Pubdate: Sun, 20 Nov 2005
Source: Daily Telegraph (UK)
Copyright: 2005 Telegraph Group Limited
Contact:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/114
Author: Alex Bellos
Note: Empire of Juramidam screens this afternoon at the Curzon
Mayfair, London, at 1.35pm as part of the Latin American Film Festival.

NOW LET US HALLUCINATE

Colum Stapleton's initiation into an Amazonian religion and its exotic
drugs rituals came in the most unlikely of surroundings - a community
hall in rural Northern Ireland.

It was three years ago and the film-maker was invited through friends
to take part in a secret ceremony of the Brazilian religion Santo
Daime, followers of which drink a hallucinogenic jungle brew.

"I opened the door and there were about 60 people all dressed in
white," he remembers. "It felt totally bonkers. The men had white
suits and blue ties, and the women white dresses. In the centre of the
hall was a table covered in a white cloth with pictures of saints and
a cross on top.

"That was the altar and there were three guys on guitars and three on
percussion belting out happy-clappy Christian songs in Portuguese. The
others were singing and dancing around the altar in simple
choreographed moves. I was given a cup of the hooch, which tasted
disgusting."

When the drug started to take effect, the sensation was more powerful
than he could ever have imagined. "It was terrifying, horrific,
dreadful," he says.

"Perhaps because I was there as an onlooker, it took its little
vengeance out on me. It felt like a near-death experience. Everything
became blue-lit and white and deathly. The people looked like
filaments dressed in white.

"They were shouting 'Viva a floresta' [Hurrah for the rainforest],"
says Stapleton, 40. "I was attracted by the sheer insanity of it in
the middle of grim, dull Ireland. I immediately wanted to make a movie
about it."

The singing and dancing ritual was to continue for more than six
hours. But the experience was the beginning of a two-and-a-half year
journey across Europe and South America that resulted in the
documentary Empire of Juramidam, which premiered in Britain this week
at the Latin American Film Festival in London.

It charts the spread of Santo Daime - also known as the Eclectic
Church of the Flowing Light - from its Indian roots in the Brazilian
Amazon to its proliferation in western Europe.

For decades the religion was restricted to a small area of the
rainforest, but in recent years it has gained an increasing number of
followers in Europe and the United States. It is estimated that there
may be as many as 30 Santo Daime churches in Europe, including some in
Britain.

The tea that is the religion's official "sacrament" is called
ayahuasca or daime. It is a muddy liquid made by boiling a vine and a
leaf which are both indigenous to the Amazon. Its active ingredient is
DMT, or N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a Class A controlled drug in Britain.

About 20 minutes after drinking ayahuasca, the religion's followers
attain an altered state that often includes visions and
hallucinations. This state, they believe, connects them with the
spirit world.

Indians in the Amazon have been taking ayahuasca for curative and
religious reasons for millennia, although Santo Daime is only about 90
years old. The religion is a Christian take on the shamanic tradition.
Its followers treat the drug as if it is a manifestation of Jesus
Christ and believe that by taking it they get closer to God.

In Brazil, the Catholic Church is far more tolerant of the religious
offshoot than its British counterpart which condemns Santo Daime's
very ethos. Catholic commentators, such as Greg Watts, the author of
Labourer in the Vineyard: a Portrait of Pope Benedict XVI, are
extremely mistrustful.

"My reaction to this would be that drugs are not the way to experience
God," he says. "Drugs are what man uses to try to replace God, so this
enterprise is clearly not from God. In the history of Christianity,
there have been all sorts of oddballs trying to distort the truth but
in this case it has the potential to be very dangerous and to mislead
people about the Christian message."

Such criticism of Santo Daime is unlikely to deter those in search of
the ultimate religious high, however. Even though Stapleton's first
experience of daime was a bad one, he continued to attend rituals to
gain the confidence of the group.

Each time Stapleton took the so-called sacrament he "almost always
felt terror", although he also began to have a new perspective on the
world. "When you are under the influence, good and evil is terribly
pronounced," he says.

"You feel the essence of the shortness of life and having to make use
of it. In some ways it is like opening the doors of the asylum and
never shutting them again. Usually I keep my documentaries at a
distance. I couldn't do it with this one."

Santo Daime followers in Europe are reluctant to speak to the press
out of fear that their activities will be curtailed by the law. In
France and Germany, the authorities have already banned the
consumption of ayahuasca.

In Britain, while DMT is a Class A drug and therefore illegal,
ayahuasca is not listed as a proscribed substance. Followers of the
bizarre religion can access the hallucinogen only when individual
members bring in a supply from Brazil.

