From the northern tip of Canada to Patagonia in South America, native cultures have used sacred plants for knowledge and teaching in their religious rituals, rites of passage and healing practices. According to archeologists, for more than 6,000 years native shamans throughout the Amazon Rainforest have been using a sacramental tea, Ayahuasca, for visioning and helping people.
By brewing a vine of one plant (“Bannisteropsis cape”) with leaves of a bush (“Phychotria viridis”), a tea with entheogenic properties is made. The word entheogen is a modern term derived from two Ancient Greek words, “entheos” and “genesthai.” Entheos means “in God.” Genesthai means “to cause to be.” So an entheogen is that which causes (a person) to be in God.
In Brazil, in the 1930s, a rubber tapper was invited by an indigenous tribe to drink Ayahuasca. Visions of Pacha Mama/Queen of the Rainforest/Mother Nature/the Virgin Mother came to him and showed him his mission in exquisite detail. This was the beginning of a doctrine, a Brazilian religion, that synthesized elements of several religious and spiritual traditions including the Yoruba religion, Christianity, Spiritism and a reverence for nature (sun, moon, stars.) The rubber tapper, Mestre Irineu, called the Ayahuasca “Santo Daime.” Santo in Portuguese means “holy” and Daime means “give me” as in “give me love, give me strength, give me light.”
In 1987, after several years year of study involving scientists, doctors, psychologists, anthropologists, and various government agencies, CONFEN, the Brazilian Federal Drug Council, concluded that Santo Daime has a very positive influence in the community, encouraging social harmony and personal integration.
To this day, deep in the rainforest, where neon butterflies and wild jaguars reign supreme, where 800 species of animals live that exist nowhere else on earth, a community of “daminstas” live in Ceu do Mapia, founded by Padrinho Sebastião, who received the doctrine from Mestre Irineu. When Sebastião, who had been suffering from a deadly illness, first drank Daime, he had a vision of angelic beings cleansing his body, from which they extracted three huge bugs destined to kill him. The next day he was well. Unlike most villages in the Amazon, where the child mortality rate is over 50%, in Ceu do Mapia, there is essentially none.
For the last 25 years, this religion has been expanding from the rainforest to the big cities of Brazil, such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In the last 16 years it has spread throughout the world. Today, Santo Daime is known around the world in more than thirty-five countries.
Several countries have assigned the sacrament of the Holy Daime as an illegal drug. When Daime was confiscated, declared as drug trafficking, and arrests were made, the charges in every case were evidence of the lack of scientific knowledge. In each country, scientific research led to charges being dismissed. There is scientific and anecdotal proof that the Daime removes addiction to cocaine, heroin and alcohol. In fact, Santo Daime is an anti-drug substance. Rather than satisfy the need to escape from oneself and reality, it facilities a profound intimate meeting with oneself, which is transformative.
With the Santo Daime, people experience life-transforming visions and spiritual revelations from above…a tradition of all religions thought our history as experienced by Moses, Saint Francis, Krishna, and Muhammad. In the visionary state, one actually can experience the Divine as palpable.
The Santo Daime intensifies one’s perceptions, which leads to an expansion of consciousness, causing one to have a deeper understanding of the self, one’s relationship to others and the world. People receive life changing guidance about one’s purpose in life and report extraordinary physical, mental and emotional healings. Scientific studies in Brazil have shown that the religious use of the sacrament has a positive effect on individuals, their families and communities.