Page 53 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

38 Mattijs van de Port

Yet there is also a deep concern about what the new audiences in the
public sphere seek to make out of the cult. With indignation Mãe Stella
notices that “Candomblé became fashion: the búzios (cowry-shells) are
thrown [a divinatory practice, MP] in shops and bookstores, the strings of
beads and the ferramentos (iron symbols of the orixás) are used only because
they are ‘beautiful’ ” (Azevedo and Martins 1989, 20). Worse, at the time
of carnival “sacred objects of our rituals are paraded down the avenues, and
people behave as if they are possessed” (ibid.). Insisting that Candomblé
should be restored to sovereignty, that the cult can only be understood its
own terms, she wrote

Since slavery, black is considered to be synonymous with poverty, ignorance,
and knowing no other right than to know not to have any rights; the black
man has always been the toy of the culture that stigmatizes him, and thus his
religion became a play as well. Let us be free, let us fight against what hum-
bles us and disrespects us, against that which only accepts us if we dress in
the clothes they gave us to wear. (Mãe Stella, in Campos 2003, back cover)
While this critique concerns society at large, Mãe Stella’s fiercest critiques
are directed toward terreiros and Candomblé practitioners who stray from
the aforementioned “purity of propositions and rituals”:

There are those who dress up in the garments of the orixá, who improvise,
merely “give it a go” (dá um jeitinho), who use garçons to serve fancy drinks,
offer candle light dinners while the Candomblé is taking place and watch
on video the latest celebration in honour of the orixás. At present, we even
have “computerized priests” . . . [we too] love candlelight dinners with a
good glass of wine, but everything has its place and its time. And this place,
most certainly, is not a Candomblé terreiro at the time of a public celebra-
tion in honour of the orixás. (1989, 21)

She continues that “in the face of so many barbarisms (barbaridades) acted
out by people who say they are initiated—some of them being priests—we
can’t blame non-adepts for their disbelief” (20). The extent of her worries
is probably best captured in a statement that I found in a recently pub-
lished “profile” of her religious leadership, written by one of her filhas:

The worst enemies of Candomblé today are those who practice it in a flut-
tering way. Those who have no knowledge of the secrets (fundamentos),
who have no basis or certainty as to what it is that they are doing. They
disfigure everything. They are unscrupulous. The police, the state, the
church, they are no longer the enemies of Candomblé. Our enemies are the
so called adepts, who disfigure everything and destroy Candomblé. [There