Christ returns from the jungle: Ayahuasca religion as mystical healing

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Christ Returns from the Jungle is an anthropological inquiry into the recent expansion from South America to Europe of the ayahuasca-based Santo Daime New Religious Movement (NRM).In it, the author addresses important research questions that could be used as a model for the study of all globalizing NRM's.These include the following: Who are the Europeans that choose to join this movement and why?What are the most important features of Santo Daime religion to these European daimistas?How does the increasing popularity of this movement challenge the long-held presumption that the continent is undergoing a teleological process of secularization?And finally, how might anthropological studies of entheogenic-based movements such as Santo Daime best inform debates about the legitimacy of long-stigmatized "hallucinogens" during a time of resurging interest in psychedelics?To address these questions, the author offers an exhaustive (close to 500 pages of text, notes and appendices) treatise that distills insights gleaned from participation in over 50 European Santo Daime ceremonies and interaction with 87 daimistas from multiple European nations between 2010 and 2011.He begins, though, with an account of his 2008 voyage to the Brazilian Amazon "nerve center" (p.91) of ayahuasca religions.After describing his experiences there and providing an overview of the emergence of Santo Daime in its Brazilian context, he recounts his conversation with the revered daimista (and well-known Santo Daime scholar) padrinho Alex Polari de Alverga.In this conversation, Polari emphasizes the importance of Blainey's (and many others') intercontinental studies at a time of increased dialogue between adherents of divergent secular and religious paradigms in which the "spirituality in these sacred plants" is the focus of much political strife (p.101).Indeed, the discussion of how European daimistas assert that ayahuasca "teaches," just as human sacred teachers have, affirms an animistic view of the world more akin to shamanism than to secular and scientific views of reality (p.249).This, together with what Blainey describes as monophasic versus polyphasic differences in cultural approaches to consciousness (p.245), contribute to continued criminalization of Santo Daime rituals throughout Europe.Per Blainey, polyphasic cultures are those "that treat different states of consciousness as sources of distinct cognitive abilities and benefits," whereas monophasic cultures restrict knowledge claims to "information gleaned in the normal waking state of consciousness" (p.245).Part VII of book is devoted to an in-depth analysis of how these factors inform the national profiles of this New Religious Movement (that he describes in Part III) in Spain, Portugal.Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland, Austria, Greece, Finland, Czech Republic, Switzerland, France, and Belgium (which was his home-base) for this year-long study.In a tantalizing preview of his findings, Blainey shares the general answer to his first research question in the early pages of his text.Santo Daime "works" (ceremonies) in Europe help fardados [Santo Daime initiaties] find "solutions" to the metaphysical problems of estrangement (p.8) and isolation from others that develop when "human selves are not connected to each other through intimate social bonds" (pp.16-17) as is typical in latemodern cultures that privilege secularized individualism, materialism, and consumerism.Participation helps to re-sacralize human experience and to satisfy an indwelling need for meaning and purpose.It also helps to rediscover an "enchanted" universe where this awareness of an inherent interconnectedness with all Creation is based on experience rather than belief (cf p. 27 and also Chapter 6 and Part VII).