Search

This article analyses the reconfiguration of religious identity in the Druze community in Minas Gerais, south-eastern Brazil, which was formed by the arrival of immigrants from Lebanon in the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The immigrants created ethnic and religious institutions destined to maintain Druze identity and its Islamic character. However, the transmission of religious knowledge to the generations born in Brazil was fragmentary and imperfect. Nevertheless, Druze identity was maintained by many and completely recreated in the religious context of Catholicism and Spiritism, while the connection to Islam faded away. The analysis focuses on how religious authorities and the belief in reincarnation were the main elements that allowed continuity in religious identity together with the transformation of tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bantu African divination is firmly established in South Africa in the context of modernity and is protected, endorsed and regulated by law. It is received in the therapeutic field. Important explorations were performed in the early 20th century by psychiatrists and psychoanalysts of Jungian orientation. Their cultural, philosophical, spiritual, and academic backgrounds are relevant to this reception. Jungian thought, Spiritual Spiritism, and traditions of European philosophy of divination resonated with the experience, observation, and understanding of Bantu divination. ('Bantu' designates the cultural and linguistic realm from Cameroon and Kenya southwards). Religious-philosophical traditions, as well as the conceptualisations of 'divination' by Plutarch and Iamblichus, are preserved. The reception and appreciation of Bantu divination in South Africa emerged from it, and resonated with these European traditions of religious-philosophical thought. Out of this development a distinct 'South African modernity' emerges. A parallel reception process developed in Brazil, in the belief systems of Umbanda and Kardecism. These developments are illustrated at present in the literatures of South Africa and Brazil, specifically in Afrikaans literature, black South African poetry and its poetics, and Magic Realism in Brazilian literature. Lastly, a perspective is offered of modernity's reception by black scholars and diviners, continually interacting with Jungian psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article examines the overlapping political, social and rhetorical functions of the category of “mother” in various contexts related to the January 2013 Boate Kiss fire in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Supported by theories of social suffering and ethnographies of violence, as well as poststructuralist notions of identity and gender, the analysis focuses on the medium-transcribed letters, newspaper articles, journalistic nonfiction, and social media posts related to two social movements that would coalesce among the affected in the tragedy’s aftermath: collectives for justice and groups ascribing to Kardecist Spiritism, both inscribed within the regional and national history of mothers in movements. Attending to gender also highlights the long-term political import of then-president Dilma Rousseff's emblematic visit to Santa Maria on the day of the tragedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 19th century can be described in different and divergent ways. If, on the one hand, it is considered by Erick Hobsbawm as the "Age of Revolutions," on the other, it can also be considered the "century of science, rationalism, academicism." From a religious point of view, however, the 19th century is also the century of occultism, secret societies, spiritism and even Christian religious revival. It is in this very divergent context that this article is located, whose focus is specifically on Germany and takes as its object the Catholic female mysticism. Although little known, the phenomenon of stigmata mysticism registered, between 1775 and 1900, at least 130 cases in Western Europe alone. If we extend this section to 1957, there are 221 cases, among which 212 (96%) are women. In view of this, our research problem is focused on a presentation and brief notes on three cases of 19th century German stigmata mystical women (Anna Katharina Emmerick, 1774-1824, Louise Beck, 1822-1879, and Viktoria Hecht, 1840-1890) in the in order to understand how the singularities and generalities of their cases represent a Catholic resistance to the consolidation of modernity in nineteenth-century Germany. As theoric and methodologic fundamentation, we propose a review of an extensive, important and, in Brazil, little known bibliography on this subject, especially in English and German. As sources, we took some sets of hagiographic publications on the cases that we took as our object, in addition to publications from institutions responsible for maintaining their memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of spiritism and psychiatry share several common elements and intersections. There has been intense conflict between psychiatrists and spiritists regarding "Spiritist madness." This paper investigates the construction of the representation of mediumship as madness in Brazil. Primary historical sources such as scientific papers, newspapers, books, theses, and conference proceedings were studied. Both psychiatry and spiritism sought legitimation through cultural, scientific, and institutional means within Brazilian society. These two social actors were related to urban, intellectualized classes, proposing different views and therapeutic approaches to the mind and madness. The resolution of this conflict is related to the achievement of social integration and legitimation by both spiritism and psychiatry, although in different fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the available data on religions of Brazilian journalists with general characteristics of religiosity in the population, based on data presented in Brazilian journalist's profile of 2012 and the Brazilian national census of 2010. The objective is to understand if particularities of the religious experience among journalists can have effects on the coverage of this subject. The issue is relevant because of the sociopolitical and economic consequences of recent changes in religiosity in the country. The data indicate three striking