Transnational mediumship and the development of a transhistorical self in the Vale do Amanhecer

Abstract

The mediumistic practices of the Brazilian Spiritualist Christian Order Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn) are spreading transnationally through migration and spiritual tourism. This article illustrates the mediums’ circulation between Brazil and Europe, how they forge sacred spaces and mediumistic bodies, and the challenges of translation of the doctrine and rituals. It then proposes a phenomenological approach to the transnational circulation of mediumistic practices focussing on the experiences of mediums, analysing a particular conceptualisation of the self in a transhistorical dimension, which may foster or inhibit transnational mobility. It argues that the notion of a transhistorical self in the context of transnational mediumship gives rise to new configurations of the relationship among place, history, and self, allowing new embodied spatial dispositions and ways of knowing while expanding possibilities of being and belonging trans-space and time.

Introduction

When examining the mobility of individuals and how religions travel with migrants, scholars have pointed at how these ‘multidirectional religious flows’ (Van de Kamp, 2016) are building new configurations of belonging or developing cultural heritage (Hüwelmeier and Krause, 2010; Rocha and Vásquez, 2013; Sarró and Blanes, 2009). However, they noted that the scope of studies on transnational religion is still limited by the fact that spirit mediumship is addressed as a traditional local practice in opposition to the global mobility of Pentecostalism (Hüwelmeier and Krause, 2010). Yet, rather than marginal, spirit mediumship and possession are increasingly spreading through migration and transnational media networks bringing along new subjectivities and the ‘return of the religious’ at a global level (Zillinger et al., 2014). Through flows of Brazilian migrants to the Global North – began in the 1980s and intensified by the current Brazilian recession – mediumistic religions spread overseas as part of ‘the diaspora of Brazilian religions’, which has informed a new ‘polycentric global religious cartography’ (Rocha and Vásquez, 2013). The increasing presence of Brazilian mediumistic practices in European countries is also intensifying the spiritual tourism of Europeans towards the Global South (Dawson, 2013; Oosterbaan et al., 2019; Rocha and Vásquez, 2013), who may either receive treatment through spiritual therapies (Rocha, 2017) or be trained into a mediumistic practice, with new mediums then returning to their homelands and opening their spiritual centres. In fact, while most European centres have a Brazilian spiritual leader and local participants, others are entirely managed by locals (Groisman, 2009; Kurz, 2018; Saraiva, 2013), which suggests that these centres are way more than places for migrants to maintain their practices overseas.

Moving beyond the disembodied textualism that has framed the studies of religion, as Vásquez (2011) puts it, and the reduction of spirit mediumship and possession phenomena to mentalistic patterns or symbols of social order, I propose a phenomenological approach to the transnational circulation of mediumistic practices focussing upon the experiences of mediums and how they change their notions of body and self, of space and history, and their ways of knowing and belonging. I address the spread of the Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn) and its mediumistic practices across Europe. My discussion is based upon data from an anthropological study which involved long-term fieldwork conducted at different stages and sites in Brazil and Europe during which I conducted participant observation, and formal and informal interviewing with mediums. ¹

Founded in 1959 by Neiva Chaves Zelaya, ² known as the clairvoyant Tia Neiva (Aunt Neiva, 1925–1985), with over 700 temples the Vale do Amanhecer is experiencing a sudden transnationalisation opening temples abroad in Bolivia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Japan, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In healing rituals, spirit mediums help spirits entrapped on earth after death affecting humans to move on to the spirit worlds. Mediums also incorporate their spirit guides, such as pretos velhos (African slaves), caboclos (Amerindians), doctors, ciganos (gypsies), ministers of God, Amerindian princesses, water spirits, all working under the aegis of Jesus Christ. The main spirit guides are the Amerindian spirit Pai Seta Branca (Father White Arrow) and Mãe Yara (Mother Yara), who are presented as having previously incarnated as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare. This complex cosmology, which sees the mediums of the Vale as connected through joint past lives as a spirit group called the ‘Jaguars’ in several key historical moments, brings together elements from ancient civilisations, Christianity, Eastern religions, Spiritism, Amerindian and Afro-Brazilian religions, Theosophy, and millenarianism, to join the healing forces from their past lives for its rituals. Thus, mediumship in the Vale is considered to be related to the redemption of karma, so in their encounter with spirits, mediums are often confronted with narratives of their selves in past lives.

