If you are a person who menstruates and takes or has taken ayahuasca, you have probably encountered issues related to the interaction of the drink with the ovarian cycles linked to this body. How many of us have been surprised by the unexpected arrival of menstruation or increased menstrual flow during a ceremony? Or, how many of us have specific experiences related to the effect of the drink when menstruating or experiencing PMS? Furthermore, how many of us, who are outside traditional communities, have wondered about the existence of ancestral knowledge on the subject while formulating new insights from experience and sharing them in discreet conversations among friends before, during, or after an ayahuasca ceremony?
It is well known that ayahuasca is a drink of Amazonian origin and that since the end of the 20th century it has expanded significantly into large urban centers and global flows. With this phenomenon, individuals and groups have made various negotiations and arrangements to better accommodate their experience with the drink in contexts other than its origin in the forest. Such arrangements have sparked important discussions about the transnationalization of ayahuasca, but these are mostly limited to topics such as negotiations with elements of the public sphere—a male-dominated domain in the Western world. In a slightly different way, through an approach that starts from the body and the visceral nature of experiences, it is possible to find other elements that participate in this process. Taking into account, for example, menstruation as a bodily condition of anatomically female bodies (whether they have different gender identities, such as cisgender women, non-binary people, or trans men), and therefore as a possible part of a person’s bodyset during a ceremony, it becomes possible to find a diversity of other negotiations, knowledge, and exchanges that participate in the configuration of the ayahuasca diaspora.
Far from being a peripheral element, menstruation is a profound theme that has divided many shamans, healers, and contemporary practitioners in the field of ayahuasca and other biocultures.
Far from being a peripheral element, menstruation is a profound theme that has divided many shamans, healers, and contemporary practitioners in the field of ayahuasca and other biocultures. With regard to diets, for example, Alex K. Gearin and Beatriz Labate (2018) identified that “(…) many centers adopt strict rules, but make exceptions for menstruating women, as it is difficult to send away female participants who have registered to be at the retreats and end up menstruating during that period.” In this context, would such flexibility point to the creation of more progressive and egalitarian ayahuasca environments? Or would they be responding to the capitalist market culture, whose invisibility and suppression of menstruation are presented as freedom for these bodies to remain productive? Furthermore, to what extent would there be a strategic selection of elements considered traditional in order to better accommodate these centers to global flows?
In my doctoral research on women’s role in the transnationalization of Santo Daime, among the more than 30 women interviewed, located in different countries around the globe—from Latin America to Japan—all of them, in their own way, recounted their experiences when their menstruating bodies interacted with ayahuasca (which in the religion is called “daime”) as an important element that never went unnoticed. In addition, they even highlighted the production of knowledge arising from this type of interaction. In light of this, I propose to discuss, based on women’s menstrual experiences with ayahuasca in Santo Daime, how Daime women produce situated knowledge about menstruation and ayahuasca, navigating between various references available in global modernity, such as Amazonian cosmologies, New Age, and feminisms, in addition to their own embodied experience. I argue that, given such arrangements, these women’s actions in religion do not fit into the key of “submission to tradition” or “emancipatory resistance,” but rather are the production of frontier epistemologies that go beyond Santo Daime and can, more broadly, reveal data about the use of ayahuasca in urban contexts.
Brief Summary of Menstruation in the Indigenous Amazon
Unlike contemporary Western societies, whose dominant menstrual consciousness is articulated around secrecy and the suppression of blood, menstruation is a central part of the social organization and cultures of Amazonian peoples (Oliveira, Nahum-Claudel, Martin, 2023). In these cosmological perceptions, menstrual blood opens communication between everyday experience and other dimensions. Thus, it operates both within a person’s body and outside it (Belaunde, 2005). Furthermore, throughout the Amazon, regardless of the specific contours linked to the diversity of each people, bleeding is “changing skin” and, therefore, perspective. Thus, anthropologist Luisa Elvira Belaúnde (2005) reminds us that in this context, menstruation is closely linked to women’s relationship with anacondas and the moon as the great masters of mutation. Given this, safeguards, diets, and seclusion would be the best ways to regulate the transformational dynamics driven by blood and its smell.
