Hi, trying to answer questions from the last two posts, not necessarily in order ...
I'm sure the reason he picked Washington state was because the Pacific NW is a good market for this kind of thing. The place is only an hour or two from Seattle, Olympia, and Portland, all strong counterculture areas.
I am told that marijuana use is discouraged there.
As for how Trinity treats his people, I have been in touch with four disillusioned ex-employees who felt exploited and mistreated. But I don't want to try to speak for them.
Now, as far as the questions raised about the Santo Daime (of which I am a member)... there are a lot of good and sincere people in the Daime, and I wouldn't want to endanger their existing legality, but there are a lot of questionable things (to put in mildly) in the Daime.
The marijuana use is controversial but widespread in Brazil. Dabcult is correct that the Oregon churches forbid it because of their legal agreement. I think that that still holds even though marijuana has now been legalized in Oregon.
But what I find the most dangerous is that some Daime churches encourage "mediumship," that is, possession or "incorporation" of whatever "entities" come along, indisciminately. This is because in Brazil there is a strong Afro-Brazilian culture (Umbanda, Candomble, etc) and this became absorbed by many Daime churches there, but mixing African-style possession with a strong psychoactive substance is one of the most alarming things I have ever seen. The founder of the Daime was a black man, but he was completely against it, and it only started happening after his death. He also didn't allow marijuana in the ceremonies, but didn't seem to be concerned about people using it outside of ceremony, because there didn't seem to be much of it then around where he was. Nowadays, though, I hear, cocaine addiction is a growing problem in Mapia. It certainly has not turned out to be the utopia that it was originally envisioned to be.
But I don't want to divert this thread into talking about the Daime.
I'm sure the reason he picked Washington state was because the Pacific NW is a good market for this kind of thing. The place is only an hour or two from Seattle, Olympia, and Portland, all strong counterculture areas.
I am told that marijuana use is discouraged there.
As for how Trinity treats his people, I have been in touch with four disillusioned ex-employees who felt exploited and mistreated. But I don't want to try to speak for them.
Now, as far as the questions raised about the Santo Daime (of which I am a member)... there are a lot of good and sincere people in the Daime, and I wouldn't want to endanger their existing legality, but there are a lot of questionable things (to put in mildly) in the Daime.
The marijuana use is controversial but widespread in Brazil. Dabcult is correct that the Oregon churches forbid it because of their legal agreement. I think that that still holds even though marijuana has now been legalized in Oregon.
But what I find the most dangerous is that some Daime churches encourage "mediumship," that is, possession or "incorporation" of whatever "entities" come along, indisciminately. This is because in Brazil there is a strong Afro-Brazilian culture (Umbanda, Candomble, etc) and this became absorbed by many Daime churches there, but mixing African-style possession with a strong psychoactive substance is one of the most alarming things I have ever seen. The founder of the Daime was a black man, but he was completely against it, and it only started happening after his death. He also didn't allow marijuana in the ceremonies, but didn't seem to be concerned about people using it outside of ceremony, because there didn't seem to be much of it then around where he was. Nowadays, though, I hear, cocaine addiction is a growing problem in Mapia. It certainly has not turned out to be the utopia that it was originally envisioned to be.
But I don't want to divert this thread into talking about the Daime.