It is from this particular conceptualisation of the self in a transhistorical dimension that in this article I address the process of transnationalisation of the Vale. First, I illustrate the challenges that mediums encountered in opening the temples in Europe. Then, I explore how their idea of ‘mission’ in other lands is also informed by narratives of the self that are forged through the encounters with spirits. The phenomenological stance that I am adopting addresses ‘narratives’ in Ingold’s (2000) terms, as the ways in which lived, bodily, and perceptual experiences are interwoven, and ‘in which the resulting discursive constructions in turn affect people’s perceptions of the world around them’ (2000: 285). Therefore, in unpacking the notion of self through the mediums’ experiential encounter with spirits, I illuminate an affective relationship with mobility and land, which invites us to expand the Western notions of history and self in particular, exploring how they may inform religious transnationalism.

The challenges of transnationalisation

The spiritual tourism to the healing centres located at the Brazilian Central Plateau has intensified following Oprah Winfrey’s show in 2013, that reported on the medium known as João de Deus (John of God) who performed spiritual surgeries in Abadiânia. Many international visitors from Abadiânia then reached the Templo Mãe (Mother Temple) of the Vale near Brasília. Given the increasing number of foreigners who decided to develop their mediumship in the Vale, in 2013 mediumistic development classes were made available in English. After the training, some continued to practise as mediums in Brazil. Others went back home as initiated mediums. They may travel to Brazil once a year to practise mediumship, or they visit the Vale’s temples closer to their countries. Others pursued different spiritual paths. But a few received the mission by the spirits to open a temple where they live. Migration was another factor informing the opening of temples abroad. Indeed, almost a decade before 2013, some Brazilian mediums migrated to Portugal, the United Kingdom, Bolivia, and the United States with the spiritual mission to open a temple. The following discussion will highlight the circulation of Brazilian and European mediums that was key to the development of new temples, addressing how they forge sacred spaces and mediumistic bodies, and deal with the challenges of translation.

Spaces

Each temple is financially managed by the local mediums with their voluntary donations; the charitable purpose of spiritual work implies that they cannot receive offerings from patients. In Brazil, some temples are built on properties that the mediums have bought and the construction of the sacred spaces tends to reflect that of the Templo Mãe. In Europe, the limited number of mediums forming the local groups and the difficulties in getting permission to build on a land mean that mediums need to make adaptations of Tia Neiva’s pattern for the temple’s sacred spaces. As the group grows, the possibility of finding larger places to rent and so to perform more rituals increases. Temples are formally categorised in three stages of development, differing in the types of rituals and sacred spaces, that reflect the different phases of development of what became the Templo Mãe. Thus, the mediums opening a new temple may somehow re-experience the foundation of the first temple by Tia Neiva.

Mediums may initially setup a space to host their rituals in a private house (in a garage or room), such as in the United Kingdom and one temple in Italy. Some groups in Germany and in Italy began by renting a space to host meetings on a monthly basis. This modality was described by a German medium as ‘a mobile temple’: the group sets up the space before each meeting, the medium responsible ritually summons forces to assist on that day of spiritual works and returns them to the spiritual realm at the end of the day. Temples that have reached a larger number of mediums, such as the ones in Portugal and Italy, have rented large sheds in industrial estates and built sacred spaces to reflect, where possible, the pattern of the Templo Mãe. Even the position of images and statues of the main spirit guides tends to reproduce that pattern. In Italy, mediums added the image of St. Francis of Assisi – acknowledging the importance of the return of the mission of Pai Seta Branca to the land where he had lived as Francis of Assisi – along with an image reproducing a Papal blessing parchment received by Tia Neiva. These images were intended to create a sense of familiarity in visitors entering for the first time in a temple with images of Brazilian spirits. While there is a certain flexibility in the setting of sacred spaces, however, the introduction of new elements and symbols departing from the original pattern tends to be discouraged in both the temples in Brazil and abroad.

