AYAHUASCA: UM SAGRADO SELVAGEM QUE BASTIDE NÃO CONHECEU

Author(s):  
Drance Elias Silva ◽  
João Paulo Reis Braga

A Ayahuasca é uma bebida enteógena feita por meio da união de duas plantas: um cipó chamado Mariri (Banisteriopsis caapi) e as folhas de uma árvore chamada Chacrona (Psychotria viridis). O Chá Ayahuasca vem sendo usado há milhares de anos em rituais religiosos indígenas, e há algumas décadas em religiões urbanas como o Santo Daime e a União do Vegetal. A Ayahuasca é considerada uma bebida sagrada por todos que a utilizam regularmente em contexto religioso. Roger Bastide foi um teórico francês, que veio para o Brasil em 1938 e estudou durante muitos anos as religiões afro-brasileiras, dando enfoque a fenômenos como: a administração do sagrado, o sentimento de vergonha, e o processo de “domesticação” e persistência do “sagrado selvagem”. O presente artigo analisou também o conceito bastidiano de transe como “um jogo litúrgico”, que segundo ele, aproxima-se de uma “representação teatral”. As conclusões desse artigo sugerem que o transe provocado pela Ayahuasca transcende algumas das premissas bastidianas. Os resultados demonstraram ainda que as considerações que Bastide faz a respeito do processo de “domesticação do sagrado selvagem” podem ser observadas em religiões ayahuasqueiras como a União do Vegetal, ainda que em alguns pontos, a realidade da instituição não esteja em total consonância com as previsões feitas por Bastide.Palavras-chave: Ayahuasca. Bastide. Sagrado Selvagem. Transe Religioso. Enteógeno AYAHUASCA: A WILD SACRED WHICH BASTIDE DID NOT KNOWAbstractAyahuasca is an entheogenic drink made by the union of two plants: a vine called Mariri (Banisteriopsis caapi) and the leaves of a tree called Chacrona (Psychotria viridis). Ayahuasca tea has been used for thousands of years in indigenous religious rituals, and for decades in urban religions such as Santo Daime and União do Vegetal. Ayahuasca is considered a sacred drink by all who use it regularly in a religious context. Roger Bastide was a French theorist, who came to Brazil in 1938 and studied for many years the Afro-Brazilian religions, focusing on phenomena such as: the administration of the sacred, the feeling of shame, and the process of "domestication" and persistence of the "wild sacred". The present article also analyzed the Bastidian concept of trance as "a liturgical game", which he said, approaches a "theatrical representation". The conclusions of this article suggest that the trance provoked by Ayahuasca transcends some of the bastidian premises. The results also demonstrated that Bastide's considerations regarding the process of "domestication of the wild sacred" can be observed in ayahuasca religions like União do Vegetal, although in some points, the reality of the institution is not in total harmony with the predictions made by Bastide.Keywords: Ayahuasca; Roger Bastide; Wild Sacred; Religious Transe; Entheogen.

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 60-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dawson

With specific reference to the spread of non-traditional forms of spirit possession, this article explores the growing influence of the Afro-Brazilian religion of Umbanda upon the Brazilian new religion of Santo Daime. The following material opens by introducing Santo Daime and plotting the historical trajectory of spirit possession from the movement's beginnings in 1930s' Brazil, to its spread to various parts of the industrialized world. Subsequent to detailing the contemporary spirit possession repertoire of Santo Daime, the article offers a typology of the most prominent kinds of spirit possession practiced by Santo Daime. The article closes by relating the increasing popularity of Umbanda-inspired possession motifs to the growing influence of a white, urban-professional constituency imbued with typically late-modern concerns.


