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The Question of Reality in the Amazon: An Analysis from the Studio of the Doctrine of the Holy Daime.


Pages: 87 - 106

Abstract

The author considers in this article the subject of "reality" in Amazonia from the native's viewpoint. This theme is approached, as the author points out, "from a realistic functional and structural anthropological perspective". The current native'view and its expression in their rituals are determined to a great extent by the rubber explotation in the Acre region. This historical period had as consequences a great migration and the breakdown of the ecological equilibrium which in turn had produced chaos in all spheres of social life among the natives of the Acre region. The myths and the rites are the answer to this chaos, arrived from the external world. In both cases the cult of Saint Daime is a ritual thar is based on the necessity of the absorption of a drug called "Ayahuasca" , which translorms, according to a well established hierarchical ritual, the profane into sacred.