The Origins and First Steps of Brazilian Candomblé
THE PRE-PHASES OF CANDOMBLÉ
In almost all introductory books on Brazilian Candomblé, the history of „Engenho da Casa Branca“ is described as the origin story of Candomblé. This is probably correct in the sense that it was with this Terreiro that a clear organization emerged, gaining public recognition relatively quickly. However, this portrayal of history overlooks the fact that from the very beginning of the slave trade, there were more or less public or secret cults and natural healing practices. This part of history is poorly documented and is only now being illuminated through various studies. The following is an elaboration by Renato de Silveira, a professor at the University of Salvador, titled „Do Calundu ao Candomblé“ (2014).
From Calundu to Candomblé
African religious rituals that were present in Brazil throughout the colonial period established their first temple in the early nineteenth century, which was built at the back of a church in Salvador.
Since the 17th century, there have been records of African cults in Brazilian lands. About twenty years ago, Brazilian historians and anthropologists began to encounter, in their research in public archives and the Holy Inquisition, not only new data but also new interpretations on a subject that was little known until then, an immense amount of information about what was conventionally referred to as „colonial Calundu.“ The animators of these mysterious African-origin cults then began to occupy the historiographic scene.
Figures such as Domingos Umbata, a Congolese who was captured by the Inquisition visitors in the captaincy of Ilhéus in 1646; Branca, an Angolan who was active in the early 18th century in the Bahian city of Rio Real; another Angolan, Luzia Pinta, who was highly successful between 1720 and 1740 in the Freguesia Sabará in Minas Gerais.
Josefa Maria or Josefa Courá, known as „Courana,“ with her „Tunda Dance“ established in 1747 in Arraial de Paracatu, Minas Gerais; Sebastião, a Dahomean founded in 1785 in the city of Cachoeira, in the Recôncavo Baiano; and finally Joaquim Baptista, Ogan (a type of Terreiro leader) of the „Cult of Vodums“ in Accu de Brotas, a suburb of the city of Bahia, in 1829. One could also add to this list a significant watercolor by Zacharias Wagener, an artist who lived in Dutch Pernambuco from 1634 to 1641, represented a group of Africans, and brought valuable visual information about the diversity and disposition of actors, costumes, and musical instruments.
The followers of Calundu organized their public festivities in the residence of an important person in the community or in houses that were also destined for other tasks. They did not have proper temples, but they were not simple household cults either since they had a festival calendar, initiated several believers in different functions, and were visited by a considerable number of people, including white individuals from different circles. Furthermore, the main priest was able to earn a good livelihood and become financially independent by providing essential services to the population that the colonial state did not satisfactorily guarantee.
The documentation from that time allows for the identification of three types of priesthood, which were sometimes united in the same person, such as Luzia Pinta, who was a „Calunduzeira, a healer, and a seer.“ This means that these personalities were not only religious leaders but also knew how to make herbal teas, poultices, and ointments that alleviated the common ailments of the colony’s inhabitants. They were also able to heal more severe diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, and leprosy using the resources of the traditional pharmacopeia. They even participated in the fight against the epidemics that devastated Bahia in the mid-19th century and knew how to treat mental or spiritual disturbances through combined and complex treatments.
In the city of Rio Real, in the countryside of Bahia, the Holy Office identified the case of a businessman who paid a high price to at least two famous slave healers, set up a kind of clinic with them where various healing methods were practiced, and shared all the profits with them. These records refer to numerous healers and seers who were received and well-paid in monasteries and wealthy circles, even by the King of Portugal personally. The effectiveness of African knowledge was publicly known and notorious, but in practice, it questioned the healing monopoly of the Church and even official medicine.
Since slavery was configured as a regime of oppression, it was always believed that the Calundus would have been harshly persecuted. However, if this were the reality, their leaders would never have been able to establish stable positions, as was the case with Luzia Pinta, who was active for twenty years in the city of Sabará in Minas. In fact, there was a constant debate within society about the best way to control the „free slave mass.“ Tyrannical policies seem to have prevailed in times of crisis, but for the most part, it was moderate policies that prevailed.
Thus, the Calundu functioned normally in Brazil since the 17th century, at least until their leaders became too visible, gained too much white clientele, or became involved in uprisings. They were part of the social landscape because they were functional, responded to the various needs of a poor population, and did not intend to be secret sects. Their mission was to become recognized public institutions, as they were in Africa.
From this side of the Atlantic, the Calundus joined together different African origins, such as the Bantus (from regions in southern Africa, such as Angola, Congo, Mozambique), and the Jeje (from West Africa, present-day Benin Republic), ultimately aligning with Catholicism. On the other hand, syncretism with indigenous cults only occurred among the Bantus. Some, like Luzia Pinta, mixed African, Catholic, and indigenous traditions in the same ritual, which led to what is conventionally called Umbanda.
In contrast to the previous ones, the Jeje Calundu of Pasto de Cachoeira was a typically urban organization and the first to have a street as its address, albeit on the outskirts of the city. The Candomblé of Accu is one of several Jeje cults that emerged in the mid-19th century in the Recôncavo Baiano and existed only in name in the urban outskirts—they were actually farms surrounded by Atlantic Forest.
These cults had a strong sense of community and strong liturgical traditions, those that were implanted in Bahia. They were supported by the existing Bantu Calundus, which had accumulated ritual knowledge well adapted to the environment.
The next bold step in the constitution of Afro-Brazilian religion would be to organize the cult in the city, to establish it as a legitimate urban institution, and to strive for its „officialization.“ In Salvador, in the Barroquinha neighborhood, this transition was initiated with relative success.
According to the oral traditions of the Nagôs (Yoruba Africans from regions of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo) in Bahia, the first Candomblé of their lineage was founded in the countryside behind the chapel of Capela Nossa Senhora da Barroquinha in the historic center of Salvador. It is said that there was a brotherhood of Black individuals whose members were the African founders. Today, this Candomblé is one of the largest and most respected in Brazil, officially called Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká in honor of its main founder, but popularly known as Casa Branca do Engenho Velho da Federação.
There is no reference in the oral traditions to the date of the founding of the Barroquinha-Candomblés. But three important moments are known from this place: the first founding of a small cult in the house of a priestess who belonged to the brotherhood and lived on one of the streets of the district; the leasing of a plot of land behind the church on which the Candomblé itself was founded; and a moment of police pursuit, entry into the temple and expulsion from the neighborhood.
Anthropologists associated with Axé Opô Afonjá, a branch of Candomblé in Barroquinha, estimate the founding date to be from the late 18th century to 1830. During the First Afro-Bahian Congress held in 1943, an exhibition commemorating the 154th anniversary of its founding took place in Casa Branca, where it was stated that Candomblé was established in 1789. This date coincides with the arrival of the first Nagô slaves from the Kingdom of Ketu (whose territory was split by the Nigerian-Benin border) from where the founders came, as well as with the „officialization“ of the Brotherhood of Senhor Bom Jesus dos Martírios in Bahia in 1788.
Among the first slaves from the Kingdom of Ketu, some members of the royal Arô family arrived in Bahia. They were captured in the city of Iwoyê and plundered by the army of the Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Republic of Benin) in January 1789. The mother of Aláketu Akibiorru, the king enthroned at that time, came from this city, which had very close ritual connections to the capital. Everything indicates that the first founder of Baroque Candomblé, Iyá Adetá, came in this wave of slaves from Iwoyê. After about nine years of captivity, Iyá Adetá obtained her freedom (carta de alforria) and moved to Barroquinha, where she established a cult for Oxóssi in her house at the end of the 18th century, similar to some of the past colonial Calundus.