According to a spokesman for Release, the drugs help and advice group:
"Someone bringing ayahuasca into the UK risks prosecution, but it is
unclear whether any prosecution would be successful."

So far, there has been no test case, although a Home Office spokesman
said: "There is no dispensation for religious drug-taking, but those
who want to can apply for a licence." No one has yet applied for one.

In Spain and Holland, however, ayahuasca has been legalised for
religious use and in these countries the European movement is
strongest. Whereas in Holland the Santo Daime groups rent community
halls to have their meetings, in Spain a Brazilian woman has built a
"church" in her home, 20 miles outside Madrid.

But even though Stapleton was taking part in ceremonies in Britain and
Europe he was never allowed to film one. To obtain the footage of an
actual ayahuasca ritual, Stapleton was forced to travel to Brazil to
visit Santo Daime's "holy city" of Ceu do Mapia.

The rainforest community of a few hundred devotees is a day's boat
ride from the nearest town, Boca do Acre, and is so remote that it has
its own time zone.

I visited Ceu do Mapia, two years ago. I felt comfortable on my
arrival in what seemed an idyllic country village centred around a
star-shaped church. But the scene freaked Stapleton out. "When I
arrived they were blaring hymns out of megaphones. It felt like
Apocalypse Now."

During Stapleton's stay he was given total access to film the
preparation of the ayahuasca and he shot remarkable scenes of the New
Year's Eve ritual. For this all-night service, the women wear
ceremonial dress of green sashes and sparkling tiaras, and the men
wear white tuxedos.

Stapleton again had to take the drug, and this time had his worst-ever
experience. "I felt I was dying. I had this huge paranoid crisis. It
was pure, sheer terror."

I can well sympathise. I had a similar experience the first time I
tried ayahuasca. I collapsed on the floor, hallucinated glowing rivers
of colour and then had such an identity crisis that I could not
remember whether I was a man or woman.

Stapleton blames his bad experience on his being there as a
film-maker, as if that was somehow taking the sacrament under false
pretences. Does he feel that it is a religion, a cult or just a bunch
of people getting off their heads? "All three," he replies.

Santo Daime dates from the 1910s when Raimundo Irineu Serra, a rubber
tapper, took ayahuasca and had a vision of a woman who told him to
start a new religion based on Catholicism. He "channelled" 132 new
hymns while under the influence, which are Daime's sacred texts and
considered the Third Testament.

Serra attracted many followers in his home town of Rio Branco, where
he established the first church in 1945. After his death, the movement
factionalised and there are now at least three Daime religions which
have a combined membership in Brazil of up to 10,000.

Daime changed during the 1970s when Rio Branco's drug churches became
a stop on the South American hippy trail. Middle-class arrivals
adopted the religion and, eventually, started to spread it throughout
Brazil.

Every year, Padrinho Alfredo, the spiritual leader of Ceu do Mapia,
travels to America and Europe to conduct ayahuasca rituals with the
faithful. In October 2003, Stapleton met him in Northern Ireland,
where he led a ceremony of 250 followers who had travelled from all
over Ireland, Britain and France. He was not, however, allowed to film
inside.

The church does not actively recruit members and is happy to continue
on a very small and clandestine scale. Hence, it is difficult to
estimate how many followers there are at present in Britain. They meet
in rented halls and the homes of members.

One follower living in England, who has frequented Daime ceremonies in
different European countries, says that the hallucinogenic brew is a
powerful tool for self-knowledge. "One cup of tea can be equivalent to
10,000 hours of psychotherapy," he says.

"It shows you as yourself, not as other people see you. If you are
self-aware it can help you in many ways, such as in the healing
process after a trauma."

In Ceu do Mapia, ayahuasca is used by many as a cure-all, the
reasoning being that all illnesses are indicative of a problem on the
spiritual realm that can be cured by spiritual work through the drug.
Women take ayahuasca while giving birth and the brew is dabbed on
children's mouths as soon as they are born.

Near to Ceu do Mapia there is a rehabilitation clinic run by a Spanish
doctor, who buys the ayahuasca from the Santo Daime church.

Stapleton says that one of the aspects he admires most about Santo
Daime is its relationship with nature and, through this, its attempts
to send out a very modern message. "The believers have a sense of
mission in the world," he says. "They have a sense of planetary emergency.

It is a very controlling religious system and there are strict rules,
such as everyone must stand in a fixed position around the altar, make
the same moves and sing a strict list of songs. Once the ritual has
started, you are not allowed to leave. But having met the people and
having been with them for long enough, I would ask why shouldn't they
do what they do?" 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake