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Liquid Light: Ayahuasca Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition.

Welcome everyone! This website is a rich treasure of material that both supports and builds off from my book Liquid Light: Ayahuasca Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition.

Book release date – June 7, 2022

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Liquid light book. Black book with a yellow and green mandala and the title Liquid Light and subtitle Ayahuasca Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition.

Santo Daime

Painting of Mestre Irineu

On this website you’ll find two comprehensive documents detailing the historical development of the Santo Daime – one focused on Mestre Irineu, the founder of the tradition, and the other focusing on Padrinho Sebastião, the charismatic head of the most prominent “line” of the Santo Daime.

This website also offers Psychedelics 101 – a straight-to-the-point introductory depiction of the bedrock basics of what anyone interested in psychedelics should know about these transformative substances. In this website you will also find Santo Daime 101 – a highly compressed account of the key beliefs and practices of the Santo Daime tradition itself. In addition, the website provides a glossary of key terms as well as an assortment of other material related to the Santo Daime tradition that simply could not be contained within the book itself, and some chapters that didn’t make the cut for the book, but which I wanted to share with everyone. And finally, here’s where you can access recordings/lyrics not only of all of the hymns that I have “received,” (that is, which poured into my consciousness from some higher Source) but also other non-musical writings that I have received as well (i.e., “Divinization” and “Invocations and Affirmations”). Enjoy!

The Book

Liquid Light offers an in-depth immersion into the complex and fascinating world of the Santo Daime – a relatively new religion that emerged out of the Amazon rainforest region of Brazil in the middle of the twentieth century, and which now has churches throughout the world. It is a religion based on the sacramental use of ayahuasca, a psychedelic brew. 

The Santo Daime is a “hybridic” religion that weaves together folk Catholicism, West African religions, the Spiritist tradition, neo-esoteric modes of discourse, and indigenous/“vegetalista” practices and assumptions into its own, utterly unique, and inherently congruent, tapestry of religious beliefs and rituals.

Author

William Barnard smiling, sitting outdoors wearing a dark blue sport jacket and blue plaid shirt

G. William (Bill) Barnard is a Professor of Religious Studies, as well as a University Distinguished Teaching Professor, at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas.

His primary areas of research interests are the comparative philosophy of mysticism, religion and the social sciences, contemporary spirituality, religion and healing, and consciousness studies. For over 15 years (including his ongoing study of Portuguese), Professor Barnard has researched the Santo Daime tradition, a syncretistic, entheogenically-based new religious movement that emerged in Brazil in the mid-twentieth century.

Professor Barnard is the author of Living Consciousness: The Metaphysical Vision of Henri Bergson as well as Exploring Unseen Worlds: William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism, both published by State University of New York Press. In addition, Professor Barnard is the co-editor of Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism. Professor Barnard has also written many journal articles and book chapters on a variety of topics, such as pedagogy in religious studies, the nature of religious experience, issues in the psychology of religion, and most recently, entheogenic religions and spirituality.

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