Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the place of ignorance in the experience of French practitioners of Umbanda. It argues that unknowing depends here on specific interactions and it is constitutive of this practice.

Paper long abstract:

French persons engage in the practice of Umbanda looking for unique spiritual experiences and personal growth. A synthesis of African religions, Christianity, European Spiritualism and elements drawn from Amerindian religious practices, Umbanda is, at least in theory, foreign to European culture. Accordingly, most French persons who eventually chose to develop their mediumistic abilities in the Temple Guaracy, one of the two shrine houses that exist in Paris, had no knowledge about Afro-Brazilian religions before engaging in this practice. However, these particularities do not account in themselves for the recurrence of ignorance in French devotees' experience. Indeed, their unknowing is not necessarily lessened as mediums evolve in the Temple and become more qualified to perform determined ritual actions.

Through the pragmatic analysis of ethnographic vignettes concerning appropriate ritual behavior, cosmological teachings, and the interpretation of spiritual entities' utterances, this paper argues, on the one hand, that it is not so much because French devotees are initially unfamiliar with Umbanda that ignorance is pervasive in their experience. Rather, the ritual interactions they engage in, but also some less formal interactions, alternatively compel them to act as someone who knows or someone who ignores, independently of their position in the Temple's organization or their actual competences. On the other hand, this paper aims to show that ignorance is generative of meaningful spiritual experiences in the Temple and is thus constitutive of this particular spiritual practice.