The Jewish Witches in A Casa (The House) by Natércia Campos

Abstract

In the novel A Casa (2011) [1998], the narrator is a countryside farmhouse, which builds its knowledge through the daily observation of its inhabitants and the wind changes that blow the news. Magical and mystical figures emerge throughout the old house’s life. In this article, we build on theorists such as Silva M. (2019, 2022), Scholem (2021), Novinsky (2015) and Cascudo (2001) to seek to relate mystical events narrated by Campos to Jewish and Kabbalistic traditions that were mixed into the countryside culture, especially in its feminine perspective, during the mestizaje that the New Christians went through in Brazil. We can see that the characteristic customs of the countryside carry elements of Sephardic culture. Using Pinheiro's theory of mestizaje (2020), we conclude that there is a mestizo mysticism, with the incorporation of Jewish-Cabalist elements into popular religiosity, as narrated in Campos’s novel.