The Ritual Use of Ayahuasca
(O Uso Ritual da Ayahuasca)
by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Wladimyr Sena Araújo, Eds.
Review By Antonio Bianchi,
Translated to English by Jacqueline Knowles
Ayahuasca is one of the last remaining great myths of alternative
culture in Europe. The word "ayahuasca" comes from Quechua meaning
"aya", soul and "huasca", liana. Literally, the "liana of the
souls". It is used by an ample number of indigenous tribes of
the North -East Amazon (Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil). It
is used far less by other areas of the great rain forest. Among
these tribes its use is related to a spiritual vision of the world.
Whether it is a specialist's prerogative, "curanderos" a local
version of what we call "shamans" or that whether it is diffused
throughout the whole tribe like in most traditional groups, the
essential objective of using ayahuasca is of putting a person
who ingests it into contact with the world of spirits.
It is produced by the prolonged decoction of the liana Banisteriopsis
caapi and by the leaf of a shrub, Psychotria virdis.
The latter contains compositions of DMT, which are orally inactive
substances, destroyed by an enzyme in the gastrointestinal duct.
The liana contains a different substance, the B-carboline, which
is not hallucinogenic in itself but blocks the enzyme stopping
DMT from activating, allowing DMT to be absorbed and to exercise
its hallucinogenic powers. The result is a beverage containing
a safe and strong hallucinogenic effect, surely safer than many
other types of psychedelics (most common side effects are vomit
and sometimes diorrea) often inducing visions relating to spiritual
aspects of the natural world.
In summary, it has some characteristics that make it an ideal
candidate to become an interesting means for rapidly providing
internal experiences to young Europeans, anxious to find alternative
dimensions other than material ones. In fact, this is what happened:
many Europeans have poured into the urban centres of the Peruvian
Amazon (the touristically most accessible ones) in search of magical
and esoterical sensations, whilst in Brazil an unrestricted amount
of communities claiming to create new messianic religions with
the use of this beverage have been founded. As always, for most
people this is a fleeting experience, for others it is a brief
infatuation, whilst for some in good or in bad a new purpose of
life. These preliminary remarks help us understand the importance
of the text edited by Labate and Araújo.
Countless anthropological and non anthropological texts have
been written on Ayahuasca. Some of them are excellent. Not one
of them, however, has attempted to show an overall view of the
use of Ayahuasca in South America in paying special attention
to aspects attracting the interest of Europeans. Others had tried
to do so but the results were rather dissappointing. This is,
to the contrary a meticulously compiled text by people who know
their job from a scientific point of view.
The results is 25 chapters: 7 chapters are about the indigenous
use of Ayahuasca, 13 talk about the new Brazilian religions and
5 chapters are dedicated to the pharma-toxicological aspects of
Ayahuasca. The best results are found in the sections dedicated
to the Brazilian religions, where it is evident that the authors
had major contacts. It is on the phenomenon of these new Brazilian
religions, which are based on ayahuasca, that the most detailed
analysis has been offered until today in completeness and length
(excluding some obscure Brazilian thesis and some books which
are more worthy as New Age literature than as scientific literature
- Polari 1999)
In fact, in Brazil in the last ten years due to a rather limited
indigenous use of ayahuasca religious sects have grown exponentially,
two in particular, the Santo Daime and the Uniăo do Vegertal -
building churches and borrowing symbols and escathologies deriving
from the Christian doctrine and from modern esoterism. The Santo
Daime church has particularly diffused throughout many European
countries (Italy and USA are two) where ceremonies based on the
use of the sacred beverage are periodically carried out.
It is unusual to note how the Western world has (or perhaps has
had to) created new religions to run a kind of experience appearing
too alien. These religions are surely (there is insufficient reference
to this in the Brazilian text) very different to the original
traditional indigenous populations use of the beverage, revealing
how difficult it is to transfer religious practices and knowledge
in such different cultures.
Labate and Araújo have dedicated a chapter to the Alto Santo
sect (where the Santo Daime religion was founded) a chapter to
the Barquinha (an obscure religion deriving from the remote region
of Acre in Brazil), three chapters to the Uniăo do Vegetal (especially
diffused in Brazil and the States) and 7 chapters to the Santo
Daime. The official calendar of the Santo Daime rituals is illustrated,
its rites and therapeutic methods, the use of ayahuasca and its
activity in Europe (particularly in Germany). A report (inexplicably
found in the indigenous part of the book) on the caboclo use of
this beverage (a mixed Brazilian population in the Amazon) must
be quoted. This assignment is original in that it emphasizes a
vast and undervalued phenomenon, which is not known by the above
mentioned religions.
In fact in Brazil ayahuasca is always associated to the religions
of the Daime and Uniăo Vegetal. In Europe the result of this is
the idea that these religions are the expression of ayahuasca
as used by the rural populations in oriental regions of the Brazilian
Amazon. A more detailed study on the use of Ayahuasca outside
such religions could probably be surprising on the phenomenon
of the two Brazilian sects maintaining an ambiguous relationship
with the cultural environment they were developed in. The collected
material in the text is on the whole vast and well constructed
and scholars in religious dynamics will certainly find excellent
arguments to develop. Reports regarding the indigenous use ayahuasca
are probably weaker than the others. Jacques Mabit is one of the
authors, a French doctor who opened a centre in Tarapoto, in Peru,
originally dedicated, through the use of ayahuasca, to the recovery
of pasta basica drug addiction, a drug obtained by coca-leaves,
and successively turned into something quite close to a spiritual
touristic centre for Europeans.
