Cuidar da saúde com a força vital da natureza: tratamentos terapêuticos no candomblé

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to explore how the lifeforce of nature beings is employed to preserve and re-establish health in candomblé. Health is conceived as imbrication of physical, psychological, social and spiritual aspects and includes the individual project of happiness. The field research that gave rise to this reflection was carried out in the Àṣe Idasilẹ Ọdẹ de Bàbá Marcelo dos Santos Monteiro Oloye Ọdẹarofa Ọmọ-awo Ifa-Funké, where the cult of Ifá is also present and lead to modifications in rituals, worldview and philosophy of life. In therapeutic practices, these changes are manifest (marking a certain distance from bahian candomblé), mainly in the centrality of the care to the orí (the head, in which material, spiritual, social and cosmological aspects are strictly linked) and in the primacy of the use of the elements of nature with respect to requests of help directed to the òrìṣà. The employ of plants, animals and minerals takes into account its therapeutic properties, its qualities and characteristics, is linked to symbolic, mythic and ritual aspects, and accompanied by prayers and “enchantations”. Ritual practices aiming at health maintenance are, usually, a combination of “medicine” and “offer”: they have in view transmitting, making the human being “participate” of specific modulations of àṣẹ, the lifeforce, of the beings of nature, and to establish flows and movements of àṣẹ in the cosmos in favour of health. Specific cosmovision and anthropology, based on forces and flows, are at the base of therapeutic treatments, which begin with the oracular consultation, which guides successive procedures, and includes advices on conduct and interdictions. Health care in the terreiro, which interests daily life and has moments of great intensity in rituals, encompasses symbolic, aesthetic, performative, social, political and spiritual aspects. Involves reflexivity, the senses, emotions, a corporified experience and contributes to creating and preserving particular philosophy of life and way of being in the world.