Body Trance and Word Trance in Brazilian Religion

Abstract

Among the popular religions of Brazil, Candomblé, deriving from both West African tradition and from Iberian Baroque Catholicism, stands out as the religion of the body, its emotions and expressions. Practised with blood sacrifice, trance, music and dance, it imposes no code of ascetic conduct on its devotees, being different from other forms of religion, like Pentecostalism, which are also growing in the country. Candomblé is a festive religion, in which the notions of sin, guilt and expiation, as understood in western theology, play little or no role. Thus it has been viewed by many analysts as a religion of personal and social liberation. Yet, the recent growth of Candomblé, in all parts of Brazil and among people of all social origins, in keen competition with Pentecostalism, gives rise to some theoretical problems. The markedly concrete character of Candomblé, within a society increasingly dominated by economic and social abstraction, seems to be difficult to reconcile with a Marxist or Weberian inspired sociology of religion.