Ayahuasca,
Religion, and Nature
Morgan Brent, Phd
Chaminade University - Honolulu (US)
Ayahuasca,
is a word from the Quechua linguistic family of Andean-Equatorial
South America. It means "vine of the soul" and
refers both to a large forest liana (Banisteriopsis caapi),
and a strong infusion (tea) made from its woody parts, or
with one or more other plant admixtures. The most usual
addition to the brew are leaves from the shrub Psychotria
viridis. These plants are endemic to the Amazon Basin, where
they are part of a much larger plantas maestras or "teacher
plants" tradition native to that part of the world.
Such plants - many of which have emetic, purgative, cathartic,
dream-inducing and/or visionary effects - are used to facilitate
states of consciousness that are believed to open into the
worlds of spirit.
In
the typical ayahuasca preparation, the molecular basis for
this lies in the betacarboline complex (harmine, tetrahydroharmine,
etc.) and the indole dimethyltryptamine (DMT). These are part
of a structural group that includes neurotransmitters, molecules
used to effect internal communication in the human body. In
ayahuasca, these dialogues are deepened and expanded to include
all manner of elemental, plant, animal, ancestor, and deity.
These then appear less as an "other," and more as
participants in the metabolisms of yet larger bodies, such
as regional ecosystems, or the earth itself.
Such
organismic cosmologies are common to many indigenous peoples.
These often suggest the existence of a reality a priori to
material existence, one of mythic causality in which all beings
are mutually transformative and exist as ontological equals,
as "persons". Dialogues with such a world are effected
through imaginal exchanges (dreams and visions), dance, prayer,
song, and their attendant feeling states and sensory awareness.
These describe the body's innate capacity to converse with
what is presumed to be the affective life of the natural world.
Ayahuasca allows access to this generous bandwidth of communication,
and its repeated use cultivates familiarity with the ecology
of souls which inhabit it.
Sophisticated
eco-cosmologies have therefore evolved among Amazonian peoples
around the use of ayahuasca and other plantas maestras. These
tend to order such practical activities as healing, divination,
procreation, and hunting within the concept of an all-encompassing
fertility circuit. This view understands the world to be nourished
by a finite supply of vital force that must be equitably shared.
Human greed, waste, and disrespect can easily disrupt this
flow, and the repercussions are thought to express themselves
in personal and social ills. Spirituality and medicine are
thereby integrated into various social norms which tend to
preserve ecosystem integrity. Examples include food, sex,
and hunting taboos, and the cultivation of kinship relations
with plants and animals.
The
world of nature as revealed by ayahuasca typically appears
as a society, a culture of spiritual relations. The teachings
of ayahuasca are acts of healing, remediations in energy flow
and balance whereby one "becomes" the lessons. One
so healed may then enter into transformative relations with
larger organizing forces, with greater ecosystemic intelligences,
which in turn tend to increase human self-consciousness, inspiration,
revelation, and sense of mission. When these traits are understood
within the context of spiritual evolution, ayahuasca takes
on a religious significance.
The
idea of healing body and soul has formed the essence of religious
beliefs of peoples the world over. Similarly, one can conjecture
that the supplication of humans to the healing power of nature
is the source of much of what we know as religious thought.
In this regard, the role of plants and fungi in the origins
of religions has been explored by a number of authors. Perhaps
the most well-known example is Soma, the mysterious plant
(or fungus) recounted in the Hindu Rg-Vedas as a vehicle of
religious ecstasy.
Plant-inspired
religions can be understood as acts of guidance by an elder
community of species to a younger one, the human. They are
concerned with successful co-creative relations within the
community of nature and the organismic and spiritual growth
that these bring about. Such religions allow the initiate
to cultivate an expanded sense of self, whereby one's actions
in the world are reviewed in experiences of right or wrong,
heaven or hell. This often results in a greater awareness
of, and respect for, the spiritual ecologies that govern the
world.
These
understandings have been lost to much of religious life as
humanity civilizes itself into increasingly mono-species (exclusively
human) social arrangements and dialogues. Politicizing, intellectualizing,
and influences that move divinity off-planet have all played
their roles in denaturing the religions that have co-evolved
with Western industrialism.
However,
a reformation of plant-inspired religions has been occurring
since the late 1800s. These often come of syncretizing influences
in places of sudden and disruptive culture change. Examples
include the evolution of the use of peyote (Lophophora williamsii
) into a pan-Native American religion; and the creation of
churches that employ iboga root (Tabernanthe iboga) in colonized
central west Africa. Similarly, ayahuasca-based churches were
born in the Amazon basin with the influx of colonists and
forest extractivists.
