Becoming a Jaguar. Spiritual routes in the Vale do Amanhecer

This chapter addresses the rapidly expanding Ordem Espiritualista Cristã Vale do Amanhecer (Spiritualist Christian Order Valley of the Dawn) considering its position within a context of intense mobility of people across religions. The main temple near Brasília comprises a spiritual town inhabited by a community of spirit mediums. Mediumistic practices in the temple are aimed at the 'disobsessive healing' of patients, which entails trance mediums embodying their spirit guides to assist patients, and then releasing spirits of the deceased helping them to crossover into the spirit world. The spectacular dimension of the colourful sacred spaces and ritual uniforms is grounded in a local discourse, developed from the mediumistic experiences of the founder, Neiva Chaves Zelaya (Tia Neiva) that, drawing upon the principle of reincarnation, evokes elements and principles of different religions, such as Christianity, Spiritism, Amerindian and Afro-Brazilian religions, Eastern Religions, Theosophy, and cosmologies from ancient civilisations. The global character of the Vale do Amanhecer’s discourse was able to aggregate people from different backgrounds and to articulate a great variety of individuals’ contemporary religious experiences.