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Several Considerations
The word 'candomblé' is synonym of african religion. It was always
used in this sense, and still it is so. This explains lots of things. Lets
see. The black was uprooted from his land and sold as merchandise, slave.
Here he arived as slave, object; from his land he departed free, man. During
the travelling, the slaver traffic, he lost personality, representativity,
but his culture, his history, his landscape, his experiences, they came
with him. These seeds, these knowledges, found a soil, an earth which resembled
Africa, in spite of be extrangely inhabited. The fear imposed itself, but
the faith, the belief - what they knew - had an urge to express itself.
There emerged the cults (onilé - later confused with the cult of
'Caboclo', one of the first versions of sincretism), there emerged the angry
and the necessity of being free. The spells (ebós), the 'quilombos',
appeared.
The three hundred years of slavery's history of the black in Brazil, show,
before all, the resistence, the organization of the blacks. The african
culture survived, to them, through their belief, through their religion.
What one believes, desires, is stronger than what one experiences when there
is a limitrophe situation. The religion, its organization in 'terreiros'
('roças'), was - as it was extensively written - the resistence of
the blacks. They resisted because there was organization. Organization with
ones ownself. Every black use to have, or knew that his grand-father had,
a light, a guider, a protector Orisha.
Among the objects of the traffic (the slaves) there were rare jewels: 'Babalorishás'
and Iyalorishás. These priests, wholehearted in their believes, created
Africa in Brazil. This magic, this re-structurant organization, can only
be understood if we think of what is initiation,
the implications of its processes, what it establishes. The sugar-cane of
the oner-patron, use to be planted by the 'Iaôs' just arived from
the 'roncós', the 'camarinhas'.
The force spread itself, the 'axé' grown and appeared in society
under the form of the candomblé's houses (candomblé - religion
of the yoruba blacks, as it is defined in the Aurélio Buarque Dictionaire).
It was "thing of negros", and as such, something furtive, ignorant,
despised and quickly translated as a bad thing, devil's thing; good and
bad, right and wrong, white and black. Those were oppressors antagonisms,
without any alternative possibility. The black, to be accepted, decided
to behaviour as if he was a white. He use to say: - Sir, we are dancing
and playing to 'Senhor do Bomfim' (St.Bomfim), your Saint, my Sir! It is
not to 'Oshala', I mean, Oshala is the Father, he is the same as Senhor
do Bomfim. Sincretism was installed. It was a way of resistence which generated
great onus, severe disfigurant scars. The dynamic, the social process is
implacable. Imobility does not maitain itself. The sons of the africans
here use to say they did not have confidence in brazilian blacks (the 'sìgìdì',
for example, an enchantment for invisibility, and creation of elemental,
was not taught). Many things were lost, the african land was reduced to
small portions, the candomble had efficacy; the patron use to look for the
old black woman to do a spell, to give him a bath of leaves, to give him
an amulet. It began the proliferation of 'terreiros'. Alienation, turism,
folklore.
But the great initiates, like the ones who created the african land in Brasil,
still exist. Odé Kayodé - Mother Stella of Oshossi, in 1983
use to say: "Iansã is not St.Barbara",
and explained. She showed that candomblé is not a sect, it is a religion
independent from catholicism. The earth trembled; some people began to complain:
"- We always went to the mass, always the last blessing, after the
initiation, was in the church, we do the mass with present corps when one
dies, this can't change". It was the alienated tradition versus the
coherent revolution, it was the break of the last chain. The dam was broken
and the water fertilized the almost sterile camps of the survivel. The niger
is free. He came from Africa, he has a history, a religion equal to any
other, and more, it is not polytheist but monotheist: above all Orishas
is Olorum. Nina Rodrigues tell us that once he asked to a Babalorisha why
he doesn't receive Olorum, as the last does exist, getting the following
answer: "- Doctor, if I receive him, I explode".
Now a new limit, new configuration installs itself. At this end of century,
with the deterioration of the traditional religious institutions, with the
appearence of new religions, with the alternative esoteric doctrines, the
candomblé, now taken as religion, is also seen as an efficient agency:
it solves problems, cures deseases, calms down the heads. The whites want
to be black, we no more hear "the black with white soul", now
the privilege is to be white with black soul, to have ancestrality, "to
have a plot, story with the Saint". The Iyalorishás and Babalorishás
question themselves as never before. The traps, the "hunter-fugitives"
are installed. They are the congresses, the TV - the media - the books,
the 'web' in a sense. We transform all this in pincers to separate wheat
from chaff, that is the reason we are here. Saying what we are we give conditions
to perceive what is posed and to understand the supposed, the opposed and
the apposed. Differentiation is knowledge, candomblé is religion,
it is not sect.
The Iyalorishás organize the heads. The process of organization of
the ori is awo (secret). The candomblé is a religion which works
with the secret, the silent side of the being, what belongs to Olorum. The
candomblé organizes what is fragmented, opening channels of expression
to the human being.
- Oni Kòwé -
Salvador, october of 1996
The Ilé Axé Opô Afonjá
is registered as an Historical Monument
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