Sanctity, sacrifice, Image and Festivity: Basic Beliefs and Rites of Afro-Brazilian Tradition

Abstract

The founding intuition of traditional Afrobrazilian religion, represented by the Candomblé of Bahia and the Xangô of Recife, is that of the dependence of the devotee vis a vis the holiness of the orixás  of African origin they worship, which are often confused with the saints of folk Catholicism. From the orixás or santos come support, protection and identity. Worship takes mainly the form of animal sacrifice.  In fact, trance, dance, feast and initiation are but the continuation of sacrifice by the consecration of the very body, especially the body of the believer, with its gestures and emotions. Holiness is very much conceived as a physical reality installed in both human heads and stone altars, which must be “fed” by sacrifices, presided over by priests and priestesses who are the heads of terreiros, where most ceremonies take place. Like Iberian derived folk Catholicism, with which they have largely been syncretized, Candomblé and Xangô are very much religions which emphasize gestures, images, passions and emotions. In recent years, however, social scientists have established a theoretical protectorate over them, leading them to lose emotion and image and to gain a new kind of rationality akin to the progress of science and the modernization of the economy and of social relations in the larger society.