Psychedelics: How to make daime, or ayahuasca – 06/17/2023 – Psychedelic Turn

It was past 2 am. After the ceremony at Céu da Divina Estrela, a Santo Daime church in Santa Luzia (MG), the group of eight people volunteered to continue with the beating at the casa do feitio, about 200 m from the temple erected on the site.

Several kilos of the jagube vine were missing (banisteriopsis caapi) macerated to complete the 120 liter (l) pots that would go into the six-burner furnace, fed with logs by Ramon Barboza. He had been invited to assist in the conduct, when the leader Glauber was not present, by the Chilean Elias Jobel, in the company of Marco Antonio Costa and Romero Meireles.

The woody braids had to be beaten with mallets until they fell apart into fibers almost as fine as hair. Jagube is a fundamental ingredient in daime, a drink also known as ayahuasca. It provides the betacarbolines that inhibit the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO).

Without beta-carbolines like harmine, the psychedelic dimethyltryptamine (DMT) from chacrona leaves (psychotria viridis) would be degraded in the digestive tract and would not reach the brain. The tea would then become incapable of producing the alteration of consciousness characterized by “mirações”, as daimists call the colored visions, often of animals such as serpents, or mystics.

Alongside three rituals with daime, the making of the sacrament was one of the highlights of the ten-day retreat organized to integrate the Chacruna Institute team. The NGO, headquartered in San Francisco (USA), is directed by Brazilian anthropologist Bia Labate.

The local host was sociologist Glauber Loures de Assis, leader of Divina Estrela and associate director in Brazil of Chacruna Latinoamérica. He follows the leadership of godfather Alfredo (Gregório de Melo), patriarch of Céu do Mapiá (AM), the Santo Daime spreading center throughout Brazil and the world.

In the style Glauber accompanies the godfather’s recipe, which he received and perfected from his father, godfather Sebastião (Mota de Melo; 1920-1990). This, in turn, was a daime maker for Mestre Irineu (Raimundo Irineu Serra), founder of the religion.

The feitio is a collective activity and also a ritual in which members of the entire Daime community, including women and children, participate. There is work for everyone, from collecting chacrona (also called queen) and lianas to cutting the woody jagube to the right size and selecting and cleaning the bush’s leaves.

Beating took place in the traditional way, manually, on stumps set on the ground in a shed with a floor lined with white canvas (there are places that use machines to chop branches). Barefoot, beaters macerate the vine with rhythmic blows, following the cadence of hymns sung uninterruptedly, hours on end. That morning work continued until around 5 am.

Each pan is arranged in seven layers. In the first, resistant vine fibers, to avoid direct contact –and consequent burning– of the chacrona leaves with the bottom. On the bed of green material, the fibers can also be mixed with jagube powder (speck).

During the retreat, each pot held 40 kilos (kg) of vine, 8 kg of leaves and 60 liters of water. After a few hours in the fire, the yellowish-brown liquid is reduced to half and is collected in the spout, a wooden frame with a metal gutter for draining. It is not yet about daime, however.

The preparation of the drink at Divina Estrela employs a trio of pots, or more, but always in multiples of three. The combination of the concentrated liquid in the first two cooking pots will make up the third, assembled with the noblest jagube material and selected queen leaves. The result of this addition goes through a new reduction in the fire, thus obtaining the sacramental drink.

During the spell, it is customary for participants to drink several small doses. Taken from the bica, still hot, the daime lives up to the name of tea, for its color and flavor. Golden, the characteristic bitterness of the drink stored in bottles for a long time, a probable result of fermentation, does not stand out.

In the original recipe, which Mestre Irineu would have received by revelation in the forest where jagube and chacrona were abundant, the spell would stop there, in what is called first degree daime. With the increasing difficulty in obtaining the ingredients, the technique was modified by padrinho Sebastião to make better use of vines and leaves.

Instead of being thrown away, the raw material is cooked again with more water in new batches of three pans. Second-degree daime comes from them. Padrinho Alfredo went further and decided to continue annealing the material, with new evaporations.

Third-degree, fourth-degree daimes and so on emerge. Quantities may vary slightly from church to church, following Padrinho Alfredo’s recipe, but the general principle of reuse and successive concentrations is preserved.

Mixing each of the grades, a new batch is obtained, which is returned to the fire with only queen leaves, then turned over with sticks called cambitos, so as not to stick to the bottom. Everything is reduced again until reaching a strong daime, known as 3:1.

Subsequent batches are reduced to smaller volumes per pot, then pooled and boiled to concentrate again. In this way, the darker 5:1 daime is extracted, used in so-called healing works, capable of inducing strong purges (vomiting).

Continuing with the reprocessing and the addition of leaves, one can obtain the so-called honey, a daime 10:1, viscous and sweet. Putting it all together, there are those who refine the drink to a point of 20:1, or higher, in order to extract a gel that, due to its low volume, facilitated export to churches that spread throughout Brazil and the world.

After two days of cooking at Céu da Divina Estrela, 140 liters of daime resulted. They were then packaged while still hot in sanitized bottles to avoid, as much as possible, fermentation. The drink produced during the retreat ended up consecrated in the last ceremony, a ballet.

In the final phase of the rite –which can last several hours– the participants dance in a circle, to the sound of hymns, without leaving rectangles painted on the floor. The opening steps of the three unique rhythms (march, waltz and mazurka) always go to the left, synchronizing everyone’s movements.

Visually, the dancing congregation was compared by one observer to the movement of a gear, to and fro. In the circle, dancing and singing in unison under the effect of the daime that he had helped beat and cook, even a convinced atheist would find it difficult to stop feeling part of a primeval, smiling, viscerally peaceful and uplifting community.

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Journalist Marcelo Leite traveled to Santa Luzia (MG) at the invitation of the Chacruna Institute, of which he is an unpaid adviser