Replanting Christ:
Entheogens in Christianity:
a theological and socio-cultural comparison of the ethos and worldview of Santo Daime and Native American Church
“Ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?” (Job 12:7–9)
Ecotheology — a background
Since Lynn White’s thesis that the current ecological crisis stems from the Christian doctrine of “dominion” over nature, a broad discourse of ecotheology has bubbled up. According to White, even expressly ‘post-Christian’ scientists have inherited a subliminal bias from the Latin Christian desire to pick apart the mechanisms of the Book of Nature. “…[M]odern Western science was cast in a matrix of Christian theology.” The encouragement in Genesis to “fill the earth and subdue it” renders “Christianity…the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen…” White continues,
“At the level of the common people this worked out in an interesting way. In Antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. These spirits were accessible to men, but were very unlike men; centaurs, fauns, and mermaids show their ambivalence. Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects…The spirits in natural objects, which formerly had protected nature from man, evaporated. Man’s effective monopoly on spirit in this world was confirmed, and the old inhibitions to the exploitation of nature crumbled…The whole concept of the sacred grove is alien to Christianity and to the ethos of the West.” [1967:1205–7]
He thus calls for a reanalysis and recasting of the modern liberal understandings of Fransiscan thought: St Francis did not preach to nature for his own benefit, but for nature’s. This final reflection is to be commended. But what of his challenge? What about letting nature preach back?
White’s history is somewhat selective, ignoring the Christian ban on the voyeuristic torture of lions and bulls in the gladiator pits, forbade on the basis of cruelty to animals. And what of the large-scale deforestation of Northern England by Neolithic Peoples, or central Australia by Aborigones, through forest fire hunting techniques? Or the hunting to extinction of the great mammals? Does the Anthropocene really have only Yahweh to thank?
In Jewish thought nature has a central feature. Two trees in the Genesis 2 Garden of Eden story play a crucial feature: one in humankind’s sustenance there (the Tree of Life); another in its banishment (The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil). Theorisations of a shamanic origin to this story, though interesting — involving as they do plants that grant life and knowledge — can only ever remain conjecture. Genesis 1:11 relates the creation of trees as, ‘Good’ (though humanity of course is considered “very good”!) Farmers are also encouraged to allow land in the seventh year to remain wild and untamed. (Exodus 23:11)
Let us also mention Adam and Eve’s vegan diet (Genesis 2:29–30), and the allowance of meat as a mercy, privilege and indulgence rather than a base necessity after the flood (Genesis 9). In some of the first legally binding permacultural and conservation obligations, Mosaic law also encourages the cultivation and love of trees until they mature and fruit, even celebrating them in a festival. It bans the destruction of fruit trees during war (Deuteronomy 20:19). And as much as mankind has an ability to dominate nature, this is tempered by the duty to care. Creation itself exists to worship God. The Sabbath is a rest day for cattle and donkeys (Deuteronomy 5:14), not just homo sapiens.
But do Churches, nestled in the doctrine of a fallen world which so often turns from God, believe nature can be learned from? The prophet Hosea describes a “covenant with the animals”. (2:18) And then there is Isaiah’s famous passage about the wolf lying down with the lamb in God’s future. (11:6)
The sages of Israel recorded that “a righteous man hath regard for the life of his beast” (Proverbs 12:10), and specifically that the suffering of animals should be alleviated by human effort (Exodus 23:4–5; Luke 14:5). Moreover, as in the pericope opening this essay, in the wisdom literature, animals, fish and even plants are considered be capable mouthpieces of divinity. (Job 12:7–9) In the new testament, plant and animal similes abound: the flock, the fig tree, the Lamb of God, the vineyard. Christ refers to the sparrows and birds as cherished by the Father, and is himself born in an animal feeding trough.
What would it mean to see a revelation of God in the natural world?
Certain Christian initiatives like A Rocha (arocha.org.) are explicitly Christian organisations engaging in nature conservation. Other groups like St Ethelburger’s and Hilfield Friary have strong ecological components. Part of me wonders at the coincidence Extinction Rebellion Faith choosing the bridge right next to the Archbishop’s Palace in Lambeth. In the Anglican church it is possible to qualify as an eco-church, with some, like St James’ Piccadilly engaging in a service for the environment, and another church in Herne Hill experimenting with straw bail building structures.
Modern ecotheological discourse may recast ‘Nature’ as the Other or Neighbour to be treated as one’s self. [Williams 2017] Celia Deane-Drummond has argued that the wisdom traditions in the Bible in combinatination with the current ecological crisis oblige us to adopt a multi-species lens for reading Theology. This allows us to go beyond liberal philosophical notions of ‘animal rights’, the latter word of which implies an anthropocentrism, and towards an understanding of our wisdom as naturally based: our wisdom allows us to understand the interiority and subjectivity of the non-human life-world itself. [2019]
Even with this corner-discourse of theology, the intrinsic value of nature is not as much a manifest emphasis as it is with traditional entheogenic plant shamanism. Although ecological domination is not an intrinsically Christian thing in which to engage, White convincingly argued that Greek-Jewish thought assumes a constant progress from creation to eschaton: progress is built into the fabric of the Christian worldview.