In the early 19th century, the slave population in Bahia from the region began to grow, increasing the number of visitors to Tia Adetá’s Calundu. This uprooted group developed a desire to have an appropriate space for the establishment of a true Terreiro (Candomblé temple). This possibility existed within the neighborhood itself as the empty plots behind the church extended into a forested area and swamp that bordered the gardens of the São Bento Monastery. The land adjacent to the chapel belonged to a couple who were members of the white Brotherhood of Nossa Senhora da Barroquinha, which shared the administration of the small church with the black Brotherhood of Senhor dos Martírios. The lease agreement was negotiated in 1804 and finalized in 1807, and at that time, the transition from household worship to Terreiro began.
Transition from the 18th to the 19th century was a period of prosperity and political relaxation in Bahia. However, from 1805 to 1809, the tyrannical government of the Count of Ponte engaged in relentless persecution of Africans, creating an atmosphere of tension in the capital that was unsuitable for the flourishing of imagination. But in 1810, the reformist and liberal rule of the Count of Arco, sent by the royal family to modernize Bahia, began. The new governor became an honorary brother of the Martyrs Brotherhood in 1811. He was a follower of the moderate current of colonialist ideology, which aimed to promote the cultural manifestations of different African „nations“ in order to stimulate their differences, preventing them from uniting against the colonial order.
At this point, the project to establish the Terreiros of Barroquinha gained new momentum. In 1812, the directors of the Martyrs Brotherhood submitted an application to the City Council, requesting permission to build a noble hall attached to the church to obtain official approval for maintaining a space for their sessions. The Nagô-Iorubá community, which was gaining importance in Bahia and likely within the Martyrs community, must have supported or at least participated in this effort. During this period of prosperity, the Terreiro must have expanded, equipped with more facilities, more space, and increased confidence. This was the setting in which the Terreiro Iyá Omi Axé Airá Intile, under the leadership of Iyá Akalá, the second of the founders, emerged.
According to oral traditions of Casa Branca, the major innovation introduced by the Terreiro of Barroquinha was organization. For the first time, Candomblé was considered a „social organization.“ What could this mean? Let’s take a look at Africa to gain more insight into the background. In the mid-1830s, the capital of the largest of the Nagô-Iorubá states, the Oyo Empire, was plundered by the fundamentalist troops of the Sokoto Caliphate and the Ilorin Emirate. This led to a massive exodus of the population from that region, the establishment of a new capital, and the reorganization of the empire’s forces in a southern region.
Indeed, the fall of the Oyo capital triggered a destructive civil war that would last until the end of the century. Enormous numbers of captives from this war arrived in Bahia as slaves, so that by the mid-19th century, more than half of the slave population in Bahia were already Nagô-Iorubá.
Ethnic subgroups from all regions occupied by the Yoruba in the western part of Africa, known as Yorubaland, such as Oyós, Ijexás, Ketos, Efans, and many others, brought their deities into exile, and all of them found a place in Casa da Barroquinha, where their shrines were established. At the same time, some urban societies of Yoruba origin called Egbés had been secretly organizing in Bahia since the early decades of the 19th century. Most of them disappeared over time but left visible traces, titles, masks, songs, or objects of worship, as well as civil-religious women’s associations. In addition to the successful worship of the Orixás, the worship of Eguns (ancestral spirits) also entered Candomblé, although in only a few Terreiros. Nevertheless, it continues to be highly cultivated with great vitality today.
Due to this significant Nagô-Iorubá contingent, Bahia became part of the plans of the strategists of the „old“ Yoruba Empire. Traditions say that people from the upper ranks of the Yoruba states came on a secret mission to organize the cults established in Barroquinha and articulate them with the Bahian Egbés. The most important among them was Iyá Nassô, a personality (princess) of the highest hierarchy in the Oyo Palace. These individuals created a new form of organization by structuring the great Ketu Candomblé, as it is known today.
Barroquinha’s Candomblé became the space that housed a grand political agreement that brought together the Nagô-Iorubás of Bahia under the leadership of the partisans of the Orixás Oxóssi from Ketu and Xangô from Oyo. Let’s remember the two main celebrations in the Casa Branca calendar commemorating its founding: the first dedicated to Oxóssi on Corpus Christi and the second dedicated to Xangô on St. Peter’s Day. The compromise of the ruling elite was anchored in the spatial structure of Candomblé: the Terreiro as a whole belongs to Oxóssi, the Onilé, the Lord of the Land, while the central space, the place of public celebration, is dedicated to Xangô, the Onilê, the Lord of the Palace. This „political-spiritual“ agreement included several other allied Yoruba subgroups.
From a ritual perspective, the fundamental innovation of Brazilian Candomblé in Barroquinha was that, for the first time in the history of African religion, the worship of all Orixás was brought together in a single temple, requiring a unified hierarchy of the Orixás of different cults under the command of the Iyalorixá, the High Priestess.
Furthermore, the leaders of the Yoruba Egbés in Bahia were summoned and given titles in the worship of the respective Orixás. These leaders were often also leaders of official organizations such as the Brotherhood of Senhor dos Martírios or the women’s veneration founded in Igreja da Barroquinha, Senhora da Boa Morte. Thus, Candomblé became more than just a house of worship; it became a complex political, social, and religious organization.
According to oral traditions of Casa Branca, at some point, the Terreiro of Barroquinha was raided by provincial police forces, and Candomblé was forced to leave the premises. However, nobody knows exactly when this move took place. What is known is that by 1855, Casa Branca was already in operation at its current location in the Federação neighborhood. The 1850s were dominated by the conservative group led by Francisco Gonçalves Martins, a hardliner who had been the police chief during the major Malê uprising in 1835.
In 1851, the ideology of progress arrived in Brazil as the societal elites sought to forget the colonial past and adopt a modern societal model following Europe and the Americas. In this new context, it was necessary to prove to the world that we were „civilized“ Westerners, which led to an increased European immigration to „purify“ our race, as it was believed according to the scientific doctrines of the time, which was seen as the only way to qualify for progress.
The persecution of the Brazilian Candomblé in Barroquinha was part of this policy that forced it to „find its place.“ The colonial tyranny, which persisted even after political independence, could never allow an African organization to become a center. Therefore, Candomblé da Barroquinha was forced to retreat to the periphery, to the old Engenho Velho da Federação, where it stands today in a magnificent location, sharing space in the city of Salvador with other Terreiros such as Gantois and Axé Opô Afonjá, which keep alive the faith that crossed the ocean.
The emergency of Candomblé
Background
Between 1525 and 1851, more than five million Africans were brought to Brazil as slaves (other sources say tens of millions). This number does not include the many people who died on African soil, falling victim to the violence of slave hunting, or who perished while crossing the ocean. It is unknown how many have been brought into the region since human trafficking began. For more than three centuries, Africans from various parts of the sub-Saharan African continent were enslaved to Brazil. It was not one people, but a multitude of ethnicities, nations, languages and cultures. In Brazil, they have been introduced in the different provinces, in a continuum that runs parallel to the history of the Brazilian economy. Economic prosperity was linked to an intensification of demand for slave labor: there was no possibility for material progress without importing more blacks.
