Shango

Son of Obatala and Yemanja, Shango is considered the king of Orishas. In the afro-Brazilian cultures, Shango is defined as the deity of storms, thunderbolts and thunders. In mythology, Shango takes care of the administration, power and justice, representing the authority constituted in the African pantheon. It can be said that Shango is one of the most popular Orishas, respected and promoted in candomblés and worship places all over Brazil. The votive day for Shango is Wednesday and the special party dedicated to him takes place on September 30.

The material representation of Shango is a meteor, his symbol is a spear and a double-sided hatchet made of thunder stones or thunder stones formed by the thunderbolt. In the religious fusion (fusion of different cultural elements), Shango is correspondent to the Catholic saint Saint Jerome, Saint Barbara, Saint Anthony and Saint John the Baptist. The black people traded into Brazil were forbidden to state their religious beliefs. In order to trick their oppressors, they gave their orishas names of Catholic saints, which was the religion of Brazilian colonizers.

Orisha is a generic name for the deities worshipped by the Yoruba, in the Southwest of what is currently Nigeria, and also Benin and the North of Togo, from where the black enslaved people in Brazil were brought and, with them, their beliefs, which were incorporated by other religious manifestations. Orishas, also called Saints, are supernatural entities that act as mediators between God and men. Most of them is the personification of nature’s forces and phenomena. In addition to all Orishas having a spiritual aspect, there is also a material aspect, that can be represented by an object or a set of objects to which their spiritual force is attached through a blessing ritual called assentamento.

With the assentamento ritual, the material representation of the Orisha, that is, his physical objects start to be more than a symbol of his presence; they are at the same time the home of the Orisha and the Orisha himself. The reality of the saint is also expressed through a trance, that is, when a member of the worship session incorporates the spirit, that is, from that moment on, present among men.

Thus, it can be noticed that there are different levels of perception of the deity (Orisha), whose reality should be assimilated and experienced by the followers in the worship sessions: the strength of nature; the concrete manifestation of natural phenomena; the material objects kept in the temples and the manifestation of the orisha on the body through possession.

The Orisha Shango is presented as a young man, physically strong, with well-developed bone structure, agile, sensual, and that seduces female worshippers with his dance. The chants to praise Shango are fast-paced and vibrant. A special rattle called xereré is used to encourage the filhas de santo. The dance is performed with warrior steps, to the sound of percussive instruments. The ravished assistants bow to the saint, stimulating him with shouts of “Ôkê! Ôkê!”. Shango comes, armed with a spear, bringing in his neck a necklace with white and red beads, jumping and spinning around vigorously. His call is “êi-í-í”.

In the worship place, also called Shango, there is an altar called Peji, where offers and food for the saint are placed. The powerful Orisha Shango like to eat amalá (okra with shrimp or beef, served with yam or flour mush) and bejiri (okra with yam, olive oil, shrimp, salt and onion). On Wednesdays, day of the week devoted to Shango, his food and water are changed.

The afro-Brazilian religions spread all over Brazil are not very different from each other when it comes to rituals, the deities, the protection categories or the purposes of their ceremonies. Inspired by Nago literature, the Shango (ritual) is performed by several Brazilian ethnical groups, known under different names, such as Macumba, in Rio de Janeiro; Candomblé, in Bahia; Casas de Mina or Nagô, in Maranhão; Terreiros, in Pará, Pernambuco and Bahia; Canjerê, in Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul; and Babaçuê (also called Batuque de Santa Bárbara), practiced in the North region, specially Pará.          

The Shango groups are independent worships, concentrated around the character of a soothsayer priest, with an infrastructure of hierarchically qualified people, other ritually initiated (filhas de santo), or candidates to initiation, and supporters. The ritual practices and religious beliefs changed with time; it was influenced by the Catholic religion and indigenous traditions. However, there usually follow the model of religious traditions of the Ewe-Fon (Jeje) and the Yoruba (Nago), peoples from the Mine Coast (correspondent to the current area of Guinea Gulf, from where many of the slaves brought to the Americas came from), whose cultures earned their respect in the religious domains over the ones from other groups that were introduced.

Those traditions hallow the worship to many deities subordinated to a creator, descendent of a mythological family, organized in pantheons, with the function of controlling the forces of natures and regulating the behavior of individuals.

Even though there are variations according to the region and even differences between local groups, the general guidelines of the organization, the operation and the belief system don’t differ dramatically, whether in Brazil, or other parts of America, where their existence is also found, such as in Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, British Honduras, Dutch Guiana and Trinidad.

Recife, March 13, 2013.

sources consulted

BASTOS, Abguar. Os cultos mágico-religiosos no Brasil: xangô, candomblé, pará, macumba, cambinda, umbanda, quimbanda, catimbó, linha de mesa, babaçue, tombor-de-mina, pajelança, toré cabula: os aparatos, os cerimoniais, as alfaias, os feitiços. São Paulo: Hucitec, 1979.

how to quote this text

Source : ANDRADE, Maria do Carmo. Xangô. Pesquisa Escolar Online, Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, Recife.Available at: <http://basilio.fundaj.gov.br/pesquisaescolar>. Accessed: day month year. Example: 6 August 2009.