Each temple abroad is hierarchically linked to a specific male representative in Brazil called Adjunto de Povo (Adjunct of People). This hierarchical line of belonging is thought as a continuum of the ‘decrescent force’, a spiritual power descending from highly evolved spiritual beings called ministers and projected upon their representative, the Adjunct, who distributes it to his people, the group of mediums belonging to the temple. He is also responsible for the collective karma of his people accumulated through joint past incarnations to be redeemed through their spiritual work. If a member of the people receives the mission to open a temple from the spirit guides, this medium becomes himself an Adjunct of People (President of the new temple) and the mediums initiated in that temple will gradually form his people, represented by his minister. The link with the root Adjunct of People in Brazil is maintained even with temples abroad, with representatives travelling to Europe to perform the initiations, forming lines of belonging that are often transnational and define a new spiritual geography made of different peoples, continents, and reincarnational histories.

People

Transnational religious circulation is often fostered by the spiritual seekers’ fascination with cultural products and aesthetics coming from across the Atlantic (Rocha and Vásquez, 2013; Van de Kamp, 2016). Joana Bahia (2016) notes that as Europeans engaged with Brazilian cultural elements (e.g. dance, music, food), they contributed, along with Brazilians, to the spread of Afro-Brazilian religions in Germany.

In the Vale, activities are seldom promoted since proselytising is forbidden. Rather, the temple is considered by mediums to be a spiritual first-aid (pronto socorro espiritual) to which people are drawn by their karma. Visitors, called ‘patients’ by mediums, arrive by word of mouth from other patients who have attended its spiritual healing works for physical, mental, emotional, or relationship matters. Some patients may be invited by spirit guides to develop their mediumship, and may decide to undertake a training that prepares them to be initiated as mediums, the so-called ‘mediumistic development’.

The temples in English-speaking countries have primarily Brazilian members, such as in the United States (see Vásquez and Alves, 2013) and the United Kingdom. They are currently beginning to hold rituals in English and translate the doctrinal material to develop local mediums. In Bolivia, Portugal, Italy, and Germany, mediums are primarily locals, and rituals are held in the local language. The rapid expansion of temples in Portugal was facilitated by the linguistic accessibility provided by Portuguese language. Since the first initiation in Europe was held in Portugal in 2012, 10 temples have been opened and over 2000 local mediums were initiated in the first 3 years.

The temples in Italy and Germany have local leaders who encountered the Vale in Brazil. Mediums in Italy have a heterogeneous socioeconomic background and many had previous experiences with spiritual approaches to well-being (e.g. shamanism, pranic healing, reiki, biotransenergetics), with some of them practising as holistic therapists. Others connected through Catholic pilgrimages to Medjugorje. While I stress the mediums’ previous involvement in spiritual healing practices, I should point out that they do not necessarily fall into the category of ‘New Agers’. Those spiritual seekers addressed by the literature through the category of ‘New Agers’ may have attended the rituals as patients but seldom do they become initiated as they are uncomfortable with the idea of exclusive commitment to a single practice and the hierarchical organisation of this initiatic Order.

Some mediums in Italy had previously visited the Vale for the first time on spiritual tours to Brazil, where they also participated in Afro-Brazilian or Ayahuasca rituals. Years later, they had the opportunity to participate in the Vale’s rituals in Italy and decided to develop their mediumship in their own language, which facilitated their understanding of the doctrine. The first temple in Italy was founded in 2016 followed by another two in 2018. Initiated mediums may decide through individual initiative to visit the temples in Brazil to participate in a number of rituals that are not available in Europe, and they may often pick up orders of ritual uniforms from the Brazilian temples. Likewise, Brazilian mediums travelling to Europe to initiate new mediums also contribute to this circulation of people, sacred objects, and symbols across the Atlantic.

