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SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
SPIRITS AND SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL:
A CASE STUDY OF AN INNOVATIVE,
SYNCRETIC HEALING GROUP 1
ABSTRACT. This paper examines the treatment of patients by a
group of Spiritist healers in southern Brazil. After describing and
analyzing a healing session, the practices are shown to be deviant
from conventional Spiritism in two directions: (1) they employ a
technique, called apometry, that they claim makes possible the
transportation of a part of the patient's body to the astral world
where it is treated by disincarnate doctors who do past life
regressions; and (2) although a conventional Spiritist disobsession
is performed, the healers invoke rival Afro-Brazilian spirits who
often are shown to have caused the patient's symptoms.
Building on the work of Csordas (1983), I hypothesize that the
discourse employed by the healers moves the patient to a new
reality or phenomenological world in which s/he is healed "not in
the sense of being restored to the state in which s/he existed
prior to the onset of illness, but in the sense of being
rhetorically 'moved' into a state dissimilar from both pre-illness
and illness reality... (Csordas 1983:346)." The new state, in this
case, is the world of Spiritism. Unlike the Catholic Pentecostals
Csordas studied who already were members of a primary group of
believers, however, the patients treated by the Brazilian healers
are mostly unaffiliated individuals who face the increasing
uncertainty and insecurity of life in disorganized, anomic, urban
Brazil. By encompassing modern science on the one hand, and aspects
of the Afro-Brazilian traditions on the other, this healing group
appeals to the often distraught white middle and lower-middle
classes, providing them with therapeutic meaning that in many cases
leads to healing, conversion, and the sense of security and safety
that often accompanies identifying with and belonging to a
religious group.
We are spirits, immortal and divine. Strong and indestructable.
Always trying to do better, to become perfect, to improve our
qualities. We are presently on a mission here on earth, a mission
the outcome of which we do not know, but which inevitably will be
for our good (Lacerda de Azevedo 1988:45, my translation).
INTRODUCTION
In the following pages I describe and analyze the therapeutic
practices of the
Casa do Jardim healers. Followers of the Spiritist teachings
codified by Allan Kardec (n.d., 1975, 1963) in the mid-19th
century, they have built on that
tradition as it has been elaborated in Brazil (Bastide 1978;
Cavalcanti 1983;
Greenfield 1987; Hess 1987; Renshaw 1969; Warren 1984), and
under the leadership of Dr. Jose Lacerda de Azevedo, have pushed it
beyond what is now
accepted by mainline believers with the addition of developments
ranging from
Culture. Medicine and Psychiatry 16: 23-51, 1992. 1992 Kluwer
Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
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24 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
modem physics on the one hand to Afro-Brazilian religious
beliefs on the other. After presenting case materials and
explaining the treatment in terms of the
healers' modified Spiritist belief system, I shall hypothesize,
following Csordas (1983), that the discourse employed by the
healers moves the patient to a new reality or phenomenological
world in which s/he is healed "not in the sense of being restored
to the state in which s/he existed prior to the onset of illness,
but in the sense of being rhetorically 'moved' into a state
dissimilar from both pre- illness and illness reality... (Csordas
1983:346). The new state, in this case, is the world of Spiritism
with its distinctive view of humanity and the human condition.
Unlike the Catholic Pentecostals Csordas studied who already were
members of a group of believers, however, the patients treated by
the Casa do Jardim are mostly unaffiliated individuals who face the
increasing uncertainty and insecurity of life in urban Brazil by
themselves. By encompassing science on the one hand, as does
conventional Spiritism, and aspects of the Afro- Brazilian
traditions on the other, Dr. Lacerda and the Casa do Jardim, we
shall see, appeal to the distraught white middle and lower-middle
classes, providing them with therapeutic meaning that in many cases
leads to healing, conversion, and a sense of security and safety
that often accompanies identifying with and belonging to a
religious group.
For the past half-century or more Brazil's population has been
growing rapidly while the society has been urbanizing. In 1940, for
example, ap- proximately one-third of the reported population of 41
million lived in urban areas. Today, in contrast, more than
two-thirds of the estimated 145 million people are urban, and there
are 10 cities with more than a million inhabitants. The population
of greater Porto Alegre, for example, is in excess of two and
one-half million.
Starting in the 1950s, and continuing through the 1980s,
millions of rural laborers and sharecroppers seeking a better life
relocated in the cities where unfortunately they found inadequate
housing, inadequate social services, and limited employment
opportunities. The general welfare, nutritional standards, and
health of Brazil's urban masses today are very poor. In the midst
of the poverty, insufficient employment opportunities, rampant
illness, and inadequate social services, a number of mostly
syncretic religious denominations have come into being, each
competing for converts by offering to help those in need with their
problems. One of the many forms of help each offers is healing. As
a result, Brazil's urban sector contains a range of altemative
healing systems each rooted in the religious traditions of its
providers. These healing systems, along with the religions from
which they derive, may be thought to constitute compet- ing
altematives in the urban market place. Although first directed at
the poor, all segments of the national population have come to
participate in the offer to heal of these fast growing, syncretic
urban religions.
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 25
A TREATMENT SESSION AT THE CASA DO JARDIM
It was 7 AM on a cold, damp Saturday morning in the middle of
winter in the city of Porto Alegre, capital of Brazil's
southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul. I had just arrived at a
Spiritist center to observe the healing practices of a group I
first had come to know several years previously (Greenfield, 1986).
There already were more than a hundred peopIe waiting in the rain
and 35 degree fahrenheit cold to receive treatment. Others would be
arriving throughout the morning. Most of the patients were from the
greater Porto Alegre metropolitan area. Some, however, had
travelled from as far away as Brasflia, the Northeast, and
Amazonas. A few even had come from neighboring Umgay and Argentina.
All, it turned out, were suffering from the symptoms of a variety
of illnesses ranging from cancer to depression to drug addiction.
They varied in age from senior citizens in their eighties to
teenagers, and there even were a few small, children. The vast
majority were white and of the middle and lower- middle classes.
The poor, so numerous in both Porto Alegro and throughout Brazil,
who are mostly black, were conspicuous by their absence. The
patients, usually accompanied by friends and/or relatives, had come
to be treated by a group of healers known as the Casa do Jardim
(Garden House), 2 one of many religious-based healing groups so
common in Brazil's urban sector.
At 8 AM, led by Dr. Lacerda and the Casa do Jardim
healer-mediums, the patients, their friends and relatives - who now
numbered several hundred - crowded into the auditorium for an
invocation that was a short prayer asking the cooperation of God,
Christ, and the spirits in the work that was about to begin. Then,
with the efficiency and resolve that characterizes the group, the
members formed a number of smaller units and went off to separate
rooms where they work in teams of between four and seven
individuals. The same individuals tend to work together week after
week. The patients and others, meanwhile, waited in the assembly
room until the number they were given when they registered was
called and they were escorted by a coordinator to the room to which
they had been assigned.
This morning I accompanied Dr. Lacerda and his team. The room I
went to was set up like a classroom, with a table and a blackboard
in the front. The chairs, however, had been moved to the sides.
Six, occupied by members of the healing team, were set out along
the side wall. Several others, occupied by visitors learning the
techniques, were near the table where Dr. Lacerda stood. I sat
against the opposite side wall with my video equipment and tape
recorder. Since there was no heat in the building, it was damp and
cold. Dr. Lacerda greeted everyone individually as they entered,
while offering some general words of advice to the visitors
observing the techniques, before the first patient entered.
The patient, a young woman accompanied by her sister, was
invited to sit
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26 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
down on a vacant chair located at the back of the room next to
one of the members of the healing team. Her sister sat next to her.
Dr. Lacerda greeted them and asked if they were Spiritists. When
they replied in the negative he asked if they had read any of the
writings of Allan Kardec, Chico Xavier, or other Spiritist authors
popular in Brazil. The patient replied that they knew of the
authors and their writings, but had not really read them. To this
Dr. Lacerda intoned that they should. He then asked the patient to
tell him her problem.
The woman then explained the symptoms that had brought her to
seek the help of the group. One of the healers seated along the
side wall, an elderly white haired gentleman who also is a
physician, however, politely interrupted her after about a minute
to ask a question, the answer to which was followed by several
other questions. Following a brief exchange he told her that it
appeared to him that she had a thyroid problem. This, he went on,
is a problem of the somatic body that is understood and can be
treated by conventional medicine. It does not require the
procedures in which the Casa do Jardim specialize. He suggested
that she go to her own physician, or, if she did not have one, she
could see him at his office.
