Miracles, Rituals, Heritage: The Invention

of Nature in Candomblé
By
Roger Sansi
Universitat de Barcelona Goldsmiths, University of
London

Resumen
Nas ultimas décadas, a religião Afro-brasileira Candomblé atravessou um longo pro-
cesso de patrimonialização. Esse processo tem girado entorno da noção de axé, ou
poder ancestral, incorporado em templos, objetos e pessoas. Algumas variantes rituais
ou “nações” do Candomblé tem tido mais sucesso que outras em reproduzir o seu poder
ancestral, virando também mas identificáveis como objetos de cultura e patrimônio.
Nesse artigo vou contrastar esse processo como outro que poderia ser visto como seu
oposto: a “naturalização” dos rituais, objetos, espı́ritos que aparecem no Candomblé
como eventos inéditos, novas entidades “naturais”, milagres e lugares de peregrinação,
mas no fundo são repetições de antigos mitos e lugares que tem sido conscientemente
esquecidos como tais, virando dessa forma irreconhecı́veis como objetos de patrimônio.
[Arte, Afro-Latino Americanos, Brasil, Candomblé, Religião]

Abstract
In the last decades, the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé has undergone an extensive
process of patrimonialization. This process has been focused on the notion of axe,
or ancestral power, embodied in temples, objects, and people. Some ritual variants of
Candomblé have been more successful than others in the reproduction of this ancestral
power, becoming also more easily identifiable as objects of culture and patrimony.
In this article, I will contrast this process with what in many ways is its opposite:
the “naturalization” of some rituals, objects, spirits, which appear in Candomblé as
unprecedented events, new “natural” entities, miraculous sites, and places of pilgrimage,
but in fact are iterations of old myths and places that have been consciously forgotten

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 61–82. ISSN 1935-4932, online ISSN
1935-4940. 
C 2016 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/jlca.12153

Miracles, Rituals, Heritage 61

 as such, and therefore, have become irredeemable as objects of culture. [art, Afro-Latin
Americans, Brazil, Candomblé, religion]

Over the last few decades, the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé has under-
gone an extensive process of patrimonialization and museification (Adinolfi and
Van de Port 2013). Candomblé temples have been declared part of the national
heritage, and its priests are now seen as artists and intellectuals; it appears to be
one of the more authentic, original, and precious aspects of Afro-Brazilian culture,
and Brazilian culture in general (Sansi 2007). But how do people who practice
Candomblé deal with global notions and practices of “heritage” and “culture” that
are not native to this religion? How is “heritage” produced and reproduced within
the practice of this Afro-Brazilian religion? This article argues that there is an
affinity between the practice of the production of heritage in cultural policy and
the practice of production and reproduction of ancestrality, ritual tradition, and
lineage in Candomblé. Some ritual modalities of Candomblé have been more suc-
cessful than others in the reproduction of ancestrality, becoming also more easily
identifiable as subjects of culture and patrimony. Most of the literature has focused
on these “ancestral” ritual traditions (Bastide 1978; Capone 1999; Dantas 2009;
Matory 2005; Parés 2007), either to describe or to question their authenticity. Yet,
at the same time, many Candomblé practices are not built upon ancestrality and
the reproduction of ritual traditions: many objects, spirits, and places appear as
unprecedented events, “found” entities, miraculous sites, and revelations, rather
than as traditional rituals and ancestral spirits. Most of these “found” entities
also have particular historicities; they can be seen as implicit reproductions of
iterations of previously existing rituals and entities. However, they appear to be
unexpected and “given”—not as repetitions but as novelties—and as such they are
unrecognizable as objects of heritage.
The aim of this article, then, is to show two particular historicities of this Afro-
Brazilian religion: the historicity of ancestrality, which is both recognizable and
identifiable with global practices of cultural patrimony, and the historicity of reve-
lation, which is explicitly set outside heritage practices. These multiple historicities
have particular consequences with regard to public visibility and recognition of
these different aspects of Afro-Brazilian religion. While some practices appear “au-
thentic” and African, others have often been described as inauthentic and syncretic,
precisely because they hide their origins. The central argument of the following
work is that this apparent inauthenticity hides a different form of relationship with
the past.

62 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

Inalienable Possessions in Candomblé

At the beginning of the 20th century, Afro-Brazilian followers of Candomblé were

persecuted by the police because it was regarded as a form of sorcery (Harding
2000; Maggie 1992; Parés and Sansi 2011). Today, however, Candomblé is a valued
component of Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage. Most of the literature on
Afro-Brazilian religion has described this historical process in terms of a dialec-
tics of resistance and recognition, and suggests that Candomblé has finally been
recognized as culture, after a long period of repression (Bastide 1978; Braga 1995;
Luz 1995; Santos 1997; Smith Omari-Tunkara 2005).
On the other hand, some critical literature has posited Afro-Brazilian culture
as an “invented tradition,” constructed by Brazil’s intellectual and political elites
as a key element of national identity (Motta 1994; Ortiz 1991; Wafer and Santana
1990). Dantas (2009) and Capone (1999) in particular have discussed how “purity”
and “authenticity” have become important values in Afro-Brazilian religions, as a
result of the valorization of “authentic” African practices as opposed to syncretic
ones, which mixed Catholicism with African religions.
Lorand Matory labeled these scholars “an army of anti-essentialist and so-
cial constructionist critics” (1999:78–79), arguing that these values of authenticity
and purity were not imposed by the postcolonial cultural elites of Brazil upon
Candomblé, and that Candomblé practitioners were themselves transnational in-
tellectuals, connected with other processes of nation building and the construction
of authenticity: this essentially refers to the Lagos renaissance in Africa, which ex-
ported a transatlantic “Yoruba” African identity to the other side of the Atlantic.
Matory, then, neither defends nor questions the “authenticity” of these traditions,
but emphasizes the agency of Africans and black people over Brazilians and white
people in this process of “strategic re-creation” (Matory 2005:70).
More recent literature has proposed a move beyond these arguments. Rather
than defending or questioning authenticity, some authors have explored the forms
that this historical process has taken: Johnson (2002) describes it as a process of
“theologization,” Van de Port (2011) talks about “authentication,” and Sansi (2007)
about “culturalization” and the “syncretism of culture.” This last notion does not
emphasize authenticity particularly but examines the notion of “culture” itself.
That is, we cannot take for granted that Candomblé is part of a “cultural heritage,”
not just because traditions are always invented, but also because these notions of
“culture” and “heritage” are the result of particular sets of practices, discourses,
and institutions: here, they have a specific Western history that may be different
from the history of Candomblé. In general terms, this Western history of “culture”
may have resulted in particular forms of relationship between people and things
and the attribution of agency, which may not be quite the same as the relations
between people and things in Candomblé. Thus, Sansi (2007) proposes a shift in

