In this article, I discuss how ritual is framed in the context of ayahuasca tourism, using ethnographic data collected in and around Iquitos, Peru. Alluding to a lack of socially sanctioned spaces for altered states of consciousness (ASCs) in western cultures, contemporary seekers flock to the Amazon to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies for an array of reasons, including healing and personal transformation. Taking Gregory Bateson's concept of “framing” as a point of departure, and applying Erving Goffman's frame analysis, I will (...) show that contemporary ayahuasca ceremonies attended by westerners are designed to be liminal, transformative, and meaningful experiences that aim to heal the body through emotional modulation. I will demonstrate how this is achieved through specific discourse that takes place before or during rituals in the form of long speeches delivered by the shamans. This framing not only separates the ritual space as liminal but also frames the way that the experience is conceptualized by the participants, ultimately increasing its meaningfulness. (shrink)

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew from Amazonas, popularized in the last decades in part through transnational religious networks, but also due to interest in exploring spirituality through altered states of consciousness among academic schools and scientific researchers. In this article, the author analyzes the relation between science and religion proposing that the “demarcation problem” between the two arises from the relations among consciousness, intentionality, and spirituality. The analysis starts at the beginning of modern science, continues through the nineteenth century, and (...) then examines the appearance of new schools in psychology and anthropology in the countercultural milieu of the 1960s. The author analyzes the case of ayahuasca against this historical background, first, in the general context of ayahuasca studies in the academic field. Second, he briefly describes three cases from Spain. Finally, he discusses the permeability of science to “spiritual ontologies” from an interdisciplinary perspective, using insights from social and cognitive sciences. (shrink)