Holy Tea Helps Amazon Cult Spread Mystic Rite : Brazil: Members see themselves as keepers of an ancient source of divine knowledge. But their beloved potion is decried as perilous.

Deep in the Amazon jungle, members of a mystic cult in ritual garb file into an open-air temple to commune with their god, a being who resides in a cup of bitter, rust-colored tea.

Men, women and children line up to drink the brew Indians use to induce visions, heal the sick and communicate with spirits.

It is festival night at the cult of the holy daime, a community that has won followers across Brazil and abroad.

Cult members see themselves as keepers of an ancient source of divine knowledge. They compare the tea to peyote and the sacred mushrooms that some Indians of the Northern Hemisphere use in religious rituals.

Critics say the tea is a dangerous hallucinogen. Some draw dark parallels with the People’s Temple in Guyana, where hundreds of followers of American cult leader Jim Jones committed suicide in 1978.

Brazilian movie stars and pop singers have joined the cult. Daime centers sprang up in major Brazilian cities, Argentina and in the United States, where use of the tea was discontinued after a Drug Enforcement Administration crackdown last year.

The daimistas have a powerful political lobby in Brazil.

In 1989, then-President Jose Sarney created two national forests around the jungle colony, called the Heaven of Mapia, in effect giving it official protection.

Last year, officials granted $230,000 for a nut-processing plant to be established and run by the cult. The U. N. Environment Program and President Fernando Collor de Mello endorsed the program.

Many people are uneasy about the tea. It contains dimethyltriptamine, or DMT, a hallucinogen, and is illegal in the United States.

“DMT causes serious damage to the central nervous system,” said Nuno Pereira, a professor of pharmacology at the Federal University in Rio. “For me, these people should be in jail.”

On May 21, 1990, Rex Neal Beynon, head of a daime center in Cambridge, Mass., was arrested after picking up a shipment of the tea at Logan Airport in Boston. Beynon, a British citizen, was charged with possessing a controlled substance but acquitted on grounds that he didn’t know it contained DMT.

A 1984 Health Ministry list of banned drugs included Banisteriopsis caapi , the scientific name of the vine used to make daime.

It was taken off the list at the cult’s request. Today, the plant is officially “under study” and authorities say there is no hurry to reclassify it.

“It’s not a high-priority item,” said Ester Kosovski, president of the Federal Drug Council. “People of social standing are connected to the cult.”

Amazon Indians have known the tea for centuries and call it caapi, yage or ayahuasca.

Raimundo Irineu Serra, a Brazilian tapper, founded the cult in 1930 after he drank ayahuasca and had a vision of the Virgin Mary. Daime is Portuguese for “give me,” as in “give me light.”

Cult members call it simply “the doctrine.”

“Daime is God,” said Alfredo de Melo, who has led the cult since the death of his father, Sebastiao Mota de Melo. “It is a spiritual food, a path to life.”

Daimistas treat sick people and drug addicts with the tea. Pregnant women take it, believing that it will ensure safe delivery. Children are baptized with it.

“Daime strips away your defenses,” said Paulo Roberto Silva e Sousa, a psychologist who heads Heaven of the Sea, the daime center in Rio de Janeiro. “It puts you face to face with your most intimate self.”

The Heaven of Mapia jungle colony is open to visitors, but no one simply drops in.

About 400 people live in the colony, 2,700 miles northwest of Rio and a two-day canoe trip from the nearest town.

Wooden cabins and chalets dot a broad clearing on either side of the Mapia River. Milk cows graze on grassy slopes set with mango and cashew trees.

Isolation and mysticism make Mapia a close community. Residents grow rice, beans and manioc root in communal fields and there is a communal dining hall for those who prefer it.

Barter is common and money almost unknown. Every month, a boat goes to town and returns with such goods as cooking oil, sugar and soap.

On a knoll overlooking the colony is the open, six-sided temple topped by a crescent moon and double-barred cross, where the cult meets daily for hymn-sings and daime ceremonies.

Preparations begin days before the festival.

Men harvest the vines deep in the jungle, a three-day walk from the settlement. At a special “preparing house,” the vines are scraped clean and cut into 12-inch lengths.

Women pick and select leaves from a bush called chacrona, or rainha --queen in Portuguese. The leaves, which also contain DMT, are added to the brew.

On festival eve, a trumpet sounds at 4 a.m. to summon the men to the preparing house. They drink daime, “to form a spiritual chain,” said Jose Goncalves, a master preparer.

Seated at 14 upturned logs, they pound bunches of vines with wooden mallets until the tough cord is reduced to hair-like fibers. The workers sing hymns as the mallets rise and fall in unison.

Layers of macerated vine and leaves are placed in water and cooked in large pots over a wood fire for hours.

Brewers pour the bubbling broth into a trough for straining and bottling, commemorating the deity’s birth by singing, “Daime, teacher of teachers, master of all learning.”

This festival was the annual birthday celebration for the late leader Mota de Melo, known as “Godfather Sebastiao.” Several other festivals are held during the year.

At 6 p.m. on festival day, the cult gathers at the temple. Men and women stand on opposite sides of a hand-carved table that bears photos of the gray-bearded Mota de Melo.

A vision of the founder, Irineu Serra, was the source of the festival garb.

Men wear white suits and dark ties. The women’s costume is a short green skirt over a longer white one, green sash over a white blouse, pastel-colored ribbons pinned to one shoulder and a crown of sequins or glass beads.

After reciting prayers, everyone lines up at a table dominated by two porcelain dispensers filled with daime. Each member receives a glassful, crosses himself and drinks it.

The service consists entirely of singing the hymns Irineu Serra “received” from the astral plane: all 129 of them.

Celebrants stand in 15-by-30-inch rectangles painted on the floor, moving to the rhythm in a two-step dance. The hymns carry simple messages of love, work, humility and respect for nature.

Within 20 minutes, the daime starts to take effect. Some sway or stagger to benches at the perimeter. Many vomit on the floor or in the bushes outside.

Monitors patrol the floor, reassuring those who feel ill that vomiting and diarrhea are common reactions. No one is allowed to leave unaccompanied.

A man approaches a boy sitting on a bench.

“Having visions, son?” he asks.

“Yes, Dad.”

“That’s good.”

The singing grows louder. Eyes blazing, celebrants intone paeans to Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the Queen of the Forest.

After two hours, they pause to rest and take more daime. The ritual continues until dawn.

For many daimistas , the appeal of the cult is its simplicity.

“A man only believes what he learns for himself, not what someone else tells him,” said Francisco Verissimo, one of Mapia’s original settlers. “Daime is your best counsel and your best friend.”

Raquel Piedrabueno ran a greenhouse in Valparaiso, Chile, before moving to Mapia. She sees daime as part of a back-to-the-earth movement.

“Everyone is looking for a more balanced, natural lifestyle,” she said. “Daime is a plant that God placed on Earth. It only does good. Why not use it?”