It’s all you! Australian ayahuasca drinking, spiritual development, and immunitary individualism

Ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant decoction, has spread from indigenous South American communities to urban areas worldwide, where it is used in neoshamanic rituals. Ethnography of Australian ayahuasca ceremonies reveals that individualism shapes the structure of rituals, interpretation of visionary experiences, and notions of spiritual development. Metaphors used by Australian drinkers reflect immunitary individualism, premised on negation of difference and relationality. Secular disenchantment and a culture of narcissism may drive people to seek ayahuasca, but transcendence is interpreted as an expansive, non-relational self. Neoshamanic ayahuasca culture may thus be both an escape from and reproduction of the culture of narcissism associated with modernity's malaise.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant decoction, has spread from indigenous communities in South America to urban areas in the Americas, Europe, and Australia where it is used in neoshamanic rituals. This paper draws on ethnography of Australian ayahuasca ceremonies to examine the ways that individualism shapes the structure of ayahuasca rituals, the interpretation of visionary experiences, and notions of spiritual development. I show how the metaphors that Australian drinkers involved in this study use to understand their ayahuasca experiences and spiritual development reflect a form of immunitary individualism, which is premised on the negation of difference and relationality. Secular disenchantment and a culture of narcissism may drive people to seek ayahuasca, but transcendence is interpreted in terms of an expansive, non-relational self. In this sense, neoshamanic ayahuasca culture may be an escape from and reproduction of the culture of narcissism associated with the malaise of modernity.