Acre and the upper Amazon borderlands
Black and northeastern migrants · rubber workers · Indigenous and mestizo knowledge networks
Rio Branco and surrounding forest settlements were shaped by rubber extraction, migration, frontier violence and exchange with Indigenous and mestizo ayahuasca specialists. Santo Daime and Barquinha emerged here as urbanising Amazonian religions whose founders were Black men from Maranhão (Labate, 2012; Labate and MacRae, 2010).
Rondônia and the Brazil–Bolivia frontier
Rubber camps · Porto Velho · UDV nuclei
José Gabriel da Costa founded the União do Vegetal in 1961 after learning about ayahuasca in frontier rubber-camp worlds. The organisation later developed a centralised national structure, formal ranks and urban centres (Goulart, 2008; Brissac, 2008).
Northeastern Brazil
Paraíba · Pernambuco · Rio Grande do Norte · Indigenous peoples · Afro-Indigenous terreiros
Colonial records locate a spreading Jurema movement among peoples identified as Corema, Panati, Pega, Xukuru and others in eighteenth-century Paraíba. Contemporary Jurema is especially visible in Indigenous communities and in Catimbó-Jurema, Umbanda and Candomblé houses (Wadsworth, 2006; Grünewald, Savoldi and Collins, 2022).
Brazilian cities and the global diaspora
Church branches · migrants · spiritual seekers · therapists · artists
From the late twentieth century, Santo Daime and UDV expanded nationally and abroad; Jurema practitioners and neo-ayahuasca networks also connected northeast, southeast, Europe and North America. Law, translation and local religious markets now help determine what a “traditional” work can look like (Labate, 2012; Talin, 2025; Talin, 2026).
| Formation | Spatial order | Sonic order | Authority and spirit relation |
|---|
| Santo Daime | Central mesa; gendered files; seated concentration or synchronised bailado; uniforms distinguish occasions. | Received hymns, maracás, guitars and fixed hymnals; march, waltz and mazurka organise bodily time. | Padrinhos, madrinhas, commanders and fiscal roles; miração and incorporation are evaluated through doctrine and lineage. |
| Barquinha | Devotional altar and mission space; branches differ in table, dance, processional and mediumistic work. | Salmos, hymns, prayers and instrumental music; maritime and Franciscan imagery is prominent. | Charitable mission and mediumship; caboclos, pretos velhos, sailors and other beings may be incorporated to heal. |
| UDV | Seated salão with directed attention; comparatively restrained movement. | Chamadas, doctrinal narrative, questions, recorded or live music and deliberate silence. | Ranked mestre directs the session; burracheira is interpreted through oral teaching, memory and disciplined speech. |
| Jurema Sagrada | Mesa or terreiro with vessels, candles, pipes, images, plants and planted spirit cities; forms vary. | Pontos, prayers, maracás, drums, whistles and spoken consultation. | Padrinhos, madrinhas, juremeiros and mediums work with Mestres, Mestras, caboclos and enchanted lineages. |
| Umbandaime / neo-church | Church geometry may alternate with open circle, healing stations, mediumistic lines or art-performance space. | Daimista hymns coexist with pontos, popular songs, soundscapes or curated playlists. | Authority can combine lineage, mediumship, therapeutic credentials, charisma and peer facilitation. |
Santo Daime: the forest is a revelatory domain of the Divine Queen, Virgin Mary, Christ, Saint John, sun, moon, stars and Juramidam. Founder hymnals form a lived scripture in which biography, cosmology and ethical instruction remain singable and renewable (Santana de Rose, 2018b; Hartogsohn, 2021).
Barquinha: human existence is figured as navigation and mission. The little boat carries practitioners through seas and spiritual realms; sailors, Franciscan devotion, the Cross and incorporated entities make a cosmology whose mobility is structural (Araújo, 2008).
UDV: Christian and reincarnationist teachings, Mestre Gabriel’s biography and orally transmitted stories organise the Vegetal as a path toward light, knowledge and moral evolution. Amerindian, popular Catholic, Kardecist and esoteric matrices do not reduce doctrine to a simple sum (Goulart, 2008).
Jurema: the tree opens an encante of cities, kingdoms and lineages inhabited by Mestres, Mestras, caboclos and other beings. Jurema can be plant, woman, city, science and sovereign force (Grünewald and Savoldi, 2020).
Candomblé and Umbanda: Candomblé nations maintain specific relations with orixás, voduns or inquices, ancestors, ritual kinship and axé. Umbanda’s spirit lines enter some ayahuasca settings through historically situated contact—not because all Brazilian religions share one cosmology (Capone, 2010; Dawson, 2012).
“Shamanism” fits unevenly. Mestre Irineu learned within an Amazonian ayahuasca milieu, yet Santo Daime formed a church-like congregation; UDV privileges its own mestre hierarchy; Barquinha and Jurema foreground mediumship and incorporation; Candomblé organises initiation and possession through terreiro lineages. The comparative term should follow, not replace, local offices.
Healing can mean relief of illness, moral correction, reconciliation, spirit consultation, charitable care or the reordering of life around a religious community. Biomedical trials address selected symptoms and mechanisms; they do not adjudicate the reality of spirits or validate a religion as clinical treatment (Mercante, 2012; dos Santos and Hallak, 2025).