An Encounter with the Souls; Saints and Heroes Challenging Standards

Abstract

The central cemetery in Bogotá is a numinous place where the ambivalence that characterizes this state of terror and fascination give place to the practice of rituals that pretend to manipulate the force of the supernatural. Here the believers communicate with the souls and acquire from them favors, and relief with their anguish and worries. This space, also a place of identity and history, is at the center of the creation of characters that reveal miraculous, whose lives implicitly show the archetypal model of the hero. With a symbology where the presence of the feminine is equated with death, protection, resurrection, and with magical practices, the celebrations in the cemetery find in women their best ally. By re-elaborating their own lives and experiences, the believers give existence to the miraculous.