Sobre aprender e ensinar uso de plantas sagradas numa tradição Amazônica

Abstract

Since immemorial time, several cultures have been appropriated of the psychoactive potential of the environment, through learning processes associated with the sacralization of plants. Through bibliographic research, written reports, and empirical experience we examined aspects of the propagation of knowledge in the context of the use and sacralization of plants in an Amazonian religious tradition. These are legitimate experiences, which configure effective situations of communication and learning, through the expression of an epistemology of sacred plants, in which are conformed their own knowledge and practices of use, and in frank process of expansion beyond the realms Amazonian. This Diaspora of knowledge and plants, associated with the recent expansion of the Brazilian ayahuasca religions, highlights an Amazonian version of religious experience, individually and collectively forming a transversal pedagogical process, approaching the current notion of self-knowledge. As a food of the spirit, it begins to question the cognitive bases of an ordinarily unique western modality of learning, by favoring and potentializing the production and circulation of knowledge from an immaterial intentionality and a horizontal people-plant relationship. Key words: Amazon. Knowledge. Teacher plants. Cabocla spirituality