Santo Daime is based upon tree structures: the church, the doctrine and the sacrament.
There are followers that give more emphasis to the institutional aspect; others emphasize the doctrinaire aspect and a few ones, in which I am included, consider the sacrament to be the most important element. The ‘institutionalists’ give emphasis to the administrative rules; the ‘doctrinerists’ to the liturgical and ritual norms; and the ‘sacramentalists’ to the development of the conscience. They are flexible before the rules of the first ones and the norms of the second.
Usually, the doctrinerists criticize the institutionalists. The first say that the second are bureaucratizing the doctrine, that they want to administer everything and everybody and that, deep inside, all they really want is money (the most radical doctrinerists totally oppose to the payment for the sacrament). The institutionalists on their turn aim to associate with the doctrinerists and they argue that a traditional behavior is no longer possible in the modern world, that it is necessary to modernize, to be democratic, to pay monthly fee so that the sacrament is not sold, and so and so. But, truthfully, the institutionalists believe that the doctrinerists are somehow hypocritical and false, that they use the traditional rigidity to hide their incapacity of personal and social change, once they are trapped on a net of parochial gossip.
Both conceptions, the institutionalist and the doctrinerist, are consumers of Daime. Only sacramentalists understand Santo Daime as a production process capable of changing their agents. The church and the doctrine came from within the sacrament. However, in order to develop Santo Daime as a whole, it has to integrate the institutional, doctrinaire and of self-sufficiency aspects. The exaggerated development of the two consuming types leads to the dependence of the groups on the forest.
There are followers that give more emphasis to the institutional aspect; others emphasize the doctrinaire aspect and a few ones, in which I am included, consider the sacrament to be the most important element. The ‘institutionalists’ give emphasis to the administrative rules; the ‘doctrinerists’ to the liturgical and ritual norms; and the ‘sacramentalists’ to the development of the conscience. They are flexible before the rules of the first ones and the norms of the second.
Usually, the doctrinerists criticize the institutionalists. The first say that the second are bureaucratizing the doctrine, that they want to administer everything and everybody and that, deep inside, all they really want is money (the most radical doctrinerists totally oppose to the payment for the sacrament). The institutionalists on their turn aim to associate with the doctrinerists and they argue that a traditional behavior is no longer possible in the modern world, that it is necessary to modernize, to be democratic, to pay monthly fee so that the sacrament is not sold, and so and so. But, truthfully, the institutionalists believe that the doctrinerists are somehow hypocritical and false, that they use the traditional rigidity to hide their incapacity of personal and social change, once they are trapped on a net of parochial gossip.
Both conceptions, the institutionalist and the doctrinerist, are consumers of Daime. Only sacramentalists understand Santo Daime as a production process capable of changing their agents. The church and the doctrine came from within the sacrament. However, in order to develop Santo Daime as a whole, it has to integrate the institutional, doctrinaire and of self-sufficiency aspects. The exaggerated development of the two consuming types leads to the dependence of the groups on the forest.
