CANDOMBLÉ

After work yesterday, I went to the coffee shop to meet a friend. There was a Candomblé father there, waiting for his wife in the shop. We wrote our names and birth dates on serviettes, and he used numbers to divine something about our personalities. He looked at mine and said something was wrong. In Portuguese, he said, “the number in the head is too close to the number in the foot, so there is no equilibrium,” and Pétala translated it for me. He was convinced that it wasn’t right so I told him that I was born with a middle name that was never used. He did the numbers again and he said, “The path is open, and you will walk through.” I asked him if I could attend a Candomblé ritual. Daniel very kindly gave up his hot date to translate for me.

That night, we met with some people in the tattoo studio/bar, bought some wine and drove for about twenty minutes to Father Ale’s house in Igrapés. It was in the dodgy part of town, where the roof is a sheet of tin, the floor is dirt, and there’s no mobile phone reception. Apparently it’s where the drug deals are done, and police refuse to enter without at least ten cars.

We stood in a circle around the one room in the house (there was only one plastic chair) whilst Father Ale took a shower and changed into his robe. When he was done, he lit a candle and turned out the light, and poured the wine into the cup. He stood at the door with his back to us and started to sing in an African language. The dog fell asleep in seconds.

The spirit came into Father Ale’s body. His body shook and he laughed a wicked laugh, and then turned around to face us. He hugged each person three times. He blew cigarette smoke into the cup to transform the wine then passed it to each person to drink. It was sweet and smoky. The father and the spirit children sang more, mostly in Portuguese but also in the tongues of the Africans and the Brazilian Indians.

The ghosts went into the spirit children and they were not prepared for the spirit power. They twitched and shook and stumbled around until they had to pull the bands on their arms so tight the rope left marks on their skin. The spirit in Father Ale made lots of jokes, then spoke to everyone in turn. My spirit spoke in a foreign tongue.

Ok, so it wasn’t well translated but apparently my problem was that my parents had no religion and I had never been baptised or initiated into any religion. I’m faithless, and that’s the worst thing to be in a country that is overly religious but also extremely tolerant of religious difference. He said I lack direction and when I dream, I dream I am falling down a hole.

The spirit left Pai Ale’s body, and Pai Ale went outside to fetch some leaves for the spirit children to eat. Plants are the power of Brazilian Indians, and in the song the spirit children ask for plants to eat. Then the process was repeated, but this time a different spirit came into Father Ale’s body. It was a good spirit who became a little bit evil on earth. When he spoke, it was with a much deeper voice than before. We drank the wine from a different cup. He told me that I had strong ‘majunity’ (spirit power) but too much negative energy, and I needed to do something with it.

When the spirits had left their bodies, and the wine bottles were empty, we turned on the light and the circular drawings done by the spirit children were revealed on the floor. They matched Father Ale’s tattoos. The dog woke up.

Then we smoked some cigarettes and went home.