A Colombian doctor German Zuluaga, to the contrary, attempted
to create an association of indigenous curanderos in Colombia
and ended up by creating a kind of panindigenistic ethic on both
the use of Ayahuasca and the relationships between curanderos
and the white participants or the people from the city in the
rituals.
And finally Luis Eduardo Luna, who having written one of the
most lucid reports on mongrel curanderismo on the cities
of the Amazon, became a well known anthropologist (Luna 1986)
and has recently given life to an organization which guides Europeans
into the Brazilian forest, where rituals are carried out in safe
conditions.
And finally Luis Eduardo Luna, who having written one of the
most lucid reports on mongrel curanderismo on the cities of the
Amazon, became a well known anthropologist (Luna 1986) and has
recently given life to an organization which guides Europeans
into the Brazilian forest, where rituals are carried out in safe
conditions.
The world of indigenous shamanism is a distant world, a vital
one without doubt, which is easily misunderstood and in continuous
rapid transformation, which to be de-codified needs time and patience
remaining a foreign land to those Europeans who cannot but dedicate
a holiday to it.
The world of indigenous shamanism is a distant world, a vital
one without doubt, which is easily misunderstood and in continuous
rapid transformation, which to be de-codified needs time and patience
remaining a foreign land to those Europeans who cannot but dedicate
a holiday to it.
The Purus has always been a poor beaten-tracked region which
although in Peru (and therefore in a Spanish speaking country)
is more easily accessible from (if we can define days and days
of boat journeys along the river so) Brazil than Peru itself.
Keifenhem accurately describes the importance of the sonorous
experience of ayahuasca and how through kinaesthetic phenomena
it enables you to structure a visionary experience through which
a sound is immediately turned into an immage.The German author
emphasizes how these songs are in fact insignificant and that
they mainly consist of evocative sounds. This distinguishes the
indigenous world from the mongrel world, where songs always carry
a meaning. It connects to what is previously signalled by another
anthropologist that mostly worked in Shipibo area (Gebhardt-Sayer
1987) and recently by Muller-Ebeling et. al. (2002) in a publication
on plants used by shamans in the Himalayan areas and lays the
basis for important scientific hypotheses.
It is a past argument that visions induced by Ayahuasca have
an archetypal and trans cultural content (Harner 1973). This has
also been confirmed by serious anthropologists who have drank
the substance in ancient indigenous communities.
A possible ethno musical analysis of such sounds (not discussed
by the German anthropologist) could emphasize the capacity to
determine sounds evoked within a determined cultural context or
even outside it, and once the level of consciousness has been
altered by the ingestion of ayahuasca determining visionary contents.
Recent studies on ayahuasca have finally reached modern methodologies
of neuro-psychophysical research through which it is possible
to analyse the effect on the brain of any kind of stimulus in
whatever state of consciousness (Riba et. al. 2002).
The German anthropologist's intuition therefore could reveal,
if supported by other data, interesting perspectives in inter
disciplinary research finally enabling an objective analysis of
the visionary experience to be taken forth (there is no better
way than that of a hallucinogenic substance taken in a culturally
different settings).
I partly recommend Labate's and Araújo's text for this reason
not only to those interested in drugs coming from remote angles
of the world. It is a text whose content surpasses ones interest
in ayahuasca and offers starting points for many developments.
A unique and immense limit. As for Portuguese: It would be good
if one considered translating it in to a more accessible language,
like English or Spanish.
Bilbliography
Gebhardt-Sayer A. Die Spitze des Bewusstseins. Untersuchungen
zu Weltbild and Kunst der Shipibo-Conibo. Klaus Renner, Munchen.
Harner MJ (1973). Common Themes in South American Indian Yagč
Experiences. In Harner MJ. Hallucinogens and Shamanism,. Oxford
Univ. Press, London.
Luna LE (1986). Vegetalismo. Shamanism among the Mestizo Population
of the Peruvian Amazon. Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm.
Luna LE and White SF (2000). Ayahuasca Reader. Encouter wuth the
Sacred Amazon's Sacred Vine. Synergetic Press, Santa Fe
Metzner R (1999). Ayahuasca. Hallucinogens, Consciousness and
the Spirit of Nature. New York, Thunder Mouth Press.
Muller-Ebeling C, Ratsch C and Shahi SB (2002) . Shamanism and
Tantra in the Himalayas. Thames and Hudson, London.
Polari de Alverga A (1999). Forest of Visions. Ayahuasca, Amazonian
Spirituality and the Santo Daime tradition. Rochester, Inner Traditions.
Riba J, Rodriguez-Fornells and Barbanoj MJ (2002). Effects of
ayahuasca on sensory and sensorimotor gating in humans as measured
by P50 suppression and prepulse inhibition of the startle reflex,
respectively. Psychopharmacology, 165: 18-28