Miracles, Rituals, Heritage 63

 the focus from how Candomblé has been recognized as “cultural heritage” to how
it has become “cultural heritage.” That is to say, Sansi looks at how the practices
and discourses of heritage have been established and deployed in and among
Candomblé spaces, people, and things; in other words, the emphasis here is on
how Candomblé has been objectified as “cultural heritage.” Calling this process the
“syncretism of culture” highlights the strangeness of “culture” to Candomblé, and
Sansi examines how it has been adapted—or better, objectified—in this context.
This process of objectification cannot be described as either an imposition by
Brazilian elites or a strategy of Africans. The question is not just “who is the
agent,” or “who invented the tradition”; it is more complicated than that. The
transformation of Candomblé into cultural heritage implies the deployment of
particular forms of relations between people and things (Sansi 2005); it requires
building agents in relation to the object—in this case, “Afro-Brazilian culture.”
This said, it is important to address the limits of this process of objectification.
The forms of relations between people and things are both similar and different
in terms of Candomblé and cultural heritage. To clarify this point, I will start by
describing this religion, and then map its points of encounter with and disjuncture
from cultural heritage. There is an extensive literature on Afro-Brazilian religions
and Candomblé in particular (Bastide 1978; Capone 1999; Dantas 2009; Johnson
2002; Matory 2005; Sansi 2007; Sansi and Parés 2013; Van de Port 2011), but here
I will make some very general points about it, not just because many readers may
not be familiar with it, but also because there are some specific features that need
to be highlighted in order to make my case.
Candomblé is based on the worship of Orixás—spirits or gods. Worshipers
need to be taken care of by a priest, who teaches them how to relate to their Orixá.
This involves a long, complex process of initiation, in which the initiate is confined
in the Candomblé house of the priest; their “saint” is “made” (feitura de santo),
that is, the relationship between the initiate and the Orixá is ritually fixed. The
initiator is the Mãe de Santo, “mother of the saint”; the initiate will be called filha
de santo, “daughter of the saint.” Their relationship is strictly hierarchical, as the
kin terminology indicates. The outcome of the initiation process is twofold: first,
the person will learn to deal with the phenomenon of spirit possession; the Orixás
will periodically possess the body in rituals of spirit possession in the Candomblé
house. Second, the Orixá will also be present in a shrine: each initiate will add a
personal shrine to the general shrine of each Orixá in the Candomblé house, which
is often called a terreiro.
Thus, Orixás are present both in people and things: in the body of an initiate
and in shrines (Sansi 2005). Their presence is described in terms of force, or axé.
Axé is particularly expressed in and through sacrifice, although it does not only
come into being through sacrifice. It is present to different degrees in different
people, places, and things. Powerful Mães de santo and shrines that have gone

64 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

Figure 1 Madalena do Vale dressed as a Mãe de Santo. Photo by the author, 2004.

Miracles, Rituals, Heritage 65

 through many initiations and sacrifices are said to have a lot of axé. Axé is given,
not bought or sold. The Orixás give axé, and powerful Mães de santo give axé to
their filhas. This gift-giving relationship creates communion, but the communion
is hierarchical. There are people with more and people with less axé—with more
or less power: this is not an egalitarian community. On the other hand, axé is
not an objectified power: it is not something that people have as property, but is
something that they are; it is not detachable from them as persons, but inalienable.
In this sense, it is not reducible to theories of symbolic capital—to objects of
accountable power—since this form of power is not separated from its subjects.
So, this gift-giving relationship is hierarchical and creates a community in the
sense of a common being. The house of Candomblé can also be referred to as
the axé, since the house is the assemblage of all the instances of axé in people
and things. Thus, when a filha de santo, an initiate, becomes a Mãe de Santo, an
initiator, and opens her own house of Candomblé, she takes her shrine with her,
to the new house that she will open. It is also said that the new house will be the
same axé as the house of her mother; because they are, in fact, the same
At this point, it is useful to draw on Weiner’s notion of “inalienable possessions”
(1992). For Weiner, the production and re-production of communities is not only
guaranteed through persons but also through objects, which are consubstantial
to the group. These objects are characterized precisely by being inalienable—by
not being subject to exchange, at least in principle. Often, reproduction requires a
form of exchange, which is characterized as a gift. These inalienable things are not
sold to strangers (as in a commodity exchange) but to partners who, by the act of
receiving an inalienable possession, become part of the community. This is what
Weiner characterizes as “the paradox of keeping-while-giving” (Weiner 1992).
This dynamic, as Weiner shows, exists in different societies with regard to
different kinds of objects and value systems. One of the value systems that can be
illuminated by this idea of inalienable possessions is the Western system of cultural
value, or heritage, as Weiner herself proposes (Myers 2001). National heritage
consists of places and objects produced in the course of the country’s history,
which in some way embody the history and being of the nation. These objects or
places, because of this essential condition, cannot be sold, because to do so would
be like selling the nation. Moreover, they are valued above individual tastes or
opinions. As historical relics, regardless of their function when they were created,
their value lies not in their use but in their capacity to embody the community.
Thus far, it seems that both Candomblé notions of axé and Western notions
of cultural heritage are based on inalienable possessions. However, there are some
meaningful differences—the main one being the value given to secrecy. Axé is, by
definition, a secret. Most people cannot access sacrifices or altars: only the initiated
have such access, and even they cannot look at the shrines. The shrines are not
objects or images to be contemplated or admired: they are the gods themselves.