The slaves came from areas where they were easier to capture and more profitable to ship. The infamous trade in Africa depended on the local conditions of the native population itself, regulated by their wars, inter-tribal hatreds, and imperial domains. Human trafficking was a profitable economic activity for Portuguese, Brazilians, and human traffickers from other nations, but it was equally beneficial for Africans who hunted and sold Africans. Africa practiced captivity long before the discovery of America, and Europe imported African slaves even before the discovery of the New World, but it was the trade here from the Atlantic that made slave hunting the most profitable activity for the African himself, a slave market he coveted Goods from the New World, especially tobacco.
The origin of the Africans brought to Brazil also and above all depended on the agreements and treaties concluded between Portugal, Brazil and European powers, especially England. Africa, even as a working barn, was obviously divided among the colonial slave countries, and the origin of the traffic has changed greatly in three centuries due to the changing interests of the powers involved, their disputes, wars and treaties.
The peoples of sub-Saharan Africa are broadly divided into two major language groups: Sudanese and Bantu. The Sudanese make up the peoples of the regions that today range from Ethiopia to Chad and from southern Egypt to Uganda and northern Tanzania. In the north they represent the subdivision of the Eastern Sudanese group (which includes the Nubians, Nilotes and Baris) and below them the Central Sudanese group, made up of numerous linguistic and cultural groups made up of different ethnicities that supplied Brazil with slaves.
Specially those located in the Gulf of Guinea, which are known in Brazil under the generic names Nagasaki or Yoruba (but which include several Yoruba linguistic and cultural peoples, including Oyó, Ijexá, Ketu, Ijebu, Egbá, Ifé, Oxogbô, etc.), the Fon-Jejes (who include, among others, the Fon-Jejes-Daomeans and the Mahi), the Haussás, who are famous even in Bahia for their Islamized civilization, as well as other groups that played a minor role in the emergence of our culture, such as the Grúncis, Tapas, Mandingos, Fântis, Achântis and others less important in the history of Candomblé. Often such groups were simply referred to as Minas.
Groups that speak the same language can form many cultural variants in Africa, sometimes with their own dialects and cultural peculiarities. Among the Yoruba, for example, in addition to dialect variations, different towns and villages worshiped specific deities, had their own ceremonial customs, had their own music, and so on. Until the 18th century, each Yoruba group was identified by its town and there was no name to refer to them collectively. Each city was politically autonomous, each ruled by its Obá, the king, but one of them dominated the others, forming a larger society defended by the imperial power of the dominant city.
Although the economy was based on agriculture, hunting and fishing, the population lived in the cities, of which Ifé, the sacred city, was considered the cradle of the Yoruba and all humanity. Among the Yoruba, the last great empire was that of the city of Oió, to which most of the cities were subject.
Of these cities, two play a special role in the memory of the religious culture reproduced in Brazil: Oió, the city of Xangôs, and Ketu, the city of Oxóssis, as well as Abeokutá, a center of worship of Iemanjá, and Ilexá, the capital of the Ijexá- Subethnicities from which the Oxum and Logun-Edé cults originate. The countless local cultural variants, in the case of both the Bantu and the Yoruba or Nagô, did not survive as autonomous entities, and many were completely lost in Brazil. Specific differences were eliminated and combined into generic groups known as Jejes, Nagôs, Angola, etc.
What were the slaves used for?
In the first centuries of the slave trade, Bantu Africans were brought to Brazil, followed later by the Sudanese, whose trade developed even more strongly after the fall of the Oió Empire, which was destroyed by the Fons of Dahomey and then dominated by the Hausas. Without military protection, the various Yoruba populations became easy prey for the local slave market, maintained by neighbors from other ethnic groups. As Brazil’s colonial and later imperial economy changed over the centuries, so did the demand for slaves, both geographically and economically. By the mid-18th century, a large portion of the Black population was imported from the sugar plantations of Pernambuco and Bahia, but with the discovery of gold in Minas Gerais in the 18th century, the traffic shifted to Minas Gerais, corresponding to the so-called Gold Cycle.
Throughout the colonial agricultural history, the growth of agricultural activities always corresponded to an increased influx of slaves. They were the workforce on the tobacco and cocoa fields of Bahia and Sergipe, in addition to sugarcane; in Rio de Janeiro, they worked on sugarcane plantations and later on coffee farms; in Pernambuco, Alagoas, and Paraíba, they were indispensable for sugarcane and cotton cultivation; in Maranhão and Pará, they worked in the cotton industry; in São Paulo, they were involved in sugarcane and coffee production. In Minas Gerais, they worked in mining as well as coffee plantations, which were also cultivated in Espírito Santo.
They were also present in agriculture in Rio Grande do Sul and in mining in Goiás and Mato Grosso. They were responsible for domestic services everywhere, organized in the big house and Senzala complex. With the growth of cities, especially coastal cities, a market for urban services emerged around the turn of the 19th century, in which Africans played a role based on a new form of politics, offering their professional skills to those who needed them and receiving payment in cash, which went entirely or to a large extent to the slave owner. They were the „slaves of gain,“ including freed Blacks in professions such as carriers, small traders, coastal skippers, food producers, craftsmen of all arts, nannies, domestic workers, in addition to caregiving services for public services, and more.
These urban workers also included „emancipated“ Africans who were brought into the country through illegal trade, freed by the government, and employed by it. With the new use of slaves, new ways of life were created. It was no longer necessary to live on the owner’s property and reside in a Senzala. Slavery urbanized, and slaves gained greater freedom of movement, expanded their social relationships, and developed new forms of sociability.
It is known that the majority of agricultural and mining activities, which had been carried out for a long time and were widespread throughout the rural interior, were ensured by slaves of Bantu origin, while urban activities that emerged more recently and were concentrated in the major coastal capitals would be more closely associated with the Sudanese, essentially due to changes in the origin streams of the slave trade in Africa at different historical moments that characterized this or that economic activity in Brazil.
Indeed, the importation of Bantu slaves was not replaced by Sudanese, and the flow of imports continued, although the imports from the ports of the so-called Slave Coast or the Gulf of Guinea would be more concentrated in the cities, especially Bahia. In Rio de Janeiro, for example, the demographic predominance of Bantu slaves has always been maintained, largely due to the peculiarities of the agreements and trade treaties that allowed Portuguese merchants of the late period to exclusively trade Blacks with Rio de Janeiro, who could only be brought from the South African coast.
In the final periods of slavery, new population movements contributed to cultural dispersion. The end of the African slave trade around 1850 coincided with a new phase of economic development. The strength of coffee plantations in the provinces of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and Espírito Santo continued to require slave labor. With the impossibility of African imports, completely prevented at that time by diplomatic pressure and naval surveillance by England, a highly profitable domestic slave market emerged in the thirty years leading up to abolition in 1888.
The provinces whose economies were in decline sold slaves, while they were purchased by the new wealthy coffee planters of the central-southern region. It is estimated that 300,000 slaves were moved from one place to another. All provinces in the Northeast, North, and South lost slave populations. The extreme case was Ceará, devastated by drought, forced to abolish almost all slavery, as it was left to the owners to sell slaves to buy food for themselves and their families, making it the whitest of the Brazilian states, not only racially but also culturally. In the realm of religions, it is symbolically perhaps the most Catholic and least Afro-Brazilian state in the country.
