A Review of Kelly E. Hayes, Spirits of the Space Age: The Imagined World of Brazil’s Valley of the Dawn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024, XII+306 pp.

Abstract

This book, by the American anthropologist of religion Kelly Hayes, is devoted to the study of the “Valley of the Dawn” (Port. Vale do Amanhecer), a new religious movement that emerged in the 1960s on the outskirts of Brasília. Hayes examines the political and social contexts of the formation and development of this community of mediums, as well as the performative and sensory mechanisms through which their imagined world is materialised. Particular attention is paid to the role of two charismatic leaders of the movement: Neiva Chaves Zelaya and her partner Mário Sassi, former migrant workers who came to build Brazil’s new capital, Brasília. From Hayes’s perspective, the Valley of the Dawn can be viewed as a “spiritual simulacrum” of the new Brazilian capital. A significant part of the book is devoted to comparing them as parallel and opposing projects of the future and as images of modernity. The review discusses the methodological, theoretical, and ethical aspects of the research and draws parallels with American and Russian spiritual movements. Particular attention is paid to the issue of the book’s novelty and its analytical incompleteness. The question is also raised as to how the work’s academic rigour can be maintained when the author’s aim — to protect the community from anti-cultist persecution — necessitates the non-disclosure of certain economic and other internal aspects of the community’s life.