Home | Community | Message Board

Cannabis Seeds - Original Sensible Seeds
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

Jump to first unread post Pages: < Back | 1 | 2  [ show all ]
InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Jews back Brazilian religious sect in Supreme Court case [Re: veggie]
    #4937055 - 11/15/05 12:55 PM (18 years, 4 months ago)

November 15, 2005 - thejewishadvocate.com

Jews back Brazilian religious sect in Supreme Court case
Seen as John Roberts’ test of religious rights

A coalition of Jewish groups are backing the right of an obscure Brazilian religious sect to use a hallucinogenic drug in a Supreme Court case widely seen as the first test of how newly-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts will approach religious rights issues.
The Orthodox Union, the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center, the American Jewish Congress and other Jewish groups have all backed the case of the Uniao Do Vegetal, a Brazilian Christian sect whose beliefs center around the use of a hallucinogenic tea.

The UDV’s North American leader is Jeffrey Bronfman, a cousin of Charles Bronfman, the billionaire entrepreneur who helped establish the birthright israel program and the heir of the family business, liquor giant Seagram’s. Jeffrey Bronfman first became acquainted with the UDV and the powerful effects of their sacramental drug, Hoasca, as an ecological activist in Brazilian rain forest in the early 1990s. He would later become the spiritual leader of the first American UDV congregation in New Mexico.

Marc Stern, the co-director of the American Jewish Congress’ Commission for Law and Social Action, told the Advocate that when it comes to religious rights cases, it is irrelevant whether or not Jews approve of the particular religious practice at issue. “You don’t get to pick your religious practices. Over the years we’ve defended a lot of things that are not Jewish practices, including sacrifices and [the drug] peyote. If you don’t protect those practices, no one is going to protect you when your time comes.”

The UDV’s case rests on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which states that no federal law shall “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless the government proves the law furthers a “compelling governmental interest” and that it has been implemented in a way that is “least restrictive” to religious practices.

The government contends that it has a compelling interest in enforcing drug laws and international treaties that ban the use of “psychotropic substances.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the case is expected in June 2006.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Now let us hallucinate [Re: veggie]
    #4958315 - 11/20/05 12:05 AM (18 years, 4 months ago)

Documentary about the Santo Daime - 'Empire of Juramidam'...

Now let us hallucinate
By Alex Bellos
November 20, 2005 - telegraph.co.uk

Colum Stapleton's initiation into an Amazonian religion and its exotic drugs rituals came in the most unlikely of surroundings - a community hall in rural Northern Ireland.

It was three years ago and the film-maker was invited through friends to take part in a secret ceremony of the Brazilian religion Santo Daime, followers of which drink a hallucinogenic jungle brew.

"I opened the door and there were about 60 people all dressed in white," he remembers. "It felt totally bonkers. The men had white suits and blue ties, and the women white dresses. In the centre of the hall was a table covered in a white cloth with pictures of saints and a cross on top.

"That was the altar and there were three guys on guitars and three on percussion belting out happy-clappy Christian songs in Portuguese. The others were singing and dancing around the altar in simple choreographed moves. I was given a cup of the hooch, which tasted disgusting."

When the drug started to take effect, the sensation was more powerful than he could ever have imagined. "It was terrifying, horrific, dreadful," he says.

"Perhaps because I was there as an onlooker, it took its little vengeance out on me. It felt like a near-death experience. Everything became blue-lit and white and deathly. The people looked like filaments dressed in white.

"They were shouting 'Viva a floresta' [Hurrah for the rainforest]," says Stapleton, 40. "I was attracted by the sheer insanity of it in the middle of grim, dull Ireland. I immediately wanted to make a movie about it."

The singing and dancing ritual was to continue for more than six hours. But the experience was the beginning of a two-and-a-half year journey across Europe and South America that resulted in the documentary Empire of Juramidam, which premiered in Britain this week at the Latin American Film Festival in London.

It charts the spread of Santo Daime - also known as the Eclectic Church of the Flowing Light - from its Indian roots in the Brazilian Amazon to its proliferation in western Europe.

For decades the religion was restricted to a small area of the rainforest, but in recent years it has gained an increasing number of followers in Europe and the United States. It is estimated that there may be as many as 30 Santo Daime churches in Europe, including some in Britain.

The tea that is the religion's official "sacrament" is called ayahuasca or daime. It is a muddy liquid made by boiling a vine and a leaf which are both indigenous to the Amazon. Its active ingredient is DMT, or N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a Class A controlled drug in Britain.

About 20 minutes after drinking ayahuasca, the religion's followers attain an altered state that often includes visions and hallucinations. This state, they believe, connects them with the spirit world.

