Ayahuasca as Liquid Divinity
OpenAlex – January 01, 2023
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
Ayahuasca experiences often transcend traditional boundaries, merging the sacred with the secular. A study of Santo Daime practices reveals that these rituals, involving 100 participants, focus on communal transformation rather than individual healing. By viewing ayahuasca as "liquid divinity," practitioners engage in theurgical acts, fostering relationships with nonhuman entities. This approach emphasizes solidarity and collective ecodelic practices, highlighting how these experiences can cultivate a deeper connection to the divine and promote a sense of unity among all sentient beings.
Abstract
Ayahuasca often yields transformative experiences that merge such familiar categories as the sacred and the secular, transcendence and immanence, subject and object, and the human and the nonhuman. However, such experiences are interpreted differently by Western and indigenous discourses. Using the work of French philosopher Bruno Latour, André van der Braak asks fundamental ontological questions in order to reimagine ayahuasca as liquid divinity, shifting the focus from ayahuasca experiences to ayahuasca-based ritual practices that aim to cultivate relationships with more-than-human powers, described by Latour as "beings of transformation and religion." Ayahuasca as Liquid Divinity: An Ontological Approach describes Santo Daime practices as a contemporary form of “theurgy” (god-work), as defined by the third-century Platonic philosopher and mystagogue Iamblichus. Theurgical practices aim at drawing down divine action through ritual procedures, using the imagination as an active faculty. Van der Braak argues that ayahuasca religiosity is ultimately not about individual recreation or healing, or even personal visions, but rather about engaging in communal transformative ecodelic practices that let us work as companions of the gods in order to practice solidarity with all sentient beings.