differences among journalists: a) more significant presence of non-practitioners and atheists; b) significantly less participation of Catholics and Evangelicals; and c) greater expressiveness of Spiritists and practitioners of religions of African origin. The text raises the hypothesis that these differences, along with other factors, can explain phenomena such as the relative inattention of journalistic coverage to the growth of the neo-Pentecostal population in the country and the generally positive approaches that spiritism received from the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to present the legitimating process of Umbanda as a religion. Umbanda is one of the Afro-Brazilian religions and, nowadays, it is present in all over the country and even in other countries. Different authors affirm that this religion appeared in the Southeast of Brazil in the beginning of the 20th century. The religious practice called "Macumba" and associated to the Black people is thought as the Umbanda's origin. To affirm this practice as a religion some groups tried to associate it with Spiritism and to define it as an authentic Brazilian religion. Others preferred to exalt its African heritage. This article shows the different ways chosen by those groups, in the first half of the 20th century. Therefore, it presents how the academic literature approaches the conformation of Umbanda and its legitimating process. Moreover, it analyses texts produced by the umbandistas themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to describe the characteristics of the complementary religious treatment conducted by Spiritist centers in the city of São Paulo (Brazil), to understand how physical and mental health problems are addressed and how the directors of these centers differentiate between persons with spiritual experiences from those with psychiatric disorders. From 365 Spiritist centers, which received the questionnaire, 55 (15.1 %) were included in the final analysis. There were on average 261 people per week attending spiritual sessions in each center, totalizing approximately 15,000 attendees per week in all 55 centers. The most common treatment performed in these centers was disobsession (Spirit release therapy) (92.7 %); the least common was the 'spiritual surgery', present in only 5.5 %. The most frequent health problems reported by attendees were depression (45.1 %), cancer (43.1 %) and diseases in general (33.3 %). Concerning the directors' awareness to differentiate between spiritual experiences and psychiatric disorders, we found some remarkable divergent opinions. In conclusion, the Spiritist centers are an important health related support system for the city of São Paulo, responsible for a significant share of the city's total health consultations. The most common conditions the patients suffer from were depression and cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Wauja of the Upper Xingu say that their musical ritual is simultaneously of and for the spirits. I will address some factors of their cosmology and shamanism, and then investigate men's kawoká rituals and women's songs performed in iamurikumã rituals. I consider these two rituals to be integral parts of a single set, the kawoká–iamurikumã symbolic–ritual complex, in which there is a deep correlation between men, women and spirits: the latter transmit their musical creations to humans through dreams. Only the male master of the kawoká flutes and the female mistress of the iamurikumã songs are capable of memorising and reproducing this musical material. During ritual performance, the women transform the music of the flutes into iamurikumã songs and vice versa. Through ritual performance, the musical creation of the spirits is returned to them in a humanised and transformed form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, the author conducted fieldwork at the Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of Dawn), an incorporated township located four miles near Planaltina, one of the so called satellite towns of the Brazilian capital Brasilia and the center of the largest Brazilian new religious movement, the Spiritualist Christian Order (Ordem Espiritualista Cristã, OEC). OEC, founded by Neiva Chaves Zelaya (1925-1985), know to her followers as Tia Neiva (Aunt Neiva), has currently some 500,000 members and 680 temples in Brazil, and several thousand abroad. The group is an offshoot of Kardecist Spiritualism/Spiritism, which is quite well-represented in Brazil, and among the spirits channeled by the OEC mediums are spiritual doctors, gypsies, and African American slaves. Several thousand OEC mediums operate in the Vale do Amanhecer, and they have attracted there millions of pilgrims, most of them seeking healing from the spirits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1990 onwards a change of course inside the organized spiritist movement took place. Led by its Brazilian leaders, kardecism was endowed with an international structure, building up networks and organizations which had their basis on the support of high-class Brazilian immigrants and on deals between native spiritist leaders, who redefined this religion's main themes and focuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the analysis of the medical records of an institution destined for the treatment of the insane and managed by followers of spiritism, this paper has the purpose of presenting the specific notions about health, disease and madness produced by this doctrine and the way in which they were transferred to an institution with the character of an asylum, the Sanatório EspIrita de Uberaba, in Brazil, during the first half of the 20th Century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes from the perspective of "globalization" how the Japan-born Tenrikyo religion has contributed to the enrichment of Brazilian religious pluralism by becoming an option of religious markets there. Tenrikyo, emerged in 1838 and spread throughout Japan and abroad. It reached Brazil in 1929, but was primarily the religion of Japanese immigrants for a long time. Only from around 1990, when Brazil adopted liberal economic policy, did the number of non-Japanese followers begin to increase, many of whom interpreted Tenrikyo within the more familiar context of Christianity and Spiritualism. Accordingly, it may be supposed that globalization, as a result of