A book review by Henrique Soares Carneiro
Professor of History at the University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil
Translated to English by Edward MacRae.
Portugese and Spanish language versions are also available.
"O Uso Ritual da Ayahuasca"
edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Wladimyr Sena Ara
Campinas, Mercado de Letras, 2002
Revised edition to be published in 2004
Ayahuasca, also known as Santo Daime or Vegetal, is a brew made from two plants:
the vine Bannisteriopsis caapi and the rubiacea Psychotria viridis which must be boiled
together for many hours. It contains the psychoactive substances DMT (from the
Psychotria) and Harmine, Harmaline and Tetrahydroharmine (from the Bannisteriopsis).
DMT is inactive when taken orally and thus must be only mixed with an
Monoamineoxidase inhibitor so that its psychoative effects may be felt. The discovery of
this synergic combination of two plants is considered to be one of the most significant
ethnobotanical achievements of the Indian cultures and one that most intrigues scientists.
There have even been attempts at patenting in the US this formula lifted from the
Amazonian indigenous cultural knowledge of phytochemistry. It took much mobilization
on the part of the Indian communities to stop them.
Ayahuasca, the Quechua name of this drink , means "vine of the spirits", and the
expansion of its use beyond the Indian and mestizo Amazonian population has been
considered the most important phenomenon to happen in the world of entheogens in the
last decade.
Since the last decades of the XXth century, a new way of consuming hallucinogens
has spread from the Amazon to the Brazilian metropolitan centres and, from Brazil to
several different parts of the world. This new form of consumption has a strong spiritual
component derived from several syncretic religions which are the result of fusions of
popular Catholicism, Amazonian Indian traditions and Afrobrazilian religions. The religions
that use this brew are a case apart in a world where the persecution, repression and
stigmatisation of drugs, carried out by the international war on drugs campaign, affects in a
general manner all psychoactive products that are included in the lists of globally proscribed
drugs.
Apart from the traditional North American Indian peyote cults, which are
authorized under ethnical criteria for the members of the Native American Peyote Church,
and the African Bwiti religion, which is practiced in Gabon and the Camaroons, the only
other entheogenic religions (that use sacred psychoactive substances), which have legal
permission to function and are institutionally accepted, are the Brazilian ayahuasca
religions.
After great initial repercussion in the media, due to the participation of well known
artists in one of these religions, the Santo Daime, the phenomenon reached many other
countries. In these, Santo Daime churches have been set up where the sacred drink is taken
during rituals of Amazonian shamanic origin which include dancing and hymn singing in
Portuguese.
This has led to the opening of a fertile new field of anthropological studies on the
ritual uses of ayahuasca and at present the different ayahuasca religions are being studied by
many different researchers. The pharmacological aspects of the brew have already been
studied by Alexander Shulgin, Dennis MacKenna, Jace Callaway and Jonathan Ott.
The anthology "O Uso Ritual da Ayahuasca" ("The Ritual Use of Ayahuasca")
published in 2002 and organized by Beatriz Labate and Wladimyr Sena, is the first
compilation of studies of this phenomenon to be published and carries articles by
anthropologists, pharmacologists, doctors and representatives of the three main Brazilian
ayahuasca religions (Santo Daime, Unio do Vegetal and Barquinha). It is a compilation of
work presented at the I CURA (First Congress on the Ritual Uses of Ayahuasca), which
was held at the Instituto de Filosofia e Cincias Humanas at the University of Campinas
(UNICAMP), on the 4th and 5th of November 1997, and is a good presentation of the state
of the art in the field of international ayahuasca research.
The book is made up of twenty five articles and is nearly seven hundred pages long.
It is divided in three parts: "Ayahuasca among the people of the forest", which deals with
traditional Indian and Mestizo uses; "The Brazilian ayahuasca religions", on the syncretic
religions that appeared in Brazil in the beginning of the XXth century, with articles by
anthropologists and spokesmen of the different religions. The third part "Pharmacological,
medical and psychological studies on ayahuasca" has articles by doctors, psychologists and
pharmacologists on the most recent scientific researches on the effects of ayahuasca.
The breadth of the coverage, the novelty of many of the studies and the variety of
approaches, make "O Uso Ritual da Ayahuasca" the most complete work ever published
on the subject, making it an essential reference book not only for researchers but also for all
those of the general public who may be interested in the relation between sacred drugs and
religions, between Indian cultures and different types of interethnic relations, mixtures and
syncretisms, between the traditional healing techniques and scientific medicine, between
psychotherapy and shamanism. Other subjects of great contemporary import make this
anthology a mature set of reflections on some of the most important themes of our time
such as: the philosophical content of extatic experiences, the relations between the
Amerindian religions and the Christianisation of America, the physiological and
psychological nature of psychedelic effects and the ritual and political regulation of the use
of psychoactive substances. The wisdom of archaic cultures confronts the refinement of the
neurosciences and faces the difficulties of a world where the much needed fusion of cultures
must overcome economic and political barriers that threaten not only the survival of
precious Indian cultures and their hybrid and mestizo forms, but Humanity as a whole.
