Spirits and Trance in Brazil

Spirits and Trance in Brazil PDF Author: Bettina E. Schmidt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474255698
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Bettina E. Schmidt explores experiences usually labelled as spirit possession, a highly contested and challenged term, using extensive ethnographic research conducted in São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil and home to a range of religions which practice spirit possession. The book is enriched by excerpts from interviews with people about their experiences. It focuses on spirit possession in Afro-Brazilian religions and spiritism, as well as discussing the notion of exorcism in Charismatic Christian communities. Spirits and Trance in Brazil: An Anthropology of Religious Experience is divided into three sections which present the three main areas in the study of spirit possession. The first section looks at the social dimension of spirit possession, in particular gender roles associated with spirit possession in Brazil and racial stratification of the communities. It shows how gender roles and racial composition have adapted alongside changes in society in the last 100 years. The second section focuses on the way people interpret their practice. It shows that the interpretations of this practice depend on the human relationship to the possessing entities. The third section explores a relatively new field of research, the Western discourse of mind/body dualism and the wide field of cognition and embodiment. All sections together confirm the significance of discussing spirit possession within a wider framework that embraces physical elements as well as cultural and social ones. Bringing together sociological, anthropological, phenomenological and religious studies approaches, this book offers a new perspective on the study of spirit possession.

Spirits and Trance in Brazil

Spirits and Trance in Brazil PDF Author: Bettina E. Schmidt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474255698
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
Bettina E. Schmidt explores experiences usually labelled as spirit possession, a highly contested and challenged term, using extensive ethnographic research conducted in São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil and home to a range of religions which practice spirit possession. The book is enriched by excerpts from interviews with people about their experiences. It focuses on spirit possession in Afro-Brazilian religions and spiritism, as well as discussing the notion of exorcism in Charismatic Christian communities. Spirits and Trance in Brazil: An Anthropology of Religious Experience is divided into three sections which present the three main areas in the study of spirit possession. The first section looks at the social dimension of spirit possession, in particular gender roles associated with spirit possession in Brazil and racial stratification of the communities. It shows how gender roles and racial composition have adapted alongside changes in society in the last 100 years. The second section focuses on the way people interpret their practice. It shows that the interpretations of this practice depend on the human relationship to the possessing entities. The third section explores a relatively new field of research, the Western discourse of mind/body dualism and the wide field of cognition and embodiment. All sections together confirm the significance of discussing spirit possession within a wider framework that embraces physical elements as well as cultural and social ones. Bringing together sociological, anthropological, phenomenological and religious studies approaches, this book offers a new perspective on the study of spirit possession.

The Mind Possessed

The Mind Possessed PDF Author: Emma Cohen
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0195323351
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Illustrated mainly with hypothetical or anecdotal examples, this book considers in detail how the psychological systems undergirding spirit concepts are activated in real-world settings and, specifically, how those concepts can give rise to trance and spirit-possession phenomena.

Jaguars of the Dawn

Jaguars of the Dawn PDF Author: Emily Pierini
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789205662
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The Brazilian Spiritualist Christian Order Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn) is the place where the worlds of the living and the spirits merge and the boundaries between lives are regularly crossed. Drawing upon over a decade of extensive fieldwork in temples of the Amanhecer in Brazil and Europe, the author explores how mediums understand their experiences and how they learn to establish relationships with their spirit guides. She sheds light on the ways in which mediumistic development in the Vale do Amanhecer is used for therapeutic purposes and informs notions of body and self, of illness and wellbeing.

The Taste of Blood

The Taste of Blood PDF Author: Jim Wafer
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203860
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Enter the fascinating world of the Condomble regions of Brazil, where interaction between spirits and human is considered an everyday occurrence. Jim Wafer uncovers the social life, rituals, folklore, and engaging personalities of the villagers of Jacari, among whom trances, sorcery, and spirit possession demonstrate the coexistence of different kinds of reality. This ethnography is intriguing not only because of the originality of its approach to the more enigmatic aspects of another culture but also because it uses insights gained from participation in that culture to reflect on the paradoxes inherent in the writer's own culture, and in the human condition in general.

The Taste of Blood

The Taste of Blood PDF Author: James William Wafer
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812213416
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The Taste of Blood brilliantly explores both Condomble and the representations of ethnographic research.--Folklore Forum

Spirits and Scientists

Spirits and Scientists PDF Author: David J. Hess
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271040807
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Brazilian Spiritism (espiritismo, kardecismo) is an important middle-class religious movement whose followers believe in communication with the dead via spirit mediums and in healing illnesses by means of spiritual therapies. Unlike Anglo-Saxon Spiritualists, Brazilian Spiritists count among their number a well-developed and institutionalized intellectual elite that has reinterpreted northern hemisphere parapsychology and developed its own alternative medicine and sociology of religion. As a result, the mediation between popular religion (especially Afro-Brazilian religious practices) and the orthodoxies of the universities, the state, and the medical profession. Situating Spiritist intellectual thought in what he calls a broader ideological arena, Hess examines Spiritism in the context of religion, science, political ideology, medicine, and even the social sciences. Hess challenges the legacy of French sociologist Roger Bastide, who saw in Spiritism an elitist, middle-class ideology. In the process, Spirits and Scientists provides a new approach to middle-class religious movements in Latin America.

Spirits of the Deep

Spirits of the Deep PDF Author: Seth Leacock
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Batuque (Cult)
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description


Spirits with Scalpels

Spirits with Scalpels PDF Author: Sidney M Greenfield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315419831
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
“The first time I witnessed a Spiritist surgery, a young man named Jose Carlos Ribeiro inserted a used scalpel taken from a tray that I was holding, and plunged it into the eye of an elderly man. The patient did not move....” Decades of fieldwork later, Sidney Greenfield presents a riveting ethnography of the complex world of religious healing in Brazil that challenges readers to grapple with the most fundamental concepts of anthropology and cross-cultural experience. In a major contribution to cultural biology, he analyses the complex social, economic, and political landscape of Brazil to understand dramatic healing practices that seem to defy medical explanation. This engrossing and provocative book will put students and scholars alike on the edge of their seats.

Possessing Spirits and Healing Selves

Possessing Spirits and Healing Selves PDF Author: R. Seligman
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137409606
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Spirit possession involves the displacement of a human's conscious self by a powerful other who temporarily occupies the human's body. Here, Seligman shows that spirit possession represents a site for understanding fundamental aspects of human experience, especially those involved with interactions among meaning, embodiment, and subjectivity.

Spirit Possession and Trance

Spirit Possession and Trance PDF Author: Bettina E. Schmidt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441171827
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Spirit possession is a phenomenon that often elicits a response of fear, particular in those who are ignorant of its meaning and role within its particular religious and cultural traditions. Possession by divine beings (such as spirits or gods) is, however, a key practice in religions worldwide. It is therefore important to gain an understanding of this practice in its cultural context before trying to develop a wider theory about it. This fascinating book contains several case studies that present new interpretations of spirit possession worldwide. The authors show the diversity of possible interpretations and methodological approaches that provide a new insight into the understanding of possession and trance.