Healing in the Barquinha Religion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v2i3.363Keywords:
ayahuasca, Barquinha, healing, Santo Daime, spirit possessionAbstract
The article focuses on the healing service offered by Barquinha churches. The Barquinha religion is an Amazonian form of Christianity, with syncretic elements. The article surveys three recurrent methodological and theoretical approaches found in anthropological works on healing in the Barquinha religion, to which the author contributes with his own ethnographic research and analysis. On the one hand, analytical emphases are often located on the participants’ subjective and symbolic processes, in association with the ayahuasca experience. Ayahuasca—called Santo Daime by adherents—is the central sacrament of the religion, frequently implied in accounts of healing. Another common focus is on ritual settings and changing bodily dispositions. Thirdly, anthropologists have considered aspects of the social relations involved in the therapeutic process. This paper furthers reflections on social interactions during healing encounters. Such encounters typically involve healer-spirits incorporated in Barquinha spirit-mediums. The author suggests that the healing service may echo symbolic motifs associated with the historical experience of migration and rapidly changing living circumstances shared by many participants.
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References
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Goulart, Sandra, 2002, ‘O contexto do surgimento do culto do Santo Daime: formação da comunidade e do calendário ritual’. In Labate and Sena Araújo, 2002: 313–37.
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Hale, Lindsay, 1997, ‘Preto Velho: Resistance, Redemption, and Engendered Representations of Slavery in a Brazilian Possession-Trance Religion’. American Ethnologist 24(2): 392–414.
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Prandi, Reginaldo (ed.), 2001, Encantaria Brasileira: O Livro dos Mestres, Caboclos e Encantados. Rio de Janeiro: Pallas.
Reeve, Mary-Elizabeth, 2000, ‘Concepts of Illness and Treatment Practice in a Caboclo Community of the Lower Amazon’. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 14(1): 96–108.
Rose, Isabel Santana de, 2005a, ‘A expressão da experiência na Barquinha: Um estudo sobre cura e mediunidade’. PhD research proposal, UFSC (Florianópolis).
—2005b, ‘Espiritualidade, terapia e cura: um estudo sobre a expressão da experiência no Santo Daime’. Master’s thesis, UFSC (Florianópolis).
Schieffelin, Edward, 1996, ‘On Failure and Performance: Throwing the Medium out of the Seance’. In Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman (eds.), The Performance of Healing. New York: Routledge: 59–89.
Sena Araújo, Wladimyr, 1999, Navegando sobre as ondas do Daime: História, cosmologia e ritual da Barquinha. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp.
Slater, Candace, 1994, Dance of the Dolphin: Transformation and Disenchantment in the Amazonian Imagination. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Taussig, Michael, 1987, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Vilaça, Aparecida, 2002, ‘Making Kin out of Others in Amazonia’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute NS 8: 347–65.
Winkelman, Michael, 2000, Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport: Bergin & Garvey.
Zinberg, Norman, 1984, Drug, Set, and Setting: The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Boddy, Janice, 1994, ‘Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality’. Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994): 407–34.
Brown, Diana DeG., 1994, Umbanda: Religion and Politics in Urban Brazil. New York: Columbia University Press.
Couto, Fernando, 2002, ‘Santo Daime: rito da ordem’. In Labate and Sena Araújo, 2002: 339–65.
Dobkin de Rios, Marlene, 1970a, ‘A Note on the Use of Ayahuasca among Urban Healing Mestizo Populations in the Peruvian Amazon’. American Anthropologist NS 72(6): 1419–22.
—1970b, ‘Banisteriopsis in Witchcraft and Healing Activities in Iquitos, Peru’. Economic Botany 24(3): 296–300.
Ferretti, Mundicarmo, 2000, Maranhão Encantado: Encantaria maranhense e outras histórias. São Luís: UEMA Editora.
Gebhart-Sayer, Angelika, 1986, ‘Una terapia estética: Los diseños visionarios del Ayahuasca entre los Shipibo-Conibo’. América Indígena 46(1): 189–218.
Giobellina, Fernando, and Elda Gonzales, 1989, Spirits from the Margin. Umbanda in São Paulo. A Study in Popular Religion and Social Experience. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Goulart, Sandra, 2002, ‘O contexto do surgimento do culto do Santo Daime: formação da comunidade e do calendário ritual’. In Labate and Sena Araújo, 2002: 313–37.
Groisman, Alberto, 1999, Eu Venho da Floresta: Um estudo sobre o contexto simbólico do uso do Santo Daime. Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC.
Hale, Lindsay, 1997, ‘Preto Velho: Resistance, Redemption, and Engendered Representations of Slavery in a Brazilian Possession-Trance Religion’. American Ethnologist 24(2): 392–414.