In Germany, the spiritual works began in 2020, when a group of six German mediums gathered to offer assistance to patients on a monthly basis. They came to know the Vale in the Templo Mãe in Brasília either through friends or through the tours from Abadiânia. They developed their mediumship and were initiated in the Vale. When they returned to Europe, they attended temples in Portugal where the messages received from spirit guides prepared them for the new mission to open a temple in Germany, as a medium told me:

I started to look for some locations [for the temple in Germany] and step by step I started to get the intuitions, what place it should be, how we should do it . . . by meditation, by being in a place and feeling that it’s the right place . . . the mediumship I have is the one of intuition (doutrinador), receiving not a message but a ‘knowing’ that it’s the right thing . . . There are several mediums that are looking for development, guidance, opportunities to exchange forces through spiritual work, and there are people requesting spiritual works. So, I wait for the spirit world to give me the right intuition at the right time . . . I had been praying for this to happen for several years, but it wasn’t feeling right. But right now, also facing the challenges that Europe is going through [with the Covid-19 pandemic], it seems the right time . . . We have the lessons in German and people are crying out of gratitude because suddenly they understand what it is about. (Interview via Skype, 18 March 2020)

Intuition plays a key role in both the location and setup of the temple and the translation of the doctrine into another language. In the next section, I address the challenges of translation faced by mediums in the process of transnationalisation of the doctrine and how these may emphasise an approach to embodied knowledge that is peculiar of the process of learning mediumship in the Vale.

Beyond the text: from translation to embodied knowledge

International participants beginning the mediumistic development in the Vale are faced with two major challenges: the language difference and learning a new way of knowing. In Brazil and abroad, the role of translator is taken by a bilingual medium who may translate the spirits’ messages and help in the mediumistic development. However, translators are not always readily available, so in that case the experience of rituals becomes fully focussed upon feeling.

The temples in non-Lusophone countries have dealt with practical choices regarding what should be translated in the practice of rituals. The common stance that they have adopted is that ritual keys (formulas) with a precise number of 14 words should be maintained in Portuguese in order to be effective, so are the hymns sung in rituals as they are held to be channelled by Tia Neiva from the spirit world in Portuguese accompanied by music. Other prayers and ritual sequences may be performed in the local language of the temple.

Access to doctrinal texts, such as Tia Neiva’s letters, is very limited for non-Portuguese speakers, as the translation is not so straightforward. As German medium said, ‘It is very difficult to translate her letters, but again, as I’m translating, I’m using my intuition and it becomes something that goes deep’, as her writing is considered to be the outcome of her experience in other spiritual planes.

An American medium in Brazil noted a difference in the approach of foreigners and Brazilians to the development classes:

The foreigners wanted to know more information and the Brazilians grew up knowing what a preto velho was, they heard the stories . . . like when I arrived it was like ‘I want to know everything and I want to know it now’. Towards the end of the development, I sort of realized that it had nothing to do with that anyway. It’s about feeling it . . . As far as knowing specifically what this person represents or what this energy is . . . you feel it! You know, because it feels good inside, it gives you confidence. (Vale do Amanhecer, 18 February 2019)

