After more than 20 years working with shamans and their apprentices in northern Peru and the United States, the author describes a personal transformation from scientist and skeptic to humanist and adept. A specific experience in which the boundary between the seen and unseen worlds temporarily lifted allowed the author to engage with Spirit in new ways. This shift led to struggles in redefining the author's relationship to anthropological work. The article suggests that thinking outside the conventional paradigmatic box can benefit the discipline, which has long kept anthropologists disengaged from the world they study.
Archaeological, historical, and ethnographic evidence shows that the San Pedro cactus has been used in northern Peru for over 2000 years as a vehicle for traveling between worlds and for imparting the “vista” (magical sight) that shamanic healers need to divine the causes of patients' ailments. The plant's use is uninterrupted and linked to ancestor worship, water and fertility cults, and wind-spirits. The paper argues that this long tradition challenges the contemporary tendency in the United States to treat San Pedro as a recreational drug rather than a sacred healing tool.
An anthropological study examines the expansion of the ayahuasca-based Santo Daime New Religious Movement from South America to Europe. The author participated in over 50 European ceremonies and interviewed 87 daimistas across multiple nations between 2010 and 2011. European members join because Santo Daime ceremonies help resolve feelings of estrangement and isolation common in late-modern cultures marked by secularized individualism, materialism, and consumerism. The movement re-sacralizes human experience and provides meaning through direct experience of an enchanted, interconnected universe, contrasting with monophasic secular and scientific views of reality that restrict knowledge to waking consciousness. These cultural differences contribute to ongoing criminalization of Santo Daime rituals in Europe.