Abstract
Animal sacrifice is the essence of Afro-Brazilian religiousness. The faithful are always conscious of a debt toward the gods, which no single act of sacrifice can expiate. Sacrifices should only be offered to deities which have been ascertained by divination practiced with cowries. Ecstatic trance is the normal continuation of sacrifice, implying the fusion of human and supernatural identities. Yet sacrifice is also very practical and is used to feed people, being part of the urban informal economy of many Brazilian cities. In contrast to Pentecostalism, the Xangô religion imposes no ethical constraints on devotees. The simultaneous growth, in contemporary Brazil, of two such different forms of religion seems to contradict some basic postulates of the social science of religion.