MAGIC, UMBANDA, AND SPIRITUALISM

FICTION, DOCTRINE AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN THE WORK OF LOURENÇO BRAGA

Abstract

In the 1940’, “The Mysteries of Magic” immerged from the author Lourenço Braga. The author dedicated himself to writing bias doctrine about the Umbanda, becoming a part of the new religion intellectuals generation. Therefore, becoming a part of the generation dedicated to making the Umbanda known while giving it an identity, capable of being peculiar amongst an expansive perspective of cultural realities apparently or assumingly having African Roots. In this sense, Lourenço Braga inhabits an interdiscursive space in which the homologies with spiritualism and the dominant religion itself appear to be narrative resources, pointing out the estrangement of African values. Contrary to his explicitly doctrine content, “The Mysteries of Magic” is addressed as a romance. Thus, the constructions of the narrative and of the characters, as well as the values that they embody, show a documental condition in the work, capable of being interrogated by historical-geographical works in search of representations of documented realities. In this specific case, Lourenço Braga refers to values, religious identity projects, and imaginary simplifications that are extremely important to efforts in comprehending the first Umbanda intellectual´s works.