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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.
List of contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Note on Translations
Introduction Chapter 1. Ways to Embody the Divine in Brazil
Chapter 2. Vale do Amanhecer
Chapter 3. Spirits in Transition: The Multidimensional Self
Chapter 4. Jaguars of the Dawn: The Transhistorical Self
Chapter 5. Disobsessive Healing
Chapter 6. Mediumship
Chapter 7. Learning Spirit Mediumship: Ways of Knowing
Chapter 8. Spiritual Routes
Chapter 9. Therapeutic Trajectories
Conclusion Appendix
Glossary
References
Index
About the author
Emily Pierini is Assistant Professor in Anthropology and Marie Skłodowska–Curie Fellow at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Her recent publications include the volume Other Worlds, Other Bodies: Embodied Epistemologies and Ethnographies of Healing (Berghahn, 2023), which she co-edited with Alberto Groisman and Diana Espírito Santo
Summary
Drawing upon over a decade of extensive fieldwork in temples in Brazil and Europe, this ethnography explores how mediums understand their experiences and how they learn to establish relationships with their spirit guides.