Dr. Lacerda concurred with the diagnosis. He then explained to
the patient, and to the visitors leaming the techniques, that the
Saturday sessions were devoted to helping people with problems
which the medical establishment was not equipped to deal and for
which it had no solutions. Since her case was not one of them, he
advised her to take his colleague's advice while reminding her to
read some of the classic Spiritist texts and learn basic doctrine.
The two women then left the room after thanking Dr. Lacerda, Dr.
Harv6 and the others present. 3
The second patient to enter the room was a well dressed woman in
her late thirties. She was accompanied by a distinguished looking
man wearing an ex- pensive leather coat who introduced himself as
her husband. Dr. Lacerda asked them both if they were Spiritists.
When both said no, he asked if they had read any of the list of
classic books the titles and authors of which he recited rapidly.
When both again said no, he turned to the woman and asked her to
tell him her problem. She said that for the past several months she
had been experiencing debilitating headaches that would not go
away. She said that she also was suffering from excruciating pains
in her back and in her legs. She had been to the doctor, she added,
but the medications he had prescribed had not helped.
Before she finished, and without inquiring as to whether she had
been to any other healer, or how she had learned of the group, Dr.
Lacerda turned and shouted the word plataforma (platform) and began
to count backwards rather loudly while waving a metal rod over his
head; he brought the rod down and then up, punctuating each number.
Within a few seconds a member of the healing team seated against
the wall, a tiny, dark haired young woman, began to speak in a
voice very different from the one she had used previously to greet
her
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 27
colleagues and the patients. She had gone into trance and was
describing a series of events in which the patient supposedly was
now participating. The patient, meanwhile, had stopped speaking
and, although now watching what was happening, also was listening
passively to another member of the healing team seated just beside
her. What was happening, I was told later, was that a part of the
spirit body of the patient had been separated from her physical
body and transported, on the platform, to the spirit world where it
was sent to a consulta- tion room in a hospital there. A spirit
doctor was diagnosing her symptoms. The dark haired young woman had
accompanied her and was reporting the diagnosis back to the
attentive members of the Casa do Jardim.
THE SPIRITIST VIEW OF THE EVENT
To assist the reader in understanding this, let me now turn to
some aspects of Spiritist belief with special emphasis on the
relationship between spirits and human beings.
Spiritism is a belief system that had its modem beginnings in
Hydesville, New York with the Fox sisters in the mid-19th century
(lsaacs 1957; Moore 1977; Nelson 1969). Recognition of the
possibility of communication with the world of the spirits of the
dead then spread to other parts of North America and from there to
Europe where it was codified into a religious and philosophical
system by a French school teacher, Hippolyte Leon Denizart Rivail,
who published the results of his efforts under the pseudonym of
Allan Kardec (Kardec n.d., 1975, 1963). Copies of Kardec's writings
soon were brought to Brazil where they became popular first among
the upper classes, and by the end of the nineteenth century, among
the population at large (Bastide 1978; Ren- shaw 1969).
In Kardec's hands the idea of two worlds, one of the living and
the other of the dead, with communication possible between the two,
was elaborated into a complex philosophical system with a moral
emphasis. Below I summarize the moral system Kardec developed that
is so important for understanding the healing practices of the Casa
do Jardim. First, however, a few words must be said about the
Spiritist view of the human body.
Spiritists believe that God created not one, but two worlds, the
invisible one inhabited by spirits and the visible, or material one
in which we live (Cavalcanti 1983; Greenfield 1987). The spirits of
the invisible or astral world are assumed to be the vital element
in this dual universe. Each incarnates periodically, which is to
say comes to earth - or some other planet on which life is assumed
to exist. There it is exposed to what are considered challenges
from which it may learn lessons that may contribute to its moral
advancement. Human beings, in the Spiritist view, are spirits
temporarily incarnate in a material body.
Spirits, along with everything else in the astral world, are
said to be made of
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28 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
materials that are of but minimal density. They have bodies, but
these are so fine that they cannot be seen or otherwise perceived
by us and would not be able to function in our world of very dense
objects. 4 To be able to participate in the visible world each
spirit, when it incarnates, must obtain a body of appropriate
density.
The creation of material bodies is a biological process of the
material world and Spiritists accept biology as we know it along
with its view of reproduction (Mundim 1981:35). Only in their view,
the union of sperm and egg is guided by forces in the spirit world.
"The spirit architects map the chromosomes of the body that will
serve as the instrument of the reincarnating spirit, including the
illnesses from which it will suffer during the lifetime as part of
the learning experience of its mission" (Mundim 1981:35).
Once embryogenesis is begun, the spirit is said to attach itself
to the newly formed fetus by means of its perispirit, a
semi-material, bioplasmic substance that is a permanent part of
every spirit being. Its perispirit is said to provide each spirit
with its defining characteristics, the equivalent of its
personality. The perispirit then remains as a permanent link
between the spirit and the physical body for the duration of the
incarnation.
The coupling of spirit and material body by means of the
perispirit takes place in a restricted segment of space surrounding
the material body (see Greenfield 1987). The chacras of the
perispirit are brought in line exactly with the plexus of the
somatic body uniting the otherwise separate dimensions of the dual
universe. Once this happens, a symbiotic relationship is said to be
established between the spirit and its somatic or material
body.
Spiritists generally believe that each living human being is
composed minimally of what might be considered three distinct
bodies: the spiritual, the perispiritual, and the material. Most,
however, believe that there are more than three. Dr. Lacerda, for
example, speaks of seven, two of which are material and five which
are spirit bodies (Lacerda de Azevedo 1988:29-45). It is the last
of the five spirit bodies, the astral, that is of interest to us
because it is the part of Dona Anna that was transported on the
platform to the spiritual plane for diagnosis.
Dr. Lacerda believes that he has learned and perfected a way of
uncoupling the several bodies that according to Spiritism are
brought together in the making of each living human being. He calls
the procedure apometrfa, apometry, from the Greek words apo,
meaning "over and above" and metron, meaning "measure" (Lacerda de
Azevedo 1988:81).
In 1965, a Puerto Rican by the name of Luiz Rodrigues, who had
emigrated to Brazil and was living in Rio de Janeiro, visited the
Spiritist Hospital in Porto Alegre. While there he explained in
broad outline the technique that would enable Dr. Lacerda and the
other Casa do Jardim healers to do something new, unique, and
innovative (Lacerda de Azevedo 1988:81).
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 29
Conventional Spiritist practice, from the time of Kardec, was
for incarnate healer-mediums to Receive the spirits of deceased
healer-doctors who through them brought the knowledge and
techniques of the spirit world to help the living. Sr. Rodrigues'
system reversed this. Instead of the "advanced" treatments and
techniques being brought from the spirit world to the material
through mediums, he suggested separating the several bodies of the
patient and sending the astral one temporarily off to the other
plane to be treated there by spirit doctors in a spirit
hospital.
Although the emphasis of Spiritism is on life in this world,
Brazilian mediums have been learning about the astral world for
well over a century now. Building on the foundation laid down by
Kardec, enlightened spirits have sent messages "psychographed" by
mediums - such as Francisco Candido "Chico" Xavier, Hercilio Maes,
and the others Dr. Lacerda names when he asks each patient about
their familiarity with the doctrine - that told about life on the
astral plane (see Hess in press). Their readers learned that, among
other things, spirits also get sick; and when they do they are
treated by doctors in spirit hospitals. The techniques used there
are believed to be much more advanced than anything we know about.
Healer-mediums receiving spirit doctors occasionally show us some
of these advanced techniques. Would it not be so much better,
proposed Sr. Rodrigues, if we sent our sick to the astral world for
treatment? The idea, Dr. Lacerda and his colleagues reasoned, was a
good one; the practical question was how to do it?