This geographical reorganization naturally led to a new tangle of origins, identities, and cultures, contributing to the formation of a cultural amalgamation of „national character“ in which the Black population gradually distanced themselves from Africa and became closer to Brazil. It appears that the Black population transplanted during this phase of slavery was mainly engaged in agriculture and less connected to urban occupations.
What did this history mean for the emergence of Brazilian Candomblé?
So, from the 16th to the 19th century, Africans from various ethnic and cultural groups, often rivals, were captured and brought to Brazil as slaves. African slaves remained indispensable for over 300 years in the advancement of the Brazilian colonial and imperial economy. They also provided a powerful foundation for some African kingdoms that saw the possibility of profit in the slave trade. In the wars between tribes, the defeated were offered for sale or traded with Europeans for products needed and highly valued by Africans, such as salt and cachaça (sugarcane liquor). This abrupt uprooting of Africans from their homeland not only disrupted their religious organization but also limited their cultural, material, and human progress. In terms of their religiosity, they had to resort to subterfuge to disguise their practices within the imposition of the Catholic religion, thus giving rise to syncretism.
Dispersion was vast, with entire families and ethnic groups separated. The Bantu ethnic group spread further into the interior of the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Maranhão, Pernambuco, Bahia, and Rio Grande do Sul. The Yoruba, Fons, and Savalunos concentrated more in urban areas of the states of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Bahia, Pernambuco, and Maranhão.
The Ewes and another part of the Savalunos predominantly went to Maranhão, with a smaller portion going to Bahia and Pernambuco. Another ethnic group belonging to the Great Fon Nation, and perhaps one of the last to be brought, came from Aladá (the Aladanos), a city in Benin, and was directly brought to Rio de Janeiro. There are no historical records of their arrival or stay in Salvador, Bahia. It was the group that formed Axé Podabá, brought by Gaiaku Rosena and later inherited by Mejitó, of Vodun Ijó.
However, it didn’t take long for the black slaves to come into contact with each other through the slave trade among large landowners. They began to assimilate the local language and thus achieved an intermingling of tribes without losing their true identity. Apparently, the Bantu had more difficulty accepting the country’s language because they lived more isolated and farther away from urban centers. They preferred to communicate in their own language, keeping their distance from others. They organized associations to fraternize and remain united, preserving their African customs, beliefs, and religious fervor, attempting to keep alive the flame of their love for their ancestors and deities. It was the moment when they „azuelavam“ in the Kimbundu language, which means to celebrate and dance.
The slaves gathered in the yards to celebrate and commune with their similar deities and each other. But despite the similarities of their Orishas, Voduns, and Inquices, it was above all Mother Africa, the land of all nations, that united them. The mother had simply changed continents… And in those moments of collective celebration, the space became sacred because the Orishas, Inquices, and Voduns emerged, reminding them, together with their earthly children, of tradition and teaching them a new way of life. The people were strengthened and perhaps even kept alive by the power emanating from their gods.
Geographically, the vastness of the land made it impossible for many groups to reunite. Over time, with the loss of the elders and their vast knowledge, small ethnic groups shrank or even disappeared. Others had to adopt and incorporate the knowledge of sister nations in order to survive and continue their cults. All these nations left traces of their presence in the lives of the Portuguese and later in the lives of the Brazilians. Their sensual and joyful dances, flavorful and fragrant cuisine, colorful clothing, and their love and respect for nature are a legacy that has survived to this day.
Recognition as Tradition
In the past, Brazilian Candomblé houses were raided, their sacred objects broken, and sometimes even confiscated as a result of police and religious persecution. Several terreiros were shut down, and Babalorixás and Iyalorixás were arrested. It was a religion that many referred to as a „demonic cult,“ as the Catholic Church used its power to force even Black people into catechism to keep them away from their own religion. The discrimination, oppression, and forced Christianization of conquered cultures by the Catholic Church were common practices at that time, both among the indigenous people of Brazil by the Jesuits and in Africa itself.
Symbolic of centuries of persecution and oppression is the translation of the Bible into the Yoruba language, equating the orisha Exú (pronounced Eshú) with the devil. This legitimized the Church’s demonization of an entire tradition. However, Candomblé, Santeria, and African source cultures can never be described as „demonic“ because these religions do not have a concept of a demon representing evil, nor do they include a notion of hell, a term often used in the past to frighten slaves. This concept of spirituality is completely foreign to this tradition, as is the notion of guilt and atonement through indulgence.
It took several centuries and many struggles, much suffering, until equality between ethnicities and religious freedom, along with the abolition of slavery, was finally established in Brazil.
In Brazil, every person has the right to religious freedom today, as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others or engage in actions that violate the law. All Candomblecistas and Umbandistas are protected by law. Awareness of the past is growing, and the exploration of history and African roots is far from complete, but it is increasingly open. However, there is still a conflicting relationship between the Church and Candomblé, particularly with the „evangelical“ sects that have emerged in recent decades, and the old traditions. In practice, though, millions of Brazilians live among and between these different worlds.
Many Brazilians attend church on Sundays while simultaneously participating in Kardecist spiritist sessions, consulting the ancient oracle of Candomblé, or conversing with the spiritual guides of Umbanda. This may seem strange to a European, but it is, in a sense, an expression of „everything is one.“ According to Candomblé and Umbanda, this behavior is not contradictory because the traditions do not have a missionary mandate. The traditions and their deities find the people, not the other way around, as is said in Candomblé.
SYNCHRETISM IN CANDOMBLÉ
In the past, syncretism helped Candomblé survive. However, it is no longer necessary today and should ideally no longer be used. There are currents that completely reject the adoption of syncretistic concepts and rituals as part of a new self-awareness. Other currents, however, view syncretism as part of the culture and strive to maintain it while clarifying its African interpretations and roots. Thus, understanding syncretism in Candomblé (as well as in Santeria) is crucial to comprehending the history and development of these traditions.
THE NATIONS OF CANDOMBLÉ
Knowledge of the nations of Brazilian Candomblé is not only of historical and cultural significance but also establishes a different understanding of terminology, particularly in relation to rituals. Therefore, it is important for every Candomblecista to understand and work within their specific tradition. The rituals, songs, and terminology should not be mixed, except in very select cases. Switching from one terreiro to another is possible, but it involves significant effort, especially if it involves changing nations. Often, this requires a new initiation and complex rituals to release and relinquish the other nation. In this book, we mainly explain the Yoruba (Nagô) tradition, specifically the Ketu tradition. It also serves as a good foundation for all other nations, but there are significant differences to consider in the practical implementation within terreiros.
The most significant nations that arrived in Brazil were the Bantu, Yoruba, and Fon. These nations encompass various countries, cities, and ethnic groups. Others also came, but they were assimilated, forgotten, or became extinct. They can only be found in certain rituals or nuances of different terreiros.
The Bantu nation brought their Inquices and Bacurus, while the Yoruba nation brought their Orixás and ancestor cults. The Fon nation brought their Voduns. Although these deities may share some similarities, there are significant differences in behavior, personality, dance, clothing, food, and communication among them. They are different deities originating from different places but with the same goal: to help people be happier.
The terminology of the nations is not consistent and often depends on the perspective or intention of the storyteller. Here, we follow a common definition as lived in contemporary Candomblé. Whenever necessary, we provide specific details.
