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We all know (or we should know!) that in the history of the so-called Western civilization, which is so proud of itself, women have systematically suffered countless forms of physical, psychological, economic, sexual, and symbolic violence.
Unfortunately, these forms of violence are still present in contemporary society. The gender pay gap and the limited representation of women in positions of power and leadership compared to men are just two examples.
The marks of patriarchy also extend to the control and surveillance of female bodies. Deprived over the centuries of freedom in relation to themselves, women have often been given the place of spectators of their own lives, with men playing the role of managers and administrators of their bodies and desires.
The impacts of these biopolitics are also felt in the establishment of medical/hospital protocols that remove the autonomy of women from pregnancy to childbirth—in some cases resulting in obstetric violence—and in the stigma of traditional practices of care for the female body. Further, the contribution of women to Western psychedelic culture has been traditionally undervalued both by psychedelic practitioners within the culture and in mainstream coverage of the culture.
For these and other reasons, it is very important that when we discuss psychedelics, we emphasize female agency and the solidarity networks formed by women, which are an important aspect of the relationship between human beings and sacred plants and the formation of cultures, religions, and collective representations associated with their consumption.
In this article, we will discuss the art of midwifery, the relationships of care and support established among women in the Brazilian religion of Santo Daime, and the connection of these practices to sacred plants.
Santo Daime and Female Resistance
Founded in the 1930s, Santo Daime is the oldest of the Brazilian ayahuasca religions. Founded by Mestre (Master) Raimundo Irineu Serra, a Black man from northeastern Brazil who migrated to the Amazon to work in the rubber industry that developed there in the 20th century, this religion has a female entity, the Queen of the Forest, a “Universal Goddess,” as its spiritual patron.
Some of the most important leaders of the religion are women, including Madrinha (Godmother) Rita, matriarch of Church of the Eclectic Cult of the Universal Fluent Light (ICEFLU), and Madrinha Peregrina, Mestre Irineu’s widow and undisputed leader of the Universal Christian Light Center of Illumination (CICLU) in Alto Santo, Acre (Rodrigues and Assis, 2022).
An aspect still little discussed in the literature on Santo Daime, however, is the female agency within its practices, and the network of support and sisterhood that women have nurtured and kept alive over the decades, despite the difficulties inflicted by a sexist society and the work overload born by many women in Santo Daime.
This network of solidarity can be seen in an especially heroic way with regard to pregnancy and childbirth. There is an art of midwifery, practiced in the Daime tradition, that remains alive, passed on from generation to generation, and protected by zealous guardians.
It is also important to say that this article deals specifically with Santo Daime. Each ayahuasca tradition has its own culture, and what happens in the Daime context cannot be generalized to the whole ayahuasca field.
In Santo Daime, women have the right to drink ayahuasca throughout their pregnancy and during labor. It is a woman’s individual choice, and no one can force her to do so. As in the case of children, pregnant women consume smaller doses (which is often symbolic) than the rest of the group. Pregnant women can also participate normally in the rituals, but are not obligated to do so because they have the freedom to choose (Labate, 2011).
State and moral entrepreneurs, vocal in sensationalist media, have challenged this freedom over the decades despite the absence of scientific evidence that the consumption of ayahuasca harms pregnant women, fetuses and small children, and families in Daime communities is widely documented in the anthropological literature.
An historic event took place in 2010 when the Brazilian government agency responsible for national drug policy, CONAD, made the decision to guarantee pregnant women the autonomy and right to consume ayahuasca in their religious practices (CONAD, 2010).
This decision remains in effect in Brazil and is a landmark in the country’s drug policy and an example to the world. In the Brazilian context, it is understood that it is up to the woman to decide whether or not to ingest ayahuasca during her pregnancy, and the family has the power to decide on giving the drink to children.
In this case, therefore, the experiences of families over generations and the principle of religious freedom have taken precedence over social prejudice, infamous “war on drugs” policies, and the patriarchal surveillance of women’s bodies.
The use of ayahuasca by women during pregnancy and during childbirth can be seen as an act of resistance to colonial and patriarchal violence, as well as a maintenance of traditional care practices and possibilities to cultivate and share wisdom, knowledge, and experiences linked to the world of midwifery.
“THE USE OF AYAHUASCA BY WOMEN DURING PREGNANCY AND DURING CHILDBIRTH CAN BE SEEN AS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE TO COLONIAL AND PATRIARCHAL VIOLENCE.”
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Traditional Midwives and the Solidarity Network Among Women
“It is useless for a woman to say that she is a midwife if there is no trust in the community,” says Clarice Andreozzi, a recognized midwife of the ICEFLU Santo Daime community.