More to the point, Christianity itself centres around a social gospel. Christianity’s central concern is the relationship of humans to humans. Uncovering a theology of nature either requires digging into the Jewish heritage of Christianity, or a hermeneutic of communication beyond language. Nature, explicitly at least, often doesn’t come into it. What can the Proverbial “plants of the earth…teach” us then? Enter, syncretic plant-entheogen Christianity…
Santo Daime and the Native American Church — a cultural-theological comparison
This essay offers an assessment of the extent to which Christianity impacts and is impacted by the worldview and ethos of Christian-entheogen syncretic[1] religions: Santo Daime and the Native American Church (NAC). Geertz provides the most practicable definition of ethos and worldview. Worldview is characterised by “the picture they have of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas of order”; ethos is identified by “the tone, character and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood.” [Geertz 2008:58] Where the former involves what is thought, the latter regards how this is felt. I argue that Christian culture and theology affects the ethos of both more than the worldview. The worldview of Christianity has been tempered in both by animistic concerns, whereas the ethos is Christian-redemptive.
I will briefly elucidate the merit of comparison, followed by an explanation of my theologically meta-relativist methodology. My argument begins by comparing the history of these religions and their various remythologisations of Christ into the plants. Christ is present to these people, ‘as if he always ever was’, in spite of an originally ‘Christless’ pre-colonised entheogenic situation. What can these cultures be said to reap from Christian imports? Is it a pragmatic solution to a colonial past — a way of normalising psychedelic ritual practice to a culture which condemns them? — or has Christian culture actively been taken into the hearts and minds of practitioners? Are these two positions mutually exclusive?
Then I will compare their rituals: what elements of the ritual space, and the actions and locutions within ritual itself — the symbolic cultural resources — can be derived from Christianity or autochthonous origins. ‘Normative’ Christianity — taken here to be the most predominant in the area — is Protestant in the US where the NAC are based, and Catholic in Brazil, where Daime started. After looking at the cultural shift, a theoretical position will be stated regarding the myth and ritual debate in this context.
Throughout, and in the last section, I will assess how and why all of these things contribute to the ethos and worldview of both examples. It seems in both that Christianity has had a moralising influence: this bears more relevance to ethos than worldview.
Is apposition apposite? What is to be gained from comparison?
The benefit of such a study is to understand the (in)compatibility between Christianity and psychedelics in a world where species chauvinism and ecological breakdown characterise our zeitgeist and planet. Christianity has had a part to play in this, if not least in its silence. Its doctrine of ‘dominion’ comes from the first book of its centrally shared text, encouraging readers to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’. While ecocide is not unique to the history of Christianity, but is a pandemic human problem (as established in the introduction), Christianity’s kerygma[2] is at heart social, a proclamation of the friendship of humanity and saving of creation in Christ, the word made (human) flesh — not “vegetable flesh”. Imminent and immanent environmental disaster looms: such a study is useful both to theologian and anthropologist in seeing the potential for an ecological, animist Christianity.
There are three reasons Santo Daime and the NAC will benefit from comparison:
1. Daime[3] and Peyote[4], as psychedelics, have similar neurological action, rendering individuals more open to environment and memory, and more likely to saturate the world with ‘meaning’. [Aberle 1991:8; Radin 2008(1925):16; Shanon 2002; Dawson 2013] This implies a non-dual worldview whereby the physicality of the Peyote or the Daime engenders a spiritual experience: both Peyote and Daime are referred to as medicine and sacrament interchangeably. [Smith and Snake 1996:43; Calabrese 2013:112 ; Goldman 2010:xxiii ]
2. Individual and collective immediacy of experience — revelations or visions — are prioritised over set dogmas. [Aberle 1991:7; Dawson 2013] They operate according to the principle of “minimal orthodoxy” [Dawson 2013:40] applicable also to the NAC wherein “no officially promulgated Peyotist doctrine can be presented…” [Slotkin 2011(1956):68] [5] Belief is subservient to the pragmatic efficacy of the medicine-sacrament. But codes of conduct during the ritual and ethical rules are cultivated and aspired to. They are low grid high group, low on set beliefs and high in embodied regulation. [Douglas 2010:2–3]
3. Both religions lack a priesthood: leadership is charismatic not bureaucratic. [Dawson 2013; Hayward 2011] Worldview is not “mummified in priestly wisdom” [Malinowsky 2008:167] but a continuously evolving myth-ritual complex.
Theoretical stance: theological meta-relativism
Arguing for a ‘Christian ethos’ necessitates a value-judgement and a reflexive-theology stemming from a meta-relativist position. As a Christian theologian I must define this meta-relativism while also taking a stance on what Christian ethos means in its broadest sense.
