Fieldwork in Religion
March 31, 2020
Anna Lutkajtis
20 citations
Psilocybin mushrooms have been used in Indigenous Mesoamerican healing ceremonies since at least the sixteenth century. Westerners discovered this practice in the early to mid-twentieth century, notably when amateur mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson met Mazatec curandera María Sabina in 1955, leading to widespread popularization of magic mushrooms in the West. For the Mazatec, the mushrooms were sacred and used only for healing, but Western hippies consumed them as psychedelic drugs with little regard for cultural sensitivities, desacralizing them. This article argues that this desacralization constitutes spiritual abuse with far-reaching consequences at individual, local, and global levels, and that recognizing it as such has implications for restorative justice and understanding psilocybin as sacred medicine.
Fieldwork in Religion
November 27, 2008
Edward Macrae
11 citations
In Brazil, tolerant policies have allowed the psychoactive substance ayahuasca to be successfully incorporated into mainstream society, while prohibitionist policies have prevented the ritual use of cannabis by a Santo Daime religious group from gaining full acceptance. This ongoing prohibition creates persistent problems for ayahuasca churches, their followers, and broader society.
Fieldwork in Religion
April 12, 2008
Robin M. Wright
3 citations
A new collection of articles examines the origins and evolution of religious movements centered on ayahuasca, a psychoactive beverage made from vines and leaves found in Western Amazonia. The movements began with indigenous peoples and mestizo herbalists, later spreading through migrant rubber-tappers from northeastern Brazil. In the 1960s, urbanites in Brazilian and European cities sought alternative religious inspiration through the ritual use of ayahuasca. By the 1990s, Brazilian researchers combined anthropological, religious, and legal expertise to protect the religious freedom necessary for these movements. As the religions diversify and globalize, the article identifies new directions for field research.
Fieldwork in Religion
November 27, 2008
Christian Frenopoulo
1 citation
The article examines healing services in Barquinha churches, an Amazonian Christian religion with syncretic elements. It reviews three common anthropological approaches to healing in this tradition: focusing on participants' subjective and symbolic processes tied to the ayahuasca experience (called Santo Daime), analyzing ritual settings and bodily changes, and considering social relations in therapy. The author contributes ethnographic research, suggesting that healing encounters—where healer-spirits are incorporated in mediums—may echo symbolic motifs from participants' historical experiences of migration and rapid social change.
Fieldwork in Religion
November 27, 2008
Mariana Ciavatta Pantoja, Osmildo Silva Da Conceição
1 citation
Ayahuasca, known locally as cipó, was introduced among rubber tappers in the Alto Juruá region of the Brazilian Amazon through interactions with indigenous populations and their shamans. Some rubber tappers became apprentices and later renowned healers. Beginning in the 1980s, ayahuasca use became intertwined with the rubber tappers' political struggle against rubber bosses, merging ayahuasca mysticism with political conflict. New syntheses emerged with the incorporation of elements from the Santo Daime religious doctrine. The article is co-authored by an anthropologist and a rubber tapper whose initiation into ayahuasca combined non-indigenous and indigenous elements, resulting in an original synthesis narrated in first-person.
Fieldwork in Religion
November 27, 2008
Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Edward Macrae
1 citation
This special issue of Fieldwork in Religion presents original and translated articles on Brazilian ayahuasca religions—Santo Daime, Barquinha, and União do Vegetal—which use the psychoactive beverage ayahuasca as a sacrament. Research on these religions in Brazil dates to at least 1983, when Clodomir Monteiro da Silva studied Santo Daime's role in integrating migrant rubber tappers in Rio Branco. The collection aims to bridge the language barrier for English readers and reveal how these eclectic religions, blending popular Catholicism, Amazonian Shamanism, Spiritism, European Esotericism, and Afro-Brazilian religiosity, have moved from Amazonian frontier settlements to middle-class urban contexts.
Fieldwork in Religion
November 27, 2008
Beatriz Caiuby Labate
This article surveys Brazilian academic and non-academic literature on the three main ayahuasca religions of Brazil: Santo Daime, Barquinha, and União do Vegetal. It provides the most exhaustive catalog available of university theses on the subject, both published and unpublished, along with ongoing research projects and selected important articles. The authors also comment on works by religious adherents. The survey is organized in two parts: the first reviews academic works, predominantly anthropological, which examine ayahuasca use through beliefs and symbolic systems, focusing on syncretism, shamanism, and healing. The effort addresses the scattered and often inaccessible nature of these studies.