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Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2016-11-01T11:27:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Celso Luiz Terzetti Filho.pdf: 1806807 bytes, checksum: 187cff518ca2190267819f5e227c3b4f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-01T11:27:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Celso Luiz Terzetti Filho.pdf: 1806807 bytes, checksum: 187cff518ca2190267819f5e227c3b4f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-19 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Created in England at the end of the first half of the twentieth century Wicca was widespread in the United States from the 60's, and in Brazil from the end of the 90s. Based on the works of the founder, Gerald B. Gardner, productions of American and Brazilian groups as well as field observations in Brazil and the United States, this study sought to identify the elements and ideas that contributed to the deterritorialization of religion and its reception in different contexts. Our thesis is that through the combination of two project identities Wicca previously restricted to a nationalist interpretation has been reoriented to a global context / Surgida na Inglaterra no final da primeira metade do século XX a Wicca foi amplamente difundida nos Estados Unidos a partir da década de 60, e no Brasil a partir do final da década de 90. Partindo da análise das obras do fundador, Gerald B. Gardner, das produções de grupos estadunidenses e brasileiros, bem como observações de campo no Brasil e nos Estados Unidos, esta pesquisa buscou identificar os elementos e ideias que contribuíram para a desterritorialização da religião e sua recepção em diferentes contextos. Nossa tese é a de que através da articulação de duas identidades de projeto a Wicca antes restrita a uma interpretação nacionalista foi reorientada para um contexto global

The purpose of this essay is to concisely present an overview of the Pagan ritual practice before the Christianization of Ireland and the United Kingdom, which enables tracking down the connection and relationship between them and three American and British, Wiccan Youtube-creators nicknamed Witchtubers. Witchtuber’s description of Samhain and objects visible in chosen videos are analyzed from Christopher Partridge’s theory of Occulture along with the parameters of acceptance, harmonization and the centralization of Goddess-worship concluded by previous studies. Also causes of the development of Neo-Paganism and Wiccain the U.K. and USA have been a part of this research in being able to further draw connections between today’s practice amongst Witchtubers and previous research. In able to do this, Content analysis has been applied to the transcriptions made by the author of this essay in order to analyze the parameters of reference-features, proportional and thematic content. In conclusion, the analysis of Witchtuber’s videos along with previous research by scholars confirm the theory of Occulture along with the question of acceptance and harmonization though leaving the question of Goddess-centering as more of a possibility of representing the mere majority of practitioners. Fragmented pieces of information about the Pagan past is left and scholars claim Irish and British Paganism to have been extinct since the overthrow by Christians. It has left the practitioners of Wicca with their own interpretation and manipulation of Paganism. Witchtuber’s statements and showcasing of objects match scholar’s descriptions of historical context to the development of the Wiccan movement apart from a few exceptions. Those which cannot be directly connected rather indicate the continuous development of the movement as of being a personal religion.

The broad aim of this thesis is twofold: firstly, I contextualise the Maausk movement and its practitioners’ understandings in relation to history and the surrounding society; secondly, I analyse the affective and embodied experiences of being a Maausk practitioner from a phenomenological perspective. The thesis focuses on the formation and practice of Maausk, which is perceived to be deeply tied to the society and history where it exists. Relatedly, this study examines how Maausk identity formation and practices have been influenced by the Soviet legacy, romantic nationalism and Estonia’s current economic and political situation. In order to analyse the Maausk experiences and narratives, this study draws from various phenomenologically oriented theories of affect, embodiment and emotion, as well as cultural theories of place, identity, tradition and authenticity. I have used economic anthropology and globalisation theories as well as historical studies of Estonia’s Soviet past to contextualise the Maausk movement. Further, to place Maausk in the European religious landscape, this study refers to native faith and Neo-pagan studies. Through sensory ethnography, this study draws on the affective and emotional aspects of the research material to analyse how the complexity of emotional experiences of being a Maausk practitioner produces Maausk meanings and values. The study also examines the role and function of the body and emotions during the process of embodying the Maausk practices, both techniques and meanings of the practices.