the emergence and growth of a foreign religion, may help relativise and revitalize the context of local Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines whether a group of Brazilian Kardecist-Spiritists are using the symbols of medicine and science to gain respectability and to better promote their beliefs and ritual activities or whether they are using the view of the world proposed by their founder to forge a new paradigm to replace science, as we know it. Their therapeutic practices, which range from the performance of surgeries without anesthesia and antisepsis to “teleporting” the astral bodies of patients to the spirit world where they are treated for illnesses acquired during previous lifetimes are described and analyzed in terms of their worldview which postulates reincarnation. Data indicating positive results from a sample of patients treated for illnesses they claim to be caused by experiences in previous lives are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Set in the field of the history of psychological knowledge, the present article presents two publications issued in the state of Minas Gerais in 1847 and 1849, approaching the description of the structure and performance of the faculties of the human soul and the genesis of the ideas. The works unveiled systematization over the concepts of the soul, intelligence, consciousness, sensibility and will. From the description of such concepts it is possible to bring into evidence the theoretical matrixes, mainly French ones, such as the ideology and the eclectic spiritualism. At the end, it is noted the relationship between the authors and the procedures to get property of the textual knowledge, as it is evidenced in the texts by the writers from Minas Gerais, based on the way Europeans original works are referred to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Afro-Brazilianist tradition, the description of initiation into candomblé is a crucial plank in the argument for the authenticity of the African religious tradition in Brazil. Critics of this literature have questioned the discourse of authenticity, but few have sought to go beyond that critique. This article sets out to examine the way Afro-Brazilian religions incorporate history in their rituals. In order to grasp the historicity of these rituals, one needs to understand how Afro-Brazilian religions are the product of a dialectical relationship between initiation and gift, the reproduction of tradition and the ability of mediums to incorporate new spirits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brazilian spiritistic religions have developed along elaborate historical and cultural trajectories with spirit mediumship as a central feature of ritual practice in Candomblé, Umbanda, Kardecismo, and similar groups. In these studies, several Brazilian spiritistic practitioners who worked as mediums were interviewed and, in some cases, tested with psychological measures for dissociation using the Dissociative Experiences Scale, for absorption using the Tellegen Absorption Scale, and for sexual orientation using the Kinsey Scale. Few significant gender differences were noted in these measures. In two cases, psychophysiological measures were employed including electroencephalography, heart rate, skin conductance, and electromyography. In general, the research participants scored highly on measures of dissociation while scoring in the average range on absorption (using U.S. norms). The psychophysiological results indicated that for the two spiritistic practitioners investigated overall peripheral autonomic nervous system activation was negatively associated with sympathetic cortical level deactivation. The data suggested a psychophysiological incongruence between the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system functioning on the part of the two practitioners. However, the two variables were positively associated and congruent in data obtained from a control subject. Interview data identified five ways in which mediums received their “call to heal,” visions, dreams, and unexpected incorporations being the most frequent factors cited. One medium who engages in surgical procedures was observed; tissues were collected from ten clients and were found to be consistent with the site of the surgery. In conclusion, it is apparent that mediumship is a complex phenomenon, one deserving of further investigation by anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists interested in human consciousness, in indigenous health care, and in the psychophysiology of practitioners who claim to work under the direction of spirit entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author examines symbolic issues surrounding the consumption of popcorn among the impoverished populations of rural Brazilian communities. The author relates popcorn and other street foods to a number of factors including ritual and religion and the relation between performance and food.

In 2005, we visited the Padre Pio Healing Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We interviewed two of the mediums and volunteered for healing sessions ourselves, along with a psychologist from Chile. The three of us were treated separately, and each of us reported sighting the "spirits of the light" who are the alleged healing entities of the Center. One of us visited Joao de Deus (John of God) as well; his healing center, The House of Dom Ignatius of Loyola, was filled with over one thousand people on that particular day, the anniversary of Joao de Deus' first reported "incorporation" of Saint Ignatius. One of us also had visited the Frei Luiz Shrine near Rio on a previous visit; in 2005, a healer from the shrine performed a non-contact healing intervention that left stains on his white shirt, stains that were later analyzed in a medical laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the genres within Afro-Brazilian oral poetics, specifically the origins of the ponto-riscado. According to researchers, the ponto-riscado are cosmograms, ritualistic forms that developed among the African diaspora in Brazil. It questions how one can read interpret these symbols as a literary form and argues that like calligrams, these symbols offer a message in the form of a altar-poem. The article explores how the ponto-riscados are mediums of expression which serve as ritualistic magical activators.

