The Diaspora of Brazilian Religions

Abstract

In 1986, psychic and physician Waldo Vieira self-published a nine-hundredpage treaty titled Projectiology: Overview of Out-of-Body Experiences (in Portuguese) proposing a "science for the study of the phenomenon of consciousness and energies beyond the boundaries of the physical body" (Vieira 1986). Following regular weekly lectures in Rio de Janeiro's upscale neighborhood of Ipanema, Vieira and close associates founded the International Institute of Projectiology in 1989. A few years later Conscientiology is introduced with an equally sized treatise 700 Experiments of Conscientiology, defined as "the study of consciousness by means of a holistic, holosomatic, multidimensional, bioenergetic, projective, self-conscious and cosmoethic approach" (Vieira 1994: 11). The organization is accordingly renamed as International Institute of Projectiology and Conscientiology (IIPC, in Portuguese). Vieira inflates the status of Projectiology from a "subdiscipline of parapsychology" (1986: 13, 25) to the "practical application of Conscientiology" (1994: 64), while both disciplines become depicted as 'neo-sciences of consciousness'. Over the following twenty-five years, IIPC grew into a network of regional branches and spin-off associations operating across Brazil and several countries. In 2002, Vieira and a few hundred Projectiologists moved to the new campus-like Center of Higher Studies of Conscientiology (CEAEC in Portuguese) located in the continental hinterland of Iguassu Falls and kickstarted a radical restructuration of IIPC. In this process, all international affairs were transferred to the newly created International Academy of Consciousness (IAC, originally in English), a small and nimble non-profit organization run by a team of mobile teachers crisscrossing Portugal, UK and the US. According to an internal report (IIPC 2004), over 100 teachers, 500 volunteers and 12,000 students are annually involved with Projectiology and Conscientiology. They are mostly white, college-educated, urban middle-class Brazilians interested in developing their psychic, spiritual and personal abilities.

Trauma als Wissensarchiv

“…Die Umbanda ist eine von vielen außereuropäischen Religionen, die sich der gängigen (neo)kolonialen Vorstellung widersetzen, dass es religiöse Fließbewegungen und Einflüsse nur unilateral von den westlichen globalen Zentren hin zu den als passiv angesehenen Peripherien gäbe und breitet sich seit Mitte des letzten Jahrhunderts im Zuge eines Exports von Religionen von Brasilien her weltweit aus (vgl. Rocha / Vasquez 2013).…”

“Spiritual Warfare” or “Crimes against Humanity”? Evangelized Drug Traffickers and Violence against Afro-Brazilian Religions in Rio de Janeiro

“…Since the 1970s, Neo-Pentecostalism has been growing in popularity in Brazil. Scholars have explained that this form of Evangelical Christianity centers on the principle that Jesus or God is engaged in spiritual warfare with the devil and that it is necessary to perform exorcisms and expel the devil (Rocha and Vásquez 2013;Da Silva 2016). Anaxsuell Fernando Da Silva (2019) contends that this religious concept of "spiritual warfare" has found popularity in Brazilian favelas because it fits with the "ethos of war and violence present in the favelas" because it "constructs their world as a place of war, battle, and conquest; a martial idiom becomes unavoidable " (p. 170).…”

Religião e as fronteiras migratórias

“…A proliferação de fluxos religiosos multidirecionais e multiescalares que tanto partem quanto chegam ao Brasil inclui grupos religiosos tão diversos como candomblé, umbanda, santo-daime, pentecostalismo e neopentecostalismo, assim como práticas culturais como samba e capoeira. E ainda lembramos que, além da migração brasileira proporcionar mudanças no campo religioso mundial, o Brasil evoca no plano transnacional um imaginário "selvagem, primitivo" geralmente construído pelo turismo, pelos peregrinos que viajam em busca de cura ou de uma viagem existencial (ROCHA; VASQUEZ, 2013;CSORDAS, 2009). Além deste imaginário que circula no turismo, seja este religioso ou não, há uma circulação de imagens de líderes e ideias sobre o Brasil na mídia internacional e ainda a circulação em múltiplos fluxos de empresários religiosos (sejam pastores ou mesmo leigos, como muitos jogadores de futebol que atuam como missionários religiosos) representantes de um mundo religioso múltiplo e dinâmico que explicitamente viajam divulgando suas religiões e competindo com lugares de peregrinação e campos de disputa no campo religioso transnacional, como é o caso mais recente da peregrinação de igrejas evangélicas a Israel.…”