Christ Returns From the Jungle : Ayahuasca Religion As Mystical Healing

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Title: Christ Returns From the Jungle : Ayahuasca Religion As Mystical Healing
Description: An in-depth, ethnographic study of the transnational expansion of Santo Daime, a mystical religious tradition organized around sacramental ingestion of the mind-altering ayahuasca beverage.After more than 450 years of European intrusions into South America's rainforest, small groups of people across Europe now gather discreetly to participate in Amazonian ceremonies their local governments consider a criminal act. As devotees of a new Brazil-based religion called Santo Daime, they claim that they contact God by way of ayahuasca, a potent psychoactive beverage first developed by native communities in pre-Columbian Amazonia. This bitter, brown liquid is a synergy of plants containing DMT, a mind-altering chemical classified as an illicit'hallucinogen'in most countries. By contrast, Santo Daime members (daimistas) revere ayahuasca as a sacrament, combining it with rituals and theologies borrowed from Christian mysticism, indigenous shamanism, Afro-Brazilian spiritualism, and Western esotericism.The Santo Daime religion was founded in 1930 by an Afro-Brazilian rubber tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra, now known as Mestre (Master) Irineu. Presenting results from more than a year of fieldwork with Santo Daime groups in Europe, Marc G. Blainey contributes new understandings of contemporary Westerners'search for existential well-being on an increasingly interconnected planet. As a thorough exploration of daimistas'beliefs about the therapeutic potentials of ayahuasca, this book takes readers on an ethnographic journey into the deepest recesses of the human psyche.
Authors: Marc G. Blainey
Resource Type: eBook.
Subjects: Santo Daime (Cult)--Europe, Religion and culture--Europe, Cultural pluralism--Religious aspects, Cultural pluralism--Europe
Categories: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, RELIGION / Cults, RELIGION / Psychology of Religion, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion, PSYCHOLOGY / Psychotherapy / Spiritually Integrated
Database: eBook Collection (EBSCOhost)
Description
Abstract:An in-depth, ethnographic study of the transnational expansion of Santo Daime, a mystical religious tradition organized around sacramental ingestion of the mind-altering ayahuasca beverage.After more than 450 years of European intrusions into South America's rainforest, small groups of people across Europe now gather discreetly to participate in Amazonian ceremonies their local governments consider a criminal act. As devotees of a new Brazil-based religion called Santo Daime, they claim that they contact God by way of ayahuasca, a potent psychoactive beverage first developed by native communities in pre-Columbian Amazonia. This bitter, brown liquid is a synergy of plants containing DMT, a mind-altering chemical classified as an illicit'hallucinogen'in most countries. By contrast, Santo Daime members (daimistas) revere ayahuasca as a sacrament, combining it with rituals and theologies borrowed from Christian mysticism, indigenous shamanism, Afro-Brazilian spiritualism, and Western esotericism.The Santo Daime religion was founded in 1930 by an Afro-Brazilian rubber tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra, now known as Mestre (Master) Irineu. Presenting results from more than a year of fieldwork with Santo Daime groups in Europe, Marc G. Blainey contributes new understandings of contemporary Westerners'search for existential well-being on an increasingly interconnected planet. As a thorough exploration of daimistas'beliefs about the therapeutic potentials of ayahuasca, this book takes readers on an ethnographic journey into the deepest recesses of the human psyche.
ISBN:9781438483139
9781438483146
9781438483153