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The article discusses Candomblé began with Yoruba people from Nigeria and Benin sold into slavery in Brazil. Topics include Candomblé is practiced through dancing, playing drums, singing, embodying orishas, cooking for and eating with them, Candomblé does not have a written doctrine, but is based on oral knowledge, and dogmas of faith to black African people's mentality.

In article the author highlights the connection of lights with god's message and religion, Candomblé, a religion widely practiced in Brazil. Topics include the presence of spirits bounded by light not just dark; and the "white table" ceremony (mesa branca) and temple's hall covered with statues of catholic saints and spirit entities.

Scholar Charles Long offers a paradigm for exploring the meaning of African American religion. This article explores the applicability of Long's methodology to other Afro-Atlantic religious traditions, such as Brazilian Candomblé and Haitian Vodou, by means of an examination of two artistic/interpretive concepts—the lithic imagination and the tertia. Succinctly, the lithic imagination is that aspect of human consciousness that bears similarities to the natural form of the stone—which is to say, the creative will to resistance, especially as manifested in religious expression. The tertia, a more ephemeral and less easily defined idea, is the surplus of the encounter of the colonized and the colonizer. It is the “third thing,” the unacknowledged history of modernity, the distressed ancestral presences which are dynamic (if often occluded) forces necessary to a full reckoning of the religious history of the Blacks in the diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the 1970s, a number of African American writers, including Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Danzy Senna, and Elizabeth Alexander, have developed literary works around Brazilian spiritual, cultural, and social formations. Advancing within a hemispheric context Houston Baker's concept of an “oceanic critical consciousness,” this article examines how narrative representations of Candomblé in Toni Morrison'sParadise(1997) prompt acts of self-reconstruction that penetrate the national borders framing certain notions of African American identity in the post-Civil Rights era. The author argues for greater recognition of the abiding yet often ambivalent transnationality of African American identity and its employment, particularly by women writers, in contemporary African American literature. The article suggests that African American literature and U.S. blackness in general must be resituated in global terms and that one way of doing so is through the figure of the woman spiritually reconstituted through transnationally rooted practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the way in which the living quarters of a famous priestess from the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé were turned into a heritage site. The Memorial de Mãe Menininha do Gantois shows that the form of the museum might be understood as a particular "language" of status and prestige. The site therefore allows us to discuss what happens when new actors in the public sphere pick up, appropriate, and transform this language of "museumification." Although the profane dimensions of "museumification" are hard to miss, we argue that in the case of the memorial this language does not at all diminish the sacred nature of this site, but actually articulates it in a new way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author explores the ways in which Catholic, evangelical, and Candomblé actors produce competing framings that shape encounters taking place in the city of Cachoeira in the Brazilian state of Bahia. The framing of Cachoeira as a site of heritage tourism – one where local religious practices are read as part of the African heritage and attractions for African American ‘roots tourists’ – obscures as much as it reveals. This is not to suggest that this framing is entirely inaccurate or to deny that many visitors themselves describe their trips to Bahia this way. But I contend that the ‘heritage frame’ masks key issues that complicate diasporic encounters in Cachoeira, particularly different understandings of heritage and religion and their relationship to black identity that African Americans and Afro-Brazilians bring to these encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the presence of "images" in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé In many traditional houses of Candomblé it is often said that it is not allowed to photograph or film rituals. On the other hand, in recent years, the presence of Catholic and other figurative images in Candomblé shrines has been questioned by recent "purification" movements--often led by these traditional houses--who fight syncretism, separating Catholicism from African religion. Still, in many cases figurative images are present in shrines, and rituals are photographed and filmed. This article argues that, beyond syncretism, images in Candomblé are contentious because they can be powerful: they can be indexes of the presence of Candomblé santos, they can become instances of a "distributed person." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay traces the origins of African Studies in the U.S. to ethnographic, sociological, and linguistic work carried out by African American scholars in Brazil among practitioners of the Candomblé religion. More specifically, the author analyzes the interrelated work of African American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, anthropologist Melville Herskovits, and African American linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner.

Spirituality has been an influential force for many people. Although often ignored in business settings, it has recently been a topic of heightened interest to managers and scholars worldwide. In Bahia, Brazil, the fundamentals of spirituality for some have existed through Candomble and have been an integral part of the community including the workplace. Candomble encompasses a variety of African religious traditions established in Brazil during the nineteenth century. This study examines the positive influences of the Brazilian Candomble on workers and business life in Bahia. Through qualitative analysis, it offers organisational insights and managerial reflections that can be adapted and used in workplaces worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most of its history, candomblé was a marginal and persecuted spirit possession cult. From the 1920s onward, however, the cult evolved into the "trademark" of Bahia, a state in northeastern Brazil The color white--a spotless and impeccable white--has come to dominate the public face of the cult: evoking positive connotations such as cleanliness and purity, the color helped to portray candomblé as the splendid cultural heritage of the Bahian state as well as a respectable African religion. However, the "politics of white" has always been intersected by a "poetics of white," as Bahian artists, writers, and other image producers sought to destabilize the condoned meanings of white. Hinting at that which is absent from the impeccable surfaces of candomblé's public appearance, this "poetics of white" produced a layered public understanding of the cult. As people engage in speculations over the "true" candomblé that lies hidden behind its public façade, claims to be "in the know" reconfigure the notion of cultural capital, and new standards of belonging come into being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the use of plants for spiritual and medicinal purposes by the Candomble, an Afro-Brazilian cult in Bahia, Brazil. Religious leaders' retention of the elements of ethnoflora by importing Old World species; Biogeographical similarity between West Africa and Bahia, Brazil, facilitating diffusion of the African religion to the New World.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including Candomblé religion in Brazil, Islam in Egypt, and the effect of light on followers.