Calabrese offers a ‘clinical-ethnography’ of the NAC from a meta-relativist perspective, accepting the multiplicity of the normal (different societies’ medical attitudes and taboos towards drugs) while also holding that are ‘better’ normals. [Calabrese 2013:49;61;199] This has the effect of medically emancipating NAC culture, the attitude towards which has been based on media-imbibed pseudo-scientific propaganda promoting the war on drugs. Medically safe, peyote aids Native Americans to socially integrate by dealing with both personal (e.g. alcoholism) and social (e.g. colonial) trauma. Acceptance of multiplicity while constantly comparing allows Calabrese to claim that NAC have a healthier attitude towards psychiatry than most Western biomedical models, taking the emplotment of individuals into social narratives as central, rather than myopically isolating mental health to a mechanistic neurological problem. [Calabrese 2013:99–100;149]
A ‘theologically meta-relativist’ position, similarly, accepts that there may be ‘better’ sacraments for certain cultures. Let us not forget that, far from bringing the religion of the Prince of Peace, the Spanish invaders brought upon natives their Inquisition: “torture encarceration, public humuliation, and burning at the stake” to “enforce a Spanish Catholic vision of the normal and the sacred.” It cannot be ignored, colonialism involved “infants being torn from their mother’s breasts and smashed against rocks, woman and children being thrown to hungry dogs and torn apart, dismemberments, killings for sport, large-scale massacres and brutal enslavement” abounded.[6] In what were probably the world’s first ever drug laws, a 1620 Spanish law disparaged Peyote as the work of the devil. [Calabrese 2013:5–6] These ethnocentric biases hid behind theology, whereas contemporary biases are bio-medically framed: mescaline touted legally speaking as a dangerous drug, open to abuse.
To an Indian population plagued by alcoholism with colonial origins [Hayward 2011; Calabrese 2013; Twiss 2015], an alcoholic sacrament makes no ‘cultural sense’. Wine is the “physical pole” of the Christian sacrament. [Myerhoff 2008:346] In theological terms, this is the ‘outward sign’ rather than the ‘inward grace’. [MacQuarrie 2005] Communion, thanksgiving, and spiritual renewal are the “spiritual pole”, or the inward grace, of such a sacrament. Thus, a sacrament which increases one’s fellow-feeling and disturbs addictive habits — both during and in the aftertime — fits better into the precedents and familiarities of the collective cultural space of First Nations people, traumatised by colonialism, resettlement, and easy access to drugs alien to their culture, such as alcohol.
A Christian worldview traditionally involves a metaphysical belief in the ontology of systematic theology: creation, fall, redemption, salvation, eschaton[7]. While ethnographies like Davies’ Ordinary Christology have thrown a spanner into the illusion that all church-goers are entirely without heresy[8], this is the most workable definition of a Christian worldview.
A Christian ethos involves a theology of redemption and salvation in which Christ is present to practitioners as a transformative force. The “tone, character and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood” [Geertz 2008:58] must reflect this paradigm of redemption and salvation. The habitus[9] and sensoria[10] of practitioners must be, in some recognizable sense, Christlike, in order to speak of a Christian ethos.
Anthropologically, this could be criticized as stretching the definition of Christian ethos to suit my needs.
But, where an anthropologist sees little connecting, say, a Russian Orthodox Slavonic Mass and a Korean megachurch, a Christian will see much — a Christian will see Christians. I am both a student of culture and Christianity. There are many Christian ‘normals’ and interpretations: words can be embodied differently in different cultures. Intuitively, however, both of these cultures reflect in a deep sense the type of community which Jesus sought to initiate: quoting Paul, these cultures exhibit the fruits of the spirit:
“the fruits of teh spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” (NRSV, Galatians 5:22–23)
Historical origin and myths of Santo Daime — a drinkable gospel for the poorest of the poor
During the early 1900s, within a generation of slavery’s abolition, Santo Daime’s founding prophet, Master Irineu, learned how to brew ayahuasca[11] from caboclos, peasants living on the edge of the Amazon (themselves taught by hunter-gatherer tribes). The vegetalista magical healing tradition from these caboclos is credited with Irineu’s ability to heal others. Ireneu’s Christian faith remained central to the hymns he “received”, sung during the ritual. Upon drinking, Irineu tried to summon demonic energy for personal power with the caboclos, but only Christian crosses appeared. In his second vision, the Virgin Mary appeared as the “queen of the forest”, or “Universal Goddess” to tell him to spread the gospel and rename the brew “Daime”. [Dawson 2013:11] The many influences upon the founder of the religion, implied by his multiple-naming of Mary, is indicative of the repertoire of the religion as syncretic — it takes from many religious traditions — and palimpsestic — overlaying one thing with many interpretations. [Dawson 2013:47] The Holy Family are given a high reverence. This Marian emphasis is indicative of the folk-Catholic milieu.
