ABSTRACT
Ayahuasca, the main Amazonian entheogen, increases its presence within Brazilian society with the foundation of Santo Daime religion in the state of Acre in 1930. Along the following decades, turned into a syncretic religion, the pre-Columbian brew leaves the jungle and heads to the cities. The dissemination of ayahuasca throughout Brazil is an expression of entheogenic mobility, a phenomenon that is studied in this chapter in light of current mobility theories.
Neo-shamanic expressions are fruitful in Rio de Janeiro, combining diverse traditions such as Umbanda, spiritism, science, esoterism, and astrology, among others. One of them is Ordem dos Cavaleiros de Ptah e Sekhmet, a spiritual center named after two Egyptian deities which is located in the city's outskirts, where the authors of this chapter participated in several ayahuasca ceremonies. The result is presented here in a narrative that combines theoretical approaches with personal observations. To that end, we had to travel from the city to the suburbs (exterior journey) in order to get to the center headed by Pai Luiz, the spiritual leader who, month after month, guides a crowd of people along a journey into the depths of Being (interior journey).