We use the term Yorubá instead of Nagô in this book to define the major nation that includes the nations that worship the so-called Orixás, such as Ketu, Ijexá, Oyó, Efan, Egbado, Egba, and others. Similarly, we use the term Fon instead of Jeje to unify the roots of Benin, Abomey, Savalu (the Mahis), Aladdan (the Aladans). From Togo and Ghana, the Ewes, a nation that also venerates Voodoo, came. However, we do not use a replacement for the word Bantu since it has not received derogatory names like the others.
The name Nagô was used by the Fons in a contemptuous manner to refer to their enemies who invaded their lands or arrived as war trophies from Yoruba areas. This term was derogatory, mocking, and cursing, referring to „waste, trash, dirt.“ Over time, it became embedded and accepted in the everyday life of the people and in the heart of the religion. The term began to collectively encompass the ethnicities that shared a common religious language and culture.
However, the term Nagô or Anagô, which encompasses the entire complex culture of Southwest Nigeria’s peoples, has no historical, geographical, or political basis, does not refer to any specific ethnic group, and has no historical relevance. In Brazil, it was mainly accepted and assimilated by the Ketu nation, which is why it is mentioned here. Due to its derogatory connotation and lack of historical and cultural anchoring, the term is not used in this text. Instead, we prefer to use the terms Yorubá or Ketu.
The term Fon refers to the Brazilian Candomblé direction that worships Voduns. The term Jeje (Adjeji) comes from the Yoruba language and means „outsider, stranger.“ It is a term the Yoruba used in Africa to devalue this tradition. Politically, geographically, and historically, there is no nation called Jeje in Africa. In Brazil, the term Jeje refers to Candomblé stemming from the Fon and Ewe traditions, originating from Benin, the ancient Dahomey, and Ghana or Togo. Due to its historical negative connotation and the absence of historical and cultural anchoring, we prefer to use the term Fon, which usually includes the Ewe as well.
With the arrival of slaves from various parts of Eastern, Western, and Equatorial Africa in Brazil, these nations and ethnic groups fragmented. While the Yoruba and Fons were enemies in their homeland, they had to reunite in Brazil to confront their oppressors and maintain continuity in their religions. They also had to adapt and create new characteristics while rediscovering their identities. In this way, they created their religious ensemble without losing the foundations of their African religion. Adjustments were made to prevent the loss of centuries of a unique religion. They came together, and today there is no longer a single nation in Brazil that represents the pure form of African traditions, if such a pure form even exists there.
The necessary union of the Fons and Yoruba gave rise to the Nagô-Vodum nation, also known as Nagô-Jeje, which predominates in books and traditions in Brazil. This union emerged from the need for certain ethnic groups to maintain the continuity of their cults and unite their knowledge with that of other nations. By expanding their religious world, they became stronger and more united. By merging the orixas with the voduns, some deities were overshadowed by others. However, this was a necessary sacrifice that expanded and diversified the pantheon. Understanding the backgrounds of the different deities is crucial in many rituals. The deeper and more differentiated the understanding, the more precise the alignment of rituals, including attire, songs, and instruments.
The Bantu nation, often referred to as the „mother nation,“ brought the Inquices, Calundus, and Bacurus. Cabindas came from the Congo, the Benguelas from Angola, and the Macuas and Angicos from Mozambique. The Minas came from the Guinea coast, specifically from Fort São Jorge da Mina. They brought various dialects and languages, including Bantu, Quicongo, Quimbundo, Umbundo, Quioco, and others. These languages contributed several terms that eventually merged into the Portuguese language spoken in Brazil. They also left their mark on folk festivals with their dances and rhythms.
The Yoruba nation was brought to Brazil in large numbers. Entire kingdoms were captured and enslaved, bringing their orixas, ancestor cults, religious rituals, and language with them. The Efon people, belonging to the Yoruba ethnic group from the city of Ekiti-Efon, were influenced by the Ketu and thereby lost some of their original characteristics and identity. Nowadays, some groups strive to preserve the history of a nation as beautiful and rich as their queen, Mother Oxum, and their king, Father Oxaguian.
Also belonging to the Yoruba nation, the Ijexás came from the Ilexá region and left us with dances and rhythms that are well cadenced and sensual. The Xambás, people who inhabited regions bordering Nigeria, form another nation that was sold mainly to Recife in northern Brazil.
When the Fons arrived in Brazil, slavery was already nearing its end. Therefore, they were partially able to choose the areas where they settled. Perhaps this contributed to their regional concentration, as they remained more centered in states like Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and Maranhão. However, there are now terreiros in several other states as well. Compared to other nations, the Fon nation managed to preserve their cultures and traditions with a higher degree of independence. They required vast areas of land and forest for their Voduns, which meant they had to live further away from urban centers. This posed challenges to initiating new members and spreading their culture, as it was more difficult and slower.
These terreiros were, and still are, partially very closed off and became known as the „Nation of Secrets and Mysteries.“ Living in extensive lands and large forests, the people of this nation often did not need to leave the boundaries of their land because they had everything they needed. The land provided them with food, herbs, clear water, and protection. In the past, many houses even had their own cemeteries because the state did not keep records or have control over the number of births or deaths among slaves. The terreiros were and continue to be passed down from generation to generation, transmitting and preserving their teachings and cults.
The seclusion of the Fon nation was both a curse and a blessing in historical terms. On one hand, it preserved their culture in its original purity. On the other hand, they gradually lost their roots, especially when the oral transmission of their traditions and the incorporation of new novices did not function effectively. The lack of exchange and highly selective transmission of rituals partly posed challenges to this tradition due to its often under-critical size.
THREE PHASES OF DEVELOPMENT OF CANDOMBLÉ
Historian and professor Reginaldo Prandi distinguishes three phases in the development of Afro-Brazilian traditions. He writes:
„The history of Afro-Brazilian religions can be divided into three snapshots: first, the phase of syncretism with Catholicism during the formation of traditional modalities known as Candomblé, Xangô, Tambor de Mina, and Batuque; second, the phase of bleaching during the formation of Umbanda in the 1920s and 1930s; third, the phase of Africanization, the transformation of Candomblé into a universal religion open to all without barriers of color or race, which implies the negation of syncretism, starting from the 1960s.
Until the 1930s, black religions could be categorized as religions for preserving ethnic or cultural heritage, the religions of old black slaves and their descendants, in short, religions that kept African traditions alive. They were formed in different areas of Brazil, with different rituals and local names derived from various African traditions: Candomblé in Bahia, Xangô in Pernambuco and Alagoas, Tambor de Mina in Maranhão and Pará, Batuque in Rio Grande do Sul, and Macumba in Rio de Janeiro. In Bahia, the very popular Caboclo-Candomblé and the lesser-known Egg-Candomblé also emerged.
The Northeast was also the birthplace of other religious modalities that were closer to indigenous religions but eventually incorporated or influenced a large part of Afro-Brazilian religions. These include Catimbó, a religion of spirits named after masters and Caboclos who go into trance to provide advice, prescriptions, and healing. This Afro-American tradition has peculiarities in various places, known as Jurema, Toré, Pajelança, Babacuê, enchantment, and healing.
In the first quarter of this century, Umbanda was founded in Rio de Janeiro and later in São Paulo, quickly spreading throughout the country and paving the way for a new phase of dissemination of the old Candomblé. Umbanda has often been identified as the quintessential Brazilian religion because, unlike traditional black religions, which were constituted as religions of black groups, Umbanda in Brazil emerged as a universal religion directed at all, resulting from the convergence of African, spiritist, and Catholic traditions. Since its foundation, Umbanda has sought to legitimize itself by erasing the characteristics inherited from Candomblé, its black matrix, especially those related to behavioral and mental models that denote tribal origin and then slavery.