Likewise, patients and mediums in development in Italy who were new to the rituals and cosmology of the Vale would ask for books to read, search for information on the Internet, and ask experienced mediums for explanations. As a response, they would be told to be patient and ‘feel it’. Elsewhere, I have addressed learning spirit mediumship in the Vale as learning a way of knowing ³ through the body, in which emotions and sensations play a key role in learning the modalities of discernment between spirits – modalities that are culturally informed. Halloy and Naumescu (2012) address possession as a ‘cultural expertise’ in which discernment is underpinned by ‘social values’ and ‘normative criteria offered by a particular culture’ (2012: 166). For Luhrmann (2009), discernment among Evangelical Christians learning to identify God is a ‘social process’ with ‘socially taught rules’ (2009: 90). In the Vale, these sensory modalities develop a shared feeling and shared skills through which a ‘mediumistic body’ is cultivated individually and collectively (Pierini, 2020). Learning in mediumistic development classes is practical and empirical, with the theory being introduced only in advanced courses. The limitations in accessing translated doctrinal texts and explanations in non-Lusophone temples emphasise even more this bodily and intuitive approach to learning doctrinal knowledge. Mediums in development, who may not be familiar with Brazilian spirit guides, have to learn a new way of knowing, educating their attention through bodily ‘enskillment’ (Ingold, 2000), and experiencing new configurations of gestures and expressions in manifesting each of their spirits according to the Vale’s repertoire. In Italy, when some mediums in development would initially manifest a spirit of a priest or a saint, the Brazilian instructors considered them as local spirit guides belonging to the Italian land that needed to be instructed to come under the cultural manifestation of a preto velho through specific gestures, postures, and expressions in order to work in the Vale’s rituals (Pierini, 2020). One German woman in mediumistic development in Brazil said that she was feeling ‘more embodied’:

Here the spirits come through your body . . . You have other dimensions inside of you as experience rather than knowledge . . . you can probably see it [the body] more as a semi-permeable membrane where it is very clearly defined in which space the spirit comes through. (Vale do Amanhecer, 10 September 2015)

This process of learning and controlling the spirits through the body and the senses (Espírito Santo, 2015; Halloy, 2015; Luhrmann, 2009; Pierini, 2016) informs the mediums’ sense of self, which becomes extended beyond the body and the single lifespan. While I have extensively discussed elsewhere how this process works among mediums in Brazil (Pierini, 2016, 2020), I will hereby consider the implications of these extended notions of the self in transnational perspective. So far, I have discussed the practical challenges that the Vale is facing following the sudden spread of its practices transnationally. I will now show how Brazilian and local mediums in the new country are not just facing the challenges of forging sacred spaces and mediumistic bodies, as well as of translating the doctrine, but they are also forging new narratives of the self.

Forging the transhistorical self transnationally

According to mediums, their spirit guides begin to work to alleviate the land from its energetic burden and building the spiritual foundation of the temple long before its opening, facilitating the release of disincarnated spirits remained trapped along the centuries. A Brazilian medium said that when mediums were looking for a place to build a temple in Northeast Brazil, a preta velha incorporated in a medium and told them that they had to open in that region because it was one of the first territories to free slaves in Brazil so it had been the stage of revolts and suffering in the past which had impregnated in the land. According to him, their mission to release spirits in the region was a karmic one, due to the fact that many mediums of the Vale had an incarnation as both slaves and land owners in Brazil. Years later, I came across a similar discourse in Italy. The disincarnated spirits connected to the Italian land to be released were identified by mediums through their spirit guides as ancient Romans or spirits linked to power intrigues in the history of the country.

Rocha (2011) has shown how the concept of ‘healing the land’ was implied in the opening of a Spiritist centre linked to the Brazilian healer John of God in Australia, when an Aboriginal Elder performed a ritual for the ancestors of the land to welcome Brazilian spiritual entities. They were then able to work together to heal the wounds of the land derived from the bloody history of the Aboriginal and British encounter. Rocha (2011) relates the idea of entities healing the land to the New Age Movement, which determines ‘a different understanding of Spiritism and John of God’s cosmology’ in Australia (2011: 146).

