Círculos de mulheres no Brasil: frestas e vazamentos dos sagrados femininos

Abstract

This work presents the agencements (enactments/activations) of Women's Circles in Brazil, a non-institutional movement of feminine spirituality organized by women and for women, predominantly cisgender, white, and middle-class. However, the research, conducted in Salvador and its metropolitan area, identified a more diverse movement, with the presence and protagonism of Black women and openness to the participation of trans women. To understand these dynamics, I carried out fieldwork in Circles across different formats of gatherings: online, in-person, and I monitored several profiles on Instagram. In total, there were eight in-person Circles in Salvador and the metropolitan area, five online Circles, the monitoring of twenty Instagram profiles, and in-depth conversations with seven women. In these spaces, the “sacred feminines” from various traditions overflow, and the feminine principle acts as the guiding force of life, experienced as a “wild and intuitive” quality. In this way of exercising spirituality, the body is the path and the manifestation of the sacred, enacted through rituals and practices such as “natural and autonomous gynecology.” The body’s processes—the fertile period, menstruation, etc.—are enacted based on the cycles of the moon, the seasons, and the circadian rhythm. Simultaneously, these cycles of life enact the cycles of the body. Based on this observation, I developed the category "cyclic and permeable bodies," as for these women, the body’s cycles and the cyclicity of life are the result of interwoven agencements (enactments). Due to this being an embodied spirituality, I utilize the analytical category "feminine sacred" in articulation with the native category "sacred feminine," to understand the multiple arrangements of the body-psyche-community relationship—transcendent and immanent—within these experiences. Although some Women’s Circles have been absorbed by the alternative therapy market, there are politicized Circles that establish themselves as an inspiration, offering an alternative way of living. In these spaces, bodies (with or without a uterus), connected to the cycles—expansion (spring, summer, day, waxing and full moons) and contraction/recollection (autumn, winter, night, waning and new moons)—establish a rhythm of life that counters capitalism. Capitalism, in turn, demands continuous expansion that results in the destruction of ecosystems. By valuing intuition and the "knowledge embodied in life's cycles," these Circles offer fissures through which other forms of inhabiting and knowing the world can emerge, distinct from those imposed by the hegemonic mode.