The conclusion revisits the book’s central themes by highlighting how ayahuasca’s legal and cultural trajectories illuminate broader tensions in the governance of religion, science, and Indigenous rights. It argues that the regulation of ayahuasca offers a window into the workings of secular power, the reconfiguration of religious freedom, and the emergence of new political subjectivities. Through the lens of controversy, the book shows how actors mobilize different epistemologies—legal, scientific, spiritual, and ancestral—to negotiate ayahuasca’s place in the world. The conclusion reflects on the practical and conceptual implications of understanding ayahuasca as an unstable and contested object, shaped by global circulations and local disputes. It calls for a renewed anthropological sensitivity to how categories like “religion,” “medicine,” and “tradition” are deployed in contexts of regulation and recognition, and suggests that controversy can serve as a productive analytical site for exploring the shifting boundaries of legitimacy and authority in a plural world.