In the Vale, the discourse of healing the karma of a land is informed by a particular ‘spirit group’ identity of the mediums, who have shared past incarnations in that land and thus participated in that history. According to Tia Neiva’s revelations (Sassi, 2003), mediums belong to ‘the spiritual tribe of the Jaguars’: a group of spirits who had joint incarnations in specific historical times – such as in Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, as Mayans, during the French Revolution, as ‘gypsies’ in Andalusia and Russia, and in colonial Brazil – in which they have crossed paths not only with each other but also with their spirit guides. They reincarnated again and have the chance to evolve through the mission of practising their mediumship to assist humans in a time of crisis and change. In rituals, they call upon the forces left in their past life for healing. Each medium may represent these forces by joining a phalanx working in rituals with forces from a particular past life, may it be the Greeks, the Mayans, the Franciscans, the Gypsies, Magis, Samaritans, among others. Their encounters with spirits during rituals are often marked by narratives of their selves in past lives. Hence, I argue, they develop a transhistorical self that extends beyond the single lifespan, often drawing new spiritual geographies of belonging, which may also foster or inhibit transnational mobility. Indeed, some mediums I met in Brazil changed their plans to visit European countries as the spirit guides had warned them that there were disincarnated spirits from their past lives awaiting them in the ‘old world’. Yet, other Brazilian mediums were indicated by spirit guides for the ‘mission’ to travel to assist the opening of temples in Italy, either to help with the release of spirits from their lives as Romans during the Empire or because they had to readjust past life matters with Italian mediums through spiritual work with them.

Foreign mediums who have developed their mediumship in Brazil recalled a shift in their sense of self and of belonging. An American medium said, he felt a sense of connection to the community, of belonging to his people, and the phalanx of the Magis (Magos). His partner described the shift of her sense of self as follows:

I think that what I wanted from here was the training. I felt that it was time to let go of an intermediary, of someone who had the ‘ear’ of the entities . . . whether is the priest, the doctor, the Pope . . . is always like ‘oh, I am not good enough; they are special, I am not’. I developed my intuition . . . We did the development in one and a half years, so I think that the evolution happened alongside that. Something was created within me . . . there is something with me always, not just when I wear the clothes and go to the temple. I felt a shift in health, wellbeing, sense of self, empowerment . . . I understand more that I am here to fulfil a destiny . . . it’s like knowing that I have done it before, it’s just a refreshers course! Everything is sort of shifting and I think that’s because I am remembering things. I don’t really have ‘oh, yes, in 1630 I was this and that . . .’ it’s about bringing from all of the past lives, the deposits of energies, so that now I can use them in this life time, and it’s so transformative. (Vale do Amanhecer, 18 February 2019)

The idea of ‘remembering’ resonates also in the words of a German medium:

We are spirits who don’t have to be taught anything because we have already had many incarnations and the information passed in the classes is not for the brain, it is for our spirit to be awaken. This is the main difference because it is not about rationally feeding your brain with some notions; it is about practising love, tolerance and humility . . . and remember what we already have as heritage of our spirit . . . At the beginning I wanted to read more but then I understood that the work is not that much on the intellectual level as it is on the spiritual level. (Interview via Skype, 18 March 2020)

This embodied remembrance is indeed very much associated to emotions suddenly manifesting in the recognition of belonging to a specific group, for instance, when choosing a phalanx. Mediums in Italy had no references to the work of the phalanges in larger temples in Brazil, but by listening to the story of the past lives of a certain phalanx, some mediums broke in tears and identified themselves as part of it, then gradually built their ties with its members on both sides of the Atlantic, either visiting their temples abroad or through their groups on social networks.