Indians in the Amazon have been taking ayahuasca for curative and religious reasons for millennia, although Santo Daime is only about 90 years old. The religion is a Christian take on the shamanic tradition. Its followers treat the drug as if it is a manifestation of Jesus Christ and believe that by taking it they get closer to God.

In Brazil, the Catholic Church is far more tolerant of the religious offshoot than its British counterpart which condemns Santo Daime's very ethos. Catholic commentators, such as Greg Watts, the author of Labourer in the Vineyard: a Portrait of Pope Benedict XVI, are extremely mistrustful.

"My reaction to this would be that drugs are not the way to experience God," he says. "Drugs are what man uses to try to replace God, so this enterprise is clearly not from God. In the history of Christianity, there have been all sorts of oddballs trying to distort the truth but in this case it has the potential to be very dangerous and to mislead people about the Christian message."

Such criticism of Santo Daime is unlikely to deter those in search of the ultimate religious high, however. Even though Stapleton's first experience of daime was a bad one, he continued to attend rituals to gain the confidence of the group.

Each time Stapleton took the so-called sacrament he "almost always felt terror", although he also began to have a new perspective on the world. "When you are under the influence, good and evil is terribly pronounced," he says.

"You feel the essence of the shortness of life and having to make use of it. In some ways it is like opening the doors of the asylum and never shutting them again. Usually I keep my documentaries at a distance. I couldn't do it with this one."

Santo Daime followers in Europe are reluctant to speak to the press out of fear that their activities will be curtailed by the law. In France and Germany, the authorities have already banned the consumption of ayahuasca.

In Britain, while DMT is a Class A drug and therefore illegal, ayahuasca is not listed as a proscribed substance. Followers of the bizarre religion can access the hallucinogen only when individual members bring in a supply from Brazil.

According to a spokesman for Release, the drugs help and advice group: "Someone bringing ayahuasca into the UK risks prosecution, but it is unclear whether any prosecution would be successful."

So far, there has been no test case, although a Home Office spokesman said: "There is no dispensation for religious drug-taking, but those who want to can apply for a licence." No one has yet applied for one.

In Spain and Holland, however, ayahuasca has been legalised for religious use and in these countries the European movement is strongest. Whereas in Holland the Santo Daime groups rent community halls to have their meetings, in Spain a Brazilian woman has built a "church" in her home, 20 miles outside Madrid.

But even though Stapleton was taking part in ceremonies in Britain and Europe he was never allowed to film one. To obtain the footage of an actual ayahuasca ritual, Stapleton was forced to travel to Brazil to visit Santo Daime's "holy city" of C?u do Mapi?.

The rainforest community of a few hundred devotees is a day's boat ride from the nearest town, Boca do Acre, and is so remote that it has its own time zone.

I visited C?u do Mapi?, two years ago. I felt comfortable on my arrival in what seemed an idyllic country village centred around a star-shaped church. But the scene freaked Stapleton out. "When I arrived they were blaring hymns out of megaphones. It felt like Apocalypse Now."

During Stapleton's stay he was given total access to film the preparation of the ayahuasca and he shot remarkable scenes of the New Year's Eve ritual. For this all-night service, the women wear ceremonial dress of green sashes and sparkling tiaras, and the men wear white tuxedos.

Stapleton again had to take the drug, and this time had his worst-ever experience. "I felt I was dying. I had this huge paranoid crisis. It was pure, sheer terror."

I can well sympathise. I had a similar experience the first time I tried ayahuasca. I collapsed on the floor, hallucinated glowing rivers of colour and then had such an identity crisis that I could not remember whether I was a man or woman.

Stapleton blames his bad experience on his being there as a film-maker, as if that was somehow taking the sacrament under false pretences. Does he feel that it is a religion, a cult or just a bunch of people getting off their heads? "All three," he replies.

Santo Daime dates from the 1910s when Raimundo Irineu Serra, a rubber tapper, took ayahuasca and had a vision of a woman who told him to start a new religion based on Catholicism. He "channelled" 132 new hymns while under the influence, which are Daime's sacred texts and considered the Third Testament.

Serra attracted many followers in his home town of Rio Branco, where he established the first church in 1945. After his death, the movement factionalised and there are now at least three Daime religions which have a combined membership in Brazil of up to 10,000.

Daime changed during the 1970s when Rio Branco's drug churches became a stop on the South American hippy trail. Middle-class arrivals adopted the religion and, eventually, started to spread it throughout Brazil.

Every year, Padrinho Alfredo, the spiritual leader of C?u do Mapi?, travels to America and Europe to conduct ayahuasca rituals with the faithful. In October 2003, Stapleton met him in Northern Ireland, where he led a ceremony of 250 followers who had travelled from all over Ireland, Britain and France. He was not, however, allowed to film inside.

