Resumo:
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.