Modem physics provided an answer (see Lacerda de Azevedo
1988:67-72). Dr. Lacerda maintains that he has developed a way to
uncouple the several bodies that constitute a human being and then
transport the astral one, which is the body in which the spirits
live on the astral plane, to the spirit world. He does this by
applying energy in large amounts. When he counts, punctuating each
number with the downwards movement of a metal rod, he is directing
the energy he believes he has learned to control. 5 When he did
this with Dona Anna, he was able to uncouple her astral body from
the rest of her and send it to the spirit world for diagnosis and
treatment.
By applying the appropriate mathematics a trained person can
enable the spirit to uncouple itself from its material body with
considerable efficiency. This is apometry, ...the treatment we use
to treat both the living and the dead. Apometric uncoupling has
opened the doors to enable us to systematically investigate the
astral dimension, a universe truly parallel to ours (Lacerda de
Azevedo 1988:37. My translation).
Certain mediums, Dr. Lacerda maintains, having rejected what he
considers to be the unenlightened stubbomess of the heads of the
Spiritist Federation of Porto Alegre, have the ability to uncouple
their astral bodies on their own. Some, like the dark haired young
woman mentioned above, are able to accompany patients to the other
world. Dr. Lacerda has used this ability to negotiate a special
arrangement with the hospital Amor e Car idade (Love and Charity).
Dr.
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30 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
Louren~o, the director of this institution in the other world,
is a friend. He has been incorporating in Dr. Lacerda's wife, Dona
Yolanda - one of the mediums in the group - for many years. After
some lengthy negotiation Dr. Louren~o agreed to make the hospital
available to Dr. Lacerda and his Casa do Jardim colleagues on
Saturday mornings. He was attending Dona Anna when her astral
body arrived at the hospital.
THE THERAPEUTIC ENCOUNTER
The reader will recall that Helena, the medium in trance, had
just started to report Dr. Louren(;o's diagnosis of Dona Anna's
illness. Almost immediately another medium joined her in trance,
her astral body now in the spirit hospital Amor e Caridade. Both
then described a series of events they said were appearing on a
large screen. Dr. Lourenqo was bringing back scenes from previous
lives of the patient to determine the cause of her head, back, and
leg
pains. After hearing the first few words uttered by the mediums,
Dr. Lacerda turned
to the visitors and exclaimed: magia negra, black magic. He had
heard enough to know that the cause of Dona Anna's pains were black
magic.
The mediums then reported an incident appearing on the screen in
which the spirit of Dona Anna inflicted a great injustice on
another spirit that is now incarnate as her sister-in-law. The two
women have never gotten along since the
day each had married into the family of Dona Anna's husband and
his brother. The spirit of the other woman was swearing to get
revenge on the other who had
treated her so unjustly. Suddenly another medium seated along
the side wall opened his closed eyes
and began to speak. "Where am I?" a weak, cracking voice, very
different from his previous strong baritone said. "How did I get
here?"
Dr. Lacerda turned to the medium and said, "Calma, relax, we
only wish to talk with you."
"I don't want to talk to you," replied the voice. "Let me go, I
don't want to be here. I don't like it here! It is so bright! My
eyes hurt! I want to go! Leave me alone!"
But Dr. Lacerda persisted. Would you not prefer to come out of
the dark? To leave the dirt and filth? Wouldn't you like to give up
those ugly claws and the dirty fur?
The voice responded in the negative maintaining that it did not
want to be
there. It did not want to continue the conversation. Gradually,
however, through his questions, Dr. Lacerda engaged the reluctant
spirit in conversation.
As a dialogue developed, it soon became clear to me that I was
witnessing a
disobsession (see Milner 1980; Hess 1989), one of five treatment
modalities
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 31
employed by Spiritist healers (Greenfield 1987). 6 Dr. Lacerda
was slowly and skillfully indoctrinating the spirit in Kardecist
morality. But the spirit, whose physical description was gradually
made clear to the observers, was unlike anything I had ever known
to appear at a Spiritist disobsession.
Spiritist mediums regularly receive disincamate spirits who
return to the material plane and perturb and/or obsess unknowing
individuals causing them to behave in ways that often are diagnosed
as mental illnesses. Most mental illness, according to Spiritists,
is caused by errant and/or malevolent spirits imposing themselves
on the living.
At a disobsession a group of mediums sit around a table while a
leader well versed on Spiritist philosophy, who usually is not a
medium, directs the session. One by one the mediums incorporate
disincamate beings who are trying to take over a body that already
is occupied, causing the symptoms of a patient who has come for
help. The patient, it might be noted, need not be and usually is
not present at the disobsession. The leader engages each
troublemaking spirit in turn in conversation. Once the spirit's
attention is gained, usually by asking it leading questions, the
leader explains to it that it does not belong in the material
world. The body in which it is trying to incorporate does not
belong to it. It has no body because it is presently disincamate.
It should stop bothering the person it is disturbing and return to
the spirit plane where it should behave itself and prepare to
reincarnate. Only in this way, it is gently but forcefully
reminded, will it be able to advance to a higher stage of
development.
In the course of the dialogue with each obsessing spirit, which
usually lasts but a few minutes, the leader will summarize the
basics of Kardecian moral philosophy. This is to educate or
indoctrinate the offending spirit, who is the immediate target of
the short lecture. The mediums and others present, however, also
benefit from the repeated affirmation of their shared belief
system.
A MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF TRANSCENDENTAL PROGRESS
Previously I said that Kardec took the idea of communication
between the living and the dead and developed it into a complex
moral and philosophical system. The codifier of Spiritism was a
product of the nineteenth century who accepted its overriding
belief in progress. But unlike most nineteenth century thinkers who
looked for progress at the societal and cultural levels, Kardec was
inter- ested in the individual, at the spirit level. The spirits,
as we have seen, were postulated as the vital element in the dual
universe. By reincarnating they animated the material world. Each
spirit was assumed by Kardec to be set at the time of creation on a
progressive course that is to lead it inevitably to moral
perfection. Morality was defined in Judeo-Christian terms. Christ
is seen by Spiritists not as the son of God, but as the most
advanced spirit ever to come to
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32 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
this planet. His life is taken as the standard, or exemplar of
moral perfection held out for all, both incarnate and disincamate,
to emulate; and his words, especially as set out in the gospels -
as they were interpreted by Kardec (1963) - are taken as expressing
all that is good and moral.
Each spirit, starting in ignorance but capable of learning, is
assumed to set out on an inevitable course the end goal of which is
to perfect itself morally. To attain this transcendental goal,
each, as we have seen, is assumed to incarnate periodically in the
material world which may be thought of as a kind of school- house
where spirits come to be presented with experiences from which they
can learn lessons that will enable them to progress morally.
Spirits, however, are assumed to have free will. They may choose to
benefit from or to disregard any specific lesson to which they are
exposed.
As each goes through its individual transcendental trajectory,
incamating, disincamating, and reincarnating across the millennia,
while not always aware of the moral imperative to do good and
reject evil, each spirit accumulates what is referred to as its
Karma, the cumulative balance of its previous experience which some
view as a series of moral plusses and minuses. This Karma becomes a
part of them and their being in both worlds.
The heart of the Kardecian system is the doing of good, the
quintessence of which is charity. "Without Charity," Spiritists
assert, usually referring to the title of chapter 15 of Kardec's
The Spirits' Book, "there is no salvation. ''7
The role of Spiritism then is to assist spirits, both incarnate
and in the astral plane, to understand the importance of moral
progress and to facilitate them in achieving it. This point is
basic to understanding all Spiritist therapy and specifically what
the members of the Casa do Jardim are doing.
INTEGRATING AFRO-BRAZILIAN SPIRITS IN THE SPIRITIST
DISOBSESSION
Dr. Lacerda, as I noted, was treating Dona Anna by performing a
disobsession. He was instructing, by means of a dialogue, a
disincamate spirit that was responsible for the symptoms of his
patient. After engaging it in conversation, he repeated
emphatically to it the importance of spiritual advancement and
moral progress. Step by step he pointed out to the spirit the
errors of its ways while explaining what was right. Gradually he
convinced it that it really wanted what Spiritism believed was good
for it. It wanted to leave the dark, lowly, and unenlightened state
in which it was living and seek advancement. It also agreed that it
should stop tormenting Dona Anna and return to the spirit plane,
not to the lowly place where it had been found, but to the hospital
Amor e Caridade where someone would help it to seek reincarnation
as soon as possible.
