Paper short abstract:

The paper reflects on the use of material means and devices as part of crafting individual ways to establish relations with the divine, based on the particular case of the innovative ritual healing practices of a woman in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement in Spain.

Paper long abstract:

Healing is a distinctive feature in Charismatic Renewal in contrast with other Roman Catholic Church movements, one that has been adapted, as others (e. g. laity relevance in ritual practices, and their direct relation with the sacred), from the Pentecostal movement. Healing is opened to every participant, as an established process with specific practices that provide an adequate spiritual condition for the relation with divinity, that of "worship". While the foundation of healing is spiritual perfection, regarding Charismatic point of view, it also involves emotional and physiological consequences. Healing ritual practices are predominantly public and collective, and involve a divine power characterized as masculine, Jesus Christ, and of a non-specific gender, the Holy Spirit.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork data, I focus on ritual creativity in Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement in Spain by the particular case of an agent. Material devices enable her to create a personal and complementary ritual variation that completes her religious needs. Unlike institutional practices, this variation is domestic, private and individual, and linked to the feminine Catholic divine power, Virgin Mary; a variation constructed from material means (music, candles, iconographic representations, photographs, devotional objects, confessional literature, diaries), that constitute an intimacy sphere as a sacralized locus by the sensory and healing relationship with the divinity.