Above the clouds and below the heavens: an analysis of the cosmology of the encantados in tambor de mina

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the cosmology of the "encantados", a specific category of entities that originated in the Amazon region, but today it's widespread in several cities in Brazil, including those more urbanized, such as São Paulo. According to the religious, the encantado is a deity who having lived on earth didn't go through the process of death, he's "encanta". This process of "encantamento" occurs in various spaces of nature, such as rivers, beaches and forests, "mythological space" called "encantaria", located, according to the religious, "above the clouds and below the heavens". In this sense, the encantados puts into perspective some fundamental social categories such as life and death, because they are not located in either logic, or time and space, because they are associated with a "time outside of time" and a mythical space (encantaria) that although it can refer to geographically identifiable places, (such as rivers and forests) allude to them as portals or passages to other cosmological dimensions. The research includes bibliographic analysis and fieldwork in a network of terreiros founded in Belém (lineage from Pai Jorge de Itaci), with branches in São Paulo that houses this cult since the 1980. (AU)