For example, according to Cynthia Carrillo (2017), for Yawanawá women, menstruation is understood as a period in which they become visible to non-humans –who in this culture are called yuxin—without being able to see them. Given this circumstance, they become susceptible to possible attacks. Therefore, according to the researcher, in Yawanawá culture, diets are recommended, as well as avoiding ayahuasca and contact with other specific plants, and participating in certain healing practices. Similarly, Laura Gil (2022) observed such elements among the Yaminaw in the Peruvian Amazon.
It is important to emphasize that such restrictions do not imply impurity or inferiority. That is, even if seclusion also stems from the belief that blood can “spoil” food, weaken and make a man sick, it can also neutralize poisons and spells (Belaunde, 2005). Thus, far from being a curse, menstruation can be understood as a form of female witchcraft, analogous to other forms of male witchcraft, such as ensuring fertility and the reproduction of game (Oliveira, Nahum-Claudel, Martin, 2023 apud Overing, 1986).
While Indigenous peoples view menstruation as power and transformation, in the Daime religion it takes on new contours and interpretations.
As Santo Daime originated in the Amazon and dialogues with the cosmologies present in the territory, it is possible to perceive that certain conceptions about menstrual blood shift and transform in this new religious context, especially with regard to its process of transnationalization. Thus, while Indigenous peoples view menstruation as power and transformation, in the Daime religion it takes on new contours and interpretations.
Menstruation in Santo Daime
In the context of Santo Daime—a modern, hybrid Brazilian Amazonian ayahuasca religion founded in the 1930s and currently present in dozens of countries around the globe—menstruation also imposes restrictions on female bodies. More specifically, the widely shared rule states that menstruating women should not participate in the cleaning of the leaves of the “Queen” (the chacruna) during the feitio (ritual that involves the production of daime). In some churches, they should not even enter the feitio house (space where daime is prepared) or the place where the bottles are stored.
According to Juliana Barreto (2019), who conducted her thesis research in one of the most traditional Daime communities in Acre, CICLU-Alto Santo, similar to other Amazonian communities, there is a belief in this religion that women are connected to other ordinary and extraordinary dimensions during menstruation. During this period, they produce fluids that could negatively influence the production of the drink. Similarly, in my research, I heard from a Daime practitioner who said she had learned from older members of the Santo Daime that, because menstruation is a cleansing process, contact between the menstruating body and the production of the drink “spoils the Daime.”
Interestingly, from what I could verify, despite the diversity and circulation of people in the religion, which includes, for example, women influenced or not by feminist ideas, belonging both to countries ranked at the top of the Global Gender Gap Report and to countries with the lowest levels of gender equality, all respect the rule. This occurred even without official explanations. However, obedience was accompanied by the elaboration and production of knowledge that favored their position as women within the religion, as I will discuss below.
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Flexibility and the Production of Knowledge
In the Daime context, because it is a hybrid tradition widely spread by word of mouth, there are no “official records” (in the Western, rational bureaucratic sense) about the origins or reasons why menstruating women cannot clean the leaves during the ceremony. Among the interviewees, the official reason was that Mestre Irineu, founder of the religion, had received it this way from the Daime itself. However, when prompted to talk more about it, the justification for this type of restriction was not limited to tradition or mystical elements, much less male authority.
When discussing restrictions related to menstruation, many women expressed ambivalence. On the one hand, they recognized that such restrictions legitimized this time as a period of retreat and rest, a necessary pause amid the intense community dedication that Santo Daime usually demands. On the other hand, they questioned the way in which this “withdrawal” was institutionalized, especially when it resulted in the automatic relocation of menstruating women to the kitchen or to childcare, which is quite common in Daime communities, characterized by their strong patriarchal structure.
Their reflections also revealed hybrid knowledge and cosmologies linked to the nebulous New Age movement and its cultural industry. That is, ideas based on notions of healing psychological and spiritual problems by aligning one’s “inner self” with the menstrual cycle. Such notions bring menstruation as a co-participating element in processes of “healing the feminine,” as well as bringing the subject closer to the earth and nature.
There was also a belief shared by most of these women, for example, in the similarity of this rule to the enchanted memory of a past common to humanity in which women “gathered together in the red tent,” which was a space for sharing and feminine power. In any case, I noticed that these references, although diffuse and not always based on specific traditions, functioned as symbolic resources to reinterpret religious taboos and reinscribe menstruation as power, not impurity, in response to the dominant Western menstrual consciousness.
