A Protection Ritual to ‘Close the Body’ Links Different Religious Traditions in Brazil

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Candomblé. Photo by Flickr user Luciano Paiva.

Posted 21 July 2016 17:00 GMT
Written by Adam Lee

When the slave trade came to Brazil in the 16th century, African religious beliefs and rituals survived the long and treacherous journey along with it. Over the centuries, such beliefs would come to unify many of the descendants of the estimated four million slaves brought to the country, through the modern-day Afro-Brazilian religions of Candomblé and Umbanda.

During the same period of colonization, 700,000 Portuguese immigrants settled in Brazil, bringing their own particular kind of Catholicism with them. Some of those settlers would attempt to carve out a home in the unforgiving desert of the Sertão.

The two ethnic groups would come to share not only much of the same region — the Northeast — but also an important aspect between their religions — a ritual known as the fechamento de corpo, or closing of the body.

The fechamento de corpo is based on a protection prayer that results in a corpo fechado, or closed body. The ritual is meant to ward off evil — either spiritual, physical or both. If the insurance sought was physical in nature, the receiver would believe themself safe from attacks no matter the weapon, including knives, guns or even snake venom.

https://globalvoices.org/2016/07/21/protection-prayer-links-different-religious-traditions-in-brazil/

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