Considering that Umbanda religion expresses and elucidates Afro-Brazilian psychological ethnotheories, the aim of this research was eliciting the meanings connected to its concept of infant by investigating one of its pantheon main characters, the spirits of children. Jungian psychology was taken as reference not only for a contrast effect but also to facilitate Umbanda concepts organization. Both participant observation and interviews with worshippers and mediums in trance receiving children's spirits were performed. It was shown that these spirits reveal themselves by using mainly non-verbal ways of communication. As far as meaning is concerned, drawing the puer archetype near children's spiritual manifestation in Umbanda deserves careful approach, and assimilating these children into the archetype can only be performed by the superposition of a psychic concept on a diverse ethnotheory.
ethnopsychology; jungian analysis; umbanda; puer; child