While in one sense the treatment of Dona Anna was a standard
disobsession,
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 33
in another it was not. The obsessing spirit, as I noted, was
unlike anything I had ever seen or heard about at the many
Kardecist centers where I had previously observed disobsessions.
Spiritist mediums receive spirits of the dead who in the past had
incarnated as human beings. In the course of his dialogue with this
spirit Dr. Lacerda made reference to its low, heavy vibrations and
to its claws and fur. In his running commentary to the visitors he
had called it variously a ghoul and a monster. Ghouls and monsters
are not part of the Spiritist universe and Spiritist mediums do not
receive them at their sessions.
Dr. Lacerda also once referred to the spirit as an exu. Exus
were part of the supernatural pantheon brought to Brazil from
Africa by the slaves. Originally they were the messengers of the
Orixtis, the African deities. In Brazil the African tradition was
syncretized, first with Christianity to form the Candombl6, Xang6,
Batuque, etc., and then with Spiritism to form Umbanda. In the
latter, which is the largest and fastest growing alternative to
Roman Catholicism in the Brazilian market place of religious
beliefs, the exus have become a separate category of supernaturals
who incorporate in mediums. They, along with the pretos velhos (old
former slaves), caboclos (Indians), and crian~as (children) do the
charity of helping people that Umbanda has taken from Kardecism to
be its primary mission (see Brown 1986; Brumana and Martinez 1989;
Pressel 1974; Greenfield and Gray 1989; Greenfield and Prust
1990).
Spiritist mediums, as we have seen, do not receive orix6s, exus,
or other Umbanda spirits. They consider Umbanda and the other
African-derived religions to be less advanced or enlightened and
their spirits to be lower forms. Along the continuum that has been
proposed to organize the variety of Brazilian popular religions
(Bastide 1978), Kardecism, or mesa branca (white table) 8 as it
sometimes is called, has been placed at one end as the highest or
most advanced, with the Candombl6, Xang6, Batuque, and the other
heavily African influenced religions at the other as the lowest or
least advanced. Umbanda lies somewhere between the two extremes,
more progressive than the purely African-derived religions, but
less so than Spiritism.
Dr. Lacerda and his fellow healers at the Casa do Jardim, unlike
other Kardecists, recognize Umbanda and its spirits. They believe,
as Umbandistas themselves maintain, that these denser, less
enlightened spirits, like the exus, can inflict injuries on the
living. Umbanda has its own system of treating the illnesses that
derive from its distinct view of the universe. The Casa do Jardim
healers, while they do not see the Umbanda system of therapy as
valid, acknow- ledge the ability of their spirits to cause illness.
They have decided, therefore, as Hess (n.d.), applying Dumont's
(1980) framework, has argued for other Kardecist intellectuals, to
"encompass" the discourse of Umbanda. By doing this the Casa do
Jardim is able to include the healing of illnesses caused by Um-
banda spirits in its treatments.
The heads of the Spiritist Federation, of course, do not accept
this, as they
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34 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
also do not accept the unorthodox transporting of patients'
astral bodies to the spirit world. They want no Umbanda spirits on
the grounds of the Spiritist Hospital, and they want the spirit
healers to come from the other world here rather than sending the
patients there. For these and other lesser reasons, Dr. Lacerda and
his colleagues were asked to leave the garden house of the
Spiritist Hospital in 1987.
Several years before, however, Dr. Lacerda had arranged for
several of the mediums in the group to join Umbanda centers and
learn to receive exus and other "lower" spirits. Today they are
able to receive spirits like the one that was obsessing Dona Anna.
Instead of having to refer patients like her to Umbanda healers,
whose therapeutic abilities they question, they are able to treat
them themselves.
During the ritual conversion from doing evil to doing good, Dr.
Lacerda had asked the spirit monster to stop tormenting Dona Anna.
Just before departing for the hospital Amor e Car idade, however,
it said that it could not. Without another word Dr. Lacerda
demanded the name of its boss. The repenting spirit first tried to
deny that it had a superior and then refused to reveal its name.
Eventually, however, it acquiesced.
A fourth medium who had been sitting quietly all this time then
burst forth in a tirade. In a voice also unlike the one he had used
to greet the patient, he protested being present in this brightly
lit place. A repeat of the previous performance then followed with
Dr. Lacerda eventually winning over and enlightening the "boss." In
the course of the ritualized debate that led to the spirit
accepting the "truths" argued by Dr. Lacerda, it also admitted that
it did not work alone. It had a gang of underlings to whom it gave
orders. Some time previously it had been approached by the spirit
that was now Dona Anna's sister-in-law and asked to help it get
revenge. Several months ago, it continued, one of its henchmen, the
spirit that had appeared earlier, acting on its orders, had placed
a tiny electronic device in the back of Dona Anna's head. The
apparatus was connected to controls in its possession. This was the
cause of the patient's headaches and pains in the back and legs.
And while the underling had installed the device, only it was able
to remove it.
Dr. Lacerda then paused while turning to the visitors. This is
the black magic I mentioned earlier, he said. He then explained
that most of these low level, malevolent spirits are organized in
gangs the leaders of which are magicians who practice the black
arts. Ancient Egypt, he observed, was the home of all black magic.
Almost all of the spirits using it today were once incarnate there.
Many, like those who have appeared today, have not reincarnated
since. Instead of accepting new lives that will give them the
opportunity to progress, they hide in the lowest, darkest, densest
parts of the spirit world, known as the Umbral, and sell their
services to other unenlightened spirits like the sister-in-law
of
Dona Anna.
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 35
After being shown the error of its ways in the conversion
experience of the disobsession, the black-magic practicing boss
spirit agreed to remove the apparatus. It also agreed to go to the
hospital Amor e Caridade to seek treatment that would enable it to
reincarnate soon and pursue spiritual development.
As the boss departed, Dr. Lacerda commented to the observers
about the organized gangs of low level evil spirits in the other
world who have access to the most sophisticated electronic and
other devices that can inflict injury and pain on unknowing
victims. One of the tasks of the Casa do Jardim group, he added,
since they are the only Spiritists to have acknowledged the
existence of these spirits, is to combat them, indoctrinating,
enlightening, and redeeming them, while convincing them to remove
the insidious devices from their victims. Once this is done,
through their enlightened friends in the spirit world such as Dr.
Lourenqo and his staff, they are able to put them on the path of
progress and development.
The redemption of the boss, whose conversion and acceptance of
help could serve as a role model for other low level spirits, did
not end the session. Abrir a frequencia (open the frequency),
intoned Dr. Lacerda as he tumed, starting to count, from the
observers back to his co-workers. The first medium who had
accompanied Dona Anna to the astral plane, and who had been silent
during the disobsession of the two monster spirits, suddenly began
to speak, this time in a voice different from both of those she had
used before. She was joined by a voice from yet another medium who
thus far had not spoken. It was soon clear that the episode in
which the initial injustice inflicted by the spirit of Dona Anna on
her sister-in-law was being re-enacted, just as it had been on the
screen in Dr. Lourenqo's consulting room in the hospital Amor e
Caridade. The patient's past life experience that was the ultimate
cause of her present suffering was being recreated.
As it unfolded, Dr. Lacerda stepped in to put in words the
immoral deeds being acted out. He made explicit to Dona Anna what
she had done. He then explained to the spirit of the sister-in-law
that although she had been wronged, she should not have sought
revenge. Spiritists not only do not approve of vengence, they
believe that seeking it negates spiritual advancement. Therefore,
the spirit of Dona Anna's sister-in-law was behaving against her
own best interests. She should call off the black magic and forgive
Dona Anna for what she had done. Likewise, Dona Anna should forgive
the spirit of her sister-in-law for causing her pain. Finally, the
two should forget the past, make up, and devote their energies to
seeking spiritual advancement.
The spirit of the sister-in-law slowly came to see the light. It
apologized to the spirit of Dona Anna for what it had done. It
ordered the black magician to remove the apparatus and it begged
the spirit of Dona Anna for forgiveness. An emotional scene between
the two spirits, or more precisely the mediums incorporating them,
followed. Dona Anna's spirit begged the other to forgive it.
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36 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
This was followed by a reconciliation in which the two spirits
embraced each other in tears of happiness.