As Umbanda had already spread throughout the country, Candomblé, which was still present in Bahia and other regions where it originated, began its journey southward. It was the 1960s, and Brazilian society was already different. From then on, it took no more than thirty years for the old and new Afro-Brazilian religions to occupy a prominent position in the scenario of religions in urban areas.
In these different movements, Afro-Brazilian religions have experienced different faces in a society undergoing constant change, adapting to social conditions throughout their diversified history, sometimes appreciating certain elements of their constitution, sometimes denying them; sometimes aligning with Catholicism, sometimes abandoning it.
Syncretism: The Constitution of Black Religion in White Society
Since their establishment, Afro-Brazilian religions have formed through syncretism with Catholicism and, to a lesser extent, indigenous religions. The Catholic cult of saints, a popular form of polytheistic Catholicism, fit like a glove with the cult of African pantheons.
Since their establishment on Brazilian soil, religions of black origin have been tributaries of Catholicism. Although the black man, whether enslaved or freed, has been able to retain a large portion of his religious traditions in Brazil since the 18th and 19th centuries and until today, it is a fact that his religion has always faced a serious contradiction: The religions of the Bantu, Yoruba, and Fon peoples are originally ancestor cults based on families and their lineage, but the social and familial structures that gave meaning to the religion in their place of origin were never reproduced.
The social fabric of black slaves had nothing to do with the family, groups, and social classes of Africans in their place of origin. Thus, the black religion in the New World could only be partially reproduced. The ritual aspect of the original religion, which was crucial to daily life and constituted through family and village ancestor cults, was hardly reconstructed because the family was lost, the tribe was lost. In Africa, it was the village ancestor (Egungum) who ensured the order of the group, resolved conflicts, and punished transgressors who threatened the collective balance. When social structures were dissolved by slavery, the ancestors lost their privileged place in the cult and only marginally survived in the new social and ritual context.
The deities more directly connected to natural forces, more directly involved in the magical manipulation of the world, more present in the construction of personal identity – the orixás, deities of the genus cult – occupied the center of the new black religion on Brazilian territory. After all, what meaning could controlling social life have for the black slave? Outside their religious gatherings, the Catholicism of the master was the only possible source for a connection to the collective world projected by slave labor and the senzala (slave quarters).
If the black religion, even in its fragmented reconstruction, was able to give the black man a black, African identity that ritually restored the family, the tribe, and the city forever lost in the diaspora, it was Catholicism that allowed him to find and navigate himself in the real world of daily life, in the society of the dominant white man who was responsible for the existence of the black man, even under conditions of deprivation and suffering, and who controlled his life completely. Any attempt to overcome the condition of slavery, whether as a reality or a historical legacy, initially implied necessary integration into the white world. And soon, it became imperative to be Brazilian, to feel and appear Brazilian.
The blacks could not be Brazilian without being Catholic at the same time. They could preserve their beliefs within the strict boundaries of family groups – often symbolically reproduced through religious communities, hence the origin of Candomblé terreiros (ritual spaces) and família-de-Santo (families of the saints) – but integration into the larger space, so to speak, required a national identity, an identity that considered the general line of Catholic society in expansion.
The end of slavery, the formation of the national society structured into classes, the distribution of the population across geographical expanses with the creation of various social possibilities – all this only reinforced the importance of Catholicism for the black population. Catholicism itself, as a hegemonic culture of inclusion, had no objection to the black man maintaining a dual religious connection that could not be overcome.
Thus, the Afro-Brazilian religions were always indebted, ideologically and ritually, to Catholicism. Only recently have religions of black origin begun to detach themselves from Catholicism, at a time when Brazilian society no longer needs Catholicism as the great and sole source of transcendence that could legitimize it and provide valuable controls over social life. However, this is a project of changing identity references that has only just begun and requires other experiences to exist and move freely in the world, with a sense of belonging.
From birth, they were exempt from questions of justice, which presupposes universal principles and collective pacts over individual desires, as this was the exclusive domain of the general religion of general society, Catholicism; disinterested in the forms of the individual for the secular world, because the model here is white; nurturing the cult of gods that manifest and express themselves primarily through form, it is not without reason that Afro-Brazilian religions have developed an enormous ritual sense that is preceded by an incomparable aesthetic sense, capable of transcending the boundaries of the sacred to be imbued in the most profane expressions that exemplify national identity.
Due to the rich cultural heritage they have been able to preserve, black religions, especially since the 1960s, have encountered Brazilian society in the realm of art by providing a significant portion of their repertoire to popular culture, which is transformed into profane art for mass consumption, and in return, they have gained recognition and prestige. However, before this, there was a long journey in which the religion of the orixás set aside its African aspects to acquire a more European, whiter face.
Whitening: The Formation of Umbanda for White Society
At the end of the 19th century, Spiritism originated from France by Allan Kardec arrived in Brazil. It is a religion that combines a certain karmic understanding of the Hindu-inspired world with Christian commandments and a certain rationalism. Spiritism quickly found a home in Brazil as it was initially a religion of the middle class, although it was also attended by poor and black individuals. In Rio de Janeiro, black adherents of Spiritism brought much of their Candomblé traditions into the centers of the new religion, often provoking conflicts with the „European“ model of Kardecist Spiritism.
Thus, the first Umbanda center was established in the mid-1920s in the state of Rio de Janeiro as a dissenting movement against Kardecism, which rejected the presence of black leaders and caboclos (mixed-race and indigenous spirits), considering them inferior spirits. Soon after, many other centers of this form of Spiritism emerged, which were then called Umbanda Spiritism. Starting from Rio de Janeiro, Umbanda quickly spread and expanded to São Paulo and then across the country. In 1941, the first Umbanda congress was held in Rio de Janeiro, attended by Umbandists from São Paulo as well.
With Umbanda, an energetic process of valorizing national elements such as caboclos and old black spirits, which are spirits associated with indigenous people and (black) slaves, began. Umbanda, in its early stages, reworked the religious elements incorporated into Brazilian culture by diluting some black elements, blending them with impoverished whites in the formation of new social classes within urban areas. The federal capital, even though it was predominantly proletarian, was culturally European, valuing bureaucratic organization, which supported a significant portion of the resident population, rewarded knowledge acquired through schooling rather than oral tradition, and was already familiar with Kardecist Spiritism as a religion.
The goal was to „cleanse“ the emerging religion of its most controversial elements, such as secret initiation traditions and blood sacrifices, by taking Kardecist Spiritism as a model that expressed the ideals and values of the new capitalist and republican society, particularly in the capital city. The crucial steps included adopting the vernacular language, simplifying initiation practices, and almost completely abolishing blood sacrifices. Sung and danced rituals of Candomblé were retained, as well as a simplified pantheon of orixás, but for many years, they were syncretized with Catholic saints and followed a liturgical calendar aligned with the Catholic Church. However, the daily life of the cult was centered around spiritual leaders, caboclos, old black spirits, and even „malefices,“ as well as male and female Exús, the latter known as Pomba Giras, who were already revered in traditional Bahia-style Candomblé and among the people of Rio de Janeiro.
