From the culture that brings us Carnival each year and champions of football (called soccer here in the States), Brazil is known for more than parties and sports. Its roots are storied and a mixture of culture that, as one component, hosts the largest African population outside of the continent itself. Approximately 90 million people of African descent live in Brazil (equaling about 50% of the Brazilian population) and a small percentage is coming to be known for practicing a religion from West and Central Africa called Candomblé, which also happens to include Afro-Brazilian healing traditions.
Origins of the Afro-Brazilian Healing Traditions of Candomblé
Candomblé means “dance in honor of the gods” and is a spiritual tradition, mostly. It comes from Portuguese, as they colonize the land in the year 1500, that covers nearly 5,000 miles of coastline and 47% of the land areas of South America, touching all but two countries on the continent.
Brazil is the last remaining country in the Americas to end the slave trade out of Africa, ending just before the turn of the 20th century. If you want to learn more about the African slave trade, you can watch this fascinating story about Domingos Alvares, “a powerful African healer and vodun priest who traveled the Atlantic between 1730 and 1750.” It is told by the lecturer in this video, James Sweet, the Vilas-Jartz Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. As the video description continues, Alvares’s “story highlights the connections between healing, religion, kinship, and political subversion in a world greatly affected by the African slave trade.”
Understanding that the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil was predominantly from modern-day Nigeria, we see why much of the language used in Candomblé is recited in Yoruba, the language and culture dominant in that region of Africa. Likely from the Yoruba religious culture traditions, Candomblé believers have one omnipotent god, Oludumaré. And, then Oludumaré is served by auxiliary deities called orixás (or, orishas, voduns, and inkices).
Disguised in plain sight
The Portuguese slave traders stripped the African people of their cultural artifacts before being boarded for the Americas, in hopes of diminishing slaves’ will for revolt and remembrance of their homeland. The slaves are not allowed to practice their cultural traditions or religious practices.
So, it’s with guise, Candomblé orixás use Catholic saints in place of their traditional, ancestral names in some sects. Over time, these meshed together, akin to Santería and other syncretic religions. Candomblé practitioners hide their practices as best as they can throughout all of slavery and into the later 20th century, as Christian religious dominance continues to persecute Afro-Brazilian populations for practicing “witchcraft” and “voodoo.” Thankfully, as I detail later, times are changing and more and more Candomblé is coming out of the darkness, embraced as the cultural tradition of this population of Brazilians.
Overview of Afro-Brazilian Healing Traditions of Candomblé
Every Candomblé practitioner is seeded with an orixá, similar to a spirit animal in the Native America tradition that guides and protects them. There is a deep connection to well-being and health to the orixá, that is chosen and initiated for each individual.
You can see a contemporary orixá (or, orisha) initiation ceremony in the video below.
And, comparable to other slave periods, while men were off working fields, the women are left in charge of many of the day-to-day activities, namely healing and faith traditions. So, in Candomblé, it is matriarchal. For the most part, women are the spiritual healers, using jogo de buzios (casting of shell sacred to them), herbalism that was common to both Nigeria and Brazil because of their similar climates, and ritual dancing.
Colonial life brings many hardships for the Candomblé devotees and they seek out psychological and spiritual guidance from these afflictions. But further, priests and priestesses are initiated with certain obligations to knowing the right foods for orixás, learn all the ritual songs and dances, help with initiations, and so on. It is a completely oral tradition, with no religious or medical texts, so the Afro-Brazilian healing traditions are all passed down by word of mouth.
Healing of a Different Kind, Greater Cultural Acceptance
So, what can integrative medicine learn from a predominantly religious minority doing ancient healing practices in Brazil? In the Journal of Religion and Health, researchers write in their 2018 study, “Perception of Candomble Practitioners About Herbal Medicine and Health Promotion in Ceará, Brazil,” that Candomblé practitioners seek out their spiritual healers “to get rid of ‘bad’ health difficulties, such as insomnia, depression, eyesight problems among others, which are commonly treated with herbal preparations, baths, and teas, using plants native to the region; however, their indications are not always in accordance with scientific evidence.”
Historically oppressed populations embrace their heritage for all concerns and many reject biomedicine not for any other reason than it was forced upon them. In order to get the best health outcomes for people, you need to be culturally astute.
To take this a step further, in the journal, Social Science & Medicine, two PhD researchers, write in their study, “Resource Mobilization for Health Advocacy: Afro-Brazilian Religious Organizations and HIV Prevention and Control,” that “[r]eligious organizations appear to have been effective in HIV prevention, especially in Africa and Latin America.” They are effective in that partnering NGOs with their counterparts in the communities, they are able to bring life-saving medicine and health practices in culturally appropriate and accepting forms.
Integrative medicine saves lives, and we can see that in the partnership of the World Bank, World Health Organization and Candomblé (and the other Afro-Brazilian healing traditions) leadership in Brazil.