We have a poster, a brochure, another poster, and a program. Take a look!

Update [12/08/2011]: the Points ADHS blog has posted on our attendees and presenters!

Traditional knowledge of the jaguar shamans of Yuruparí ©2006 Sergio Bartelsman, ACAIPI, Fundación Gaia Amazonas

The mythical and cosmological structures that make up the traditional knowledge of the jaguar shamans of Yuruparí represent the cultural heritage of the many ethnic groups that live along the Pirá Paraná River in south-eastern Colombia, in the department of Vaupés. According to ancestral wisdom, the Pirá Paraná forms the heart of a large area called the territory of the jaguars of Yuruparí, whose sacred sites contain vital spiritual energy that nurtures all living beings in the world. The jaguar shamans follow a calendar of ceremonial rituals, based upon their sacred traditional knowledge, to draw the community together, heal, prevent sickness and revitalize nature. The rituals feature songs and dances that embellish the healing process. The vital energy and traditional knowledge of the shamans are believed to be inherited from an all-powerful, mythical Yuruparí, an anaconda that lived as a person, and is embodied in treasured sacred trumpets fashioned from a palm tree. Each ethnic group conserves its own Yuruparí trumpets, which form the centre of the strict Hee Biki ritual. During this ritual, traditional guidelines for maintaining the health of the people and the territory are transmitted to male children as a part of their passage into adulthood. The traditional knowledge concerning care of children, pregnant women and food preparation is transmitted among women.

Documents

Nomination form: English|French

Consent of communities: Spanish

Decision 6.COM 13.9

The Committee (…) decides that [this element] satisfies the criteria for inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, as follows:

R.1: Embedded in the mythology and cosmology of the communities of the Pirá Paraná River basin, the traditional knowledge of the jaguar shamans is transmitted from generation to generation and takes the form of rituals, songs and dances and other cultural practices;

R.2: Its inscription on the Representative List could promote respect for cultural diversity and encourage dialogue concerning indigenous traditional knowledge and practices;

R.3: Current and proposed measures constitute a comprehensive safeguarding framework that reflects the commitment of the communities and the State to safeguard the element, including legislative and institutional as well as practical measures;

R.4: The nomination was initiated by the communities concerned and the State endeavoured to ensure their wide and active participation; their free, prior and informed consent is demonstrated;

R.5: With the active participation of the communities concerned, the element was included in the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Columbia administered by the Ministry of Culture.

Inscribes Traditional knowledge of the jaguar shamans of Yuruparí on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The Working Group on Plants and Religion at the University of Florida (UF) is hosting a symposium entitled “Multidisciplinary Approaches to Plants and Religion,” to be held 15-17 December 2011. The event will be relatively small and informal, consisting of sessions on specific topics, as well as a planning session to guide the future efforts of the Working Group.  The symposium will explore human-plant relationships in the realm of the sacred.  Of special interest this year is the religious use of psychoactive plants.  However, we have scheduled several sessions to encourage and welcome participants from a broad range of perspectives on the religious use of plants.

It is the intention of the Working Group to create a space at UF that can study  the religious use of plants in order to allow for interdisciplinary work within UF, and to serve as a center for resources for, and collaboration with other scholars engaged in these endeavors at other institutions nationally and internationally.

The Working Group would like to invite you to come, participate, and help us plan for the future.  The goal of the Working Group is to use this symposium to identify areas that are in need of further research, and topics/areas that colleagues feel are the most pressing for future work in the study of the religious use of plants. We want to position ourselves in critical sphere of research that can foster dialogue across disciplines and institutions, as well as draw incoming and prospective students into considering the religious use of plants and psychoactive plants, important areas of research.

Outline of Sessions

Healing Plants I

This session will cover the topics of shamanism and the ritual uses of plants and healing.  Indigenous religious systems of the Amazon will be especially highlighted.  The plants focused on will range from parika (Virola spp), ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis Caapi), chacruna (Psychotria Viridis), and tobacco (Nicotiana spp), among others.

Plants, Cosmology, and Art

This session will open onto notions of petroglyphs and other forms of shamanic art as they have been informed by the ritual use of plants.  Plants will be discussed in terms of their cosmological positions as “world trees”, forms of axis mundi, sources of food and knowledge, among other common cosmological referents.

Healing Plants II

This session will expand on the the first healing session, moving into the discussion of plants as food, and medicine.  Traditions ranging from Amazonian healing systems to Traditional Chinese and Indian (Asian) Medicine will be considered.

