“The City of Snake Enchanted”: encantaria and its subtle landscapes in cidade Bragança-PA

Abstract

The enchanted are entities evoked in the terreiros of Afro-Brazilian religions, in the healing practices of shamans, prayers and not infrequently they also manifest themselves in the bodies of animals from rivers and forests (snakes, porpoises, monkeys, birds). In addition to transformational predicates, the enchanted are given the power to live in their own places at the bottom of rivers and under trees, places called “encante” or “encantaria”, “dwelling at the bottom” or “city of the enchanted”. Based on field research with mothers of saint, prayer women and shamans in the city of Bragança, Zona Bragantina, northeast of Pará, the article presents reflections on the cosmological spaces of enchantment that emerge in the relationships between healing agents and the enchanted as well as constituent elements of this sociocultural landscape.