Christ Returns from the Jungle

<p><b>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.</b></p><p>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 (<i>daimistas</i>) revere ayahuasca as a sacrament combining it with rituals and theologies borrowed from Christian mysticism indigenous shamanism Afro-Brazilian spiritualism and Western esotericism.</p><p>The Santo Daime religion was founded in 1930 by an Afro-Brazilian rubber tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra now known as <i>Mestre</i> (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.</p>