66 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

 Figure 2 Madalena’s Caboclo. Photo by the author, 2004.

Therefore, it is a far from simple task to translate Candomblé shrines into art—or
heritage—objects.1 One of the main points of the modern notion of cultural or
artistic heritage and art is that it has to be public and accessible: it must be visible.
The modern notion of culture is strongly linked to notions of public good and
democracy. However, this is not the case with Candomblé: only higher ranking
people who are familiar with the secret can have access to certain objects. The
question, then, is how to make these two cosmologies compatible. I will address
this question below, after briefly exploring how some Candomblé houses have
become part of the national heritage.

National Heritage and Candomblé in Brazil

Deciding what forms of culture embody the nation is a key issue for national
heritage projects: if all forms of human life are “culture” in the anthropological
sense, which of these should be acknowledged as worthy of recognition as a public
good—as “culture” in the institutional sense? In the end, this is always a political
decision. In Brazil, since its first cultural policies in the 1930s, the definition
of cultural heritage extended beyond architecture and the fine arts to popular

Miracles, Rituals, Heritage 67

 culture, folklore, and indigenous cultures. Thus, the cultures of the dominated
peoples of the colony, indigenous and African-American, were recognized as part
of the national heritage alongside those of the European colonizers (Sansi 2007;
Van de Port 2011; Williams 2001). What this recognition meant, in practical
terms, is difficult to comprehend, however, and it was not until the 1980s that
the process of recognizing some Candomblé sites, objects, and people as national
heritage was begun. The Pro-Memory National Foundation (Fundação Nacional
Pro-Memória, FNPM) was created in 1980. It initiated a project called “Ethnic
Groups and National Society” (Etnias e sociedade nacional), the long-term goal of
which was to preserve the history of “ethnic groups”—such as Native Americans
and black people—in Brazilian society (Serra 1999). In 1981, in cooperation with
the Cultural Foundation of the State of Bahia and the city council of the city of
Salvador (the state capital), the FNPM promoted a “Project to Map Black Religious
Monuments and Places in Bahia” (MAMNBA). The basic idea was that the cultural
value of Candomblé temples and works of art, or what it called Black heritage, had
been under-recognized and systematically marginalized in public heritage policies.
The project proposed to declare one house of Candomblé—Ilê Axé Iya Nassô Oka,
known as Casa Branca—as being part of the national heritage. The immediate
objective was not just to achieve recognition for Casa Branca, but also to stop the
dispossession of the urban area occupied by it, which was not owned by the temple.
The owners of the land wanted to sell part of the area to build a gas station. The
process of declaring the temple to be part of the national heritage (tombamento in
Portuguese) would thus stop the process of dispossession.
However, the process of declaring the temple to be part of the national heritage
was not straightforward. At the time, this was an unconventional application,
and there were some open disagreements between anthropologists and heritage
specialists. The Institute for National Cultural and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN)
argued that the architectural and artistic value of the site, its “material” value,
was difficult to assess: it was a compound of self-built, poor houses, very similar
to the shanty town surrounding it, with little content that is recognizable as a
“monument.” Second, IPHAN expressed concern that recognizing this house of
Candomblé as part of the national heritage would encourage countless other houses
of Candomblé to ask for the same status (Serra 1999:135). The anthropologists
stated that it was the people who lived in these houses and used these objects that
made them valuable; their use of the objects, or “cultural goods,” is what produces
value or meaning.
This is very much an anthropological reading of what cultural value is, and it
was probably a strange notion for traditional heritage specialists at that time. Thus,
they had to be persuaded to take on board the idea that heritage was sometimes
not “material” but could be “immaterial”; that is to say, it not only involved things
or places but also the ideas, legends, songs, and practices associated with these

68 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

 Figure 3 Madalena incorporating a ‘Wild’ spirit of the Maionga. Photo by the author, 2004.

things and places (Lody 1999:108). Brazil was a pioneer in developing a notion of
immaterial heritage, which was then put into more general use by UNESCO in its
declaration of a notion of “intangible heritage” in 2003 (see Collins 2009, 2011).
In the 1988 Constitution, the first point of article 215 on “cultural heritage”
declares: “The State will protect manifestations of popular, indigenous and Afro-
Brazilian cultures, and the other groups’ participation in the national civilising
process.”2 The cultural heritage of Brazil is defined in article 216 as:

goods of a material and immaterial nature, taken either individually or collectively,

that make reference to the identity, action, and memory of the different groups that
make up Brazilian society.3

However, IPHAN’s second question remains pertinent: why would only that
house of Candomblé be declared part of the national heritage? Why not all houses
of Candomblé, since they are all, in anthropological terms, manifestations of Afro-
Brazilian culture? An interesting point was made in the Casa Branca application:
the main argument was that Casa Blanca was the oldest Candomblé house, and
the point of “origin of all the rest” (MAMNBA 1981). The implication was that
Candomblé as a religion was born here, and that all Candomblé houses stemmed
from this place. This was quite a bold assertion: historically, Brazil had had a
significant influx of African slaves of all backgrounds, cultures, and religions. Thus,
Afro-Brazilian religions, even in their particular configuration as “Candomblé,”
are inevitably the result of many different influences, both African and not. Here,