Movement and Destinations: Spatial Trajectories of Plants and Religion

This session will look at the ritual uses of plants and movement, especially in terms of pilgrimage, tourism, and the cultural migration, appropriation, and transformation of symbols.  Ayahuasca tourism, the Huichol peyote hunt, and New Age uses of these plants will feature prominently in this session.

Environmentalism and Ethnobotany

This session will attempt to bridge the gap between indigenous and mainstream discourses on plants – especially in terms of ethnobotany – and the discourse of plants in Environmentalism.  Religion and Nature is a particularly rich and diverse topic, and the intersection of the religious use of plants with this discourse is central.

Political and Legal Intersections of Plants and Religion

This session will look at questions of legality, policy and procedure surrounding the ritual use of plants.  Cannabis, ayahuasca, peyote, coca, and many other plants face strict prohibitionist legislative agendas and rhetorical strategies, much of which is placed unquestioningly in terms of addiction and harm prevention.  This session will aim to treat the subject beyond these common patterns of discourse.

Time and Place

The symposium is to begin on December 15^th and run through the 17^th.  On the 15^th and 16^th the symposium will begin at 10am and run through 6:45pm, with breaks for coffee and lunch between each session.  The 17^th is expected only to last from 10am to 1pm, including closing remarks.  The symposium will be held on the University of Florida campus, in space made available by the Department of Religion.

Contact

If you have questions, comments, concerns, or would just like to RSVP, please contact us at support@plants-and-religion.org.

Keynote Speakers

Beatriz Caiuby Labate has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil. Her main areas of interest are the study of psychoactive substances, drug policies, shamanism, ritual, and religion. Since 2009, she has been a Research Associate at the Institute of Medical Psychology, Heidelberg University. She is also researcher with the Nucleus for Interdisciplinary Studies of Psychoactives (NEIP), and editor of its site (http://www.neip.info). She is author, co-author, and co-editor of eight books, two with English translations, and one journal special edition. Her book, “A Reinvenção do Uso da Ayahuasca nos Centros Urbanos” (“The Reinvention of Ayahuasca Use in Urban Centers,” Mercado de Letras, 2004), was derived from  her Master’s thesis, which received the prize for Best Master’s Thesis in Social Sciences from the National Association for Graduate Studies in Social Science (ANPOCS) in 2000. For more information, see: http://bialabate.net/

Edward MacRae was born in Sao Paulo, raised in Great Britain where he graduated in Social Psychology from the University of Sussex and received a master’s degree in Sociology of Latin America in the University of Essex. Back in Brazil, he studied anthropology in Unicamp and USP, where he finished the doctoral program in 1986 with the dissertation, “The militant homosexual in post-dictatorship Brazil.” Since then he has researched the topic of drugs, initially working for the Institute of Social Medicine and Criminology of the state of Sao Paulo – IMESC and in the Program for Orientation and Attendance of Drug-dependencies – PROAD/EPM. He was a member of the Sao Paulo State Narcotics Council. He is currently living in Salvador where he teaches anthropology in the Federal University of Bahia, and is a researcher associated to the Center for Drug Abuse Studies and Therapy – CETAD/UFBA.  There, he teaches post-graduate courses on topics related to the social anthropology of drugs.  He is currently a representative of the Ministry of Culture on the National Anti-Drugs Council – CONAD and member of the Scientific-Technical Advisory Chamber of the CONAD. He has written books on sexuality, social movements, and the socially integrated use of psychoactive substances and harm reduction associated to the use of drugs.

Guests and Participants

Bron Taylor – Department of Religion, University of Florida

Todd Swanson – Department of Religion, Arizona State University

Benjamin Hebblethwaite – Department of Anthropology, University of Florida

Andrew Tarter – Graduate Student; Department of Anthropology, University of Florida

Kerri Blumenthal – Graduate Student, Department of Religion, University of Florida

Clint Bland – Graduate Student, Department of Religion, University of Florida

Coordinators

Robin Wright – Member of the faculty, Department of Religion, University of Florida

James (Pete) Taylor – Graduate Student; Latin American Studies, University of Florida

Lucas de Biaji Moreira – Graduate Student, Department of Religion, University of Florida

Jaya Reddy – Graduate Student, Department of Religion, University of Florida

Marissa Molinar Anders – Comparative Art and Archeology

Support and Contribution

Department of Religion

Center for Latin American Studies

University of Florida Research Foundation

Department of Anthropology

Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Full article here: JSRNC 3.1 – The Religious Lives of Amazonian Plants