Umbanda, in a way, broke away from the Kardecist worldview that taught Brazil was another land of suffering, where individuals had to account for their actions in past lives. Umbanda inherited from Candomblé the idea that experiencing life in this world implies the obligation to enjoy it, that the fulfillment of human beings is expressed through the pursuit of earthly happiness, thereby questioning the Kardecist notion of karmic evolution (what we are today depends on how we acted in a past life), which emphasized guilt and conformism. With the practice of ritual sacrifices appeasing the gods in our favor, Umbanda offered the possibility to change the order of the world, to intervene according to individual interests and will. It became necessary for each person to seek their full realization, especially since the world we face is one that values individualism, creativity, expanded imagination, and the significance of „ascending in life.“
This detail is essential because this way of seeing the world through Umbanda promotes social mobility. More importantly, this mobility is open to everyone without exception: the poor of all backgrounds, whites, browns, blacks, Arabs, etc. Social status is no longer determined by family or racial origin. Now, it is about changing the world in one’s favor. And this religion is capable of offering another instrument for that: influencing the world through rituals. With Umbanda, the major cities of the Southeast, and then all others, experienced a new spiritual wave.
Alongside Umbanda, the major cities of the Southeast, and later all others, witnessed the offerings to Exu, sacrifices deposited at crossroads. Thus, until the end of the 1950s, the history of Afro-Brazilian religions can be considered a history of the erasure of African-origin traits and systematic adaptation to the national culture dominated by European, white influences. However, during the process of whitening, many black ritual practices and religious concepts imposed themselves on white society.
Africanization: The Expansion of Candomblé and the Return to Black Origins
By 1950, Umbanda had consolidated as an open religion for all, regardless of racial, social, ethnic, or geographical differences. Having developed its unique worldview, a European-African-Indigenous collage symbolizing its own heritage, Umbanda could present itself as a source of transcendence that could replace Catholicism or join it as a vehicle for renewing religious meaning. After its central aspects had solidified in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Umbanda spread throughout the country and can now be found not only in Portugal but also in Argentina, Uruguay, and other Latin American countries.
However, the Afro-Brazilian religions, as constituted up to this point, could still be considered black religions. They were still under police and public health control. Even Umbanda, which made great efforts to present itself to white society as a white religion, was still viewed with many prejudices. Led by individuals from the lower middle class, including military and police officers, small business owners, and housewives, Umbanda was referred to as „lower Spiritism“ and was met with reservations since it had failed to attract intellectuals, artists, and journalists as Kardecist Spiritism had.
In the case of Candomblé, since its inception, it had been surrounded by influential individuals from society, including business leaders and intellectuals who sympathized with and admired the religion of black people, maintaining a loving and supportive connection with Candomblé terreiros (places of worship) and their leaders. Candomblé created a hierarchical position for these individuals, serving as a protective figure, the Ogã, who acted as a bridge between the terreiro and the white world. The Ogã protected the cult group from police persecution, resolved bureaucratic and political issues, and provided financial assistance for performing rituals. Intellectuals and highly esteemed artists received (and continue to receive) such honors.
In the 1960s, something surprising began to happen. With the massive migration from the Northeast to the industrial cities of the Southeast, Candomblé began to encroach upon the established territory of Umbanda, and old Umbandists began to be initiated into Candomblé. Many of them abandoned Umbanda rituals to establish themselves as fathers and mothers of the most traditional forms of Orixá worship. In this movement, Umbanda once again yielded to Candomblé, returning to its old and „true“ roots, which were seen as more mysterious, powerful, and authentic than its modern, whitened offspring.
The years from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, often referred to as „the 1960s,“ marked a period of vital cultural and mental flourishing, bringing profound changes in lifestyles and intellectual codes. Rationality came under suspicion, as did blind faith in university knowledge and its closed models for explaining the world. This period anticipated what would later become the demand for postmodernity. The movement of questioning that started in the 1960s in Europe and the United States soon reached Brazil, particularly in the Southeast and major cities, gaining followers among intellectuals, students, and scholars.
These are the years of counterculture, the recovery of the exotic, the other, the original. Western youth rebelled, developed a taste for Eastern civilizations, their transcendental and occult mysteries (remember the Beatles and the pilgrimage of American and European youth in search of the gurus from the Himalayas). The culture of the other was appreciated. In Brazil, indigenous culture and anthropology diminished to ethnography in order to engage in indigenous politics. And also the culture of the Blacks. Society embarked on a search for its roots. It was necessary to return to Bahia and – why not? – set up camp in Arembepe. Open the doors of perception, seek pleasure, expand sensitivity, seek immediate rewards for body and mind.
During this time in Brazilian history, the old African-origin religious traditions, preserved until then in Bahia and other parts of the country, found excellent economic conditions to reproduce and multiply further south; the high costs of rituals were no longer a hindrance that could contain them. At the same time, many intellectuals, poets, students, writers, and renowned artists, as part of this middle-class movement in search of the original roots of Brazilian culture, knocked on the doors of the old Candomblé houses in Bahia. Going to Salvador to have their fate read by the Mães-de-Santo became a must for many, a need that filled the void created by a modern and secularized lifestyle, which so forcefully represented social changes affecting the way of life in the industrialized cities – those of the Southeast, a lifestyle that already – who knows? – might be the result of so many disillusionments.
The non-Candomblé found very favorable social, economic, and cultural conditions for its rebirth in a new territory where the presence of black-origin institutions had previously counted for little. However, the newly established Terreiros de Orixás contained poor people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds who were interested in Candomblé, and the Terreiros grew to hundreds. Even the Candomblé from the Southeast became a universal religion, a religion for all.
During this time of intense cultural and political exuberance – one only needs to remember the military coup of 1964 and the long years of dictatorial repression and resistance by student and labor movements – the left-wing youth movements played an intense role in areas such as theater and music. At the same time, a social concept developed that included the appreciation of the poor, the Blacks, the exploited, and the marginalized. This included the favelas and hills of Rio de Janeiro, which were now sung about by composers and performers of popular elite music as centers of struggle against social injustice.
Nonconformism and disdain for rational culture were concentrated in the illustrated bourgeoisie. Soon, it became a defined cultural movement and at the same time a protest, leftist, and renewal movement, as evidenced by the already electronic media that brought a wealth of previously unknown information into households and promoted the emergence of new tastes. The country experienced the political and cultural euphoria that preceded the 1964 coup, followed by the turmoil of the years of resistance against the military dictatorship. The Brazilian intellectuals with greater legitimacy actively participated in a cultural project of reclaiming their origins in the 1960s, a project that was directly related to Bahia.
In this context, the economic, social, and cultural Candomblé came to São Paulo and other regions of the country where it was little known or unknown, and settled there. It was no longer a black religion but a religion that addressed everyone, regardless of race, although it remained predominantly black in the regions of origin.
The religion of the Orixás preserves its image as a cult of secrets and mysteries, which in the people’s imagination implies the idea of danger and risk, a fact that nurtures prejudices. However, it has undoubtedly infiltrated the process of legitimation and is no longer hiding from the police or confined to closed sectors of the population. The profane dissemination of the religion through the arts, especially popular music that reaches the masses via radio and television, has undoubtedly contributed to reducing the marginality of the religion of the African gods.
As a religion that now belongs to everyone, Candomblé emphasizes the idea that competition in society is much fiercer than one might think, that it is necessary to reach much denser and encrypted levels of knowledge, and that religious power has ample opportunities to expand. It teaches that there is nothing to hide or repress, neither about oneself nor about others. In this world, we can be what we are, what we want to be, and what others would like to be. Once upon a time.