Miracles, Rituals, Heritage 69

 Figure 4 Milagre of São Roque. Photo by the author, 2004.

however, anthropologists chose to single out a particular house, Casa Branca, as

the “origin of all the rest.” This claim does not fit very well with a democratic
ideal of giving value to popular, oppressed, and subaltern cultures, but rather risks
privileging a particular hierarchy of origin and lineage, akin to classical discourses
of “high culture” in Europe (Sansi 2007).
Nevertheless, in due course, Casa Branca was declared a site of national heritage.
It took until 1999 for IPHAN to start to declare other Candomblé houses as also
being part of the national heritage. The next in line was Ile Axé Opô Afonjá (1999),
which was not as ancient as Casa Branca; it was built in the 20th century. However,
this house is the most famous and prestigious in Brazil: many intellectuals, artists,
and politicians (not necessarily of African descent) belong to it. Moreover, Ile
Axé Opô Afonjá was founded by a filha de santo (initiate) of Casa Branca, and in
Candomblé, it is said that they have the same axé, the same ancestral power. After
this followed Gantois (2002), Alaketu (January 2002), Bate Folha (September 13,
2000), and Casa das Minas in Maranhão (2002). Between 2004 and 2006, in the
state of Bahia, the local Heritage Institute, IPAC, declared the following houses to be
part of the state heritage: Portão, Pilão de Prata, Oxumaré, Aganju, and Ajaguna
in Salvador; and in the region of Salvador, the Ile Axe Alabaxe in Maragogipe,
the houses of Pai Laércio in Itaparica and Gaiaku Luiza in Cachoeira were also

70 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

designated as heritage sites (see VVAA, IPHAN 2011). Some of these houses are
said to be from the 19th century, but others are more recent, with some dating from
the 1980s—which is particularly the case with those designated by IPAC. What
seemed to be deemed relevant in the declaration of some of these houses was not
just the issue of age, but also concerned two other factors: the level of social prestige
and the issue of lineage. Gantois, Opo Afonja, Aganju, and Ajaguna are related by
ritual ancestry and axé to Casa Branca, the “origin of all the rest.” In other cases,
the recognition of the house was a result of its reputation among intellectual and
political elites, including anthropologists, who often work at heritage institutions
such as IPAC; often, these people are Candomblé practitioners or sympathizers.
Even in these cases, however, most priests make claims about the “ancestrality”
of their axé: that it comes from the most ancient sources in Africa, and that it is
directly inherited by ritual or even by direct kinship. The Araketu house claims to
have been founded by Africans in the 17th century, by an ancestor of the current
priestess, although there is no documentation to verify this claim. In this sense,
the Candomblé notion of axé and lineage has been imposed over the criteria of
historicity, which is more generally bound up in notions of national heritage. As
Parés notes (2011), there is a “matricial” value at stake, in the sense that the other
houses take their value from reproducing the “matrix” they come from—Casa
Branca. What is important, it is said, is that the house has “ancestrality”: this
means that its axé comes from the most ancient sources, not necessarily that the
house itself is very old.
An important issue here is that there are different ways of producing ancestrality
in Candomblé. The religion has different “nations” defined roughly in relation to
their different origins in Africa, but also, importantly, by their different rituals and
ways through which they initiate devotees. These differences, I would argue, have a
direct influence upon forms of reproduction of Candomblé, and they also influence
directly the various ways in which Candomblé has become recognized as part of
the national heritage. The model of Candomblé I have presented above is mainly
based on a particular ritual tradition or “nation” of Candomblé—Ketu, which
is the nation of Casa Blanca and its descendants (Gantois, Opo Afonja, Aganju,
Ajaguna). The Ketu tradition of Casa Branca has significant ritual particularities,
and I would argue that it has become the dominant tradition, not just because of
personal influence, but also because it has been more successful at reproducing
itself and expanding through the creation of new houses. In the Ketu tradition,
axé is mostly contained in pots that can be moved from one house to another; it
also has the ritual of the Deca, by which an initiate is invested with the power to
initiate others, who may then become Mães de Santo of their own houses. The new
Mãe de Santo is given the pots and razors she will use to “shave” heads, that is, to
initiate others. Historically, other Candomblé nations, such as Jeje or Angola, have
had more difficulty in reproducing themselves: the shrines are in most cases not

