The mirror effect: seeing and being seen in the cult of María Lionza (Venezuela)

Abstract

In the cult of María Lionza (Venezuela), the look or gaze constitutes a fundamental aspect of the ritual process, since it is one of the privileged ways through which the relations between spirits, mediums and participants are established. The use of the camera as a research method helps to gain a better understanding of this issue, since the action of holding a camera – and looking through it – may provoke comments and reactions among believers, resulting in a process by which a set of assumptions about the meaning of seeing and being seen that usually remain implicit become explicit. Most of the time, these newly explicit assumptions appear as visual prohibitions or as a consequence of a mistake made by the researcher. What I defend in this paper is that ‘visual mistakes’ and prohibitions are very valuable in anthropological research and should be taken into account. The text concludes with two general reflections: one about the connection between cinema and the sacred, and the other about the intimate relationship between what we usually call ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ in visual anthropology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

[1] In the cult of María Lionza, a medium or materia is a person capable of expelling his or her own soul or spirit and embodying a supernatural being or the spirit of a dead person.

[2] The literature about the concept of Afro-American culture is vast. See, for instance, Mintz and Price (1976), Palmié (2013) or Johnson (2014).

[3] Alan Kardec (1804–1869) is regarded as the father of modern spiritism. In 1857, Kardec, who considered himself a scientist, wrote his most important book, Le livre des esprits, highly influenced by cartersianism, evolutionism and the theories of Saint-Simon and Fourier. According to Kardec, all spirits are imperfect in their origin, but through a mechanism of successive reincarnation, they can achieve perfection. Kardecism offers a rationalization of the spirit world and accepts communication with spirits as a means for individuals’ physical and intellectual progression.

[4] For many families in Venezuela, spiritism is a way of living. Many ceremonies are paid for. The price of the ceremony depends on the complexity of the ritual, the prestige of the main medium that must perform it, and, finally, the cost of the material necessary to perform the ritual (candles, religious images, flowers, etc.).

[5] Before starting any ritual, believers must seek permission from the gods. If permission is not granted, no ritual can be performed.

[6] For an analysis of the role of cigars in the cult of María Lionza, see Flores, Dilia. La adivinación por el tabaco en el culto a María Lionza. Maracaibo: Universidad de Zulia, (Flores 1991).

[7] In many myths, María Lionza is associated with this animal. See, for instance: Antolínez, Gilberto (Orlando Barreto, ed.). La diosa de la danta. San Felipe: UNEY (Barreto 2005).

[8] Criticism of syncretism generally claims that, if there are syncretic religions, there should be non-syncretic religions. Still, any religion, like any cultural expression, is syncretic in the sense that it is the outcome of the creative re-signification of previous cultural sources.

[9] Authors such as Goody (1997) have pointed out that the ambivalence between the representative and the represented is a consubstantial aspect of religious images and, in general, of any representative image. For anthropology of images, see Belting 2011.

[10] In the text Stop, look and listen (Ingold 2000) Ingold tackles the question of the role of vision in European and non-European traditions. He convincingly rejects the popular idea that the prominence of occulocentrisim in the Occident would be the origins of the process of objectification or of separation between the subject and its environment.

[11] This is a clear example of the external theory of vision, according to which vision is not only about receiving impressions but also about projecting strength through the act of seeing. This principle has been opposed by the internal theory of vision, consisting of the idea that looking is just receiving external stimuli, a theory which would have been predominant in the Occidental mind-set.

[12] This idea is closest to the concept of ‘skilled vision’ that Cristina Grasseni has put forward in several texts (Grasseni 2007). According to the author, looking is a product of a dialogical apprenticeship that necessarily takes places in a specific environmental landscape.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roger Canals

Roger Canals works at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Barcelona (Spain). Specialist in Afro-American Religions and Visual Anthropology, he holds a PhD in Anthropology from the Ecole des Hatues Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Roger Canals has published numerous articles on visual anthropology and Afro-American religions. He has also published the book A Goddess in Motion. Visual Creativity in the cult of María Lionza (Berghahn Books, 2017). He has made several ethnographic films such as The Many Faces of a Venezuelan Goddess (Canals, 2007) or A Goddess in Motion. María Lionza in Barcelona. (2016).

He has received the first Fejos Fellowship of Ethnographic Cinema of the Wenner-Gren Foundation (New York).