Candomblé's Eating Myths: Religion Stated in Food Language

Body bar (print) issn 2057–5823 and bar (online) issn 2057–5831 Religion Article Candomblé’s eating myths: religion stated in food language Patricia Rodrigues de Souza Abstract All religions have particular relationships with food. Either through fasts, inter- dictions, sacred foods, banquets or rituals involving food, religious values can be represented, expressed and reinforced through taste. Some religions, such as African Brazilian Candomblé, have food systems as complex as a language. Each of its deities has a favorite food, prepared according to strict rules, similar to a grammar. A slight modification of the ingredients or of the way of prepar- ing a food offering could change its meaning and cause unexpected, undesirable effects. In Candomblé there is no ritual without food. Depending on the goal, food is served to the deities but also shared with mortals, or only to mortals but representing the deities, and sometimes foods are not eaten at all but are one element of cures, being passed over a person, e.g. in the popcorn bath discussed here. Keywords: taste, food, food language, Candomblé, offerings Affiliation Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil. email: [email protected] bar vol 2.2 2018 167–189 doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.36488 ©2018, equinox publishing 168 PATRICIA RODRIGUES DE SOUZA Food is my religion, the kitchen is my temple, and my sacred book contains recipes. This article is an invitation to Candomblé’s kitchen, a place where devotion comes from its pans. In this African-Brazilian religion, humans and gods eat together. Gods have their favourite foods: beans, yams, sweet potato, okra, corn made in all forms, coconut, chillies, all sorts of meat … all spiced with onion, and dried shrimps sautéed in rich colourful palm oil. Ceremonies are banquets with music, dancing and meaningful, elaborate foods. Everyone is invited, there’s no need to be a practitioner, prosperity is to be shared. From the very beginning of human history, religion and food have been related. Ancient cults had tutelary gods and goddesses of wheat, rice, grapes, cows and pigs – and they would all get fed and offered sacrifices. The Hebrew Bible contains a whole book (Leviticus) on dietary rules: what could or couldn’t be eaten, when and in what manner, and with whom. As Graham Harvey states in his Food, Sex and Strangers: ‘It is possible that religion began as a kind of interspecies etiquette – especially when members of one species needed to eat members of another’ (2013:2). Religions have regulated food issues, either because of the heavy weight of tradition that tends to determine what people treat as significant, or because we perform our everyday activities, such as eating, in a religious manner (Harvey 2013; 2015). Religion has everything to do with the relationships that constitute, form and enliven people in everyday activities in this material world. Even for an atheist, Sunday lunch with family can be ‘sacred’. Believing or not, we attribute ‘religious’ specialness to things and act accordingly. Hence, religion, in a wide sense, has shaped eating habits, and therefore taste. As a culinary art teacher I have had the opportunity to closely observe people’s food choices for many years. I conclude that religion is an important filter, even for people or groups who declare themselves to be atheists or agnostics. Indeed, this fact made me want to study religion so that I could better understand the motivation for food choices. Moreover, having spent twelve years as a practitioner of Candomblé, I can affirm that food practices can reinforce religious adherence. In this article I will show how food practices within a religion constitute a food language and therefore how religions can be professed through matters of taste. As a theoretical approach, I follow Lévi-Strauss’ ideas in The Raw and the Cooked (2010a) in which he demonstrates that food rules work like any language. People’s values and thoughts are expressed the same way, following the same rules, whether they are using verbal language or communicating through food. I also follow Mary Douglas in ‘Decipher- ing a meal’ (1997) in order to demonstrate how meals follow a structure which encodes messages. I will exemplify these ideas by exploring the food CANDOMBLÉ’S EATING MYTHS: 169 practices of Candomblé, a religion based on the cult of African deities. Like other religions, Candomblé has its own taste, which originated in combi- nations of specific meaningful ingredients, most of which are mentioned in its myths. In this article I will focus on Brazilian Candomblé. Because Brazil was colonised by the Portuguese, Candomblé and other African religions prac- tised there have a Portuguese touch. This is demonstrated not only by the use of Portuguese orthography for Yoruba liturgical words, but more significantly by the food offered to the deities. For example, some of the typical