Recognizable Daime rituals were probably in full swing by the 1920s. Its original members were illiterate Roman Catholic villagers, and Daime was drunk as an augment to Church attendance. It has evolved into a stand-alone religion, especially among the new urban middle classes, who often have a shorter fuse when it comes to traditional Catholic ceremonies. [Dawson 2013]
Comparing the history to the myth will aid our understanding of their worldview. Members of Santo Daime revere their founder, Master Irineu Serra, as the reincarnation of Christ. His disciple, Padrinho Sebastiao, is considered the reincarnation of John the Baptist by CEFLURIS, the Universal Church of the Undying Light, Daime’s largest denomination. [Dawson 2013:61] This very statement provides our first contrast regarding worldview. The more vehemently Christian Winnebago NAC studied by Radin explicate their distinction from traditional Indian worldviews by a rejection of reincarnation. [Radin 2008(1925)]
Ayahuasca as Daime is considered a “drinkable gospel”, the doctrine of which went into hiding given the Europeans’ “distortions…to Jesus’ teachings.” [Goldman 2010] That it appeared in the poorest part of the poorest country to a black rubber-tapper under a decade after slavery’s abolishment is considered in keeping with Christ’s promises to the poor: Daime is in continuity with the Christian gospel, while simultaneously a radical break from it. Divine knowledge is experientially accessible. “Divine Being” is “embodied in the tea”, but the tea also represents a “gateway” to “other dimensions” such as the astral plane, the denizens of whom feature in their hymns. [Goldman 2010:xxiii-xxv]
As there already is a New Testament, we might see it as a ‘Plant Testament.’ In Master Irineu’s words, “We don’t work with the Bible here. We work with the conscience. I believe in the Bible but I don’t work with the Bible in hand. My Bible is the Daime and the hymns.” Notice, here, the close family resemblance to the statement of one Navaho informant, “The Peyote…is my Bible. I know what I should…and shouldn’t be doing.” [Smith & Snake 1996:49]
Historical origins and myths of the NAC — a cactus Christ
The history of the Christianisation of Peyote has notable similarities and differences: firstly, it is (and was) used indigenously for personal power, healing and divination. [Slotkin 2011(1956):28–30] Its use outside the NAC among the Huichol is well documented, notably by Barbara Myerhoff. Furst notes that the longest continuous usage of any psychedelic has been demonstrated by the cultures surrounding peyote’s habitat. [Furst 1976] Samorini dates the earliest concrete archeological evidence for peyote dating from 3,200 BC , psilocybin mushrooms 6000 BC and San Pedro Catcus at 8,500 BC. [2019:2] Mike Jay has recently suggested that peyote may “perhaps” precede the use of San Pedro. [2019:34]
In the NAC, there was no single prophet or founder in the same sense as Daime, but a series of native missionaries, moving northward. The NAC was officialised as a Church in 1918 at the encouragement of James Mooney, their first ethnographer, who also did a lot to normalise peyote use. [Jay 2019:54] Though he had their best interests at heart and was concerned with legal protection through freedom of religious expression, the colonial implications here are unavoidable. The crystallisation of the ritual happened gradually, either standardised by 1885 in New Mexico, or by the plains Indians to whom the Apachean groups introduced peyote. Christian elements came gradually and inconsistently as partly Christianised tribes adopted it, and membership started increasingly to include Christians. [Aberle 1991(1966):19] The extent of Christian membership varied according to each tribe’s relationship to Christian missionaries. [Fikes 1996:171] Different types of similar ceremony evolved under different Roadmen (as the leaders of ceremony are termed): with Quanar Parker, the half-moon ritual developed, named after the horse-shoe dirt mount with a line in the centre to represent the peyote road; with John Wilson, who “vouchsafed a series of visions in which Christ and the peyote walked together in the sky”, this involved more explicitly Christian elements and came to be known as the “full moon” or “big moon” ritual. The Winnebago Church uniquely uses the Bible in its ceremonies. [Radin 2008(1925)] In other contexts, missionaries like the Methodist John Jasper Methvin, were swift to condemn, in keeping with the earliest times of conquest. [Calabrese 2013:5–6; Jay 2019:71] By 1908, Albert Hensley, a Winnebago educated in a missionary school, was perhaps the first to view peyote both as “Holy Medicine and Christian Sacrament.” [Fikes 1996:171]
Ceremonial use was protected by federal regulation in 1965, but with uncooperative individual state responses, active persecution was illegalised in 1978. [Smith & Snake 1996:150–1] Under constant contestation, a recent 1995 law has further explicated protection. Now the longest living and most prevalent pan-tribal North American native religion, the NAC’s membership stretches from Mexico to Canada. [Calabrese 2013:9]
In 1908, the Winnebago Albert Hensley is recorded at saying, “To us it is a portion of the body of Christ…even as the communion bread is believed to be a portion o Christ’s body by other Christian denominations. Christ spoke of a Comforter ho was to come. It never came to Indians until it was sent by God in the form of this Holy Medicine.” [Fikes 1996:171] I have heard of British and Estonian practitioners using ceremonies with a similar structure, originally taught by NAC practitioners, often as members of the “diaspora tribe”. These adoptions and adaptations, however, have less of an explicitly Christian content. It is clear that the NAC is open to manifold doctrinal positions.
Fikes interprets the remythologisation of peyote as form of mutual cultural reinforcement. Parallels between the way Peyote was originally viewed and its new context are unavoidable. The affinity of this myth with the Eucharistic story is striking: the native Huichol myth “parallels Christianity in that the Creator, out of compassion…subjects himself to the limitations of this world…but is resurrected to save human beings…Peyote embodies the Creator’s heart.” [Fikes 1996:168]
Though there are many origin myths given the differing tribal contexts in the Native American Church, the most common myth is as follows: a woman wounded in battle, whose fellow tribes people had died or retreated, heard a voice emanating from a “sacred plant” nearby, encouraging her to eat with the promise of “all the richest blessings” for her “Indian people”. Upon eating it “her strength returned and she was healed and cured from her sufferings”. [Calabrese 2013:111]
This modal myth lacks explicit Christian content. Calabrese interprets the attack and wounding as the colonial process, which left most natives dead and the rest subject to enforced enculturation, the seizure of native lands, and alcoholism. [Calabrese 2013; Twiss 2015] Peyote is made meaningful as a pan-tribal panacea, a form of “postcolonial healing”. [Calabrese 2013] The NAC has a distinctly pan-tribal worldview, uniting the disparate tribes abused by colonial atrocities. The other defining feature, perhaps surprising given its colonial birth, is its focus on salvation and redemption.