The art of midwifery is involved in the transmission of knowledge between women, and is not a solo, individual activity, but part of a network of support and solidarity with ancient roots.
“It is traditional, ancestral knowledge, passed on from generation to generation,” recalls Clarice, who adds: “The knowledge of traditional midwives is not only linked to labor itself; often it is also associated with knowledge of herbs. Many midwives are prayer leaders and faith healers, and serve as a point of reference in terms of recognizing women in a community. A midwife is a woman that other women trust. She not only takes care of childbirth, but also of women’s problems.”
One of the main historical midwives in the Daime tradition was Madrinha Cristina Raulino. “From the ninth month onwards, Madrinha Cristina started to accompany the women. From the ninth month, a dessert spoon (of ayahuasca) every night. It helps to relax and relieve pain during childbirth,” recalls Vera Fróes, a leading researcher of plants and the female experience in Santo Daime (Fróes, 2014).
Madrinha Cristina mentored and supported many women in the art of midwifery, among them Clarice, who says that she became a midwife to “support women so they don’t go through the same difficulties I did. All the obstetric violence. A total lack of information, in the postpartum period, when I was breastfeeding.”
Today, Clarice is part of the “Daime a Luz” (“Daime-that-births-Light”) Network, a project of women linked to ICEFLU, that seeks to strengthen and empower midwives who live in Daime communities in the forest, “and who become teachers of new midwives,” especially in the Céu do Mapiá headquarters of the Santo Daime expansionist line in Amazonia, founded by Padrinho (Godfather) Sebastião (who is himself a recognized midwife by the community).
The Art of Midwifery and Women’s Freedom Over Their Bodies and Desires
With the expansion of Santo Daime into large urban centers, the makeup of the Daime community has begun to change, and the new socioeconomic profile of its members is more accustomed to the medicalization of the birth experience, distant from the Amazonian cultural roots of the religion. As a result, the delivery performed by traditional midwives with the use of ayahuasca, even in forest communities, has in many cases been passed over in favor of so-called “modern” methods, and in this way the home/community has given way more and more to the hospital as a place to give birth.
According to Meyer and Meyer (2013), this transition is also related to the average Brazilian’s perception that childbirth is an “illness” or “disease,” which would help to explain the high rate of deliveries performed by modern medicalized means. On the other hand, they point out that the continuance of traditional home births in remote and isolated forest communities is related to the scarcity of resources and difficulties in accessing hospital services.
It is not a question, here, of necessarily placing modern biomedical knowledge in opposition to traditional knowledge. It can be safely said that most followers of Santo Daime do not see a contradiction but rather a complementarity between modern and traditional care techniques.
What interests us here is not a fallacious opposition between “tradition” and “modernity” but rather an opposition between violence and women’s agency over their own lives, bodies, and desires. Here quality information about the possibilities of choice involving pregnancy and childbirth, as well as an appreciation of female expertise in women’s care, play an important role.
It is in this sense that Vera Fróes (2017) states that “keeping alive the tradition of humanized childbirth is an act of resistance against the monopoly of health practices and the industrial production of medicines, in addition to valuing our cultural heritage, contained in traditional, intuitive, or empirical knowledge and practices in the use of plants.”
Ayahuasca and the Daime Childbirth Ritual
We can define living together in a Santo Daime community as a ritualized life experience. There are rituals for all sorts of initiations, from marriage to baptism, and childbirth is no different.
Clarice defines the Daime ritual of childbirth as a “ritual of simplicity, which unites the simplicity of the Daime and the naturalness and simplicity of giving birth.” Women’s faith and trust in their own process are fundamental elements of this moment:
“First of all, with all those who are present, the spiritual works are opened: the Sign of the Cross is made, and the Lord’s Prayer and a Hail Mary are recited. Afterwards, prayers are made, asking Our Lady of Good Birth, Mestre Irineu, Padrinho Sebastião, and our spiritual guides for protection. Soon after we consecrate the Daime [ayahuasca]. Depending on the situation, we may chant other prayers or carry out a hymnal session [a ritual session with singing] until labor starts.
The delivery time varies a lot. That is why we observe the rhythm, the confidence, the presence, the empowerment of women in their process. After a while, we serve a little more Daime, and we can also carry out a smoking or smudging process and provide sitting baths.
When the woman is afraid, we make our prayers and incantations. And we take our spiritual strength to carry out the work. Sometimes the woman wants to meditate. Sometimes she wants to stay in the bathtub. She has the freedom to experience her own process. When the baby is born, we sing the hymn “Sol, Lua, Estrela” [Sun, Moon, and Star], by Mestre Irineu, and the hymn “Sou Luz, Dou Luz“ [I’m Light, I Give Light] by Padrinho Sebastião. After the baby is welcomed, we say the Lord’s Prayer and a Hail Mary, thank the guides and ancestors who are present, and then we close the spiritual work.
