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2. the Notion of Cure in the Brazilian Ayahuasca Religions

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2. the Notion of Cure in the Brazilian Ayahuasca Religions T Transworld Research Network 37/661 (2), Fort P.O. Trivandrum-695 023 Kerala, India The Ethnopharmacology of Ayahuasca, 2011: 23-53 ISBN: 978-81-7895-526-1 Editor: Rafael Guimarães dos Santos 2. The notion of cure in the Brazilian ayahuasca religions Sandra Lucia Goulart Assistant Professor at Cásper Líbero College, São Paulo, Brazil and researcher in NEIP (Psychoactives Interdisciplinary Study Group), São Paulo, Brazil Abstract. This article discusses concepts and practices of healing in Brazilian religions which have in common the use of a psychoactive beverage mainly known by the names of Daime, Vegetal and Ayahuasca. These religions are elaborated from the same set of cultural traditions which nonetheless unfolds in different ways. All of them originate in the Brazilian Amazon region and in some cases, these processes expand to other parts of Brazil and abroad. We compare here the ways in which the healing is experienced and explained in these religions, emphasizing the representations concerning this beverage used in all of them. The case of these religions points to the complexity of the relation between both scientific and religious medicines. 1. Introduction In this article we intend to develop an analysis of the therapeutic concepts present in some religious cults emerged in the Brazilian Amazon region Correspondence/Reprint request: Dr. Sandra Lucia Goulart, Assistant Professor at Cásper Líbero College, São Paulo, Brazil and researcher in NEIP (Psychoactives Interdisciplinary Study Group), São Paulo, Brazil E-mail: [email protected] 24 Sandra Lucia Goulart starting from 1930. All these cults have in common the use of the same psychoactive beverage, made by brewing a combination of two plants, a liana whose scientific name is Banisteriopsis caapi and the leaves of a bush, Psychotria viridis1. In all of them this beverage also receives different designations. Thus, in some of them the beverage is named Daime, in others as Vegetal. The main habitat of the Banisteriopsis caapi is the East of the Andes, Peru, Bolivia, the whole Northwest of the Amazon, the Colombian and Brazilian Amazon, Ecuador and Venezuela. Outside the context of these Brazilian religions, the term ayahuasca is one of the most known and used for such psychoactive beverage. The term is quite widespread in Peru and comes from Quechua. Aya means persona, soul, “espíritu muerto”, and Wasca means rope, “enredadera”, “parra”, “liana”. The name is used to designate both the beverage and one of the plants composing it: the liana Banisteriopsis caapi[1]. Therefore ayahuasca can be literally translated to Portuguese, as “the rope of the spirits” or “the rope of the dead” and also as “the liana of the spirits or the dead”. Nowadays, the term “ayahuasca religions” is also used by many scholars to refer to cults which have arisen in Brazil. Within the indigenous context, the beverage is mainly consumed in the Pano linguistic trunk groups (Eastern Peru / South Acre), Arawak (Peru), and Tukano (Colombia), receiving different names in these different contexts. Nowadays, throughout the Amazon, there are about seventy indigenous groups making use of this beverage. The contexts of these practices vary considerably. Although there are extensive and ancient indigenous and mestizo traditions in the use of this beverage, the emergence 1The liana Banisteriopsis caapi contains three beta-carboline alkaloids: harmaline, harmine and tetrahydroharmine. The plant species Psychotria viridis, a bush, has as its active ingredient another alkaloid, DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine), substance considered as the main responsible for the visionary effect or the hallucinogenic aspect of this beverage. However, it is known that DMT has no effect when ingested orally, as it is deactivated by an enzyme present in the human digestive tract, the MAO (monoamine oxidase). Hence, precisely, the importance of the alkaloids present in the liana, which has the function to temporarily disable the MAO, allowing the DMT to activate the central nervous system, thus producing its visionary effects. It is also important to remember that since 1971, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, signed in Vienna has included the DMT on its top list of forbidden drugs, considered highly dangerous. The ban involves many intricate and controversial discussions[2]. Just to mention some issues, it is worth noting that in addition to Psychotria viridis, several other species also have certain amounts of DMT, such as some kinds of fungi, fish and mammals, including man himself, but suffer no prohibition. Cure in the Brazilian ayahuasca religions 25 of organized, urban, non-indigenous, religions based on its consumption, is an exclusive phenomenon of the Brazilian region. 