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- BRASLIA, BRAZIL -
At the end of a dirt road, a sign arches over a gated entrance welcoming
visitors to the Valley of the Dawn. Behind a squat stone temple, women
wearing medieval-style purple and black dresses with silver tiaras, glittering
veils and cone hats chant on the bank of an artificial lake hemmed by a
pyramid and wooden cutouts of goddesses.
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- Nearby, men in satin capes and white vests bearing various
religious symbols preach what sounds like Christian liturgy, interspersed
with appeals to galactic princesses and Afro-Brazilian gods.
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- You check your guidebook to see if you've stumbled onto
a set for a science-fiction movie. In fact, you've encountered one of
Brazil's biggest tourism attractions: New Age cults awash in millennial
fervor.
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- Promoting a rich brew of religious and mythical tenets,
most predict an apocalypse greatly moderated by the paradisiacal times
beyond -- particularly for those believers who happen to be around Bras(acu)lia
when the new millennium rolls around.
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- It may seem a weird mixture of apocalypticism and utopianism,
but it suits government tourist officials just fine.
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- With about 5,000 members, the Valley of the Dawn is one
of the 150-some mystical religious groups that have sprung up around Bras(acu)lia
in the past few years. And the number goes up every day, researchers say.
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- Now the government in Bras(acu)lia is hoping to cash
in on the city's mystical image as ``the capital of the third millennium''
by promoting events around the year 2000, which happens to coincide with
Brazil's 500th anniversary. About half of the 1 million visitors to Bras(acu)lia
last year came for mystical tourism, officials say.
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- ``We believe we can double the number of New Age tourists
as the millennium approaches,'' says Marcelo Dourado, the city's tourism
secretary. ``Bras(acu)lia has a mystical aura that no other city in Brazil
has. This is an excellent tourist product.''
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- Last fall, Bras(acu)lia's tourism office published a
guide to the various groups in Portuguese and English. Tourists can choose
ecumenical tours of churches and religious communities, or follow the ``Millennium
Trail'' from Bras(acu)lia to Pôrto Seguro in Bahia State, where the
Portuguese first landed in 1500.
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- Among the most popular attractions is the ecumenical
Legion of Goodwill Temple, a seven-sided, seven-story pyramid topped by
what the literature describes as the world's largest crystal. For New Age
seekers, the temple is touted as much more than just another roadside attraction.
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- Other tourist hits are the University of Peace and isolated
religious communities such as the Eclectic City and Valley of the Dawn,
where visitors can participate in ceremonies and snap pictures of devotees
in ritual dress. The Eclectic City has been in place more than 40 years.
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- Cultural hodgepodge
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- ``This is Interlandia, the highlands of Brazil, the center
of the South American continent,'' says Luiz José da Cunha Lima,
a researcher of New Age groups, who gives tours of Alto Parso (High Paradise),
a self-styled mystical community three hours' drive from Bras(acu)lia.
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- Here, as in many of the other places, one may see and
hear a hodgepodge of many religions and cultures -- from the indigenous
South American Indians to the ancient Egyptians, from the Afro-Brazilian
gods to the Roman Catholic Church. Most of it is draped with a New Age
overlay.
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- ``This region has been esoterically prepared to be the
crib of a new movement,'' says da Cunha Lima.
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- Deis Siqueira, a sociologist at the University of Bras(acu)lia,
says the growth of new religious movements ``is happening very fast'' in
the Bras(acu)lia region because land there is cheap and the vast, empty
territory allows these groups to seek solitude from society. Brazil's tradition
of syncretic, or mixed, religions has also helped New Age groups feel at
home.
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- ``Brazil is above all a country of exoticism, where the
mysterious is tolerated,'' Siqueira says.
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- Controversial groups such as Saint Daime -- which uses
a hallucinogenic plant borrowed from Indians of the Peruvian Amazon to
give members religious visions -- are as welcome in Alto Parso as the radical
Protestant sects and Hindu religions.
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- ``All these groups coexist really well together,'' Siqueira
says. `It's their belief in the importance of building the new era, preparing
for a new time of peace and unity. Alto Parso is a living laboratory.''
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- Many New Age devotees believe the region lies on a bedrock
of crystal that is supposed to give it unusual spiritual power. While some
believers are natives, most migrated here fairly recently, officials say.
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- From its founding in 1960, Bras(acu)lia has billed itself
as the city of the future. Its modernist architecture, framed by an expansive
blue sky, and isolated location in Brazil's dry backlands lend the city
an otherworldly aura.
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- Built in the shape of a bird or airplane, Bras(acu)lia
was the brainchild of former President Juscelino Kubitschek.
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- Historians say he chose to build Bras(acu)lia based on
the prediction of 19th-century Italian priest Dom Bosco that a new civilization
that arose between the 15th and 20th parallels would become the seat of
the new millennium.
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- ``Bras(acu)ia was born under two creation myths,'' explains
Siqueira. ``One was modernization. This side of the dream has not been
realized yet; that is, equal income distribution. But the other side of
the dream, of mystical unity, this has happened. In this sense Bras(acu)ia
is a city of the future.''
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- Every block seems to have a house with a banner hanging
over the door inviting visitors for an interview with a psychic. UFO sightings
are claimed to be as commonplace as shooting stars, especially near Alto
Parso.
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- Insights from outer space
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- Egon and his wife, Inti-Ra, founded the Arcadia organization
in Alto Parso based on insights they claim to have channeled from extraterrestrial
beings. They said their spiritual guides led them to the central plain
to promote sustainable societies and space-age healings. Like many New
Age groups, Arcadia believes the world as we know it will end soon.
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- ``This Earth will be a real paradise. We are building
what will remain,'' Egon says.
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- Fearing the Apocalypse, Osho -- a Hindu meditation group
formed by the late Bagwan Shree Rajneesh -- moved onto a spectacular patch
of land near Alto Parso where it runs a type of eco-spiritual resort.
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- ``Frankly, we came here because we believe it's the safest
place on the planet,'' says Shivana da Lua, a spokesperson for Osho in
Brazil. ``When everything starts falling apart -- and it will this year,
believe me -- this spot will be spared from all that turmoil and destruction
because of its high spiritual energy.''
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- The new religions may have an otherworldly veneer, but
they are firmly Brazilian in their incorporation of other traditions and
their social role. Most devotees are poor and often illiterate. Homeless
people, alcoholics and outcasts end up knocking on the doors of these groups.
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- High on a plateau in the outskirts of Bras(acu)lia, the
community adopts children and schools them for free, treats the sick with
herbal remedies, and builds houses for whoever wants to live there, he
says. Residents are required to abstain from alcohol, and women in Eclectic
City must wear long skirts and long hair.
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- Utopia-building is a common theme among the new religions.
Most eschew hierarchies in favor of an egalitarian structure. They advocate
individual self-discovery, a communal vision and an alternative way of
life.
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- Most don't last longer than three years, experts point
out.
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- Today visitors can sleep in the abandoned domes in Alto
Parso for $6 a night -- an inexpensive place to contemplate the local prophecy
that the world as we know it will end, but that a new world more beautiful
will arise.
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