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The article focuses on how several pagan cults in Brazil including Umbanda, Quimbanda, and Candomble worship the sea goddess Iemanj and discusses topics on Spiritism, a term which refers to the adoption of the practices of witchcraft and extrasensory psychological exercises. It mentions how the devotees gather at the country's beaches during the New Year's Eve to offer worldly things including combs, jewelry, and perfume to Iemanj. It cites the people's belief that the offering is accepted if it does not wash back onto the shore. Furthermore, it notes that the beach rite is the most prominent pagan practice in Brazil. It also reveals that many of the Brazilians who claim to be Catholics are also involved in spiritism which is said to be posing a distinct threat to the Catholic church.

The book "The City of Women," by Ruth Landes is a tourist account by an anthropologist of a field trip to Brazil and is devoted in the main to "candomblé," one of a number of fascinating African survivals in the Western Hemisphere. West Africans brought this religious cult from their homeland when they were shipped as slaves to Brazil, and their descendants are keeping it alive today in a modified form. The book contains no reference to the highly developed West African culture that so deeply conditions current Afro-Brazilian attitudes and beliefs.