Most local myths interpret Christ as present in Peyote. One Navajo reports the belief that Jesus told his people, “after my blood dropped to the earth from my heart, there grew up from the earth vegetation, and that was Peyote, and Peyote is my blood”. [Smith & Snake 1996:43] Slotkin stated that God pitied “them for being a subject people…made the peyote cactus…and put some of his power into it…to help the Indians…”. Eating peyote, Indians “absorb…the power inherent in it…it is a sacrament like…bread and wine…consumed in order to absorb the Holy Spirit…” [Slotkin 2011(1956):28–30] In both these cases Peyote replaces wine as the blood of Christ, the Eucharistic celebration.
Peyote is interpreted as either a mother or father or both, depending on whether the tribe in question is matrilineal, patrilineal, or neither. The divine represents the social norm in all individual tribal cases. For many members of the NAC, there is a female Christ as a palimpsest for the mescal goddess. [La Barre 1996:163]
Given the normatively heretical viewpoint of a female Christ, it seems unlikely that such interpretations originated as an attempt to normalise the practice to a Christian dominator culture.[12] More orthodox is the emphasis on Jesus the Native.
Problematically, ethnographers study the NAC in different localities. Radin studied the NAC among the Winnebago, others have studied them elsewhere — Mooney and Quanah Parker were critical of Christianity. Having said that, his famous utterance — “the white man goes to his church and talks about Jesus, the red man goes to his church and talks to Jesus” — will ricochet through Christian history. We should thus be wary of making sweeping statements regarding worldview. Slotkin notes that whilst God is “equated with the Great spirit, [who] is the ‘ultimate source of all power.’”, it seems that “Jesus’ role is variable — sometimes equated with the traditional culture hero…[or] intercessor between God and man…[or] a rejected man caring for the rejected Indian. Tribes vary in their beliefs on these points.” [Slotkin 2011(1956):69] So, the NAC can be seen as fundamentally linked to tribal symbolism in its worldview, with a potential Christian interpretability from those who are Christian.
Comparison
Both are clearly examples of syncretism. Both incorporate the use psychedelics as entheogens. The ethos before the entheogen use commingled with Christianity was one of personal gnosis, divinatory power, spiritual warfare, and social-personal shamanic healing. Christ has been added to a mixed cultural background in both cases, though Santo Daime is more consistent in this. The NAC situation is multifarious, and varies from individuals and tribes. In terms of worldview, Christ is more closely associated with the plant than with scripture. In terms of ethos, we will need understand more about their ritual culture.
Ritual
“To the Santo Daime people…the rain forest is our home, or laboratory of spiritual union and…self-sustainability…more than that, it is an area of intimacy with the Divine…Each living pulsation of the forest produces a profound therapeutic effect on the people connected to it.” — [Polari 2010:7]
“All of the important things that life requires are woven into the [Native American Church] ceremony. The entire ceremony is symbolic of our dependence on and use of things in our environment: fire, water, plants and animals.” — [Old Crow in Smith and Snake 1995:44]
I will firstly explicate the occasion, embodiment and locution of both religions, followed by an analysis of physical symbols, all indicative not just of the worldview, but of the ethos of the community.
‘Concentrations’ occur on the 15th on 30th of each month sitting down the final songs of Irineu’s hymn book (o Cruzerinho, hymns 117–128). On Saint’s days — including St John, St Joseph, the Virgin of Conception, Good Friday, and the birthday of Mestre Irineu — Santo Daime dancing ceremonies involve the gradual drinking of Daime and the continued singing of all 128 hymns of the Cruzeiro. This lasts 6–9 hours and involves 4–8 dosing sessions where the Daime is received to the statement, “deus nos gui” (God guides us). In some lineages, Good Friday involves the singing of the women’s books (because women discovered Christ at the tomb), but in other lineages this is the same as the Finados (the day of the dead, ‘The Finished’), and other alternative hymn books are sung, for instance those of Padrinho Sebastiao. On the first Monday of every month is the mass or missa. In some lineages ten songs are sung each evening. Monday, the day of the dead in the Brazilian calendar along with November 1st, involves an evening Missa sung from Master Irineu’s hymn book, preceded by two other hymn books. In all of the above except the concentrations, thirty hail Mary’s and thirty Lord’s Prayers are made beforehand to sacralise the space, purify intent, and ward off evil spirits.
Dancing is two steps from side-to-side, in unison, with the male battalion and the female opposite one another. In older lineages, people are organised in lines and rows in height order in a square room. In CEFLURIS/ICEFLU lineages, people are organised in lines and rows in age order in an eight-pointed star-shaped room.
Christian saints’ days are celebrated, beginning with an ‘Our Father’ and ‘Ave Maria’, centring on a confession, during which the dancing stops and candles are held. In the CEFLURIS branch, the creed is also said. The Lord’s prayer is edited from “thy kingdom come” to “let us go into thy kingdom.” Hymns contain terms alien to Christianity and indicative of spiritualist, especially Kardecist paradigms, such as the central pursuit of the abandonment of “ego” for “higher” (though sometimes termed “Christic”) self. This is often in conjunction with a belief in karma and reincarnation. Kardecist influence is present in the belief that the dead can communicate with the living.[13] These influences concern worldview: how the cosmos is seen to operate.
