Jorge Vega on Santo Daime

By: Jorge Vega

May 2, 2008

The first time that Natalia (not her real name) drank the hallucinogenic Daime tea she saw herself die. The agony she felt was such a powerful experience, that she says she knew right then and there that the only way to escape an empty, numb life was to join full-time the movement of Santo Daime.
She was 19 or 20 when a friend invited her to visit a service of the Santo Daime group, a spiritual movement started by settlers in the heart of the Amazon at the beginning of the twentieth century. Mixing local, indigenous beliefs with Christian cult, Santo Daime stresses the use of the hallucinogenic Ayahuasca plant as a cleansing tea used in every monthly service. People might think that we are just looking to get volados (drugged), but they are missing the point. Santo Daime can be considered a religion, but it is rather a simple, communal approach to attaining a more conscious direction in our life. Like Santo Daime, other alternative spiritual movements exists, such as the União do Vegetal, or the Vegetable Union, which too uses the hoasca tea, while stressing vegetarian doctrines with very specific rules; for example, certain vegetables have specific cooking procedures so as to not "kill their essence."

What is interesting here is that, while in the United States such groups are considered fringe cults living, according to popular imagination, in communes in Oregon and the Arizona desert, here in Brazil they are quite accepted by the rest of society, so much that the Brazilian government allowed the use of these hallucinogenic teas as part of religious ceremonies all the way back in 1992 (a notable policy in a country where drug addiction and drug-related activities are considered urgent social problem that has been tackled with harsh laws). Of course, there is the differentiation of them as an alternative group, but not a distanciation; for example the same label of "hippies" is usually thrown around, but not as a way of completely disregarding people as being crazy. Why then does Brazilian society have a more accepting, less judgmental view of these groups than American society? Simply categorizing this attitude as characteristic of a liberal society doesn't work. Maybe my observation in the first letter, that spirituality in Brazil responds more to social and political aspiration while serving as an identifying feature of one's distinctiveness, may help explain why.


São Tome das Letras is a small town located in a very rural area of the state of Minas Gerais (it only has one paved road leading to it). Sitting on top of a hill made completely of granite, sandstone, and quartz, driving into the city feels like you are entering the background for the movie The Hills Have Eyes, and with reason: São Tome, where many houses are made from the same giant slabs that pave the uneven streets, is known as the esoteric city of Brazil. Even though now it is mostly known as a destination for people looking to use drugs (so much that me and my friends were stopped by the police and searched for them on the way there), it really has a strange aura to it.

That night, as we made our way down from the top of the rocky hill in which the city was built, and where many young people congregated in different groups consuming many different drugs, we entered the only "café" opened at that time. We were greeted by a long-haired man with indigenous features, a Peruvian who moved to Brazil to study the spiritual forces and settled in São Tome, because according to him, the town is one of the few energy hotspots left in the world. This explained, he said, the supernatural aura in the town, and why, for example, one could find in a nearby cave a periodical, trans-dimensional portal that he claims he saw briefly, and that according to local lore, takes you to Machu Picchu in Peru. He conceded that, even when most people would quickly dismiss all those stories as impossible, "Brazil is such a big country that you have space to believe and explore [one's beliefs]. Even here in the rural area, people that are traditionally Catholic have an open mind to receiving revelations." When I asked him if this meant that Catholicism is losing ground to other spiritual currents, he quickly denied it, instead echoing other non-Catholics in their caution of dismissing Catholic identity: "Brazilians are very comfortable with expressing their spirituality in more than one way."

Although I didn't ask him further, listening to him talk about his work, life, and family reminded me of Natalia, and in fact, of a lot of Brazilians that I have met so far. Even when they are representatives of spiritual currents that can be considered alternative and that as such, people whose spiritual beliefs would be much more noticeable in their way of life, none of them talked of their spiritual experience as exclusive, or in that sense, all-encompassing. Neither unattached nor extremely passionate, their description of their religious experiences and how they fit into their everyday life seems to hint at a spiritual life that, even when labeled and expected to be contextualized in fairly rigid doctrines regarding morality and cultural practices, is manifested in highly personalized ways, sometimes even taking a note from other religions.

Even more, and unlike the observation of other study abroad students that find religion defining social, economical, and political practices more so than we are used to, religion in Brazil seems to mold itself to every day life. In fact, religion for many people seems to serve at times as more of complementary guidelines on how to live one's life, much like a diet regime or a debt management program; spiritual salvation here goes hand in hand with physical well-being, socioeconomic advancement, and political empowerment. For example, Natalia stressed how Santo Daime helped her reconnect to nature, while the Peruvian man from São Tome expressed how his spiritual views coincide with the more political views of living "outside the system." Again, at times it doesn't seem to be a defining characteristic of people' lives, but rather a complimentary trait that serves needs besides spiritual salvation and improvement.

Because of this, religion is not a socially divisive matter that tags somebody to a specific context. Actually, it is seen as a personal choice that, even when it represents certain social norms, proves to be no more of a defining choice than, say, dietary preferences. Like a friend of mine down here said: "I would be more surprised by somebody changing allegiance from one soccer team to another, than somebody changing religion."

In the next letters I'll expand on the traits I believe allow Brazil to be such a pluralistic society, even while embracing traditional Catholic identities. This will be done by analyzing Afro-Brazilian religions and Catholicism, based on interviews of people from both religions.
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