After a few minutes both spirits took their leave. The medium
who had received Dona Anna's sister-in-law then stood up and
approached the patient. Dr. Lacerda raised his metal rod and began
to count again. The treatment had been completed. Dona Anna's
astral body was being brought back from the hospital in the other
world. The next task was to rearticulate or recouple it with her
other bodies. The medium now standing next to her was giving hand
passes to bring energy from the spirit world to help facilitate the
recoupling. First, Dr. Lacerda asked the medium to check and make
sure that all of the devices had been removed. When assured that
they had been, he completed the rejoining of the now healed
patient.
Dona Anna, who, although engrossed in the dramatic events played
out before her also had been deep in conversation with the one
member of the healing team who had not participated in the
disobsession, was now told that she could leave. She would
experience the headaches and other pains no longer, Dr. Lacerda
reassured her. She should, however, read the books by Allan Kardec,
"Chico" Xavier, Hercilio Maes, and others mentioned previously to
learn to help herself and also should attend sessions at a
Spiritist center. She and her husband, who along with her had
observed the proceedings in amazement while also participat- ing in
the discussion with the team member seated next to them, then
thanked Dr. Lacerda and the others and departed.
THE THERAPEUTIC VALUE OF THE TECHNIQUE
As the next patient was being shown in Dr. Lacerda turned to the
visitors to inform them that perhaps 75 to 80 percent of all
illnesses begin on the astral body. Medicine, he added, cannot
treat them until they appear on the somatic body, which they
eventually do because of the symbiotic relationship between the
spiritual and somatic bodies. Since western medicine recognizes
neither the spirit body nor the symbiotic relationship between it
and its somatic counterpart, it must wait until an illness has
developed sufficiently to manifest itself on the material body.
Then it can treat only what according to Spiritists are the symp-
toms because the real causes are at a level whose existence it does
not acknow- ledge. With apometry, however, the illnesses of the
astral body can be treated quickly and easily by spirit doctors
long before they ever appear on the flesh.
The real value of apometry he added, was its ability to treat
mental illnesses. Obsession, he observed, raising a topic developed
at length in his book, "is the illness of the century" (Lacerda de
Azevedo 1988:136). Like most Spiritists, he believes that with the
exception of those cases where there are demonstrable physical
causes, "All mental illness is spiritually based" (Lacerda de
Azevedo
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 37
1988:136). Misguided spirits, usually at lower levels, for
reasons unique in each case, inflict what manifests itself as
mental illness on the living. Disobsession, rather than
psychotherapy or any of the other therapies developed by conven-
tional science and medicine, he emphasized, is the most viable form
of treat- ment. Unfortunately it is not generally employed because
conventional science does not recognize the existence of the
spirit. Conventional treatment, to the detriment of the mentally
ill, he added, is a prisoner of its materialist assump- tions. One
of the Spiritism's tasks, which the Casa do Jardim group shares
with other Spiritists, is to free science from its materialist
biases (see Hess 1987; Greenfield 1990c). Apometry, he concluded,
with its ability to harness and control sources of energy from both
planes, can be used to determine who the low level spirits that
cause much of the pain and suffering of incarnate patients are, and
communicate with and help (or heal) them as in the cases just wit-
nessed. This enables the Casa do Jardim to do what their more
conservative fellow Spiritists cannot do in ordinary
disobsessions.
THE RITUAL DRAMA
As the morning continued and patient after patient was welcomed
and treated, a pattern emerged that became more clear in later
weeks and when I visited the sessions of the other healing teams.
Symbolically, the apometric treatment of the Casa do Jardim
healers, like the Spiritist disobsession on which it is based, is a
ritual drama highlighting the struggle between the forces of good
and those of evil. Dr. Lacerda and his Casa do Jardim colleagues
are the champions of good. Patients suffering from a variety of
symptoms, ranging from unspecified aches and pains for which no
organic causes could be found, to depression, schizophrenia
(professionally diagnosed), cancer, and occasionally drug
addiction, were found to be suffering from the effects of evil
coming from the astral plane. They, and the doctors and other
(mortal) healers from whom so many had sought treatment that was
unsuccessful, of course, were helpless against these forces from
the invisible world. With the assistance of enlightened,
cooperating disincamate spirit doctors, the earthly representatives
of "the good" learned that some low level being, or exu, often as
part of a gang of such ghouls and monsters, was the true cause of
the patient's suffering.
There followed a titanic struggle between the leader of the
earthly healers - representing good - and each of the spirits,
individually or collectively, responsible for the suffering of the
patient. Dr. Lacerda, or one of the others, would attribute to
their antagonist(s) all that Spiritists believe is evil. The
offending spirit first protested, denying the doing of evil.
Tenaciously, however, the representative of good engaged the other
in dialogue, rebutting its arguments until it was forced by the
logic of the truth to admit its misdeeds. Yes, it was
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38 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
doing evil. It was sorry, however, and would repent. It would
call off the members of its gang and would remove the apparatus it
had installed that was the immediate cause of the problem. And more
importantly, it acknowledged the laws of Spiritist cosmology that
explicated good and evil and specified how spiritual advancement
was to be achieved. Yes, it would seek reincarnation and pursue
moral advancement. But, it almost always would add, the victim also
had been evil. In some past life the spirit that was now incarnate
in the body of the patient had committed an evil act the victim of
which had sought revenge. In
Spiritist bel ief victims and their obsessors usually travel
together across time reincarnating often as neighbors, kinsmen, and
even spouses or offspring, and
alternate in trying to gain revenge. The healers, as in the case
of Dona Anna and her sister-in-law, had not only to get the lowest
level gang members to name their boss, repent, and seek help in
development, and then get the boss to remove the device that was
the immediate cause of the pain, repent and seek help, they also
had to get each of the parties seeking revenge on the other - in
this lifetime or a previous one - to admit that it was wrong,
forgive the other, and seek the guidance that would help it to
advance spiritually.
What started as treating an incarnate patient suffering from a
specific set of symptoms or illness evolved, after the patient's
astral body was uncoupled and dispatched to the hospital in the
invisible world where it was diagnosed and treated by a team of
spirit doctors, into a ritual performance in which the group leader
in tum indoctrinated in Spiritist morality and philosophy of
developmen-
tal progress first ghouls and demons, or spirits from other
religions such as the
exus of Umbanda, all of whom appeared to be members of gangs
headed by bosses who were black magicians who then also had to be
indoctrinated and converted. Then the spirit that had contacted the
gang had to be enlightened as
eventually did the spirit of the patient who in a past life had
been an aggressor. While in each case the Casa do Jardim healers
started with a specific patient, they never knew who or what they
would encounter and have to show the light
before a treatment was completed. Almost everyone who had once
lived, individually or as part of a group, it appeared, was a
possible victim and/or perpetrator of obsession. 9
TREATMENT RESULTS
When I asked Dr. Lacerda about the outcomes of the treatments,
he first mentioned the many testimonials he had received over the
years from patients who considered themselves cured of a variety of
illnesses after one or two apometric treatments by the Casa do
Jardim healers. He reviews many of these successful cases in his
book (Lacerda de Azevedo 1989). His response to me, and his
published presentation, however, is that of a clinician. His
definition of
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 39
successful treatment is, as it is in his medical practice, that
the patient does not return to complain further of the same
symptoms. He assumes that if the patient no longer claims to be
bothered by the symptoms, he or she is cured. He also told me that
he has records of thousands of cases that he and the others have
treated over the years. While no one has analyzed them, he
maintained the vast majority of treatments have been successful. He
further asserted that the success rates of the Casa do Jardim group
over the past two decades are considerably higher than comparable
figures for psychiatric treatment, psychoanalysis and related
therapies; and, he emphasized, they take much less time and there
is no comparison in cost to the patient since he and his colleagues
do not charge for their services. Although neither he nor the
others do follow-up visits, as is the case in his medical practice,
he could only conclude that if a patient did not return for further
treatment it was because he or she no longer was suffering from the
symptoms that first brought him to the Casa do Jardim.
I discussed the issue of efficacy and cure further one day with
Dr. Ivan Harv6 who now does the Friday aftemoon diagnostic
interviews to determine which patients are to be treated by
conventional medicine and which ones need the services of the Casa
do Jardim. His first response was also that of the clinician who
assumes that if the patient does not return to complain further
about his symptoms he is cured.