In the explicit locution of the confesciao (confession), the unique impact of Christianity on its ethos is evident. Each stanza begins with “My divine Father of Heaven, Sovereign…”, calling the singer a child of this Father “in this sinful world”, encourages recognition of one’s “crimes” and asks for forgiveness “of transgressions.”
The dancing stops and candles are held at this point, adding to the collective solemnity of the occasion. All members have stilled themselves to state these words. For hours before and after they have and will be dancing, adding to the power of the words themselves. Said in unison, there is no divergence between individuals. Moreover, the nature of the intoxicant renders hum-drum ‘just doing the motions’ nearly impossible: inner reflection is likely.
The “purpose” of NAC gatherings — to thank God for his blessings, to cure the sick (including especially alcoholics, those with terminal diagnoses and traumatised veterans), and “promote future good” — is not explicitly Christian, it merely allows for that potential among Christian members. These broad aims contrast to the Daime special rituals which are often held on Catholic saints’ days or for the production of the Daime itself. Daime’s worldview is more explicitly Christian, whereas the NAC is more personally and adaptably Christian.
The ritual process
The power of the Daime brew can make some sick: this is interpreted as physical and moral purgative redemption. Whilst this physically derives from physiological reactions to psychedelics, ideologically, the collective locution of confession renders the ethos more Christian in origin than spiritualist or shamanic. In shamanic ayahuasca use, vomiting casts out bad spirit energy; in Christian Daime, it is collectively interpreted as a redemptive process. For daimistas “consumption of Daime sets them apart from the world of ‘sin’ and ‘illusion’” [Dawson 2013:61]: the marked words are Christian and spiritist (Kardecist) terms respectively. The former bears relevance to ethos, the latter to worldview: the former to the moral mood, the latter to the way things are seen to work.
Vomiting is interpreted identically by the NAC, though a pre-programmed statement of confession is seen as inevitable to the phenomenology of the drug, not a collective locution from a hymn book. Both are examples of a “moral somatic” process encouraging redemptive transformation. This moral somatic process, argues Douglas Davies, is based on the idea that emotions are culturally learned feelings. Blushing is another example. In this context, the view of another vomiting stimulates the collective understanding that guilt is being released, and therefore, social catharsis is felt. “It is precisely the individual as an emotional being that lies at the heart of … moral-somatic relationships…”. [Davies 2002:46] Moreover, “sociologically speaking, to highlight moral-somatic processes is to mark the complex interplay between membership in a social network with its core values and the physical processes of bodily life activated by both memories and future goals”. [Davies 2009:188, my italics] The Winnebago interpret this period in the ritual as “the dark hour, the hour of the Crucifixion.” [Radin 2008(1925):164] One Cheyenne informant interprets “getting the bad stuff out of you” as “being close to God.” [Smith and Snake 1995:39]
Peyote is believed to possess an ethically transformative power. “When I started eating…I found out I was a sinner…think why I was like that…Peyote teaches me what is right.” [Smith & Snake 1995:49] La Barre has argued that the belief that peyote “sees and punishes evil deeds” is one with pre-Christian origins, as it is present among the Huichol. [La Barre 1996:97] Nevertheless: “sinner” — an explicitly Christian term — implies a Christian ethos. At least, we might say this provides another example of the mutual enforcement of cultural resources.
The way in which the Christian worldview is reinterpreted transgresses what is normatively Christian. Mary is referred to by daimistas as the rainha (queen) of Forest, Sky and Sea: not only the mother of Jesus. [Dawson 2013] This encourages among members an axiology of nature, as well as humankind.
According to a prominent CEFLURIS Padrinho, Alex Polari, “renewed Christianity” is encouraged to spring up in people’s “hearts…a new approach to God’s words, consistent with the words of the saints, prophets, and other seekers of the way. The Daime offers a new way of understanding the agenda of redemption and the renewal of hope for the spirituality of the third millennium.” [Polari 2010:6] Viewing him as a culture-carrier, we can take this at face value.
Or, is this a cynical ploy by a Padrihno to appeal to the Christian mainstream? Whilst the worldview may be framed in terms of losing one’s “ego” in order to achieve a “higher self”, using terminology alien to Christianity, the ethic remains: the dwelling in Christic community can be a form of salvation on earth. As Larson notes: “When Earth reaches up so joyfully, we can feel Heaven touching Earth.” [Larson 2010:xix] The worldview of Santo Daime is subsidiary to “the tone, character and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood”: this is distinctively Christian and redemptive.
Contrasting the Christian locutionary elements in both traditions, one notable thing becomes apparent. For daimistas, all the hymns are in the same language: originally Portuguese. For the NAC the songs are sung in different native tongues which not everyone will understand: English is used when Christ is petitioned or discussed. [Fikes 1996:173; Hayward 2011] After important prayers, “amen” as well as the Native American “aho” are used. As Mike Jay notes, “the outward form of the Christian service…created the conditions in which the old medicine could be summoned. Those who now worshipped the Christian God could sit and pray alongside those who still addressed the Great Spirit.” [Jay 2019:59] In Hayward’s report, the Trinity includes, “in the name of the Father, his Native Son Jesus and the Holy and Great Spirit.” (my italics) The addition of ‘native’ here casts Jesus as part of an oppressed people. “Great Spirit” is a reference to native spirituality. And so, the original conflict between indigenous and imperial religious cultures can now begin to be healed. The languages used imply that Christianity’s role as the ‘white man’s religion’ is somewhat maintained in the NAC, though embraced, whereas in Daime, Christianity is considered to be more indigenous and intrinsic to its origins.