The book deals with questions that are at the centre of classic philosophical and
anthropological debates such as: What is a ritual? What is the definition of religion? How
are they formed and how do they subdivide? What is the difference between religion and
healing practices?
The study of shamanism leads us back not only to the old comparison already made
by Lvi-Strauss of the shaman and the psychoanalyst, but also to the discussions on the
nature of illness and healing. The central role played by ayahuasca in South American
shamanism gives rise to debates on the way different cultural traditions can be integrated
and the limits to the defense of traditional purity. Traditional and modern uses and how
they may live alongside each other amicably, the different degree to which different uses of
different substances are tolerated and criticism of the systems of social control that exist at
present, are themes that cross all the discussions on the meanings of the various uses of
ayahuasca.
The first part of the book is made up of ethnographies on Indian uses of the brew
(Esther Jean Langdon on the Siona, in Colombia; Barbara Keifenheim on the Kashinawa, in
Peru; Pedro Leite da Luz with a review of the bibliography on the Pano, Arawak and
Tukano language groups) as well as those of the mestizo population, such as the
rubbertappers in Acre. It also carries polemical statements on the legitimacy of Western
appropriations of traditional knowledge, which Grman Zuluaga considers to be an
authentic way only among the Indians themselves. The French doctor Jacques Mabit, who
lives in the Peruvian Amazon and is responsible for a therapeutic centre in Tarapoto where
ayahuasca is used, discusses the nature of visionary production among the healers of the
Upper Amazon and Luis Eduardo Luna focuses on the relations between shamanism and
the natural world.
The second and longest part of the book comprises the writings of anthropologists
and of spokesmen for the ayahuasca religions, who are given a chance to expound on their
practices and doctrines. Among the anthropologists, Beatriz Labate makes an inventory of
the Brazilian literature on the ayahuasca religions, while Sandra Lcia Goulart, deals with
the Santo Daime, Arneide Bandeira Cemin studies the Alto Santo, Wladimyr Sena the
Barquinha and Lucia and Henrique Gentil and Srgio Brissac the Unio do Vegetal. The
greater number of articles on the CEFLURIS, one of the branches of the Santo Daime,
corresponds to the greater media coverage this branch has suffered at national and
international levels. The historical aspects of each of these religions, the biographies of their
leaders, their doctrinal and ritual differences, their ruptures and dissidences are exhaustively
dealt with, as is their international repercussion in an article by Carsten Balzer on the Santo
Daime in Germany. The anthropologist Edward MacRae discusses a subject which is taboo
to many ayahuasca religions: the role of Cannabis sativa as a sacred plant alongside the
Santo Daime in the CEFLURIS, where Cannabis is identified with the Virgin Mary. Other
branches of the Santo Daime, like all the other ayahuasca religions, condemn this
vigorously. The nature of the Santo Daime rituals is examined by Fernando de la Roque
Couto and the possibilities of their therapeutic use by Maria Cristina Pelaez.
The last part of the anthology deals with some of the most recent research on the
human pharmacology of ayahuasca. There is a study of the psychological and physiological
effects of ayahuasca among habitual Unio do Vegetal users, carried out with the
participation and supervision of important Brazilian and foreign medical institutions. Here
the clinical conditions of chronic use and cases of acute ingestion were put under
observation. In another article the Israeli psychologist Benny Shanon proposes the opening
of a new field of studies, apart from the medical-pharmacological and the anthropological
ones. This one should be psychological, or as he says, should deal with the experience as
seen from inside. Shanon proposes a classification of the visionary contents among many
different groups of experimenters. Finally, Jonathan Ott contributes with an article on the
nature of the synergy that occurs among sources of DMT and Monoamineoxidase
inhibitors, presenting a vast range of combinations of substances that produce the same
effect as ayahuasca, which he calls ayahuasca analogues, anahuasca and pharmahuasca. He
also analyses jurema, another plant traditionally used by Indians in Brazil and which also
contains DMT.
Brazil is already at the centre of the phenomenon of the religious use of ayahuasca.
Now the anthology "O Uso Ritual da Ayahuasca" puts it in a priviledged position in the
academic and scientific research into such practices. Despite the unevenness of the different
articles in the book and a few proofreading slips, it is a priceless work that helps bring light
to an experience which is described as visionary. It is an important part of the effort to
establish a dialogue between the science of Pharmacology and the Indian ethnobotanical
knowledge that faces the difficulties of having its secrets revealed, and its wisdom robbed. It
describes ecstasies but, above all, the mechanisms of their control and regulation.
Henrique Soares Carneiro is Professor of History at the University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil
Translated to English by Edward MacRae
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