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Phillipe Lucas, Research Affiliate at the Center for Addictions Research of British Colombia, Brian Anderson, MD Candidate at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Bia Labate, Research Associate at the Institute of Medical Psychology, Heidelberg University, have the privilege to organize a meeting and dialogue of international ayahuasca researchers as a adjunct to the upcoming MAPS conference in Oakland (http://www.maps.org/conference/25/). The meeting will take place at the conference site (Oakland Marriott City Center) on Sunday, Dec. 11th, 2:30-4:30, and is free but will be exclusive to ayahuasca academics.  Participants will be invited to share current projects, successes, and challenges, and to discuss the present and the future of the international ayahuasca research. To sign up for this Ayahuasca Researcher Dialogue, please email Phillipe (philippe.lucas1969@gmail.com) to express your interest.

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Dear Friends,

I am sharing with you another review that came out on our book, co-edited by me and E. MacRae, “Ayahuasca, Ritual, and Religion in Brazil”. The review was written by Jack David Eller, and published here:

http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=4085.

I am very happy to see our small field of research receiving a little more attention…

If you wish to buy a copy of this book, you can answer this email and order it with me.

“ABSTRACT: This well-crafted collection of essays explores three versions of ayahuasca religion in Brazil and ends with an analysis of the governmental policies controlling such mind-altering substances and the potential medical uses outside of religion.

Along with the enduring interest in new religions among anthropologists and other social scientists, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain the distinction between ‘new’ and ‘old’ religions: old religions fragment and fission into new ones, and new religions adopt and retool aspects of old ones. The case under consideration in this interesting and well-organized set of essays is new religions in Brazil that use the hallucinogenic plant ayahuasca—part of pre-Christian practice in various Amazonian societies—in their rituals and sacraments. Even more, these Brazilian religions are not restricted to Brazil anymore, so they are not entirely ‘Brazilian’ either, just as Christianity is not entirely Middle Eastern or European today.

As the editors express in their introduction, the theme of the collection is “the emergence of religious groups in the Brazilian Amazon that build their systems of ritual, myth, and principles around the use of a psychoactive brew known by several different names, one of which is the Quechua term ‘ayahuasca.’ These religions—Santo Daime (in its Alto Santo and CEFLURIS branches), Barquinha, and the Uniao do Vegetal—are generically labeled as ‘Brazilian ayahuasca religions’ in anthropological writings” (p. 1). Thus we notice one of the pervasive issues in the text, the fact that there is not one ayahuasca religion but several, each with its related but specific beliefs, behaviors, and organizational structures. It should be noted too that the volume is not a completely neutral academic piece but has something of a political agenda, namely to contribute “to the ongoing journey of ayahuasca religiosity toward full and equal recognition as a legitimate mode of religious expression” (p. xvi).

After laying down some useful basic history of the diverse ayahuasca movements and defining some of the key concepts to come (such as ‘ayahuasca religion,’ ‘religion,’ and ‘sacrament’), the book moves in a pleasantly systematic way through a number of related topics on the subject. Anthologies of this sort are often much less conceptually and topically integrated, so the tightness of essays is very welcome (especially given that the chapters are not organized into named sections). The first chapter provides an orientation to the use of ayahuasca among the rubber tappers of the Upper Jurua region, establishing the link between native culture, colonialism, and the eventual new ayahuasca religions. The authors also discuss in general the preparation of the ayahuasca ‘brew’ and its ritual use.

This is followed by two chapters on each of the three major divisions of ayahuasca religion. Arneide Cemin analyzes the rituals of Santo Daime, which are perceived as ‘work’ by their performers, in particular work “done on the body and thought: symbolic productions, the imaginary” (p. 39). The details of the ritual are thus appropriately seen as “a multiplicity of techniques in which the body serves as support: uniforms, concentration, coordination of movements in the dance steps, the singing of hymns and the rhythm of the maraca rattle, and even the physical effects of the liquid” (p. 40). This treatment is very much in keeping with the contemporary anthropological interest in embodiment and the efficacy of ritual. Luiz Eduardo Soares’ much shorter article relates Santo Daime to “the new religious consciousness” (p. 65), as scholars such as Campbell (1978) and Ley and Martin (1993) have suggested, taking a cue from Ernst Troeltsch that certain kinds of religion (i.e., ‘mystical’) might suit the modern urban person better than the familiar ‘church’ and ‘sect.’ Indeed, a longer and more detailed presentation would have been possible and appreciated here.

