The Pharmacopoeia of the Invisible: a visual investigation of healing through the lens of neuroscience and the Jurema-preta (Mimosa tenuiflora)

The relation between the biodiversity of the Caatinga and the healing systems of the traditional peoples of the Brazilian Northeast goes beyond purely extractive or empirical interaction, constituting what is defined as a complex cosmopolitical field of forces (Stengers, 2014). At the centre of this web, Jurema-preta emerges not only as a botanical taxon of pharmacognostic interest, but as a sentinel of the biome and an active agent in the reorganisation of life.

Historically, the ritual use of Jurema, the sacred drink of autochthonous peoples, has records dating back to 1739 in Pernambuco, evidencing its presence in the missions of Paraíba and indicating complex sociocultural dynamics on the colonial frontiers of the eighteenth century (Medeiros, 2006). Although colonial sources situate it within that timeframe, its origins are ancestral, prior to the arrival of the colonisers, and its permanence today — in Indigenous cosmogonies as in rural and urban syncretisms — reaffirms its force as an element of communication between distinct cultural universes.

From the standpoint of Public Health and primary care in Indigenous territories, this investigation proposes that healing is a systemic event, in which the biological body is inseparably integrated with the cosmopolitical body and with the territory. Starting from the premise that the health of native populations depends on the integrity of the ecosystem, the desertification of the Caatinga implies the direct fragmentation of healing processes and the loss of health sovereignty. This vision of integral health aligns with the concept of Tekoá (Jecupé, 2024), which defines territory as the “place of being”: the sacred ground where Good Living is manifested and cultivated.

Mimosa tenuiflora (Willd.) Poir. belongs to the kingdom Plantae, division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Fabales, family Fabaceae, subfamily Mimosoideae. Taxonomically it is frequently associated with Mimosa hostilis, a botanical synonym widely used in classical ethnopharmacological literature (Schultes; Hofmann; Rätsch, 2001).

It is a shrubby to arboreal species of medium size, reaching between 3 and 7 metres. Its morphology is an evolutionary response to the xeromorphism of the Caatinga: the stem has a fissured, greyish bark revealing a dense reddish heartwood; the branches are armed with recurved infrastipular prickles that act as herbivore defence and reduce water loss (Lorenzi, 2002). The leaves are bipinnate, with small leaflets that close in response to physical stimuli or thermal stress. Flowering occurs between September and January, in dense cylindrical spikes of whitish-yellow colour and sweet scent, essential to the local insect fauna.

A pioneer species of high edaphic plasticity, it thrives in podzolic, latosolic and lithic soils, with pH between 5.5 and 7.0. Its nitrogen-fixing capacity gives it the role of restorer of degraded soils (Maia, 2004). In ecophysiological terms, the plant “translates” environmental stress into chemical complexity: intense UV radiation and water scarcity act as elicitors for the synthesis of secondary metabolites. Although not listed as endangered by the IUCN, it faces vulnerability from predatory extraction for charcoal and firewood, which compromises the integrity of native juremais and the genetic sovereignty of Indigenous territories (Lucena et al., 2015).

The chemical complexity of Jurema rests on two large groups of compounds. Condensed tannins, located mainly in the bark and roots, confer astringent, cicatrising and antimicrobial properties, and account for the “blood of Christ” colour of aqueous macerations (Grünewald, 2002). Indole alkaloids mark the biochemical apex, in the synthesis of N,N-dimethyltryptamine: biosynthesis follows the shikimate pathway, in which L-tryptophan undergoes decarboxylation and successive enzymatic methylations, resulting in the indole ring fundamental to the interaction with serotonergic receptors (5-HT2A) of the central nervous system (Santos et al., 2018).

The traditional “wine of Jurema” is technically a cold aqueous maceration of root bark. Unlike ayahuasca, which is decocted, Jurema extraction favours solubility at ambient temperature in order to preserve thermolabile compounds. The great pharmacological enigma lies in the oral activity of DMT: contemporary research suggests an entourage effect, in which saponins, tannins and trace alkaloids modulate absorption or protect the molecule against enzymatic degradation (Ott, 1998).

