Brazilian Believers Of Hidden Religion Step Out Of Shadows

[rug]

NPR | Sept. 16, 2013 2:55 p.m.

Amid chanting and drumming, a crowd gathers in Sao Paulo and waits for the gods to come to them from the spirit world.

They are celebrating a sacred festival day in honor of Omulu, a deity of life and death. The women wear white dresses with crinolines, colorful belts and headdresses. The men wear lace, pajama-style suits. They sing and dance in a circle for hours; the room gets warmer, the chanting more intense.

Suddenly, they are here: Orixas have possessed the chosen among the faithful. They are spirit gods, the deified ancestors who link humans to the other world.

Those who have been taken over writhe and shout. They are led away and then return dressed in beautiful sparkling costumes depicting the aspect of the deity that possesses them — Omulu, for example, or the snake god Oshunmare.

http://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-brazilian-believers-of-hidden-religion-step-out-of-shadows/

8:14 audio at link.

[xfundy]

1. Their claims are as plausible as any other religion's.

[rug]

2. They're not. A common error is to consider all religions equally flat.

[xfundy]

3. Disagree.

Since each religion claims it is the ONE, TRUE religion, and at least by standards of America's constitution, they are all the same. Each has some mighty unbelievable stuff to those who don't follow it.

[rug]

5. For one thing, many religions do not claim to be "the ONE, TRUE religion".

For another thing, American jurisprudence says nothing about plausibility of religion.

Lastly religions are based on belief. Whether one believes them or not, whether one finds them plausible or not, depends to a large extent on what the religion claims is the source of the belief. A religious belief that a spacecraft is the trail of the comet Hale-Bopp is measurably implausible.

[xfundy]

8. "Measurably implausible?"

How so? Nuts, yes, but "measurably implausible?" How do you know they didn't make it? How do you know Mormons don't get their own planet, or that Muslims get 72 virgins? Where's the proof/plausibility for any religion's claims?

All the major religions, possibly with the exception of Judaism, do indeed claim "one, true." So do denominations among Christian sects.

[rug]

10. Yes, measurably implausible.

If the claim is there is an alien craft trailing a comet, that can be demonstrated or not demonstrated. As far as the LDS, both the claim of ruling planets and their anthropology of North America, imo, undercut the plausibility of their claims. I don't know enough about Islam but I suspect the claim of 72 virgins awaiting martyrs in Paradise (often cited by Islamophobes) is not literal. If a religious claim is rooted in the measurable, then it is indeed susceptible to conventional "proof", that would effect its plausibility. Most, though, are not and are rooted in belief.

Do you not consider Buddhism, Bahá'í, and Jainism, to name three, to be major religions?

[xfundy]

11. Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion.

As for consider Bahá'í and Jainism, I don't know enough to say. I doubt it.

As for things I do know, Southern Baptists, Catholics and most other denominations/sects of xianity DO consider themselves to have the one, true, within the one true.

So, a virgin birth, talking snakes and donkeys, walking on water, waking up after three days dead and flying to heaven are plausible?

[rug]

12. Religion is found around the world in many forms.

Don't take this the wrong way, but your experience with religion appears to be parochial.

I don't know about talking snakes and donkeys, but a virgin birth, walking on water, and the Ascension (nothing in there about flying), while not measurable, are plausible and consistent with the notion, and within the purview of, a God who is a Creator of all things.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

4. Santeria

Studied that for a while. It has some very very interesting parallels to Greek mythology in its pantheon. And no, I'm not talking about the "universal" stuff that you sometimes hear people say are found in all mythology. I consider those claims invalid for the most part. There are specific parallels in there that are very intriguing.

[rug]

6. I hadn't heard that before about Santería.

Worth looking into.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

9. It's just me.

Check the personality of Eleggua (or Legba, or the other variants): very similar to Hermes, or Loki for that matter. He too is a messenger of the gods in one of his aspects. Another of his aspects is very similar to Janus.
Another very interesting one is that they have two goddesses of the sea, one of whom has, as her symbol, a net. Yemaya rules the waves, I was told, while this one - I forget her name, unfortunately - rules the deep ocean.
If you remember, Aphrodite and Ares were caught in a net by Hephaestus. I'm sure if I went back to Greek times, I'd find that a net was one of her symbols, or maybe a symbol of another Greek goddess of the sea.

I reject the "universal" stuff because you don't find anything remotely similar in, say, Hopi mythology. Native American mythologies are recognizably distinct. So that you can so easily find parallels here is something that makes me think there was contact at some point in the distant past between the ancestors of the Yorubas, from which Santeria comes, and the Greeks, or at least some intermediate people who transmitted ideas between them. Not so far fetched, as the distance from the Mediterranean to Nigeria is long, but in the long history of human migrations, hardly impossible.

[cbayer]

7. Santeria is similar to Vodoun, which you can find in and around New Orleans.

It's interesting and uses powerful psychological techniques, imo.

Someone once put a "spell" on me, the details of which I will not go into to. I knew a practitioner of Vodoun and while I did not believe in it, I followed her instructions anyway. What could it hurt?

It's not uncommon for New Orleanians to pour salt on the floors of their new homes and sweep it out with a new broom, another nod to Vodoun.