The purpose of this article is to disseminate the research developed within the Masters in Science of Religion - UCG/GO, with the headline: "Education Profession Danger: Burnout, Depression and the Spiritual Treatment - Spiritism". The scientific methodology was developed based on a holistic, qualitative and phenomenological view, finding out in the research that education is a dangerous profession. In conclusion, we corroborate our hypothesis, saying, in the first place, that religion, for people in search of health, plays the role of providing comfort, answers to the reasons of diseases and the restoration of life and the symbolic omy; and secondly, that workers in education seek in Spiritism the treatment of spiritual burnout syndrome and depression by the belief in the restoration of life and the symbolic omy through the explanatory theodicy offered by this religious expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spiritist perspective on mental disorders exerts a great influence in Brazil. Spiritist theory supports the survival of the spirit after death with an exchange of knowledge between the incarnated and disincarnated spirits. This article reviews the texts on mental disorders and Spiritism written by four leading Spiritist authors: Allan Kardec, Bezerra de Menezes, Inácio Ferreira and Joanna de Ângelis. These authors advocated a model of spiritual etiology without rejecting the biological, psychological, and social causes of mental disorders. The Spiritist etiologic model for mental disorders includes the negative influences of discarnated spirits (termed ‘obsession’) or trauma experienced in previous lives. In addition to conventional medical and psychological therapeutics, spiritist séances for disobsession are recommended, as well as ‘passes’, prayers and efforts to live according to ethical principles. The importance of Spiritist views in Brazil indicates the need for more academic research on this tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information about the history of spiritist madness in Brazil in relation to Psychiatric practices. Spiritism is widely accepted in Brazil and influences psychiatric practice, especially through religious-oriented hospitals. The article also reviews opinions on "Spiritist madness", written by the most eminent psychiatrists of the time, and then discusses the epistemological factors that have contributed to the conflict between medicine and Spiritism. Spiritism adopts a dualistic concept of the human being. It postulates that human beings are, essentially, immortal spirits that temporarily inhabit physical bodies for several necessary incarnations to attain moral and intellectual improvement.

Examines the transformations of the Padre Cicero tales, a folk saint from Brazil. Background of Padre Cicero and the devotion to him in Maceio; Analysis of stories dealing with the priest's relationship to spiritualism; Storytellers; Vergel storytellers' association of spiritualism with city life.

The present work had its the methodological approach to demonstrate an manifestation of Umbanda in the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte (mainly regional northwest of Belo Horizonte and Ressaca and Contagem regions) and its manifestation in public (Iemanjá and Preto Velho feasts) and in private (yards / tents / centers) reflecting the syncretism of Umbanda, as well as its rich plastic capacity to adapt and yet remain as a magical-religious identity. Through field research and the use of oral history, four temples were considered: an Umbanda yard with ideological features of Candomblé, an Umbanda tent which considered itself as having ideological characteristics; an Umbanda center with ideological features of Kardec's spiritualism and, finally, a tent with ideological characteristics of esotericism. From this research it is possible to emphasize that Umbanda has the ability to assimilate, incorporate and decode symbols of other religions and other spiritual segments and also it is able somehow to keep up with its own identifications. The data surveyed stimulate reflection of this characteristic - from its origins until the present time. Therefore one can affirm that Umbanda, within this hybridity, owns and maintains its traditional capacitiy: the assimilation and the re-adaptation of other faiths. This thesis therefore examines the culture, customs and identity of Umbanda in its traditions/similarities and breaks/differences within a historical and interdisciplinary analysis. Thus, as theoretic framework for the development of this work, the historical look under the sociological and anthropological perspective was sought. In interweaving the past and present cult of Umbanda, it was used, as a theoretical framework, the overview of the classics of African- Brazilian studies by Arthur Ramos and Roger Bastide, as well as the latest analysis from scholars about Umbanda. Overall, this work, contextualized the characteristics of the micro and macro Umbanda, which, in turn, was capable of reflecting, in terms of belief, the Brazilian culture and identity [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]