Paper short abstract:

This paper acknowledges the importance of materiality in Sufi practices. It also highlights the importance of looking at the complex interactions between human and non-human beings, objects, places, knowledge, belief, values and actions which make the experience of the transcendence possible.

Paper long abstract:

The culminating point in the practice of Sufism is the physical "journey to the saint', in this case, to his shrine, since everything is related to the encounter of the saint's presence and experience of his spiritual power. This spiritual power, which is called 'baraka' and translated as "grace", "blessing" or "blessedness", is materialized in different objects and experienced through music, scents, flavors, emotions and actions. Materialized blessings of the saints are taken home by devotees and consumed with strong belief that their wishes will get fulfilled and mundane problems be solved. By providing ethnographic examples on "how religion happens materially", this paper acknowledges the importance of materiality in maintaining human-divine relationships in the context of Sufi practices. By materiality, however, we mean a broad spectrum of things, such as: objects, human body, places, and practices that enter into co-existing relationships and shape and re-shape each other. On the examples of baraka, this paper aims to highlight the importance of looking at the complex interactions between these 'actants': human and non-human beings, objects, places, knowledge, belief, values and actions which make the experience of the transcendence possible. The work is based on ethnographic material collected on Sufi shrines in Ahmedabad (India) in September 2018 and March 2019.