Exchange ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitri M. Bondarenko

Abstract The present article, based on field evidence collected in 2017, deals with a very recent phenomenon — the Orthodox Old Believers in Uganda. This faith originated in Russia, however in Uganda all its adherents belong to African ethnic groups. We describe the short by now history and current state of the Old-Believer communities in Uganda and then concentrate on their members’ motivation for converting to Old Believers vs. knowledge of this religion. We show that what brings them to Old Believers is the search for the true faith associated with the original and hence correct way of performing Christian rites. In this we see an intricate interplay of the features typical for authentic African cultures and acquired by them in the course of interaction with the wider world. Basing on our case study, we discuss how globalist and anti-globalist trends manifest themselves in the religious context in contemporary Africa.


Author(s):  
Vladimir A. Bolshakov

The present article deals with the symbolism of the sistrum in the cultic and ceremonial practice of the New Kingdom period. As a sacred musical instrument, closely associated with Hathor and other goddesses identified with her (Tefnut, Sakhmet, Bastet, Iusaas, Nebet-Hetepet), the sistrum of two types (sSSt and sxm) was widely used in performing various religious rituals and ceremonies. Since the dominant type in the iconography of the king’s wives and mothers of the New Kingdom is their image playing the sistrum/sistra, the author focuses primarily on the main female representatives of the royal family. The article provides a brief overview of iconography, laudatory epithets of royal women and accompanying inscriptions to the use of sistra. A study of official cultic and ceremonial scenes with royal women shaking sistra, allows the author to define three main objects of veneration: a. gods; b. goddesses; c. king. The author also puts into doubt the interpretation widespread in modern Egyptology, according to which, the sexual energy of the supreme deity was stimulated through playing music. Moreover, the absence of the important title “god’s wife/hand” in the protocol of some royal women does not allow reducing their cultic role to the personification of the consort/daughter of a solar deity. A critical approach to this interpretation makes it possible to state that playing sistra was not an exclusively female prerogative and was not limited to the strict opposition “royal woman – god”. Besides, one can conclude that the use of sistra as liturgical objects was a prerequisite for performing offering rituals.


2019 ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Russell M. Jeung ◽  
Seanan S. Fong ◽  
Helen Jin Kim

Chapter 2 offers a genealogical exploration of how Chinese traditions have shaped Chinese American religious affiliations and familism. Chinese adopt a plurality of beliefs for utilitarian purposes through their religious repertoire based in Chinese Popular Religion. Given their mixture of beliefs and practices that have no names, Chinese tend to identify as “nothing in particular.” Another factor contributing to the high rates of Chinese American religious nones is Confucian thought, which oriented Chinese society toward religious skepticism and an agnostic, symbolic interpretation of religious rituals. These twin approaches toward religion are the roots of modern-day Chinese atheism and agnosticism. Both reinforce the primacy of familial relations. These two traditions have undergone changes through modernization, migration, and the religious context in which they take root. The chapter ends with a survey of how these traditions have been transformed by Chinese state modernization, acculturation to the American context, and racialization.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey L. Morrow

AbstractWith the 1901 publication of his Les Mythes babyloniens et les premiers chapitres de la Genèse, the French Catholic scholar Alfred Loisy examined carefully parallels between Babylonian literature and the Book of Genesis. In German scholarship, this had been a growing fascination since at least the 1895 publication of Hermann Gunkel’s Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit. Loisy’s use of the concept of “Myth” provides an important window into the appropriation of German scholarship on religion and the Bible into the French scholarly world. Through Loisy’s work, what had been primarily a German Protestant academic discussion became one of the matchsticks that ignited what would become known as the Roman Catholic Modernist Crisis. This present article situates Loisy’s appropriation of “Myth” from the German scholarship he mastered within the proximate cultural, historical, and religious context that became Roman Catholic Modernism


Stanovnistvo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergej Lebedev ◽  
Mirko Blagojevic ◽  
Elena Pokaninova

