The Therapeutic Aspect of Modern Witchcraft: Customization of the Myth

• Grant number: 24/03114-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2024
• End date: December 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Urban Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: José Guilherme Cantor Magnani
• Grantee: Beatriz de Arruda Campos Barcellos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In this research I intend to explore how the therapeutic aspect is configured, manifested and understood by the Wicca religion (also called Modern Witchcraft), which seeks to modernize and adapt magic into the disenchanted urban context of São Paulo. To that and in order to demonstrate Wicca as a legitimate form of therapy, I focus on its narrative-performative aspect and its symbolic effectiveness. Leading with the idea that this effectiveness is reinforced by the high customization capacity of Wiccan myths, which is understood here as the possibility of personalizing collective myths, gathering from individual preferences for certain cultures and rites and inserting aspects of the private life of each believer, making the myth unique to each individual. To delve deeper into these characteristics, I will mainly use the analysis of the construction and interpretation of the Magical Personality, a term used for the wizard alter ego of wiccans. The analysis will start from observations carried out at the Loja Wicca Old Religion e o Santuário da Grande Mãe and then establishments and events belonging to the Wicca circuit of São Paulo will be outlined, updating, with a certainly more specific approach, the neo-esoteric circuit proposed by my advisor José Magnani in his book Mystica Urbe: an anthropological study on the neo-esoteric circuit in the metropolis (1999). In addition to its relevance due to the lack of material produced on the topic, this project also seeks to contribute to the important development of the logic of healing and therapy of knowledge that escapes the definition of hegemonic science.