Written by Stian Møller – current leader of Antropress
(picture from the candomblé initiation i was attending)
* (candomblé – an afro brazilian religion, similar to other diasporic religions in Latin America like vodou. The reveering of orixa, African saints from the Yoruba people, is central practice, where they receive them through their body.)
I sat down after doing all my compulsory readings to start doing some research on my master thesis, which is about the relationship between the Brazilian trans community and candomblé*. This has been a project I have been interested in since I came back from my backpacking trip to Brazil, where I first was introduced to the different afro Brazilian religions and continued since then. My good friend João, an upcoming pai-de-santo of an umbanda terreiro introduced me to this wonderful world of magic, music, spirit possession and spiritual guidance, in an otherwise – chaotic city of são Paulo. He started to date a candomblé practitioner, who invited to his terreiro to have the privilege to observe the initiation of two new filho-de-santo (people who can receive and be possessed by the orixas). The drums, dancing and singing really struck me with awe. I have never seen anything like it before! It led me to undertake a huge task; trying to make sense of it all.
I really don’t think people understand just how much I have read about this topic: introduction books on Umbanda (in Portuguese of course), field notes from candomblé temples, an entire book about the different mythologies of the different orixas (its 500 pages all in Portuguese), as well as countless articles and books about the lives of Brazilian trans women, whom many practise the religion. I have tried to do everything I can to decimate the “pombagira” (an entity/spirit), to understand the history, legacy and how this entity functions within the different “terreiros” (temples). But at the end of the day, the more I read, I only get more confused. I feel like everything I have learned is only in vain – everything contradicts itself within this field.
This might have something to do with the history of afro Brazilian religions itself. Candomblé started out as something completely different than its contemporary counterpart. It was first the enslaved people from Congo who established the practice, (unfortunately very little is known about this stage of candomblé since it was illegal and repressed by state and church). But many slaves made it to the other side of the Atlantic, bringing with them different gods, deities, traditions and practices, which all influenced candomblé today. Not to mention the different religions and practices like French spiritism and indigenous beliefs, which has also affected the contemporary version of candomblé. Apart from this, there also exist different afro Brazilian religions like Umbanda, batuque, Xango and minas who all exist within Brazil and have been affected by, but also changed the practice of candomblé. Candomblé itself is also a varied practice. It differs regionally, and each terreiro (temple) has their own traditions and practices that vary significantly in between themselves. Also, each terreiro has different approaches to the different orixas and entities, so how they wish to employ everything is really up to themselves.
And here I am, sitting in complete confusion, since anyone I ask has something else to say about the different entities like Exu or any other orixa. Apart from the orixa and the aforementioned entities, other african deities have also had an massive impact, like the Inquetes (bantu deites) as well the voudons, all different sets of deities, gods, practises and folk stories. Most terreiros also worship caboclos, ameri-indian spirits! Here I am, trying to collect everything to make sense of an orderless, non-dogmatic religion, and I can’t say that I understand anything more than when I first started on this journey back in 2021.
It was in all this confusion, It finally struck me, on the eve of Halloween. I may have made the same mistake as my anthropological predecessor, Franz Boas. By chance I read a great article written by Isaiah L. Wilner called : Transformation masks: recollecting the indigenous origins of global consciousness (2018). The article is about the fieldwork Franz Boas was conducting on the northwestern coast of Canada/ United States among the native Americans who lived there. He had collected a huge amount of different masks that were used under their performances, so he could take them back to Germany to showcase their cultural heritage. He almost risked his life crossing the sea under gruesome conditions that could have led to his death, under the pressure of collecting more masks. What he did not understand was that the mask he was collecting did not have any intrinsic value in themselves, it was the person who wore it that communicated a story through the use of the mask that gave it meaning.
The native American stories of the north eastern coast were also a very interesting point to me, as it reflected some of my own hardships with my fanatic collection of stories. Boas was fascinated with all the different stories they told him while traveling across their land, writing many of them down. But the stories in of themselves, situated as if they were without time and place, lose their original purpose. The meaning of the stories changed in function and meaning depending on how and who told the story. It was how the story was employed to describe something about the current situation that created its function and meaning. To take the story out of its social and cultural context, its original meaning was lost to the reader, the same case with the mask he had collected.
And this all got back at me. I had turned into Franz Boas, trying to understand the different entities and orixas by learning and reading every story and forgetting why they were even told in the first place. Exu is not a mythological creature like our old norse gods, he is a living being, who exists among us in the crossroads of our own lives. Maybe the history and my systematic understanding of these entities and orixas was truly only interesting to one person, me.
I should do what Boas failed to do when he started conducting his research;stop collecting “masks”, and instead try to understand how the “masks” are being used. I am trying to construct and force objects of cultural heritage into a system that was not constructed out of their cultural understanding, by forcing one narrative or one Exu, when there are multiple. At this time, I had attempted to do what the scientists in the 40s were attempting, to create one single calculation to explain the whole world – the world of afro Brazilian religions. Instead, I need to put on my feminist goggles and be content with the fact that I can’t understand every aspect of the Exu, that there are huge tensions and contradictions in the literature and the stories regarding the entities and orixas, since it is not about one narrative, one story of one entity for that matter. It is about people and how they interact with these entities in a very real way, and these experiences are very different from each other.
This might sound very obvious to you, the reader. But for me, this has been a long, tiresome journey. I have spent so much of my time reading, talking and trying to understand something that was not supposed to be completely understood in the beginning. I am only thankful I understood this before I went on fieldwork. And I hope you, the one reading this, are able to avoid the same pitfalls as I have succumbed to.
Bon voyage!
