Hayes, Kelly E. 2024. Spirits of the Space Age: The Imagined World of Brazil’s Valley of the Dawn. Oxford Scholarship Online. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516393.001.0001.
Description:
The Valley of the Dawn (Vale do Amanhecer) is a unique psychic ecosystem: equal parts religious movement, enchanted city, utopian vision, and theatrical spectacle. Hundreds of mediums dressed in dazzling vestments gather there daily to perform ceremonies for healing and karmic redemption. They consider themselves the spiritual descendants of an ancient race of extraterrestrials originally sent to galvanize humanity’s cultural and spiritual evolution. Founded in the 1960s by a charismatic spirit medium called Aunt Neiva (1925–1985), the Valley of the Dawn synthesizes elements from Christianity, Spiritism, Afro-Brazilian religions, UFO beliefs, and esoteric philosophies into a Space Age cosmology focused on healing and self-transformation. Today the Valley is home to over 25,000 people and the center of a global religious movement with more than 800 affiliated temples worldwide. Spirits of the Space Age details the Valley’s historical emergence and explores its “imagined world”—the imaginative and collectively shared representations that foster a common sense of identity, meaning, and purpose among Valley members. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, it offers a narrative portrait of a new religious movement as seen in and through the lives of Aunt Neiva, her most important collaborators, and contemporary adherents. By presenting a more complete picture of the Valley of the Dawn, this book counters the persistent media representations of the Valley as a cult. But it also illuminates how religious movements respond to their particular place and time even as they situate themselves in relationship to imagined otherworlds and times.
Credits: https://academic.oup.com/book/56123
