The beliefs and practices that constitute Santo Daime draw on a diverse set of cultural and religious elements, many of which are widespread in Brazil, including folk Catholicism, Kardecist Spiritism and other European esoteric traditions, AfroBrazilian religious practices, indigenous shamanism, mestizo ayahuasca traditions, and Amazonian caboclo culture. It is sometimes difficult to identify and isolate these various strands of influence since many of these traditions had already undergone centuries of mutual borrowing and syncretism prior to being incorporated within Santo Daime, as is the case,, for example, in the mutual affinities in belief and practice between Afro-Brazilian religions, mestizo divining, and folk healing in northeast Brazil, and similar practices among assimilated indigenous peoples (Pacheco, 2004). Nonetheless, both scholars and Daimistas themselves have attempted to trace the migration of these various cultural elements and study their process of resignification within the symbolic corpus of Santo Daime. While recognizing the merits of these various studies, we note their tendency to conflate the historical formation of Santo Daime itself with the various authors’ personal representations of this religion as constructed through time and in relation to Brazilian society. This article focuses on the historical formation of Santo Daime by means of a panoramic but critical review of the relevant anthropological and other literature, while analyzing the implications of the different interpretations presented by various authors. Establishing the origins and characteristics of the religion of Santo Daime raises interesting theoretical questions in anthropology, especially with regards to limitations and possibilities for research into the genesis and development of hybrid cultural manifestations, or local adaptations of Christianity. At the same time, such discussions are relevant more specifically to the emerging field of research into Brazilian (and more broadly Amazonian) religious movements and ayahuasca traditions, as well as into other areas such as: the ethnology of Amazonian shamanism and millenarian movements; research into Afro-Brazilian religions; studies of the New Age movement, globalization and post-modernity; and the history of drugs and forms of social control. While situating their research within specific theoretical domains, anthropologists also negotiate power and legitimacy for the object of their studies the religious groups themselves — within the broader space of social discourse. As we attempted to demonstrate throughout this text, different studies into the origins of Santo Daime also reflect ideological disputes within the arena of ayahuasca religions, providing insights into multiple and sometimes conflicting interpretations and representations of the religion among its membership. In this context, we hope to have highlighted lacunae in the data, as well as the difficulties faced in trying to fill them. The difficulty of achieving complete objectivity and precision in this field of research does not mean that some degree of objectivity and precision cannot be obtained. We hope that more detailed and rigorous research will help us to better understand how and why Santo Daime developed into the form we observe today.