Customer Reviews

Forest of Visions: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Spirituality, and the Santo Daime Tradition

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There is much on the internet about Santo Daime, almost none of which accurately portrays the church or the religious and spiritual significance of the Daime. This book, however, is a deep discussion of the church, the doctrine and the Daime which offers a clear picture from a man who has traveled far on the spiritual path of the Santo Daime. Interested people, please read this book before reading anything else.

I've read this book twice. I'm particularly interested, as a member of a Santo Daime church in North America. However, the story of Sebastiao's struggles to find a place for his faith community and to secure the sanction of the Brazilian government for the use of ayahuasca as a religious sacrament is inspirational for anyone. There are several stories of mystical experiences in the Amazon, and the devotion of author Alex Polari is touching. The writing is sometimes awkward (mainly due to an inelegant translation from Portuguese) and sometimes repetitive.

This book, as others have said, is probably the best introduction to Santo Daime in English -- if you understand that "introduction" means being introduced to an inner, intuitive sense of what Santo Daime is about. It is not a history of Santo Daime -- you can search in vain for any information about *when* anything happened and there is a lot of history that the book does not touch. But for what this book IS, it is brilliant and unequaled. In other words, the book gives an intuitive sense of what Santo Daime is better than probably any other, but it leaves a lot of history unclear.

The book is a personal story, the encounter between Alex Polari and Padrinho Sebastiao. Padrinho Sebastiao was a disciple of the founder of Santo Daime, Mestre Irineu, and eventually founded his own branch of Santo Daime, called CEFLURIS, and eventually founded the Daime community of Mapia in the Brazilian Amazon. (If you know about the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, two of them are madrinhas, or godmothers, from Mapia.) Most Santo Daime churches outside of Brazil are affliated with CEFLURIS and Mapia.

Alex Polari, the author of this book, is himself today a leader of CEFLURIS. This book is his own autobiographical account of how he, a former guerrilla who had been imprisoned and tortured for years, searching for meaning and direction after being released from prison, met Padrinho Sebastiao and became his disciple. You don't need to have a special interest in Santo Daime to enjoy this book -- this book should appeal to *anyone* who is interested in the literature of spiritual journeys -- it can go on the shelf next to books about people's spiritual journeys in India and Tibet, for example, or their accounts of shamanic apprenticeships. This book partakes of both, as Santo Daime partakes of both. But it is a personal story, the story of the author's inner transformation as he spent years with an illiterate rubber tapper whom the author considers to have been a medium, a prophet and a saint.

Although it is a personal story and not a book about Santo Daime as a whole, this book helps to convey the spiritual sophistication of Santo Daime, Santo Daime synthesizes elements of Catholicism, Amazonian indigenous religion, Afro-Brazilian religion, and Kardecist spiritism, but unabashedly has Christ at the center. People outside of Santo Daime sometimes wonder about whether the Christian / Catholic component of Santo Daime is something naive, just a holdover from the Catholic culture of Brazil, or whether it is something more sophisticated and deeper. This book helps to answer that question.

The preface to this book, by Jonathan Goldman, leader of the Santo Daime church in Ashland, Oregon, is considered required reading for prospective guests at Daime works. It is linked at
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Whether you are interested in Santo Daime or not, if you are interested in spirituality and the literature of spiritual journeys and apprenticeships, you will find this a very rich and profound story.

If you want to learn the truth about the Santo Daime, then this is definitely the best resource. If you are reading this, then maybe something is already stirring inside you. Enjoy your journey.

Alex Polari has a very special capacity of writing and bringing to life this beautifull story of such an important person, Padrinho Sebastiao.
This book gives an indepth view of the padrinho's life and of the Santo Daime doctrine.
Very inspiring

Good background and history of Santo Daime in Brazil written by an insider who became a leader. Gives information about Sebastiao, Irenu, and others who started the church. Tone is intellectual, somewhat preachy. Conceptual, not specific. Would have liked more ancedotes and true stories. A little heavy on theory for me.

I really wanted to find out about the Santo Daime movement, and while this book has a lot of information, there is just way too much of the very mental ramblings of the author. While in many books this is a good thing, here it is a real distraction.