Word: yemanj
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...fastest-growing cult: "spiritism." Altars were set up everywhere in the sand, heaped with fetishes and food offerings, bottles of beer and the rotgut alcohol known as cachaça. Around the altars, while drums pounded faster and faster, men, women and children danced and shouted, stomped and babbled. Yemanjá, goddess of the sea, was the special object of honor; poor families from Rio's slums and evening-clad nightclub patrons waded into the water to toss in offerings-liquor, perfume, jewelry, and thousands of bouquets of white chrysanthemums...
Oxala & Ogun. The upsurge of spiritism in Roman Catholic (95%) Brazil is a phenomenon of the past decade, but its roots go deep. Slaves brought their gods from Africa, and many of them changed in their new country: among the Nagôs, Yemanjá was a river goddess who became a sea goddess on the journey across the water; Calunga, the Bantu sea god, became the god of death during the slave ship trip to Brazil. The spirit deities also merged with Catholic theology: Oxala is both the Lord of Creation and Christ, Yemanjá is also Our Lady...
Victory for Yemanjá. Instead of merely condemning spiritism, Archbishop Câmara has launched a campaign to expose the charlatanism of the spiritist leaders and to draw their followers into church by holding Masses in honor of their most popular saints, notably St. George and St. Sebastian. After painstaking studies of prestidigitation and stage music, Rio's Marist Brothers put on a series of public shows during the past year to duplicate the tricks by which the spiritist babalaôs hoodwink the gullible. Such sound showmanship has had some success...
...last week Yemanjá scored a clean victory. When Archbishop Camara held an open-air Mass on the beach New Year's Eve to compete with the spiritists, only 600 people showed...
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