Christ Returns from the Jungle

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 (daimistas) revere ayahuasca as a sacrament, combining it with rituals and theologies borrowed from Christian mysticism, indigenous shamanism, Afro-Brazilian spiritualism, and Western esotericism.

The Santo Daime religion was founded in 1930 by an Afro-Brazilian rubber tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra, now known asMestre (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.

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments

Part I: Framing and Tackling the Question: Why Santo Daime in Europe?

1. Introduction

2. How the Outsider Can Understand Daimista Insiders

Part II: From Amazonia with Love

3. Tracing Origins

4. The Current State of Santo Daime Studies: Brazil and Beyond

5. Passage to "Heaven" of Mapiá

Part III: Back to the Old World

6. Santo Daime and the Re‑Enchantment of Europe

7. National Profiles

Part IV: Santo Daime "Works"

8. Framework for Curing the Ego

9. Eclectic Symbolisms of Santo Daime Ideology

10. Being‑in‑the‑Astral: An Auto‑Ethnography of Ethnophenomenology

Part V: The Mystical Technology of Santo Daime Rituals

11. A Key to Solutions

12. Fardados' Conception of Santo Daime as a Mystical Path

Part VI: Fardados' Existential Values

13. Timeless Wisdom

14. The Aims of Santo Daime Perennialism

Part VII: Applying Anthropology to Public Debates about Ayahuasca

15. The Cosmopolitics of Entheogenic Healing

16. Closing Remarks: Toward Mutual Respect and Toleration

Appendices

Appendix I: Glossary of Portuguese Santo Daime Terms

Appendix II: Liturgical Calendar of Santo Daime

Appendix III: Master List of Sacred Plants (Europe‑wide Sample)

Appendix IV: Master List of Great Spiritual Teachers (Belgian Sample)

Appendix V: Master List of Great Spiritual Teachers (Europe‑wide Sample)

Appendix VI: Triad Test Results and Statistics

Notes
Bibliography
Index