Liquid light: Ayahuasca spirituality and the Santo Daime tradition

Liquid Light is an important addition to the growing number of published accounts that discuss the use of ayahuasca (known by the name, Daime), and its role within Santo Daime, a fundamentally Christian though highly syncretic new religious movement founded in 1930 in the Amazonian state of Acre by an Afro-Brazilian rubber tapper known to followers as Mestre Irineu.The text is a richly descriptive account of Barnard's own evolution as a fardado (Santo Daime initiate) and includes first-hand accounts of his participation in many kinds and types of Santo Daime worship services in both the United States (Chapters 1 and 3) and during his four-month visit (Chapters 4-10) to the Amazonian village of Céu do Mapiá, an intentional community founded in 1983 by one of Irineu's followers known as Padrinho Sabastião.Barnard's text is really three texts in one.It reads, at times, like a traditional ethnography that describes and explores the geographic, economic, social, and emotional spaces of villagers who inhabit both Céu do Mapiá and this particular lineage of the Santo Daime religion.It is also informed by his lens as a philosopher of religion with interludes (especially in Chapters 2, 7, 8, and 11) that delve into such topics as: a) phenomenological questions about the origin and location of Consciousness (Chapter 2); b) ruminations on how to interpret the mirações or visions (Chapter 7) as well as the viscerally-experienced "visitations" of spiritual energies, forces and beings that are common to those who imbibe ayahuasca in a ritual context (Chapter 8); c) theological considerations of transcendent versus immanent encounters with a Divine "Other" (Chapter 8); d) ethical considerations of how to account for immoral or amoral actions of Daimista mediums who blame bad behavior on visiting spirits rather than taking responsibility for their own failings (Chapter 8); and e) ponderings about the spiritual goals of the Santo Daime path, and perhaps of religion more generally (Chapter 11).Third, and perhaps most controversially, Barnard's text is explicitly experiential, located, and autobiographical.It is the tale of a spiritual seeker and a religious adherent who paints an exquisite picture of what Santo Daime feels like from the inside-out.Just one example of this interweaving of the ethnographic and the auto-ethnographic is the way in which Barnard draws attention to the vital role played by hymns, each with their unique vibratory signature, that carry and communicate the força or energy of the Daime during ceremonies (pp.164, 170, Chapter 8, and throughout the text).These hymns are received by followers directly from what Daimistas term the Astral (a powerful spiritual realm) when communing with the Daime (p.22).Once given the stamp of approval as being a "real" gift from the Daime rather than emerging from a more ego-driven place to simply draw attention to oneself (p.300), these hymns are collected into hinarios (hymnals) that are learned and sung together.The communal singing of these hymns, together with the rhythmic dance steps punctuated by the rasping, percussive beat of the maracás (wood and metal rattles) that are played throughout the ceremony, provide the liturgical structure for each worship service.As Barnard recounts, during one of the early Santo Daime "works" (worship ceremonies) he participated in during his stay in Céu do Mapiá, …More and more I began to sync with the rhythmic beats of the maracá and softened into the oscillating repetition of the dance steps.And the more that I danced and sang, the more that I could slowly feel my personal energetic boundaries softening, and I was increasingly able, with periodic stops and starts, to sink into something bigger, until…my consciousness encompassed and then merged with the whole room…over and over again, I felt myself almost bodily uplifted by the sounds of the hymns…as hundreds of us were swept up in the surge of the Current as it