A reinvenção do uso da ayahuasca nos centros urbanos
AUTOR(ES)
Beatriz Caiuby Labate
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO
2000
RESUMO
Brazilian ayahuascan religions, especially the União do Vegetal (UDV) and the Santo Daime, have been increasingly practiced in the large Brazilian cities since the 1970 and 1980s, respectively, and in other countries as well, mainly since the late 1980s. One outcome of this process is the appearance of new urban types of ayahuasca consumption. Many small experimental groups use the beverage as part of psychotherapeutic treatment in experiences within the new-age context, or in social groups related to the arts, the theater, and music, or even in activities carried out with street dwellers in the city of São Paulo. These small groups in formation have been called neo-ayahuascan. The subjects developing these new forms express a certain tension between a tendency to reject traditional religious models of the ayahuascan matrixes already in existence, and the avoidance of falling into uses seen simply as profane drug consumption. As a result, new kinds of rituals, as well as philosophical, existential, therapeutic, and even religious frames of reference are built up discursivelyand symbolically, thus introducing significant ruptures in ayahuasca consumption patterns in Brazil. Neo-ayahuascans belong to an urban network of participants which provides constant interchange of information, knowledge, persons, substances, and funds. This network is part of the Brazilian ayahuascan field, which interconnects the various groups considered traditional (Alto Santo, CEFLURIS, Barquinha, and UDV). It has also crossed the Brazilian borders to reach Peruvian witch doctors and even modem psychic healers in developed countries. These new urban modalities of consumption of this beverage of Amazon origin are related to broader processes which have been taking place in times of modernity. The present dissertation is basically a case study of a neo-ayahuascan, the holistic therapist Janderson, who is the coordinator of a therapeutic center in the city of São Paulo and the leader of a group called Path of the Heart (Caminho do Coração). We have completed this ethnography with a panorama of other urban ayahuascan trends, intended not only as a contribution to understanding the Brazilian ayahuascan field in its continuous re-inventions, but also as an investigation into the nature and dynamics of new urban religiosities
ASSUNTO(S)
santo daime religião nova era (movimento esoterico) ayahuasca ritual