Beyond the taboo linked to menstruation, among the Daime practitioners I interviewed, there is a prevailing perception that Daime acts as a catalyst for spiritual openness and cleansing. Commonly, they all stated that they felt spiritually “more open” when they were menstruating and more susceptible to the actions of non-humans, such as spirits, vibrations, emotions, and energies during this period. Other women reported that consuming Daime during their cycle increased their menstrual flow, which could cause discomfort such as weakness and more intense cramps, as well as the fear of leaks that could stain their uniforms—which in the Daime context are called fardas—with blood marks. As a remedy, some said they avoided high-intensity ceremonies such as Healing or Saint Michael ceremonies (typical of churches associated with the Igreja do Culto Eclético da Fluente Luz Universal – ICEFLU), preferring more peaceful rituals. There are also those who choose not to participate in the dances – which can last for hours—due to the physical effort involved.
In any case, even though there is no rule for this, it is common for many women to choose to drink smaller amounts of the beverage or weaker types of ayahuasca that differ from the more conventional export model during their menstruation. In this case, ayahuasca/daime honey or gel—which originated from transnationalization and consists of cooking the drink until it becomes thick like a gel, thus making its transport more viable, since one kilogram of gel could normally yield around four liters—would be far from ideal for most of the interviewees during their menstrual period. For most of them, “first-degree Daime” (first cooking), because it contains more water, would be considered gentler on the body at that time. In the absence of this Daime, smaller amounts of diluted honey or gel would be recommended. The justification is both practical and spiritual: the body, already in the process of purification, would not need additional stimuli.
As reported by Liesbeth, a Dutch woman who is the leader of the largest Daime church outside Brazil:
“When I was menstruating, I took a little less Daime. The body is already cleansing itself and becomes more vulnerable. So, if a woman tells me she is menstruating, I usually offer her less Daime. But it is their choice.”
In fact, among the interviewees, there is a noticeable attention to each body’s own rhythm and an autonomous management of the menstrual experience that recognizes the uniqueness of cycles and women’s right to self-regulate their intake of Daime without institutional prescription. Given this, it is possible to see that thinking about menstruation within contemporary ayahuasca practices allows us to shift the debate away from the dichotomy between submission and autonomy, as observed by Saba Mahmood (2005) regarding the pietist movement among Muslim women in Egypt. In this way, it becomes possible to glimpse the complexity of the negotiations that women engage in when occupying religious and spiritual spaces historically mediated by men.
“When I was menstruating, I took a little less Daime. The body is already cleansing itself and becomes more vulnerable. So, if a woman tells me she is menstruating, I usually offer her less Daime. But it is their choice.”
Liesbeth, a Santo Daime Leader
Far Beyond Submission and Autonomy
The experiences of Daime women with menstruation and Daime reveal a turning point where body, ayahuasca, and culture meet and reconfigure themselves.
We have seen that in the context of Amazonian traditions, menstruation appears as a principle of transformation and communication between worlds, as a vital force, an agent of healing and transformation. However, with the circulation of ayahuasca in different global contexts, these conceptions are reinterpreted by women who, situated in modern and secular patriarchal regimes, create new ways of signifying their bodies and their cycles. Thus, menstrual blood, until then read as a limitation in modern society, comes to be understood as a marker of agency and self-knowledge, opening space for feminine epistemologies about the relationship between their bodies and ayahuasca. Hence, it is possible to read these women as creators of frontier knowledge, in the sense of Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso (2016), who understands decolonial practice not as a return to an essentialized past, but as the political exercise of constructing oneself in the midst of it all.
Menstrual blood … comes to be understood as a marker of agency and self-knowledge, opening space for new feminine epistemologies about the relationship between the body and ayahuasca.
In this in-between, urban and Daime women operate translations and displacements, constructing their own meanings for their experiences. Thus, menstrual blood, until then read as a limitation in modern society, comes to be understood as a marker of agency and self-knowledge, opening space for new feminine epistemologies about the relationship between the body and ayahuasca.
Thus, in a complex way, Daime women have not limited themselves to rejecting or obeying the rules that come from “tradition,” but rather they remake them based on their own experience, reintroducing the female body with its secretions, sensitivities, and instabilities as a legitimate source of knowledge, spirituality, and power. In this way, they reinscribe blood, and with it, the feminine, as an active part of their role in the process of expanding and reinventing ayahuasca itself in the world.
Art by Mariom Luna.
Note: This article was originally published in Spanish and Portugueses on Chacruna Latinoamérica.
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References
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