For Indigenous public health, and for the art proposed here, Jurema-preta ceases to be a botanical object and becomes a biotechnological subject. Its resistance to desertification is a metaphor for the resistance of the peoples of the Northeast.

From the standpoint of pharmacology, Mimosa tenuiflora constitutes a reservoir of high biochemical complexity, notably through indole alkaloids that establish a direct molecular dialogue with human serotonergic receptors. This geometry originates in the shikimic acid pathway, the plant's primary factory. Therapeutic efficacy, however, is not confined to isolated pharmacodynamics: the drug, in this context, is inseparable from rite and territory.

The biological centrality of Jurema-preta is corroborated by ethnopharmacological research carried out in the Brazilian semi-arid (Silva; Lima et al., 2013). For this research-creation, the botanical robustness identified by regional science operates as a metaphor for the resistance of native peoples: the molecular structure of the plant, mapped in the laboratory, is transposed onto the canvas as a geometry of healing and survival.

The interface with neuroscience emerges as a fundamental field of translation. Contemporary studies (Araújo et al., 2012; Carhart-Harris, 2014) suggest that ritual use of these substances modulates the Default Mode Network, verified by functional magnetic resonance imaging, enabling cognitive flexibility and neuroplasticity. In the Indigenous universe, this phenomenon translates into the subject's capacity to renegotiate traumas and identities within a cosmopolitical body.

The pharmacological robustness of the species extends beyond the field of consciousness: recent research suggests that its indole alkaloids not only modulate 5-HT2A receptors but induce the release of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), promoting synaptogenesis that repairs dendritic atrophy caused by stress (Palhano-Fontes et al., 2019). In parallel, the somatic dimension of the plant reveals itself in its bark, a reservoir of tannins and saponins with potent anti-inflammatory and cicatrising action (De Souza et al., 2008). Painting, consequently, is not mere representation: it is the visual systematisation of this neural, spiritual and political transition.

The transmutation of the pharmaceutical gaze into pictorial gesture speaks directly to Amerindian Perspectivism (Viveiros de Castro, 2002). In recognising that plants, animals and spirits possess political agency and subjectivity, the series acts as an exercise in visual anthropology: the artist-researcher relinquishes external, purely objective observation in order to inhabit the perspective of the plant and of the territory.

In this cosmogony materialised on canvas, nature is not scenery but pulsating presence: the sea has a life of its own, the sky manifests a vitality that “blinks”, and every element of the biome vibrates at singular frequencies. The painting breaks with the Western nature/culture dualism by proposing an aesthetics of equivalence, in which the particle accelerator and the maracá occupy the same existential plane of ontological dignity.

This construction employs a cartography of signs that operate as keys of access to a cultural system of cosmology. According to Eliade (2013), myth and its symbols reactualise the “primordial time, the fabulous time of the beginning”. Ritual elements such as the pipe and the maracá are signs that reconnect the biological body to that originary, living matrix. In painting the vibration of sky and sea, the artist evokes the symbolic efficacy of ritual, turning the canvas into a living organism pulsing in harmony with the Tekoá.

Practice in public health shows that healing is often the process of making visible what Western pathology renders invisible. When the technical language of the pharmacopoeia proves insufficient to describe the phenomenology of consciousness, art emerges. By employing the aesthetics of high-energy physics, the work seeks to map the “collisions” between the molecular and the spiritual dimensions.

The relevance of this investigation lies in the need to strain the boundaries between biomedical science and Indigenous epistemologies. The choice of Jurema-preta is justified by its centrality in the Caatinga, a biome that, as Krenak (2019) writes, reflects the scars of environmental neglect and the regenerative powers of the territory.

The project finally assumes a character of health and intellectual sovereignty: in transmuting the pharmaceutical gaze into pictorial gesture, the research proposes that working through historical trauma passes by way of reconnection with the living pharmacopoeia of the semi-arid, countering the biopolitical invisibility of this knowledge and protecting the immaterial and genetic heritage of the Brazilian Northeast.