Between spiritual emergencies in an axial time and commodification contemporary healing property

Abstract

Several anthropologists and sociologists have identified spiritual healing as a response to situations involving health and illness in the religious arena. Pierre Bourdieu defined healing as a cultural capital disputed by religious agencies. Even though this is the predominant point of view, a comprehension of healing as an experience of intimate knowledge that has repercussions in social behavior has begun to take shape.The author of this paper suggests that spiritual healing, practiced and represented in several socio cultural environments, combines the quest for experience and knowledge with the concept of use value.Therefore, he tracks the cultural biography of spiritual healing in two historic schemes: the axial time, when it appeared as a solution for human beings caught in the arena of the introspective fighting between their spirit and their flesh; and the New Age when it was transformed into an interchangeable cultural object.