Mais uma pesquisa em andamento sobre o Santo Daime no exterior

Blainey, Marc. The Spread of the Santo Daime Church in Europe: Paris, Brussels, and the Metaphysics of Religious Conversion. Ph.D. Project in Sociocultural Anthropology. Tulane University. 2007. (pesquisa em andamento)

Resumo do projeto da pesquisa (enviado pelo autor):

"My academic passions revolve around societies whose extraordinary religious practices imply belief in a collapsible boundary between a larger external reality and the conscious beings that operate as ostensibly separate components within that reality. Preliminary preparations for Ph.D. research regarding this theme have led me to the blatant use of “hallucinogenic” substances by modern European and North American converts to the Santo Daime and Uniao Do Vegetal (U.D.V.) religions, inspired by indigenous Amazonian traditions. Assemblages of these two groups gather regularly to imbibe Ayahuasca tea, a potent entheogen, in a sincere ceremonial context. I have already written on the ancient Mesoamerican use of entheogens,[1]a word that replaces “the term psychedelic, which was felt…to be too socio-culturally loaded from its 1960s roots to appropriately designate the revered plants and substances used in traditional rituals.” [2] The term “entheogen” was coined in 1979, derived from the Greek word entheos, meaning “god within.” [3] I would like to delve deeper in identifying possible links between this ritual behaviour and the metaphysical assumptions underlying the associated beliefs. I assert that this can be accomplished by developing a comprehensive familiarity with the ideational orientation of adherents to a spiritual community organized around entheogens through the ethnographic assessment of the original European Santo Daime congregation in Amsterdam, Holland. Through interviews, participant observation, and the distribution/collection of questionnaires, I intend to develop deeper understanding of both the metaphysical underpinnings of “new-shamanism” relative to traditional shamanism, as well as comprehension of this movement’s popularity in Holland.

There appear to be parallels between metaphysical assumptions such as monism and the perceptual modifications induced by entheogens, where the latter purportedly encourage “the assessment that all things are interconnected and that in their totality they constitute one harmonious whole." [4] In endeavouring to be tolerant when considering the viewpoints of entheophilic ideologies, it becomes clear that the conventional term “hallucinogen” is infused with entheophobic bias. I want to examine the extent to which cultural attitudes regarding entheogens are shaped by metaphysical stance. In this way, my proposed Ph.D. dissertation will converge around one main research question: Is there a discernable correlation between monist beliefs and the Euopean Santo Daimistas’ penchant for altered states of consciousness (ASC) induced by the ingestion of Ayahuasca? The notion that this relationship exists denotes a cross-cultural typology of metaphysical predilection where the peculiar emergence of antiquated shamanistic tendencies within the habitual dualism of Western culture is rendered explicable."

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[1] Blainey, M. Gordon (2005) Assessing the Current Entheophobic Bias: Evidence for Ritual Use of Entheogens in Ancient Mesoamerica and the Implications for Approaches to Religion and Worldview. B.A. Honours Thesis. Published on official website of WAYEB: The European Association of Mayanists. Click here to read.

[2] Tupper, Kenneth W. (2002) Entheogens and Existential Intelligence: The Use of Plant Teachers as Cognitive Tools. Canadian Journal of Education. 4: 499-516.

[3] Carl A.P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott and R. Gordon Wasson (1979) Entheogens. Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Volume 11 1979, 145-6.

[4] Shanon, Benny (2002) The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience. Oxford, Oxford U. Press: 164.

Para entrar em contato com Mark: castleblayney@hotmail.com