1992 – Two Seminal Books About the Santo Daime Movement Appear in Brazil
The Santo Daime movement (which includes the drinking of the powerful psychoactive brew ayahuasca) first began with a rubber tapper of African descent named Mestre Irineu who learned from indigenous specialists in the 1930s. When the founder passed away in 1971, the Santo Daime movement split into two streams. The traditionalists, known as Alto Santo, wanted to keep strictly to the practice of Mestre Irineu, while the innovators, led by Sebastião Mota de Melo (known as Padrinho Sebastião) wanted to incorporate mediumship and the use of cannabis in the works, and thus created the Santo Daime lineage called CEFLURIS.
In 1992, two books about Santo Daime appeared in Brazil. One was O Guia da Floresta (The Guide from the Forest) by Alex Polari, who was a leader of the CEFLURIS line of Santo Daime in Brazil. The first “insider account” of the Santo Daime, it was a personal story of Polari’s relationship with Padrinho Sebastião, blended with a history of Padrinho Sebastião’s line of Daime.
The second Santo Daime book was an anthropological study blended with history by Edward Macrae, called Guiado Pela Lua: Xamanismo e uso ritual da ayahuasca no culto do Santo Daime. Polari’s book was published in English translation in 1999, under the title Forest of Visions: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Spirituality, and the Santo Daime Tradition. Macrae’s book was published in English translation in 2006, under the title Guided by the Moon: Shamanism and the Ritual Use of Ayahuasca in the Santo Daime Religion in Brazil.
References
Polari, A. (1999). Forest of Visions: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Spirituality, and the Santo Daime Tradition. Park Street Press.
Macrae, Edward (2006). Guided by the Moon: Shamanism and the Ritual Use of Ayahuasca in the Santo Daime Religion in Brazil. Neip website
