessions 40-2; Spiritism and
51; vcgetal hall 40-2; vegetal/hoasca
39: W0111en and 50-I
United Nations Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples 233
United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 234
United Nations General Assembly
Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS
2016) 237
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNO DC) 223, 233
Universal Church of the Kingdom of God
(LJCKG) 64, 100, 102
urban-professional ayahuasca use 22,
25--6,32
validation see regimes of validation
vegetal hall 40-2
vegetal/hoasca 39
vcgetalismo shamanism 6, 80, 166-8
Villavicencio, Manuel 166
visions (pintas) see ayahuasca visions
(pintas)
Voltaire 19
Vy gotsky, Lev 191, 193
War on Drugs 58, 81, 86, 226
wattle see Acacia (wattle)
Weber, M. 22, 50, 67
women: Canadian Santo Daime 91: Santo
Daime 65; Uniao do Vegetal (UDV)
50-1
World Ayahuasca Conference (AYA2014)
see AYA2014
yagc 147
The Yage Letters (Burroughs & Ginsberg)
]47, 168
yopo beans see Anadenanthera peregrine
(y opo) beans
Yurirnaguas 171, ]73, 175,176