Abstract
The author illustrates alternative forms of syncretic procedure at work in three forms of “trance culture” which act as sources of diagnosis and divine healing for African residents of Gabon today: initiation into prophecy and visionary experience in a syncretic cult (Bwiti); clairvoyance from a minister in an independent African church (Celestial Christianity); charisma of deliverance from exorcizing pastors in Brazilian pentecostal churches. These three figures, examples of African religious hybridization, are not intended to lead to a new typology of syncretisms or to any theological judgement about the Christian or pagan authenticity of the religions. If the term syncretism continues to be applied to certain religions which reject it or is used to single out certain processes which are not the result of simple mixing or addition, it is simply because the ambiguity of these configurations goes along with the productive ambivalence of the symbolic work of initiated prophets, visionaries, or exorcising pastors.