Harner, Michael, 1972, The Jívaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Harris, Mark, 2000, Life on the Amazon: The Anthropology of a Brazilian Peasant Village. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kapferer, Bruce, 1979, ‘Mind, Self, and Other in Demonic Illness: The Negation and Reconstruction of Self ’. American Ethnologist 6(1) (February 1979): 110–33.
Krippner, Stanley, and Alberto Villoldo, 1976, The Realms of Healing. Millbrae: Celestial Arts.
Labate, Beatriz C., and Wladimyr Sena Araújo (eds.), 2002, O Uso Ritual da Ayahuasca. Campinas: Mercado de Letras.
Labigalini, Eliseu, 1998, ‘The Use of Ayahuasca in a Religious Context for Former Alcoholdependents’. Master’s thesis, Escola Paulista de Medicina, UNIFESP (São Paulo).
Luna, Luis Eduardo, 1986, Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Luna, Luis Eduardo, and Pablo Amaringo, 1999 [1991], Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
MacRae, Edward, 1999, ‘The Use of Ayahuasca in the Santo Daime Healing Rituals’. Work in progress paper for paper presented at the X International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm, Geneva. March 21–25.
Maia Neto, Florestan J., 2003, Contos da Lua Branca: Histórias do Mestre Raimundo Irineu Serra e de Sua Obra Espiritual Contadas por Seus Contemporâneos. Volume 1 (132 Flores). Rio Branco: Fundação Elias Mansour.
Mercante, Marcelo S., 2003, ‘Images of Healing: Investigating the Possible Connections between Spontaneous Mental Imagery and the Processes of Sickness and Healing in a Brazilian Ayahuasca Religion’. PhD research proposal, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center.
—2004, ‘Miração and Healing: A study Concerning Involuntary Mental Imagery and Healing Process’. Paper presented at the Toward a Science of Consciousness 2004 Conference. Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona.
—2006, ‘Images of Healing: Spontaneous Mental Imagery and Healing Process in the Barquinha, a Brazilian Ayahuasca Religious System’. PhD dissertation, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center.
Metzner, Ralph, 1999, ‘Introduction: Amazonian Vine of Visions’. In Metzner (ed.), Ayahuasca: Human Consciousness and the Spirits of Nature. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press: 1–45.
Monteiro da Silva, Clodomir, 1983, ‘O Palácio de Juramidam—Santo Daime: um ritual de transcendência e despoluição’. Master’s thesis, UFPe (Recife).
Oliveira, Rosana Martins de, 2002, ‘De Folha e Cipó é a Capelinha de São Francisco: A Religiosidade Popular na Cidade de Rio Branco—Acre (1945–1958)’. Master’s thesis, UFPe (Recife).
Overing, Joanna, and Alan Passes, 2000, ‘Introduction: Conviviality and the Opening Up of Amazonian Anthropology’. In Overing and Passes (eds.), The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia. London: Routledge: 1–30.
Paskoali, Vanessa, 2002, ‘A Cura Enquanto Processo Identitário na Barquinha: o sagrado no cotidiano’. Master’s thesis, PUC/SP (São Paulo).
Pelaez, Maria Cristina, 2002, ‘Santo Daime, trascendência e cura: Interpretações sobre as posibilidades terapêuticas da bebida ritual’. In Labate and Sena Araújo, 2002: 427–45.
Prandi, Reginaldo (ed.), 2001, Encantaria Brasileira: O Livro dos Mestres, Caboclos e Encantados. Rio de Janeiro: Pallas.
Reeve, Mary-Elizabeth, 2000, ‘Concepts of Illness and Treatment Practice in a Caboclo Community of the Lower Amazon’. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 14(1): 96–108.
Rose, Isabel Santana de, 2005a, ‘A expressão da experiência na Barquinha: Um estudo sobre cura e mediunidade’. PhD research proposal, UFSC (Florianópolis).
—2005b, ‘Espiritualidade, terapia e cura: um estudo sobre a expressão da experiência no Santo Daime’. Master’s thesis, UFSC (Florianópolis).
Schieffelin, Edward, 1996, ‘On Failure and Performance: Throwing the Medium out of the Seance’. In Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman (eds.), The Performance of Healing. New York: Routledge: 59–89.
Sena Araújo, Wladimyr, 1999, Navegando sobre as ondas do Daime: História, cosmologia e ritual da Barquinha. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp.
Slater, Candace, 1994, Dance of the Dolphin: Transformation and Disenchantment in the Amazonian Imagination. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Taussig, Michael, 1987, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Vilaça, Aparecida, 2002, ‘Making Kin out of Others in Amazonia’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute NS 8: 347–65.
Winkelman, Michael, 2000, Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport: Bergin & Garvey.
Zinberg, Norman, 1984, Drug, Set, and Setting: The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Published
2008-11-27
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Frenopoulo, C. (2008). Healing in the Barquinha Religion. Fieldwork in Religion, 2(3), 363-392. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v2i3.363
