O circuito da Bruxaria Moderna na cidade de São Paulo

o caráter terapêutico e a customização do mito

Abstract

Woven in a distant, immemorial, and, from certain perspectives, imagined past, Wicca presents itself to the outside observer as a patchwork of disconnected references, whose origins have been lost. In reality, the ability of this religion to absorb heterogeneous elements constitutes its essence, blending collective and individual aspects in order to build its own symbolic efficacy (Lévi-Strauss, 1975). This efficacy, by providing its practitioners with a high degree of customization, is well-suited to modern aspirations and, in the Brazilian case, to the deterritorialization of the beliefs that gave rise to the Goddess Religion. In this research, I intend to unravel this dynamic, exploring how the therapeutic aspect is configured, manifested, and understood within the Wiccan religion, and how it constitutes Wicca as a creative form of existence (Stengers, 2023) in constant transformation. The analysis started from the construction of the Wicca circuit in São Paulo, updating — with a certainly less comprehensive approach — the neo-esoteric circuit proposed by my advisor José Magnani in his book Mystica Urbe: An Anthropological Study of the Neo-Esoteric Circuit in the Metropolis (1999). Thus, inspired by authors such as Isabelle Stengers and Barbara Glowczewski, I aim to characterize Wicca as a creative form of existence and resistance, which challenges rational-modern logic and proposes alternative paths for self-care and care for the world, contributing to the expansion of the therapeutic field beyond hegemonic science.