Paper short abstract:

This article will focus on a study of resignification of the ritual Temazcal bath (a steam bath originally from a North American native tradition, that is also known as inipi or sweatlodge).

Paper long abstract:

This article will focus on a study of resignification of the ritual Temazcal bath (a steam bath originally from a North American native tradition, that is also known as inipi or sweatlodge). This ritual has recently been adopted from native American traditions by various agents (seekers of an alternative spirituality, or of experiences of reconnecting to nature, female circles, neo-native or neo-pagan movements, and therapists in search of new techniques of holistic healing). We may say that the temazcal is undergoing a dynamic of transterritorialization, and is being reconverted into a cultural good circulating transnationally, offered and experienced in different places, with different subjects, and distinct meanings and functional uses. The way the temazcal is practiced and experienced varies according to its new contexts and the agents who have appropriated it. To illustrate this the paper shows three different ritual uses of the temazcal, which correspond to different contexts and the trajectories of agents impressing new senses of symbolic efficiency on it. The cases presented consider the need to effect an anthropology that can cast into relief how central the physical, "in the body" experience is, and how important the metaphorizing and resymbolizing of the elements present in the ritual, in terms of perceptions and experimentation of nature, the female cycle, relations and ancestors.