Conclusion

Migration, missionisation, mediatisation, and the mobility of individuals are key analytical lens through which religious transnationalism has been examined by scholars (Csordas, 2009; Sarró and Blanes, 2009). Moving beyond an idea of diaspora with migrants re-territorialising their religious practices, it is necessary to broaden the perspective on these mediumistic practices as actively involving local participants in their development in other countries. In my discussion, I have addressed the trajectories of mediums between Brazil and Europe examining the process of forging the sacred space, the hierarchical lines that link mediums transnationally, how they dealt with the challenges of translation, and learning new ways of knowing through the body. I have then analysed the narratives of the self in transhistorical terms. Elsewhere, I proposed the notion of ‘transhistorical self’ (Pierini, 2020) and referred to Palmié and Stewart’s (2016) call to expand the Western notions of history to embrace the plurality of forms of making history shaped by other societies. Trance states may activate through affectivity a ‘chronotopic switching’ in which ‘past and present may become fused’, multiplying the spatial–temporal configurations that may become ‘inhabitable’ (Palmié and Stewart, 2016: 218–219). ⁴ I propose that this expanded notion of history invites us to reconsider the temporal orientation of the self, in this case, in transhistorical terms. The process of forging this notion of the self through the encounter with spirits may imply challenges due to the previous spiritual experiences of new mediums in the different regions. In Italy, the notion of self is embedded in a Catholic culture in which it is bounded in a single earthly life in which the encounter with the divine is considered to be mediated by a priest. Some Italians in mediumistic development referred to such mediation and said they felt initially as ‘not worthy’ or ‘entitled’ to embody spirit guides. This was also a point made by the American medium above, who wanted to ‘let go of an intermediary’. Another perception – which may have sparked the interest in the Vale’s rituals, but it also had to be negotiated by mediums in development – was the initial idea of some European participants that Brazilians, given their closeness to indigenous shamanism, had an innate ability and openness to channel spirits. This idea entailed a cultural perception of a porous versus Modern Westerner buffered self (Taylor, 2007). As they learned – as Brazilians also had to in their mediumistic development – to expand their perception to embrace the spirit world, their sense of self was extended. This awareness of the role of the senses and intuition has led them to develop new ways of knowing, as the German and American mediums have stressed when referring to their experience of learning and translating the doctrine, or finding a place where to open the temple. It also marked the transition from a Cartesian mind–body or spirit–matter dualisms towards an expansion of the temporal and spatial articulation of the self.

In Europe, ideas of a multidimensional self and reincarnation spread particularly through Esotericism, Theosophy, and French and Anglo-Saxon Spiritism, then circulate through the holistic therapy network. These ideas find echoes in the Vale and thus constituted a fertile ground for the introduction of its notion of self in different European localities, as a result of the Vale’s ability to articulate and emplace a great variety of contemporary religious experiences. A phenomenological approach that considers lived experience beyond the textualism of belief puts knowledge into motion – ‘knowing’ as Ingold (2000) puts it – and considers it to be generated through the relations with others and the environment (2000: 145). My point is that it is through their experiences with spirits and embodied remembrance that new mediums added notions about their selves in previous lives and developed a transhistorical sense of self extended beyond a single lifespan, establishing new spiritual geographies of belonging. This transnational sense of belonging draws upon an expanded notion of history which temporally orients the self, and an emplaced mediumistic body collectively forged through a learning process, which allows new ways of feeling and knowing together. Thus, through the notion of transhistorical self, I point to the individual and collective experience of a spatial–temporal configuration that goes into crafting transnational sense of being and belonging. In the case of Afro-Brazilian religions, Golfetto (2020) has highlighted the importance of the sense of belonging to a ‘transnational social field’ (Frigerio, 2013; Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004) of relations among members of the same Candomblé lineage across cultural contexts, such as Brazil, Portugal, and Italy. In the case of the Vale, I have proposed that when considering the transnational trajectories, reincarnational narratives play a pivotal role along with the hierarchical lineage in the expansion and settlement of temples abroad. As they are crucial for the mediums’ experiences, they often determine their life trajectories as much as their decisions of mobility, which in some cases may lead to the opening of a new temple; thus, they should not be underestimated. Hence, the transnationalisation of the mediumistic practices of the Vale gives rise to new configurations of the relationship among place, history, and self, which allow new embodied spatial dispositions and ways of knowing while expanding possibilities of being and belonging trans-space and time.