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Santo Daime
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Santo Daime is a syncretic spiritual practice, which was founded in the Brazilian Amazonian state of Acre in the 1930s and became a worldwide movement in the 1990s. Santo Daime rituals involve the consumption of Daime, the name founder Raimundo Irineu Serra, or Mestre Irineu gave to the drink known generically as Ayahuasca. Dai-me means "give me" in Portuguese, as in "daime força, daime amor" (give me strength, give me love), phrases found in several of the doctrine's hymns.
Santo Daime is syncretic in that it incorporates elements of several religious or spiritual traditions including Folk Catholicism, Kardecist Spiritism, and, to a lesser degree, African animism and South American Shamanism. The religion, called simply the Doctrine of Mestre Irineu by its most senior practitioners, has little basis in liturgical texts. Instead, its teachings are learned experientially through the singing of ostensibly divinely inspired hymns, in which the Catholic pantheon of the Eternal Father, the Ever-Virgin Mary, and Christ the Redeemer figure most prominently, though African and South American deities are also present, and respect and love for one's "brothers" are constantly preached.
Ceremonies, which are called trabalhos or "works" range from a couple to many hours long and consist of drinking Daime and either sitting or dancing while singing hymns and shaking maracas, or sitting in silent "concentration". They sometimes also include healing mediumship sessions.
Ayahuasca, which contains the psychoactive compound dimethyltryptamine (DMT), has been the subject of increasing legal scrutiny in the last few decades as Santo Daime has expanded. The decoction has been explicitly legal for religious use in Brazil since 1986, while recent legal battles in Europe have legalized its use in Holland and Spain. In the United States, the Supreme Court in 2006 upheld a preliminary injunction permitting another Brazilian church, the União do Vegetal (UDV), to use ayahuasca ritually. This decision, as the result of specific litigation involving the UDV, applies only to that group, so the legal status of ayahuasca generally remains in a gray area in that country.
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Santo Daime is the name presently given to the religious practice begun in the 1920s in the far western Brazilian state (then-territory) of Acre by Raimundo Irineu Serra, an immigrant of Maranhao in Brazil's northeast region.
Serra, a rubber tapper and government employee, first drank ayahuasca in the border region between Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. He began attracting followers in the 1930s. Many of them came to him sick, seeking healing they could not afford or failed to find in standard medical practice.
Following the death of Mestre Irineu in 1971, disputes over leadership led to several splits in the congregation. From a global perspective, the most significant of these occurred when Sebastiao Mota de Melo, commonly called Padrinho Sebastiao, left the original center with a large group of his followers, and formed a group known as CEFLURIS. Many of Padrinho Sebastiao's followers were Brazilians from the country's affluent south or citizens of other South American countries who were interested in Daime because of their experience with the middle-class counterculture.
According to church documents, this split also entailed disagreement over the use of cannabis. Followers of Sebastiao Mota de Melo believed marijuana to be the Goddess incarnate, and referred to it as Santa Maria, using it in ceremony to help their mediumship (embodying of spirits for the purpose of healing.) Followers of Mestre Irineu regard use of cannabis, as well as mediumship generally, as outside the doctrine. In recent years, the church has admonished against use of "Santa Maria" for several reasons. First, because of its addictive potential. Second, because it is illegal. Third, in an effort to retain more faithfully the original teachings of Mestre Irineu. While some church members may privately partake of smoking marijuana and refer to it as Santa Maria, the official church stance is to prohibit its use. It is no longer considered "of the doctrine".
In the early 1980s Padrinho Sebastiao moved his the church headquarters to Ceu do Mapia. Control of CEFLURIS was increasingly shared with the southern intellectuals who joined the movement in the 1970s, and in the 1980s CEFLURIS established centers in southern Brazil. The group now has affiliates in North America, Europe, and Japan, as well as throughout Brazil.
