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The use of Ayahuasca and the Experience of Transformation, Relief and Cure in the Uniao do Vegetal (UDV).

Abstract

The religious cure is a subject that has been very discussed by the Social Sciences, mainly in virtue of stories of adepts of diverse religions and sects involving the cure. The non medical cure, “spiritual” or “religious”, must be studied by the Science in order to have a more complete view about the questions involving disease, health, affliction and relief, and how the individuals interact with their problems looking for different kinds of treatments. This study aims to comprehend how the transformation, relief and cure experience is in the União do Vegetal (UDV), through a social-anthropological view. The União do Vegetal is one of the religions that use an entheogenos tea (Scientifically named Ayahuasca) in its religious rituals. Established in the Amazon region on July 22nd in 1961, by the bahian rubber tapper José Gabriel da Costa, the "Master Gabriel", it possesses a Christian- reincarnationist doctrinaire base and today it is present in the urban centers of Brazil and also in other countries. The adepts refer to UDV as it being a religion that allows positive transformations in their lives and brings relief and cure to the problems faced by them. The problems go from “physical illnesses”, or “illnesses of the body”, to depression, anguish, drug addiction and others. Having in mind the importance of the narrative in the experience of the affliction and infirmities, it looks forward to comprehend, through the adept’s speeches, how they conceive such processes and to whom they relate these transformations, relief and cure. The aim is to contribute with scientific knowledge, expanding the paradigms about the phenomenon of “religious cure” or “spiritual cure”.