In
the late 1920s, a rubber tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra,
or Master Irineu as he came to be called, had a series of
visions in the forests near Acre, Brazil brought on by his
use of ayahuasca. In these he was visited by the Queen of
the Forest in the guise of the Virgin of Conception. Through
her he received the doctrine of a new religion based on spiritual
healing. Ayahuasca took on the name of Daime, after the invocation
Dai-me Amor, Dai-me Luz. . . ("Give me Love, Give me
Light"), and the religion became known as Santo Daime.
Master Irineu moved to the nearby town of Rio Branco in 1930,
and there began to cultivate this religion with a small group
of adherents.
A
number of hymns began to be received by church members in
the form of "singing murmurs," considered to be
gifted from higher worlds. They invoke an eclectic pantheon
that includes Old and New Testament figures and various saints,
spirits of sacred plants, forest animals, devic presences,
and heavenly bodies. These, along with accompanying musical
instruments and formalized dancing, became an important part
of church ceremonies and source for doctrinal development.
As
the religion grew in Brazil, it spread from rural caboclo
(mixed-blood river dwellers) communities into new settings
and populations. These include the urban middle class, health
professionals, and intelligentsia, as well as more marginalized
groups, such as drug addicts (the churches have become well
known for their work in helping people to overcome addictions),
counter-culturalists, and the urban poor. This growth stimulated
the formation of sects. For example, the Barquinha ("little
boat") group emerged in the 1950's; it accommodates aspects
of the very heterogeneous Umbanda (mediumist) spiritualism.
Yet
another rubber tapper, Jose Gabriel da Costa, encountered
the use of ayahuasca with native Indians in the forests bordering
Bolivia and Brazil. In 1961 he founded the U.D.V. (União
do Vegetal) which soon spread into the urban south of Brazil.
Among the more hierarchical and organizationally sophisticated
of the ayahuasca religions, the U.D.V. stresses a less "active"
service, with long periods of silence interspersed with conversational
sharing.
Despite
differences, all churches share similarities that derive from
the integrative nature of ayahuasca itself. It is considered
a sacrament, and like its predecessor soma, a divinity, both
"Christ's blood," and a forest spirit. The replacement
of the bread and wine Eucharist with ayahuasca brings an eco-spiritual
force into communion with Christian saints and their prescriptions
of love, peace, charity, and fraternity. By unifying the naturalized
and the civilized, it appears to work as a bridge over the
500 years of culture clashes wrought by the colonialist enterprise.
In this way it births new cultural forms of indigeneity, ways
of belonging to the land that reflect the needs of the various
peoples brought to it.
A
notable example is the 1982 founding of a community called
Vila Céu do Mapiá (Mapia) by Santo Daime church
members. Located in a large forest reserve in the Brazilian
state of Amazonas, Mapia is intended as an ecological-communal
"social laboratory" where the teachings received
through the Daime can be practiced in daily life.
The
world affirmed by ayahuasca, and in fact all teacher plants,
tends to run contrary to that enacted by industrial-growth
cultures. Hence those individuals that convert often become
less amenable to mainstream mores, values, and ways of life.
The media in Brazil and elsewhere have observed this, and
in recent years have accused the churches of contributing
to the breakdown of society; this by inducing its followers
into acts of fanaticism, such as leaving one's city life and
disappearing into the forest.
Antipathy
to the forces of change unleashed by sacred plants is likewise
reflected in the modern War on Drugs. Under international
pressure, Brazil added B. caapi to its list of controlled
substances in 1985. Following a series of appeals and investigations
it was removed from the list with provisions in 1987, and
fully exempted in 1992. In that year its legitimacy was celebrated
with ayahuasca ceremonies featured as part of the inter-religious
vigil of the Global Forum section of the Earth Summit conference
in Rio de Janeiro.
As
the use of ayahuasca spreads outside of Brazil, it continues
to run into prohibition policies. In recent years the churches
in Europe and the U.S. experienced a number of seizures and
arrests. Many court cases are pending, though a decision on
May 21, 2001 in the Dutch court acquitted the Santo Daime
church under the constitutional right to freedom of religion.
Modern
ayahuasca religions are born both of the sylvan cosmos and
a humanity sundered from that world. They therefore have great
implications during this era of ecological crisis. To reestablish
communicative relations with medicinal plants is to reconnect
with a perennial source of assistance to humans. What such
plants can do for individuals, they can do for communities;
in this way they engender healing cultures. This process continues
in Brazil (e.g., the Centro de Cultura Cósmica has
recently sprouted from both Santo Daime and the U.D.V. influences)
and in other areas of the world, where such movements are
more covert.
These
religions are prophetic in considering themselves microcosmic
realities of a future-healed earth, yet for them, the future
is now. They presume that as more people awaken to this reality,
a relational indigeneity appropriate for the times will become
increasingly accepted as a new cultural norm, and the planetary
crisis will then pass. This vision is millenarian in scope,
and suggests the inevitable evolution of a heart-opening ecotopia.
To this end, a Daime hymn sings of a "new life, new world,
new people, new earth."
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