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Visions from Other Worlds: Western Esotericism, UFO Beliefs and Conspiracy Theories in New Age Ayahuasca Groups.


Pages: 21 - 34

Abstract

The encounter between aliens and neo-shamanic contexts allowed many people and groups to reframe their religious and/or spiritualist beliefs and practices, that were worn out by the clash between emerging possibilities (e.g., counterculture movements) and traditional symbolic universes (e.g., Catholicism, Pentecostalism, etc). There is, therefore, hybridization between the traditional and the contemporary, in the form of aliens subordinate to Christ, ascended masters of the Great White Brotherhood, evil extraterrestrials associated with negative energies, etc. Instead of distant and dissociated beliefs from everyday life, the ritualistic and neurochemical aspects of ayahuasca make such realities imperative, feeding the process of adopting non-hegemonic beliefs known as the ascending spiral of complexity. For all these reasons, the current ayahuasca neo-shamanic contexts are inseparable from the collective imagination about extraterrestrials, in addition to being idiosyncratic compared to the scientific and cultural mainstream.