In this work we have laid out for the reader a most important legal finding by the U.S. Supreme Court, permitting a religious group originating in Brazil but located as well in the United States - the União do Vegetal - to use the plant hallucinogen, ayahuasca, as a sacrament in its religious rituals. This mixture of plant hallucinogens in the sacrament are derived from the Amazon and have a long history of spiritual and religious use among indigenous peoples, among mestizo healers throughout the Amazonian countries of Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia, and since the 1920s, among new religions, and since the 1960s as with the UDV. We trace this process of change both historically, anthropologically and linguistically and provide a vision of the future where we anticipate that the principles of religious freedom will trump those of political definitions of illicit acts and substances. “Hallucinogenic” use to access spiritual realms must be distinguished from the use of substances to deaden pain and anguish or to provide hedonistic experiences.