I then pressed him, reminding him of the rather unusual
assumptions and even more questionable techniques employed during
the Saturday morning sessions. He was a medical doctor, I reminded
him, who had done an internship in the United States. How could he,
or I after studying the Casa do Jardim healing practices, go before
a group of scientists and scholars like those he had met in
Philadelphia and Washington and expect them to take seriously a
report on a treatment modality that alleges to transport patients
to another world where their experiences in a previous life are
found to be the cause of their present symptoms? Perhaps if he
could convince me that the patients were cured, as both he and Dr.
Lacerda maintain, I suggested, scholars and scientists also might
listen.
Almost in frustration he responded that as a clinician with all
of the ex- perience he has he can tell when a patient is cured.
Take all of the records and statistics you want, he went on, you
just have to look at the patients.
A few Saturdays later I was sitting in on the group in which he
participates as a medium. A young female patient entered the room
looking troubled and concerned. Dr. Harv6 and the others greeted
her, recognizing that she had been there before. They wondered why
she had returned.
The leader opened the frequencies and sent her astral body to
the spirit world. A series of demons and other spirits then
appeared and were disobsessed. She was told that someone she knew
was seeking vengence for something she had once done. The leader
then explained to the offending spirit that seeking revenge
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40 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
was wrong. An emotional reconciliation followed and the spirits
departed, each motivated now to do only good and abstain from
evil.
By the end of the session the patient was relaxed. The tension
was gone and she no longer seemed concerned as she had been at the
beginning of the session.
Dr. Ivan took me aside to discuss the case. "Did you see that?"
he asked me. "It is a perfect example of what I was trying to
convey to you." He then explained that this was the second time
this patient had been treated by his team. The first time had been
approximately two years ago when she arrived totally distraught and
suicidal. Had not a girlfriend literally dragged her to the
Spiritist Hospital grounds where they then practiced, she most
probably would not be alive today.
The patient, then 16 years of age, was from a poor, strict
family of European descent. She had met a young man with whom she
had fallen in love. Her family, however, would not accept him. And
when she had become pregnant, she found herself abandoned, first by
the young man and then by her family. Without money or means of
support, and rejected by her kinsfolk, and with no place to go, she
felt that the world had come to an end for her.
During her treatment at the Casa do Jardim it was learned that
the spirit incamate in the young man had been murdered by her in a
previous lifetime. Leaving her pregnant and abandoned was his
revenge. Although he did even- tually ask her forgiveness, while
forgiving her, it was not possible for him to care for her and the
child in this lifetime. Her parents, however, whose spirits also
appeared through mediums in the session, agreed that it had been
wrong of them to reject their daughter and grandchild. When the
patient left the treatment session, her parents not only took her
back, she reported that they got along better than they ever had.
She attended sessions at a Spiritist center and learned the
doctrine. Her parents joined her and began to do the charity so
important in the Spiritist tradition. She found a job where she
worked until the baby was born. With her mother's help she was able
to return to work shortly after the delivery. Her parents loved the
baby and were happy to have both of them in their home.
Furthermore, she had met another young man and the two were in
love. He had asked her to marry him and wished to adopt the baby.
Her parents not only accepted him, they treated him like the son
they never had. She had told him everything and he had become a
party to her new life of Spiritist develop- ment and charity. She
was healthy and happy.
She had come today because she was having trouble at work. She
had not been given a promotion she thought she deserved. It was
discovered in the treatment that one of her supervisors,
retaliating for something she had done to him in a previous life,
had prevented her promotion.
His spirit had been treated this morning and had repented. The
patient and everyone else present, consequently, was convinced that
her career would go as well from now on as had the rest of her
life.
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 41
Dr. Harv6 said to me: "Two years ago she was ready to commit
suicide. With our help she not only recovered, but today she is a
happily adjusted woman with a full life. What more in the way of
success could you ask for?"
I must admit that to the best of my understanding the young
woman certainly appeared to be better after treatment than before.
And the same was true for the many patients I visited in their
homes after other sessions at the Casa do Jardim. Most indicated
that their symptoms had improved, if they had not disappeared
altogether. But such hearsay reporting by patients is not usually
acceptable as proof of cure to scholars and medical researchers.
They would want before and after examinations with careful
controls. Unfortunately, I am neither a physician nor a
psychotherapist. I am unable to do what medical researchers would
consider as most basic to establishing an argument for the curing
abilities of the Casa do Jardim healing practices. And neither Dr.
Lacerda, Dr. Harvt, nor the others are will ing to take the time
from doing what they believe is their first priority - treating
patients - to organize the data, let alone present it to the
medical community. Drs. Lacerda, Harvt, and the others recognize
the difficulty most rationally
trained intellectuals, be they Brazilians, North Americans, or
Europeans, have
taking seriously the treatment techniques they and their
colleagues use each Saturday morning. Dr. Lacerda addresses this
point in his book.
Decriptions such as these .... of dead doctors treating the
astral bodies of patients, of mediums and patients visiting
invisible hospitals with treatment rooms containing highly advanced
machinery (and, of course, of buildings, gardens, vehicles, etc.)
all may seem the fruit of flights of the imagination and smell of
science fiction.
But they are not.
For more than ~ years dozens of our mediums have visited the
hospital Amor e Caridade, the institution in the astral plane that
cooperates with us in our work. In all this time different mediums
(first independently and then in groups), and on different days,
gave identical descriptions of the gardens, of the buildings, of
the waiting rooms, of the operating rooms, and above all of the
treatment techniques employed...by the teams of astral
healers...
Based on everything we experienced, we cannot escape concluding
that with apometry the therapeutic process is enhanced and
diversified. The spirit (of the patient) can be treated by
disincarnate doctors while the body is treated by the living.
Besides, it enables us to regress both the living and the dead to
their past lives to show the causes in the remote past of their
illnesses - uncovering karmic interrelations with other spirits -
enabling not only the investigation of the laws of karma, but also
the treatment of profound illnesses with lasting effects (Lacerda
de Azevedo 1988:82, 83, my translation).
HEALING BY SYMBOLIC TRANSFORMATION
In a perceptive hermeneutic analysis of the rhetoric of
transformation in ritual
healing, Csordas has argued that
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42 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
healing is contingent upon a meaningful and convincing discourse
that brings about a transformation of the phenomenological
conditions under which the patient exists and experiences suffering
or distress. It can be shown that this rhetoric redirects the sup-
plicant's attention to new aspects of actions and experiences, or
persuades him to attend to accustomed features of action and
experience from new perspectives... To the extent that this new
meaning encompasses the person's life experience, healing thus
creates for him a new reality or phenomenological world. As he
comes to inhabit this new, sacred world, the supplicant is healed
not in the sense of being restored to the state in which he existed
prior to the onset of illness, but in the sense of being
rhetorically 'moved' into a state dissimilar from both pre-illness
and illness reality...
In linking the rhetorical aspect of discourse with the
endogenous healing process, this approach suggests that the
transformation brought about by healing operates on multiple
levels. Insofar as endogenous processes take place on physiological
and intrapsychic levels, and rhetoric acts on both the social level
of persuasion and interpersonal influence, and the cultural level
of meanings, symbols, and styles of argument, the experience of
healing is an experience of totality (Csordas 1983:346).
Csordas applied the analysis in a study of the healing
activities of Catholic Pentecostals in the United States. The
groups with which he worked were relatively small, self contained
populations of believers who formed a primary community. This
enabled him to analyze the rhetoric of transformation of a symbolic
meaning system shared by the members of the group. The Casa do
Jardim healers and their patients, however, do not form a
community. Although the healers are all Spiritists who share a
common belief system and set of symbols, the patients, as in the
cases presented, mostly are neither Spiritists, nor active members
of other religious groups. They are, like most members of the
middle and lower-middle classes, unaffiliated. As I noted
previously, there are a number of religious denominations in the
urban Brazilian setting that form
primary communities - Spiritists, Umbandistas, Batuqueiros, etc.
Only a small
percentage of the population, however, actively participate in
any of these groups. The remainder are unaffiliated, but may be
thought of as potential converts. They are the people the religious
groups are trying to attract by offering services such as healing.
The pattern is that many of the active members of Spiritist,
Umbanda, Candombl6, Batuque, and even Protestant religious
communities become so mostly after being healed by the ritual
healing system of the group (Krippner 1989). In the process they
become members of a primary group who are transformed by the power
of its rhetoric.
