"Pelas estrelas de uma banda": sincretismo e ecletismo em um centro de Santo Daime da Bahia

Abstract

Brilho das Águas is a center of the religion called Santo Daime, founded in Salvador, in 1995. It is recognized as the first Santo Daime center to be founded in the state of Bahia. This collective began at a time when Afro-Brazilian religions were going through a period known as Africanization, in which they sought to reconnect with their African matrixes that had been erased during the period called whitening. By studying the specific case of the church Brilho das Águas, this thesis questions how the conceptions and practices of this center relate to the period of Africanization. It was observed that Brilho das Águas was impacted by Africanization, through the dialogues established with the church Flor da Montanha, located in Nova Friburgo/RJ, founded by the late Ialorixá Arlete Coutinho (Baixinha). She founded Umbanda centers in the state of Rio de Janeiro and was confirmed in Candomblé. The Brilho das Águas also follows the work done by Dona Dinorá, in Sergipe. Dinorá, similarly to Baixinha, performs Umbanda, Candomblé and Santo Daime ceremonies. Although Brilho das Águas and Flor da Montanha are autonomous centers, they are influenced by the Igreja do Culto Eclético da Fluente Luz Universal Patrono Sebastião Mota de Melo (Church of the Eclectic Worship of Fluent Universal Light Patron Sebastião Mota de Melo) -ICEFLU, located in the Céu do Mapiá community, in the municipality of Pauini/AM. This Amazonian center has been close to Umbanda since the 1970s, and welcomes indigenous people and indigenists into its midst. One must take into account, in this context, that Santo Daime is an Afro-indigenous religion, and has reclaimed elements that were already part of its history, but that were forgotten during the whitening period. The first chapter of this thesis brings the history of the formation and foundation of Santo Daime by Raimundo Irineu Serra (Mestre Irineu) and his followers, as well as the stories of Sebastião Mota de Melo (Padrinho Sebastião) and Baixinha. The second chapter presents the history of Brilho das Águas, the church that is the focus of this study. In the third chapter, through an auto-ethnography and an ethnography, the author's experiences are told alongside those of other interlocuters from Brilho das Águas, Flor da Montanha and Céu do Mapiá, where he carried out field work and incursions. Some religious experiences lived by the author before joining the Santo Daime are also addressed. The fourth and last chapter brings a historical review of anthropological concepts related to syncretism, making them reverberate on the information presented in the first three chapters. For the analysis of the information, the notions of syncretism, whitening and Africanization, proposed by Prandi, were used. In the specific case of Santo Daime, the author makes use of these notions, considering the sociocultural context of the time in which they were being mobilized: Syncretism between 1890 and 1920, whitening between 1930 and 1970 and Africanization from 1980 until today.