Brazilian Ayahuasca religions in perspective
April 8, 2016 Sérgio Brissac, Lyzette Goes Telles Brissac 4 citations
An anthropologist interprets the symbolic experience of urban Brazilian members of União do Vegetal (UDV), a religious group that uses ayahuasca (called Hoasca or 'the Vegetal'). Based on 15 years of observation and field research conducted in 1998 at the Nucleus Alto das Cordilheiras in Campinas, a city in southeastern Brazil's industrialized region, the author analyzes how participants derive meaning from the psychoactive tea made from Psychotria viridis (chacrona) and Banisteriopsis caapi (mariri). The work, which formed the basis of a master's thesis in social anthropology, seeks to understand the symbolic dimensions of the UDV experience within an urban Brazilian context.