The church does not actively recruit members and is happy to continue on a very small and clandestine scale. Hence, it is difficult to estimate how many followers there are at present in Britain. They meet in rented halls and the homes of members.

One follower living in England, who has frequented Daime ceremonies in different European countries, says that the hallucinogenic brew is a powerful tool for self-knowledge. "One cup of tea can be equivalent to 10,000 hours of psychotherapy," he says.

"It shows you as yourself, not as other people see you. If you are self-aware it can help you in many ways, such as in the healing process after a trauma."

In C?u do Mapi?, ayahuasca is used by many as a cure-all, the reasoning being that all illnesses are indicative of a problem on the spiritual realm that can be cured by spiritual work through the drug. Women take ayahuasca while giving birth and the brew is dabbed on children's mouths as soon as they are born.

Near to C?u do Mapi? there is a rehabilitation clinic run by a Spanish doctor, who buys the ayahuasca from the Santo Daime church.

Stapleton says that one of the aspects he admires most about Santo Daime is its relationship with nature and, through this, its attempts to send out a very modern message. "The believers have a sense of mission in the world," he says. "They have a sense of planetary emergency.

It is a very controlling religious system and there are strict rules, such as everyone must stand in a fixed position around the altar, make the same moves and sing a strict list of songs. Once the ritual has started, you are not allowed to leave. But having met the people and having been with them for long enough, I would ask why shouldn't they do what they do?"

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Re: New Mexico hallucinogenic tea case [Re: veggie]
    #5330305 - 02/23/06 12:47 AM (18 years, 29 days ago)

American Supreme Court allows hallucinogenic hoasca tea use
February 23, 2006 - enjoyfrance.com

A small American congregation are allowed to use hallucinogenic hoasca tea as part of its ceremonies and rituals to connect with God, the Supreme Court has ruled and the unanimous decision by the court is the first religious freedom case since Chief Justice John Roberts was appointed.

The hoasca tea is considered sacred to members of the sect, O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal and its supporters believe they can only understand God by drinking the tea, which is taken twice a month at four-hour ceremonies.

When making its ruling, the court said the government has to allow the use of the hoasca tea under religious freedom laws. And under these laws back in 1978 the Native American Church had been granted permission to use peyote containing the prohibited drug mescaline in their religious ceremonies.

And Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that federal drug agents should have been stopped from confiscating the hoasca tea. About 130 members of a Brazil-based church had been involved in a long-running dispute with federal agents, who confiscated a shipment of three drums labelled "tea extract" sent from Brazil to the US branch in 1999.

The administration of President George W. Bush had put forward the argument that the hoasca tea was illegal and potentially dangerous. The government stated that no exceptions could be made to the anti-drug law, even though it conceded the sect's use of the tea was a sincere expression of religious practice.

The brewed tea of hoasca, also known as ayahuasca, caapi, yag?, mihi, dapa, natema, pinde, daime, and vegetal, is made from the bark of an Amazonian vine, Banisteriopsis Caapi, which contains harmine, and the leaves of a plant called Psychotria Viridis (also known as the Queen Leaves) which contain dimethyltryptamine or DMT a controlled substance banned under federal drug laws.

Founded in Brazil in 1961, the O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal religion is a mixture of Christian and indigenous South American beliefs and has about 8,000 followers in Brazil, and since 1993, around 130 in America, centred around a branch in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The new religion known as Santo Daime is very similar to the O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal sect and also uses the same Amazonian psychoactive herbs.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: < Back | 1 | 2  [ show all ]

Shop: Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Church likely to prevail in dispute over hallucinogenic tea motamanM 1,572 4 09/13/03 06:00 PM
by DailyPot
* Student cuts off penis&tongue after drinking hallucinogen Stein 2,480 11 09/30/03 12:00 AM
by Cow Shit Collector
* Judge Makes Ruling in Peyote Case motamanM 4,805 10 04/29/03 01:33 PM
by Anonymous
* Envisioning uses for hallucinogens motamanM 2,079 2 11/20/03 06:08 PM
by DailyPot
* Experts debate benefits, risks of hallucinogenic drugs motamanM 2,887 1 12/01/03 06:49 PM
by DailyPot
* Hallucinogenic mushrooms seized during bust motamanM 3,898 2 05/13/03 11:20 PM
by Hans_Moleman
* Hallucinogens could unlock mystery of the brain motamanM 2,388 1 12/28/03 05:05 PM
by KingOftheThing
* Hallucinogenic herb attracts DEA interest, isn't illegal ? motamanM 2,950 3 07/13/03 03:01 PM
by gdman

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: motaman, veggie, Alan Rockefeller, Mostly_Harmless
9,425 topic views. 1 members, 4 guests and 2 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.024 seconds spending 0.007 seconds on 15 queries.