Miracles, Rituals, Heritage 71

 detachable and reproducible, but are attached to particular places—essentially, to
trees and other elements of the landscape. The Mães de santo of these temples have
often died without a successor—their axé dies with them (Nicolau 2007). They do
not have specific rituals to produce Mães de Santo, so their capacity to expand is
much reduced—each temple has to start from scratch. Thus, the capacity of the
Ketu nation to produce ancestrality is much greater, and may be part of the reason
they have become the dominant tradition.
This is not a minor problem. It is not clear what the actual benefits might
be for many houses in becoming part of the national heritage in this sense. For
some, it may be a way of claiming land rights and economic help, but that is not
the case for all the houses, some of which are anyway quite wealthy, and are built
on land owned by the priests (Matory 2005; Parés 2012). Nevertheless, the Can-
domblé community has started to perceive their national heritage status as proof
(more than a source) of prestige and power. As a result, many Candomblé houses
are asking to be recognized as part of the national heritage, claiming that they
too have ancestrality. Indeed, it is difficult to see how it can be proven otherwise.
However, in many cases, only houses that can claim a specific Ketu lineage linked
to a particular ancestral “matrix” are acknowledged as ancestral and, thus, the
issue is ongoing: according to the Center of Afro Brazilian Studies at the Federal
University of Bahia, there are more than 1,400 houses of Candomblé in Salvador
de Bahia alone.4 By 2011, only about 12 had achieved “cultural heritage” status,
which is less than 1 percent.
Another problem arose after many of these houses had been declared to have
national heritage status: once their status has been declared, how do terreiros
become public spaces with public access? There are no clear statements about how
they might be visited and what is open to public display. In fact, the terreiro is itself
multiple territories in terms of heritage, because it reproduces different models of
heritage space: it is a temple, like a historic church or monastery; it is also a nature
reserve, like the parks; additionally, it is a sort of “ethnic reservation,” much like an
indigenous reservation. Furthermore, there are many spaces in terreiros that are
very much not public; they are strictly secret. Almost no one, even the initiated,
can have access to the shrines, for example. How have the Candomblé houses dealt
with their transformation into public heritage sites? Most of the time, this has been
achieved by building memorials to the Mães de Santo. These memorials contain
objects with low axé—things such as documents, photographs, the clothes used in
public festivals, and chairs. Nothing from the shrines is contained here and these
things may only have axé because they have belonged to a Mãe de Santo.5 What is
interesting about these memorials is precisely that they are exclusively focused on
the Mães de santo, highlighting Candomblé’s strict hierarchy (Adinolfi and Van de
Port 2013).

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 It seems awkward to put together the constant use of the term “community” by
anthropologists in reference to Candomblé with the strictly aristocratic vision that
Candomblé people have of themselves. Yet, this is not necessarily contradictory in
terms of the practice of national heritage, which originated in the transformation
of goods associated with the aristocracy (Weiner employs the example of the British
Crown Jewels) into “national heritage” goods. In fact, the memorials at Candomblé
houses have more things in common with the Tower of London than with any new,
experimental museographic attempt to recover the memory of the oppressed.
The success of some Candomblé houses in being recognized as heritage sites
has not resulted simply from the adoption of new, more democratic, inclusive,
or multicultural ideas of “immaterial” cultural heritage by the Brazilian state. On
the contrary, some have appropriated traditional notions of heritage and cultural
value as the product of an elite. In this sense, the aristocratic and lineage claims
of some of these houses have been decisive factors. The Casa Branca, Opô Afonjá,
and Aganjú claim to be courts in exile, remnants of an ancien régime. In Bahia, for
example, court societies have been recreated, which have attracted an increasingly
prestigious section of the local elite: intellectuals, artists, musicians, and writers, for
example. However, this is not simply a Candomblé strategy for acquiring cultural
prestige: they already have prestige, and the heritage declaration only confirms it.
In fact, it could be said that they have managed to change the historical criteria of
national heritage processes to work in their favor, by making prevalent different
notions of “ancestrality.” There may have been contradictions inherent in the
museification process, in requiring the houses to show as artworks and historical
documents objects from the temple that were in most cases restricted by taboos;
but the solution that most houses have found has been to build these memorials
around the memory of priestesses, thus avoiding the use of objects of power (Sansi
2007). It seems, then, that Candomblé has been maintained intact, avoiding the
transformation that could have resulted from its new national heritage status.

Candomblé and Heritage in Cachoeira

Historically, the city of Salvador was the main site of Candomblé practice, and
also the place where the patrimonalization of Candomblé started, through its Ketu
houses. By now, however, this process has spread to other places. Cachoeira is an
old colonial town, two hours from the capital, with a Candomblé tradition as old as
that in Salvador (Parés 2006; Selka 2007). The Jeje nation’s Gaiaku Luiza house was
declared part of the national heritage by IPAC in 2006, and another old Jeje nation
house, Roça do Ventura, is now in the process of gaining national heritage status
through IPHAN. Despite the historical pre-eminence of the Jeje nation, after the
1970s the Ketu nation—which had been virtually unknown in Cachoeira but had

Miracles, Rituals, Heritage 73

 a significant presence in the state capital Salvador—became important because of
some initiates of the house of Gantois, Salvador. At the same time, the old Jeje
houses have been struggling to survive, because of their difficulties in reproducing
the ritual lineage of their priests, as outlined above. The declaration of these houses
as being part of the national heritage could be seen as an attempt to help them
survive.
Madalena, with whom I carried out most of my fieldwork in Cachoeira, did
not come from one of these large, ancient Candomblé houses. Her story does not
correspond to the model of “ancestrality” but is familiar in the world of Candomblé.
Many practitioners do not have a long ritual ancestrality, but that does not mean
that they are not valid, authentic examples of a historical tradition that is more
significant than the narrative of particular lineages. The problem is that only this
narrative of lineage and ancestrality has been recognized as an appropriate form
of “cultural heritage”; the houses that lie outside this narrative have not received
the same levels of recognition. The next section explores Madalena’s story as an
example of the controversial and contradictory situations that these narratives can
generate.

The Caboclo

Like most people, Madalena did not join Candomblé of her own volition, but
because she was summoned by a spirit. When Madalena was seven years old, she
went to wash clothes with her mother at a small waterfall in the forest, not far from
the town of Cachoeira. She was bitten by a snake, which her mother then killed,
whereupon Madalena fell into a trance. She was possessed by a spirit, Caboclo
Oxossi, although she knew nothing of this at the time. While in the trance, she
found a small offspring of the snake and took it home, hiding it from her family.
When her mother found out that a snake was being raised under a bed, she was
horrified, and asked a young man to kill it. While he was trying to do so, he tripped
and broke his leg, at which Madalena fell into a deep trance. She remembered
almost nothing of what happened in the following months, when she was initia-
ted into Candomblé.
Madalena did not have a good relationship with her pai de santo, the priest
who initiated her. According to her, this was because Caboclo Oxossi resisted her
initiation: he disliked a pai de santo putting his “hand on her head,” that is to
say, initiating her. This is a significant point: Madalena went to a Candomblé
house to “make” the santo, to undergo initiation into the Orixás Iansã, Oxum, and
Obaluaiyé. But the Caboclo did not need to be “made”: he came to her as a gift
before she was initiated, and he stayed with her despite her initiation. Even today,
she seldom falls into a trance with her Orixás.