If the placenta takes a long time to come out, there is the prayer of the placenta, for Saint Margarida. In the meantime, we make massages—there are several different techniques, such as steaming the uterus, smoking it with Santa Maria (Cannabis sativa), invoking her sacred presence—and in this way we carry out the needs that arise during childbirth. Each birth is a new experience, a new learning experience.”
Doctor Adelise Noal, another important Daime midwife, shares some of the emotion of experiencing childbirth within Santo Daime: “The whole body trembles when receiving a newborn human being from the maternal womb, as if it were in a state of trance. The blooming of a flower, watered with the wine of souls [ayahuasca]!” (Noal, 2021).
As can be seen, the Daime childbirth ritual is deeply related to the faith and values shared by the women who make up this religion, a feeling that is shared by the first author of this article, who drank ayahuasca in a Santo Daime church throughout her pregnancies, and considers that Daime also played an important role in the birth and postpartum processes:
“During the entire period of labor to give birth to my second child I took small doses of Santo Daime, which gave me the necessary confidence in myself, in the baby, in the team that helped us, and in the whole process. Although this birth took place in a hospital environment, we were able to set up a small altar in the room. During the baby’s expulsive period, which began to take longer than expected, I drank some Daime, said some prayers, and lit a candle, and from that moment on, the baby was born quickly. On the same day, we moistened the child’s mouth with cotton wool containing Santo Daime, and all this contributed to a meaningful experience, which continued during the puerperium and breastfeeding period.”
Therefore, linking the experience of childbirth to the consumption of ayahuasca within Santo Daime can give participants confidence and support them through the birthing process. This is illustrated by a statement from Padrinho Sebastião, quoted by Vera Fróes, according to which “a woman who drinks Daime does not die in childbirth” (Fróes, 2014).
“LINKING THE EXPERIENCE OF CHILDBIRTH TO THE CONSUMPTION OF AYAHUASCA WITHIN SANTO DAIME CAN GIVE PARTICIPANTS CONFIDENCE AND SUPPORT THEM THROUGH THE BIRTHING PROCESS.”
Respect for Women’s Freedom and Autonomy
Throughout the history of Western civilization, women have lived with all kinds of violence and interference. Female agency has been constantly relegated to the background, in favor of moral and technical discourses made mainly by men. Despite this, women have been resisting, and the example of the art of childbirth in the Santo Daime religion shows the power and luminosity of women united together.
This power has profound subjective and collective implications, which help to keep the social fabric of the community, its rites, and its culture alive and strengthened in the midst of the various attacks against traditional knowledge, lifestyles, and female autonomy.
We hope that this paradigmatic Brazilian case can inspire people to question the war on drugs, awaken an anthropological sensitivity to observe human cultures in their own terms and worldviews, and fight for women’s rights.
And we also hope that more and more women raise their voices and become protagonists of their own lives, with full freedom over their bodies, their desires, their consciences, and their spirituality. It may be possible for humanity to gestate and give birth to the long-awaited utopia of a better world for all.
Art by Trey Brasher.
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References
CONAD (2010). Resolução n.01. Disponível em: www.bialabate.net/wpcontent/uploads/2008/08/Resolução-Conad-_1_25_01_2010.pdf
Fróes, Vera. (2014). Relato #04. Disponível em: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7utyQoyzYpk
Fróes, Vera. O uso do Santo Daime no parto. Disponível em: https://chacruna-la.org/o-uso-do-santo-daime-no-parto/
Labate, Beatriz. (2011) “Consumption of Ayahuasca by Children and Pregnant Women: Medical Controversies and Religious Perspectives,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 43: 1, 27–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2011.566498
Meyer, M.E. & Meyer, M.D. (2013). Los Niños de la Reina, Ayahuasca y Embarazo: Um Informe Preliminar. In: Labate, Beatriz C; Bouso, José C. (Ed.). Ayahuasca y salud. La Liebre de Marzo, Barcelona.
Noal, Adelise. (2021). Os Psicodélicos no Universo Feminino do Partejar. Disponível em: https://chacruna-la.org/psicodelicos-no-partejar
Rodrigues, Jacqueline e Assis, Glauber L. Madrinha Rita: Matriarca brasileira da ayahuasca. https://chacruna-la.org/madrinha-rita-matriarca-brasileira-da-ayahuasca/
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