In the contemporary sociology of religion that focuses on the study of Orthodox religiosity, especially in Russia and partly in Serbia, there are different theoretical and methodological approaches to assessing the criteria of orthodox religiosity in the population. Two criteria can be identified as paradigmatic cases: the first one could be called the classical or positivist approach and the second one could be named the alternative or phenomenological approach. Researchers who advocate the first approach believe that the criterion of religiosity must include some practical confirmation of the expressed cultural religiosity of the respondents or the population in general. Therefore, it is not enough to identify oneself as a believer or simply align oneself with a particular confessional community. Instead, this subjective position should be confirmed by objective facts such as the regular practice of religious rituals and ceremonies. Proponents of this approach argue that if we do not adhere to this, then the established number of believers is just fictional without any real content, and thus established believers are actually just imaginary believers. For supporters of the phenomenological approach to the criteria of Orthodox religiosity, the crucial criterion is the self-identification of the respondents and their awareness of belonging to a religious or confessional group. Authors of this persuasion do not talk so much about religiosity, but instead introduce the notion of churchiness, which is not a discrete position ? nor a fixed current state, like religiosity is considered among the first group of researchers ? but a process that begins at a certain point in time and more or less approaches the ideal requirements that a real, profoundly churched, true (Orthodox) believer should fulfil. The authors compare and analyse these approaches in the text, while at the same time presenting the rationale for a third method: the integral value- and reflection-based approach. This approach to the socio-logical criteria of religiosity is based on concepts of reflection, choice, and context. The criterion of religiosity is proposed as a stable, irreversible intention for immersion of a social actor into a religious context. As such, immersion into the very "core" of religion becomes a basic indicator of a per-son?s religious value-based orientation.


Author(s):  
Deise Lucy Oliveira Montardo

This text is an entrance to the universe of Afro-Brazilian religions, in a search for the references, presence and action of indigenous entities. The focus begins with Umbanda, in whose origin myth indigenous entities have a foundational and central role. This universe expands, however, to other religions, and the interest falls on dialogues that take place in the spiritual plane between beings and their performances in the rituals. The field study that informs this paper was conducted in Manaus because the city has a strong presence of Afro-Brazilian religions and significant contingent indigenous populations - which awakens curiosity about how, and if, this interferes in the manifestation of the indigenous entities in the religious context.


Author(s):  
Alexey Sergeevich Podchasov

This article is dedicated to conceptualization of the notion of glory in the Russian religious culture and secular discourse. Texts of the Holy Scripture indicate etymological relation of glory to the Ancient Hebrew root kbd (to be heavy, important, liver), which imposes additional meanings to the concept, not recorded in the dictionaries. For example, ancient Jews interpreted glory as a true value of the objects of corporeal and incorporeal world, which could be measured, “weighed”. Usage of the word glory in folklore, particularly in Christmas carols, as an imperative incantation can testify to the belief in the magic qualities of this word, as well as to connection of paganism and a religious rituals in people’s mind. As a result of comparative and hermeneutic analysis, the author concludes that in the religious context, glory retains the idea of the interconnectivity and interconditionality of hearing and speech, typical to the Indo-European root kleu, from which is stems from. A centuries-old process of de-ontologization led the loss of the internal form and value elements of semantic structure of glory, which caused distortion of this Christian concept in consciousness of the Russian native speakers. In the secular, profane discourse, fame became the key meaning of glory. However, in consciousness of the Russian native speakers, the word glory remains a significant source of cultural-linguistic information, which cannot be understood without reference to the history, traditions and religion of the nation.


2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 219-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Duriez ◽  
Claudia Appel ◽  
Dirk Hutsebaut

Abstract: Recently, Duriez, Fontaine and Hutsebaut (2000) and Fontaine, Duriez, Luyten and Hutsebaut (2003) constructed the Post-Critical Belief Scale in order to measure the two religiosity dimensions along which Wulff (1991 , 1997 ) summarized the various possible approaches to religion: Exclusion vs. Inclusion of Transcendence and Literal vs. Symbolic. In the present article, the German version of this scale is presented. Results obtained in a heterogeneous German sample (N = 216) suggest that the internal structure of the German version fits the internal structure of the original Dutch version. Moreover, the observed relation between the Literal vs. Symbolic dimension and racism, which was in line with previous studies ( Duriez, in press ), supports the external validity of the German version.


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