What do they do when there's a New Moon on Monday?
OK, so maybe O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal DIDN'T name themselves after a Duran Duran song. But I still haven't figured out the origin of the name.
More bits and pieces on the group. (See here for the Bronfman connection.)
From All in the Mind:
Benny Shanon is a respected Professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. But 12 years ago he embarked on what was to become a personal, professional and intellectual odyssey. And he’s just put it all down in an extraordinary book called Antipodes of the Mind – Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience, published by Oxford University Press.
It’s described as a pioneering cognitive psychological study of Ayahuasca which is a psychoactive brew that the indigenous people of South America’s Upper Amazon have prepared and used for millennia. Shanon’s study documents and analyses the experiences of several hundred users as well as his own....
Ayahuasca was kept a secret until pretty much the middle of last century but a burgeoning rubber trade in Brazil changed all that. And William Burrough and Allen Ginsberg wrote about it in their famous Yage Letters and today tourists from the west are jumping on the bandwagon too.
A number of ‘syncretic’ churches both in and outside of Brazil use the brew as a sacrament, like the very large UDV, which by the way stands for ‘Union of the Vegetable’. In New Mexico they’ve just had a major court win against the government trying to ban the brew....
Benny Shanon: ...I’m a university professor but also I like to travel and I’ve been travelling all over the world, and 12 years ago I was invited to give a series of academic lectures in Brazil a country I’ve never been to before. And after that I travelled for two months in this vast land and by, really, a series of coincidences I heard about a rural community close to the Brazilian border with Bolivia in the Amazon.
I heard of something strange and many times in my life before in other countries, I heard things about things I don’t know about, and I would like Alice in Wonderland I’d try to open this strange gate and see what’s there. And I flew from South Palo where I was to the other side of the continent. I knew practically nothing about Ayahuasca....
And I got to this community - I should say before I go on that it was a ceremony. I think it’s very important to appreciate that this is not a game, it’s not a hedonistic thing that people do on their own. Ayahuasca’s been a centre of indigenous Upper Amazon tribes for millennia, it has never been taken lightly, always on fixed dates and hours, always with a person designated beforehand that will lead the ritual. So it’s not just people take a drug and go on a trip....
Ayahuasca is a Quechua word, Quechua being the language of the Inca Empire which is still spoken by many people throughout Peru. The name is a compound of two words meaning The Vine of Death or The Vine of the Spirits.
It’s made out of two plants, one plant whose name is indeed Ayahuasca is the vine. The other plant is a bush, it’s closest botanical relative actually is a coffee plant. The amazing thing is that if you take each of these plants alone nothing will happen to one. It’s only when you combine them, you pound them, you add water and like a pot of soup - but in large quantities because it boils for 48 hours or so. Only when it’s prepared like this would it have psychoactive effects on human beings....
The next day I drank it again, two cups, and I was sitting there in front of the forest and I saw with open eyes and the forest became enchanted with lots of animals. Some zoological animals, some mythological animals, and it was just heavenly. With the second cup that I drank that afternoon, again with open eyes, it was all a golden palace and I should say these images would not rapidly change but you could be seeing a scene, observing it and things would happen there....
And here's some news from Brazil:
RESOLUTION
Conad legalizes the religious use of ayahuasca
[ 08 Novembro 19h06min 2004]
The religious use of ayahuasca was recognized in this monday as one practical legal one for the National Advice Antidrogas (Conad), after decades of controversies between users and Brazilian authorities on if the tea he would be or not alucinógeno. The resolution juridicamente admits the legitimacy of the consumption of the prepared psychoactive drink with Amazonian plants. The drink is used for more than the 12 a thousand followers of the Union of the Vegetable, Daime Saint and other entities.
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