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, far from 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 AfroBrazilians' 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
now Nigeria 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 and perpetuate 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 of thunder, 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 ofthattown.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
of human 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 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,
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, or Ogun, Orish of iron and the iron tools used to create both civilization and

war. They believed 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 former enslavers.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 for a 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 of Yoruba 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.