On witchcraft as ritual aesthetic in African-Brazilian religions

Abstract

This article returns to part of the ethnographic data relating to witchcraft to which
I devoted a chapter of my doctoral dissertation – a description of three houses of religion of African origin located in southern Rio Grande do Sul. My goal here is to demonstrate that spirits, despite invisible, have a significant material side. Because of this the ritual assemblage of these beings presupposes a delicate craftsmanship, which includes specific ways of combining and separating certain foods and cooking ingredients, but also the careful use of certain objects, places and words. This is
the case of the ritual creation involved in witchcraft, the main object for this article. To understand it we need to describe part of what happens during the initiation rite. The main hypothesis is that ritual creation is the expression of a transformational relation between different rites.