74 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

 After her initiation, Madalena lost interest in Candomblé, but after some years
the Caboclo started to provoke more frequent crises of possession. These took
place in the most unexpected situations—while she was at the market, or dancing
at a party. After many unfortunate events, including the death of her husband, she
decided to carry out her obrigação, her duty, to the Caboclo, and built a shrine
(assento) to him. Initially, this was in a small room, but the spirit began to perform
a number of miracles (milagres) and to help people, and with his help, the small
room became a house of Candomblé, dedicated to him.
During the early occasions on which Madalena was possessed by the Caboclo,
it was a wild spirit (muito bravo). Madalena’s Caboclo did not dance, and “talked
Greek” (which in Portuguese is a way of saying that it spoke “an incomprehensible
language”): he was truly a fierce indian (indio bravo). Later, through going to
other Candomblé houses, he met other caboclos, who taught him to dance and
sing, and ultimately, to speak. Gradually, through these public rituals, dreams, and
apparitions, it has become clearer to Madalena who Caboclo Oxossi is, and their
relationship has become more stable.
Caboclo Oxossi is not to be confused with the Orixá of hunting—the king of
Ketu: he is an Indian from the Amazon. The festa of the Caboclo in Madalena’s
house opens with the national anthems of Brazil and Cachoeira (the Caboclo
colors mimic those of the Brazilian national flag). In Candomblé, however, it is
not clear where the Caboclos originate: the spirits claim to come not only from
Brazil but from many other places (Brazeal 2003)—particularly Aruanda-Luanda,
in Angola. These places are identified with the sertão, which etymologically is
connected to the “desert”—an uncultivated, uncivilized, barren area—the outback,
or wilderness. In the first half of the twentieth century, the cult of the Caboclo
was regarded as an impure, syncretic, fake form of Candomblé by the leaders of
the dominant houses in Bahia (Santos 1995); it then became extremely popular,
and most Candomblé people have a Caboclo spirit. In recent years, in the context
of the movement toward the “reafricanisation” and purification of Candomblé,
some houses, like the Opô Afonjá, have forbidden their members to worship
their Caboclos inside the temple. However, many continue to do so elsewhere.
In fact, Madalena has had several conflicts with more orthodox and traditional
Candomblé houses, which reject her because her house was founded on a Caboclo.
Madalena was almost forced to undergo initiation into the Ketu nation by the other
Cachoeira Candomblé houses. In the beginning of the 2000s, the Ketu houses
dominated Candomblé in Cachoeira, in particular through the Association of
Afro-Brazilian Cults (FEBACAB), which created official “certificates” of correct
practice. Pressed by FEBACAB, Madalena had to be initiated into the Ketu tradition
and she thus gained her certificate. However, she always said that the “owner” of
the house was a Caboclo—a spirit not recognized by the Ketu tradition.

Miracles, Rituals, Heritage 75

 More than ten years after her initiation into Ketu, Madalena’s situation changed.
She became one of the most powerful and well-known Cachoeira priestesses due
to her charisma, intelligence, and political skill, rather than to her ancestrality. Her
“Caboclo” was not recognized as an object of cultural heritage.
The key difference between the Caboclo and Orixá is that the former is not
“made”—in the sense that people are not initiated into it through the long ritual
process of the feitura de santo. The Caboclo is already made; it comes as a “gift,”
in the sense of a gift-giving exchange of inalienable possessions, rather than as an
ongoing flow of substances that reproduce and endure. It is an encounter that just
happens—it is “given.” A Caboclo is often unique to one person: they are known
to people because somebody embodies them. They are also much closer to people
than Orixás, who do not tend to talk to people. If they do speak, they say only a few
words in Nagô, an African language that few understand. Such words are deemed
to have a terrible force (axé). Nor do Orixás open their eyes, which are thought to
have a power too strong for human beings to bear. The only way to communicate
with them is through the oracle of búzios (cowry shells). By contrast, Caboclos
speak in Portuguese, although with a strange accent; they listen and joke, and they
heal people.6
Caboclos are not recognized as heritage objects because of their lack of
“ancestrality”—which means that they are not “made” through orthodox Ketu
rituals of initiation. The incorporation of these native spirits cannot be interpreted
as the degeneration of an African religion, however. It is clearly a case of “embodied
history,” as Stoller (1995) puts it: a different form of historicity integrating various
elements of local history in the popular imagination. A spirit such as Caboclo
Oxossi was not only part of Madalena’s story but is also part of the history of her
people and country. Yet, what is interesting about Madalena’s story is not just her
“gift” in incorporating new spirits and the Brazilian historical imagination, but
that parts of her personal narrative incorporate elements of the cycle of initiation as
if they were “natural,” or given, while their “ancestrality” is forgotten or, perhaps,
disavowed.

