What Is Candomblé?

The Candomblé is a religion developed in Brazil by enslaved Africans who attempted to

recreate their culture on the other side of the ocean. In a very different environment, far
from everything familiar, in an unknown land among unknown African, European and
Indigenous people, and in spite of unimaginably inhuman conditions, these transplanted
Africans 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 a
generation later than the U.S. in 1863. The transatlantic slave trade officially lasted until
1851 in Brazil, as opposed to its official end in 1808 in the United States, which allowed
new African influences to continue entering Brazilian society until a much later date.
Catholicism contributed to Afro-Brazilians' ability to retain their African religion. Its
many saints, feast days, processions, costumes, and elaborate rituals provided a much
more congenial camouflage for African beliefs and practices than did the austere
Protestantism 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 now
Nigeria and Benin. The Yoruba were the major group taken to Brazil in the nineteenth
century. Their enslavement was facilitated by civil wars between Yoruba kingdoms, in
which the losers often found themselves on ships bound for the Americas. Yoruba
numerical importance and concentration in urban areas allowed their religion to prevail
over other African religious observances practiced at the time, and to institutionalize and
perpetuate itself into the present.

The Orishás, the anthropomorphized forces of nature who are the spiritual beings of the
Yoruba, are associated in Africa with geographical features, extended families, towns,
and the Yoruba subgroups dominant in those towns. For example, Shangó, Orishá of
thunder, has the center of his worship in the town of Oyó, of which he is a divinized king.
Oshun, Orishá of the river that bears her name, is worshiped in Ijesha and Ijebu, where
the river flows, and especially in Oshogbo because of a pact she made with the first king
of that town.

Yemanjá, Orishá of rivers, is worshipped by the Egba subgroup, and was worshiped in
the 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 Egba
took with them the sacred objects associated with Yemanjá. Certain Orishás, however,
are worshipped among all Yoruba groups, such as Oshalá or Obatala, the creator of
human life, and Ogun, Orishá of iron and ironworkers.

As a result of European colonization and the imposition of Western institutions, including

religion, the worship of the Orishás has declined in Nigeria and Benin, whereas it has

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flourished and continues to grow and spread in its new incarnations in the Americas. The
worship of some Orishás was greatly diminished in Africa because so many people
responsible for it were transported to the Americas. Such is the case with Oshossi, the
Orishá of the forest and hunting.

The Yoruba town of Ketu in the Republic of Benin, center of the worship of Oshossi,
who was, like Shangó, a divinized king, was devastated by the Fon kingdom of Abomey
in the 19th century. Many of its inhabitants, including initiates of Oshossi, were sold into
slavery. People from Ketu responsible for the worship of Oshossi were involved in the
founding of Brazil's earliest and most influential Candomblé houses, considered to be of
the Ketu “nation”. Yoruba scholars from Nigeria have found elements of their religious
past recreated in Brazil.

The Portuguese prohibited the enslaved Africans from worshiping their own deities, and
obliged them to participate in the veneration of the Catholic saints. The Yoruba learned
the names and characteristics of these saints, perceived similarities between them and the
Orishás, and established equivalences that allowed them to use the saints to camouflage
their own spiritual beings.

Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, initially
meant nothing to the Africans. But they were familiar with Yemanjá, who in America
was again transformed, this time from the Orishá of a river into the Orishá of the oceans,
the crossing of which their ancestors had survived. They didn’t know St. Lazarus, the
leper, but they did know Omolú or Obaluaiyé, Orishá of smallpox and epidemics. Jesus
Christ was equally unknown to them, but they all knew Oshalá, the eldest Orishá, and
father of humans. In the same way, St. George, who slew a dragon, was associated with
Oshossi, Orishá of the forests and hunting. And Saint Ann, mother of the Virgin Mary,
was associated with Nana, the eldest of the water Orishás.

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 they
were really worshiping Yansan, Orishá of the River Niger and of the winds of storm, or
Ogun, Orishá of iron and the iron tools used to create both civilization and war. They
believed that the Orishás would understand the necessarily convoluted manner in which
they managed to acknowledge them. The Orishás apparently did understand, and even
triumphed, in that the Afro-Brazilian religion survived both slavery and postslavery
oppression. And the Orishás are now worshiped publicly, even by descendants of former
enslavers.

The Candomblé represents a microcosm of the Yoruba spiritual world, a kind of pan-
Yoruba cosmology. Each Candomblé house has a patron Orishá, the Orishá of the
founder, as well as altars for the other Orishás. Whereas in Africa each Orishá was
worshipped separately, in Brazil they are grouped together. The small numbers of people
dedicated to each Orishá, their close interaction with people from other areas, and the
desirability of developing a larger institutional structure for support and protection in a

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hostile environment, inclined them to join together. The Candomblé provided a basis for
a new social organization replacing systems destroyed by slavery.

Yoruba from Oshogbo who had worshiped Oshun, those of Oyó who had worshiped
Shangó, those from Abeokuta who had worshiped Yemoja, and those of Ketu who had
worshiped Oshossi, found themselves together, with others, in a common situation in an
unfamiliar place. Together they created a new religious structure in which each could
worship his or her Orishá in the context of the worship of all the Orishás.

Those Orishás found in the Americas indicate the areas from which critical masses of
Yoruba people were enslaved. The importance of the worship of Shangó, Yemanjá,
Oshossi, and Oshun in Brazil indicates that large numbers of people were taken from
Oyó, Abeokuta, Ketu, and Oshogbo. Thus, Afro-Brazilian Candomblé houses represent
microcosms of both Yoruba human and spiritual geography.