Deirdre Meintelinsofar as possible, it became my practice to meet study participants
outside the church, in cafés, or at my home or theirs. The first inter-
view done with the sixteen key informants concerns their life history
(religious background, employment, family and couple relationships)
and how Spiritualism, the sch, and their connection to Michel fit into
their personal trajectory. Other interviews focus on experiences of
spiritual gifts (e.g., trance, healing, clairvoyance) and other extraor-
dinary occurrences, such as astral projection, attacks by negative spir-
its (mauvaises entités), premonitory dreams, and so on.
Interviews with Michel and sixteen members of the sch who have
been in Michel’s closed groups are conducted in tandem with ongo-
ing participant observation. At the beginning of the study, I expected
that I would be the recipient of others’ healing efforts and that Spiri-
tualists might, as they put it, give me clairvoyance. Indeed, I welcomed
these possibilities. From the Spiritualist point of view, everyone has
spiritual gifts of some kind. I was nonetheless taken aback when I re-
alized that joining the closed group meant actually doing clairvoy-
ance myself. Later I was invited to learn to heal and to heal others at
the church’s healing service. These were unexpected roles, ones that
did not correspond to my self-image; though I believed myself to be
a fairly intuitive person, I certainly did not see myself as a clairvoy-
ant or healer. Assuming these roles and accepting all the experiences
they have brought was not initially part of my research plans. Rather,
the research project evolved organically for the first several years and
has gradually grown into its present form. Being the subject and not
just the object of healing and clairvoyance has enriched the research
immeasurably.
I am often asked why I would study something so different from my
usual interests. Part of the answer is simply that I cannot fully take
on a Cape Verdean perspective nor fully enter into the experience of
a Portuguese immigrant to Canada. However, I can enter into the
Spiritualist experience as far as my personal capacities and inclina-
tions allow. This research project has led me to a broader interest in
the anthropology of religion in the modern world. Originally, my in-
terest was less about religion than about epistemological issues: how
can we study things that do not make sense in terms of conventional