A stranger in a strange land: negotiating supernatural 'fact' and 'fiction' within visions and hallucinations in non-traditional ayahuasca churches

For thousands of years, potent psychoactive potions such as ayahuasca have helped

magico-religious practitioners make sense of this life and the next. Although historically

confined to indigenous South American communities, Europeans are increasingly

consuming ayahuasca to experience (im)possible supernatural realities within immersive

hallucinations and visions. Of course, whether these perceptual psychoactive

experiences are real or just pharmacological fictions of mind is an acute epistemological

concern. With little known about this otherworldly issue, this ethnographic study

examines how neo-European ayahuasca church members negotiate supernatural ‘fact’

and ‘fiction’ outside of traditional religious, psychological, and philosophical knowledge.

Key findings show that while ayahuasca catalyses intense supernatural beliefs, it also

leaves individuals epistemologically struggling to cope with the vulnerabilities of their

mundane lives and ongoing threat of social stigmatisation. However, with these churches

acting as otherworldly ‘gatekeepers’, new congregants must work to embrace totalising

supernatural doctrines or lose access to these fairy tale lands forever.