Classical Santo Daime practice features two main kinds of ritual: concentrações ("concentrations") and bailados ("dances"), also known as hinários ("hymnals"). Participants drink Daime in both types of ritual; but concentrations are silent, seated meditations, while hymnals involve dancing and singing hymns while shaking maracas.
Brazilian hymns are sometimes sung in English in the states, and in Japanese in Japan, Dutch in the Netherlands, etc, and non-Portuguese-speaking members often "receive" (from God or angels) hymns in their native language.
- Main article: Ayahuasca
Santo Daime's entheogenic sacrament, ayahuasca, has been used for millennia in South American indigenous cultures. It is one of the traditional tools of the shaman in South America, and in many regions is to this day a common medicine used for finding and treating various ailments as well as for its vision-inducing effects, which are said to be profound and life-changing.
The tea has had many names including Santo Daime (or simply Daime), Hoasca, Ayahuasca, Yage, and Caapi. It is made from two or more plants, one a woody vine (Ayahuasca vine or Jagube; generally b. caapi), and the others known as admixtures. While various plants are used throughout South America, most of which have high concentrations of dimethyltryptamine, the preferred admixture in the case of Santo Daime is Psychotria viridis, known to church members as the "Queen of the Forest," after the figure who is said to have appeared to the churches founder in a vision, prompting him to start the religion. DMT occurs naturally in the human brain and is released in great quantities at the time of death, but it is normally digested in the stomach if consumed and an MAOI, (monoamine oxidase inhibitor), in this case harmine and harmaline, is needed to allow it to reach the brain in this way, thus the use of the vine. The Santo Daime Church uses only the Jagube vine and the Viridis leaf, not adding any other plants to the mixture. The tea is prepared ceremoniously over a week by members of the church who sing hymns while the men hammer the vine into powder and the women clean and sort the leaves.
Due to their usage of ayahuasca as a sacrament and the spread of the religion, Santo Daime has found itself the center of Court battles and legal wrangling in various countries.
In Brazil, CONFEN (the Federal Drug Council) has consistently upheld the right of the Daime Church to practice its religion and healing practices using the Daime tea. A study was made of the Daime by the CONFEN in 1987 which included visits to the various churches and observation of the making of the Daime. It also included study of another group of Ayahuasca users, who call the drink Vegetal (Uniao do Vegetal). The work group which made the study included representatives not only of the CONFEN but also of several other government agencies. The conclusion of the study was that the Daime was a very positive influence in the community, encouraging social harmony and personal integration. The study noted that, rather than simply considering the pharmacological analysis of the plants, it was essential to consider the whole context of the use of the tea -- religious, social, and cultural.
In the Netherlands, Santo Daime won a court case in 2001 which allowed them to continue their ceremonial usage of ayahuasca. One factor in this decision was a fax from the Secretary of the International Narcotics Control Board to the Netherlands Ministry of Public Health, stating that [P]reparations (e.g.decoctions) made of these plants, including ayahuasca are not under international control and, therefore, not subject to any of the articles of the 1971 Convention. [1]
In France, Santo Daime won a court case allowing them to use the tea in early 2005; however, they were not allowed an exception for religious purposes, but rather for the simple reason that they did not perform chemical extractions to end up with pure DMT and harmala and the plants used were not scheduled. Four months after the court victory, the common ingredients of Ayahuasca as well as harmala were declared stupéfiants, or narcotic schedule I substances, making the tea and its ingredients illegal to use or possess. See [2] and [3] (French) for more information.
In the United States, court battles over ritual use of Ayahuasca have mostly been fought by the UDV, and practitioners of the Santo Daime doctrine are watching these events closely. So far, UDV has been able to continue practicing legally thanks to Supreme Court decisions that soundly rejected attempts by the government to prohibit it. see [4] for more information.
The most recent decision came in Italy in 2006; an eight month long investigation had led to the arrest of 24 Italian Santo Daime members in early 2005, but the May 2006 ruling found that no sufficient evidence had been presented to demonstrate that the church members had broken Italian law.