My fieldwork is based in Orlando Florida. My areas of interest are the anthropology of shamanism, entheogenic sects and psychedelic religions in the United States, the anthropology of law, and Indigenous studies. www.tarryljanik.com
This dissertation examines the process by which Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth Inc., an ayahua... more This dissertation examines the process by which Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth Inc., an ayahuasca church, in Orlando, Florida, seeks to become a legal church in order to be exempted from the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which classifies DMT, the psychedelic by-product of the boiled ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaf, as an illicit substance. The three-year study charts the process by which Soul Quest undertakes to demonstrate their practice and belief in terms that will conform to the State’s idea of what “church-ness” looks like and how sincere belief should be demonstrated in terms the law will find legible. In the process, Soul Quest is compelled to make a series of situational adjustments to their practices and front-facing self-presentation in order to perform “church-ness,” which the DEA ultimately reads as insincere and uses as the grounds for denying exemption. Soul Quest then sues the DEA for being insincere in their own arbitrary process for denying Soul Quest exemption, arguing that the DEA does not have the right in any kind of statute or law to decide what sincerity is or what a religion is. In the case of Soul Quest v. the DEA we see that the lines between the secular and religious are increasingly blurred and entangled and are not mutually exclusive. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at Soul Quest where ayahuasca ceremonies take place, online, where Zoom integration sessions are held, through court documents drawn from the court case and through an account of the broader cultural context of the psychedelic decriminalization movement in the United States, I show how the social meaning and identity of ayahuasca is entangled and contested on multiple registers. I show how the State tacitly regards rights to exemptions to use entheogens according to an exceptionalism based on racial ideas and on the exceptionalism extended to combat vet’s experiences as hallowed testimony in the face of high suicide rates and intractable PTSD. I argue that at the heart of these various contests and meanings is the question over how altered states of consciousness are to be reckoned with as a social fact.
Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth—a domestic non-profit corporation based in Orlando Florida—self... more Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth—a domestic non-profit corporation based in Orlando Florida—self identifies as a neo-shamanic Christian syncretic religion whose central sacrament is an Amazonian plant medicine called ayahuasca. Ayahuasca, in the United States is an illegal schedule I controlled substance that contains N-dimethyltryptamine or DMT and is consumed by church members as a means of not only communing with the divine, but also as a way to heal a variety of psychosomatic conditions and illnesses. What sets Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth or (Soul Quest) apart from other American ayahuasca churches such as Santo Daime and Uniao de Vegetal is the fact that they are operating without the approved religious exemption status of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration or DEA. In 2016 Soul Quest was invited by the DEA to apply for religious exemption and was later denied exemption for “a lack of religious sincerity” as well as not conforming to proper storage and importation protocols. In this paper, I will closely examine the exemption denial of Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth, INC by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration paying close attention to how surveillance and law intersect and co-participate within the framework of New Legal Realism.
Central to the story of the Buddha's enlightenment is an antagonistic figure known as "M... more Central to the story of the Buddha's enlightenment is an antagonistic figure known as "Mara." At the moment of the Buddha's enlightenment, Mara appears and attacks the Buddha with sense pleasures and unsuccessfully tries to make the Buddha question whether he is truly enlightened. The scholar Michael David Nichols concludes Mara is merely a convenient figure that is used to demonize unorthodox Buddhist thought rather than a real, living Buddhist phenomenon. Contrary to this, I argue that Mara is not just a convenient symbol that is used to demonize untraditional Buddhist thought as Nichols suggests. Through an examination of early Indian Mahayana Buddhist sutras (or scriptures) - specifically the Prajnāpāramitā ― I show that Mara is a very real physical and mental Buddhist phenomenon that exists to snare and to seduce the bodhisattva into succumbing to his inner Mara nature - humanity's inherent capacity for evil.
This dissertation examines the process by which Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth Inc., an ayahua... more This dissertation examines the process by which Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth Inc., an ayahuasca church, in Orlando, Florida, seeks to become a legal church in order to be exempted from the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which classifies DMT, the psychedelic by-product of the boiled ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaf, as an illicit substance. The three-year study charts the process by which Soul Quest undertakes to demonstrate their practice and belief in terms that will conform to the State’s idea of what “church-ness” looks like and how sincere belief should be demonstrated in terms the law will find legible. In the process, Soul Quest is compelled to make a series of situational adjustments to their practices and front-facing self-presentation in order to perform “church-ness,” which the DEA ultimately reads as insincere and uses as the grounds for denying exemption. Soul Quest then sues the DEA for being insincere in their own arbitrary process for denying Soul Quest exemption, arguing that the DEA does not have the right in any kind of statute or law to decide what sincerity is or what a religion is. In the case of Soul Quest v. the DEA we see that the lines between the secular and religious are increasingly blurred and entangled and are not mutually exclusive. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at Soul Quest where ayahuasca ceremonies take place, online, where Zoom integration sessions are held, through court documents drawn from the court case and through an account of the broader cultural context of the psychedelic decriminalization movement in the United States, I show how the social meaning and identity of ayahuasca is entangled and contested on multiple registers. I show how the State tacitly regards rights to exemptions to use entheogens according to an exceptionalism based on racial ideas and on the exceptionalism extended to combat vet’s experiences as hallowed testimony in the face of high suicide rates and intractable PTSD. I argue that at the heart of these various contests and meanings is the question over how altered states of consciousness are to be reckoned with as a social fact.
Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth—a domestic non-profit corporation based in Orlando Florida—self... more Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth—a domestic non-profit corporation based in Orlando Florida—self identifies as a neo-shamanic Christian syncretic religion whose central sacrament is an Amazonian plant medicine called ayahuasca. Ayahuasca, in the United States is an illegal schedule I controlled substance that contains N-dimethyltryptamine or DMT and is consumed by church members as a means of not only communing with the divine, but also as a way to heal a variety of psychosomatic conditions and illnesses. What sets Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth or (Soul Quest) apart from other American ayahuasca churches such as Santo Daime and Uniao de Vegetal is the fact that they are operating without the approved religious exemption status of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration or DEA. In 2016 Soul Quest was invited by the DEA to apply for religious exemption and was later denied exemption for “a lack of religious sincerity” as well as not conforming to proper storage and importation protocols. In this paper, I will closely examine the exemption denial of Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth, INC by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration paying close attention to how surveillance and law intersect and co-participate within the framework of New Legal Realism.
Central to the story of the Buddha's enlightenment is an antagonistic figure known as "M... more Central to the story of the Buddha's enlightenment is an antagonistic figure known as "Mara." At the moment of the Buddha's enlightenment, Mara appears and attacks the Buddha with sense pleasures and unsuccessfully tries to make the Buddha question whether he is truly enlightened. The scholar Michael David Nichols concludes Mara is merely a convenient figure that is used to demonize unorthodox Buddhist thought rather than a real, living Buddhist phenomenon. Contrary to this, I argue that Mara is not just a convenient symbol that is used to demonize untraditional Buddhist thought as Nichols suggests. Through an examination of early Indian Mahayana Buddhist sutras (or scriptures) - specifically the Prajnāpāramitā ― I show that Mara is a very real physical and mental Buddhist phenomenon that exists to snare and to seduce the bodhisattva into succumbing to his inner Mara nature - humanity's inherent capacity for evil.
This is chapter one from my forthcoming horror fiction book entitled "Godforsaken" which will be ... more This is chapter one from my forthcoming horror fiction book entitled "Godforsaken" which will be published in January 2016.
This paper is about the relationship between humans and jaguars (Panthera onca) in Paramakatoi (i... more This paper is about the relationship between humans and jaguars (Panthera onca) in Paramakatoi (in the Potaro Siparuni region) Guyana South America. The ways in which the jaguar is perceived and embodied by the Patamuna of Paramakatoi—Its history and historicity— Is shaped by social cosmologies (kanaima, piya, and alleluia shamanism), ecologies (eco-tourism), landscape1, modernity (the state/globalization)2, and mythology3. To show this I will be drawing on the important historical account of humans and tigers by Peter Boomgaard, wherein Boomgaard tracks the decline of tigers in the Malay world (specifically Java, Bali, Malaya, and Sumatra) and by doing so argues that tigers have a history in relation to human beings. I too want to offer a history of the jaguar and its relationship to human beings. To do this I will focus specifically on Paramakatoi and human-jaguar interactions. In particular, this paper focuses on were-jaguars and jaguar spirits. And through an examination of these socio-cultural beliefs I will argue that how the jaguar is perceived by indigenous people (the Patamuna), Europeans, and Guyanese shapes their relationship to the jaguar.
In this paper, I argue that kanaima in Paramakatoi Guyana should be conceptualized as a state of ... more In this paper, I argue that kanaima in Paramakatoi Guyana should be conceptualized as a state of dissociative possession, that kanaima is reified and reproduced via a mythic model of Carib warfare and cosmological sacrifice experienced through spirit possession and the ritual usage of binas or charms which foment a culturally encoded and conditioned (from childhood) hyper-aggresson in the user. I will employ Huesmann's model of aggression to suggest that kanaima is an inculcated normative cultural script of aggression through which Patamuna youth encode and condition themselves to become hyper-aggressive in this ritual context. To do this, I will examine testimonies of kanaima and the ritual usage of binas which are central to the process of becoming a and performing kanaima in juxtaposition with the exegesis of text—specifically theories of dissociation, altered states of consciousness (possession), a mythic model of Carib warfare, comparative Amazonian case studies, the psychology of aggression, and cosmological sacrifice.
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religion, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2021, pp. 142-145.
Since the twentieth-century shift in cultural studies away from a positivist scientific objectivi... more Since the twentieth-century shift in cultural studies away from a positivist scientific objectivity in fieldwork toward a model of naturalism, then to an interpretive and phenomenological approach, the distinction between “insiders” and “outsiders” has continued to be problematic in both the social sciences and humanities. Previous studies on the insider/ outsider “problem” within anthropology and religious studies have rejected the notion that ethnographic accounts can represent social reality in a rather straightforward way; they argued for an increasing recognition of reflexivity, which implies that there are certain elements of positivism and naturalism that must be abandoned while simultaneously reflecting deeply upon the role and position of the ethnographer in the field. This anthology, written by a diverse range of scholars, extends this discussion from a multidisciplinary approach.
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