“Natural” Rituals

Madalena’s “innate” initiation was similar in its structure to a ritual that, according
to Gisèle Binnon-Cossard (1970), was part of a cycle of initiation in the past—
particularly in one of the ritual traditions of Candomblé, called Angola, which has
been lost or forgotten in most houses: it is called the inkita. Here, the initiates, in
a state of erê, a sort of childish, roguish version of the santo, were abandoned to
“a state of nature,” where they lived alone, finding their own means of survival by
hunting, fishing, and sometimes stealing. After eight days, they would come back
to the house in a state of wildness. They carried emblems (ferramentas) of their

76 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

Orixá: a stone (Xangô), a piece of iron (Ogun), a snake (Oxumare or Oxossi), or a
fish (Iemanjá).
Binon-Cossard mentions that there are African precedents for these forms of
initiation in the Kikongo rituals of the nkita described in colonial ethnographies,
where the novices found their “fetishes” in the bush or water (1970:204). Each fetish
had its own story, which only the initiate would know (Bittremieux 1936:119).
When they returned to their homes, the initiates were in a state of violent trance
(Laman 1962:252). The more recent historical and anthropological literature also
describes the nkita as local ancestral spirits, often associated with pools and water-
falls (Devisch 1993:180). McGaffey makes reference to the nkita as “nature spirits”
(2000:217); Thorton interprets them as guardian deities of the land (Thornton
1998:55). In Cachoeira’s Jeje houses, we find something similar to the inkita—the
grau, or gra, which according to Parés is “an elemental force of nature, sometimes
referred as o bicho (the beast), sometimes identified with the aggressive side of the
erê7 or even an Exú” (Parés 2010:82).
In Madalena’s house, the inkita, as Binnon-Crossard describes it, was not
practiced as a part of the cycle of initiation, but at the end of the celebration for
the Caboclos. Madalena and her family perform an analogous ritual, the maionga.
Before dawn, the initiates leave the closed initiation room in the Candomblé house
to bathe (maionga) in a pond in the bush, at the Caperuçú, up the hill in the rural
area of Cachoeira, where it is said Indians lived in precolonial times. There they fall
into a trance and grab the first thing they see—stones, animals, or plants—which
are brought back to the house.
In many ways, the story of Madalena’s first encounter with the Caboclo repro-
duces the inkita, although this is not described by her as a ritual of initiation—as
part of the process of “making the saint”—but as an unprecedented event. In her
encounter, Madalena appears as a child, an erê, finding the snake as a “natural” em-
bodiment of the Caboclo Oxossi—her spirit. Even if the inkita has been forgotten,
there are traces of it in the ways that practitioners of Candomblé describe certain
events. These events are not portrayed as part of an active process of initiation
but as “given.” The “made” is “given”: the ritual is turned into a gift, without the
necessary intervention of a pai or mai de santo, thus breaking the model of repro-
duction imposed by initiation and generating a wholly new entity—the Caboclo
Oxossi.
Madalena’s example shows that Afro-Brazilian culture is “culture” not just
in the sense of cultural heritage, as a learned tradition with an explicit form of
knowledge transmitted through initiation, but also in the anthropological sense:
that is, things are known without necessarily having been directly taught. In other
words, people know without having being “initiated” or explicitly informed—
without, perhaps, even knowing what these things and events are called. They
respond to an event by putting it in relation to a shared, tacit knowledge of

Miracles, Rituals, Heritage 77

 how spirits are found. Since this knowledge is common, direct, and apparently
unprecedented, it appears as “given,” or natural. Schneider (1980) and Wagner
(1981) observe that this is precisely what culture in the anthropological sense is: it
appears as natural and given, as the form of the things themselves, and not just as
discourse we create. It is precisely this naturalization that puts the Caboclo outside
the narrative of ancestrality that would justify its inclusion as a manifestation of
cultural heritage, that is, as an object of “culture” in the institutional sense—a
piece of traditional knowledge explicitly defined as such.

Water and Miracles

There is another important element in this story: water. According to Madalena,

her Caboclo does not accept sacrifices (matanças) or, therefore, blood. This relates
to the fact that the Caboclo is not “made” through ritual initiation (which involves
sacrifice). The ritual substance more openly used in Madalena’s house is water.
This water is believed to come from a miraculous source, the Milagre (miracle) de
Santa Barbara, which is a sanctuary in the town next to Cachoeira, São Felix. There,
around 20 years ago, a man heard a voice when he was about to cut down a tree. It
said: “Don’t cut me!” He thought it was just his imagination, so he continued with
his task, but when the axe hit the tree trunk, it started to bleed. The man then had
a vision of Saint Barbara (Iansã, in Candomblé), who entreated him not to cut the
tree—it was sacred to her, and spring water with miraculous properties ran under
it. He promised to comply, and vowed that he would make an altar to her on that
very spot. The man kept his promise to Saint Barbara, and people from all over
the region now come to get water from the Miracle spring, including Madalena.
Another miraculous water source is the Milagre de São Roque, to which
Madalena goes on a romaria (pilgrimage) every year. The Milagre de São Roque,
near to the road that leads to the city of Salvador, is a precipice formed of a single
piece of solid rock (in Brazil this is known as a lage), with water pouring from the
vegetation on the rock. The local people say that the water falls down the precipice
during summer and winter with the same force; it does not come from a river or
other running water source but pours from the earth. There are two stories con-
cerning the origin of the Milagre de São Roque. For some, a giant snake protects
the water source; others say that the milagre was discovered when an image of São
Roque was found in a small cave, where now there is a Catholic shrine. The Milagre
de São Roque has become the object of a popular celebration on the last Sunday
of August; many Candomblé practitioners take part here, and incorporate their
Caboclos in the groves surrounding the milagre.
Obviously, this is also a popular Catholic celebration, although these two
milagres are not promoted by the Catholic Church, and have not in either case

