„Freedom is a scary thing“: Zur Interdependenz von Krankheit und Heilung im Candomblé

About the Interdependency of Disease and Healing in Candomblé

Abstract

Various practices of spiritual healing are an important element of the Brazilian Candomblé religion, which originated in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. The present paper introduces the very complex religious field of Candomblé, locates own ethnographical research and describes the ethnological approach of this paper. Then a heuristic order of first, second, and third degree healing practices is outlined on purpose to understand everyday religiosity, services offered by spiritual experts and the process of initiation in a common continuum. With respect to the initiation processes, an ambivalent concept is developed from the various aspects connected with it, in which disease and healing can be understood as mutually inherent. Following metaphors of slavery, still present in terms and rituals of Candomblé, this concept can be parallelized with a dichotomy between concepts of captivity and liberation. This complex turns comprehensible by a framework which understands the “alter“ as a basic part of the “ego.”