The next two chapters present the Barquinha variation of ayahuasca religion. Wladimyr Sena Araujo, in another quite short offering, describes the “symbolic space” (p. 73) of Barquinha (literally, ‘little boat’) as an instance of cosmology-making. Christian Frenopoulo more extensively focuses on healing or “the therapeutic transformations effected from the consumption of ayahuasca in these [religious] settings” (p. 85). This includes presentations on the ‘charity works” in which Barquinha practitioners indulge and their performative genres and biographical narratives.

The Uniao do Vegetal receives more extensive treatment in its two extensive chapters. Sandra Lucia Goulart gives us a deep and informed survey of the ‘religious matrices’ of the movement, not only its history as a movement but the diverse sources of which it is a confluence, such as Kardecist Spiritism (an under-appreciated force in Brazilian and other religions), Afro-Brazilian spirituality, and Amazonian native tradition (filtered through the colonial settlers, as mentioned above). Sergio Brissac’s fascinating contribution zeroes in on the religious experience of UDV participants, viewing it as an altered state of consciousness that unites knowledge, feeling, memory, and piety into a sense of what Brissac calls “encompassment” (p. 154). This is a concept, I think, that could be profitably brought to bear on other religious traditions.

The final three chapters represent the more political or even activist side of the compilation. For instance, Domingos Bernardo Gialluisi da Silva Sa, in the longest essay in the book, discusses the chemistry of ayahuasca, its religious use and meaning—as “a means, an instrument. Its rules must aid the participant to accomplish a desired objective” (p. 168)—and most significantly the governmental response to it. This is the real point of the other elements of the chapter: to determine how and why the Brazilian federal narcotics board, CONFEN, came to determine that ayahuasca should be excluded from its list of banned substances. Da Silva Sa concludes, as they did, that ayahuasca is not a dangerous or deleterious drug and that there is no evidence that it causes long-term harm (although it can apparently make those who consume it acutely uncomfortable or ill). In fact, he ends the chapter with the assertion of his “serene conviction that the search for the particular form of perception that ayahuasca users engage in during their ‘sessions’ or ‘works’ must not be defined, unreflectively, as hallucinations, in the sense of mental insanity or deviation” (p. 189). The remaining two essays round out the case for the legalization of ayahuasca by recounting the development of public policy on the substance and by reflecting on the potential therapeutic value of ayahuasca in the medical context.

The articles assembled in this anthology have almost all been previously seen in the journal Fieldwork in Religion (published by the publisher of the book, Equinox), but it is worth gathering them together in this format, first because many anthropologists may not know that journal and second because they are ultimately so closely related. The book is a model for well-integrated anthologies that seek to promote not only ethnographic knowledge but also a social agenda. The essays also contribute to our mounting awareness of the standard processes of new religious movements, and they incorporate some of the state-of-the-art thinking about religious experience and religious efficacy. Scholars working in the area of religion and religious change will find much in the collection that supports their thinking but also gives them new things to think about.

References

Campbell, Colin. 1978 The Secret Religion of the Educated Classes. Sociological Analysis 39 (2): 146-56.

Ley, David and R. Bruce Martin. 1993 Gentrification as Secularization: The Status of Religious Belief in the Post-Industrial City. Social Compass 40 (2): 217-32.

To cite this review, the American Anthropological Association recommends the following style:

Eller, Jack David 2011 Review of Ayahuasca: Ritual and Religion in Brazil. Anthropology Review Database February 26, 2011. http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=4085, accessed May 31, 2011.”

Greetings,

Bia Labate

Abstract

This article focuses on the sacrificial acts of divinities and other primal beings whose bodies became cultivated, and wild plants, particularly plants as forms of gifts and other types of exchange from the deities to humanity among the Baniwa peoples of the Northwest Amazon. I seek to reflect on Viveiros de Castro’s ideas on Amerindian ‘perspectivism’ (1998, 2002) to evaluate their ‘fit’ to Baniwa spiritual ethnobotany. Initially, I see a major difference between the perspectivism and agentivity of animal and fish-people, which is very common among all Arawak and Tukanoan speaking peoples, and the plants which derive more often from a divinity that has been sacrificed, dismembered, transformed, and divided up into many distinct species. The predator–prey relation between animals, fish, and humans is actually secondary when compared to sacrifice and gifting relations between plants and humans, which seem to have more to do with the peaceful development of chiefly and priestly societies.