In Peyote ceremonies, a prayer of thanks is said at the beginning. Hayward notes, when the prayer began, “the tipi turned into a church…” [Hayward 2011] Peyote is passed around in dried, powdered, or tea form and songs are individually sung and statements made around the circle. This is notably different from the Daime tradition which emphasises uniformidade (uniformity). Individual wants and needs are expressed by the individual to the collective in the NAC, rather than internalised; in Daime traditions, the space is held rigorously by the group dance and movement.
Physical ritual culture
In the NAC, the drum — though foreign to some tribes like the Winnebago [Radin 2008(1925):15] — is interpreted as the mother’s heartbeat: “we are told that the drum represents the heartbeat…inside our mother’s womb, floating in fluids and in darkness, the first thing that we hear is our mother’s heart-beat. Ka-tun, ka-tun.” [Smith & Snake 1995:43] Thus, a foreign tribal symbol is made a common symbol through the mutual understanding between tribes as humanly embodied and born.
Another example of this symbolic reinterpretation and pan-tribalisation is the waterbird, associated originally by the plains cultures as a “bringer of rain.” It is now associated with the biblical “dove, the Holy Ghost or peace…a messenger between man and God.” [Slotkin 2011(1956):69] This is another example of the way in which the worldview — as rain-stimulating — remains, overlain by a Christian ethos: it promotes peace, caused by communication between divine and human realms.
NAC ceremonies take place at night before the dawning of the new day, reflective of the ‘death-rebirth’ motif. Native beliefs of the cycle of night and day are mutually culturally reinforced by the belief in Christ and sun’s rising into the new day. The narrative of the group experience is thus confirmed by the cycle of the world.
The cross is interpreted differently by these cultures. The double beamed cross is interpreted as a Christian symbol in Daime, though the second beam is variously interpreted as the locus of the symbolic crucifixion of Irineu [Dawson 2013] or “birth” of the “second coming” as the “seed of compassion” in all of humanity. [Goldman 2010:xxv] It centres the room upon a table, with Catholic rosary, and an empty chair for Master Irineu, who is spiritually present in each ceremony.
Contrastingly, the cross in the native American ceremony is not consistently present as a physical object, but often a gesticulation during blessing. [Hayward 2011] The modal NAC ritual space has no preprogrammed Christian aesthetic. Crosses are not only given a Christian significance — with exception of the Winnebago mentioned above. As physical symbol or gesticulation, they are interpreted both as a Christian symbol, and a native one, dependant on viewer. From one viewpoint, it indicates “old native four-point symbolism”, symbolising the four winds of nature and the elements, [La Barre 1996:162] another example of the mutual enforcement of cultural resources. Both Christians and non-Christians more used to the animist native tradition can feel at home amongst the same symbols. For multi-religious populations with a history of collective persecution, agreement upon standardised, doctrinaire worldviews is less important than a common ritual praxis and ethos, integrating into a socially post-colonial [Calabrese 2013] and personally often post-alcoholic [Hayward 2011] situation.
Both ritual cultures represent nature to remind the community of their greater ecological heritage, debt and reliance. In the NAC, half-moon altars represent the journey upon which the roadman takes the community; fires represent change and transformation, the locus for the visions, and the water represents new life. The frequent arrival of rain and snow are taken as indications of divine presence. [Hayward 2011]
On the central table of Daime ceremonies: earth is represented by flowers, water feeds them, wind by incense sticks, and fire by candles. Encouragement to ethically improve in one’s attitude towards human beings (redemption) is coupled with an enculturation that the natural environment is our physical sustainer. The Christian gospel is expanded from human realm into nature at large. Entheogens are used, implicitly and explicitly, for the purposes of a Christian redemptive ethos. Christ is replanted.
In both religions, through collective ingestion of God’s gift participants come closer to God by shedding individual identity into the common identity. The free gift of redemption comes to include the natural world, an economy of redemption becomes an ecology of redemption. ‘Planting Christ’ encourages members of both communities to reflect upon the mutual reliance of colonisers and colonised, of humankind to nature, and all to God.
Conclusions on Ethos and Worldview
“…living men, apotheosized…as creative beings, are themselves…responsible for the world’s creation and persistence. Given humanity’s powers to construct and destroy and its position of dominance in ecosystems that it itself can destabilize, its responsibility…cannot be to itself alone but must be to the world as a whole.” — [Rappaport 461]
Given that both religions claim not to uphold rigid doctrines but are stringent on ethics and ritual praxis, it is the ethos which is the characteristic element concerning their worldly ethical and aesthetic habits and senses. This I have argued is largely Christianity-derived. The worldview in the NAC is more warpable by locality and individual-cultural emplotment. That of Santo Daime is more consistent.
La Barre has argued that Christian elements of the NAC are “thin and superficial.” He quotes informants who either betray a greater attachment to native religious beliefs than Christian ones, or argue that Methodist or Catholic Christian churches do not meet their spiritual needs as the NAC do. [1996:166] Aberle, conversely, has argued that it has an “ethic of redemption” underlying it: it is a “religion of the oppressed”: it rejects both features of its own and colonial culture to create something entirely new. [1994(66):354] I have argued that Christianity may be inconsistent in its shaping of the way in which members of the NAC see the world. But to argue that Christianity is only a superficial overlay is dishonest when one considers the beliefs of its members, the physical and locutionary ritual structure. It does not reflect the embodied reality of NAC members quoted in the body of this essay.
