ABSTRACT
The dream theory of the wandering soul is of an impressive ethnographic recurrence. What one understands by “wandering” or “soul” in each of these contexts, however, is far from being obvious. The Tikmũ’ũn people, also known as Maxakali (Minas Gerais, Brazil) also describe their oneiric experiences as wanderings of their “souls” (koxuk) through tortuous and dangerous paths that usually leads to the far away villages where the dead live and from where returning is not always easy, if even possible. But, besides that, it is also curious the way in which their travels’ reports trace some parallels with their dream ones. In a way, not only their dreams are like “wanderings of the soul” but also their wanderings are somehow like “dreams”. In this article, I explore theses parallels between “dreams” and “wanderings”, but also those between “dreams”, “body”, “illness” and “death”.
KEYWORDS:
Dreams; perspectivism; shamanism; kinship; Maxakali