Welcome to Wasiwaska

Wasiwaska - Research Centre for the Study of Psychointegrator Plants, Visionary Arts, and Consciousness. Wasiwaska (the House of the Vine), a legally established Brazilian non-profit organization, is located in Florianópolis, on the beautiful island of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil. It was created by Luis Eduardo Luna, Ph.D., with the aim to promote research on the use of sacred plants in the fields of anthropology, ethnobotany, ethnomusicology, pharmacology, neuropsychology and consciousness, as well as their cultural and artistic manifestations. Wasiwaska is the site of a developing botanical garden with a variety of species of sacred and medicinal plants for the purpose of scientific identification and conservation of the flora and fauna of a beautiful patch of Atlantic Rainforest within the property. Wasiwaska also houses a small but growing specialized library.

Special emphasis is given at Wasiwaska to the documentation and study of ayahuasca, the sacred brew of the Amazon, used in the past and the present by numerous indigenous groups of the Upper Amazon, by the mestizo riverine population of Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, and regarded as a sacrament by several contemporary Brazilian religious organizations.