2. Mestre Irineu’s daime Historically, the first of these religions was organized by Raimundo Irineu Serra in the city of Rio Branco, capital of Acre state, in 1930. He, who would later become known as Mestre Irineu was native from the state of Maranhão, Northeast of Brazil. As most Northeastern people, he migrated to the Amazon region, still early in the first decade of the twentieth century, to work with the extraction of rubber. It is during the period in which he works as a rubber tapper, in a border region between Brazil, Bolivia and Peru that Mestre Irineu gets in contact with a whole culture of the use of this beverage which would be central in the new religious cult founded by him. Between 1915 and 1918, more specifically in Brasiléia, Mestre Irineu would have not only his first experiences with ayahuasca, but also begin to develop the principles of worship that would later become known by the names of Alto Santo, Daime or Santo Daime2. That is when the use of the beverage provides him a set of mystical experiences, which feature the vision of a female entity that gives him the doctrinal basis of the new cult based on the use of the beverage, now called Daime. This entity who would later be identified by Mestre Irineu as the Virgin Mary, from the Catholic tradition, would have clarified that the real name of that beverage was “Daime”, whose meaning comes from a request or invocation made by those who consume the beverage to the spiritual being who reigns it. Thus, the believers would ask: “Give me light”, “Give Me Love”, “Give me wisdom”, “Give me health” etc. This explanation of the name Daime, already points to the importance that the psychoactive beverage takes in the definition of the religious experience of this cult believers. It indicates that the Daime is assigned a crucial role in obtaining mystical, doctrinaire teachings or healing revelations - spiritual or 2Only in 1970, shortly before his death that Mestre Irineu had his group notarized as a religious institution, under the name of CICLU (Centro da Iluminação Cristã Luz Universal – Christian Enlightening Center Universal Light). Previously, in 1945, Mestre Irineu received a property donation, the Custódio Freire colony, located in the rural suburbs of Rio Branco. He shared this land among his followers and built his church at this site. The location, the church and, in some situations, the cult itself, became known as Alto Santo. However, over time and even with the emergence of new groups in this religious tradition, the group originally founded by Mestre Irineu is also identified in some situations as “Daime” or “Santo Daime”. In this article this term will be frequently used in order to refer to the religion created by Mestre Irineu. 26 Sandra Lucia Goulart material. During this period, in Brasiléia, Mestre Ireneu organized along with two fellows from Maranhão: André and Antonio Costa, the Centro de Regeneração e Fé (Center for Regeneration and Faith), which had as its main point of practices the consumption of ayahuasca. Nevertheless, the daimist cult only begins to be effectively organized in 1930, when Mestre Ireneu already lives in Rio Branco. At that time, he was established in the district of Vila Ivonete, rural area of the Acre capital which, in that period, housed rubber plants and small agricultural colonies, whose tenants were mostly former rubber tappers. Mestre Irineu, as well as several of the first members of his cult, had, by then, small colonies. As shown in other studies[3-5], to a certain extent, the religious group founded by Mestre Irineu, in Rio Branco, expressed both the material reorganization of former rubber tappers that, in a new environment, began to engage in the agriculture activity, as the rescue of a group of ancient regional cultural elements, which were resignified according to this context. At this time, issues related to health, disease and healing problems, gained prominence. Accordingly, the cult founded by Mestre Irineu appears, initially as a healing cult. In the early years that marked the organization of his religious group in Rio Branco, Mestre Irineu performed especially “healing works” with the Daime. It was through this kind of practice that he and his new cult were gradually becoming known, gathering followers in the region. Many of those who sought the guidance of Mestre Irineu, at that time, brought up requests related to health problems and, in most cases, those were typical of diseases from the region and from a social layer of low income, with little access to the official medicine. Thereby, the first believers of the group founded by Mestre Irineu were converted, especially as they felt their misfortunes and ailments were cured or solved. This was the case of Antonio Ribeiro (and part of his family), one of the earliest supporters of the cult of Mestre Irineu. In an interview with me, his daughter, Percília Ribeiro, reported that her father sought Mestre Irineu in 1934 because he suffered from malaria, and could not have it cured through the conventional medical treatments. In her words: “There was no medicine to cure that (...) Dad went only from home to the hospital, just taking drugs..
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