Revista de Antropologia
December 19, 2014
Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Tiago Coutinho
20 citations
Indigenous groups in Brazil, including the Kaxinawa, Guarani, Apurinã, Kuntanawa, and Yawanawa, have entered the urban ayahuasca circuit, engaging with ayahuasca religions and neo-ayahuasca movements. Some of these groups claim they originally introduced ayahuasca to Mestre Irineu, founder of Santo Daime. Their participation in public debate seeks recognition of ayahuasca as intangible cultural heritage by Brazil's historical and artistic heritage institute. The entry of Indigenous people into this circuit and the participation of non-Indigenous people in village ceremonies in Acre are reconfiguring the Brazilian ayahuasca religious field.
Revista de Antropologia
December 12, 2013
Esther Jean Langdon
7 citations
Among the Siona people, narrative performances fulfill an aesthetic function by recreating shamanic journey experiences and the perspective shifts that occur during rituals with the entheogen yajé (ayahuasca). These performances replace everyday perspective with another, allowing the audience to know beings inhabiting the invisible world revealed in visions. They also transmit shamanic knowledge. Oral literature dramatizes encounters or travels in the invisible world, whether linked to entheogens or dreams. Through poetic mechanisms, these narratives convey knowledge by indexing relations between everyday life and hidden realms, creating audience expectations about extraordinary spirit encounters and preparing them for perspective shifts.
Revista de Antropologia
September 27, 2017
Marcelo S. Mercante
6 citations
In a therapeutic community in the Peruvian Amazon called Takiwasi, plants, especially ayahuasca, are central to treating substance dependence. The community believes that plants possess agency and a spiritual action beyond their chemical properties, which is considered more important than their pharmacological effects. To explain this spiritual power and agency, the author draws on Benjamin's concept of "language" and Viveiros de Castro's notions of "spirit," "image," and "imagination." Ayahuasca, a psychoactive beverage traditionally used by Indigenous peoples across the Amazon and by three Brazilian Christian-based religions, is the main tool in Takiwasi's recovery process.
Revista de Antropologia
April 27, 2022
Marcos de Almeida Matos
3 citations
This article examines two major Pano myths about ayahuasca as transformations of a series of other myths, establishing a transformation set. It argues these myths are closely linked to myths about human relationships with herds of peccaries. This connection can be understood in light of an influential hypothesis about the history of ayahuasca's diffusion, extending it to the upper Juruá and Purus rivers region. The work suggests ideas for how myths transformed to accommodate ayahuasca use and what this change means from the perspective of the cosmologies that produced those myths.
Revista de Antropologia
December 30, 1995
Peter Gow
3 citations
In the Alto Ucayali region, cinema is a meaningful lived experience comparable to the hallucinogen ayahuasca, which is called the 'cinema of the forest' because it makes normally invisible powerful beings visible. Both film and ayahuasca experiences differ from dreaming.
Revista de Antropologia
July 3, 2020
Ronan Alves Pereira
Religion is often seen as a conservative force, but this article argues it can also be transformative. Examining the lives of two Japanese religious founders, Miki Nakayama (1789-1887) and Nao Deguchi (1836-1918), the author discusses three levels of religious experience: personality reintegration, change in social status, and the transformed person's ability to influence or alter the sociocultural system. The key point is that special states of consciousness, such as possession, dreams, and hallucinations, create the possibility for such change, rather than the change itself being the primary focus.
Revista de Antropologia
July 3, 2020
Ordep J. Trindade-Serra Trindade-Serra
Jorge Amado, a celebrated Brazilian writer, popularized the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé through his novels, shaping widespread perceptions of the faith as practiced in Bahia. Although Amado presents himself as an atheist, he champions the syncretism between Catholic and Afro-Brazilian rites. His literary interpretation of Candomblé's symbolic system is not ethnographic but merits anthropological study. This paper examines Amado's treatment of Catholic and Afro-Brazilian syncretism in his novels *Tenda dos milagres* and *O sumiço da santa*.