ingredients or techniques of African votive dishes were substituted by Portuguese ones. The article is divided into three parts: the first gives some background context, the second describes Candomblé’s food practices, and the third is more analytical, examining Candomblé’s food practices through language theory. Contextualising rituals in African American religions The African diaspora in the Americas produced several interrelated religions, all of which are based on the cults of African deities. Cuban Santeria, Haitian Vodou, Surinamean Winti and Brazilian Candomblé, Xangô and Tambor de Mina are some examples. Some African groups managed to preserve their ancestral beliefs and some of their religious practices (Parés 2006). However, these African diaspora religions incorporated many elements from European Catholicism, and sometimes absorbed native Amer- ican influences as well. Many of the deities worshipped in these traditions seem to be quite similar, and the way in which they are worshipped has many common elements, such as the use of food offerings as a means of communication. The cults focused on in this article all originated among the Yoruba of what is now Nigeria. The deities are called orisas (in Yoruba), orishas (in Spanish-speaking countries) or orixás (in Portuguese-speaking countries). In Latin countries they are also known as santos (saints). Each orisa rep- resents, or is itself, a nature force to be venerated. They are worshipped by men and women by singing, dancing, obeying and by offering gifts, sacrifices and foods. Food offerings in African religions follow the idea of reci- procity, as says a Brazilian Candomblé ditty recorded by Vilson de Sousa Jr: ‘That who gives me to eat also eats, that who gives me to drink also drinks’ (2009:34). Ancestors also play a very important role in Yoruba-derived religion. Just like the orisas, they are worshipped and never forgotten. They also receive offerings, some made by the whole community and some made by a single 170 PATRICIA RODRIGUES DE SOUZA member or a single family. These offerings can consist of candles, leaves, flowers, objects, animals, drinks and foods. The foods offered could range from a single fruit to a whole meal prepared with the meat of a slaughtered animal. Collective offerings happen at specific times of the year according to a liturgical calendar. Individual ones such as rites of passage or healing rituals do not have fixed dates but are determined by circumstances. In all cases, the goal is to produce, transfer, accumulate, activate or expand the what is called ase, ashé or axé (in Yoruba, Spanish and Portuguese respec- tively), which consists of a force that animates all living things and moves the whole universe, according to Yoruba cosmovision. Another concept shared by several African American religions is Ifá, a set of poems or myths from which derive all the principles of such religions. Although it is orally transmitted, it can be considered the ‘sacred book’ of African American religions as the African philosopher Kólá Abímbólá states (2006:47). Axé and Ifá will be discussed in more detail in the following section. Candomblé, a food-religion Food is a simple and familiar reference, recognisable by everyone, and therefore provides material for excellent metaphors, or even metonymies in which a food can actually be a part of an entity instead of merely representing it. Beyond symbolism, food issues can be so central in some religions that we could classify them as food-dependent religions (meaning that they would be very different without food practices). Candomblé exemplifies this model. Ifá, the origin of everything Candomblé mentions food, eating, offerings and related matters through- out Ifá, its sacred canon. All wisdom and principles of traditional Yoruba people are contained within a collection of 256 oral myths or poems – ítan (story) or odu (destiny, path). Each ítan tells a myth from which it is possible to divine the kind of destiny (odu) a person was born with and what might be done to ease it. Ifá priest Fatunmbi (1992:v) states that odu represent the energy patterns that create consciousness, analogous to Carl Jung’s archetypes, i.e. each person shows features under the odu they were born. A person’s odu is revealed through a divination system using palm tree seeds (opele) or cowry shells (búzios). In this sense, ifá is also an oracle (Figures 1 and 2). In order to be animated, both opele and búzios must ‘be fed’, i.e. be offered food, usually including the blood of a slaughtered animal. From CANDOMBLÉ’S EATING MYTHS: 171 Figure 1: Ifá divination board with cowry shells. Drawing by Patricia Rodrigues de Souza. Figure 2: Opele, made with palm tree seeds. Drawing by Patricia Rodrigues de Souza. 172 PATRICIA RODRIGUES DE SOUZA time to time they must be fed again to renew axé, the force that makes them animated and capable of communicating between priest/ess and deities.

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