The Mediumistic Body: Transnational Ways of Knowing the Spirits in the Vale Do Amanhecer

Religious travel and transnational mobility contributed to the expansion of temples of the Brazilian Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn) across Europe. Members of this Spiritualist Christian Order practise spirit mediumship as a form of spiritual healing for those who visit the temple. This practice consists in the release of spirts remained trapped between the existential planes after death troubling humans in their physical, affective and material matters. Within the Vale do Amanhecer, mediumship is considered to be produced by human bodies and, as such, it can potentially be developed by anyone. The mediumistic development involves an ongoing process of learning in which both mediums and spirits are engaged. This process entails a form of bodily enskillment, educating the body of mediums to discern, control and manifest spiritual entities according to culturally codified modalities. As this spiritual practice circulates transnationally, a key question emerges: how do new mediums learn to manifest spirit guides rooted in another culture according to specific modalities? This chapter addresses this question through a comparative analysis of the experiences of mediums in temples in Brazil and Italy. It examines how cognitive, bodily and affective aspects are intertwined in the acquisition of specific modes of knowing, highlighting how the formation of a "mediumistic body" is negotiated across transnational settings.