Horizonte (Mar 2014)
Globalization, New Age and Popular Religions:A digression from Sunrise Valley
Abstract
This paper aims at studying the religious movement “Valley of the Dawn” (Vale do Amanhecer) whose origins was in Brasília in the late 60s, through the articulation of elements of popular Catholicism, Kardecism, Umbanda and the New Age, as well as the use of signs drawn from various global contexts and used in a performative way. We understand that its formulation is given as an intense process of interaction between the global and the local, from references to popular religions in Brazil with the signs of the universe of the New Age, and from the use of performative and visual references to different cultures. Such articulation enables the creation of polysemous senses and meanings that constitute the identity of individuals who experience the sacred. Our considerations are brought from an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in São Lourenço da Mata and Recife.
