chapter 12 Becoming a Jaguar: Spiritual Routes in the Vale do Amanhecer

Emily Pierini

Introduction

The Spiritualist Christian Order Vale do Amanhecer is a mediumistic religion that emerged in 1959 through Neiva Chaves Zelaya (1925–1985), known in as the clairvoyant ‘Tia Neiva’ (Aunt Neiva). A widow with four children, she was a 33-year-old truck driver working on the construction of Brasília when she first began to spontaneously manifest mediumistic phenomena. She sought explanations about her phenomena in Catholicism (the religion in which she was brought up in), in psychiatry, in Candomblé and, eventually, she situated what was happening to her within the discourse of Spiritism. She claimed to have experienced astral travels to Tibet, where she had undertaken a spiritual apprenticeship with a Tibetan monk called Master Umahã (Sassi 1999: 12), as well having followed the instructions of spirit guides such as Pai Seta Branca (Father White Arrow), Mãe Yara (Mother Yara), Pai João de Enoque (Father John of Enoch), Tiaozinho and Amanto, among others, in order to establish the material, ritualistic and doctrinal foundations of the Amanhecer, includ- ing the shapes and disposition of the sacred spaces and ritual vestments. The question of apprenticeship through spirit guides in Brazilian mediumistic reli- gions has been addressed also by Marcelo Camurça (2003), who highlights the ‘pedagogical’ character of some spirits instructing their mediums in different fields of knowledge. Tia Neiva’s revelations were systematized by her partner Mario Sassi (1921–1994), who was refered to by mediums as ‘the intellectual’ of the doctrine, given his background in the social sciences. In the earliest stage of its development, the Order changed several names and locations, moving between the Goiás and the Federal District, includ- ing: União Espiritualista Seta Branca (Spiritualist Union White Arrow) in the Serra de Ouro near Alexânia (1959), followed by Obras Sociais da Ordem Es- piritualista Cristã (Social Works of the Spiritual Christian Order) in Taguatin- ga (1964). In 1969 the main temple, currently known as Templo Mãe (Mother Temple), was established in a farm 50 km northeast from the Capital Brasília and 6 km South from the town of Planaltina-DF, and the Order adopted the current name of ‘Vale do Amanhecer.’ Many patients and visitors, who arrived

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004322134_014 226 Pierini seeking Tia Neiva’s advice and spiritual healing, subsequently returned to the temple in order to become mediums themselves. Since its foundation the Or- der has opened over 600 temples in Brazil, and funded temples in the United States (Vásquez and Alves 2013), Bolivia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Japan, , Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.1 In Europe the Order is experiencing a rapid expansion in Portugal with five temples and over 2,000 mediums being initiated between 2011 and 2015. Two temples were founded in Cambridgeshire and London, attracting primarily Brazilian and Portuguese members residing in the uk, although rituals are also available to English- speaking patients. Some mediums from Brazil are currently travelling to Italy assisting Italians with the set-up of a new temple.2 Increasingly, foreigners travelling to Brazil and visiting the Templo Mãe decide to undertake the medi- umistic development and to be initiated as mediums. The area around the main temple in Brazil, the Templo Mãe, has grown from a small farm into a town of around 10,000 inhabitants.3 Most activities in the town are based around the religious activities of the temple. Indeed, accord- ing to the leaders of the Order, 70% of the inhabitants are mediums or have some kind of tie to the Vale do Amanhecer. The social composition of the Or- der in the Templo Mãe includes working-class members, as well as a significant number of middle-class and professional participants, living in the Vale or com- ing from Brasília or its satellite cities. Because of the proximity to the capital, the most common employment sectors are the government offices, the public

1 At the time of my research, between 2004 and 2015, the temples in Germany and Japan were temporarily closed. 2 The ethnographic fieldwork upon which this discussion is based was conducted in Brazil in 2004, and between 2009 and 2012 in the main temple of the Vale do Amanhecer in Brasília. It also included fieldwork in temples in North-East and Southern Brazil, Portugal, the u.k. and Italy in 2014 and 2015. This research has been funded in different stages by The Spalding Trust, the Read-Tuckwell Scholarship (University of Bristol), and the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Sutasoma Award. It also benefited from the institutional support of the Faculdade de Médicina of the Universidade de São Paulo (Medical Anthropology). 3 According to the 2010 Brazilian National Census, during the year in which I carried out my fieldwork the town of the Vale do Amanhecer counted 10,238 inhabitants (ibge 2010). In the same year, around 500 mediums were initiated at Templo Mãe. According to the admin- istration of the Order, the registry of the Filho de Devas counted 90,900 members initiated between 1996 and 2010. However, they stressed that it is currently not possible to determine the number of initiated mediums across the temples of the Amanhecer since not all temples send their registers to the main temple in Brasília. Particularly in the first decades following the foundation, not all mediums were formally registered. Further, there is no rule on how frequently mediums should attend, and no way to note how may members have left and returned to the Order, making it imppossible to determine the number of active members.