The rhetoric used by the Casa do Jardim healers, as we have
seen, is a Spiritist rhetoric; but as I shall now try to
demonstrate, it is a rhetoric that employs in a distinctive way
symbols and meaning sets central to Brazilian national culture. In
tuming to the way Spiritism adapts the dominant symbols of
Brazilian culture, I shall hypothesize that the Casa do Jardim
appeals to a specific sector of the Brazilian population, the
white, urban, middle classes, many of whom become active
participants in Spiritist primary groups in the
process of being cured (see Greenfield and Gray 1989).
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 43
RELIGIOUS COMPETITION AND ENCOMPASSING THE RHETORIC OF
OTHERS
Brazilian culture, as Da Matta (1979, 1985) has pointed out,
does not make a clear cut opposition between this world and the
other, as do, for example, most of the national cultures of Western
Europe and North America. Instead, Brazilians see this world as
part of a continuum that extends into and is a part of the other
where power and authority is located. God the creator is seen as
the locus of all power. In contrast with post reformation North
American and Western European assumptions, Brazilians believe that
God still is actively involved in the affairs of this world, and
the ultimate cause of all that happens here. From the perspective
of the individual this means that all that happens to him, good and
bad, is caused by God and any modification can be obtained only
through His future intervention. That is, if one has wealth or
health it is because God so wishes it, while if one is poor or sick
it also is because God has made it so. If the individual wishes to
modify his or her circumstances, such as his material condition or
the state of his health, it follows that he must enlist God's
cooperation to effect a change.
Again in contrast with North Americans and Western Europeans,
Brazilians do not appeal directly to God for help; instead they
approach Him through an intermediary. In the still dominant Roman
Catholic tradition, which may serve as the paradigm for the
national cultural pattern, and which provides many of the symbols
and the basic rhetoric used by all the competing religious
denomina- tions, one goes through a saint or the Virgin Mary who
then may serve as an intercessor between unhappy and/or suffering
humans in this world and the all powerful creator in the other.
This belief system is played out, for example, in the still popular
pilgrimage tradition in which individuals make promessas, or vows
promising visits to shrines and other prestations if the virgin or
the saint intercedes successfully and God ameliorates their
suffering or otherwise provides what they request (see Gross 1972;
Greenfield 1990b).
In the rhetoric of the Casa do Jardim healers, the ultimate
authority of God as the cause of all that happens on earth is made
explicit in the opening invocation made by Dr. Lacerda before every
healing session. He and his colleagues, he explains, are the
instruments of God; they can only help those who seek their
assistance with active collaboration from the other world.
Having placed themselves within the framework of dominant
Brazilian beliefs, Dr. Lacerda and the Casa do Jardim healers then
present an alternative to the Roman Catholic view of intermediacy.
Instead of an other world com- posed of God surrounded by the
Virgin and the saints as in Roman Catholicism, Spiritism, as we
have seen, sees only spirits, spirits living out what is believed
to be - in Kardec's reinterpretation of Christianity - God's true
creation. Christ, for example, as we have seen, is not the son of
God, but rather the most advanced spirit ever to have appeared on
the planet. Spiritual advancement, as elaborated
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44 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
by Kardec, based on information provided him by several advanced
spirits, is taken to be the proper reading of God's - and Christ's
- message. By doing as He "really" ordained - i.e., striving for
spiritual advancement and doing charity
- the sick and the suffering can attain the true health and
betterment He wishes for them. Advanced spirits, such as Dr.
Lourenqo and his associates at the Hospital Amor e Caridade, and
others, replace the virgin and the saints as the intermediaries
between human sufferers and the other-wordly help they seek. By
following Spiritism, the new intermediaries will help the patients
to transform their situation and as a result become well.
In this respect the Casa do Jardim healers are doing what all
Spiritists, healers and others, do: they offer an alternative to
the traditional imagery of inter- mediacy of the Church to a people
many of whom have become disillusioned with the hope it offers. The
difficulties of twentieth century urban life appear to have further
eroded whatever faith many Brazilians still had in what once were
the predominant beliefs of Roman Catholicism. In this respect, all
of the alternative religious groups competing for converts may be
seen as offering an alternative to a belief system that no longer
provides satisfaction for much of the population. The challenge
they make is not to the traditional belief that power is located
with an omnipotent God who is the cause of all that happens, but
rather to who best can serve as intermediary with that God to
intercede on behalf of the living. If the saints no longer are
believed able to do the job, perhaps enlightened spirits can? Or
maybe, to draw from some of the other alternative religions, the
African deities can, the Holy Ghost, or the new syncretic pretos
velhos, caboclos, or other entities of Umbanda? The variety of
religions (and healing systems) competing in Brazil's urban market
place may be viewed as each offering a different path to God and
His absolute power through their own intermediaries whose
cooperation may be enlisted by means of their ritual practices.
The Casa do Jardim healers, however, as noted above, in doing
this also are encompassing two sets of rhetoric that strengthen
their specific appeal to the urban middle classes. The first of
these, which all who follow the teachings of Kardec accept, is to
encompass the rhetoric of science. Spiritism invariably is
presented as the science that codifies the laws of the more
inclusive invisible world (see Hess 1987). Scientific terminology
is used in discussing reincarna- tion, karma, and spiritual
advancement and the basic beliefs are presented as laws.
Unlike other Spiritists, the Casa do Jardim group also
encompasses the rhetoric of Umbanda by recognizing exus and other
spirits that are part of supernatural pantheon of this new, fast
growing syncretic religion. In this way they appeal both to those
who respect science, but also may fear Umbanda and the legacy of
African sorcery it retains.
Umbanda, as I have indicated, has established its own
intermediaries between
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 45
God and man who are a mixture or syncretism of the Roman
Catholic saints, the African Orixds (deities), Amerindian
supematurals, and spirits from Spiritism. But Umbanda also has
taken from the African tradition beliefs in what in the broadest
sense might be called sorcery. The powers of its supernatural
inter- mediaries are believed to be hamessable to do both good
and/or bad. That is, its exus are believed to be able to both help
or hinder the health and well being of the living, depending on how
they are used by specific ritual practitioners (Maggie 1975).
My intent here is not to elaborate on Umbanda and what many
consider its back, or underside, Quimbanda. Instead it is to
indicate that most Brazilians living in urban areas, whatever their
social position, race, or personal beliefs, have some familiarity
with stories attributing an illness or other misfortune of some
person known to them personally or by name to a "work" of
Quimbanda. While they may not "believe" that the illness or
misfortune was actually caused by the Quimbanda ritual, there is
enough of an element of uncertainty and doubt to lead many who
would not otherwise turn to Umbanda or Quimbanda to fear becoming
the victim of an exu unleashed against them by those jealous of
them, their job or business, or social position. By encompassing
the rhetoric of Umbanda/Quimbanda, the Casa do Jardim healers are
able to offer the white middle classes the belief that they will be
able to undo and/or cure what many fear are illnesses and
misfortunes afflicted on them through nefarious works of
Quimbanda.
PATRONAGE AND HELP WITH OTHER PROBLEMS
In addition to the value of science and protection from
Quimbanda, Dr. Lacerda and his Casa do Jardim colleagues also offer
patronage in this world to the urban middle classes. The Brazilian
symbolic world, as we have seen, is ordered hierarchically, with
power and authority located in the other world. To gain access to
God and His ability to heal or otherwise improve our well being,
one must go through intermediaries in the other world.
This world, however, also is believed to be ordered
hierarchically and, therefore, one also needs intermediaries to get
help from the top. From its inception, almost, a broad range of
important social relations in Brazil have been what are referred to
as relations of patronage and clientage (Greenfield 1972, 1977,
1979; Hutchinson 1966; Roniger 1981, 1987, 1990). Individuals,
differen- tially placed in the social hierarchy, with access to
distinctive kinds and amounts of resources, entered into exchanges
that became formalized in social relations of patronage and
clientage. The classic example of this from nineteenth century
post-emancipation Brazilian history was the relationship between a
rural landowner and the many dependent laborers living on his
property (Carone 1971, 1978; Castelo Branco 1979; Cintra 1979;
Nunes Leal 1977; Pang 1979).
