Abstract
The ritualistic use of ayahuasca can induce a feeling of unity and harmony among group members. However, such depoliticized feelings can come in the service of a destructive political status quo in which Palestinians are marginalized. Through 31 in-depth interviews of Israelis and Palestinians who drink ayahuasca together, and through participatory observations, such rituals were examined. In this setting marginalization was structurally rooted by the group’s inability to recognize Palestinian national identity or admit the ongoing Israeli injustice toward Palestinians. Although the groups avoided politics, they still find their way into these rituals. This happened through occasional ayahuasca-induced revelatory events, in which individuals were confronted with a pressing truth related to the oppressive relations between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians. Three case studies of such revelatory events are described in this paper. Affected by emotions of pain, anger, and guilt, these participants developed resistance toward the hegemonic Israeli ritual structure. This was followed by an urge to deliver an emancipatory message to the rest of the group, usually through a song. Moreover, affected subjects developed a long-lasting fidelity to the truth attained at these events. In time, this fidelity led to the expansion of ayahuasca practices to other Palestinians and the politicization of the practice. The article draws on Badiou’s theory in Being and Event (1988) to analyze the relations between the Israeli ritual structure, the Palestinian revelatory event, and the emancipatory fidelity that followed. Badiou’s theory elucidates the egalitarian revolutionary potential, which is part of the sociopsychopharmacology of psychedelics.
Highlights
During an ayahuasca ritual on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Ruqaiya had a painful historical revelation
We offer a contextualization of the observed ayahuasca rituals in Israel, in which we suggest that they are structured around a depoliticized New Age culture that avoids acknowledgment of the injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian collective by Israelis, especially that which comes about through the denationalization of Palestinian citizens of Israel
Open to Jewish Israelis, Palestinian ayahuasca rituals offer an alternative structure in which they can reclaim the Arabic language and culture as part of their Palestinian heritage, and not as a denationalized discourse of multiculturalism and interfaith dialog. Such an alternative structure of ayahuasca rituals, as we demonstrate allows Palestinians to produce a safe space with a new cultural vocabulary, where they can share the pain and anger that they experience as a result of the Israeli settler colonial structure
Summary
During an ayahuasca ritual on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Ruqaiya had a painful historical revelation. We maintain that changes to the status quo of the ritual can occasionally occur through the resulting process of fidelity, in which the subject who had the political revelation develops a sense of mission to challenge, and potentially alter, the structure of the rituals according to the newly perceived universal truth. Taken up in fidelity to the visionary event, they each attempted to intervene in the rituals’ structure by delivering an emancipatory message, in the form of a song, to the rest of the group While their message came as a demand to recognize the injustice that Jewish Israelis have been causing Palestinians, it aimed to achieve inclusionary universalism, in the rituals and beyond. At times these subjects were somewhat successful in changing the rituals’ structure, they often had to act outside of it to establish a more accepting ritualistic structure for Palestinians
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