Too often women have a secondary place in religious institutions, with no possibility to influence or come into leading positions. This thesis aims to understand women’s empowerment by searching for such examples in Neo-Paganism, a growing New Religious Movement (NRM) in the west. Grace Jantzen’s development of Foucault’s power theory is utilized to analyze and understand the results. A mixed method is used; four interviews are conducted with Wiccan and Druid women, a survey of 332 women is analyzed, and literature and studies on Neo-Paganism are analyzed. I draw the conclusion that Neo-Paganism can empower women in different ways, however, this can be influenced by socio-cultural factors, as empowerment can look very different in different countries. The result is meant to provide us with an understanding of women’s needs in a religious and spiritual context, so that women may become empowered within their religious communities.

The Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) created the Silueta Series during the 1970s and ‘80s. It consists of earth-body works in situ featuring the silhouette of the artist's body fashioned from mud, plants, rocks, gunpowder and other materials. Underlying the creation of the Silueta Series is Mendieta's belief that the elements are sentient and powerful beings. This perception is particularly strong in the Afro-Cuban religion Santeria, a creolized form of the Òrìsà tradition of the Yoruba of West Africa introduced to the Americas during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. While scholars have noted Mendieta's incorporation of Santeria in her art, a thorough analysis of the iconographical references to the deities have yet to be explored. This thesis aims to provide such an analysis of Mendieta's works; thus enriching the current discourse on the Silueta Series.

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Ecocritical theology relates to American fiction as it connects nature and spirituality. In my development of the term “neo-pastoral” I begin with Virgil’s Eclogues to serve as examples for spiritual and nature related themes. Virgil’s characters in “The Dispossessed” represent people’s alienation from the land. Meliboeus must leave his homeland because the Roman government has reassigned it to their war veterans. As he leaves Meliboeus wonders why fate has rendered this judgment on him and yet has granted his friend Tityrus a reprieve. Typically, pastoral literature represents people’s longing to leave the city and return to the spiritual respite of the country. When Meliboeus begins his journey he does not travel toward a specific geographical location. Because the gods have forced him from his land and severed his spiritual connection to nature he travels into the unknown. This is the starting point from which I develop neo-pastoral threads in contemporary literature and discuss the alienation that people experience when they are no longer connected to a spirit of the land or genius loci. Neo-pastoralism relates Bakhtin’s idea of chronotope and the expansion of the narrative voice of the novel to include the time/space dialogic. Neo-pastoral fiction shows people in their quest to find spirituality in spite of damage from chemical catastrophic events and suggests they may turn to technology as an ideological base to replace religion. The (anti) heroes of this genre often feel no connection with Judeo-Christian canon yet they do not consider other models of spirituality. Through catastrophes related to the atomic bomb, nuclear waste accidents, and the realization of how chemical pollutants affect the atmosphere, neo-pastoral literature explores the idea of apocalypticism in the event of mass annihilation and the need for canonical reformation. The novels explored in this dissertation are John Updike’s Rabbit, Run; Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49; Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer; Don DeLillo’s White Noise; Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead; Toni Morrison’s Paradise; and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Earth Matters examines the relationships between alternative religion in North America and the natural world through the twin lenses of the history of religions and cultural anthropology. Throughout, nature remains a contested ground, defined simultaneously the limits of cultural activity and by an increasing expansion of claims to knowledge by scientific discourses. Less a historical review than a series of fugues of thought, Earth Matters engages with figures like the French vitalist, Georges Canguilhem, the American environmentalist, John Muir; the founder of Deep Ecology, Arne Næss; the collaborators on Gaia Theory, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis; the physicist and New Age scientist, Fritjof Capra; and the Wiccan writer and activist, Starhawk. These subjects move in spirals throughout the thesis: Canguilhem opens the question of vitalism, the search for a source of being beyond the explanations of the emerging sciences. As rationalism expands its dominance across the scientific landscape, this animating force moves into the natural world, to that protean space between the city and the wild and in the environmental thinkers who initially moved along those boundaries. As the twentieth century moves towards a close, mechanistic thinking simultaneously reaches heights of success previously unimagined and collapses under the demand for complexity posed by quantum physics, by research in genetic interactions, by the continued elusive relationship of mind to health. This allows the wild to return inside through the internalization of consciousness sparked by the American New Age, but also provides a new model to understand the natural world as complex zone open to a wide variety of strategies, including the multiplicities of understanding offered through contemporary neopaganisms. Earth Matters argues for the necessity of the notion of ecology, both as an environmental concern but also as an organizing principle for human thought and behavior. Ecologies are by their nature complex and multi-variegated things dependent upon the surprising and unpredictable interaction of radically different organisms, and it is through this model that we are best able to understand not only ourselves but also our communities and our efforts to make sense of the external world.