Abstract
Ritual acts in Candomblé have an important role to create the pragmatic conditions for the transmission of religious memory. The purpose of this paper is to describe how performing gestures (offerings, purifications, ritual prohibitions, etc.) mobilize the characteristics of the Orishas and of the signs of destiny (Odus) and motivate the allegiance of the adept to the symbolic dimension of worship. During ritual interaction, objects, foods, places, etc., are disconnected from their normal contexts of use and they reach a new cognitive value and a symbolic efficacy. Therefore, we aim to determinate how a sui generis reality emerges, notably, a paradoxical biography of the adept, mated with the intentionality of entities (Orishas, Odus, etc.), special efficacies of elements, and mythological categories.
Keywords
Candomblé; symbolism; ritual; efficacy; pragmatism