What is it about?
This paper give an insight to the visions of a contemporary folk prophet who lives in Transylvania, Romania. He established a charismatic Christian new religious movement the Lights in 2008 that has local hubs in North Serbia, Romania, and Hungary. After an outline of the techniques of how the prophet receives his visions of heaven and hell (as answers to the existential dilemmas of death and the afterlife), I analyse the role and reception of these visionary journeys. I conceive of complex roles for the narratives about the prophet’s visionary journeys and his theory of reincarnation. These narratives attract people who encounter the prophet and inspire them to participate in the NRM’s religious events. The group has a complex reaction and reply to these visions that I analyze based on my anthropological fieldwork in 2010–2018. I combine interpretive anthropology with the genealogical way of discourse analysis introduced by Michel Foucault.
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Why is it important?
It gives an insight to religious visions of Hell and Heaven that can be compared with the Middle Age and Early Modern Age reports of similar journeys.
Perspectives
This study is part of an ongoing work on a book about the new religious movements in the Carpathian Basin.
László Koppány Csáji
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This page is a summary of: Contemporary Visions of Heaven and Hell by a Transylvanian Folk Prophet, Founder of the Charismatic Christian Movement The Lights, Open Theology, January 2022, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/opth-2022-0214.
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