Marcio Purusha in dialogue with Yharu Kuntanawa wearing a traditional feather headdress

Marcio Purusha is the founder of Queen of the Forest — a visionary, spiritual guide, media producer, and social entrepreneur who has devoted his life to the Amazon rainforest, its sacred traditions, and the peoples who protect them.

For more than three decades, his life has moved between two worlds: the ceremonial fire and the connected world of media and commerce. He has spent his life building bridges between them — so that the wisdom of the forest could reach the world, and the world’s support could reach the forest.

The Path Begins

Marcio’s journey with the sacred medicines began in 1988, when he first sat with Ayahuasca in Brazil. By 1993 he had entered the medicine path fully, living within the Santo Daime community and immersing himself in a tradition of discipline, devotion, and forest spirituality that would shape everything that followed.

Marcio Purusha in white Santo Daime farda with community elders

In 1999, he was chosen by his spiritual tradition for a mission: to carry the knowledge of the path beyond the borders of Brazil. He moved to the United States and spent more than two decades — until 2022 — serving that mission: traveling the world, facilitating thousands of ceremonies, and receiving Indigenous leaders, elders, and teachers from many nations as they brought their traditions abroad.

Marcio Purusha at ceremony grounds in the mountains with tipi

Along that road, Marcio was also ordained as a certified Road Man of the Native American Church — authorized to run peyote meetings and to perform ceremonies across the full arc of life, from birth blessings to weddings and beyond. He speaks three languages fluently, plays several musical instruments, and carries the songs of the traditions he serves.

The Digital Pioneer

Long before “digital marketing” was a profession, Marcio was building the web in South America. In 1995 he was featured in Veja Rio magazine as one of the pioneers of web publishing on the continent, creator of the early online venture Rio Observer. In the early 2000s he founded Boulder Web Marketing in Colorado, taking small businesses from zero to hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue through storytelling, search, and honest marketing craft.

In 2015, he was the featured keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony of Parsons School of Design (The New School) in New York — invited to speak about vision, purpose, and building enterprises that serve something greater than themselves.

Marcio Purusha speaking as keynote speaker at a graduation ceremony

Ancient Voices

As a media producer, Marcio created the Ancient Voices film project — a documentary journey into the sacred traditions of the Amazon, recording the voices of elders, pajés, and forest communities so their knowledge could speak for itself, in their own words, to a global audience.

Queen of the Forest

In 2015 these two rivers — the medicine path and the digital craft — met in a single project. Marcio founded Queen of the Forest: a platform for authentic Amazonian ceremonial goods and education, built on direct relationships with the communities that make them. With a lean team of only two to three people, Queen of the Forest has served a global community for over a decade, generating more than seven million dollars while returning value to Indigenous artisans and medicine makers across the forest.

Marcio Purusha on an Amazon river boat with Indigenous leaders and musicians

Those relationships are personal, and decades deep. Friends and partners like Chief Assis Kaxinawá of Aldeia Pinuyá prepare the medicines Queen of the Forest shares; the stories of the Huni Kuin, the Yawanawá, the Nukini, the Kuntanawa, and other peoples of the forest live throughout the site’s Forest People pages and the Rapéh Guide, most of them written from Marcio’s own years among these communities.

Marcio Purusha receiving Indigenous leaders in ceremonial dress

Life as Ceremony

Marcio believes that with devotion, unity, and perseverance, a more balanced world is possible — one with more dignity and peace for all. That nothing is impossible when we tap into the power of our higher selves and unite. And that the future of humanity is tied to the future of the forest.

This is the philosophy Queen of the Forest calls Life as Ceremony: not a product, but a way of walking — with respect for the traditions, reciprocity with the communities, and reverence for the living forest that holds us all.

Haux Haux.