A Christian reinterpretation may facilitate an acceptance of entheogenic drug-sacramentality among Western Churches. But, some of the NAC’s and Santo Daime’s most vocal critics come from both tribal traditionalists and local Christians, both white and red. [Calabrese 2013:86] While it is beyond this essay to cast judgement on whether Christian imports benefit the NAC, or whether Christian plant-entheogenesis could benefit mainstream churches, my contention is that Christianity has helped to shape the ethos — “the tone, character and quality of their life” — and the plant-entheogens have also morphed Christianity. The hearts of many practitioners weave both finely. They are psychoactive religions of redemption.
Christianity’s power lies in its universal ethos: that through sacrificing an attachment to one’s personal narrative, one gains a new life in the meaningful feeling of belonging. These social facts of redemption are, in Godelier’s phrase, “inalienable gifts”: given with no expectation, given for giving’s sake, where the giving itself becomes gift. It is through transcending the economic, transactional nature of sociality into the ethic of human family and friendship that we find our truest selves. [Davies 2002:195–204] In moving from anthropological to theological terms, now, through giving life, we receive life, the gift of life is itself the newness of life: one does not happen because of the other, but one is the other. Such an economy of redemption becomes an ecology of redemption. This is evident in both cultures’ ritual symbolism and beliefs.
One central feature which distinguishes both these examples from the Christian milieu is their worship of non-human nature. What I have termed ‘replanting Christ’, ignites vast symbolic ramifications when compared to an ecclesial Christianity, concerned predominantly with the human realm. These religions view social and ecological environment as co-creating and of mutually sustained importance. Strict worldviews are less important to both the NAC and Daime community, though the Christian worldview is more obviously present in the culture of Santo Daime. The NAC exhibits more of a tendency to reinterpret native symbols into Christian ones than the Daime community, for whom the Catholic symbols have appeared cum lacte.
The NAC’s ritual structure is also more to do with individuals expressing, listening and sitting around the fire. In a Daime ceremony the uniformity of embodiment of individuals in the group is crucial, and visions are more private.
Christian worldviews in both religions have been tempered by a heightened reverence for nature through the belief that Christ is present in plant as teacher: Christ is replanted. Originally a form of plant spirit shamanic and mediumistic practice, however, has — in meeting Christianity — received a redemptive ethos. The impact such religions might have on mainstream Western churches in a world where species-chauvinism dominates the zeitgeist, remains to be seen…
Bibliography
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[1] Culturally mixed
[2] A theological term roughly encompassing “proclamation” (lit.), but also “message”, “gist” and “essence.”
[3] Literally ‘give me’ in Portuguese, Daime is what daimistas (congregants) call ayahuasca, the DMT and MAOI (ayahuasca vine and chacruna shrub) tea which is their medicine-sacrament.
[4] The mescaline-containing button cactus which is the psychedelic (‘mind manifesting’) medicine-sacrament of the NAC.
[5] Goldman comments, “Doctrine is a very important word in the Holy Daime. It does not signify a set of rigid rules or an orthodox set of ideas. The Doctrine spoke of in many hymns of the Daime is a living matrix of consciousness. Jesus Christ implanted a conscious seed in this world by his life and death. This was his mission: to initiate the vast change in human consciousness that is now beginning to come to fruition. The Doctrine, which is the organizing principle of humanity’s awakening, is seen within the Daime to possess an active intelligence of its own.” [xxiv]
[6] On the face of this, the reader may question the central thesis — that Christianity had a moralising influence. Partly, their adoption of Christianity could be a response to these earliest traumas and criticisms. Having said this, if indigenous use of peyote is comparable to the Huichol of the 1970s, where it was used as a way of divining, communing with spirits, and increasing the power of the taker to protect from and return spiritual attacks, [Myerhoff 1976] then this, as we shall see, contrasts notably with NAC use.
[7] ‘End Time’
[8] Regular and faithful Church goers throughout the UK referred to Christ as being ‘half man, half God’, ‘a spirit which looked physical’, ‘adopted by God’, all traditional and early Christian heresies when one becomes educated in the Patristic Era.
[9] An anthropological term meaning, most broadly, the collectively learned cultural ways of being embodied in the world.
[10] The way in which the senses are primed by a culture — aesthetic perceptive tendency.
[11] See footnote ‘3’
[12] La Barre cynically notes that “there seemed to be a certain quality of propaganda for the ethnographer’s benefit…when the name of Jesus was mentioned with unwonted frequency.” [1996:163]
[13] For instance, Goldman notes that whilst Padrinho Sebastiāo may be dead, though “his body is left behind…he is as alive as he was in Céu do Maiá and at the River Jordan.” This a condensed example of three worldviews held hand in hand and merged with the Daime: a belief in the continued presence of the dead, in reincarnation, and John the Baptist! [Goldman 2010:xxvi]
(originally published in the Psychedelic Press Journal Issue XXIX https://psychedelicpress.co.uk/collections/psychedelic-press-journals/products/psychedelic-press-xxix )
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Mark Juhan 2020 All Rights Reserved
