Abstract
Starting from data gathered in several years of field research among the traditional Ayahuasca drinkers, as also setting awareness, I propose an effort to classify a few modalities of the ritualistic Ayahuascan shamanistic/neoshamanistic consumption of the psychoactive substances known as forest medicines. In order to archive this goal, I introduce the Santo Daime (Brazilian Ayahuascan Religion), the urban shamanism (or neoshamanism) and the Pano shamanism (linguistic family that includes several ethnics groups located particularly in the amazonic forest) as models of Ayahuascan shamanism, which articulate themselves through alliances, and work on circuits in which individuals, substances, knowledges and traditions can move Freely. In this domain, where performatic experiences and traditions (re)inventions are made, its protagonists place in ritualistic consumption the centrality of their Cosmogenesis.
Keywords:
shamanism; forest medicines; circuit; tradition