SEARCH

Subscribe to our newsletter:

Name:

Email:

where do you live?
UK BRAZIL SOMEWHERE ELSE

Porto Velho: Trippin' in the Jungle

Dream Tea

Words: Gabriel Silvestre

The ingestion of ayahuasca in spiritual cerimonies dates back centuries and is used by several South American indigenous tribes, but its contemporary history has the involvement of a British researcher. In 1851 the English botanist Richard Spruce was invited by the Amazon Tukanoan tribe to attend their ritual and tried a 'nauseous beverage', collecting samples of the plants it was made of.

In the following century it would be rediscovered in the economic rubber boom in the Amazon, giving birth to religious movements that would spread accross Brasil, Europe and North America. The two main groups, the Santo Daime and the Uniao do Vegetal, incorporated elements from Christianity, South American Shamanism and African Animism, having the ingestion of the tea as a central practice. Despite being a hallucinogenic drug its consumption in Brasil is legalised in a religious context and has recently been permitted in Holland and Spain. In the UK it is believed that half a thousand followers regularly organise clandestine meetings as the Home Office still classifies the ayahuasca tea as a Class A drug.