As a magical services agency, it offers non-elected individuals the opportunity to find solutions to unresolved problems in a different way, without having to engage further with the religion. In the eyes of the client, the dense holiness of Candomblé can go unnoticed. Since the initiation rites of Candomblé are conducted away from the public eye, the uninitiated only witness the public ritual, i.e., the celebration with music, song, dance, food, and vibrant colors. Therefore, Candomblé is closely intertwined with its aesthetic form, which is reflected in theater, samba schools, television soap operas – making Orixás accessible as legitimate consumer goods.
An important part of the social legitimization of elements of this black culture or African origin, with Bahia being their main source, this legitimation of the „root,“ may have been managed by the new aesthetic of the intellectualized middle class of Rio and São Paulo in the 1960s and 1970s. They adopted and disseminated the artists and intellectuals of Bahia, including through electronic media, reaching all social classes, with a special impact on popular music.
It also reached the poor, although they did not experience the desire for return and rebellion that drove people to Salvador in the 1960s, anchoring in Porto da Barra, ascending the slope of Gantois in the neighborhood of Federação, finding the path of São Gonçalo do Retiro, and entering the paths of Matatu de Brotas in search of the venerable mothers of the saints and their enchantments. I hope it has also spread among the Umbandistas, who until then have struggled to erase precisely this non-white origin of their religion, this Bahia, this Africa.
What I called the Africanization process of Candomblé began, where a conscious return to relevant traditions of language, rituals, and myths took place, which had been misrepresented and lost in the adversities of the diaspora. Returning to Africa did not mean becoming African or Black but reclaiming an heritage whose presence in Brazil is now a source of pride, wisdom, and public recognition, and being carriers of a culture that is already both Black and Brazilian, as Brazil already recognizes itself in the Orixá.
In the believer’s imagination, a poor believer, the „original“ Orixá, cherished and courted by someone who is wealthier, more educated, famous, and successful in life, proves to be stronger, richer, „authentic,“ more powerful.
Throughout the sociocultural process outlined here, the cult of Orixás initially mixed with the Catholic cult of saints to become Brazilian – syncretism was forged. Then it erased black elements to become universal and integrate into mainstream society – Umbanda was gestured. Finally, it returned to its black origins to become part of the country’s true identity – Candomblé transformed into a religion for all and initiated a process of Africanization and desynchronization to regain its autonomy from Catholicism.
The priesthood in Candomblé is also a means of upward social mobility (as the Catholic clergy, with their projects of advancement for their children, like all religious leaders, whatever they may be, have gone to many poor families), and those who begin to achieve social success (which implies clientele) tend to seek symbolic prestige, which, as in religions in general and particularly in Candomblé, presupposes an original purity derived from the past (Africa through Bahia) or the present (Africa itself as of today). In the process of legitimation that has been taking place in São Paulo since the late 1970s, most of the sacred talents involved are forced to pilgrimage to Africa, make commitments, and take positions in the temples of Nigeria and Benin, repeating the saga of Martiniano from Bonfim, of Bahia, and of Adam from Recife, among other „greats“ of the 1930s.
That is Africanization. But to Africanize does not mean to be black again or to want to be, much less to live like Africans. Let us remember the significant number of Candomblé followers who are educated by white adherents. Africanization also means intellectualizing to Africanize, gaining access to a sacred literature that includes the oracular poems of Ifá, reorganizing the cult based on models or with elements brought from contemporary Africa (a process where the cult of the Caboclos is perhaps the most vulnerable point with the highest potential for conflict). It implies the appearance of priests in metropolitan society as someone capable of overcoming the identity with the poor, ignorant, and prejudiced people of Bahia.
Each one of them, whether from Africa or outside the dominant Bahia-Candomblé circle, rebuilds their Terreiro and chooses the aspects that appear most comfortable or interesting to them. In this sense, Africanization is also brickwork; it is also the invention of traditions. It is not a return to the primitive as it once was but an expansion of the spectrum of religious possibilities for a modern society in which religion is also a service and presents itself as a service in the religious market with various offerings, originality, competence, and efficiency.
The traditional religion that migrated and was recaptured in the modern city thus appears as a charitable image of today’s society, representing the seriousness of difference and diversity. In this secularized society, where there is no longer a place for the singular and hegemonic religion capable of dictating rules for society as a whole, a society that no longer needs gods but still venerates them for individual needs, Candomblé spreads as one of the infinite religions of the modern metropolis.
As I mentioned on another occasion, religion is also changing in this new society where many fundamental references change and alternate. It becomes limitless and without territory, without being universal in the sense of a religion pretending to be unique, like Catholicism, classical Protestantism, or Islam. Religion now depends on the forces of supply and demand and must adapt to new situations and new requirements. It reacts to its competitors by using propaganda and electronic media, simplifying its language, limiting itself to a small number of religious „products“ whose efficient promotion is the attraction for the „followers“ who are devoted to it en masse.
Above all, it specializes by abandoning its old nature as culture and a totalitarian institution intended to account for all things. Religion expands and fragments, loses its origin, which must be redesigned for each new demand, and gains space and market. It is now one of the infinite world religions where everything is known and everything is consumed, sold, and bought. One day, who knows, it may become the religion of the borderless market. There, one can observe the prejudice against the religion of the Orixás, to which other African gods join, which are less known to Brazilians further south: the Voduns, in a conspiracy of rebuilding traditions and new worship possibilities as never seen before, as befits a secularized and pluralistic society.
And these new religions, although new despite their old origins, no longer depend on Catholicism as a mechanism of identity for their followers. One no longer needs to be Catholic to be Brazilian; one can have any kind of religion or even none at all. Syncretism no longer makes sense, and for many Candomblé followers, especially their more enlightened leadership (in all parts of Brazil), the removal of Catholic elements from this Afro-Brazilian religion is part of their return to the origin, their return to Africa, which is a reclamation of religious symbols and not a desire to return to the living conditions of the Blacks, the slaves, the elders.
By denying syncretism, the religion of the Church, its rituals, and saints, the new Candomblé places itself on an equal footing.“
CONCLUSION
Candomblé’s journey from its roots in African spirituality to its current form as a vibrant component of Brazilian culture is a testament to resilience, adaptability, and the enduring power of faith. By understanding its origins and appreciating its complexities, we gain a deeper insight into not only a religion but a rich cultural heritage that continues to shape the lives of many.
To continue this spiritual journey and delve deeper into the fascinating world of Yoruba religion and its diaspora, I warmly invite you to subscribe to my NEWSLETTER. Here, you’ll receive regular insights, stories, and updates that will further enrich your understanding and connection to these ancient traditions.
Additionally, if my journey through Yorubá’s world has sparked your interest, I encourage you to read my books, which delve even deeper into these subjects, particularly the enchanting myths. They are available on AMAZON in four languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French, offering a multicultural perspective on these rich traditions.
Lastly, don’t forget to connect with me on INSTAGRAM at @daily_ifa_orisha. It’s a vibrant community where we celebrate and honour the Orishás daily, and I would love for you to be a part of it.
Thank you for accompanying me on this enlightening journey. May the blessings of the Orishás, be with you always, nurturing and guiding your path. Until we meet again, stay connected, stay curious, and continue to explore the profound depths of our spiritual heritage.
Asé ó.
Tilo Plöger de Àjàgùnnà