Spirits in Brazil

Spirits were abroad on New Year's Eve along the beaches around Rio de Janeiro. The five-mile crescent of Copacabana and the other Rio beaches blazed with the ritual candles of some 600,000 devotees of Brazil's fastest-growing cult: "spiritism." Altars were set up everywhere in the sand, heaped with fetishes and food offerings, bottles of beer and the rotgut alcohol known as cachac,a. Around the altars, while drums pounded faster and faster, men, women and children danced and shouted, stomped and babbled. Yemanja, goddess of the sea, was the special object of honor; poor families from Rio's slums and evening-clad nightclub patrons waded into the water to toss in offerings--liquor, perfume, jewelry, and thousands of bouquets of white chrysanthemums.

As the pulse of the drumming quickened, the spirits drew nearer and began to possess their worshipers, who writhed and rolled in the sand: twitching and groaning. One believer pointed at another, yelling, "The evil god Exu has entered into him." then splashed a bottle of alcohol over him, touched it off with a candle, and watched his blazing victim run shrieking through the crowds. A young shop clerk, possessed by the spirit of the amorous Indian god Arruda, wrestled a pretty woman to the ground, died when her husband emptied his .45 into him. The next morning the beaches were littered with grisly debris--fetishes and bottles, blood, clothing, and the occasional headless carcass of a sacrificed chicken.

Oxala & Ogun. The upsurge of spiritism in Roman Catholic (95%) Brazil is a phenomenon of the past decade, but its roots go deep. Slaves brought their gods from Africa, and many of them changed in their new country: among the Nagos, Yemanja was a river goddess who became a sea goddess on the journey across the water; Calunga, the Bantu sea god, became the god of death during the slave ship trip to Brazil. The spirit deities also merged with Catholic theology: Oxala is both the Lord of Creation and Christ, Yemanja is also Our Lady of Glory, Xango-Agodo, god of medicine, is also St. John the Baptist, and Ogun, the war god, is also St. George.

Brazilian spiritism has its European origins as well. Inspired by the lore of mediums and table-rapping in the books of Frenchman Allan Kardec, the Brazilian Spiritual Federation was founded 74 years ago, now claims 3,600 centers throughout the country. In the 1950 census some 900,000 Brazilians declared themselves spiritists, but best estimates are that about 10 million of Brazil's 61 million population now indulge in the cults. One, the Confederac,ao Espirita da Umbanda, claims, in Rio alone, more than 1,000 centers, known as terreiros (earth places).

The Roman Catholic Church, embarrassed by a shortage of priests that leaves only one for every 5,250 people, has only recently taken serious steps to combat the movement. "Our people have faith," says Archbishop Helder Camara of Rio. "They are instinctively religious, but they need help and spiritual guidance which they cannot always get. All the Masses celebrated on a Sunday in Rio can provide for a maximum of only 355,000 people --out of a population of 3,000,000."

Victory for Yemanja. Instead of merely condemning spiritism, Archbishop Camara has launched a campaign to expose the charlatanism of the spiritist leaders and to draw their followers into church by holding Masses in honor of their most popular saints, notably St. George and St. Sebastian. After painstaking studies of prestidigitation and stage music, Rio's Marist Brothers put on a series of public shows during the past year to duplicate the tricks by which the spiritist babalaos hoodwink the gullible. Such sound showmanship has had some success.

But last week Yemanja scored a clean victory. When Archbishop Camara held an open-air Mass on the beach New Year's Eve to compete with the spiritists, only 600 people showed up.

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