78 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

been explicitly recognized by it. There is no doubt, however, that both the Milagre
de São Roque and Milagre de Santa Barbara are expressions of popular Catholic
devotion: and they are also Candomblé “natural” shrines. What brings the two
religions together? The answer is the miracle itself. The miraculous event—the
encounter that revealed these places—and the holy waters are recognized as such
by practitioners of both religions. John Thornton, for example (1998), explores the
sudden success of Catholicism in the kingdom of Kongo following the first colonial
encounter and suggests it is based on the same idea—that what brought Kongo
beliefs and Catholicism together was not necessarily their analogous cosmologies,
but the centrality they gave to miracles and revelations. Revelation is a form
of finding spirits and saints in objects and territories, both in Kikongo ritual
traditions and Catholic practice. Thornton terms this “continuous revelation”
(Thornton 1998:259). The mechanism for this is more complex than “syncretism”:
it involves not only a mixture of or identification with different religious beliefs
or cosmologies, but also a redefinition of what is particular and what is universal,
which comes from a new point of view resulting from an encounter—that is, an
event leading to a revelation. The encounter of different cosmologies, or religions,
or cultures—whatever term we deploy—is marked in the present context by the
encounter with the local spirit, the nkita, which is redefined as a universal saint.
In some cases, the encounter results in the emergence of prophets, who propose
a wholly new religion and description of the world. What is interesting about
revelation is that it also articulates the emergence of unprecedented elements:
that is, it reveals new saints, or new sacred places, within particular histories
and territories. Precisely because these are unprecedented events, however, these
revelations cannot readily be made to fit into the frameworks of “tradition,”
“initiation,” and “heritage.”

Conclusion

This article began with an examination of how the Afro-Brazilian religion Can-
domblé became a form of cultural heritage. I have showed that this process cannot
be described only in terms of public recognition of a previously repressed part, or
as part of a strategy to acquire symbolic capital by Candomblé leaders or, indeed,
as a pragmatic strategy to confront such practical problems as land ownership. All
these aspects may be relevant in many cases, but some of the houses that have been
recognized as “heritage” do not really have problems of land, property, or finance
in general, and they do not need the symbolic capital offered by national her-
itage status, which only confirms a prestige they already have. Furthermore, I have
proposed an interpretation of the deeper affinities between certain Candomblé
practices and the practices of patrimonalization, by describing ancestrality and

Miracles, Rituals, Heritage 79

 initiation in Candomblé as a form of reproduction of inalienable possessions. I
have also explained how particular houses and ritual traditions have been more
successful in reproducing ancestrality; consequently, they have become more easily
identifiable as heritage spaces. I have suggested that parts of Candomblé are not
part of the “national heritage,” because they exceed this narrative of ancestrality
and initiation. Such practices have been represented as “syncretic,” “improvised,”
and “inauthentic” in the literature on Afro-Brazilian religions. However, practices
outside initiation and ancestrality have their own historicities, as we have seen:
they can be regarded as iterations of a disavowed past, which appear as “given”
rather than “made” things, and as “nature” rather than “culture.”
My objective in this article has not been to return to discussions of the nature-
culture divide, but to explore the particular configurations through which some
forms of reproduction in Candomblé become recognizable as “culture” and “her-
itage,” while it is not possible to identify others as such because they are manifested
as “given,” or natural.8 As Roy Wagner explains (1981), to “invent” culture, we
always need to contrapose it to something else, which is neither culture nor the
“made” but the “given.” In a way, any process of cultural invention always brings
with it the counter-invention of nature. It is not my intention, then, to describe
two separate Candomblés, one based on ancestrality, the other on revelation, for
both forms of reproduction are part of one reality, and they are always built in rela-
tionship to one another. There is no ancestrality without revelation, and vice versa.
The latter has rarely been recognized by most anthropologists to date, however,
and I trust that this article addresses this “natural” invisibility.

Acknowledgments

This article was written thanks to the research funding provided by the Ministerio
de Economia y Competitividad of Spain through a Ramon y Cajal Senior resarcher
contract.

Notes

1 There are many artists whose work is inspired by Candomblé, but that is very different from using

objects that were shrines, or objects that were part of shrines, as “ready-made” art. For a discussion of
the relationship between Candomblé and modern art, see Sansi (2007).
2 “O Estado protegerá as manifestações das culturas populares, indı́genas e afro-brasileiras, e das

de outros grupos participantes do processo civilizatório nacional” (1988, art. 216.1).

3 “Os bens de natureza material e imaterial, tomados individualmente ou em conjunto, portadores

de referência á identidade, a ação, e memória dos diferentes grupos formadores da sociedade brasileira”
(1988, art. 216).
4 http://www.terreiros.ceao.ufba.br, accessed January 14, 2014.

80 J ournal of L atin A merican and C aribbean A nthropology

 5 At the funeral of a Mãe de Santo (Axexé) many objects are disposed of from fear of Eguns (spirits

of the dead): this does not only apply to objects from the shrine but also to personal objects (see Brazeal
2013).
6 Although Caboclos are not “made” through the feitura ritual, this does not mean that there is no

“training” process (doutrinamento) with the initiate. In the early encounters, the Caoclo may be a wild
spirit, a “wild Indian,” or indio bravo. The Caoclo has to be trained to dance, eat, and eventually talk;
in other words, it must become more humanized, or “manso” (tame) (Sansi 2013).
7 Each Orixá and Caboclo has a childish version, or erê; for example, the erê of Caboclo Oxossi is

Flor Branca, his son. Flor Branca is the spirit of a street child: he likes to hang out with street children,
beggars, and drug-takers, and he likes reggae music. Like his father, Flor Branca is a generous spirit,
organizing large parties every year at the beginning of October. These parties are replete with food and
sweets for children, reggae music, and games. The erê is a contradictory and ambiguous spirit; the term
comes from the Yoruba for “play.” In the process of initiation, initiates spend a great deal of time in the
state of erê, in which they can talk, listen, learn, and eat, as opposed to the state of possession, in which
the possessed (particularly in the case of the Orixá) neither eat nor talk.
8 For further discussion on the “natural heritage” of Afro-Brazilian religions, see Sansi (2009).

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