Cult of María Lionza in late-twentieth-century Venezuela

Record summary

The María Lionza tradition centers on a Venezuelan folk religious figure approached through possession, séance, pilgrimage and healing ritual. In the 1990s and 2000s, anthropologists documented spirit courts that include indigenous, African, historical and sometimes angelic or saint-like intermediaries. The material is valuable for comparing revelation through mediums with Catholic apparition narratives and for tracing state, church and media responses. The tradition’s origins and textual history are disputed, and individual trance claims remain testimony rather than independently verified evidence of possessing spirits.