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46 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
When Brazilians moved to the cities in the mid-twentieth
century, however, they found no patrons; urban life, it is still
claimed by some, is antithetical to traditional rural social forms
(Camargo et al. 1981; Velho 1980). But the new migrants appear not
to have lost the belief that access to the sources of social and
political power and resources is to be obtained through a patron.
At present, therefore, urban Brazilians, primarily the poor, but
also the middle classes whose wealth has been erroded and whose
social position has been threatened, if not actually destroyed, may
be thought of as people in search of a patron who hopefully will
help them to find a new place for themselves in the developing
social order of the city. Elsewhere I have argued that Umbanda cult
leaders (Greenfield and Prust 1990), Spiritist healers (Greenfield
1987, 1990a), and other leaders of urban religious groups serve as
patrons for clienteles composed of segments of the urban poor. Dr.
Lacerda and his colleagues at the Casa do Jardim, I would
hypothesize, fulfill this role for the white, middle-classes. As
doctors and educated professionals who combine modern science and
medicine with religious healing, they appeal to the middle classes
many of whom identify better with them than they can with "Popular
Catholic," African-derived, and other alternatives. This initial
identification provides them a distinct advantage when it comes to
beginning the rhetorical transformation that may result in healing
and conversion.
Many years ago, Roger Bastide summarized the role Spiritism
played in providing new meaning and a sense of security
specifically for the white middle classes.
Here city people without status, who have lost their place in
Brazil's old patriarchial structure and not yet found ... an
organization to provide them with a measure of security, seek a new
cosmic or mythic framework to sustain them. They find a place in a
hierarchy of spirits that extends from the earth to the planets,
where there is one law for all in a supernatural society
hierarchized according to merit and virtue. They escape from human
loneliness in a mystic association with this new supernatural
society (Bastide 1978:315).
CONCLUSION
One final factor of no small consequence must be added in
concluding. Else- where Patric Giesler and I (1989) have shown that
the respect and prestige conventionally attributed a patro n in
Brazil, especially when he or she is a healer, when combined with
the fantasy-proneness and considerable ability of most Brazilians
to imagine, contributes significantly to the increased probability
of a patient-client entering a state of heightened suggestibility
or hypnotic trance. Many of the patients I observed at the sessions
of the Casa do Jardim appeared to have been in an altered state of
consciousness when Dr. Lacerda apometrically uncoupled their astral
body by punctuating his counting with the
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 47
waving of a metal rod. Increased receptivity to suggestion while
in such a state, we are learning, enhances the working of mind-body
processes, contributing significantly to the healing of illnesses,
especially those that have an emotional component (see Rossi
1986).
Most of the patients treated by the Casa do Jardim healers, as
Dr. Lacerda himself would agree, suffer from what might be called
psychosomatic illnesses. It could very well turn out that the
combination of their respect for Dr. Lacerda and his Casa do Jardim
colleagues - in the image of a patron - and their heightened
suggestibility after entering an altered state of consciousness,
enables the patients, when exposed to the rhetorical discourse of
the group, to reduce enough fears and anxieties to start to feel
better. This reduction in the psychosomatic trauma is enhanced by
something else that takes place during all apometric treatment.
While the leader and the mediums act out the healing ritual, the
patients, as I have noted, sit quietly, usually conversing with one
member of the team not participating in the drama. This group
member, however, it turned out, was performing more conventional
psychological therapy, complementing and reinforcing what the
patient was getting directly from the healing ritual and indirectly
from the suggestions being made by the group leader. The combina-
tion of therapeutic approaches may produce sufficient temporary
relief to inspire many of the patients to read Kardec and other
Spiritist authors mentioned by Dr. Lacerda and to attend sessions
at a Spiritist center. The repeated exposure to the Spiritist
message, as the symptoms ease, may then convince the patients that
they have discovered the "real" cause of their illness, which, if
it is not karmic, can be cured by acceptance of and conversion to
Spiritism. And by becoming an active member of a Spiritist center,
the patient participates in a primary group that reinforces the
beliefs to which he first was exposed by the Casa do Jardim
healers. As a member of a new religious community, the
phenomenological conditions under which he existed and experienced
suffering and distress may be said to have been transformed. He has
been cured by going through the complex process of religious
conversion that began with the Saturday morning session at the Casa
do Jardim.
Department of Anthropology University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Milwaukee, W153201, U.S.A.
NOTES
1 Revised version of a paper presented at the symposium,
"Systems of Healing in Brazil," at the annual meetings of the
American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, November,
1989.
I wish to thank the Fulbright Commission and the Graduate
School, The Center for
-
48 SIDNEY M. GREENFIELD
Latin America, and The College of Letters and Science of the
University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee for the financial support over
the past few years that made the research on which the paper is
based possible. I alone am responsible for its content. 2 The Casa
do Jardim refers to a building located in the garden of the
Spiritist Hospital of Porto Aiegre. The hospital had been
established by the Spiritist Federation as one of its many
charities. For more than two decades, beginning in the late 1960s,
the group had met there every Saturday morning to treat patients.
In 1987, however, they were asked to leave because their beliefs,
and following from them, the forms of treatment they employed were
judged to have gone beyond the acceptable orthodoxy of Spiritism,
at least as defined by the directors of the Spiritist Federation
who administer the hospital. Since then they have continued to
treat patients, renting space on a short term basis from a number
of unaffilated Spiritist and/or Umbanda centers. Their hope is to
some day be able to finance the construction of their own premises.
3 Unlike the woman who had left without being treated, most
patients who seek the help of the Casa do Jardim healers already
have been to conventional medical doctors. They usually have taken
tests and been to laboratories and hospitals. When their symptoms
did not disappear, they looked elsewhere. Some also may have turned
previously to a Spiritist center - where healing is done - before
coming to the Casa do Jardim. Others may have tried one or more
Umbanda healers, a Batuque pai-de-santo, or one of the other
religious based healers so popular in Brazil. Only if their
symptoms disappear and they learn about it by word of mouth will
they come to the Casa do Jardim. Dr. Lacerda and his fellow
healers, of course, respect conventional medicine and what it can
do. Their concern is with what it cannot do. To prevent patients
like Amelda, the woman who had just left, from wasting their time
and needlessly occupying the group, Doctor Ivan Harvr, who
diagnosed the thyroid condition, now screens patients on Friday
afternoons. He conducts a detailed interview diagnosing each
patient's problem. Those, like Amelda, who can be treated medically
are sent to conventional doctors. Those that need the treatment
developed at the Casa do Jardim are assigned to a healing team,
given a number, and told to return on Saturday. 4 For Spiritists
there is an inverse relationship between density and degree of
moral advancement - and therefore good. The astral world is
believed to be more advanced than the material. It is less dense
than the material world whose density is indicative of its less
morally developed state. For Spiritists the denser something is the
less spiritually and morally developed it is assumed to be. 5 This
innovation, however, has not been accepted by mainstream Spiritist
intellectuals and leaders. It is one of the reasons the Casa do
Jardim group was asked to leave the ~arden house at the Spiritist
Hospital.
The other four are: administering hand passes (see Armand 1983;
Toledo 1954); directing healing at a distance by their spirit
guides; "psych0graphing," or writing prescriptions for medicines
dictated to them by their spirit guides; and doing surgeries when
possessed by spirit doctors from the other world. 7 Spiritist
religious practice in Brazil has come to be referred to as the
ethic of practical charity (Renshaw 1969:74). "Spiritism without
charity," adds David St. Clair (1971:115), quoting an unnamed
Spiritist author, "is inconceivable: It just is not Spiritism."
Spiritist charity took two main forms in Brazil: (1) the giving
of social assistance to the poor; and (2) healing (McGregor
1967:93). The second, including both physical and mental healing,
then developed into what Renshaw (1969) refers to as Spiritism's
mission in the universe. With respect to Spiritist healing McGregor
(1967:93) adds that a "...total and genuine lack of cost and
treatment by specific.., spirits rather than generalized healing
through their aid are the main differences between Brazilian and
other branches of the movement." 8 A reference both to the table
around which Kardecist mediums sit and to the fact that most
Kardecists are white and middle class. 9 See Droogers' (1988)
interesting case in which Brazil was the patient that had to be
disobsessed.
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SPIRITIST THERAPY IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL 49
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