One medicine, many names and histories.

Ayahuasca is the term used in the Sanctuary’s documents and communications and in Brazil’s Resolution CONAD No. 1/2010. Other names help reveal the historical, territorial and religious diversity surrounding the medicine.

These words are not perfectly interchangeable. A name may be connected to a particular people, language, preparation, lineage, prayer or religious community.

Caapi or kaapi may refer to the Banisteriopsis caapi vine or to a drink prepared with it, depending on the context. Yagé or yajé is especially associated with Indigenous and mestizo contexts in northwestern Amazonia, including areas of Colombia and Ecuador.

Nixi pae and uni are names found in Huni Kuin contexts. Their meanings belong within living cultures and cannot be reduced to search terms detached from peoples, territories and forms of transmission.

Daime is the sacramental name established in traditions that developed from the life and teachings of Mestre Raimundo Irineu Serra. Hoasca, oasca and uasca are phonetic or written forms related to ayahuasca, while vegetal is used within specific Brazilian religious vocabularies.

Santuário Céu de Aparecida is not formally affiliated with Santo Daime, União do Vegetal or another ayahuasca religion. It maintains its own ritual formation while respecting the historical and religious importance of these traditions.

Between late 2024 and early 2025, directors Bruno Luz and Michael Pereira were received at Aldeia Chico Curumim, in the Kaxinawá Indigenous Territory of the Jordão River, Acre, near the Peruvian border. They took part in a community experience and a Huni Kuin baptism alongside young people from the village, following local guidance.

The experience has biographical and spiritual meaning for the directors, but it does not grant the Sanctuary lineage, institutional representation or permission to reproduce Huni Kuin rites.

The Sanctuary recognizes Indigenous authorship and the need to name people, communities and contexts accurately. Encounters and authorized records are documented as lived history, not as proof of authority over another people’s knowledge.

Its universalist ritual practice is its own. Respect for Indigenous peoples includes acknowledging both what has been learned and the limits of what the Sanctuary may claim or reproduce.