Report of research carried out in the Netherlands concerning Santo Daime Churches

(draf still subject of modifications)

This report has been written on the request of Adele van der Plas, lawyer and legal counsel of the Santo Daime churches in the Netherlands. It's context may be used by the Santo Daime churches in their defence for the upcoming trial for the Court of Amsterdam.

The questions put forward to me relate to investigations I made during my study on the ayahuasca using religions. The main question answered in this report is focussed around the "transpositioning" (Alberto, please explain this word here for the reader) of the Santo Daime religion from Brazil to Europe.

----Alberto, maybe you can also give some confirmation of the De Wolff report, and give from an anthropological perspective your opinion about it?.

Introduction

This report had been prepared by Alberto Groisman, researcher and lecturer at the Anthropology Department, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and PhD student at Goldsmiths College, University of London. It is broadly based on long-term research on different subjects concerning Santo Daime religion in Brazil, and particularly on specific fieldwork carried out at Santo Daime churches located in the Netherlands. The data which bases it was collected in the Netherlands and Brazil, in different periods from October 1996 to May 1999, with a focus on the process of transposition of rituals and religious tradition of Santo Daime to the Netherlands.

1. A brief history of Santo Daime religion

Santo Daime is a religion which is originated in Brazil, and its religious practices are based on the ritual use of a psychoactive substance known as ayahuasca and particularly called daime[1] in this religious movement.

Santo Daime emerged in Brazil in the 1920s. His founder was Raimundo Irineu Serra, a Brazilian, descendent of African slaves. Serra probably went to the hinterlands of Brazilian Amazonia in 1912, during the period of economic expansion triggered by the boom of latex extraction. There, he became rubber-taper, and later, worked for a governmental commission responsible by the demarcation of the borderline between Brazil and Bolivia. In the region, having known about a drink called ayahuasca, which healers - descendants of Amerindian population - used to provoke visions and healing, Serra participated in sessions and was initiated in its use. In his initiation, Serra had visions in which a woman, who was identified as the Virgin of Conception, appeared and instructed him on how to use ayahuasca 'for the benefit of the humanity'. Afterwards, in the experiences, Serra learned or 'received' from the spiritual world - as his followers used to say - sacred songs called hinos (hino-hymn). Towards the end of the 1920s, he started to organise sessions in the periphery of Rio Branco, state of Acre, Brazil. With the increasing of the number of followers, Serra founded the first institutionalised centre for the use of ayahuasca in Brazil, which later became known as Alto Santo. He named the substance daime and established a specific ritualised way to use it, which central elements of his tradition are still maintained in Santo Daime religious practices: the ritual use of daime, the basic format of the ritual (men and women separated in a concentric format, singing programmed set of hymns); and the overall Christian-spiritualist doctrine.

From the end of the 1940s, in different periods, other ayahuasca groups were founded in Brazil, some of them directly derived from Serra's centre. In 1971, Serra died, but his centre remained active. In 1974, Sebastião Mota de Melo, a member of Serra's centre, left Alto Santo and founded a spiritualist organisation called Centro Eclético de Fluente Luz Universal Raimundo Irineu Serra [2](CEFLURIS), initiating a new trend in Santo Daime religion. His centre located in Rio Branco, state of Acre, Brazil attracted people from other parts of the country and also foreign followers who went to Amazonia and joined the group.

2. National and international expansion of Santo Daime religion

In the beginning of the 1980s, under the leadership of Mota de Melo, Santo Daime-CEFLURIS expanded nationally for almost all the states of the Brazilian federation. After the consolidation of its national presence and because of the interest of European adherents, in 1989, Brazilian daimistas were invited to perform rituals in Spain and, in the Holy Week of 1989, Santo Daime-CEFLURIS official rituals were organised for the first time in Europe. Afterwards, groups of Brazilian daimistas (musicians, singers and ritual experts) were invited to come to Europe to perform rituals, to teach the ritual skills (the singing and playing of the hymns) and the Santo Daime doctrine to European members, and other ritual participants.

The emergence of Santo Daime churches in the Netherlands began in 1992, when a Dutch citizen looking for alternatives to a surgery to treat a brain tumour went to Italy to participate in a Santo Daime-CEFLURIS ritual. Impressed with the experience, she subsequently went to the headquarters of CEFLURIS in the state of Amazonas, Brazil, and there started to use daime as a spiritual treatment for the tumour. The experience was considered a healing process and stimulated her to join Santo Daime, and to start a group in the Netherlands. With friends and other interested people rituals were organised, and soon after two Santo Daime churches were founded officially in the Netherlands.

3. The rituals in the Netherlands

A regular collection of data, from regular attendance, showed that the Santo Daime rituals in the Netherlands were held with periodicity, congregating people who may use ritual uniforms called fardas. In the services, participants drank daime and positioned themselves around a central table, to sing the hymns, and eventually to perform a synchronised and repetitive style of dance called bailado. The ritual was supervised by a co-ordinator, normally called commander, and there are people responsible in to assist and take care of participants, called fiscals.

The ritual participation in the Santo Daime churches in the Netherlands was selective, regarding a particular view on the benefits of ritual-religious use. In this sense, the Dutch churches developed systems of selection of participants, under the general criteria of admitting to the rituals those people who were considered authentically and consciously in search for a spiritual experience.

Daime was used in a ritual setting under the supervision of religious experts, called fiscals, who were responsible of the taking care of ritual participants. The work of these fiscals was supervised by the board of the churches, and up-dated from counselling and advice from more experienced members of Santo Daime. A sense of sacredness was applied to the use of the beverage daime, and was also extended to the visionary experience, called miração, and considered a contact with 'the divine beings of the celestial court'. It was this 'contact' which was considered the moment when healing and self-awareness processes were triggered by the energy from the spiritual plane, and could be absorbed by ritual participants.

4. Concluding Remarks

Based on the Santo Daime doctrine and ritual format, and also on the personal background of ritual participants and their interpretations, the way Santo Daime churches in the Netherlands have developed their approach to this religion shows that spiritual practices among daimistas are related to features of exploration of the healing and social-associative potentialities of the ritual-religious use of the psychoactive substance. Structured by the religious setting and supported by Santo Daime indigenous system of teachings to be translated or taken as guidelines, interpretation of visionary experience reverberates to social life, in a continuum, as a form of searching for socialisation, and promotion of 'self-awareness' and 'spiritual development'. Religious commitment and practices were predominantly triggered by the experiential knowledge, whose plausibility was given by the doctrinaire principles, but also by the solidarity sparked among ritual participants by the impressiveness of the experience itself.

The use and dynamics of Santo Daime in the Netherlands shows that in the contemporary process of spiritual seeking, ritual is revitalised, as a space of experiencing. As performance and transcendence are considered related to experience, the collective and individual hermeneutics are highly considered relevant, giving room to individual reflection. In this particular aspect, the process of transposition of Santo Daime to the Netherlands shows that the way Dutch daimistas chose to re-locate ritual and doctrine was motivated by a search for to reproduce the original Brazilian tradition of Santo Daime, exploring its therapeutic and socialising potentialities.

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[1] Preparation based on the ritual cooking of two plants natural from Amazonia, Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis, which contain psychoactive alkaloids, harmine and N,N dimethiltriptamine (DMT), both with psychoactive properties)

[2] Eclectic Centre of Fluent Universal Light Raimundo Irineu Serra.