Between the material world and the spiritual world: magic, religiosity and popular catholicism in a city in Minas Gerais

Abstract

This work focuses on the different forms of interaction between the spiritual world and the material world in the municipality of Caldas. From my experiences with the local population, I show that such relationships are woven by the manifestations of this spiritual world in people's daily lives in various aspects, such as the visit of spirits of dead relatives, especially on days that follow the death of the body. I also observed narratives that evoke the appearance of the souls of former residents in places of personal distinction, such as their homes or in places that committed their sins - which is why they still walk in the world of the living - and that is why they are incorporated into the haunting category. In this dimension of proximity and communications, in addition to the Catholic faithful, who represent the majority of the population and exercise various magical rites and practices, I find other social agents who have a closer interaction with the spiritual world, elaborating spells that can lead to death or blessers, who cure diseases, expel hauntings and undo spells. In this sense, through “participant observation”, the collection of narratives and collective memory, when we find intersectionalities in the countless forms of convergence between the two worlds, in which representations about death and those about the souls of the dead are relevant to the community, I chose to incorporate them into the notion of popular Catholicism.