What Is Candombl?

The Candombl is a religion developed in Brazil by enslaved Africans who attempted torecreate their culture on the other side of the ocean. In a very different environment, farfrom everything familiar, in an unknown land among unknown African, European andIndigenous people, and in spite of unimaginably inhuman conditions, these transplantedAfricans evolved a religion based on the spiritual knowledge they brought with them,adapting it to a new reality.Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888, more than ageneration later than the U.S. in 1863. The transatlantic slave trade officially lasted until1851 in Brazil, as opposed to its official end in 1808 in the United States, which allowednew African influences to continue entering Brazilian society until a much later date.Catholicism contributed to Afro-Brazilians' ability to retain their African religion. Itsmany saints, feast days, processions, costumes, and elaborate rituals provided a muchmore congenial camouflage for African beliefs and practices than did the austereProtestantism of the United States.Although people from many ethnic groups in West and Central Africa arrived in Brazil,the dominant Afro-Brazilian religious culture is Yoruba, from the area that is nowNigeria and Benin. The Yoruba were the major group taken to Brazil in the nineteenthcentury. Their enslavement was facilitated by civil wars between Yoruba kingdoms, inwhich the losers often found themselves on ships bound for the Americas. Yorubanumerical importance and concentration in urban areas allowed their religion to prevailover other African religious observances practiced at the time, and to institutionalize andperpetuate itself into the present.The Orishs, the anthropomorphized forces of nature who are the spiritual beings of theYoruba, are associated in Africa with geographical features, extended families, towns,and the Yoruba subgroups dominant in those towns. For example, Shang, Orish ofthunder, has the center of his worship in the town of Oy, of which he is a divinized king.Oshun, Orish of the river that bears her name, is worshiped in Ijesha and Ijebu, wherethe river flows, and especially in Oshogbo because of a pact she made with the first king of that town.Yemanj, Orish of rivers, is worshipped by the Egba subgroup, and was worshiped inthe areas of Ife and Ibadan where the river Yemoja, from which her name is taken, flows.Forced by war between Yoruba kingdoms to relocate to the area of Abeokuta, the Egbatook with them the sacred objects associated with Yemanj. Certain Orishs, however,are worshipped among all Yoruba groups, such as Oshal or Obatala, the creator ofhuman life, and Ogun, Orish of iron and ironworkers.As a result of European colonization and the imposition of Western institutions, includingreligion, the worship of the Orishs has declined in Nigeria and Benin, whereas it has flourished and continues to grow and spread in its new incarnations in the Americas. Theworship of some Orishs was greatly diminished in Africa because so many peopleresponsible for it were transported to the Americas. Such is the case with Oshossi, theOrish of the forest and hunting.The Yoruba town of Ketu in the Republic of Benin, center of the worship of Oshossi,who was, like Shang, a divinized king, was devastated by the Fon kingdom of Abomeyin the 19th century. Many of its inhabitants, including initiates of Oshossi, were sold intoslavery. People from Ketu responsible for the worship of Oshossi were involved in thefounding of Brazil's earliest and most influential Candombl houses, considered to be ofthe Ketu nation. Yoruba scholars from Nigeria have found elements of their religiouspast recreated in Brazil.The Portuguese prohibited the enslaved Africans from worshiping their own deities, andobliged them to participate in the veneration of the Catholic saints. The Yoruba learnedthe names and characteristics of these saints, perceived similarities between them and theOrishs, and established equivalences that allowed them to use the saints to camouflagetheir own spiritual beings.Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, initiallymeant nothing to the Africans. But they were familiar with Yemanj, who in Americawas again transformed, this time from the Orish of a river into the Orish of the oceans,the crossing of which their ancestors had survived. They didnt know St. Lazarus, theleper, but they did know Omol or Obaluaiy, Orish of smallpox and epidemics. JesusChrist was equally unknown to them, but they all knew Oshal, the eldest Orish, andfather of humans. In the same way, St. George, who slew a dragon, was associated withOshossi, Orish of the forests and hunting. And Saint Ann, mother of the Virgin Mary,was associated with Nana, the eldest of the water Orishs.The Portuguese obliged the Africans to pay homage to the saints on their feast days.Although appearing to worship Saint Barbara or Saint Anthony, the Yoruba knew theywere really worshiping Yansan, Orish of the River Niger and of the winds of storm, orOgun, Orish of iron and the iron tools used to create both civilization and war. Theybelieved that the Orishs would understand the necessarily convoluted manner in whichthey managed to acknowledge them. The Orishs apparently did understand, and eventriumphed, in that the Afro-Brazilian religion survived both slavery and postslaveryoppression. And the Orishs are now worshiped publicly, even by descendants of formerenslavers.The Candombl represents a microcosm of the Yoruba spiritual world, a kind of pan-Yoruba cosmology. Each Candombl house has a patron Orish, the Orish of thefounder, as well as altars for the other Orishs. Whereas in Africa each Orish wasworshipped separately, in Brazil they are grouped together. The small numbers of peoplededicated to each Orish, their close interaction with people from other areas, and thedesirability of developing a larger institutional structure for support and protection in a hostile environment, inclined them to join together. The Candombl provided a basis fora new social organization replacing systems destroyed by slavery.Yoruba from Oshogbo who had worshiped Oshun, those of Oy who had worshipedShang, those from Abeokuta who had worshiped Yemoja, and those of Ketu who hadworshiped Oshossi, found themselves together, with others, in a common situation in anunfamiliar place. Together they created a new religious structure in which each couldworship his or her Orish in the context of the worship of all the Orishs.Those Orishs found in the Americas indicate the areas from which critical masses ofYoruba people were enslaved. The importance of the worship of Shang, Yemanj,Oshossi, and Oshun in Brazil indicates that large numbers of people were taken fromOy, Abeokuta, Ketu, and Oshogbo. Thus, Afro-Brazilian Candombl houses representmicrocosms of both Yoruba human and spiritual geography.