Paper short abstract:

Analyzing the ritual interactions within the weekly public ceremonies of Umbanda in Paris, this paper argues that ritual participation brings forth a spiritual self shielded from disquiet. In this specific case ritual may be understood as a powerful self-technique in dealing with restlessness.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to discuss the theme of disquiet as it may be observed in the ritual practice of Umbanda, an Afro-Brazilian religion, among French persons in Paris. Adhesion to Umbanda most often occurs here as a step of an ongoing spiritual quest rooted in an experience of unbalance, disquiet and self-reflexivity. Initiates, as well as sympathizers, show themselves weary of most values and religious practices they were raised in, but also those of their present surroundings. Their spiritual quest relies thus upon a need to redefine one's self-identity and to cope with issues confronted in everyday life due to this sense of split with one's original milieu. French practitioners of Umbanda express this orientation as "working on oneself" in a therapeutic idiom of self-transformation. In this endeavour contemporary Western society appears as unbalanced, impure and potentially harmful with regards to one's "true self", which rituals are intended to nurture. Rituals orchestrated in the Parisian Umbanda shrine house are designed so as to develop a new, spiritual self, which, revealed and empowered through specific interactions with spiritual entities and fellow practitioners, brackets one's ordinary self deemed fragile on its own. The analysis of ritual interactions within weekly public ceremonies shows that the shrine house's rituals operate the transformation of this ordinary self into a ritual one which is, at least during ceremonies, shielded from disquiet. More generally, I argue that ritual is, in the case of Umbanda in Paris, a powerful self-technique in dealing with restlessness related to self-identity issues.