History
Santo Daime, sometimes called simply the 'Doctrine of Mestre Irineu', is the name given to the religious practice begun in the 1920s in the far western Brazilian state (then-territory) of Acre by Raimundo Irineu Serra, an immigrant of Maranhao in Brazil's northeast region.
Irineu Serra was born in Brazil in 1892 to African parents and migrated to the Western Amazon region in 1912, attracted to a boom in the rubber tapping industry. He first drank ayahuasca in the border region between Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. As a result of experiencing a series of visions whilst spending eight days in solitude in the forest, he began to conduct spiritual ceremonies using ayahuasca. Many people came to him sick, seeking healing they could not afford or failed to find in standard medical practice.
Originally, Santo Daime teachings had no basis in written text, as early practitioners were illiterate, learning being experiential, through singing of inspired hymns exploring the perennial values of love, harmony and strength through poetic and metaphorical imagery. The hymn collections of early practitioners have since become the sacred works of the doctrine.
Read more about this topic: Santo Daime
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)